Changing Roads Podcast
Changing Roads Podcast unveils the profound essence of travel, exploring not just the destinations, but the personal transformations within. We unravel the various themes, aspects and narratives of travel that define us, shape us, and lead us to the heart of our own stories.
Changing Roads Podcast
Executive Hobo: The Extraordinary Life of Bo Keeley
Travel back in time with us as we sit down with the legendary adventurer, Bo Keeley. From his humble beginnings, to veterinary school, to his rise in fame in sports, to his break from society, trading a normal life for the hobos life, to traveling the world, to his unconventional home in a shipping container in Slab City, California, Bo's life is a testament to relentless exploration and resilience.
With every twist and turn, Bo imparts invaluable lessons on survival, curiosity, and the unyielding human spirit. This episode is a treasure trove of stories from a life lived on the edge, full of profound moments and unforgettable encounters.
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Welcome wanderers, dreamers and fellow seekers of the open road. This is Changing Roads, a sanctuary for explorers of the world and the self. Life is a wild adventure filled with changing roads and stories untold. Some people have the insatiable, lifelong need for full immersion into the enormous world around them. They crave to test and push themselves to their limits and voraciously explore, always looking for the next amazing thing around the next unknown bend. With resolve, they choose to know the beauty and light as much as they choose to face the ugly and dark. In this way, they seek to experience the world in its most intimate ways. They go from dress shoes to hiking boots, tennis shoes to bare feet, each footprint the mark of an enduring need to literally become the ground upon which they walk. They've felt the vastness of the world and the smallness of themselves. They've loved and lost, fallen and risen, always with the understanding that life's true richness and beauty lies in its unpredictability. They've come to cherish the detours, the unexpected turns and the challenges that have tested their resolve. It is only in this way they know that they will discover who they truly are. These are the souls who have embraced the life of changing roads. They've wandered through cities and wilderness alike, collecting tales from every corner of the world. Their lives are like a river, never stagnant, always flowing, carving out new paths as they move forward. As they near the end of their days, these adventurers find solace in solitude, tucked away from society, surrounded by the quiet peace they've earned. Their eyes carry the depth of a life fully lived, a life defined not by a single narrative, but by the countless roads they've traveled. And in that quiet they know that the road less traveled is the one worth taking, and they wouldn't have it any other way. And they wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 1:Hi, welcome to Changing Roads. I am your host, Brad, joined here by my co-host, Ranger, my loyal travel companion and service dog, and we have a special guest for you today, and it's an honor to have him on. I met him many, many, many years ago in Slab City, which is an outlaw town in Southern California near the Salton Sea, and the time that I spent there and my conversation with our guest down there probably changed the way that I travel and how I view travel in the first place. So usually I give a quick introduction on my guest, but with this guy I would not know where to start, so I would like to introduce you guys to Bo Keeley. How are you doing, Bo?
Speaker 2:I'm doing well in Slab City. Slab City is an outlaw town in California, on the Salton Sea in the Sonora Desert. I'm sitting in a shipping container where I've lived for the last 10 years in Slab City. Wow, it began in Schenectady, new York, after World War II. I was born, my parents popped me into a laundry basket and we drove to California to Santa Cruz, california in a 50s Mercury. I grew up on the Pacific Ocean and the boardwalk. Don't have much memories of that, probably because the next 30 years of my life would be a blur of many avenues and paths around the country through various means and finally, another 40 years later, here in what are we? In 2024, august, ending up sitting in a shipping container in this kind of slab city. No better place to live, easier to progress, chronologically Sounds good, is that all right? Yep, from Santa Cruz we moved to San Francisco, back to Santa Cruz, then down to Concord, california, near Disneyland. I have fond memories of Concord, jumping through sprinklers, picking four-leaf clovers and playing with my dog.
Speaker 2:My dad was a blue-collar man. The family didn't have much. There was enough dinner on the table. I had three cents a day, a salami sandwich and milk money. At school I remember my dad went to work at 5 in the morning, got on the company bus, returned at 6, fed the dogs we ate, dinner, did homework, went to bed. I was a keen athlete. I had great hands, a good arm and quick eyes. I joined the tennis team. I had only learned tennis the previous summer. Coach Kiley told me if you beat our number one guy, I'll let you join the team, because I usually don't allow newcomers onto the team after just one summer's experience. And he kept the team nevertheless.
Speaker 2:I was the sports newspaper editor, took journalism class, started keeping journals, graduated in 1967 from Parkside High School, went up to Michigan State University. I'd always liked animals. I'd been working summers for a veterinarian washing dogs, cleaning tunnels and hardly wanted to be paid, but did take my 25 cents an hour to augment my three cents an hour I was getting for pulling weeds. At MSU I was a B plus A minus student from high school and decided to become a veterinarian. I quickly fell into the middle of the class and stopped athletics for a while and kept my nose in the books and made it through with passing grades through pre-vet, into vet school and then begin my life dream of being a veterinarian.
Speaker 2:This was in the late 60s. I was a baby boom kid from World War II. There was also a pet boom. America was swarming with dogs and cats. Besides farm animals, they ran an accelerated program at MSU Michigan State University one of the best veterinary schools in the country. This program had continual day classes, six days a week, 364 days a year Christmas off unless we were on call, 364 days a year Christmas off unless we were on call. And by that time Vietnam was in full swing. The protests were on.
Speaker 2:I was in the draft lottery. In retrospect, had I gotten a high number, I would have preferred to risk the one out of ten chance of being shot. It was a great education up with sunrise, classes all day, study all night. And when I turned 21, I needed a break. So I began running to the Lansing College bars. I never drank, I just ran a mile to the bars, ran home, studied more, slept six hours. This went on for five years. We were presented in a warehouse with a number of animals of different species cats, dogs, horses, even giraffes and roadrunners from the Detroit Zoo. We opened them up, pawed through the intestines, the hearts, looking for diseases, parasites I'd swipe looks at the brains, trying to find the seat of consciousness and apply it to myself.
Speaker 2:As a sophomore, I took up paddleball. Paddleball is the predecessor of racquetball. I played with a wooden paddle in the same court. My first paddle was plastic. I practiced hard, still didn't have many dates, didn't have a car, couldn't afford to know movies. All I did was study, play sports and play paddleball for two hours every afternoon. One hour was up in an isolated court where I practiced alone, and then the second hour went downstairs and embarrassed myself on the courts with the better players. I practiced enough to become the intramural champion, then, a couple years later, the national paddle champion of USA, so that when I graduated I took a championship as well as my DVM sheepskin into a knapsack and, after passing the Michigan veterinary boards, just wanted out of the snow country.
Speaker 2:It was January in 1971. I took a left bank on an airplane out of Lansing, michigan, and landed in San Diego, california. Talk about a change of roads in life. There are many roads in life and we'll get to more of them. Some roads you're born into. I was born into one, without shoes and very little money money. I created many options for myself which could be called paths in life and shunted myself into vet school. Now I made the decision to move out to California.
Speaker 2:At the disgust of my appearance, I decided to become a professional racquetball player instead of a veterinarian. Let me explain. When I landed at the airport in San Diego, at the arrivals gate, pretty redhead in a bikini dashed out, put a Hawaiian wreath around my neck and planted a kiss on my virgin lips and said welcome to leech industries. Breakable was just just starting. They were just starting to make rackets in mass. The first two companies, leech and ectalon sports, had formed that year. Leech recruited me at a rival gate to sign with them For the next five years.
Speaker 2:I became the paddleball and racquetball champion many times over In the US. I was national champion. I went to hundreds of tournaments. It was like the Simon and Garfunkel song, every night's one night's sand of going to a different place giving a clinic demonstration or a tournament for the next five years and being at the top number one three in the country in the new sport of racquetball. I hitched and took freight trains to tournaments. I was the first sponsored player in racquetball financially and the first apparel sponsored player. I got sponsored by Converse, wearing Chuck tennis shoes, chuck Converse, I wore a red and a blue one on each feet for Christmas. For up to July a red one and green one for Christmas and a yellow and black one for Halloween. And because I was an eccentric wearing sweats for my warm-ups, a jockstrap, headband and being kind of an individualist, I got written up in Sports Illustrated in 1981. In an article by Tim Yost in Sports Illustrated called he Found His Racket. It was one of the most popular selling magazines in Sports Illustrated history, not because of my five-page feature but because it was a cover with Magic Johnson, now a racquetball champion. I wrote a couple of racquetball books. One was a first instructional on racquetball called the Complete Book of Racquetball bestseller. It sold 100,000 copies. Racquetball opened so many new doors for me. I met politicians, second story men, professional sports athletes. I did the first clinic tour through Central and South America. I was a Johnny Appleseed of racquetball throughout Latin America and made my first cover of National Racquetball Magazine hugging a llama with a racket at the top of Machu Picchu. Having hiked there for two days Toward the autumn of my racquetball career in the late 70s I branched off into hopping more freight trains hitchhiking around the country.
Speaker 2:By then I knew new people in many major cities of the USA. By that time I had begun a tour of the USA. I wasn't the genius, but I wanted to be With all these people I had met throughout the country. There were some smart ones. I got in my van and visited them for a month at a time. I had a seven-foot rabbit named Fillmore J Hare. He was stuffed. He rode shotgun. I had an invisible string attached to his hand. Whenever somebody thumbed for a ride I waved at them back with Fillmore, got some astonishing looks and learned the saving value of humor in life.
Speaker 2:After my genius tour I began the next arena of my life. I got in terrific shape every day through the 70s without fail, even on New Year's as I waved at the firecrackers and people partying on the beach at Ocean Beach and Pacific Beach. I bicycled about 10 miles to the beach, ran eight miles from the jetty to the Pacific Beach, ran to Meldorm Sports Club, the first privately owned racquetball club in the nation, lifted weights for 30 minutes, practiced for an hour, played competitively for two hours, got on my bicycle, rode 10 miles into an offshore breeze back home, read, studied, started writing the first racquetball book. Then I ran to a bar, watched for an hour, never drinking, ran back home and passed out like a log For about 10 years through the 70s, I didn't miss one night talking about freight train riding, the arena of my life, which began in the 80s.
Speaker 2:I became a boxcar tourist on my first freight train ride in four I was doing a racquetball clinic in Salt Lake City at the Canyon Racquetball Club, just down the road 30 miles south of the famous Golden Spike in Ogden, utah, where in the 1860s the Union Pacific joined what was it called? The Central Pacific Railroads pounded the Golden Spike and that opened up the West Coast, the Pacific to the Atlantic. A freight run which is very historic and which I rode many times with hobos, executive hobos, hoboettes, stopping by the Brit National Hobo Convention, the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, and continuing on my genius circus between the Atlantic and the Pacific. In other words, for the next five years through the late 80s, I was first a boxcar tourist for three straight years. That means I rode not only boxcars but gondolas, grain cars, cabooses, even locomotives, but I wasn't a real hobo, although I put in as much time as them. I've ridden about 400 freight trains through all of the states and on every line west of the Mississippi River, where it's wider, open and easier, there's not as much security and it's just more fun. But I also rode on a lot of main lines on the East Coast, for example the Pacific Seaboard, which ran from Jacksonville.
Speaker 2:I remember I cut out from under a bridge in Jacksonville, florida, got on, worked my way north, got off, deboarded in Newark, new Jersey, and walked under the Lincoln tunnel into proper Manhattan and when I say proper, the wealthy place went up to 62nd Street by the Manhattan Park on the east side, knocked on the door. The elevator man knocked on the door. The elevator man knocked on the door for me because I was such a sight from riding the freight trains. Do you want to let this guy in, mr Niederhofer? He said hobo, come in, get in the shower. I have a suit you can wear. We're going to dinner with Mr George Soros.
Speaker 2:Victor Niederhofer at the time was the number one commodity speculator in the USA. For four years running he had been philanthropist and now famous investor and world political figure, george Soros. He had been his quantum hedge fund advisor. Then Victor went off on his own was very successful. He was also the national squash champion was very successful. He was also the national squash champion and Victor and I teamed up and played against and with each other in many racquetball tournaments Phenomenal racquet man, much better than I could ever hope to think to be, but I was better at him in just one sport racquetball.
Speaker 2:Victor and George Soros ended up sending me on a capitalism seeding tour of the world where I identified in these that had emerging markets that were privatizing. I identified 13 of them, stuck on a coat and tie which I hadn't had on since vet school, on a coat and tie which I hadn't had on since vet school. Some polished shoes and went around with a briefcase for about three months to Korea, sri Lanka, india, pakistan and other emerging markets. Usually I had an appointment via Niederhofer. Sometimes I cold-knocked, showed Niederhofer's card and I talked to the people in emerging markets, in the stock markets. Stock markets in those places were just for me. It was fascinating.
Speaker 2:An overnight courier letter summarizing my findings, recommending or not that Niederhofer and his personal fund and invest or not in this country's bonds and commodities, and then he acted on that. And this was before email. But via phone call and overnight courier I found out the letters came to me Hobo. He said I made a Niederhofer today. A Niederhofer was where he personally made a million dollars. The next day, hobo, keep up the good work. I had a double Niederhofer, the second in my life today. It made two million dollars in one day. Life today. It made two million dollars in one day.
Speaker 2:This escalated over the weeks, millions of millions of dollars until toward the end of the tour in thailand I recommended investing. It was a mistake, my mistake he did. There was a quirk in the market, a mathematical oddity, where he lost everything. Wow, I returned to his former apartment in New York and in Weston, massachusetts, where he had the largest house and the biggest library in New England and he was down in the basement library. He was down there playing with the train set and sort of muttering with himself. He needed a break from the financial world. I encouraged him. He chastised me gently for leading him into this train set world. I agreed it was my fault and I took off. We shook hands and I took off into the next arena of my life, which was the wilds.
Speaker 2:The best explanation here that began in the 90s when I left the freight trains for the wilds is my life has followed the persistance of Buck the dog in Jack London's Call of the Wild. You may recall that Buck was born in a California backyard and all he knew was a backyard. It was me, I remember, my first time out the backyard in California. I was astonished at what was in the front yard. Buck dug his way out of the backyard, found the streets of California. As I had found the streets of California and then America on the global circuit and hitchhiking many times back and forth, bicycling back and forth across the country, buck had found the streets of California. He got toughened, like I did and, unlike me, he joined a dog fight club, clawed his way, bit his way to the top and they shipped him, buck the dog, up to Alaska for the really big dog fight contest. He performed well and one night he heard the howl of the wolves and ran off to join them. Of the wolves and ran off to join them. That's what happened to me in the 80s.
Speaker 2:I left civilization. I hiked the length of Florida on the Florida Trail in an article I wrote called Education of a Speculator. There were cottonmouths, gunshots over the shoulder sank into quicksand up to my neck and other near deaths, until I ended up 500 miles later at the Georgia border. That whet my appetite and I went up to the Appalachian Trail where it's contingent with the Vermont Trail that begins in Connecticut and runs 500 mile length of Vermont and runs 500 mile length of Vermont. Strangely, I got dropped off for that trip by Art Biscayne. Art Biscayne was a chess player who beat Bobby Fisher in their first US Open contest. I had met Art Biscayne in Manhattan because I was an avid chess player, sat down with him and in his first game he gave me rook odds and white and didn't even look at the board and trounced me. He could play 30 games blindfolded simultaneously against better players than I and beat them. He went on to become Bobby Fischer's second, that is, his confitzer advisor in the Russian tournaments and the famous ones that have been televised. Art Biscayne, the chess player, dropped me off at the Vermont Trail.
Speaker 2:I walked 500 miles up to the Canadian border. It was cold, it was late September, snowflakes around. It's true that a deer gets frozen by the headlights, and I was walking like a deer gets frozen by the headlights and I was walking like a zombie, frozen by the weather. I didn't know which way to turn. I was about run over on the shoulder of the road not the driver's fault, but it would have been mine. I found a log, lit a fire, reflected the heat off, it warmed up, walked out from the Canadian border and that after a couple days recovery. You swear you'll never get back on the trail again, but you always do.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I went out and hiked the Colorado Trail, which is 500 miles from Denver to Durango at altitude 8,000 to 10,000 feet. What a blast that was.
Speaker 1:I actually live in Colorado and we've had people on the podcast who've hiked the Colorado Trail.
Speaker 2:Probably mine was before them, because mine was in the 90s and I saw no other people on the Colorado Trail except one. He was a little leprechaun character. He said he had quit his high-paying headhunting job because he had emphysema. He didn't believe the doctors. He had seen the Colorado Trail on a map and we were clomping through knee-deep snow. He had no more emphysema. Actually we were going the opposite directions. But I switched mine just so I could hear his story for five minutes. I continued on and he had cured his emphysema. I hadn't cured my hiking wanderlust. So by the time I reached Durango, hitchhiked out of there, went to California, got on the Pacific Crest Trail, hiked from talk about paths of life, hiked from the Mexican border up to near Lake Tahoe, about 500 miles. There was one other hiker that I saw and peeled off from, and then one other about a week out. The second one was a Marine with an umbrella. He said he was out training. This was in May. It was a mistake to start so late and it was hot and we passed each other. He tipped his umbrella, explained himself, and that was the only other person that I saw.
Speaker 2:Now on the Wells Rod and the Pacific Crest Trail, 500 miles up to Lake Tahoe, I saw lots and lots of four to five foot arm thick western diamondback rattlesnakes. Many tough times, many rewarding times lost. All the time there was no data book. There was the first guidebook ever that was very thin and just said repeatedly every two pages at this point you're on your own. There may be a rock cairn if nobody's torn it down. Go over land at a compass bearing of such and such and look for such and such mountain or such and such county road. In this manner I made my way to Tahoe. Why did I run into snow? Oh, because it was still too early in the season. At Tahoe I ran into a snowstorm, got blighted out, had to crawl under a log with the tarp and woke up the next morning no tracks, didn't know where I was and it was that I took a compass bearing and walked out, never turned to the Pacific Crest Trail for a while.
Speaker 2:I will say this in 1993 or 4 I was the first person to event ultra light hiking. Every other person at that time who had to hike the Appalachian Trail and the two people I saw on the Pacific Crest Trail had backpacks that reached a basketball goal and they ridiculed me. They said you're not a true hiker. I had a fanny pack, only that weighed 15 pounds, water bottle strap that was 15 pounds loaded. My strategy was to connect distant water points by walking farther each day. I could do 40 miles each day instead of the 15, the people with the big backpacks did working much harder. Now, of course, a decade down the line beginning in the 2000s, everybody is an ultra light. It makes sense and they chastise and don't believe that the guys who carry big backpacks are through hikers. I took that fanny pack by the way down to Baja California in the 90s. I walked the length of Baja on the Pacific Beach and oyster trails and drug smuggling trails, all up and down the Baja Coast for about 800 miles and no one else had gone there before except the oyster hunters and the smugglers. I liked that.
Speaker 2:I guess I could say I also invented corridor hiking because I hadn't heard of it to that point. I started picking out swaths of land through mostly desert territory, identified water sources on the Delorme maps the best map series for this kind of thing because it lists all the springs and cow windmills for water and I began corridor hiking in the southwest, going from one water source to the next off-trail, and with a GPS. That was about the time I started using a GPS. I've had many close calls being lost and near-death hiking. But the GPS, not one GPS, but always two. And here's a tip for pilgrim hikers Always do and here's a tip for pilgrim hikers In your GPS, always carry extra batteries. Always carry a mag, one triple cell flashlight, because when you need your GPS it'll be when you're compromised. I've been compromised, lost, dreadfully lost in the mountains and having to climb rises to use the GPS. I've been worse lost in the desert, burying myself in the sand to cool off because I couldn't read my GPS, because my eyes were too blurry. So that was my life in the early 90s.
Speaker 2:After hearing the call of the wild from Buck the Dog in Jack London's book and some of these roads of life I had created myself through hard work and discipline, other ones had been thrown on me. Even now, if the bad guys come to my container in Slab City bad guys being on both sides of the law I have a flea pack ready. I have stashes hidden all over Imperial Valley. Here, where Slab City is located, just east of the Salton Sea, I can take off at the drop of a heartbeat. You can drop me off anywhere in the USA and without a penny in my pocket and I'll do fine. I'll know. I've been to the missions, I know the streets, I know how to beat the system and I'll do well. You can put me on an airplane and drop me off with a passport, any place in the world, and it'll be good. I've been to 105 countries the hard way under a backpack.
Speaker 2:The strategy there is and this begins, this is the intro into the next era of my life in the late 90s and early 2000s was world travel. I've been to 105 countries. As I mentioned, I packed just a knapsack. Half that is a library of books. All you need to travel a country and I've lectured to backpack stores on this all you need to travel the world, that is, is a backpack. It has to fit in to carry on a guidebook I prefer Lonely Planet and your passport and $10,000. $10,000 is for one full year. It'll cover the cost of your around-the-world airplane ticket. It'll take you continent to continent. You land and, if you use the Keeley method, you land in a city. You go to the zoo, the library, look at the military installations, walk the streets, ride the subways to every corner, or the L's or the buses, and then you hitchhike or bus to the next city and the next major city of that country, until you've covered that continent and then the next continent in six months to one year.
Speaker 2:Stints of travel and having been to thousands of towns, like Slab City that is self-sustaining, lawless, off-grid People who come here from throughout America. My hat's off to them. They've taken the big step in their road of life. It's going to be their pivot of life. They're going to pass the guard shack in Slab City. They're going to meet friendly people. They're going to pick out a slab for their camp it's theirs in 24 hours of occupation. It's free, there's no taxes, there's plenty of food and I graduated from that 10 years ago to my shipping container. We'll get to that in just a minute. I was just starting on world travel.
Speaker 2:Having been to 105 countries, came back with new eyes of perspective of many groups of races of human beings able to judge myself, and that landed me back in California in the early 2000s. What happened was I walked the length of Death Valley in the early 2000s. It was something I had wanted to do ever since childhood watching Death Valley Days and the Old Ranger and these are the story of Death Valley Days and seeing the 20-year-old team Borax clomping across the dust-covered Death Valley. I knew as a kid, watching Death Valley Days, listening to the Old Rangeranger that I wanted to do that when I got old enough, and so in the early 2000s, in January, I took off from the south end of Death Valley with the typical knapsack instead of a fanny pack that weighed about 25 pounds. I had to carry more water and I did a corridor hike from south to north in that valley. It took two weeks and was fairly fun but fairly uneventful, except for two instances. The first was running out of water and having to flop myself in the Salt Creek, it's called, which is what the 49ers drank and died because they drank too much. I knew from vet school and having plenty of nutrition classes and pharmacology, how much water I could drink. I just drank enough salt water, saltier than the salt in the sea, which is saltier than the oceans how much water I could drink. I worked my way up the salt creek and was able to continue with a slight stomach ache for the next few days until the next event happened Up in an area in central north Death Valley called, I believe it's, devil's Golf Course.
Speaker 2:The geographical description is a bunch of mini sand dunes, each about 10 to 20 foot high is a bunch of mini sand dunes, each about 10 to 20 foot high, anchored at the top by a creosote bush or a little palo verde tree. There were hundreds of these in the area. I was zigzagging through and it was late afternoon. I thought, gee, it's great to be miles from where nobody has been before. And I came on a backpack leaning against a creosote bush. The first thing you think of is the old logic joke what happened? Scratch that in your head. I came across a backpack in the early morning middle of Devil's Golf Course and thought how can this be? I'm miles from where anybody should have been.
Speaker 2:I gingerly opened the top and was introduced to the life of Dan. I traced his bus tickets. He had landed in Death Valley and for some reason, started walking in Death Valley and for some reason, started walking, made about 20 miles to this spot. I found some letters from his sister and opened one. It was in beautiful feminine hand that became stained with tears. If it wasn't already, dan, this is from Linda. I'm your only sister. We haven't seen each other from childhood. We're now in our 30s.
Speaker 2:They said you've taken off to Death Valley to do something you had to do. Please don't do it, dan. Find me, I'm in St Louis, write me, please, and I want to meet you again after all these years. I took a pocket watch, I took a little clock, his jackknife, the letters, his bus ticket and his identification and continue hiking north out of Death Valley. On the north end it starts to rise a little bit.
Speaker 2:I came out near Highway 395 through Owens Valley which goes up to Laws, california, outside Bishop California. There I was living in the early 2000s in a barn and was able to open it and look upon mountains. I returned and got on the phone and called the Death Valley Rangers. I got a guy named I came to know as Dapper Dan, the head ranger, and I said I just hiked the length of Death Valley. You know you're not supposed to do that without permission. I know, but please listen to what happened. I tied a sock to the top of one of the cactus in a devil's golf course and there you'll find a backpack it belongs to such and such. And I said but here's a contact for his sister. That I wrote down and I gave him the St Louis number, the.
Speaker 2:After Dan got back to me a couple of days later he said I took the quad out there I found the backpack. We did a spiral search, which I had done, a search and rescue. You do either a concentric circle search or a spiral search, making an ever-expanding spiral out from the point of origin where the last guy was last seen, and I did that out to about 100 yards and didn't find him. I hadn't gone far enough. Dan said about 300 yards from the backpack we found the bleaching bones of Dan. Wow, the fellow whose backpack you found. Wow. So I did talk to the sister. I returned her things.
Speaker 2:I went and visited the slab city. I had enough money. I bought a motorcycle. I went to the Amazon. I went to the headwaters of the Amazon, to a place called Iquitos, peru. My first visit was in the late 90s, over the Andes. My first visit was in the late 90s over the Andes, landing in Jungle Lock, iquitos, peru. Jungle Lock means that there's no roads there, there's only airplanes and there's boats. I loved it. I just posted on Facebook Bo Keely, b-o. Only two places in the world I would live are the Amazon, the headwaters and the slab city. In the Ketos, you step out your hostel door and you're in Jurassic Park. Here in slab city behind me, I can step out my container. I'm in the Sonora with my peers the coyotes, mules, big cats, jackrabbits, vultures with seven-foot wingspans, the owl that landed in my lap and I can walk and solve my problems and the world problems tomorrow.
Speaker 2:The only two places I would live then would be Iquitos and Slab City. I stayed in Iquitos for about three months, which is the maximum allowed on a free 90-day visa, and still is. And you can catch a plane from Slab City even this day. Get on the bus county bus for a buck, go down to IMP, the Imperial County Airport. It's a $50 flight. One reason I live here in Slab City it's a $50 flight to LAX in Los Angeles and that connects you to the world. It's a $500 round-trip flight to Iquitos, peru.
Speaker 2:Suddenly, you're in Jurassic Park and you can have like experiences. Now, by this time I knew the mountains like the back of my hand and the desert like the front of my hand. I could be placed anywhere in either of them and I would probably survive. But I didn't know the jungle. The jungle is the most inhospitable place in the world. You can talk about heat, you can talk about cold, but it's the skaters and the other things that go bump in the night that get you. I had taken a jungle survival course. I thought I knew enough, and so I booked this 21-day expedition with a guide named Carlos Brandy. 21-day expedition with a guide named Carlos Brandy.
Speaker 2:An expedition out of Kitos into Jurassic Park entails getting on a triple-decker paddle wheel ship. It goes for about three days until the river narrows. You get on a double-decker until it narrows too much for the keel and then you get on a fishing boat. By now we're five days into the trip until finally we ended up in the middle of I don't know where in Peru, the Amazon rainforest, in a canoe with Carlos Brandi. We paddled until the stream became too narrow. Insects, birds, monkeys, all manner of wildlife everywhere. The Amazon is the most fecund wildlife area of the world. Africa is a cradle of civilization, but the Amazon rainforest is a cradle of wildlife. We got out the canoe, we walked and walked for about two days on a faint path.
Speaker 2:Carlos didn't know where he was going. One day he looked at the sky and said the clouds, we got some rain coming. I'm going to go build a raft. He tromped off into the jungle and I stayed in my hammock. It was early morning. There were raindrops. It was raining more to the west, toward the Andes.
Speaker 2:When that happens, the water flows down. It wasn't even raining hardly where I was at, but soon the rivers overflowed. The vertical rise in small gorges is 30 feet within a matter of 24 hours. The Amazon River spreads from a half a mile wide to 30 mile wide. Where I was at, I looked down under my hammock and there was no land except for a 10-foot island. Now, when the water uprising water comes like this. First come the animals. They ran by beneath me, and then came the insects. I had a bug net over my hammock and there were enough, tens of thousands of insects of just dozens of species. I'm an amateur entomologist and so it wasn't a nightmare. The light of day, blocked out, nearly smothered, and I bounced out because of that and found a note tied to my hammock from Carlos that said in Spanish I've returned home because there are narco-terrorists ahead. Best wishes, carlos. Are you still with me there, brad?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm still here, fascinated Okay.
Speaker 2:Okay, I packed up the hammock in my knapsack, looked at the sun, made a guess. Actually, it was an educated guess. I learned two things. It was an educated guess. I'd learned two things. I learned that if you get grabbed by a bow constrictor and he's clutching you, just spit in his face. The bow constrictor is down there in the Amazon. I've seen them 20 feet and perhaps they run up to 60 feet. So the second thing I'd learned was if you're ever lost in the Amazon, follow the small rivers to the big rivers, to the larger rivers, and they eventually dump into civilization.
Speaker 2:So I followed the water downstream, waiting and then walking on dry land, till I came to a small village. And when I saw the first people and when I saw the first people, the natives my blood froze. The thing that popped into my head was they drink blood. These were the Maharoony Indians, m-a-y-a-r-u-n-a, something like that more commonly known as the cat people that are covered in National Geographic. If you look at the pictures of them I included a picture in the post yesterday on Facebook they tattoo cat whiskers and stick quills in their noses so they resemble jaguars. They're one generation past being cannibals from raiding their neighbor rival's camps.
Speaker 2:And this was a small 1500 village I had wandered into. They looked at me in complete surprise and they had never seen white people before. I played the clown and they didn't speak English, didn't speak Spanish, and indicated that I wanted to hire somebody to paddle me to a bigger river. I was assigned a maharuni cat guy, a teen, and he paddled for one full day downstream and he dropped me off at the ten hut village and then inexplicably disappeared with the canoe. The cat people, since I had been brought by one of their brethren, took me in, put me on a bamboo mattress on an elevated hut, fed me rice and some goop that the old lady cooks spit into, and I woke up the next morning, went down to the bank it was a 10-foot muddy bank trying to figure out how to get out of that place and suddenly on the bank above me lined everybody in the village with hands behind their backs, including the kids and the women, and they started shifting back and forth, going huh on their feet.
Speaker 2:Now I had the advantage of having read Shogun and seen the movie, in that the protagonist gets in a similar situation and he acts crazy. As he says, nobody messes with a crazy man. They want him to exit. Wanted to exit, it's true. So I had also been an amateur magician in childhood. I used to give magic shows to the neighborhood kids. So now they're standing with the 30 cat people, huh, huh, hands behind their backs.
Speaker 2:I started doing jumping jacks and twirling my heads like a helicopter, twirling my hands above my head to get their attention. Then I stood at attention for about 30 seconds and then I used my amateur magician sleight of hand to bite off my tongue. Getting tongue tied, I bit off my thumb, stuck it in my mouth, swallowed it, rubbed my stomach and they all looked on with incredulity. They were about 15 feet above me and relaxed their hands and machetes dropped into the mud. I took advantage of the moment and indicated, pointed to a little child's canoe. It was about 10 feet, full of holes, didn't have a paddle, the sides were about a foot and a half high, but I saw it as my ticket to get out of there. Again, I'm not speaking English nor Spanish Indicated by the canoe. The little kid, a little girl who was the owner of the canoe, came down, handed me the oar. I gave her the money about 10 US dollars worth got in the canoe and boy, I was glad to get out of there. I followed the maximum go down the big stream to a bigger stream and you'll end up in civilization Daily.
Speaker 2:I came to another Maharuni village, but they were slightly better dressed. The women were no longer bare-breasted, the kids no longer naked, the men's clothes were no longer tattered but third-hand. And they fed me. They fed me platain bananas, which are hard bananas, until I had them coming out of my ears. I didn't want to stay for supper because I still feared they'd invite me for supper and I'd end up in the pond. And so I continued down day after day for about a week until, if you've seen an Indiana Jones movie, you know what he looks like in a rabid shirt coming off my back, swollen skin with mosquito bites. There had been snakes, green snakes, swimming across, howling monkeys coming down night and day along the banks, warthog, warthogs at night burping and learning me not to go to shore, which I couldn't anyway because I couldn't get out of the canoe because it was such it was a 20 minute shore to get back in. I was weak, so I sat for a few days going to civilization. Civilization, in this case was in the middle of nowhere Another.
Speaker 2:I saw 15 huts and a soldier weighed out with an old rifle, but as shredded clothing as me, shorts on barefoot. He came out and said in Spanish que pasa. And he took me by the shoulder because I couldn't walk and took me to the commandant's office. The commander's office was another stilted hut. I sat on a wood crate across a wooden stool from a sharp-eyed commander. He was in civilian clothes. He immediately turned and looked at me and said you are a narco-terrorist. I said in Spanish I'm not a narco-terrorist. That's why I'm trying to escape from.
Speaker 2:When Carlos Grandi abandoned me, his face softened. Trying to escape from. When Carlos Grandi abandoned me, his face softened. He said take this man to the medic. And they took me to a nurse in another hut who pumped me full of antibiotics and morphine. They carried me more or less across a swinging rope bridge to a hut and I'll never forget, woke up laying down on the planks, looked around and heard chickens and pigs beneath the hut and there were rodents scurrying around, cats chasing them around the floor and I passed out. I was in and out of consciousness for well, I was told.
Speaker 2:Three days later a young man knocked on my head and said listen, and I heard a helicopter. He said the general's coming. We've got to get you up so you can go. Ask him to take you away. He helped me to where the general was having a meeting with the base commandant. This was at a little town, a border town called Colonial Angamos, in Brazil, on the Peruvian border. The general was there to meet with the commandant of the base about what I can only guess, because the general in his green camo with gold stars looked like Walter Cronkite. He was Caucasian. I noticed this and the first thing I said to him was habla ingles? I said in Spanish. I sat there with the general and the first thing I said to him in Spanish was you speak English? He replied in Spanish yes, I speak English, but it's better to talk here in Spanish. I suspect he was part of the narco-terrorism gang.
Speaker 2:They had cocaine plantations throughout the isolated jungle. The cocaine went to Quito, peru, at the headwaters. It was packaged there on boats that went to Colombia. From Colombia they refined it and then shipped it to various parts of the States. So the general said yes, but let's speak Spanish. I said you can see I'm sick. Can you take me out of here? He said I'll see you after my meeting with the commandant.
Speaker 2:About an hour later I went out. The young aide helped me out to the helicopter. About an hour later the general came out. He said let's go. Climbed in the chopper, double-bladed with the back cargo door, and it lifted off of the rainforest and disappeared in the clouds. He dropped me at the military base in Iquitos, peru. I said is there a charge? He said the only charge is that you get better. This is for, this is for liberdade, this is for liberdade, this is for liberty. With that I took a little tube, tube taxi a few minutes over to the international airport, got on the flight to LAX, had a surprise visit at LAX from someone in the Chocolate Mountains here just to my right in Slab City, eight miles away, who picked me up at LAX, drove me in an old jalopy to my camp in the chocolates where I recovered for a few months.
Speaker 2:Let me pause here to describe my camp in the chocolates. It's a deeded 10-acre property that I still own. I have a semi-truck, various outbuildings, but to survive the harsh summers right now, I dug a 10-foot cube of earth with hand-dug, with pick and shovel, slid in a little camper shell, made a false roof of three inch well pipe with corrugated tin and mattresses and a little bit of heavy dirt for a roof, shaded everything with plants so that it resembled the area. I had built a tornado-style entrance, like in the Wizard of Oz, with Dorothy in the Kansas entrance where she didn't quite make it in time down into the cellar and the tornado whisk her away.
Speaker 2:This burrow, 10 feet down, was a decent living space. I had a waterbed, a captain's chair and a computer with solar panels and a screened foyer. There was screen all the way around the foyer, the entrance that is a stairwell as well as a container so that whenever you have a cool spot in the desert even now in my shipping container the creatures come to below the container because it's the coolest spot. You can imagine 10 feet down, 30 degrees cooler in my burrow on the floor, that it was the coolest spot in the desert and that brought on the barking geckos, the tarantulas, the lizards, snakes, little rosy boas, western diamond diamondbacks, all scratching at the screen and it was like lying there in the waterbed and having a subconscious of animals, which was terrific for me, a former veterinarian, and that's where I had Sir the Sidewinder that I had raised when he was as little as a shoestring. He was my guard, my doorkeeper at the borough entrance. That's where I slept and read and wrote.
Speaker 2:There's an Avis and a Hertz rent-a-car. This was from Hertz, sorry, I rented it by the month for two years and car camped up and down the Coachella Canal, which is our Nile River of Slab City. It's our life sustenance. And I hiked to the Chocolate Mountains, eight miles away. Many times I've done thousands of miles of hikes because I'm an outdoors guy.
Speaker 2:During those miles of hikes to the Chocolate Mountains I discovered eight animal drinkers. Some are gravity-fed, some are solar-fed. Some are gravity fed, some are solar fed. An animal drinker is, which is an old concrete by now they're 50 years old because they were placed that long ago. The animal fountain is about three feet by four feet with a foot deep of water. It has a toilet bowl plunger, a simple plunger, and I started maintaining these animal drinkers because by the time I found them they'd fallen into disuse. It's hard to find these animal drinkers. Many of them hadn't been visited in a while. They were broken. I fixed them and suddenly the animals that I've been seeing proliferated.
Speaker 2:When you're unhappy and thirsty, you die and you definitely don't breathe. When you have water you drink, you reproduce and two years after I started maintaining the animal drinkers the eight or so within eight miles of me here in Slab City, there was an abundance of young animals coyote pups, young birds although less so because they could fly to the canal big cats, cougars and cougar bobs, which are a cross of mountain lions or cougars with bob cats, deer, burros and other species. They now reproduce and I caught them. I captured them, produced and I caught them. I captured them, that is, I captured their photos.
Speaker 2:What I did was I bought some field cameras from Amazon and Amazoncom and placed them at the water drinkers that I maintained to capture at ground level the expressions on all these animals' faces as, after they marched across the desert to finally find water, looked at the camera because the camera face resembles it's only the size of a cigarette pack, but it resembles an owl. They look at the camera camera has an automatic shutter as well as an infrared for night pictures and get them drinking water. Some great shots, good enough that I started posting. They're popular at my Facebook and I published two books a year ago called Bucket of Wild Photos, slap City and Bucket of Wild Photos to Slap City that are at amazoncom. It's the best hobby I ever had and I still have one camera out there at a drink or the rest for stolen. You're still there.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I'm enthralled. You're a good listener. Thank you, my listeners are good listeners too. This is fascinating, bo. I'm still here, it is a fascinating life.
Speaker 2:Again. I'm just another mammal out there on a trail in the little valley around me where there's no water. I walk their trail, they walk mine. It gets beaten down.
Speaker 2:I learned in Baja and other places that a trail goes someplace for a reason, always to an interesting place, and that's to water or to a mine or to a salt lake, or to find your peers, like the wild animals around me, and that includes slab city. This valley is an island oasis. In evolutionary terms. That means that it's difficult for animals, except for birds, to escape. That's the reason we have crossbred wolves that look like coyotes, coyotes that look like dogs, all formed into one, mr Potato, and we have mountain lions that have bred with bobcats. So you've got a mountain lion body with a bobcat tail. I have pictures of them in Facebook and in my books and I got to know them and they know me. I know the burros by first name.
Speaker 2:When I go out and camp, occasionally walk into the chocolate mountains, the burros come up and sniff the kit fox come up. Kit fox are the size of a long feather but they're a fox. They glide over the ground and they have a cat-like mentality with a dog-like body and I used to eat with them out of the same bowl. They'd come up to my camp and I'd serve them. They liked Old Roy, especially sirloin beef tips and sirloin beef tips for me aren't bad, they're one of the better dog foods when mixed with rice and eat out of the same bowl with my with the kit fox.
Speaker 2:One night I got lost. Come back to camp. There wasn't a moon, there was a clouded over and I missed the north star. It saved my life many times and I lay down because I was tired, didn't really know where I was and, laying on my back, felt two tugs at my hand and each of two kit fox, which were siblings they had shared the sucker plate with. They had grabbed my thumbs and were trying to drag me in the direction of my camp.
Speaker 2:Of course they couldn't drag me I weigh 165 pounds but they gave me the direction. I headed that way and I was only less than a half mile from camp and we all had a celebration dinner together. Sometimes I brought in pizza for them. Now I'm in Slab City. I'm happy as can be. I've gone through all kinds of roads to all kinds of arenas. I've avoided dangerous or evil paths and I'm the first to back away from something that's very dangerous. I evaluate the risk and then figure out if the reward is worth it.
Speaker 2:I'm a walking chess player. I gauge every move by what could happen. I see two or three moves ahead. Nothing like Art Bisquain or the other guys I play chess with. But life is just a sweat game, which is fortunate, because that's what Slant City is. To survive here I had to be a chess player.
Speaker 2:I go out for the adventures I love getting under an empty big backpack, getting on my motorcycle. Things happen to you on a bicycle. I've bicycled from Canada to Mexico and bicycled on a Peugeot PX10 from San Diego to Detroit. For Mother's Day. Things happen to you in a bike that are memorable. A bicycle is the most perfect form of transportation. Per mile gain, per energy of effort, but it doesn't take you places that hiking boots can. So I bicycled on a recumbent bike through Baja California, nearly the length of Baja California, on a recumbent bike bought from the Watts Riot Fire Sale. That was a bicycle built for two. The bike dealer had cut down and fashioned into a beautiful single-person recumbent bicycle. I fixed with a little captain's chair and when you ride a recumbent your legs are in front of you. There's no strain on the neck, so it's like watching National Geographic 10 hours a day. I get up 10 hours after 10 hours going through baja, california, feel wonderful. I want to continue but couldn't because it was dark and there were chuck holes in the roads. I had a. I had a wind sail. I made out of graphite golf shafts from the swap meets and a tarp and I mounted a uh three by four foot square wind sail like a prairie schooner and when I had a tailwind I wouldn't have to pedal for hours at a time. I coasted through a? Uh in baja, near guerrero negro. About midway down I coasted through a monarch orange butterfly migration for about two miles. They ran from my tires up to 20 feet above my head with one orange speck, one butterfly every cubic yard, somehow avoiding me, and unforgettable dive in and out of an orange immersion.
Speaker 2:I lived in Garage Nirvana. Let me divert here to Garage Nirvana because it becomes important in the scheme of things on how I came to Slab City and would survive the rails and the world. Garage Nirvana was a remote one-car garage that I insulated and remodeled inside. It was off-grid, no heat, no running water, and I lived there for one year. I called it Nirvana because my goal was to live for one year. This was in 80, 81, because there's a picture of it in the Sports Illustrated article. He found his racket.
Speaker 2:I lived in the garage nirvana for one year as a transition from the system out there to the streets, the wayward paths around America, the third world towns, the desert trails I needed to toughen. So I did a series for one year of 24-hour experiments Sometimes I ran a little bit longer and I posted on this about three days ago I think, detailing some of the experiments, and I'll just quickly go over some of them. I didn't blink for 24 hours. I blinked my mind like a blackboard for 23 hours. I suppressed, removed all emotions for 24 hours, stopped thought for 24 hours, locked myself in a closet sensory deprivation, closet for 24 hours. Also, many physical aspects. There was a chinning bar. I had to chin myself before going in and out the garage at the rate of X plus one where X was the previous number of shins. That refreshed after each day. And another experiment I wrote 24 straight hours, I walked 24 straight hours.
Speaker 2:I started reading books upside down and read upwards of 100 classics. Obviously I wanted it. I read them upside down, that is, with the print flowing from right to left, because reading a book is just like going to a mental gymnasium and reversing the print, so it goes from right to left, makes the eyeballs and the central nervous system go the opposite direction. So now, when you see a baseball coming from right to left or a boxing glove left hook from right to left or a boxing glove left hook or a speeder from right to left or a racket, more quickly it'll save your life and it saved my life from lions and tigers and bears many times.
Speaker 2:So there I was in the garage, nirvana, living with the dog. I stuck it, ran around in a smoking jacket. I ran around the lake throughout the winter eight miles with him in a smoking jacket to keep him warm. I had other experiments where 24 hours I wouldn't sit down, another 24 hours where I would prepare appliances like vacuums and cleaners and toasters. For 24 hours straight. I would walk backwards for 24 hours and so forth, until a year was up and I gave the dog away, sold Garage Nirvana and struck out into the world that I better know now as an alternate from what's out there, and I live now as a hermit in Slab City.
Speaker 1:You have the wildest story of anybody I've ever met in my entire life yeah, they are fantastic stories.
Speaker 2:They're all true. I've been through a lot in my life, been down through many roads in my life, but when I came to slab city a year ago, I wouldn't believe what's happened to me. This is the wildest place I've ever been yeah, yeah, bo, you're an amazing individual.
Speaker 1:You've had quite, quite the life, that is for sure. And people, a lot of people, may not believe your stories, but I guarantee to my listeners this is all 100 true 100% true.
Speaker 2:In fact I checked myself. I don't have reason to make anything up.
Speaker 1:I know it, bo. Is there one thing at the end of this that you could leave with my listeners that they might be able to take home into their lives, that might change their view of the world or inspire them to get out there?
Speaker 2:Is there one thing that you have to leave the lessons I've learned come from the many people on the rails and on the roads Always do the right thing. The second thing is whenever I hesitated, always default to action, meaning that when you get stuck, move, do something, something. The third is always try something new. You only have to get your toe wet and there's no fear, because you can always go back. It's good advice, bro.
Speaker 1:But type of people listen, the people that are hungry for the worlds and the people that are trying to understand their own roads and their own paths in life and where they end up and how they can make that a positive thing on reflection. You know what, bo? I will come back to Slab City just to see you again. Okay, one of the most amazing people that I've ever met in my life, and you inspire me and I cannot wait to share this with the people that are going to listen to it. What you've been through in life is profound and I appreciate you coming on here and telling your story, how many listeners you're supposed to have?
Speaker 1:we have a lot and we're all over the world. We're in four or five continents now I'd have to relook but we're all over the world and what you have said today is going to reach a lot of people. I can't wait to share this talk to you again, Bo. I'll come back to Slav City, Not for interview, just to hang out.
Speaker 2:No, do it. We'll do an interview too. We'll catch a freight train if you want.
Speaker 1:Let's it, we'll do an interview too. We'll catch a freight train if we'll catch a freight train. If you want, let's do it, man, I'm all right, I'll see you later, all right, thank you so much, bo. Well, there you have it, guys the ultra, ultra condensed version of the story of the life of executive hobo bo keely. This man just has too many stories that can be captured in one episode much less 10, probably 20. So we're grateful that we had him on.
Speaker 1:I hope you enjoyed this as much as I did. I would go and find him on Facebook, bo Keely, b-o-k-e-e-l-e-y, if you want to find some really fascinating photos and hear some more of his stories. It's a really, really cool place, a really cool thing to check out. So you can find us at wwwchangingroadscom. There you can find our links to Spotify and Apple. We are also on Amazon Music and you can always feel free to email me at changingroadspodcast at gmailcom. Thank you, guys, all for being my listeners and we hope to see you next week Because once again got another great episode lined up. So say bye, ranger, bye guys. Talk to you soon.