Travelcast with Igar Garai
Hello dear travelers from around the globe, and welcome to Travelcast!
I'm your host, Igar, an active traveler for last 9 years. Join me as I dig into the world of travel with my esteemed guests. From budget-friendly journeys to luxurious escapades and everything in between, we'll explore diverse travel experiences that are sure to inspire you. Allow these stories to spark your wanderlust and lead you towards more dynamic, engaging, and safe travels. And don't mind the occasional background noise; after all, we're recording from the heart of different destinations, capturing the essence of travel in real time.
Let's enjoy this journey together!
Travelcast with Igar Garai
E15 - Douglas Concha: Pushing Boundaries: Achieving a Guinness World Record, Facing Death, and Reflections from a 29,000-Kilometers Journey
What compels someone to embark on a journey spanning 29,000 kilometers on a single-speed bicycle to achieve a Guinness World Record? In this episode, we meet Douglas, a remarkable traveler who has cycled across six continents to both set a world record and support charities like Doctors Without Borders. His narrative unfolds with tales of daring adventures, personal resilience, and the kindness of strangers encountered along the way. Join us as Douglas recounts his transformation from a traditional cycle tourist to a global cycling hero fueled by a deep commitment to making a difference.
Douglas's journey wasn't just a physical one; it was a profound exploration of survival and endurance in extreme environments. From navigating the sweltering heat of the African desert to the biting cold of Europe's snowy landscapes, he shares invaluable lessons on minimalist travel and the psychological strength that comes from connecting deeply with nature. The conversation sheds light on the importance of proper nutrition during endurance activities and offers practical tips on maintaining health and energy in resource-scarce regions. Through personal anecdotes, Douglas reveals how overcoming accidents and illnesses became stepping stones in his quest for both personal growth and charitable success.
The cultural tapestry Douglas encountered is woven with stories of generosity and warmth from people across the globe. Reflecting on the dual essence of beauty and struggle in his travels, he highlights moments of genuine hospitality in regions like Central Asia and Southeast Asia, and the vibrant social scenes of Latin America. The episode concludes with reflections on solitude, self-reflection, and the simple joys of global culinary experiences. As Douglas contemplates settling into community work and healing from knee surgery, his narrative leaves us inspired by the enduring power of human connection and the courage it takes to pursue one's dreams.
Connect with Douglas:
- Couchsurfing: https://www.couchsurfing.com/people/douglasconcha
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charitybicycle/
Connect with me:
- Igar Garai Instagram: https://instagram.com/igargarai
- or be my CS guest: https://www.couchsurfing.com/people/igar-garai
Hello, dear travelers, and welcome back to another episode of the Travelcast. Today I have a really, really inspiring guest, douglas the person who is traveling to totally another level. He's traveling all around the globe by single gear bicycle and really really just by single gear bicycle. So, douglas, I think I would like to give you a word a little bit. Can you please introduce yourself?
Douglas:world record for circumnavigation around the world 29,000 kilometers, averaging 161 kilometers per day, across six continents. And I did that on a single speed bicycle, one gear with self-support, so carrying all my equipment food, clothing, shelter, and, yeah, and we did it to also raise money for Medicine, san Fransides or Doctors Without Borders, to support those very brave men and women who are helping our fellow human beings. So we also raised a lot of money for them and it all went to their organization. So, yeah, I got back on March 1st back to my beautiful home of Hawaii, successful, not without a lot of beauty and pain throughout the world, of beauty and pain throughout the world, but luckily I got back and just resting and rebuilding after a very intense journey.
Igar:So, firstly, congratulations, right so you got your record. You have a record officially written in the Guinness Book and you mentioned about. So you have all the total 25,000 kilometers, so definitely all the globe, definitely different continents. Coming back to your beginning, how it all started. Back to your beginning, um, how it all started, like, how did you decide again this kind of way of I don't know if I can call it travel or it's a mission, you know so how it all begin and when it begin yeah, so I I have.
Douglas:I did realize in this ride that I had done something a little unusual, which was to take what is normally described as cycle touring, when you go on these long distance trips where you immerse yourself in culture and nature. And I took that activity and I turned it into a personal race. I made it kind of a competition and and that that there are people that do that, that's kind of these Guinness World Records. But normally people get on a bike for these long distance experiences, to kind of be to, for culture and for nature and so. But my motivation to turn it into a type of competition was to get, was to be able to get attention from others, and the reason for that is because all my rides have always been connected to a charity. I always wanted to raise money for various organizations and so to do that, I thought that maybe if I showed them a little suffering, if I showed them a little pain, and they would be more sympathetic to donate money to the charity, it wasn't just me having a good time traveling the world, but it was me really struggling, and then maybe I could kind of touch their heart. And then when I asked them to donate to other people who are struggling in the world that they would. So that's kind of how it started. It started mostly to raise money for charities and then deciding to make touring into a kind of a competition, and then I kept increasing the level of competition.
Douglas:The first ride this world record was the third ride that I've long distance ride that I've done. The first one was crossing the United States. That was the first time I did this. It was in 2016. And I cycled about 7,000 kilometers from Los Angeles, california, back to New York City on a single gear bicycle, self-supported. And I did that to raise money for a US organization called the March of Dimes that helps children that have illnesses. And so I did that. I was very overwhelmed. I had no idea what I was doing. I had never cycled long distances, I had never gone camping or lived out in nature and luckily I somehow made it, because I had to cross the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachian across Death Valley. And I was so unprepared it's kind of the naive is bliss. I was so ignorant that I thought I could do something like cycling, you know, 160 kilometers a day on one gear. And it was. It was insane, but I did it. We raised money for this charity, and that was supposed to be done.
Douglas:And then fast forward in 2020, the pandemic happened, and by then I was already back to my usual life of study and teaching at the university. And uh, but the pandemic put everything to a halt, and so I I decided I wasn't going to teach remotely, like through the computer screen, because I just didn't like that. So I said I'll take a year remotely, like through the computer screen, because I just didn't like that. So I said I'll take a year off and wait for the pandemic to for something to happen the vaccine and during that year I started to brainstorm well, what do I do with my life? You know what is there, you know, and and that's when I decided, well, I really enjoyed that cycling across the US four years ago, so maybe I can do it again, but do it bigger.
Douglas:So this time I'm going to circumnavigate the European continent, which would be 24 countries and about 12,000 kilometers, again on a single gear, self-supported, and I would raise money for the World Food Program as part of the United Nations, and it's also an organization I really cared about deeply. And so I then, on 2022, I embarked on that journey. I completed that successfully and halfway through that European trip I had in my mind that I could do something even bigger. So when I got back to Hawaii I took about three months and I started planning the adjustments to do the world record and that had me cross six continents and 29,000 kilometers for Doctors Without Borders. So these were three organizations that I really cared about, that I believed in and I wanted to raise money for, and the cycling was a way to do that and also to experience the world and nature and people along the way and to explore myself and my own potential physically and mentally. So that's kind of how it kind of evolved from a country to a continent, to a world record and in various charities.
Igar:Interesting and, all being said, it was all the time the same bicycle, or like you, upgrade yourself somehow.
Douglas:Yeah, there's not much you can do with the steel. It's just a steel single-gear bicycle, so there's not much you can upgrade, but every little advantage helps. So you know, if I just got a more comfortable seat or if I got more comfortable padding on the handlebars, I mean, when you're doing that, you know, on the bicycle 10, 12 hours every single day, nonstop. Yeah, little, little little adjustments go a long way each trip, including the world record trip, on how to make small modifications to just make the experience, uh, survival, survivable. Um, but overall, like you wouldn't see a difference on all three rides. It's a black steel bike with one gear.
Douglas:You know the the only nice thing about it is that, unlike a lot of cycle tourists who are doing like what I did crossing deserts in Africa, frozen mountains in Europe, like they will experience a lot of time mechanical failures because they have more advanced technological equipment that's more delicate and when it's exposed to the harshness of nature the dust, the sand, the mud, the ice things will break very easily on their more delicate equipment. With me, nothing could break. It's just a chain and a piece of metal and so, luckily, I was never like stranded in the middle of an African desert going. Oh no, this little piece broke and I have to wait two weeks for them to ship it in. I saw all this on YouTube from other cycle tourists, you know, stuck in the middle of nowhere because of one little bitty piece.
Douglas:In my case, nothing broke. The bicycle, though, did get crashed several times, and in many in Indonesia, in Africa, in Argentina. I needed to find a welder to just weld steel plates onto the metal because it broke the frame. But luckily, with steel they just slapped pieces of metal and just burned it, and my bike looked like a Frankenstein bike of metal wells, because the bike did literally break in half in several places, and uh, but luckily that's. All you needed to do was just keep adding more metal to it and and it would survive.
Igar:You know, yeah, yeah, you can't do that you can't do that with carbon fiber some really delicate material, you know but with metal you just add more metal, all right then it's like makes sense, because today I, while I was also preparing and checking your last links on instagram, and you have a link with bicycle, uh, with the gear and not the gear, I think. I think it's all everything what you have, and and by weight, by scale, and I was surprised when you put there was like 13 kilograms of bike. I was like, hmm, his bike that heavy, because other thing it was like really quite light and I was kind of a little bit confused. Maybe you know, like metric system was like miscalculated or something. But now when you say steel, it totally makes sense for me, yeah, and actually my, my bike.
Douglas:While it is a simple steel bike, it's actually a really nice company that that makes this bike. It's called wabi and they use a really high grade steel that makes it just as strong but lighter. So for steel bikes, my bike is actually very light. For steel it's not light for everything other material, but for steel it's.
Douglas:It's quite light and still has the strength that is good for traveling long distances. In fact, most people believe that if you're going to cycle tour, maybe not doing like a race, like me, but if you're going to cycle across a country or continent, that you steal most, that's usually the standard, it's just it. It feels better on the road, it can withstand a lot more abuse and it's easier to fix if something breaks. So most, most cycle tourists, you steal anyways and you know. And then they, the trade off is the weight. But you know it's not the Tour de France. Unless you're doing what I'm doing, then it kind of is.
Igar:But, yeah, it's mostly steel, nice, nice. Well, let's maybe touch a little bit this moment with such experience as you, man, I don't even know what the level of this experience is God-level experience, what the level of this experience is like god level experience. Anyway, uh, can you like, like, go again from experience of cycling, traveling, because again you was camping, you was having a winter time, you was having super hot summer time, tropics, exotic, everything, everything. So, uh, all all this picture, like how would you say what people not necessarily for record, but let's say for themselves, when they want to go to bike trip, what they should pay attention, what they should take, what they should not take, because it's really a waste of your weight and time and so on.
Igar:So, yeah, like everything, like from the luggage till the bike itself.
Douglas:Yeah, yeah, absolutely yeah. I think that's great so I'm also yes, sorry, uh-huh yeah so. So the most general piece of advice and that's for survival, I, I would say, is having experienced, yes, extreme heat, you know, 45 degree African deserts alone, or negative 20 degree, you know, up in when I was there this last December in Poland and Germany, you know it's like it was snow.
Douglas:It snowed in December. The beginning of December there was that big snow and I was right there in the middle of the snow storms. So for these two things, so on the most extreme, there are two things you need to survive for extreme heat and cold. For heat, the one thing you need is water.
Igar:You need enough water.
Douglas:If you have water you'll survive. You won't die. You know everything else will be terribly miserable, but without water you will die. Everything else is is whatever.
Douglas:For for the extreme cold, you need clothes that will keep you warm and dry. You don't even need water. In fact, I could barely drink water because my water bottles turned into ice bricks and even if I was thirsty I couldn't have it. But you don't sweat water in extreme cold, so you really need just a little bit because your body retains it all. So in extreme heat, you need water. I carried like eight liters of water that I drank the entire thing and still was dehydrated to cross deserts. But if you had water you don't even need food. You need nothing else, you need water. And then in the heat, in the cold, you need that clothes that keep you dry and warm, because if not you're going to freeze to death. And there you don't need water either, and in fact, in both extremes you barely even need food, to be honest.
Douglas:And what's everything else? Like, if we're going to talk, you need a cell phone with a Bluetooth speaker? I mean, I guess, but for what I was doing it was about performance. Like, could I cycle this 160 plus kilometer per day and because of the one gear bicycle I had, limit this limited technology I couldn't change gears and carry more weight, so I had to strip down to the barest essential to make it as easy as possible. So, other than that I mean it's to each it really is a personal decision. I mean, first of all, if they're not trying to perform like I did and more about enjoy the experience, and maybe they want to do 50 to 80 kilometers a day, they want to cycle half the day and then spend the other half just like camping and relaxing.
Douglas:Well, you can carry a lot more stuff. You could carry books, you could carry a Kindle, you could carry music. You could carry a full laptop so you could do all your video editing while you're chilling half the day to document the cycling trip. You could carry a bigger tent so that you just have more room inside your tent. Even if it's just you, you could carry a two person tent or a three person tent. It only adds like 30% more weight. Uh, so it's not like you. Two person tent is double the weight of a one person tent. That's not true. It's only like 30% more, but it has double the volume inside so you're then more comfortable if it's raining. Now you have more room to put your stuff and relax and stretch out.
Douglas:So I might be the wrong person to I'd be very militaristic and things but to ask that I would be like you need water and heat and clothing, that's it. It's maybe I'm not the best person, but this also does align with something we had talked about right before the meeting, which is my desire to live a minimalist life and the less things I had, the less things I had to worry about, about maintaining, about losing, about getting stolen, about my appearance to others All of this I became free of the less and less that I had and I could just then focus on my health, on nature, on my personal relationships, and not have to worry about all those things, the responsibilities that come with having more and more material things. So for many, for several reasons, you know, when it comes to equipment and things, I stripped everything down to the bare minimum, uh, for performance sake and also for for kind of almost like a spiritual uh reason. Um, one other thing I would say about a more minimalist take is also a psychological one. When I'm cycling and I only have this one gear.
Douglas:I'm very connected to the environment, the nature that I'm surrounded by, in the sense that when you have technology like, say, you're more and more technology, it removes you from nature. When you have technology like, say you're more and more technology, it removes you from nature and it and it uh, and it means that you avoid uh making learning lessons that nature has to teach. So, for example, if you're driving in a car and you're going down the road and it's really hot, well, you can uh close the windows and turn on the air conditioning. Or if it starts raining, you can cover the windows and turn on the heat, and that makes you more comfortable and that's fine. But what it does do is it separates you from the nature. And why is that?
Douglas:Maybe a problem is because nature has very valuable things to teach, and in very basic ways, but meaningful ways, and that's impermanence that everything is changing, and interconnectedness, that everything is connected. And when we remove ourselves from nature we don't get that lesson. So, for instance, when I'm on the bicycle or when anybody's on a bicycle, what happens when it gets really hot or it gets colder, it starts raining is you can't roll up the windows and turn on the air conditioner, in the heat, so you can't have this controlled environment, ecosystem that is never changing, that is permanent. And so instead you're out there and the heat burns your skin and it makes you sweat, or the cold shakes you to the bones. As uncomfortable as that is, it's also teaching you a valuable lesson. It teaches you that you are connected to your environment and that the environment is in fact always changing. And that teaches you how to live a way of life where you accept that nothing is permanent because you're so. You are so viscerally connected to it when nature was beating you up about it, viscerally connected to it when nature was beating you up about it.
Douglas:And that lesson, I think, is very important, because then it carries on to the way you live your life, like there's something very basic, like the sun or the cold, beating you up and teaching you that nothing is permanent, that everything is changing and everything's connected. You then go home and then say you're there with your family and you're having a conversation and you have a disagreement and you're like, oh, this person doesn't understand me and you want to get upset. But then you kind of realize this lesson no, everything changes, everything's impermanent. It's okay, I'm having this disagreement with my loved one, but everything changes. One day we will overcome this and we will have harmony or peace. So let me let go of this moment, because it's not permanent and the less technology you have, the more you learn these lessons.
Douglas:So my decision to do a single gear, as opposed to just a bicycle with like 20 gears or something, also even gets me more intimately connected to these ideas. Because when I'm like approaching a mountain and I look at this giant mountain immediately, somebody with a proper bicycle with a lot of gears will immediately start to strategize in their head Okay, I'm approaching the mountain, the elevation is changing, what gear is my optimal gear? How do I switch? Just switch, change to find the perfect strategy to overcome this change. Instead, with me, I don't have a choice.
Douglas:The mountain comes and I say there's nothing to do but just to pedal, just push harder, and so as I'm. But just to pedal, just push harder. And so, as I'm climbing, physiologically, my body changes Suddenly. My heart races, it feels like it's going to explode through my chest, my body starts to perspire and now I'm understanding connectedness that when the mountain, when the environment changes like the mountain comes, my body changes and everything is connected. As soon as I overcome the mountain and I start flying down, the wind cools my skin and dries it. My heart rate drops to nothing. So every change is the less technology you have, the more you are exposed to change and connectedness. That nature teaches you, and that lesson is really valuable. So, in fact, I think the best way to experience it is not even on a bicycle, it's walking.
Douglas:Grab a backpack and just start walking down the road, go cross for 10 years, just walk with a backpack. There is even less technology, which means you will be connected to nature even more and you will understand these two valuable lessons of impermanence and interconnectedness. Uh, everything is changed and everything is connected. So, uh, yeah, okay, so that's that cool man like yeah download my philosophy on you, but uh it is what it is well that's perfect.
Igar:Yeah, I actually would like to go to this direction as well. Um, just uh just wanted to a little bit. Uh ask. Ask just some small question about.
Douglas:Yes, please.
Igar:Two things About water and about the, let's say, waterproof warm things. Yeah, just practical. Just a question. So to water, should it be any, I don't know, like some vitamins, is it, you know, like in pills or something like? Should you like it's your recommendation, is it like like worth to bring like package of like vitamins? I don't really remember this word is a tonic, so like something like this. But you know something I don't know, like some minerals, something what will also help the body to deliver something more just water, is it? Yeah?
Douglas:when you're on.
Douglas:Must have or like yeah, the um, for for um, they have what they call electrolytes and you'll find them in sports drinks. There is there a combination of, I think, like anywhere, like up to six different kind of minerals, um plus salt, and what it does is, yeah, it helps your body, uh, retain water so that you don't um, and yeah, it's, it's essential for performance. So, uh, absolutely, like I said, if you're, if one is taking a much shorter trip, you know like I'd say, a weekend on the bike, or maybe even a country, you know like it might take two weeks, I think you can carry these electrolyte pills. You might even carry a multivitamin, just a generic multivitamin, because it'll just have a little bit of everything. Carry a multivitamin, just a generic multivitamin, because it'll just have a little bit of everything. And and, yeah, and it doesn't occupy too much space, I keep everything in zip and plastic. You know bags. I don't carry any special waterproof bags or anything. It's just a bunch of little bags and you can put your toiletries in it and you can put medicine in it and you can do that. So, so, yeah, you could do that and it won't carry much.
Douglas:For my case when for, like my world record, it was nine months, and and the six continents that require too much. That would be kilos of pills to then take. Also, in certain stages or continents like Africa, you couldn't even find those pills if you wanted to. Because Africa, for me, was the most inspiring place out of all the continents. The people were just great and the landscapes were beautiful, the burning fire, sunrises and sunsets were just spectacular, and the people like the best people, the kindest, honest, wonderful people. But so, having said that, the countries, all the countries, are very poor, and so the lack of food and nutrition made that stage the hardest of all the stages, in combinations to the harsh climates and the lack of infrastructure. But there you could barely get any food. So normally you need to consume quite a bit of protein so that it can rebuild your muscles as you're breaking them down, especially if you're doing something like a lot of mileage. But in Africa I was living many, many weeks off just bread, if I could find it, which has very little protein, and water was even hard to find. So I couldn't I definitely couldn't find something like electrolytes and things like that In Africa.
Douglas:I was really struggling and I crossed paths with a doctor from South Africa and she gave me a mixture that I could make on my own. She said you put one part salt and six parts sugar this ratio into water. This will be like Gatorade or like a sports drink, and I was actually surprised. I said that much sugar and she goes. Yeah, she goes. The sugar actually is what allows the blood to absorb the salt, and that's why sports drinks have a lot of sugar in them. Actually, I thought they just had sugar for taste, just to hook you I didn't know this okay yeah, I thought that's the only reason they had a lot of sugar, but they don't.
Douglas:they have sugar because it's necessary to absorb the minerals. So, um, so one part six. So if you're doing extreme survival cycling or walking and you're in very poor areas, then you can make your own cocktail of six to one, and sure you can find sugar and salt they're so basic. But even in very hard, poor places like Afghanistan, you don't take anything for granted. You're lucky if you get bread to put in your mouth and and something like salt and sugar to put in your water, and then you just keep pushing. Um, but if you're like, yeah, cycling, europe, asia, north america, if you want to do that, sure fine, go to a sports store, go to a pharmacy, say, say, I'd like some electrolytes, a multivitamin, and also another thing you might think about carrying is a small bag of protein or protein bars, because they're very portable, they can, you know, and you can quickly consume that necessary protein to rebuild the muscles you're breaking down, so that they can, you know, push the next day.
Douglas:So I would say, you know, bring some protein bars. If it's, if it's like, if you're cycling in cooler weather, the protein bars will not melt, and so they're very nice. You can just and because they're easy cleanup, you just eat it and then all you have is a wrapper to throw away. If you bring protein powder, well, you have to put that in a container, shake it, drink it. But now you have to put that in a container, shake it, drink it, but now you have a dirty container you have to clean. And sometimes, if you're out in the country in the wilderness, yeah you know, finding water to clean is more of a challenge, you know. So, uh, the protein bar, you just have a little wrapper you can just keep until you can find trash, um, but that. But that will be harder in hot climates, because when you open that thing it's got chocolate on it and stuff. It's going to be a mess. So then maybe powder is better.
Douglas:And those things can be very easy, right to find at a pharmacy or health store and you can stay really, really healthy with, yeah, electrolytes, some protein powder or bars and a multivitamin. You're probably doing more than a lot of cycle tourists. The way I see cycle tourists, they don't do that. They even they're just like I just eat pasta and rice and that's it. I'm like no protein, no electrolytes, and and you know, and they always talk about, I lost so much weight, like I became so skinny, and and they, they blame it on the cycling, but it's not, it's the nutrition, and they're just not educated.
Douglas:I was cycling 12 hours a day, 160 miles, and I lost very little weight. But unless I was in Africa or in South America, there I lost weight because of the lack of access to good food, but when I got to Europe, I'm just eating sausage from the grocery non-stop, like fuet. I eat like a million pounds of fuet. I'm just like sausage, bread, cheese and yeah, and then I'm I'm bulking up for when I get to south america or bulking up after africa. So, um, yeah, so, yeah, yeah. I think those three simple things and you would be doing better than most cycle tourists. Yeah, just take a couple electrolytes, a multivitamin and a protein something every day, and then the rest you can find whatever you find available, whatever continent you're on. Southeast Asia has great food for cheap.
Igar:Europe has great food, know you'll, you'll find your food all over the world well, and moving, uh, moving forward with, uh well, man, uh again, all your trips. It's like, as you also mentioned this, physical and mental, uh, let's say challenges, or like in general, it's like it's tough moments, like do you have definitely you have, like, would you like to share some of your toughness moment, like if you remember some, both like physical and mental, and how did you cross through it?
Douglas:yeah, yeah, there was. There was plenty, um, not on the us trip, aside from death valley, and in the europe trip, aside from some some cold at the end of it, uh, they were safe and and fine. The world trip really pushed me. Um, I, yeah, there were many things to overcome. I got COVID twice, once in Southeast Asia and once in Europe. Uh, I had food poisoning twice, once in Southeast Asia and once in Africa.
Douglas:I uh had three accidents with cars one in Indonesia, one in Botswana, I'm sorry, one in Indonesia, one in Buenos Aires and then one in the United States. In all these cases, because of the nature of the Guinness World Record requirements are that you cannot stop for more than, I think, a week, or it disqualifies the trip. So, say for, in Indonesia, I both got food poisoning and I was involved in an accident with a truck that left a hairline fracture in my knee, so the knee had a crack. In both those cases I stopped for only two days and I had to keep going. So, with the food poisoning, it meant that I cycled for 10 days and then stopping on the side of the road every hour to throw up uh to, and then just keep going because I, you know the food poisoning, it wouldn't let me hold any food, and so I just had to, and I was so, uh, weakened physically to keep doing the 160 per day. Um, but you had to keep going because if I stopped enough days it would disqualify the trip and plus, I had to. I had, uh, my, my goals, cause I wanted to finish this world record in nine months. So so, yeah, it just meant you had to keep going. With the hairline fracture, this one broke my bike and cracked my knee. I still had to cycle that day.
Douglas:Still another, I think, 60 kilometers to the town that I was going to finish in, because, also, one of the requirements is you cannot get in any private transportation. You have to physically cross this 29,000 kilometers on your own, and you also cannot take public transportation unless you are crossing continents or across bodies of water. So when I crashed in Indonesia with this truck, the truck wanted to give me a ride the 60 kilometers to the, to the town, and I couldn't accept it. So, luckily, the bicycle, yeah, and so, uh, I had to get on the bike, but thank God that it was. It was cracked, but it would still move in a straight line. It could not turn or anything. And so I rode in just tears until I for the 60 kilometers, the first thing I did was, before going to the hospital, was go to a welder and I was like please, please, god, fix my bicycle.
Douglas:And nobody spoke English. And and I was like please. And I went from a bicycle shop to another bicycle shop to finally a welder, to a place with just welders, and nobody could help me. No one could speak English. But when I got to the welder place, everyone's there, but there's this one young guy sitting leaning against the wall smoking a cigarette. And I just looked at him. He was so relaxed, so confident and I go, he's the one to help me, like he's my savior, I can, I feel it. Look at this guy. Everyone else is like what happened? What happened? And this guy's just chilling. And I said bike, fix these. And he goes okay. And he fixed it. He's like stuck all his metal on it and fixed it.
Douglas:Then I went to the hospital. They x-rayed it and they said you have a fracture. They said you know it's okay. And they said you have a fracture. They said you know it's okay, you need to put it into a cast for like four weeks and then it will heal by itself, no surgery. And I said I don't have four weeks, I have two days, I have to go. And they were like well, we don't know. And so what to tell you? So what they did is they extracted blood out of it because it had swollen really big. So they extracted a lot of blood and then they gave me a bunch of painkillers and then in two days I hit the road and I kept going and then for like four weeks I took this really powerful painkillers that I was almost delusional the whole time I was cycling. For four weeks I was like this, just kind of like because you know, maybe your guinness record will hear it and disqualify you for drugs.
Igar:You know.
Douglas:No, no painkiller is okay for steroids, performance enhancing? No good they. They did offer me that, though, too steroids, and I, and I said no, I said I think that's not, that's not fair, but the painkillers.
Douglas:Yeah, and then, um, so I cycled with painkillers and when I got to Kazakhstan the stage three I had to go to the hospital again for them to extract blood again because of the swelling and uh, and then when I finished the painkillers I actually said no more because I could get more around the world, but it was, I could feel it.
Igar:It's kind of addictive you really feel good you feel good, everything is like you feel so relaxed.
Douglas:And so I was like I don't like that feeling, it's not natural. So I was like no, no more. And four weeks had passed so I kept cycling. Same thing the COVID, the food poisoning. Again the COVID. The first time I didn't even feel that I had COVID. I was just tested in order to get a visa into Europe. Had COVID, I was just tested in order to get a visa into Europe. But the first time I got COVID was terrible. I was coughing for like two weeks straight. It was just hacking coughing and I couldn't sleep Like all night. I would wake myself every hour, just hacking coughing. It was a nightmare, mostly because I couldn't sleep, because I kept coughing myself awake and I still, even with no sleep cycle every day, 12 hours, so tired.
Douglas:The accident in Botswana it left me scraped up but no serious injury. In Argentina, a truck or van sideswiped me and like crashed me into the corner. I fell, I knocked myself out. I got a concussion. The driver took me to the local hospital. They were like you have a concussion, you have to be careful with your head, you cannot fall. I felt I had really bad headaches for about three days. It was just pounding headaches but I kept cycling and just managing the pain, and then they went away. And then the last thing of all, the injuries. And this doesn't even mention the extreme heat or the cold and the hunger that you had to overcome, but you had the illnesses and the injuries. But the last last thing is when I got to stage seven, which was the United States to cross North America and this was the last stage, so, which means I had to overcome all that that.
Douglas:I described all the heat, all the cold, all the hunger, all the illness, all the injury. Heat, all the cold, all the hunger, all the illness, all the injury, all the pain. And I had made it to the final stage and I'm in my country cycling. It's kind of like the final tour of the battlefield. I'm just going to cross the United States and go home with my victory, and 10 days before I was going to finish in Hawaii, a car ran over me in Texas, ran completely over me and left me unconscious again underneath the car with the bicycle, with my head cut open, with my shoulder dislocated and with my knee dislocated, and it was a complete catastrophe. I woke up on the side of the road in a stretcher with a neck cast, with the ambulances carrying me into the ambulance to the emergency room, where they then proceeded to put my head together and close it with staples and sutures. So they stapled my skull together, they had to remove fluid with these out of my brain because it was swelling and it could cause me to go into a coma or brain damage, and I was left just completely immobile on a stretcher and just completely heartbroken because I wanted so bad to achieve this world record Like when I left Hawaii almost nine months before, I knew that I was going to attempt something that no one had attempted, at least not officially on a record with evidence. I was going to be the first to attempt this, and I didn't know why that was possible, why someone my age, my average physical abilities could do something that no other person had achieved on record. And so I made a commitment to myself. Then I said this is going to be so hard that I need to get into the right mindset, which means I cannot allow myself an opportunity to quit or an escape plan. There is no plan B. So I prayed really, really hard for days before I left Hawaii and I told myself, and I told Amy, my fiance, I told I said there's only three ways that I come back to Hawaii. I either come back on my bicycle, in a wheelchair or in a coffin. That's it. There's no other way I come back. I either come back victorious, or crippled or dead, and that's the only way this is going to happen. And I told myself that so much until I believed it. And so when I was crossing yeah, those African deserts, those frozen mountains in Europe, when I was vomiting on the side of the road from food poisoning or COVID or my fractured knee. I never quit. Even though I cried and I screamed and I suffered so much, I never quit.
Douglas:And here I was, at the final stage 10 days left, 160 kilometers per day, and it was. And I was in my country and it was going to, and I was, and I had already proved to myself that I was willing to give everything and sacrifice everything and go through so much pain. And then this car completely runs me over. Three teenagers, not paying attention on their phones, completely ran over me and left me unconscious underneath their car and an ambulance in an emergency room to try to make sure I didn't die. The doctors were like you're lucky, you're not dead, and I sat there with my neck completely in a brace just pouring tears, not from all the pain, from my head and everything, but because I was going to fail, even though I wanted. I failed at something I was going to give. I wanted to give everything to and I spent two days in the emergency room and my mother flew down from New York City where she lives and she came to see me.
Douglas:I'm 45 years old, but we're always a child of our mothers. I'm a grown man, but my mother came and I prayed again for what to do and they relocated my shoulder but I could barely use it and my groin muscle was torn in my left side so I couldn't use my right arm or my left leg and then I had these gruesome staples all over the top of my head. They've left me with really big scars on the top of my head now and I had to worry about my brain swelling again. But I decided after two days in the emergency room I said I'm going to try to finish this. 10 days, 160 kilometers a day. I'm going to try.
Douglas:So my mother rented a car and because of the Guinness rules again, she cannot ride close to me or in front of me and she also cannot carry anything for me, not even food.
Douglas:And so she rode. She rented a car and she rode about five kilometers or four kilometers behind me to make sure that if, as I was cycling, if my brain injury caused me to go unconscious and I fell and I just hit my head I'm in the middle of nowhere that she would find me and could then bring me to a hospital. And she followed me, going like 20 kilometers an hour for 1,600 kilometers behind me, while I cycled 160 kilometers a day, which normally took like 10 to 12 hours but because of my only able to use one arm and one leg, took me about 18 hours every day. So I would cycle like 18 hours from like sunrise until dark into the night till 11 PM and then we I would get to the hotel and my mom would be waiting there and I my injuries and she would nurse me. She would like tears and I wouldn't make a noise just my.
Douglas:I would just be lying flat on my back and the pain from all the chemicals like the alcohol and stuff on my body and she would just be nursing me and I would just be pouring tears and just try to sleep like four hours because I would have to wake up to do it again. And that's how those 10 days went. It was like I was this defenseless child, like when I was a baby, an infant, and there was my who was taking care of me when I was completely vulnerable, was my mother again. It was very strange and I'd never experienced that.
Douglas:I guess, since I was a child, and that's how those 10 days went. My mother saw me push and I did the, and in 10 days I got to the finish of the North American stage and the next morning on the plane to Hawaii where I closed out the world record. So that was that. That's all the pain and the injury, and it was brutal and uh yeah, including the finale, um, this last 10 days, uh.
Douglas:But you know, in a way I see it as a good thing, uh, because all my life I wanted to, I wanted to. You know, I've always been inspired by people who gave everything for some cause, for some person or some purpose, and they did it because they had a great love in their hearts. If it was Gandhi or Martin Luther King or anyone, it's like they cared so much about somebody else that they were willing to die for that, for that love. I always admired these people and yet, every time I looked in the mirror, I never saw that kind of a person in me. It's the kind of person I wanted to be, but it never was the person that I was.
Douglas:And the reality was is that in my life, whenever things got hard if it was academics, if it was athletics, if it was career, if it was relationships, whenever it got really, really, really hard, I quit. I would always quit. I achieved a lot of success in my life in banking, in academia, in the military, banking in academia, in the military. But the truth was that I succeeded a lot because of my own talents, because I was gifted with a strong mind and a strong body, but whenever it came to the consciousness and the heart and it got extremely hard, I would quit. So I would always get the silver medal instead of the gold medal. I still beat everybody else, but I didn't. I wasn't the number one and it was always because of a lack of heart, and that bothered me. I was now in my forties and I had never given everything for something that I loved.
Douglas:And it just so happened that this world record was a chance for me to prove to myself that I could be the kind of person that I always wanted to be. And, having cycled already all those six continents and having gone through all those challenges, I was crossing the United States already saying I did it. I proved to myself that I could love something enough. I could raise money for this charity and I could do something noble. Money for this charity and I could do something noble.
Douglas:And it was getting run over by that car in Texas and almost dying. That just put the stamp, just affirmed for me once and for all that I was capable of loving something so much that I would be willing to die for it, and that kind of peace, that kind of serenity that comes, when one knows that they can love someone else or something else, is really a wonderful feeling, and I've been searching for it my whole life, and so, in a way, getting hit by this car and almost killing me was a way to experience that, and so, in a way, I'm grateful that it happened, even if it left me with permanent injuries even now, to this day.
Igar:Um, so, yeah, so those are all the challenges, so tense and emotional, I would say even for me to listen it and like, just like, once again, happy, you breathing and, like you know, finish your goal.
Igar:This is cool stuff and your mother is like a hero you know, like true hero it's all mothers right yeah, well, you know what uh also would like uh to ask you, with all this intercontinental experience and like cycling and seeing all these cultures and food and people and generosity, and maybe not necessary, maybe some bad moments, I'm not sure oh no, do you have also same sound as?
Igar:I have now. Yeah, so and yeah, um, I really would like to have to hear some of the stories you touched already a little bit of africa. We can go like start from africa itself, because for me it's totally a new world. I've never been there. It's like also destination to go Asia. Same for me, many other, I think, like everything for me is like this. So, yeah, I would like to hear your experience, your cultural touch, your cultural exchange, cultural touch, your cultural exchange, how you've been again, like this Hawaii man from the island and yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because I realized as I was finishing all the painful experiences that I hope that's only half the picture and I so I was like, oh god, I don't want them to think it was just this horrible experience.
Douglas:Um, in fact it, for every painful experience there was a beautiful one attached to it. So yeah, for sure, there was just as much beauty as there was pain, and and in fact I don't even think you can really separate the two I think that, with that, great beauty has pain like like something as simple as the nature.
Douglas:You know it's like, yes, it's more comfortable to be inside a house or a car, but, um, but then you miss out on the, the visual. You know your eyes get, get obscured by the windows. You know you don't experience the wind when, when the doors are closed, and so. So the nature is so beautiful, but if you really want to get closer and closer and see more and more beauty, it means being exposed to the pain of heat and cold and wind and fire and ice, and so, yeah, so there is no beauty without pain, in my opinion, and so, for all this pain that I was exposed to, it meant that I got, I received, so much beauty and love that I don't think anyone could experience without being exposed to that much pain. So like for one, is the generosity I was.
Douglas:So I was completely alone crossing all these continents, and it's not like, you know, when you fly in on a plane and then take a train or a bus to a major city where all the infrastructure and people were there. I spent a very small amount of time in cities because it takes a long time to cycle between them, and so you're alone in nature and you're very vulnerable. You don't have food, you don't have water. There's safety issues, even with wild animals and things, and then safety issues with the temperature, like is it too hot or cold or do you have enough water, and so for all of that, the generosity, the kindness of strangers, is just like we couch surf and you'll always see the kindness of strangers and I love, love, love couch surfing to this day.
Douglas:But it is a different kind of experience where you're in the middle of nowhere or in very small, remote villages where they've never even seen someone with your face before. It's like you're going back a hundred years and you're some explorer and they're like what are you? And there's no language, and there's no technology, and there's no wifi and there's no electricity, and it's the first time they ever get to look and touch a person like you and they're kind and they have almost nothing, but they give you exactly what you need to survive and without it you would die. Um, and so the generosity of people across the world is wonderful. The two places that I experienced anecdotally the most kindness was indonesia, uh, and, and the entire continent, or the eight countries I crossed in Africa. The people were just exceptional. Coincidentally or not, these are also the poorest places that I cycled through, so I don't know what the connection is, but it doesn't matter. The people were so giving. The people were so giving.
Douglas:So one of the incredibly beautiful things to experience in traveling was the kindness of others, the love, the unconditional love, the giving, the gifting that I experienced all across the world and I could speak highly of, yeah, everywhere.
Douglas:You had mentioned about any bad experiences, actually had zero, zero bad experiences. Now one time I mean I'm sure a lot of it has to do with my, my personal experience, traveling and common sense and respecting cultures and people, to not do something stupid, but but in general. But I, regardless, I had zero bad experiences with people and their cultures. I'm also very open minded, so I eat everything. I say no to nothing, and so you know there's no bad cultural experience for me. I can appreciate any kind of food, music, art, kind of food, music, art, literature, philosophy, ideas and be open and respectful to it. So I had no bad cultural experiences, no bad interactions.
Douglas:Some differences, I would say, is, I could say when I got to developed regions like, say, thailand, or Europe in general or the United States, there tends to be more of a separation between people. That's not a bad thing. A bad thing is someone doing something negative to you. But it does feel less enjoyable when you cycle through Africa, for instance, and everybody on the side of the road that sees you, every single person, even a five-year-old child, will stop as you're moving past them, look you in the eyes and say hello, hello, welcome, and you're just like hello. But then it happens 10,000 times because nobody has cars and everyone's walking down the roads and you're on the bicycle the whole time, so everyone's like hello mister, hello mister, hello mister, hello mister, and they stop and they look you in the eyes and they smile and they say hello mister.
Douglas:And all you have to say is hello back, and they don't want anything from you. It's almost just like manners and they don't want anything from you. It's almost just like manners. And then, unfortunately, to go to the United States and Europe, parts of Europe, and you just pass somebody and you're passing them, you're only one meter away, they know you're there and instead you can see the eyes, slightly look down and away and don't do anything and it's okay, like I said, they're not hurting me. But it's a missed, I would say, at best it's a missed opportunity to have what is very natural between human beings, which is a connection. We are social beings, we're social animals. We derive peace and happiness through interacting with each other and so, for whatever reason, through interacting with each other and so, for whatever reason, these countries, these developed countries, have kind of moved away from physical or spatial human interaction and it just makes it a little harder to live life. And so in these places like I described, in Indonesia and Southeast Asia in general, or Africa or even South America, there's a lot more of a human connection and it's just an added bonus.
Douglas:What are other things from culture? Well, food, we can talk food. Southeast Asia has amazing food, especially if you eat spicy, and it's so cheap. So this is not anything you can find on any tiktok travelers things, but I just can't emphasize it enough. If you like good food, if you can eat spicy, you can have entire meals there for three euro, like a giant plate of seafood and meat and everything, and it's it's just so cheap, it's so delicious and it's so, yeah, cheap, affordable, and so you know, southeast asia is an excellent place to travel because everything is cheap, in fact, even accommodations. You can get a private like a hotel room, a one for like 10 euro. You get food for 3 euro. It's so cheap and the quality is good and the region is very safe, and so it's just an excellent place to travel. The people are friendly. Indonesia is an exception, though because of its poverty, it's a very poor place. The people are the nicest, it's the most poor, though, but if you're traveling in the other parts, like the more common, the more popular tourist sites like Malaysia or Thailand or Vietnam, you those are. You have great food, great infrastructure like hotels and cleanliness, and it's safe. So that's an excellent place to travel Central Asia, like when I went through Kazakhstan and stuff.
Douglas:I liked it. It was interesting. It was like a mix of Asian and Russian or Slavic culture, so the people are kind of a little more cold or unfriendly. But the moment you break the barrier, oh my God, these people you might as well have married one of their daughters because you are family and you feel it in your heart. You feel like we are blood. You don't know how it happened, but you just have to break that wall. There's a wall there. They look at you and they're like nothing. Just you were in russia or the ukraine or something. But god, it's so easy to break the wall and when you do, it is it's even more genuine than the friendliness of like southeast asia or africa. That's more of a uh, a politeness of friendliness, but in like places like central asia stuff, it is like a deep, a genuine love that they will give you and I loved it and it had a nice blend of slavic culture and asian culture.
Douglas:I actually thought was good. Tough, tough people, tough climate, but but very warm houses and warm hearts. So that was cool. I personally I'm also kind of tough. I lived in new york city for like 17 years so I kind of can be a tough personality, so I was okay with it. I was, uh, but the people were super kind, like genuinely kind. Um, what else? Europe amazing infrastructure, very safe for cycling relative to southeast asia and europe are the best, safest places for cycling. Europe has amazing infrastructure, amazing food, a very educated population. That is just super important. I mean, I'm I'm from the united states, so I can say this my, my people tend to be really stupid in general and it's very disappointing because it's personal. This is yeah, they're just the lack of education and that that's not to blame the people.
Douglas:It's more about the infrastructure. We just have a very poor public education system and it's it's very poorly funded, and so there's not enough of resources for high quality teachers to teach the population, and so the population is quite ignorant. And, like I said, I can say that because I am an American, I can critique my own country because it's my family, it's my people, and on top of that I was in the military.
Douglas:I served you know, I was willing to die for this country. So if I want to say something negative, I can say something. So, yeah, so it's very disappointing. But to go back to the positive, europe is outstanding, probably the most educated people when it comes to culture and history and politics and society that I've experienced around the world and that leads to more enlightened, harmonious conversations and understandings. And, of course, I know Europe has its problems too, but it's still doing better than a lot of the places I saw around the world. So Europe had great food and enlightened population relative to the rest of the world and great infrastructure and safety.
Douglas:And then South America. Well, I was born in the US, but both my parents are immigrants from Colombia and so my blood and my bones and my culture is also Colombian. So I don't know if I'm biased, but the Latin people very warm, very friendly, very, very social. Nobody puts in my opinion once again, maybe biased, but nobody throws a better party than Latinos. Latinos are the best parties. They've got the best music. They love to dance. They, you know everything is a celebration, love to dance. They, you know everything is a celebration. So, so nothing you know. So you go to Latin America and you just find these warm, beautiful, social, uh celebration focused people, uh, or it's easy to find. Of course, latin America has its own problems and its own politics, but you can definitely find a great party and a good time and kind people all over Latin America. So that's what they offer. They have good food, too good amazing nature, and then, yeah, last, that leaves oh, I left out Australia.
Douglas:Australia has a lot of beauty and really down to earth people like simple, honest, hardworking people is what I saw, and they also have their problems too with their indigenous population. No place is perfect, but what I encountered were a lot of what they call the salt of the earth kind of people like just very simple, down-to-earth, honest, hardworking people. Is what I experienced cycling across the whole continent from Sydney to Perth. They have this beautiful area called the Nullarbor Plain. That is, this giant expanse of 1,000 kilometers of desert right on the edge of the cliffs that drop into the ocean. It's completely uninhabited, so there's no food or water for a thousand kilometers, except for a few roads, houses like gas stations, and so you. So if somebody is going to cycle it or walk it, they have to be very prepared to carry like enough food and water for many, many days or they will get into very serious trouble. Um, because there's nothing, but it's also very beautiful. So Australia, good people, beautiful nature.
Douglas:And then last is my country, the United States, or North America. Well, I've already said some stuff. Statistically it is for cyclists it's the most dangerous place. We have a very aggressive car culture that I really hope and advocate.
Douglas:I'm trying to change in my work here in Hawaii, but we have a very aggressive, entitled car culture that makes it very dangerous for pedestrians or cyclists. We have, you know, we have a lot of money, so there are good roads and you can find healthy food to travel, but it is expensive, like kind of like Europe relative to the rest of the world. It is more expensive to find food and accommodations and the roads are more dangerous. It is where I almost died, not a coincidence maybe, and but the people you can find good people as well, just like everywhere. But I have to say I enjoyed many other parts of the world and I'm actually I feel hesitant to recommend cycling in the US because I know statistically how dangerous it is and I now have personal experience and I just would hate to like strongly encourage someone to cycle the US and something happen, I feel like I would have some responsibility. So I don't want to discourage anyone.
Douglas:But at the same time I'm not going to encourage the way that I did Europe or Southeast Asia, so yeah, that I did Europe or Southeast Asia, so yeah, that would be kind of culture, people, stuff like that.
Igar:Nice, yes, you touched a little bit of the food and you also mentioned that you eat pretty much everything, so from all of their continents and countries, like what is the weirdest maybe, and at the same time the most delicious like can be? Can be anything like, but I I'm pretty sure you try maybe some horse, for example, in kazakhstan, maybe not, I'm not sure. Yeah, but like you know what I mean, right, like, so do you have open your list of your interesting?
Douglas:meals, 15 years of backpacking around the world like through couchsurfing and stuff, because there I've been to over 100 countries and and, yeah, I eat everything I also can tolerate really high spice levels and I have a really huge sweet tooth. I love sweets. So, from extreme spicy to very sweet, and I eat everything On this trip. Yes, maybe the most unusual thing was to eat horse in Kazakhstan. I have eaten horse, though, before, in Japan. In fact, in Japan I ate raw horse, so horse sashimi.
Douglas:So you know, yeah, so they even have that in in japan, yeah so you can eat horse, but they even have it raw, just like they have raw everything um, if you, if you like, yeah, so so, but but as far as this trip these I think it was 30 countries or something.
Douglas:Uh, maybe the most unusual thing, I think, for other people would have been the horse In Indonesia, because it is quite poor. You have to be careful about food poisoning, which I did get, and so I was eating you know food that you know. They were like cooking the meat on the skewers and stuff. But the thing is they keep all the raw meat because it's a very poor country, so they don't have much electricity, so they don't have much refrigeration, so a lot of the food is left in room temperature and then what they expect is that when you cook it over the fire that the meat will kill, or the fire will kill a lot of the bacteria. And if you're accustomed to that food, probably your gut stomach is strong enough to handle some of the bacteria that remains even after the fire. But for someone that's not accustomed to it it meant getting sick raw meat just in a container on, you know, with no refrigeration, and going oh god, uh, I'll have that, that and that
Douglas:and they just take it and they cook it and you're just like, oh, the risk, um, that was scary, or you know, even though it wasn't a dish, it was just beef or chicken, but it was still very risk-taking to want to eat it. But otherwise, I mean in Southeast Asia, I always told the staff I said give me the spiciest. And they were like are you sure You're not from here? And I was like give it to me. I was like, don't be shy, don't hide, give it to me. And they're like okay, no foreigner ever asked for this. And I would sit there and I was eating this really spicy noodles and rice dishes. And they would be staring at me Wow, he's really eating it. And I'm like, I'm like, yes, 15 years of eating extremely spicy food, uh, from Mexico to Korea, to India, I can handle it. So, um, yeah, um, yeah, what else? What else? Anything in europe? That was strange. I don't think so. I don't think so.
Igar:I love the food in poland's good heavy oh, what about the sweet like uh, what the? Okay, so like what is the nicest sweet you've tried?
Douglas:I've eaten delicate sweets everywhere.
Igar:No, no, let's stick on the sweet, the one sweet.
Douglas:That stands out more than anything was a very, very simple ice popsicle. That was just ice with like a pink sugar, you know, poured over it like on a stick. So it's super, super simple, right.
Douglas:There's no anything, it's just ice flavored ice on a popsicle stick that I found when I was cycling through Botswana. I stopped and this was like this 45 degree desert and I had been in Africa for like over a month pushing through this insane heat. Like it was so hot that, as I was cycling the road, one day I realized I, looking at the side of the road, there's a tree every like 300 kilometers one tree standing and under that tree were all the animals cows, cows, goats, they would and every tree I pass, every tree I pass. Every 30 seconds I pass a tree. All the animals are hiding under the tree. And I look at the animals and they're looking at me like why is he out under the sun? And I'm looking at them going. I wish I was under the tree and I said I said if I can't keep moving, if I stand under the tree, I have to keep moving. So I have to be killing myself under this heat. But I was looking at the animals and thinking they're smarter than me, they know what to do, and they were just staring at me. They're smarter than me, they know what to do and they were just staring at me like what are you doing? What is that animal outside?
Douglas:So after being exposed to such extreme heat, one day I stopped at this gas station or little convenience store to buy some bread to have for dinner. And I found this freezer and it had these pink popsicle ice popsicles no milk, nothing. And it had these pink popsicle ice popsicles no milk, nothing, just this ice water. And I bit into that. It was so cold and so sweet.
Douglas:And I sat there in this little convenience store with this old black woman there and I just ate this popsicle under the brew and it was so good, it was so good and I asked her. I said, can I have another? And she was like, of course, have as many as you want. And I ate like three of them, sitting on the little plastic bucket under the inside the store, outside of the heat, and it was the most delicious sweet I had for my whole nine months across all continents, because I needed that cold and that sugar, because I was so tired and so dehydrated and so hot. And that's the thing I remember the most Best sweet. Otherwise, objectively, the best sweets were definitely in Europe. Let's just put that out there in general. The best, yeah, of course I can't remember off the top of my head, but I know.
Douglas:Europe. The best gelato, best pastries, without a doubt, and I found them whenever I could. I found great gelato everywhere, even to this day, to this day, I say, 24 countries in Europe. The best gelato that I had was its place in Warsaw. It was the best gelato I had. I said that even in Italy and upset all the Italians.
Douglas:I said the single best place that I ever tasted gelato was this place and if you look at the place reviews on Google this place in Warsaw it's like 10,000 reviews, five stars straight. It's this really great place, but it was the best place I had gelato even out even better than anywhere, any single place. I had it, even italy. So you know, good, good sweets everywhere, um, or every all over europe, but uh, but yeah, best sweet is africa, botswana. Simple sugar ice pub in the middle of the desert.
Igar:Little desert, sweet seat, nice man, and you know what you touched some moment of, let's say, your personal challenge of you being the best and so on, of like you being the best and so on. Um, how is like in this trip, maybe not also necessarily this trip, but let's say one of your bicycle trip, and again, I know that you suffer a lot like even back then, when you've been my guest here, uh, you also shared me the story of, like, how you was crossing alips, for instance.
Igar:Yeah, like, crying and screaming, crying and screaming, still telling everybody this story, and but what I'm really interested like, and also in the beginning of podcast, you touch it. Then, let's say, this personal growth, spiritual growth inside you, um, like it's not even I'm asking like any story or something, but maybe some observation what you had during your again this, a lot of self-time, you was all the time with yourself. Again, you very nicely mentioned that, like, without technology, without like gears and different things, you can focus more on you, on nature, on this connection and so on. Can you maybe open it a little bit from your perspective and how you face it? And maybe maybe you had some like boom, like I don't know, like I don't know how it's happened, with different people, different actions. However, it's really interesting for me to hear some of uh yes, spiritually.
Douglas:And day to day, uh yeah, I, I spent the majority of my time alone. This would with this third trip since this wasn't my first one, it's my third I already knew when I was going to you know, getting on the plane to start to fly to Australia that this whole experience was going to be a very meditative experience, that this whole experience was going to be a very meditative experience. I already knew that because I had done these two other rides before and I was excited about that. I think with cycling, cycle touring for instance, there are two ways to approach it. It can either be a spiritual journey or it can be a social one. Not that it has to only be these two, but in general you can split in two. The social one is because a lot of people cycle tour as a couple or as a team. They go as a group, and when you do that you're cycling together, you're camping together, you're talking stories, you're playing games, you're having fun. It's a social experience and that's very nice as well. In fact, I kind of wish I would have that someday. The other one is strictly a spiritual one, because you're alone, and what is there to do but to be alone with your thoughts and your feelings and your breath, and you don't really have a choice. Being alone, that spiritual process depending on where you are, like maturity, wise, it can be either a very painful experience or it can be a very rewarding or positive experience. It really depends on where the individual is.
Douglas:You know, you have an issue like in the United States. We have a type of punishment called solitary confinement, where, when you're in jail and you misbehave, they lock you in a small room by yourself. This is considered by humanitarian law in the United Nations as an act of torture, but the United States considers it a valid form of punishment or correction One of the few countries that does it. So what is it, though? It is you're just locked in a room in a steel box with no light, no windows, no comfort, and you sleep on a concrete floor in darkness, and you stay there for many, many days or weeks, or sometimes even months, with no sunlight or human connection, and this really tortures a person. Like I said, the UN thinks of it as an act of torture, even though nobody's hitting you or yelling at you or doing anything to you. But it's really painful and I think it's because we're social beings again. It is not natural to be that isolated, and so it causes a lot of pain. But on the other side, though, you can take like a Buddhist monk, and a monk will go into a monastery and will put themselves in a small concrete room with no lights, no windows, no people, no communication, and stay for weeks or months as well. So what's the difference?
Douglas:Difference is when you're alone, truly truly alone, without people, without your phone, without a book, without a pencil and a paper, nothing to do, nowhere to distract yourself, no one to interact with. You're left with your own memories and your own thoughts and your own feelings, depending on where you are as a human being. If you've experienced a lot of suffering, then that's what you're going to be exposed to, and you won't be able to distract yourself with relationships or with social media. When the pain of your own memories and thoughts come, you go. Oh, I don't want to think about that. Let me call my friends, let me go drink alcohol, let me do whatever, so I don't ever have to be alone with my own thoughts and feelings, and that's what I think a lot of people do with their life. But when you're in these solitary places you can't run away from yourself.
Douglas:So the person that's in prison it's probably the case that they didn't have a good life. That's probably why they committed some bad act. At least my opinion. It's a big part of why they did something bad because something bad happened to them when they were very young. I believe this. So when you leave them alone now, they're exposed to those memories, that trauma, that abuse, that violence, whatever it was that they experienced, and it's too painful and so, alone, they scream in pain and they suffer.
Douglas:The person who has volunteered, the monk, the Buddhist monk who has volunteered to go into isolation. Once again, nobody forced them. They chose to do this. I think they chose to do it because they probably have grown mentally and emotionally to a point where they can see the benefits and while they still have work to do on themselves, it's not so much work that they feel overwhelmed. They see the challenge, but it's a reasonable challenge and so they go. I'm going to commit and work and face my demons and come and try to become a better person. So that's the issue.
Douglas:So, when cycling alone, I've already known that I was going to get a taste of this experience, and when I was younger. I wouldn't want this. I would have avoided it, because I did grow up as a child with a lot of violence and I grew up with many problems as a young man because of it, and I had a lot of work to do over the decades and it involved a lot of meditation over the decades and and it involves a lot of meditation and even now, a lot of therapy, to continue to heal and become the kind of person I want to be. So cycling when I started cycling I was already in my late 30s or mid to late 30s. I had already grown enough to where, when I set off on my own I was, I could handle the amount of work that I needed to do on myself, and so over the last like eight years, I've improved. And when I started on this world trip, I was excited to be alone, and so what that meant was just, and what I do is I meditate.
Douglas:For me, meditating isn't tied to any religion or any kind of supernatural or metaphysical thing. I don't imagine or visualize any gods or beings. I don't see any light or energy coming from anywhere. There's nothing supernatural, everything is just purely physical. I just examine my physical body, the skin, the bones, the blood, the heart and as it's moving, and the breath. And I watch it and I try not to make any judgment or try to change it. I just try to accept it whatever it is.
Douglas:And that also goes for my thoughts and my feelings. If I'm feeling upset, anxious, angry, jealous, sad, I don't try to change it, I just try to observe it, to acknowledge that I'm having a bad feeling, and then to go back to my breath, to let it go and just say that is what I'm feeling. There's nothing wrong or there's nothing good or bad about any thought or feeling. It is what it is.
Douglas:Now go back to the breath and then I'm constantly examining the physical body and breath and then my mind will wander off into some thought or some feeling. I accept it, I don't try to change it and I wait for it to go away and I go back to my breath. That's it Really simple. But what it is doing is allowing me to understand again this idea of impermanence or change and this idea of interconnectedness, of everything being connected, because I realized that when I'm there quietly examining my thoughts and feelings is that every, every thought is attached to a feeling. I have a thought about something like somebody. I think somebody is trying to hurt me, and then that creates a feeling.
Igar:I feel anger.
Douglas:And so I realized that the thought and the feeling but, then I realized that every thought disappears over time.
Douglas:Over time, I realized that my assumption about another person was wrong or that whatever they're doing to me, they are no longer doing to me because time has passed and we have gone our separate ways. So every thought and feeling is connected, but every thought, it changes, goes away eventually and thus the feeling also goes away. So every bad thought, every bad feeling eventually disappears and is replaced with a different thought and feeling. That thought or feeling could be positive, it could also be another negative feeling, but it's still a different feeling. And so when I'm intimately connected with my body and my mind and I see that my breath changes, that my skin and my blood and my heart changes and that my thoughts and feelings are constantly changing and that nothing is permanent, it helps me let go of any moment, because I know that that moment's also going to change.
Douglas:But I need to experience it in the most simplest and personal, physical of ways to then be able to apply this philosophy in more complicated ways, like when it comes to human relationships, when it comes to romantic love, when it comes to politics, when it comes to all this like we're about to have an election here in the US and we're either going to and for the. We're either going to elect a tyrant dictator for the next four years or we're not. Not that the alternative is that much better, but it's still, I would say I would argue, a little better. There's still both bad in my opinion, but one is a little bit better, the lesser of two evils. But how do you handle such complex issues like national politics and global economics?
Igar:How do?
Douglas:you handle romantic relationships that involve sex and love and jealousy? How do you involve, how do you, how do you handle a family relationships where there are so many fundamental problems but there's a deep sense of loyalty and commitment, like these are really complicated things, but I think they can be answered by understanding and permanence and interdependence. But that can needs to be understood in a very basic, very simple and personal way first, and then you can build more complex applications on it. Politics, family, romantic love, sex, all that from that. How does one do that? There's no shortcuts and nobody can teach it to you.
Douglas:You have to sit there alone, that's it. You can read all the books on Buddhism you want, you can go to church as much as you want and pray to your gods. At the end of the day, you have to be alone and you have to put in the work yourself, which it means sitting quietly, distraction-free, and facing all those personal demons and figuring out a way to overcome them, not by fighting them, but actually by accepting them. Sure, it means by no means that I'm an expert. No means am I a guru. I am as fucked up as everyone else and, to be honest, I think in many ways I'm fucked up worse than many people. So I just have an aspiration and I have a belief that there is a way to improve and I have seen positive results in my life. But but yeah, make no confusion that I'm somehow anything other than a normally flawed human being like everyone else. Uh, walking down the street.
Igar:Uh, yeah, man, being honest, I really resonate with this world, like about spending time with yourself. I again, doesn't matter in which way, you know, like everybody, choose own way, or like running, swimming, bike, meditation, praying, anything, but like exactly you and you, you're facing you. It's like again, as you gave this example with the jail and they say it's a torture Because crap like you're really facing yourself and like others, you can walk away. You can run away. You can turn like I don't know, you can close the door anything, like you can turn off the phone.
Igar:But, you and you. This is like this is tricking you and your life and thoughts and your thoughts and your thoughts again like and this and your actions and yeah, this is valuable thing. I really I really not about even belief about things like this, but I know that it's nice. I know that it's nice and it's really valuable and outcome is really good.
Douglas:Not easy, not necessarily easy, not necessarily positive, but uh yeah, yeah, the way we're living in society now, like that we have. Just you want to say it's, it's in the palm of your hand, to your phone. Sometimes I think it's already connected to your hand. You don't even you know, there's not even a choice to to separate it, um, but you know, we, you look at our ancestors yeah you go back, not even just 50 years.
Douglas:Forget about 500 or 5 000 50 years ago. There's still. You know, back then, yeah, life was more simple. We weren't as connected. You really only knew people in your town or in your neighborhood. You weren't very connected. You didn't know what was going on really around the world unless you were reading it in a newspaper.
Douglas:And I think it was easier to spend time alone or not, or and develop a smaller group of deeper relationships. Um, even I remember, you know, because I'm 45, like I grew up before the internet even and I just remember playing with my one friend there's just one, and there was no one else in the world, there was just the one friend and we spent all summer together and that was it. You know, we played video games, something like that, but, um, and now you know it's like we're so hyper connected, and especially the youngest people like me, when I was eight years old, with one friend and and just and just the neighborhood, just how far I could go on my feet or with my bicycle, and and that was it, and that was my whole world. There was nothing else.
Douglas:And now I look at eight-year-olds and they have a phone and it's throwing at them everything in the world and they're losing human connections. Yeah, I think it's really harder than ever to appreciate time alone and time in nature. It's harder than ever, Actually. Let me qualify that.
Douglas:In developing nations, because when I went to Africa, for instance, all the eight-year-olds were extremely social. They walk right up to you and look you right in the eyes and start talking to you like an adult, and they had the advanced communication skills hey, what are you doing? So how are you so all this? So what's your doing? And you're like, am I talking to a child or an adult? But it's because what do they have? They literally live on dirt floors and all they have is rocks to play with. But they have each other. They have.
Douglas:They spend all day alone on that dirt road, but with five or ten kids, and they grow up interacting, interacting, interacting. And so, by the it's like why latin people are good at dancing. It's not because we have something genetic, it's because, from the age of three years old, our mother is pulling us onto the dance floor and moving us, and we're, and we're terrified. We're like no, mom, don't do it. But by the time we're 15, we've been dancing for 12 years. It's an education, it's a phd in dancing, and so you go. Oh, my God, he's only 15 years old, he's a natural.
Douglas:No, he's been dancing for over a decade. So it's the same thing with the children in Africa. They're socialized without the distractions of technology from such a young age that they're so good at it and they're so healthy. And so when I say that the technology and the being alone is so unnatural, it's more than anything for developing nations. Japan, europe, united States, many parts of the world don't have that problem, but it's because of a lack of technology, which is connected to issues of poverty, which is another problem. It's a trade-off-off, you know one problem for another.
Douglas:But uh, but nevertheless, I think everyone would benefit from being alone and in nature, but we kind of have to force ourselves to to be in that environment. You know, like even now it's not. You don't have to go to africa. It's literally we put our phones down. In my case, I put the phone, I leave the phone at home and then I walk the 10 minutes to the beach, because I live in paradise, so my hawaii is. There's a beautiful ocean, but I need to leave the phone here.
Douglas:And can I overcome my fear, which sounds so stupid, but there's a panic when I think about leaving this, having nowhere, nowhere to look at a map, make a text message, nothing, order food, nothing. Leave the phone and go completely free to the beach and spend an hour on the beach. I know when I get there, when I do it, I will be very happy, but in this moment, can I let go of this thing and go do it? That's the challenge. The reward is guaranteed, in my opinion. It's guaranteed. The reward is there. But can I make the hard decision, unnatural decision, now and let go of the technology? Same for you, so yeah.
Igar:Indeed, nice, yeah, indeed, nice. Well, man, all being said, would like to slowly, slowly wrap up, however. After all your trip and all these situations and accidents and goal that you achieved, let's mention it again. What is? Let's say, what do you consider your biggest achievement in this trip and with this goal, with this award?
Douglas:sorry. The thing that I'm most proud of is that I was able to prove to myself that I was capable of a great love. You know the kind of happiness and peace that comes from that realization that I was capable of loving something else, whatever and everyone. They can choose whatever it is, if it's their family, if it's their career, but just to be willing to love something so much that you're willing to give everything for it. I had always seen that in movies and seen it in stories and real people, and I always wanted that for myself. And so my biggest achievement is that that I could see that in myself I could prove to myself I was capable of a great love. See that in myself I could prove to myself I was capable of a great love.
Douglas:The biggest lesson to come out of it was the one where I spoke about beauty and pain that I don't think you can separate the two. Yeah, somebody wants romantic love, they want to fall in love with a beautiful woman or man, but then the moment things get hard, they want to, they want to run away or push from this, push away from the pain. But there is no way to separate pain from beauty. They're intimately connected and if you really want to be as intimate as you can with love and beauty, you have to come to terms with that. That's going to cause you a great amount of pain and suffering, but it's worth it. It's worth it to feel alive than to be overly protected but never experience that beauty and love in its full potential, love in its full potential. So those, those two things are the biggest takeaways from from this cycling trip nicely nice, honest, nicely said and what?
Douglas:are your future plans.
Igar:How is all going? What are your thoughts? And, uh, maybe travel plans, maybe bicycle I don't know two things.
Douglas:One is I'm I'm healing, so I I needed to have a surgery to repair my knee, but it was so. It was a serious surgery. So when I got back I I actually needed to. After the surgery, I actually need to relearn. I'm relearning now how to walk again. I was in a completely or and do you have some?
Igar:titanium or metal things. So yeah, so I was in a wheelchair for an entire month.
Douglas:It was a very serious operation and now the last three months it's learning how to walk, learning how to climb stairs. So the rehabilitation will take about 12 to 18 months, about a year, year and a half to get back to cycling or something like that. So I also made a big sacrifice of my health for this and I will never be 100% the same after this. So I'm getting older anyways. So I've had a big life.
Douglas:So one thing is rehabilitation rebuilding this body and the other one is well, when I came back I actually thought maybe after 45 years and after 100 plus countries and after all the singing, dancing, laughing and loving around the world, maybe it's time to kind of settle down a bit. And I've always loved Hawaii and I wanted to build a community here. So you know, the idea is to spend my time in working for the community, nonprofit advocacy, trying to, because Hawaii, like everywhere else, it's paradise but it also has its problems. So trying to be a part of the solution and helping out with the many social issues here. So to get involved with the community, doing social advocacy work and building relationships and rebuilding my body is kind of the long term plan, I'm sure, because I am, as my mom says, a gypsy. I am a nomad. I'm sure I'll probably be on the road at some point. I've been doing it my whole life. I don't know if I can resist the urge, so I'm sure I'll be somewhere in the world doing something.
Igar:But I'm going to try to stay focused on investing my time here in the community here in Hawaii and with my personal relationships and and rebuilding this broken body back to something uh strong again well and lastly, but not uh least, last but not least, uh, what are your words to some travelers who would like maybe make some big trip not necessary, maybe even smaller, or like some encouraging words for someone who is listening and don't have enough courage? Or maybe some doubts in general about themselves, about the world safety and so on? Okay, fair enough, many people have some things, because you mentioned it.
Douglas:Safety-wise, I really think the world is actually vast. I think that human beings are vastly good people, and so the reality is the majority of the world is very safe. It's just that we watch the media, and the media has figured out that it can play on our emotions and our psychology and our primitive states of survival by showing us negative things, and that makes us keep coming back to them, because we do have this pessimist, evolutionarily pessimistic mind that's geared for survival, and so you just keep showing your bad things and you will keep staring at it, but it's not reality.
Douglas:The reality is that the vast majority of people in this world are good and thus the vast amount of the world is safe and it's easy to travel. Of course, there are a couple of caveats. One is you have to have common sense and you have to be open-minded and respectful of other cultures. Of course, if you don't know that, I don't even know why you're traveling. You know it's like you got to, as they say when in Rome, do as the Romans. You have to be open-minded and respectful, for when you examine cultures that live differently, and if you are open-minded, you will realize that their different way is not necessarily wrong. There are many ways to get to the same conclusion and that just the way they eat, the music they listen to, the art they produce, even the way they organize society, is just as valid, it's just as good, it's just only different. So having common sense and being respectful will keep you out of any of that trouble. I do want to say a special caveat for women travelers. Yes, it is the case that women are going to experience a little more safety issues than men. That's just a fact. It's a patriarchal world, and that's very unfair. And so I want to acknowledge, give credit to women that when they travel, that they will have to be a little more careful. Also, all the women world travelers I've found in the world are badass. They are tough, charismatic, dynamic, energetic. I've always been impressed by solo women travelers because they are. They do overcome more than the men and it's like diamonds. They're made out of pressure, and so a woman that travels alone is always a badass that I admire and respect. But there is the fact that there is more for them to consider.
Douglas:As far as pursuing your dreams, that's kind of hard for me, because I would just say just pursue your dreams. It's one life. It's a little cynical or pessimistic no cynical to say, but you know you're going to die anyways. You know it's going to end anyways. Why not make it a great story? Even with all the sacrifices I've made for my experiences in life, I don't have any regrets, right? You have the saying. You know you only regret the chances or whatever that you didn't take, and I do think that's true.
Douglas:No matter, you know, if it comes to a romantic love, falling in love with someone, if it comes to careers, if it comes to travel like. You do the action, you have the courage, you pursue your dreams and you do it. And it fails horribly, it sucks and you have to pay the consequences, but it never feels as bad as if you never took it and you have to look in the mirror and realize that you were kind of a coward or you lived in fear. That's a worse punishment than whatever. The punishment is that that man or woman rejected you, that that career fired you, that journey around the world injured you. It's never.
Douglas:It's, once again, the lesser of two evils Better to go, better to pursue your dreams and take the chance. But also, it's just just follow your heart, right. If it's, if it's telling, if it excites you, just keep dreaming, keep imagining. Eventually your heart will take over and you will. You will do it. So just keep pursuing. It'll be a natural thing. Just keep so. Just keep pursuing. It'll be a natural thing. Just keep your imagination and curiosity and keep researching. Whatever it is that makes your heart excited and it will happen. That it will happen. From there, solutions you will find ways to overcome. Challenges you will find through your research, through your curiosity, through your passion. You will find ways to overcome and to finally get you there. And so, yeah, wherever it is, you know, whatever you love, you know, my first love when it came to travel was Japan, and and and, yeah, and I just, I just never let go of my dream and my curiosity and my imagination.
Douglas:And one day I was there and one day I had and I had this amazing experience and I even fell in love there and things happened, and then I went back time and time again, time again, until I deeply understood the culture and you know.
Douglas:So, yeah, no regrets, so just sweet and if some people would like to maybe ask a question or connect with you or just follow you where they can find you Facebook, instagram, people would like to maybe ask a question or connect with you or just follow you. Yeah, so I'm on facebook, instagram, mostly under charity bicycle. Uh, I'm also building a web, uh website now, which would be uh, charitybicycleorg, that will document the three cycling trips. Um and uh, they could find me there, or or just, or, yeah, on social media, charity Bicycle or my name, douglas Concher. And yeah, if they have any travel questions, I think I have a lot of experience traveling, backpacking around the world, couch surfing and, for sure, any cycling or adventure tourism. I've already, you know, through the blood, sweat and tears, I've accumulated a lot of knowledge on how to travel in that way as well. I'm also very passionate about history, politics and philosophy, so if they want to talk about that, I'm very open as well. So, yeah, I'm open to any conversations about any of that cool.
Igar:Yeah, I will put links in description also to the episode and, uh, if the video will appear the way how we try now, it will be also understood. Well, man, yeah, really really amazing and man thoughtful conversation, to be honest, and I'm really happy you achieve what you wanted, what you tried and you did it many many huge respect and many congratulations.
Igar:I'm really happy that like yeah, definitely you need to rehabilitate and come back to your normal, daily, healthy life. However, still very happy that you know like it could be worse. We always can say shit could be worse you know you're still working, even though you're learning. Really happy for that many thanks for being here.
Douglas:In regards to that, nobody does anything alone we succeed or we fail because of the support or lack of support of others. I truly believe that I have a world record, but the reality is that hundreds of people across the world share that victory with me. It's just their name, isn't you know, on their trophy, but they're all in my heart and in my mind.
Douglas:And there's no way to be honest, except to acknowledge that nobody does anything alone. So even we're talking right now. Why? Because you offered to open your home to me and to provide me shelter when I was doing my trip around Europe. That's why we're talking now, and that Europe trip didn't succeed with the love and support of people like you, the world trip wouldn't have happened.
Douglas:So you know we're talking now because of, and I just want to thank you for your support. Thank you very much. Thank you for this podcast and opportunity to speak on your podcast.
Igar:Thank you, Douglas, Perfect, Really happy to hear you. Cool man. All right, then, have an amazing day, rest of the day and people all who are listening and joining for other episodes. We'll be happy to see you there.
Douglas:You too Keep doing it Safe travels.
Igar:Yeah, cool man. Bye-bye, bye.