Claudio von Planta - Motorcycle Filmmaker Interview

Swiss filmmaker Claudio von Planta is best known work as the cameraman who accompanied Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman on their Long Way Round motorcycle journey eastward from London to New York in 2004, Long Way Down from Scotland to South Africa in 2007, and Long Way Up from Ushuaia to Los Angeles in 2019.

The intro was recorded live in Shrinagar, Himalayas, India. 

Chapters

• 4:50 Interview

Transcript

SPEAKER_07: 0:03

Welcome to the ADV Cannonball Podcast, where we discuss all things on two wheels, the adventure bike cannonball, and other motorcycle-related nonsense.

SPEAKER_05: 0:30

Welcome to Season 3, Episode 15, Adventure Hannibal Podcast. I am joined today by my good friend, Aaron Pufall. Aaron, welcome. Yeah, bud.

SPEAKER_08: 0:41

We're sitting here on the aft deck of the houseboat. What's the name of this lake? Nagin Lake in Srinagar, India. And listeners may be able to hear in the background, there's a call to prayer happening right now. This is basically 100% Muslim Indian community, and we're near the Pakistan border.

SPEAKER_05: 1:03

Yeah, as a matter of fact, we've road that direction yesterday when we took a couple of bikes up. We can talk about that a bit later on.

SPEAKER_08: 1:10

Yeah, we will have a full episode about this trip and it's going to include the travel advice, what to do, what not to do. In other words, all the things that I've done so far and made mistakes. If you're ever planning a trip to the Himalayas or India, stay tuned because we're going to have a lot of travel tips based on our disaster.

SPEAKER_05: 1:32

Yeah, I how to give people advice on how to do it right is having done it wrong once yourself.

SPEAKER_08: 1:39

Absolutely, yeah. And they're totally avoidable things. And everything from the airports to where to buy things to how to rent motorcycles here, route planning, all that stuff. But first, normally we start the podcast with cracking a sweet-ass IPA, but seeing as though the call to mosque is happening in the background, obviously that's not going to happen. However, I did smuggle in a little flask of Johnny Walker Blue Label just for this rare occasion that we're in the same place together. So let's raise a glass here of our Johnny Walker Blue, and cheers, bud.

SPEAKER_05: 2:18

Yeah, very nice. Very nice. Thanks for...

SPEAKER_08: 2:20

Oh, yeah, it's so smooth. Oh,

SPEAKER_05: 2:26

yeah. Oh, that's delicious. All right, so... We've got a lot to talk about here. And this interview is like an hour and 13 minutes. I think you'd probably cut it back from like 10 hours to an hour and 13 minutes. You did a great job on the editing, by the way.

SPEAKER_08: 2:42

The problem is when you have a person like Claudio, you just want to hang out and chat. I have all these questions and I want all these answers. And if I'm interested, usually our listeners are going to be interested as well. So hopefully everyone finds it just as engaging as I do.

SPEAKER_05: 2:59

Yeah, so do you want to give a bit of background and then we'll jump into the interview?

SPEAKER_08: 3:05

In the motorcycle community, Claudio is well known for his work on the Long Way series and most notably about Long Way Round. So he actually did all the filmmaking for every Long Way series, including the latest work of Long Way Home. And in this interview, we talk about his current work. He's really passionate about electric vehicles and some really extreme uses of electric vehicles. and it was a real honor to talk to him about it.

SPEAKER_05: 3:35

And with that, let's roll the interview with Borio Van Planta.

SPEAKER_12: 3:49

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SPEAKER_08: 4:50

Claudio, welcome to the podcast. Yes, wonderful to meet you. And I'm in Seattle in the studio. And where are you today? I'm in Souches, a little tiny village in the mountains of Switzerland. It's definitely a little slice of paradise. So what came first? Was it the filmmaking or the motorcycles?

SPEAKER_10: 5:07

No motorcycle. It was just, I had an older brother and he already could ride motorcycles or like mopeds. At the age of 14, you're allowed to ride mopeds. And then I was two years younger. So at 12 already, obviously, I had to test it. I had to try it. So definitely the motorcycle first.

SPEAKER_08: 5:30

And did you have any formal film school education?

SPEAKER_10: 5:32

No, the filming, the filming came a little bit by accident. So I was keen to find a job, which gives me a pretext to travel and to discover the world. And so I felt journalism would be a good way to find that pretext, but I was a little bit dyslexic. So writing print media was never really such a good idea and I was always quite technical probably I picked it up with the motorcycle just to fiddle with you know at the time even film cameras it was tech it was mechanic it was not electronic so I was always quite good with mechanical things and technical toys and so at the time it started actually my very first my very first film making experience where I had an ambition to do something professional. It was in 85. I studied already at the university in Zurich, political science, with the idea to move into journalism. But I felt maybe I should do something more image based. And at the time, it was just the beginning of video technology. So it was film, you know, proper film, 16 mil. It was very exclusive, too expensive. Only companies could do it or very rich people could do it. But then suddenly the video came in and that opened the door for everybody. It was cheaper. It was still at the beginning, it was still quite expensive, but less expensive than the real film. So in Afghanistan, I went there effectively to be somewhere where you have no competition. And it was already a war going on. The Soviets occupied Afghanistan in 1979 So I came in 85 and I never did a film school before. I just felt relatively competent with a little. It was at the time actually still Super 8, just tiny little film roles. And then I came back to Switzerland and tried to sell it to Swiss TV and they didn't even look at it. They just asked, where did you do the film school? And I said, I haven't done a film school. I just, I'm studying at University of Zurich. And then they just, they didn't even look at it. They just said, you know, we only work with professionals. I said, okay, fine. I'm out of here. And it's probably the best thing that happened to me in my life because I never wasted any times with these kind of bureaucratic idiots. I just, no waste. That was it. So I'm very grateful to them. They reacted. So I was forced to, to, um, to get out of Switzerland. Because at the time, there was only one TV station in Switzerland. It was still state-owned and nothing else. No other option. So I ended up selling the footage in France. And there, there was an editor for a news program. And they felt, yeah, this is actually very exclusive stuff coming out of Afghanistan. So definitely we will make copies. And I will give you my best editor to cut the story. I said, yeah, of course. Cool guy, great guy. amazing material, very exclusive from Afghanistan. Of course, I get straight away the best editor. And so this editor, he was a little tiny Vietnamese called Pedro. So I get into his studio. In the meantime, my Super 8 footage was transferred onto the first generation of videotapes. U-matic, it was called at the time. So really big, fat tapes. And so I get into the studio of Pedro and he didn't even say hello. He just takes my tape, goes into the machine, fast forward, and then he turns around and he basically, the first thing I hear from Pedro is saying, look, if you are stupid enough to risk your life for that pile of shit, I think it's about time to learn how to use a camera. That was the introduction. So it was just perfect. It was absolutely perfect. So I became very, very quiet and started to listen. And Pedro, he became my mentor. Everything, the basics from filmmaking, I learned from Pedro. But he really knocked me down straight away. It was brilliant. It was really good. And then Pedro, he just started to show me all the mistakes. It was a complete disaster what I filmed in Afghanistan. He still managed to make a little report. I think it was about seven minutes long. But it It was hard work to get seven minutes together. And I was spending before three months in Afghanistan. It was...

SPEAKER_08: 10:30

And anyone today can just go buy a video camera from Amazon and be a filmmaker. When did you first merge the motorcycling and the filmmaking together?

SPEAKER_10: 10:38

It actually really happened because of Long Way Round. Before, motorcycle for me was just a good means of transport to get from A to B, particularly in crowded cities where you get stuck in traffic. And I ended up in London in 1990. And then I think I was one day, I was using public transport, the tube on the ground. And the next day I bought the motorcycle because I didn't want to waste my time in the underground. It was just too awful. So it was always just the best way to move around in cities. And yeah, and then with long way round out of the blue, suddenly the question whether I have motorcycle license became relevant. And that was a little bit kind of embarrassing at the beginning. Because in Switzerland, I actually had automatically my big bike license. At the time when you made the car license, that was in 1980 for me, you got automatically the big bike license as well. But then when I came to the UK, they forced me to switch the Swiss license to the UK license and didn't recognize the big bike, only up to 125cc. And because I was lazy, I was bored to make a fuss, and I just left it like that. And then suddenly, 2004, they called me up for Long Way Round. And then after a while, I realized, oh, there might still be a problem with my license. And then at first, I tried to find out, could I switch back to my Swiss license? But there was not enough time because they just... got in touch two weeks before departure. And so I felt the only option was to do this kind of, I needed to do the practical test. Fortunately, not the Siri anymore, but the practical test. And, you know, people who watch the film long way around, it's an embarrassing start that actually at the beginning, I failed my test. So, you know, that happened. I didn't turn my head enough, you know, when you indicate left and right, you need to turn your head. And I didn't do it enough, which is actually dangerous if you do it too much, because the primary focus always needs to be in front of you. And anyway, I failed. And then that was about a week before departure. And to retake the test, you have to wait for 10 days. So I felt they will just drop me. You know, how can you hire a guy to film a show when he doesn't even have a license? And it showed you the kind of mentality of the producers, all four of them. You know, it's you and Charlie and then David Alexeni and Andras Malkin. These four, they actually started this whole idea with these motorcycle trips. And so they have a company together and then they were looking for, you know, to hire somebody who can film. And I ended up to be that person. And all other producers, you know, 100%, they would have dropped me straight away. But these guys, they see that i know how to ride bikes and uh and they could feel that somehow the chemistry was right uh suddenly ewan and charlie they just told um ross and david look that's the guy we want um i think i still don't know exactly why because they looked at many many other people but uh just it was their gut feeling that's the guy and so ross and dave they said okay we take him anyway with or without license um you know who the hell will ask you for the for the the driving license if you drive through Siberia. And so it just shows you the mentality, which is key, you know, that you just need somehow, you need to trust your own instincts, you know, whether it's legally 100% exactly perfect or not, try and find a solution later. And so, well, that's what we did. You know, at the beginning, I just went with them. And then from the Czech Republic in Prague, I flew back to try again. And then fortunately, So they were relieved that the second time around I managed to

SPEAKER_08: 14:56

get the license. Yeah. And that became part of the storyline of that series. And I think everyone enjoyed that. Yeah. Let me play a little piece of camera that you recently posted that will introduce your current work. And I apologize in advance because you're going to have to hear your own voice. And if you're like me, you probably hate it. Definitely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_10: 15:19

Hello. I'm Claudio from Planter. I'm a Swiss filmmaker and I will join La Croisière Verte to capture their cleantech adventures all across Africa. I'm known to have filmed the long way motorcycle journeys with Ewan McGregor and Charlie Borman driving around the world across Africa and across South America but my journey as a petrolhead took a turn in in 2010 when I filmed an electric car driving from Alaska all the way down to Argentina. That was a long distance e-mobility world record. It was a game changer. I realized that electric vehicles will be essential for clean and future-proof mobility. In 2019, I was back with Ewan and Charlie and we captured the next electric vehicle record when they drove electric motorcycles across South America. And in 2023, I had a chance to film a solar-powered electric truck driving from sea level at Chile's Pacific coast, all the way up to the highest volcano in the world. They reached 6,500 meters altitude. And now, La Croisière Verte will push the boundaries once again. We will drive 14,000 kilometers across Africa, solar powered at zero energy cost. I can't wait to start that adventure. We will share many inspiring insights about Africa's cleantech revolution. Stay tuned. Yeah, it's true. It's always strange to watch myself. It's the new selfie culture. You know, I'm still kind of the older generation. I'm not used to it, but we should do it. It's the way it goes.

SPEAKER_08: 17:31

Yeah, I definitely don't like it. But talking about the Racing Green project, who built this car and what was the chassis based off of?

SPEAKER_10: 17:39

The car during the trip from Alaska to Argentina. Yeah, that was actually my first e-mobility experience. Again, out of the blue, what happened after Long Way Round, because this became very, you know, it became kind of a landmark story. Lots and lots of people around the world watched these shows. And so because I'm in it, and particularly whenever I fell over, you know, you and Charlie took the camera and filmed me just to have a laugh. So that's actually the reason why people have seen my face and And so somehow people connected to that third person who filmed Long Way Round. And then suddenly people started to call me up if they wanted to do an expedition. And they called up and said, look, we saw you in Long Way Round. Would you be interested to follow our expedition? And so this electric car story happened exactly like that. There were young graduates from Imperial College in London. And most of them are mechanical engineers. electric engineers. Quite a few of them had experience with fuel cells during their studies, so making electricity out of hydrogen and then running electric motors. And they built go-karts based on fuel cell technology. And after that experience, they felt actually, yes, it works, the fuel cell idea to power a machine with hydrogen, then turn it into electric and run electric motors. But in efficiency terms, it doesn't make sense. It's not really efficient. And it's the best way to power a car, something that kind of drives on a road, is just simple. A battery and an electric motor. End of story. Just keep it simple. Why make it complicated in between? And it's the most efficient way. It's like 90, 95% efficiency, maybe a little bit of heat. but really not much compared to combustion engines, for example. So the efficiency is super, super high with e-mobility, 90, 95% at least. And so these young engineers, they wanted to prove to the world that electric cars can have a big reach, a long reach, because everybody had range anxiety when it came to electric mobility. Oh, you drive once around the block and then the battery is flat and you are standing there and you can't charge and it's a disaster. So, you know, that was the kind of the vision. And so this was in 2009. They had the idea and we did then they decided to prove to the world that cars can go long distances. They said, let's build a car. It was a prototype at the time with a good battery. I think they had 54 kilowatt hours in their battery. So at the time, it was still early, early days with battery technology. It was already lithium based, but still quite the battery was about 800 kilos. Today, it would be much, much less. But they managed to and they said, okay, we have a better battery. And then the next thing is you need to have a car that's light and a car that looks sexy. Because at the time, the only electric vehicles you had suddenly in an area like London, they were either golf buggies or milk floats didn't didn't look particularly sexy and and they felt look to have success in the car industry it needs to look good and so they decided let's take let's take a race car and it was an existing model of race car which was given to them by by the guys who produce it they are called radicals they they are you know proper race cars not really for the road but for for racetracks and in the back they have a suzuki motorcycle engine because these engines at the time they delivered you know most power uh the best power to weight ratio and and so instead of so they they they got it they got a car from radical without the suzuki engine in it and then they just turned it into an electric machine so with motors in uh i think in the back wheels they had motors and a big battery and and you know they were engineers, they built it all themselves. At the time already, the software, that's the tricky part, how you can control the charging and decharging of the battery and control the motors. So they had like a whiz kid in the team who later got hired by Tesla because Tesla started exactly at the same time. I think 2009, they started to sell the first Tesla's And so very typically, one of our team members, you know, he was really the bright kid with all the software. And after our trip, we called it Racing Green. He then disappeared to

SPEAKER_08: 23:00

Tesla. It was a super cool car. What was the route that was proposed? And what was the route that you guys actually accomplished?

SPEAKER_10: 23:09

They always said they want to do the Pan American Highway from Alaska all the way down to Argentina. And they are, I think it's along the coast, mainly. And then in certain areas, there is no highway anymore, like the Darien Gap, you know, between Panama and Colombia, there is just rainforest and jungle and mountains. And there are some crazy guys, they managed to somehow get through with a bike or something, but it takes them months to do it. And today, it's already at the time when we did it in 2010, it was really a risky area because all the drug smuggling went through that stretch of land. So we had to do it with a boat and put the car into a container in Panama City. And then the container went to Cartagena in Colombia. And then there we started again, Colombia and then all the west coast of South America, so Ecuador and Peru. And then in Argentina, we had a little bit of Argentina and then we went across the Andes to the, no, a little bit of Chile on the Pacific side and then across the Andes into Argentina. So it was pretty much the route they wanted to do. And we really managed to get all the way down to Ushuaia.

SPEAKER_08: 24:34

And how did you film it? Were you able to ride a motorcycle?

SPEAKER_10: 24:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's because I knew from long way around to film a road movie is just the best you do it on a motorcycle and even better if somebody else rides and the guy who films is on the back of it. Right. Like the film Tour de France or events like that. And so for the first time I managed to film like this and it was really cool. It was unbelievable. It was the first time I actually figured out the power of social media. It was just the beginning of Twitter and I had already a little bit of a Twitter following at the time because I did stories with Charlie Bowman before in 2009. And so, I don't know, I had a few thousand followers on Twitter, mainly Longway fans, clearly. But I didn't really know what that represents and what that means. I was never really an active user. You know, today you have people, they do it on a professional basis, all these social media interactions. I just had this Twitter account with a few thousand followers. Usually, these stories I do on my own, like Racing Green or other ones where I just do it out of my own interest and passion. There is no TV commission, nothing. I just say, look, these are cool guys. Let's just follow them. I can do it on my own. Then I realized doing this Racing Green trip will be really tricky. I will probably probably burn out along the way because it's so tough to to ride to film to do backups in the evening and and and it's you know it's a real crazy long marathon it took us five months to actually do the whole stretch wow it was quite quite a big thing and so i said actually it would be the best if i could find somebody who rides a motorcycle and i can sit on the back so i put out a twitter when i got into the plane in london to fly across to to alaska and just said, I will follow these guys with this electric car. It's the first time somebody tries this in the world. And I'm curious to see how far we get. Is there anybody around who could ride a motorcycle where I can sit on the back for a bit? And I arrived in Fairbanks, looked at my phone. There was already a message there from an American guy who actually was based in Alaska. He was a helicopter pilot. And And so it was just crazy. He apparently, as a helicopter pilot working for the US Army, he has like shifts of months on the job and then the months or even longer, he has kind of free time. And apparently, just a few weeks before he saw my message, he by chance watched the Long Way series. And he said, this is really cool. Let's buy a BMW. GS. And so he bought, he had his brand new GS. And the next thing is he sees my Twitter message. And he said, this is fate. Obviously, I have to help this guy. You know, this is not by accident. This is fate. It has to be like that. So he came with his BMW GS bike and met me in Fairbank and then he drove all the way, all the way down to Texas. Then he had to return for his helicopter job. But it was just amazing. And that experience as well, to have a rider who is a helicopter pilot, they are so super coordinated with their movements. It's because they use hands and legs and feet and they can do everything at the same time. And I felt completely, totally safe. That That's how I managed to get really cool shots from the electric car.

SPEAKER_08: 28:49

I'm sure there's a bunch of GS owners, including myself, that were influenced from the Longway series. Yeah, I should have got some shares in the BMW company. And I didn't. Yeah, they should have given you a referral code or something at minimum. That's for sure. Yeah,

SPEAKER_09: 29:03

exactly.

SPEAKER_08: 29:04

And you must have thought that if you made it all the way to Ushuaia on this experimental racing green vehicle, surely you could do it on pre-production highly engineered Harley Davidson live wires. Let me play the clip from the Long Way Up expedition.

SPEAKER_14: 29:22

I've been dreaming of doing a trip through South America for years.

SPEAKER_01: 29:28

But

SPEAKER_14: 29:29

life got in the way. And now I've decided to do the trip with my best friend, Charlie Broom. You've got to look after the relationships in your life. And if you don't, you're just, you're losing something that's very important. We'll ride 13,000 miles from the southern tip of Argentina all the way to Los Angeles. 150 miles every day

SPEAKER_13: 29:47

is

SPEAKER_14: 29:48

a long

SPEAKER_13: 29:48

way

SPEAKER_14: 29:49

to go. And if that wasn't enough of a challenge, we wanted to see if we could do it on electric motorcycles. I think it's the future electric. You'd be the first people to go this distance charging as you go. Oh, my god. It's so great, isn't

SPEAKER_13: 30:03

it? Oh. Uh-oh. The power's just gone.

SPEAKER_14: 30:09

Well, this is us on the road, Charlie, versus us on the way, man. I'm going to get attacked by this dog. We'll ride through the brutal Patagonian winter. Look at that snow. It's amazing how cold it is. We're going to climb to the extreme heights of the Andes and experience the real risks of high altitude. I can't breathe. I'm definitely getting sick, Charlie. Before witnessing the endangered jungles of Central America. To think about all of the things that might go wrong. I think we're lost. Is this a road? The woods might be a little bit...

SPEAKER_11: 30:39

Whoa,

SPEAKER_14: 30:39

whoa, I'm falling off! In the middle of the night, things just go around your brain, don't they? I have real fear. I don't want anyone to get hurt. They just roll around. I'm not going to make it. Towing somebody on a bike is dangerous. What if the bikes don't work? What if we can't charge the bikes? What if it snows tomorrow?

SPEAKER_08: 30:58

At least in that clip, I didn't make you listen to yourself. In this expedition, did you have any concerns that these two bikes and these two prototype vehicles wouldn't make it?

SPEAKER_10: 31:08

Yeah, I knew from my previous experience with Racing Green that e-mobility in an expedition setting is still a little bit tricky and most likely you will have problems and you will have to repair things and you will need good engine engineers to do these jobs. And so I still felt, if it's before, these young graduates from Imperial College, they built their own car the very first time. But then I felt if you have companies like Harley-Davidson, I think they decided in 2015 that they should probably try and go that direction as well, just as an alternative to the traditional combustion engines. And then in 2019, four years later, we could use the first two serial bikes. So they were not really 100% prototypes anymore. They were always kind of the serial product, but not tested. But I felt it will be probably, you know, it'll be okay. And then the main engineer who was in charge of the whole team to develop that electric live wire bike, she was on the trip. And so I said, fine. And so they had like, but it was still a pretty crazy situation. setup. So you had always a Harley-Davidson engineering team behind us with a sprinter van, a workshop, and a trailer with spare bikes, just in case. So I said, with all these engineers behind us, somehow there will always be a solution. And then on the Rivian side, because the Rivian, they came into the story because they felt it If already we do it with the electric bikes, the range is a little bit annoying. It's not as much as you would like to have for an adventure trip where you want to be able to do five, 600 kilometers a day if necessary. You hardly ever do it, but if you want to, it would be nice if you could have that kind of reach. And these live wire bikes, as I remember, it was something around 200 kilometers, not miles, So really not that much. They had 14 kilowatt hour batteries and it was just about 200 kilometers. And so the idea was that you stop over lunch and then you should plug it in somewhere. And if you have support cars with a big battery, maybe you can just suck out the bit from the power from the support cars. And that's when Russ and David, the producers kind of went around, you're knocking doors of car companies who started to build electric cars, whether there's anything suitable around. And they ended up with Rivian. And Rivian didn't even exist at the time. It was just the beginning of Rivian. I think they had a deal with Amazon, with Jeff Bezos, that they should develop cars and delivery vans for Amazon North America. And they had very tight deadlines. I think the Amazon-Rivian deal was uh 2018 like october or something and then our request for long way up to find support cars came in march 2019 and the departure of our trip the next long way up trip was in september 2019 and so the the rivian ceo he just felt anyway we need to go full speed ahead we have at the time when they did the deal with longway they didn't have a single car it was only like kind of 3d models in computers, nothing else. But it shows you as well that kind of risk-taking on the American front. You couldn't find this in Europe. It's just not happening. And that's why very often the American economy is just moving ahead much faster than anybody else because you have people who take these kinds of risks. So Rivian decided, yes, let's do it. We have to test cars anyway. We have to build it as quickly as possible. And then if at the same time, We have a little bit of PR on Apple TV with a Hollywood star. It doesn't hurt. So let's do it. And so they were building these two cars like crazy, but they didn't have the time to actually test the charging system with the Harley-Davidson's because both companies were just like desperately trying to move ahead to build the bikes and the cars. So then both companies shipped, the Rivians were shipped to Ushuaia, the Harleys were shipped there and then they tried to figure out whether it just and obviously it didn't work and it absolutely didn't work at all so the whole point of having these rivians there was actually for nothing it didn't work at all um but then rivian was the same like harley they had three engineers on the trip all the time because they knew these these prototype cars not tested nothing they will break down and and they knew they need to have the the manpower and the brainpower there to constantly fix things. And it was like that. You know, the most amazing film would have been the film about the Rivian engineers trying to keep these two cars on the road. It was every night they were, you know, sitting there, you know, with their laptops trying to improve the software. Unbelievable. And so it was certainly a good exercise for them to get the Rivians up to speed. But on the Harley side, we had to find other ways to charge and you know if you are in cities and so on you can always find you have infrastructure you can find you know mains power and plug it in somewhere but in the middle of Patagonia it was difficult and you know and it was you know it was shown in the film that it was sometimes a little bit sketchy problematic I remember the very first time in Patagonia we were on our own the Rivians were gone anyway we couldn't kind of do much with the so we had to look for ourselves and so we came to one of these amazing farms in the middle of nowhere you know thousands of sheeps around and they had wind wind power because there is constant wind so wind power works and so they were very proud yeah no problem you can come here and charge your bikes um because we have our own uh power generator with the the windmills and you know of course the moment we plug in the two bikes boom everything goes black all the fuses were gone

SPEAKER_08: 38:01

and yeah it was just dead finished keeping in mind that this was six years ago and the technology has come a long way even with level one charging adapters have you seen this german kid who's going around the world on a zero no no no no i haven't seen it no yeah he's actually doing it and he's doing it quite the same way that he's plugging in level one to just a normal outlet uh when he's checking into airbnb so he's actually doing it and i'm sure he was in inspired by Long Way Up. And that's a great example of just using everyday consumer level technology. But let's move on to the next adventure and let me play the trailer.

SPEAKER_10: 38:50

As a filmmaker, I'm attracted by adventurous and life-changing stories. I'm always looking for visionary characters with mind-blowing ideas.

SPEAKER_06: 39:01

Our dream is to take electric mobility beyond its limits. We're going to build a new electric truck and take it up to almost 7,000 meters to the summit of the highest volcano in the world to set a new altitude world record. We are developing a commercial electric vehicle This world record expedition will prove its capabilities beyond any doubts.

SPEAKER_10: 39:27

These three engineers know what to expect. They traveled to Chile before and undertook

SPEAKER_06: 39:32

an exploratory expedition. We reached the summit at 6,893 meters and the conditions were extremely cold. It was very hard to breathe and it could start snowing anytime. But we managed to scout the way for our truck all the way to the summit. I wonder how it will be possible to reach 7,000 meters altitude with a truck. We are convinced our truck will reach the summit because it has very special features. It has a very low center of gravity because of the battery packs and our electric powertrain is not reliable on oxygen from the air. So we will have full power all the way to the summit. We will also be completely energy independent because we charge our vehicle with solar power. The rigorous

SPEAKER_10: 40:21

planning is impressive, but what strikes me most is the ingenuity and the craftsmanship of the Peak Evolution team.

SPEAKER_06: 40:29

We have been a tight team for over 20 years and we have done everything together. We've built vehicles since we were little children, but this truck is the biggest project we've ever done.

SPEAKER_10: 40:42

I'm also impressed by the lifestyle of the Peak Evolution team. They restored the house on their own and are totally energy self-sufficient.

SPEAKER_06: 40:51

We renovated an old warehouse to make it our carbon neutral dream home. Lots of sports is also part of the healthy lifestyle. To make it up that mountain we have to be extremely fit and our mountaineering skills will help us reach that goal.

SPEAKER_10: 41:10

First the boys have to build their truck. At the moment it looks like ground zero.

SPEAKER_06: 41:16

This is the most stripped our vehicle is ever gonna be. We spent two years designing everything, getting all the parts ready and now we're putting it together and in a few weeks it will be ready to drive. We already installed the drivetrain, the cabin and the box at the back will go up soon. Follow our channel to find out if we finish the truck in time and make it up to the top of the highest volcano in the world.

SPEAKER_08: 41:42

Again, you found yourself in some really cutting edge technology. You found yourself in some extreme terrain. It must be really special to document these great engineering projects.

SPEAKER_10: 41:55

Yeah, I'm just an observer. I'm not really doing it. But if I meet people who have such crazy ideas, I'm just fascinated. I just feel These are really cool stories I want to capture and to spread and talk about. And so I was already hooked on e-mobility. I was fascinated to see what you can do. And, you know, very practically for the filming, it's pretty cool because it doesn't make any noise. So, you know, that's like something you never think about. But to sit on a bike, an electric bike, which doesn't make the noise as a filmmaker that's like the perfect world because you get all the sound you can hear the voices people talk to you and it's very good for filmmakers and so I was hooked on e-mobility and I was you know it's still just the beginning of e-mobility technology you know we will still see crazy developments and it's happening very fast unfortunately much more on the Chinese front than anybody else because so many industry leaders on the combustion engine side, they are too arrogant and then they didn't realize that actually the future lies somewhere else. Yes, it's true, Mercedes or BMW or whoever, they are building incredible combustion engines like they are the world's best, but it's the dead end. It's definitely the dead end. It's not the future. And so you have countries like the Chinese, they invest into this technology, like in a strategic way, like other people, other countries invest in defense, in armies. So, you know, China invests in technologies in a strategic way and with the same spirit, even so it may be at the beginning, it's not like commercially a great success at all, but they still continue investing it like this long-term vision. And so when I met by chance, again, these three Swiss engineers, and they were talking about this idea that they want to convert an existing diesel truck, 4x4 truck, which is used here in Switzerland in the Alps by farmers, you know, to go up steep hills and to catch the hay and so on. So they are very, you know, kind of the Rolls Royce type of 4x4 trucks. Not very big, because in the mountains, you know, smaller, but they can carry about 10 tons. And And they are very kind of flexible. You can steer the front wheels and the back wheels. And so you can even traverse, not just go forwards and backwards. So it's like the Rolls Royce or 4x4 trucks here in the Swiss Alps. And they felt it's strange. You know, the whole world talks about kind of trying to switch to e-mobility. Everybody talks about cars. But why is nobody talking about agriculture? All the machinery you have in agriculture, which runs on diesel. diesel. And so like the guys in 2009, 2010 with Racing Green, they wanted to show to the world electric cars can go long distances. And these guys, the Swiss guys, they wanted to show that agricultural machinery could be electric. And to prove that it works well and even better than any diesel engine could do, they said, let's do an altitude world record. Because all the three, they were very good engineers, mountaineers, very top mountaineers. So they understand what's happening in high altitudes in wind and snow and glaciers and crazy temperatures. And they just felt that would be interesting. So they were looking around, doing some research and figured out there is this one volcano in Chile, Ojos del Salado. It's in the Atacama Desert and it's nearly 7,000 meters. So I don't know in feet how much that is, but it's high. And that place, you had all sorts of people who tried to do altitude world records with cars, with trucks, with all sorts of things. I know we met the Swiss guy. He's there every year trying to go higher and higher with his motorcycle. So far, he was always on KTM combustion engines. And now this year, he will be back again for the first time with an electric motorcycle. And so these Swiss guys basically decided, let's build a truck here in Switzerland, ship it across to Chile, and then try whether we can get up. And then, of course, if it's electric, the question is, how do you charge it? And so they came up with the idea to charge it with solar panels. So they designed it in a way that they had a whole pack of solar panels inside the truck. You know, the panels you see on the roofs of houses, nothing sophisticated, nothing special. It was quite heavy. I think 450 kilos or 500 kilos, all the panels together. And it was a little bit laborious. You had to kind of take them out, put them on the ground, you know, connect them with all the cables. But with these solar panels, they were totally self-sufficient and they really managed to charge the truck at the Pacific coast, zero meters, and then slowly, slowly go higher and all the way through, all the way up to, we They managed to get to 6,550 meters altitude. So it's unbelievable. And yeah, it was such a cool experience. Just to see you can do it. You can do it. It's great. And the funny thing at the same time, whilst we did the record with the electric truck, like a seven ton truck, you know, that's a lot of weight and all going up with solar power. And parallel to us, there was a Porsche team doing exactly the same, actually the same route. So it was quite fun at the end for our story to have this kind of competition between Porsche, you know, like a top car brand with loads of money behind it. And then these three Swiss guys with absolutely nothing but just their brains and some real, real skill. It's a good story. So the film is soon finished.

SPEAKER_08: 48:30

And I'm not a subject expert, but I do know for a very steep angle extremely high altitude mission, a electric drive system has a lot of advantages. You've got 100% torque at the first revolution of that wheel, and there's zero power loss as you lose oxygen as you climb to higher altitudes. But anyways, we will leave that discussion for people that's smarter than me. And then after this project, you stumbled into yet another project with EV and again, an extreme environment. You took four ridiculously small toy cars, essentially, from Paris to South Africa. Maybe you can tell us how you got roped into this mission.

SPEAKER_10: 49:17

Yeah, so that's my latest e-mobility adventure. And as I said before, it's just people approach me. They call me up because they know I like this kind of crazy clean tech trips and I'm used to big, long expeditions. And so this particular story, it was called La Croisiane So it's very French. It's a French initiative. And the name basically means green cruise in a way. And it's based on a previous expedition, which was called La Croisière Noire, the black cruise. And that was a story in 1924, organized by André Citroën, the founder of the Citroën car company. He managed to organize the first motorized crossing of Africa North. South in 1924. And that was the Croisière Noire. And La Croisière Ouvert, the Green Cruise, is now kind of the brainchild of a French guy called Eric Vigouroux. He was a former rally driver. He did Dakar rallies, all sorts of rallies all over the world. It was absolutely his passion. You know, a crazy petrolhead burning thousands and thousands and thousands of litres of petrol. And then suddenly, you know, did this about 20 years and then suddenly his kids came to him and said look daddy if you think that's cool don't you realize it's completely ridiculous and and irresponsible haven't you heard about the problems of the co2 and and and you know wasting petrol for for nothing just for kind of racing around and so daddy became very quiet probably a little bit similar like when pedro told me you know i should learn how to use a camera it was that moment for him. And so he actually then realized they have a point. And so he started to look into e-mobility. He had a whole team of engineers with him. And so they started to play around and build electric buggies. He was still into rally. And then by chance, Eric, he found this book, La Croisière Noire, which is the story of this expedition in 1924. And he read this book and says, this is just how cool is that. And it would be amazing to do the same, but 100 years later with new technology. And so that's the background of what we did. So the start was in Paris in October 24. We started on a big car convention. It's called La Mondiale de Loto. It's a kind of a French big car convention in Paris. So we started there with a little bit of press. at the beginning. Then we had to drive down to Marseille to catch the ferry to get across to Morocco. And then the official start, which is really to the day, 100 years after André Citroën, it was on the 28th of October, 24. We started in Morocco in Ouarzazate and just went south. 16 countries all the way down to Cape Town. And you don't know whether it will work. But The same thing was, it was electric and solar powered. The solar power idea actually came from me because I spoke to Eric whilst he was developing the expedition in 2023. And I already had this experience with the solar power truck in Chile and said, look, if you do something on e-mobility front, it would be really cool if you try to be self-sufficient with solar power as well at the same time, because that is the real freedom. If you do expeditions far away in the middle of nowhere, you don't have to worry about the next petrol station because you make your own power. And yes, you have to wait a little bit. Maybe if there are clouds, you wait until you have sun again, but what's the problem with waiting a bit? It's actually fun. It gives you time to do all the things. You can go and meet people, discover local culture. So the waiting, it was never a problem. And so that's basically the the story of what we did. And it took us four months to get to Cape Town. And there were moments where it was tricky and we had no support. It was just five people. So four people in these little cars and me on a Chinese electric motorcycle. That was an experience in itself. And the cars, maybe just a few words to the cars. It's like the antithesis to the Rivians. It's like the opposite to the Rivian. A Rivian is probably three tons or something. Massive. And it has a massive battery as well, like 140 kilowatt hours. The models we had in Chile in 2019. I don't know how much they have today, but it's huge. But the problem with e-mobility, the whole logic behind e-mobility is that you try to be more efficient in your energy. And it's the same concept like you know if you heat a house and you want to reduce your energy consumption to heat your house you know you should insulate it properly first otherwise you just burn too much and the logic with electric vehicles is an electric a heavy electric vehicle is just stupid because you waste too much energy just to move your tons around so the lighter an electric vehicle is the better and more efficient and that's why eric actually and his engineers they decided to choose this ridiculous toy car. It looks like a baby car. It's actually designed for kids. It's not like the type of car you think, oh, yeah, I'm an off-roader. I'm a tough guy. I have a big four-wheel drive, Land Cruiser, Land Rover, whatever, big tires, everything. No, no, no, no. It's the opposite. It's a ridiculous looking toy car made for kids. It's actually originally designed for kids, for teenagers, because you can drive it at the age of 14. You don't need a driving license. And so it's like a little niche market where they thought maybe we can catch some customers there. And it is actually a Citroën as well, which is cool because it's the 100-year anniversary of André Citroën's expedition in 1924. And we rock up again with a Citroën car, but not what you expect. It's a little toy car. And of course, it was adapted. The engineers of Eric, they changed a few things. The original model has a front wheel drive, but now the models we took for Africa, they changed it to back wheel drives. They had two motors in each wheel and then they had a bigger battery. We had 30 kilowatt hours battery. And because the car is light, we had a range of once it was over 600 kilometers with one charge. So that was on flat roads, tarmac marked roads and no wind against you. In Mauritania, we could do 600 kilometers. But even on a dirt road, which kind of consumes much more energy, you have more resistance on the road. Even on dirt, we had still 400 kilometers.

SPEAKER_08: 56:51

It's another great example of you don't need a 800 horsepower trophy truck or a$35,000 GSA to go on an amazing adventure. And I watched these guys pick up these little electric cars out of mud bogs and going across sand and going across all types of terrain. It really was an amazing adventure. And I actually didn't know you were on a cheap little Chinese motorcycle. So that's super cool

SPEAKER_09: 57:19

also. Yeah, exactly. I

SPEAKER_08: 57:20

know we're running out of time and I promise we wouldn't be more than an hour, but I wanted to quickly share a movie that you made that I just posted on our motorcycle film club. And this is called a Kurdish movie. And this is filmed in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. And it's with your buddy Billy Ward, who's a gregarious character on his own. And let me quickly play the intro to that.

SPEAKER_10: 57:45

Hi, everybody. After a few years, I found a great opportunity to revisit the long way around filmmaking style. No Ewan and Charlie at the moment, but I found Billy Ward, another great bike adventure who was brave enough to face my cameras.

SPEAKER_03: 58:03

There ain't nothing stopping us, only the leaving. John Wayne, 1962.

SPEAKER_10: 58:09

Billy has lots of experience in organising expeditions in Africa, South America and Australia, but I suggested to explore motorcycle tours in new, uncharted territory.

SPEAKER_04: 58:20

Where did you take us, Claudio? Here. I mean, seriously? We're on holiday, for God's sake, Claudio! Why don't we just throw ourselves off a cliff?

UNKNOWN: 0:00

...

SPEAKER_10: 58:35

Despite Billy's trepidation, I patrolled him into a bike adventure in the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where I made good friends over the past 20 years. He was certainly up for it.

SPEAKER_02: 58:46

Oh, my Lord. There you go. These are all for you. Choose your bike. Wow. Yesterday, I was here, and I was told Billy wants this one, because that flies.

SPEAKER_10: 59:02

And this was just the beginning of our lucky streak. I

SPEAKER_04: 59:05

really don't believe this, Claudio. I just do not believe I'm driving a police car with blue lights and...

SPEAKER_10: 59:15

It didn't take long to feel at ease with our police bikes and blend in with the locals. Just a normal night out in Elbel.

SPEAKER_01: 59:23

Sure, I am okay with my husband. I don't want Finnish city everywhere.

SPEAKER_04: 59:30

And that's good with me. I'm happy, happy, happy. This is what it's like living in a war zone. This is just a normal evening. That's it. Motorbikes in Kurdistan!

SPEAKER_08: 59:53

It must have been a real treat to go back to the Middle East and this time not to document a war zone or interview Osama bin Laden. It was a unique experience to grab a couple of motorcycles and you ended up with these really cool police bikes somehow. And what was it like for you to go there and essentially go on a nice little vacation with your buddy, Billy? Yeah,

SPEAKER_10: 1:00:17

it was such a fun, such a fun, crazy story. And I had to, idea to actually try and do a motorcycle trip in the north of iraq because i met billy ward who hired me to do a kind of a trip in in peru at the time and normally it's done through charlie boorman he had like his fan club and then sometimes he goes on motorcycle trips and and people come on on paid vacation to to do these trips with charlie but then he he had an accident and couldn't do it anymore and so i just stepped into as kind of the plan B. And that's how I met Billy Ward. And so he started to explain me about the trips they do with Charlie in Africa, in Australia, in South America, different places. And then I, because I had a lot of connections in Iraq, I did quite a few stories there with a Kurdish friend. And I, you know, quite often in conflict zones, if you meet people and You work with them, you develop an incredible base of trust because that's the only thing that works. Nothing around you works, but friendship is the key. Actually, quite often in a negative way, you say, oh, yeah, it's like a mafia organization. Yes, it's true. It's like a mafia style organization, everything based on trust, but it doesn't need to be criminal at all. But it's just the only thing that works. You have friendship and it's just a code that you help each other. If you can help, you help. That's the deal. And so that's what I experienced with the Kurds. And because they are a minority, they are persecuted in all the countries they live. They are split up between Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria. They are always a minority and very often they have troubles with the central governments and then there are conflicts. And so the Kurds are, for the last hundred years, effectively after the the first world war when they got split up they were always having trouble and they still have troubles today but in the north of iraq it's relatively stable at the moment you know after saddam was taken out since then it they managed to keep that area like an autonomous area and so i knew it's definitely possible to go there and it would be so cool to do it on a motorcycle and i just told billy saying look if already you have to these paying clients, you know, paying a lot of dollars for, you know, fancy motorcycle tips, you should offer them something properly exclusive. You know, everybody goes to Australia and Africa and to Kenya, to safaris, you know, what's special about that? But Iraq, you know, let's do a, let's do a, let's do a kind of a test. And so he was reluctant, but said, okay, okay, that's good. And Billy, he's just a great, fun character. And so we ended up in northern Iraq and my Kurdish friend, he was preparing the ground and the first mission was how you, where you find the motorcycle and what kind of motorcycle. And that was already the start of the story. You can't find any decent motorcycles there. It's not possible. But he had good connections with the police and so we ended up with police bikes. You know, we You know, in which country around the world you could go as a motorcycle tourist and effectively get some police bikes to do your trip? I couldn't imagine anywhere. But there we basically just a good connection with the head of police. No problem. Yeah, just take two of our bikes. And so Billy and myself, we were riding around on police bikes with the blue light and everything. It was so funny.

SPEAKER_08: 1:04:21

Yeah, it was really cool to see you ripping around on those borrowed police bikes. And if anyone wants to listen to our interview with Charlie, it's season three, episode three. And it was really cool to talk with him as well. And speaking of Charlie, I want to play the trailer for Long Way Home.

SPEAKER_14: 1:04:41

My name is Ewan McGregor. And for the last 20 years, my best friend, Charlie Borman, and I have traveled to some of the farthest corners of the world. Yet we've never properly explored the countries on our own doorstep. So this

SPEAKER_13: 1:04:54

time, Europe is our playground. And we're doing the journey on vintage, temperamental 50-year-old bikes.

SPEAKER_14: 1:05:02

I just love them to death. I shouldn't say that. Motorbikes are dangerous enough as it is, you know what I mean? It's great to be back on the road again. Travel up through the vast Nordic countries... I've got splinter in my bum. Do you want me to have a look in the tent later with the tweezers? And into the Arctic Circle. It's bloody freezing. Down to the beautiful Baltics in Eastern Europe. Look at that view! Before winding our way through the Alps

SPEAKER_13: 1:05:34

and across France. We've got about seven and a half thousand miles, but these roads are dangerous.

SPEAKER_14: 1:05:40

Are you okay? No, I'm good. Oh, man. I had a little crash. I just lost control. We're going to find some metal worker who can fix my bike.

SPEAKER_13: 1:05:49

It's the international thing. If it doesn't fit, hammer it. It always works.

SPEAKER_08: 1:05:54

It must have been a nice change to not being a war zone or in a desert or the high mountains. It must have been a walk in the park to film in Europe.

SPEAKER_10: 1:06:04

Yeah, it was definitely totally different in dynamic than what we did before. I think the toughest clearly was Long Way Round, the very first one, you know, where everybody with good reasons said, Siberia, you can't do it. It's impossible. You can't do it. And we were very lucky that we actually managed to get through. We just by chance had a window of one week to get through Siberia where you had still the permafrost, the ground frozen, and we didn't have rain. And so the the water levels in the rivers that was still slow down and we could get through the rivers. Even for the trucks, it was just the limit. A week later, it wouldn't have been possible anymore because then the permafrost started to melt and then the water levels in the rivers go up like crazy. And if it rains, then the water level goes up and we have only one day of rain in Siberia. So we were very lucky to get it there. And then Africa was tough as well. certain areas in Sudan going through the deserts and the sand and then the heat. So that was pretty tough. Long way up, it was just the technical challenges with the electric bikes, trying to find charging points. That was a new dimension. And now the long way home, going up through Scandinavian countries and then Eastern Europe, you think, oh yeah, it's all easy. And usually it's It's always, you have to be careful if, or I realize whenever I think it's easy, not necessarily because the challenge we had here on Long Way Home is just like so much rain, rain, rain, rain, rain, rain up in Norway. You know, it's beautiful. Norway is beautiful, but I can't really remember to see much because there was always clouds and fog and rain and a few glimpses of a sunbeam once in a while, but really not Not much. So that was actually a real challenge from the filming point, how to capture something if everything is wet, wet, wet. Unfortunately, we have now today, we have all these action cameras. And for the first time, we used the Insta360 360 degree cameras, and they are all completely 100% watertight. And so we managed, even in the craziest rain, we still managed to capture a few impressions. You know, a long way around 20 years ago, we didn't have these gadgets we didn't have drones we didn't have waterproof cameras so it was we were lucky that we didn't have much rain on on long way around yeah but that was tricky the rain was tricky

SPEAKER_08: 1:08:47

yeah one raindrop on that lens and the whole shoot is is done for charlie and ewan had the antique motorcycles did you have your trusty gs on this adventure no no no no no no no no no gs

SPEAKER_10: 1:09:01

no it's effectively so it was clear you and charlie they wanted to do it on their vintage bikes and on my side um they just told me you know like the production crew they just told me find a bike whatever works with you and this time around for the first time on the long race series we decided to be two on the bike effectively the experience i had in uh in um during racing green in 2010 you know having one guy riding and i'm on the back filming and so we replicated that system on Long Way Home. And the guy on the back called Max Cruz, he came from Chile. We worked together already on Long Way Up. That's how we met. He was actually the local fixer in Chile, but he's a very kind of multi-skilled guy. He's a producer. He's a very good photographer. And because the chemistry worked well, we then decided it would be cool if Max gets on the bike. And so we are two on the bike and he can film i can film and and we can double up and so we just swapped and then the the key was because we are two on the bikes um it was important to have a bike that's low so when we stop you know with your two legs you know both feet fully on the ground to keep the bike steady so that the second guy on the back can can film and move around and so the gs's they were too high and and so we found a KTM. So finally KTM made it into the long range shows.

SPEAKER_08: 1:10:41

Yeah, that was a big blunder with season one. But did the KTMs make it or did they throw a cam? They're famously known for breaking down. No,

SPEAKER_10: 1:10:48

no, no, no. The KTM was absolutely fine. Absolutely fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was a KTM 790, not like the biggest model, but the whole keys was it was lower than the GSs. And, you know, it was easy for us, like the vintage bike, that was more problematic. I think Charlie didn't have any problems with his BMW. 1975, I think, was the year. But it was very well restored before he left. So he didn't have any problems. And Ewan had a little bit of problems, but not much. I think it was more electronic. The spark cables for the spark plugs, they kind of got detached or they had... humidity in it and then but we could it was good for the story you know if it's too smooth it's too boring

SPEAKER_08: 1:11:41

whenever there's a delay that always just adds to the story and a little breakdown adds a little bit of color I want to ask about the future did Charlie and Ewan give any kind of indication if there was an appetite for another episode of the

SPEAKER_10: 1:12:04

Yeah, I don't know. I'm usually not involved in the decision making. I just come on board whenever it's ready to go. But I'm sure there will be more shows. I think Ewan and Charlie, they just love to do that stuff. And I think it will go again more into Asia. Nice. I push them for China. That's what I tell them. Look, that was actually the original idea, the very, very original original idea for Long Way Round was doing the trip in China. I think it's even explained in the film because Yuan, his wife grew up in China. And so he felt it would be nice to discover the country where my wife grew up. But at the time in 2004, it was still too complicated with permits. It was still too closed. And so they realized it will be very problematic. And that's why then they came with the idea. Okay. Then just do the round the world trip. And, uh, but I still would like to go to China.

SPEAKER_08: 1:13:11

All right. We got the scoop. Maybe just maybe the next episode will be in China, China. That's it. That's fantastic. And do you have any projects that you're personally working on that maybe you're excited about? Yeah, at the moment I'm, I'm very

SPEAKER_10: 1:13:23

busy trying to get this, uh, uh, this Africa trip off the ground. You know, I shot lots of footage. I was on the road for, you know, four and a half months, a 135 days shooting every day. There is a lot of material and various cameras. Everybody in the team had little cameras to film themselves. So there's a lot of great material to cut. I could easily cut the 20 part series, but I haven't found a broadcaster yet who goes for it. But the material is there. So I'm now in the process of trying to find the place where to get the story out. I could make something shorter as well like a feature length documentary for festivals or some some conventions or something but to do justice to this huge trip where we really saw a lot a series would be very appropriate so that's what i'm busy with that

SPEAKER_08: 1:14:22

i will put the trailer in the show notes the link it's french but it's subtitled and it's definitely worth a watch it's really entertaining oh that would be cool and based on that film and your breath of work and even prior to the motorcycle experiment you're currently on I'm going to award you the certified badass sticker certified badass there are only 100 of these in the world and hopefully you stick it on the side of your next motorcycle for your next big adventure

SPEAKER_10: 1:14:50

brilliant brilliant that's how very cool very

SPEAKER_08: 1:14:54

cool well thanks Claudio so much for taking the time to talk to us today and hopefully it won't be too long before we see you on your next adventure

SPEAKER_10: 1:15:01

yeah wonderful thank you thank you for your interest. It's quite fun to dig in my memories trying to remember.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:11

Ladies and gentlemen, can I please have your attention? I've just been handed an urgent and horrifying news story. And I need all of you to stop what you're doing and listen. Cannonball!

SPEAKER_12: 1:15:27

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