He Built a Bike Brand Out of Burnout — And Found His Purpose

Keywords

orthopedic surgery, cycling, reinvention, healthcare, Mischief Bikes, resilience, passion, risk-taking, patient care, medical innovation

Summary

In this episode, Dr. Chris Wahl shares his remarkable journey from being a top orthopedic surgeon to founding Mischief Bikes, a custom bike shop in Seattle, WA. He discusses the motivations behind his career changes, the challenges faced in both medicine and cycling, and the importance of resilience, joy, and community in pursuing one's passions. Dr. Wahl reflects on the lessons learned from difficult cases in surgery, the evolving landscape of healthcare, and the significance of taking risks to redefine what is possible in life.

Sound Bites

• "The courage to reinvent yourself."
• "Good judgment comes from experience."
• "The time is now."

Chapters

00:00
The Leap from Surgery to Cycling

03:04
The Journey into Medicine

06:10
Defining Moments in Orthopedics

09:12
Learning from Challenges

11:56
The Changing Landscape of Medicine

15:02
Risk and Innovation in Surgery

17:59
Reflections on a Medical Career

20:57
Healthcare Challenges and Future Directions

24:09
The Joy of Cycling and New Beginnings

28:29
Family Adventures on Bikes

32:45
The Joy of Biking and Community

36:13
A Journey of Reinvention

40:51
Crafting Mischief: The Art of Bike Building

45:57
Legacy and Lessons Learned

50:54
Rapid Fire Insights

Transcript

Shanon Tysland (00:00)
So let's imagine for a moment being recognized as one of the top orthopedic surgeons in the country, trusted with athletes careers, solving cases where others couldn't, and then stepping away from the operating room to open a custom bike shop. What would make someone take that kind of leap? Welcome back to the redefine what's possible podcast. I'm your host, Shanon Tysland, and I'm so glad you're here. On today's podcast, we explore...

the real story of growth, resilience and transformation, and the courage to reinvent yourself. My guest is Dr. Chris Wahl, class orthopedic surgeon, whose career has spanned the operating room, athletics and academia, and who recently surprised many by stepping into a new chapter. He is the founder of Mischief Bikes, a boutique shop for cycling.

enthusiasts. I've also had the privilege of working with Chris and his patients as a physical therapist for over a decade. One thing we share is a deep love of cycling and helping people move. A few years back we did a bike ride around Bainbridge home of the famous Chili Hilly course. I couldn't keep up in your bike draft Chris. You were putting the hammer down. His passion for health and performance both in and out of the OR is inspiring. And so Chris

I'm grateful you're here today to share your story with us. And I think I'd like to start at the beginning of what first pulled you into medicine and then specifically into orthopedics. Shanon, first, I want to say thanks and thank you for having me. What brought me into medicine could be a very long discussion or a super short one. But I think the shortest version of it is be careful what you say to kids. My decision or thought about becoming a doctor happened when I was in fourth grade.

We were having to do these little installments in the library to learn how to use a library. And I hated them. I just procrastinated forever. And then I was like last minute trying to get them done while everyone's out at recess or whatever. And I would bust through getting these little modules done and then just scribble my name on and hand it in. And at one point the librarian or somebody turned to me and she said, you're going to be a doctor someday. And I looked at her blankly and I'm like, why? And she's like, because your handwriting is terrible.

The funniest thing is from that moment on, I knew nothing about being a doctor. At that time, there were no doctors in my family. It was just one of those things where every time from that point on, someone said, what are you going to be when you grow up? I said, I'm going to be a doctor. And that was a theme that kind of came and went through everything. just, that was always my default. When that librarian mentioned that, did you start to research what it took to become a physician or was it just in your brain stewing? I probably researched more how to improve my handwriting honestly at that time, but I

think I actually did have a significant interest in biology in high school. Some of my favorite teachers, there was one particular teacher, guy named Mr. Whiting, who was just hilarious and warm and one of those great teachers who leaves a mark. And so I really liked biology and later I got out of it. When I got into college, I took all the courses I needed for pre-med, but I found molecular biology, which is the major I'd chosen, to be exceedingly boring.

There was not much I liked about it. I got into it because everyone said that's the best major to have if you want to go to medical school. But I hated it. And all around me, kids were taking philosophy classes and art and stuff like that. And I was doing none of that. And I actually switched from molecular biology into the design school and architecture because...

The classes I would get to take were more along the lines of philosophy and art history. It was great for me because the idea of homework in the architecture school is building small models and designing things. That drawing, that design, that satisfied this whole part of me that molecular biology wasn't satisfying. At the end of the day, when I was applying to med schools, it turned out to be a huge advantage because...

biology students applying to med school are a dime a dozen, but an architecture student applying to med school is unique. They love to take people with all these diverse backgrounds and make them exactly the same. That's the secret sauce in medical school, right? So I think it's been this thing where it's gone back and forth and I just kept finding myself there and it seemed to be a nice place to land. I've really enjoyed.

that profession. the architecture, if you look at orthopedics, right, it's the skeletal system and we have our own architecture. I'm seeing a through line here maybe. What drew you into orthopedics specifically? There were two things. In medical school, as you get through the clinical first couple of years, you then do these rotations or trials through all different specialties and subspecialties. For no significant reason, I knew I wanted to be a surgeon because I knew that I liked working with my hands and that concept of design and building.

Physically, interestingly, I was actually heading more towards neurosurgery. If for no other reason than it sounded cool to be a brain surgeon, we could do a whole podcast on another chapter of my life where I discovered this hidden brain collection in the sub-basement of our medical dormitory. And that was like my 15 minutes of fame. There was this foregone conclusion that I would go into neurosurgery, particularly after that finding. But then I did rotations back to back on neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery. And the orthopedic surgery people were just more my kind of thing. They were guys who were

clearly very smart, but they loved playing dumb. They were self-deprecating, but they were top of their class, bright guys. They didn't take themselves too seriously. Like they were guys who like, we would have a, there was like this entire schedule on the call room wall where all the different weekly rounds and meetings for different.

different services were like pediatrics and internal medicine and stuff. And the purpose of this was that you know where to go find food because they always had food at these things, right? So you'd be like, it's three o'clock on a Tuesday, Petey's having their rounds. There's certainly going to be food outside this door. And you'd go down there and just a bunch of guys who didn't take themselves too seriously. And then the work itself in orthopedics just completely appealed to me for all the reasons we're talking about. It's about

building things, it's about making fundamental changes that are apparent at the time. Unlike other specialties which are so important, but you have to be patient in medicine, you have to wait and see what things, and in orthopedics you make a change and it's immediate. So was there a defining patient or case that shaped you early on? Anything stick out in your mind? There are a few people through the years that will always stick in my memory. I think we all learn more when things don't go well than when they go. I think

That's where the learning kernels are. And so there are a few cases that are either the result of myself or my own poor decision-making. One of my mentors once told me, good judgment comes from experience and experience comes from bad judgment. That resonates. Right? And so, the cases that stick out, one that sort of defined my academic orthopedic career that I can be very clear about was fortunately not a problem of my own making. It was a 19-year-old soccer player who had just started at a college in Oregon.

she had a collision with a goalie and had a knee dislocation. Now at the time, and I still, I built my orthopedic career around taking care of complex issues. I wanted to be a sports surgeon who took care of big trauma injuries. For better or for worse, I got what I asked for, because not a lot of people want to handle those things. And it has been an albatross that's followed me everywhere. Because I have to remind people that because I can reconstruct all four ligaments in the knee, I can also do one just fine.

but oftentimes I just get sent the three and four ligament injuries. But she's a gal who had a knee dislocation. She was actually seen and appropriately diagnosed on the field by the trainer. The trainer said, look, there's something more going on here than just an ACL. She was in incapacitating pain. And I think a lot of people just thought maybe she's just not that tough a kid or whatever. She was seen and evaluated by the team orthopedic surgeon.

they saw that she had a fracture in the tibial plateau, the top part of the knee joint. But it isn't typical of what a usual tibial plateau fracture is. The fracture she had is a variant that occurs when you've had a knee dislocation. The problem is from start to finish in her case, nobody really examined her. They just went with the thought that she's had an ACL or that she had a tibial plateau fracture. Long story short, she was taken to the operating room to fix the tibial plateau fracture. They put up the tourniquet. She'd had a vascular injury that hadn't been diagnosed.

She went through multiple surgeries, ended up with severe contractures and insensate limb. And unfortunately, I had to perform an above knee amputation. Wow. This terrible thing happened to this person. And she's gone on to be just an outstanding individual and so successful in every way. It made me realize that it's when problems arise that we learn the most. I gave a talk once at, there's a multi-ligament study group, which has been.

surgeons from around the country who fix these complex knee problems. And what's generally true of physician meetings is everybody likes to get up there and talk about how they can turn poop to gold. They show these terrible cases that all end well. And I went to this and I presented a case of my own where every single decision that I made, even when bouncing this off of other people and saying, what do think we should do here? Was it a morbidly obese guy who was in a severe motorcycle accident and had a horrible knee injury? But every time you make a decision and act on it,

what you wouldn't have expected happened that was poor happened. And this thing just goes down the road to get worse and worse to the point where at the end of the day I end up fusing the guy's knee. And the last slide in the presentation is he's finally happy. He can at least wait there. He can get back on a motorcycle with the fused knee with some modifications to the motorcycle. And then he takes a misstep and he breaks his leg through one of the pin sites from the next fixer. my goodness. So you watch this story just go from like someone who in their heart of hearts is trying to make the right decisions.

to just every single time the thing turning poor. And I finished the presentation and the room is silent. And there's a fairly famous orthopedic surgeon who's written the book on needless occasions named Greg Finnelli. And probably one of the nicest compliments I ever got is he stood up and he said, out of all the presentations here, he goes, this is the one that I hope everybody paid attention to. Because he goes, we can all talk about how when things go great. But he's like, when everything goes down the drain and you have nowhere left to turn and everyone decides at some point to just quit, that's when you've actually learned a lot.

So I think those patients where things don't go perfectly are the ones where we learn the most. That's so powerful. I had a client, a 20-year-old female, last week came in with a full-length fracture of her fibula. And I'm sitting here looking at her and I'm like, wow, like, how did this happen? She's, don't know. I'm like, did you do anything new in the last couple months? She's, no. And so I'm scrapping my brain.

referred, she's had all the diagnostic tests, and I still don't know exactly where I'm going with her. And so I pulled in other team members because I'm trying to figure this out and it doesn't make sense. We're trying to work through this and pull in appropriate resources, but I think when you don't know something or you try something that doesn't work, that's where you learn. It forces you to become a better clinician. And get other eyes on things like you're doing.

Sometimes the eyes see what the mind knows, right? You're oftentimes guilty about looking at something and it just doesn't fit the world. The only mistake you can make there is chalking that up to being like, whatever, I don't know, so it must be this instead of like just figuring out, okay, this is not. Something else has to be going on here. You have to be vocal about it, particularly in a position like yours. It can be hard to reach out to people who've been caring to someone and say, this isn't adding up, like something's going on here. And that's the system working, right?

when we all work together and the communication lines are open and anybody on any level can be like, there's something amiss here. So being an orthopedic surgeon, I know you get the crazy cases and it would be nice to just reconstruct one ligament instead of all four. And I'm just curious for you, what is most fulfilling then what drains you about being an orthopedic surgeon? ⁓ the most fulfilling thing is I still like the fact that

I have to do a lot of thinking with the tough cases. I jokingly say that I don't like them, but I do enjoy the tough problems because it forces me to use my brain and not just go to the operating room with the same case over and over again. And that part of it is fulfilling. It's particularly fulfilling when people do really well and I've helped them achieve goals that they want to achieve. I think the unfulfilling parts of it, we can do a whole podcast on this, but a big part of it is just how medicine has changed. It's become less personal. It's become far more corporate. I think we've evolved from

being a physician, being a noble profession and calling to it being a job where people are employed by fairly large corporations who don't have any moral mandate to take the best care of people. It puts everyone, most of all the patient, in difficult situation. That, documentation part, the policy making part of it, the insurance for short version of it, and the sort of shenanigans have made it so that much of the job now in being a physician has so little to do with patient care.

And this is across the boards. This is everybody. I go onto floors and I'm looking at patients and the nursing staff who are trying to take good care of these patients. It's all about them inputting data into this computer. The whole purpose of this input of the data is basically to track money and resources. The difference from 20 years ago and the amount of time a nurse spent at the bedside to today is vastly different, which is one of the reasons why outpatient care has really blossomed.

because quite honestly, you get better care at home. Not because the nurses aren't good, they're exceptional. It's because the nature of what they have to do has changed and they don't have the ability to unchange that. That resonates so much, even from the physical therapist lens. So you've dealt with cases where others couldn't find solutions. I want to know what that pressures. And one of your clients who's on your website,

did a testimonial is Roger Strong. His story is just fascinating and he happens to be a family friend. His daughter and my daughter run cross country together in high school. Was wondering if you could do a deeper dive on like, how much pressure do you put on yourself and what is that like? It's interesting. In many ways we have to work for our luck and usually by the time it comes to getting into an operating room and working with somebody.

I've already thought about the case like 10 times in my head. I've already thought about Plan A, B, and C. That takes away a lot of that pressure. Ironically, it's the most difficult problems where all hope is lost that are the easiest to treat because you have more license to do something or try something that hasn't been done before because the obvious things haven't worked. And so I almost see it more as opportunity than pressure in those situations.

I try and keep myself out of situations where I'll feel a lot of pressure if I can. If it's something that is not in my wheelhouse or something that I think would fit better with another physician who's got a different skill set or even something where it's outlandish and I might need another set of eyes and hands in the room just to double check my work as I go. I'm very quick to rely on other people. I have this whole group of people mostly nationally, but there are some from...

even international account. And it's a group of us who do the same type of complex cases and very frequently will just send case studies to one another. They'd like, this is what I'm thinking, but where am I going wrong? And send some of the imaging over and just let this sort of mind trust go through it. And we've got recommendations everywhere from the obvious to I think doing nothing is maybe the best thing to people suggesting things that are completely outlandish. You have to weigh what these other folks are recommending based on my own experience and skill level. And so I don't ever feel like

I'm pressured because I haven't thought about something. If something doesn't turn out the way I want it to turn out, it's hopefully not because I've omitted thinking about the problem in a way that's meaningful and I'm prepared by the time life comes to skin and I'm prepared to deal. Two things stood out to me there and just what you shared. One, you look at it as an opportunity versus a pressure, which is a mindset. And two, how you pull other folks in. If it is something that might be perceived as

high pressure, what are some other resources? And I think that's very admirable and something, regardless of what your title is in life, you can pull that into everyday situations. So thank you for sharing that. If you would categorize, what's the biggest risk you've ever taken in medicine? The biggest risk? I would say I've become, it's funny how the trajectory of a medical career goes. When you start out, you have not a lot of experience, but you're straight out of your fellowship.

you're reading all the latest, greatest, and you are willing to try a lot of things and maybe inflict some things on your patients that haven't been fully vetted. There are some companies that honestly, it is a business, right? So you have some companies that oftentimes release implants and ideas before they're fully vetted.

have people who are key opinion leaders get on the podium and talk about how this is the best thing ever. And you never see those same people on the podium four years later when these things become an unmitigated disaster. There have been a few cases where I've pioneered surgeries that hadn't been done. It usually occurs in situations where there's not another good option. I believe that what I'm gonna try and do that maybe hasn't been done is something that makes the most sense given where we're at.

For instance, one of the procedures that I initially published was something called a drawer osteotomy of the tibia, which was a way to treat cartilage lesions on the top of the tibia, which is the knee joint. And the problem with the tibia is that it's under the femur and extension and it's under the femur and flexion. So there's no way to get to the top of the tibia to do cartilage transplants. And there was a young gal who had fairly severe necrosis and collapsed the tibia, but the girl was like 13 or 12 years old or something with open growth plates. there's just.

not really good options for this. And so my thought was, if I can't get to the tibia, I'll just bring the tibia to me and literally made an osteotomy cut, like you would use in a joint replacement where you take out the top of the tibia and replace it with a metal bearing surface. In this case, I took out her tibia, worked on it on the back table, put a cartilage transplant in and put it back in. I think a lot of folks at that time might've thought you're out of your mind. This is like just something that isn't done, but she didn't really have a good option except for wait on it or sit on it. And fortunately she did.

incredibly well. I've done some other procedures in the shoulder that I pioneered, but I think taking baby steps in some ways is better than making huge grandiose things. I try and stay three fads behind in terms of major changes in the way we do things. Some of those things pan out and some of them turn out after a few years to be not very durable in terms of patient outcomes and things like that. And I think when I was younger, I was quicker to adopt a new technology and try it out. As you get older and you see how your patients do over time, you

start to recognize more so that you're dealing with human beings that have to live with some of your innovations. I think you do naturally become a little more conservative. I still like to think that I push boundaries to some extent, but I also hold back on some things that...

emerging technologies that aren't fully vetted. That's such an interesting example and for our listeners who maybe not understand what the tibia is or what the femur is, your femur is the biggest bone. It's your thigh bone and your tibia is your shin bone. So what Chris is saying is he basically took the top of that shin bone, cut it off, did his surgery and then inserted that back in. How did you weigh that

Risk versus reward. The irony there is that the risk is mitigated to some extent by educating the patient about what our plan is. The risk is taken by the patient. The only person taking risk here is the person who has to be flat out courageous to allow you to do something that hasn't been done. And even more nuanced in this case because this girl was a minor. So her parents had to be the ones who were willing to take on the risk of doing something that wasn't really done or described. The patient's

parents, yourself, your team talking about, okay, what are the risks? What are the rewards? What do we do? I just love how you pull that all together. Looking back, as you said, you've made me become a little bit more conservative over time. Like we gain perspective. Is there anything you wish you had known? I could never have imagined that what I signed up for and becoming a physician and what the profession has become over the past 20 plus years. I could not have imagined the changes that

I often get asked from people, you do it again if you could become a physician? Even my own kids, one of my daughters is really interested in becoming a physician, despite the fact that she was so vocal about complaining about how much we were gone and how busy we were all the time. And it's hard because what I do is so rewarding on one hand, but at the same time, it has become very hard to take good care of people. I think our society values...

things a little differently than they used to. Being a physician used to be a noble profession. It's a non-scalable profession, right? I have to take care of people one way at a time. There's no way I can get ads and scale this in a way that I'm gonna make the kind of money that is the way people make money now. Not that money is the end of it. But it is nice to have free time and the ability to do things that complete you as a person. What I tell my daughter is, if you wanna do this for all the right reasons and you genuinely care about people and you can't see yourself doing something else, then I think it makes...

a ton of sense to become a physician, but understand that you're going to be an employee for some big corporate entity, which was a different than when I started out. Private practice won't exist in the next 10 years. It's just impossible. And the weird irony is that private practice is actually, in so many ways, better medical care. It gets smaller in scale, more personable, less institutional. If you've ever gone to a DMV, you know exactly what I'm talking about, right? Experience is just different when you're in a big institutional setting, and that's what all of medicine is becoming. And that personality actually feeds

people's frustration with and dislike of seeing the physician in a way that 20 years ago was more pleasant. I think that's a great segue to, I would love to have a conversation around some healthcare issues. We had new hire training. I've been a physical therapist for 26 years. And how many of you have been alive for 26 years? I love the human body. I love connecting with the person.

in front of me. What are their hopes? What are their dreams? What are their struggles? What are their fears? And what takes my soul is the insurance company and the documentation and fighting for your value, fighting for your worth, fighting to prove every single day that you were worth that visit. And that is a struggle. You've been in the operating room. You've been in athletics, academics. What arc do you see health care on?

I don't know, because I just told you I couldn't have imagined the arc that was on over the last 20 years. I guess I think that a lot of the decision making is going to be based on averages. And as AI gets involved, and it's already involved in terms of, I think there are things where it's going to improve our patient care. And I think there's places where it's going to regress to the mean. Already we see this where doing easy things.

or straightforward things that fall into the bell curve of the usual. It's not like it's easy to work with insurances at all, but it sure is easier than working with something that stands outside the norm or is more esoteric. And the problem that creates is cream skimming. I'll give you an example. Insurance companies are starting to pass these policies about outcomes-based reimbursement, which to the lay person sounds like a great idea. The concept being if your results are good, if you do knee replacements or you do this procedure or that procedure and your patient satisfaction scores are high, then

they may not pay you less as they ratchet down the reimbursements. What is, so intuitively, when someone hears that, they're like, great idea, we should pass that, and people jump on board and they pass these policies. But what they don't recognize is that the people who probably need the most help, who have the most complex problems are the most difficult knee replacements. Now as a surgeon, you look at that and you're like, this is gonna drive down my patient satisfaction scores. Like, I know this person with this complex problem is not likely to have a perfect result.

And if I'm now going to be evaluated or recommended by an insurance company based on my outcomes, I'm not going to take this case. And you find patients now who go to physicians and they're like, I have nothing to offer. They do have something to offer. They're not willing to do it because the insurance company has made it a poor decision from a standpoint of livelihood, business, and reputation. Those types of things have uncoupled compassion and care for the individual. You never used to think about that stuff.

It was just like this person has a bad problem, I'm going to treat it and I'll do the best I can. It may not turn out perfectly, but if I have improved them, if my heart of hearts trying to do something, then it's going to be good. But so I think the trajectory is that we're all going to be employed. It's going to be by fairly large corporate things. National health care, which is unfortunately another keg of worms because the problem with even a nationalized health care system is that big insurance companies and a national health care system are motivated by the same thing. Charge people as much as they can either in

benefit costs or in taxes and give out as little money as you can to try and save money and feed the pig. And either way, you're still stuck in the same situation, which is to get rid of the middlemen. All the people between the people who are actually caring for patients and people who are receiving the care are taking a huge chunk of what has become the expanding health care dollar. that would be a beautiful world from a clinician. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. We got to stop stepping in.

This conversation gets so dark, so fast. Okay, we're going to change gears. Let's pivot to biking. This is like the fun part of the conversation. And again, I guess I want to look into you've been recognized as this outstanding best orthopedic surgeon. Then you do something I didn't see coming. You step away full time from the OR to open this custom bike shop, Mischief. I want to know what was your first memory of your first bike? My first bike was nothing special.

but what it brought was pretty special. Truth be told, it was probably a special bike that I didn't recognize because it wasn't what everybody else was riding. It was a hand-me-down from, think my three older brothers all had probably learned to ride on the same bike. It was like an old Raleigh, nothing special, like 24-inch wheel, kind of balloon tire bike, whereas like a lot of kids are initially riding Stingrays or BMX bikes, early version BMX bikes. But what it brought me was the freedom. You reach that time and you...

your life when you're old enough to get around on a bike pretty well, it's about the same time that it was okay to go out in your neighborhood and explore things. I completely remember riding my bike to the pool and ditching the bike in a bush and getting into things. The bike was your first ticket to exploring and pushing boundaries. It was just pure fun. can role play on the bike. It was a form of transportation. It served every purpose when you were that age. For me, my first bike was a banana seat, yellow and orange Schwinn. And I'll never forget it.

And I thought it was so cool until my brother got a BMX bike. How did I get this, the banana seat? And I was just remember being very bitter, like emotions of like excited and then my ego being like, but he has something cooler and he's my little brother. And I'll remember for me when I was in first grade, I took this banana seat bike probably three miles down a gravel road in Iowa to Crick.

and I jumped in the crick and I just played for hours. Had no idea what time it was, got on, rode my bike back home. Both my parents were freaking out. Where were you? What's going on? We thought you were a run over. took you. You can never leave the house again. So those are like the emotions that resonate. I'm curious like.

What emotions resonated with you then and what emotions resonate with you now? It's very much the same thing. I'm a bit of a serial obsessionist, right? I've had a bunch of hobbies over the years. I enjoy the process of learning about something new and going down that rabbit hole on stuff and learning everything there is to learn. One of the serial obsessions that's always been present has been cycling. I've always been a cyclist since my first job in a bike shop and ⁓ countless bikes that I look back on and I have fond memories.

of them for every reason. Riding a bike is incompatible with being sad. You can't stay sad long on your bike. And so that's always been this thing that in some ways has gone anywhere from being just like around. Fun thing to do to points like in medical school where I'm pretty sure it saved my life, that ability to uncouple from what was a very hard training process and low sleep, but just get up.

mountain bike in the Connecticut woods. And each of the bikes has had a sort of a special place. I like the thing that is a bike too, is a machine. It's fascinating and it's technological, but it's also super simple and just like this incredible machine. They're amazing. There's nothing more efficient, right? A bicycle is one of the few modes of transportation where the payload is actually much heavier than the mechanism, right? You weigh it up.

150 pounds and your car weighs 3,000 pounds and it's exactly the reverse on your bicycle. And yet it's like the one of the most efficient from an energy perspective standpoint thing. It's just, they're just amazing. I always overestimate what would be fun for other people in a way that's not great. I remember one of the most innocent things I did, they were so young. I have triplets, right? So there three kids the same age and we're all on this bike trip and we lived in this neighborhood that has huge hill up to where our house was.

It was in Laurelhurst and there's this giant hill up 41st. And it's hard to get up for an adult on the bike, right? It's not too difficult. I basically told the kids as we're riding toward this thing one day, I'm like, hey, whoever can get to the top of this without putting their foot down. And it just ended in unmitigated disaster, right? All three kids are crying. First kid almost immediately just out of panic puts her foot down. So she's disqualified. My second daughter and my son are trying to get up the hill. My son just...

at some point runs out of gas and puts his foot down and he's so angry that his sister could actually do it when he couldn't. My third daughter turned herself inside out, collapsed at the top of the hill weeping on the ground. They're not super keen on riding with me, even now. We still do for fun. Suzanne and I, my wife, we do ride. She's having kind of a re-found interest. a lot of times feels if she's riding with the people that I would ride with like she's holding everybody back. So we usually do our rides together. Our idea of riding

which is really healthy is like getting on the bikes and going to the Ballard Farmers Market or doing something where the journey is really, the destination is there, but part of the fun is just lollygagging through Seattle on our way down to the farmers market. And that's what I about Cyc, too. You can make it be as competitive as you want, or it can be this leisurely experience where you're just taking it and now there's electric bikes have taken by storm. And so folks that maybe didn't have the wherewithal to have the endurance to do that are able to.

I just think family has a... And for us, we have four kids. Our youngest is five, our oldest is 15. And our two-olders are on a mountain bike team, and our two-youngers want to keep up with them. A little bungee cord that we strap on the back of one of our seats will hit those hills that you're talking about. But our seven-year-old is stubborn. He's, no, I don't want to be on the bungee cord. And I'm like, dude, you're going to burn yourself out, and then it won't be a fun ride. No. And he'll just be beat red in his face. He'll get to the top.

and he's just so determined. Another one will just fall off and cry and we pick him up and do it. It creates these memories that are just priceless. Suzanne, our first date was on Bainbridge. I thought it wouldn't be too much of a dig. Terrible judgment, but I was like, we'll just do the Chilly Hilly course. It was July. This had been her first time on a bike in forever. She was using toe clips because she didn't have cleats and stuff on a rented bike and ended up just turning herself inside out trying to do this course. And at one point got so frustrated with me.

She fell down like three times because she couldn't get her feet out and would just like to the fall over thing. And the fourth time she fell down was when she was so exasperated and frustrated that I came up and I was trying to give her a little push to help her up the hill. And she's just get away from me. And then she went to push me away, not recognizing the laws of physics that I wasn't going to budge. I'm like twice her weight. And she just pushed herself upside down in a ditch in a blackberry bush. At which point I pulled out my camera on my phone and she lost it. Needless to say, I don't have the picture.

But yeah, you're right. Those stories are priceless. And we ended up getting married on bikes. Our whole wedding was around bikes. Okay. So got one for you. So I'm from Iowa and the rag. I have not done it. love to do it. Yeah. Okay. It's amazing ride. It starts on the Eastern border of the state on either Nebraska or South border. And then you bike over a course of a week and it finishes by dipping your front tire. What is amazing about this is there's 20 to 30.

thousand riders every day and you get the folks that are up at 430 in the morning and they are just going and then you have the folks that were out too late having a good time who roll out about noon and come across but these little towns you'll go through a town of 500 and now all of a sudden it's 20,000 and it's they've got bands and foods just the atmosphere is awesome and we've taken our family 26 years and it's been

Wonderful. it on your... Me, like, is about, we've talked about, like, joy and community. And I'm curious, do you see biking teaching those lessons in your opinion? Or what lessons do you see? I think a bike is so many different things to different people. All that matters is that it fulfills whatever the need. When I started Mischief, one of the best bits of advice I got from somebody was write a manifesto. They were like, write down all the things that you...

love about bikes in the industry and write down all the things that you hate about bikes in the industry, make a series of statements about what you change and what matters and doesn't matter. What would be the identity of what you want to build with this? I think a big part of that is not taking it too seriously and recognizing that the bike is supposed to be that same thing that it was for us when we were kids. No matter how you get there, if that involves racing at breakneck speed, great, we'll build your bike.

I'll tell you funny anecdote about this. The first mischief that I built for someone who wasn't like either someone who knew me or a friend who was trying to support getting the brand off the ground and stuff like that. First guy who walked in out of the street and basically said, I want to build this bike. He was clearly a rider. He had this old bike that had been like this old Jamus that was all beat up, but clearly had been written. You can just tell, right? And everything was worn on it and he rides a lot, an engineering type guy. So we built him this kind of nice random or a style bike with

fender made for his commutes and stuff like that, but obviously much lighter. Really just a beautiful bike. This is the first one that leaves the shop. Took photos of it. We were so proud of it. Send it out into the wild. I asked him before he left, do want me to put some titanium bottle cages on it to match the titanium bike? He no, I've got bottle cages at home. Goes out, he does STP on the bike for the first time and he just writes me back. And he's just, he's like, I just, it's amazing. I love it so much. And he goes, I think I want to get those titanium bottle cages. Can I come back and get those? And I'm like, sure, bring the bike in. And he rolls up to the front.

door and the bike is flashing like a Christmas tree. Like there's a solid white light on and there's a blinking white light on and there's a solid light in the back and a blink light on the back. As he opens the door, there's a radio mounted to the top. He's playing music. He's got this air canister mounted to the bottom of the down tube for the mounts for the cage. It's connected to literally like an air horn on the front of the bike. And I'm not going to lie, my first thought when he rolls the thing and the thing, I'm like, what did you do? This is the first one in the wild. But almost immediately it occurred to me like,

this isn't my bike and he's doing with it exactly what he wants to do. Just like when I was a little kid putting bells or cards in the spokes or whatever. And I just immediately was so thankful. And the craziest thing is now people will come into the shop and they're like, Hey, have you seen that guy with the radio mounted and the lights all over his bike in the air horn? And I'm like, he's really fast. And I'm like, I know the dude rides. Bikes are different things for different people, discipline and achievement and doing the activity with other people who

push you to become better yourself is a key thing. It's always more fun to ride with other people. You can always push yourself harder when you're riding with other people. You can always see more if you're out for a fun ride when you're riding with other people, because there's four sets of eyes looking at things. yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this transition. It sounds goofy, but it's a completely natural. A lot of the work that I do in orthopedics is procedures called osteoponies, which is limb correction, like alignment correction and stuff, which is basically mitering tubes. You're basically taking a bone and you have to

calculate how much correction are you gonna make and you're gonna then plate it and put it in place while the bone heals. But it's all about structure. My day job as an orthopedic surgeon is about structures and how things work together and mechanics. That's one of the reasons why when I was thinking about doing something other than orthopedics, the first place my mind went was it has to be something where I'm working with my hands because I like cycling and outdoors and because cycling has always brought me happiness. I was like, I think I want to learn how to build bikes. Arrogantly like how hard can that be?

It's actually not that easy, but that's what makes it fun. Let's dive into that. So you're still working in the OR, orthopedics, fifth time. What was the decision point to step away and create mischief? Yeah, was related to a lot of the things we've talked about. I found that I was becoming less and less, just getting less and less enjoyment out of what had always been a very enjoyable profession. And a big part of that was that I was just working bell to bell.

I was literally waking up at six every morning, sometimes dropping an F-bomb and going to bed at 10.30 at night and filling the entire time between those two with just tasks and emails. I think the real break point for me, I was already primed at this point. I was like, this is becoming unfun. It's becoming so monotonous. Granted, I enjoyed the patient interaction part, but as we talked about, there was just less of that involved. And then I got sent an Apple memory where they sent you those pictures. It was like 2015. And it's this picture of me racing cross in

2015. At that time I was on a racing team, I was riding and training and it was probably around the time when we took the Bainbridge and I looked at this picture and I was like, what happened to that guy? I'm no more productive from a standpoint of output of surgeries or certainly more lucrative career, but I wasn't training, I wasn't racing, I couldn't even imagine having the time to do any of that and it occurred to me I have to make some changes. I'm becoming unhealthy, I'm miserable all the time.

I was sardonic all the time. And I was like, I gotta find something else that's gonna fix this for me and heal myself a little bit. I appreciate that. And it's easy for all of us to kind of just sleepwalk through our lives. Like we did something and then we keep going and we don't take the time to reflect. So that pause, that reflection is kind of the tipping point. Yeah, I had a conversation with my daughter, Reeby. I think she caught me at some moment when I became pensive for a second. I was looking down she's like, what's the matter, dad? I'm like, oh, it's nothing.

And she's like, because she'd been sort of lamenting like the difficulty in choosing what she was going to study in college at the time or something. I said, it's nothing. She's, no, what is it? I said, it just occurred to me like, you can do pretty much anything you want to do. You can choose any course of study. You can set your sight and do all these kinds of things. And I'm like, it just occurred to me that.

I don't have enough lives left to do all the things I'd like to do. I could live five more lives chasing hobbies. I'd love to learn how to be a farmer, but I don't have the years left to learn how to farm. I think that this whole transition for me in part was like, all right, I gotta make some changes and do something that satisfies in a lot of ways. Then making bikes, it again, restocked all these interests, everything from design.

of the actual frames, working with my hands and building something beautiful and actually having this thing at the end of the day that started as raw titanium tubes and ends up being a full bicycle that one can ride around on. The interaction with people where they're just, people aren't sad when they visit their bike builder. People don't walk into the shop sad. They see the Earth-Pedic Surgeon because they have to. They see their bike builder because they get to. And even the design of the graphics and all this other stuff, it was just...

this thing that had been dormant for a long time and it's been this incredibly helpful transition. So do you see this as a reinvention or is this just a return to something that you've always loved? It is both a gambit to save my soul and to put some balance back in my life, which has been successful. It's an opportunity to learn a whole host of new things that I just wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn had I stayed in just doing orthopedic surgery full time.

everything from using design software to, you know, I changed the graphics on pretty much every bike. There are nuanced differences that each bike is unique and all of them have some crows that are up to something. working in design software to design that stuff and make the graphics to design individual bikes the way people want and change the geometries to fit with their purposes. Running a business, which is something I applaud you for. been in a

private practice, but I've never run the private practice and actually being the guy who pays the bills and pays attention and I'm HR, I'm like everything. We're tiny, let's face it, like two people are actually employed and the rest of us are basically doing this for free. But it's just been an avenue to kickstart that whole creative side of me and learning a new thing side of me.

The creativity, let's pop into that. So for our listeners, you probably can't see, but Mischief, the logo itself, do you want to talk us through how you came up with the logo of Mischief and maybe where Mischief came from as the name brand? The name brand is a direct result. The things that I love and disliked about the industry, getting back to that idea that a bike really should be that kind of thing that just allows you to push a little boundary, go to a place or do something that

you would not normally have done. We're not counter industry, but for sure making hand-built titanium bikes in an industry where everything is basically mass produced and overseas, except for other small frame builders like myself. These are all things that even are manifested to try and remind some people that like people forget that they think if you're gonna ride a race bike, it has to be made of carbon, but it doesn't.

One of our things in our manifesto is like a comfortable bike is way faster than an aero bike every day of the week. I see so many people who come in on their super top brand race bike that they've built, but they're in my age group and they've got like six centimeters of spacers on the stem trying to get up right enough that they can just ride the thing. And it's like, why don't you just get a bike that fits from the get-go? We're not Tadej Pogacar, the famous Tour de France racer. You just enjoy a bike more and you're faster on it when you do that. Again, they'll say things like, aero is more important than lightweight.

That might be true, but it also might be true that it's just more expensive for them to create a lightweight and aero bike. Maybe? Or there are things they study. Aerodynamics has studied out the yin-yang, but they don't really look at vibration and how that plays a role. And when you start to look at materials like titanium that have different qualities in terms of ride quality, you're not going to see that study because it's too time intensive to make a hand-built titanium custom-made bike. That's not an industry thing. Mischief is a little bit of

I want the brand to be just the right amount of broken. We're just a little not in this sort of mainstream industry thing. I'm not chasing to build or scale this in any way. What I think keeps it beautiful is it's a small one bike at a time thing. The crows thing is just they're fascinating animals. They're the sole animal for the company. They're everywhere, always paying attention. We have some at the house who I've befriended here who are quite interesting creatures and

And again, they're like on the bikes. There's, there are always crows on the bikes. They're usually doing something weird, like stealing the eye. One of my friends who got a bike was really persnickety about every single detail on the bike and the frame color. He went back and forth with our painter like five times to get the color right. So when I made his bike, I put the branding on his bike and his bike has mist and then EF and there's no eye. The eye is on the head tube with the crow stealing it. He's got the only mischief where the head tube logo isn't our usual logo, but the logo's on the front.

And it was so fun to watch him when he picks up the bike. He's looking at beautiful day, he turns and he sees the side of the bike where the branding is and he kind of pauses and he's like, did you like me to do that? And I'm like, oh, it's there. You just got to find it. But he loves the fact that he's got the only mischief that has the eye missing and the logo. Another gal I had, we went through the whole process. She was so excited to get her bike. We went through the whole fit process, picked out all the components. This is like a two hour visit to go through all this kind of stuff. And at the end of the visit, we're starting to talk about colors. she's like, the only thing is, she's like,

I'm not really a fan of crows. And I was like, I just feel like this isn't really working out. This relationship might not be working out. I was like, I'm scraping for something. like, what do you like? And she's like butterflies. And I was like, But I did her whole bike with our classic designing when everywhere I would have a crow on the bike is a butterfly, including like a butterfly stealing the eye on the thing, except the head badge is my usual M with the crow, which is this part of the crow.

but it's got the circle with the X through it. There is a crow on the bike, but it's got the no crows kind of things. I like that kind of irreverence. I like the fact that the bikes are just a teeny bit broken. Chris has the mischief is spelled M-I-S-C-H. There's a missing eye, but a crow is holding the eye flying off with it and then E-F. So he has three crows in the name and those crows are causing mischief. And I love.

how that's just woven into how you do your bikes. And it's fascinating. And I want to go back to because I pulled out my road bike for the first time three weeks ago and I've gotten into mountain biking. I raced triathlons, Ironmans a decade ago and I have my aero bars on it. And I went down into my aero bars and I'm like, ⁓ hell no, this is not happening. I went and I ordered a stem with a 30 degree up tube. I'm like, I got to get out of this position. What is this?

So I've been, I'm that person that you're describing right now. I'm like, give me more spacers. I want to be more upright. So Chris, what do you hope your legacy to be in both medicine and with mischief? I don't care. I hope in medicine, I've made the people that I've interacted with better and happier and that the experience itself wasn't unpleasant because it's always starts as something that people didn't want when they meet me. No one comes and sees you because they're

doing great. That's the thing that I care the most about when people just appreciate that. I'm happy to carry on the torch of the tradition of hand-built bicycles. When I first approached Bill Davidson, because this, I'm very fortunate to have a mentor in Davidson who's been building since 1973. The way this conversation went when I thought I want to build bikes is I thought I'm just going to approach a frame builder and see if they'd be willing to let me see what this is all about. They really didn't know much about it.

initially. About three years ago, I cold called Bill Davidson. I said, hey, I'm an orthopedic surgeon, but I don't want to buy a bike. And he's, okay, what's the reason for the phone call? And I'm like, I think I want to learn how to build bikes. And I'm wondering if you'd let me come hang out and see what it's all about. And there's this long silence. And he's like, why don't you come on by? And I was like, really? I was expecting a hard no. And he said, I was expecting to give you a hard no. But he goes, I'm sort of intrigued. So I went in and started spending time with him and realized the whole process is much more difficult than.

I had imagined. I probably didn't have enough years to buy the equipment and the jigs and the mills and create the jigs and all the stuff that goes into building a bike. The expertise involved was such that it was going to take decades to get to where I needed to be without a mentor. And at the same time, Bill was basically not a big self promoter in building the brand. And I think he was seeing the numbers go down. In this world, titanium hand built bikes are a very niche.

It was just the right timing for both of us. One day after a couple of months of spending time with him, he said to me, like, I've had a lot of people who want to buy and own a bike shop, but they just want me to build the bikes and they want to brand them and do stuff. He's the first guy who actually wants to learn building. And I think he got the sense fairly early on that I had a brain about such things. I'd be watching him do something and I would just, we got collegial enough that I'd be like, why wouldn't you do it this way? And he'd be like, that's a good thought. And he'd try it and be like, that's pretty good. So it became something that we informed on another. And then one day he pulled me aside and said,

I thought it was like divorce day. I thought he was going to be like, dude, this is weird. Like, why are you still hanging around the shop? But instead he said, what would your perfect world be? And I said, maybe I could build a second brand out of your shop called Mischief and help you pay the bills and benefit from your mentorship and tutelage and use the jigs and stuff to build some bikes. And he looked a little dejected and I was like, but that's just me. What's your perfect world? And he goes, I want you to just buy the entire business. I'm 75. I've got to retire at some point. I'll stay on and help you, but let's build your brand and...

past this torch. And so I guess my legacy, would like to be continuing building bikes customized for people a little bit different than what's available out there for everyone else. I think what we build is pretty special. And there are certain people, it's a smart thing to buy a bike like that. And there are other people where it would be poorly spent money. But I think the people who know exactly what they need and want or have an individual use, they're perfect for a custom hand built.

and they're beautiful things, but not so precious that they don't get ridden. Thank you for sharing that story. Several months ago, I stopped into Mischief and you gave me a tour. And one thing I like how into all the tail you are. Like I can see that if I was buying a bike from you, like the passion that is going into it. And to hear the backstory of how Bill mentored you, you having that opportunity, that's just so precious. And I'm hearing two things in this whole podcast is

One, your teacher who said your handwriting's crap, you're going to be a doctor, the impact that had. And then two, you taking a cold call, like having the courage to just cold call someone up and be like, hey, would you teach me something? And having that turn into him mentoring you and moving on. What are your takeaways from those two things that maybe our listeners are like, wow, maybe I should?

reach out to someone that I haven't or, yeah. I did it because I was in a place where it needed to happen. But I think if I was giving someone advice, I would just say, these things are possible. I think one thing all of humanity is lacking right now is that sort of community and like working with people and getting away a little bit from just staring at our phones and the mundane in and out of everyday things that we do.

It's like when you travel, your eyes open to so many new things. It's like this incredible thing. But realistically, we don't travel all the time. But all of that opportunity and all those beautiful things are still surrounding you at all times. And it's just a matter of allowing yourself the luxury to be like, I wanted to play piano and just...

take that step, right? Just be like, I'm gonna find a group of other people who want to learn to play the piano and find a way to make that happen. Because the pressures will always be to fall into the day-to-day monotony of what become our lives. Hopefully you won't make it all the way to 58, where I did, looking around Sam. Man, I don't have a lot of years left. I gotta start making up time here. And I think the time is now. Go for it. I want to say that again. The time is now. The time is always just right now. It's right now. We live with the illusion right now.

Are you up for a rapid fire round of questioning? As long as they're PG. OK. What is your favorite bike ride in the Seattle area? Man, the Mischief Hot Lap is just a icon classic, right? Or not the Mercer Island Hot Not the Mischief Hot Lap, but the Mercer Island Hot Lap. Right. Going out to Mercer Island, doing the horseshoe, coming back around the horseshoe. I've done that thing so many times with so many people at all paces, fast and slow. it's just so fun. Right around Seattle, the other ride I

I enjoy doing is going out May Valley into Issaquah and Hobart route and then circling back and coming through there. It's a bit of a longer loop, but little more climbing. Those are two rides I do a fair bit. That's great. How about your, what's your favorite ride, Ellery? If I'm on my road bike, these days I'm on my mountain bike a lot. And I live north of Seattle up in Edmonds and you can do this down from Edmonds through Olympic View Drive, going through Edmonds, which is this little fairy town, small town north of Seattle.

heading through shoreline and you just the views of the Puget Sound, the Olympic Mountains. And it's almost like you're in the country without being in a dream cycling destination. just had it this last year. I went to Majorca and did the Majorca 312, which was like, I didn't know cycling could be like that. It was just such a, the event itself is just the most grueling thing I've ever done on a bike. So the Majorca 312 is a 312 kilometer

They have different distances, but the longest distance, the one I did is 312 kilometer ride, which has basically started as a tour of the Isle of Majorca, which is a small island off of Spain, and has 16,000 feet of climbing, and they close all the roads. So you feel like you're on the pro tour because you can use the entire road on these incredible bucolic climbs to these vistas looking out over the ocean, and then descending these breakneck hairpins. It's just...

this miracle on the pavement there, the way that they've engineered the roads is otherworldly. It had been an event that a couple of buddies of mine did and it was just fantastic. I've got a long list of things I want to do. I want to do Iceland's Rift gravel ride. want to do, before I get too old to do them, we've been planning with this riding group of Nerda Wells that I ride with a lot. Want to go and do all the iconic climbs in France and the Pyrenees and Alps. And we keep coming up with itineraries and we keep coming up with excuses why this isn't the year.

But I think this year that's probably going to be a focus is to at least tackle the Pyrenees or the Alps and go do some of these incredible Tour de France climbs. Amazing. OK. Best beer. Any type of beer? Are you a lager, IPA? Beer. OK. Someone told me once there's only three types of beer and I drink them all warm, cold, and free. Is there any cycling myths you'd like to bust for our listeners out there? I think there are other materials besides carbon. Carbon's easy to make and mass produce bikes out of.

There's something really magical about a metal bike, whether it be steel or titanium. With titanium, there's almost not a significant weight penalty. The bikes, the way they ride, they carry speed. It's a whole different thing. The first experiment I did when I built Mischief was I built the carbon road bike that I'd been riding for years and probably rode on our Bengris trip out of titanium to apples to apple, even kitted it exactly the same way to see what is this thing about titanium that people talk about. It's hard to put words to, but it's fantastic. Is it?

take vibration differently? It seems to carry the speed. You put in effort and the bike just, you just have to keep stoking the momentum. People describe it like a boat planning. There's a point, and it felt like in a carbon bike, you're fighting the road surface a lot, right? And then on a titanium bike, it's like when a boat gets fast enough that it gets up on top of the water, it's just gliding along, and that's what the feeling is. What's one upgrade every cyclist over 40 should make? Bike fit.

and bike fit, absolutely. Favorite surgery you've ever done to perform and why? It's either, I would say it's osteotomies, the limb correction surgeries, mainly because it's a bigger surgery, involves a lot of planning and you make an immediate, obvious difference. Sports surgeries are, you have to be a little more patient because they take a long time to recover from an osteotomy. And you do have to recover from an osteotomy, but the difference you've made is clear.

Okay, what is a best piece of advice, a quote or verse you like to live by? Two things come to mind. The first is on the back of my truck, there's a sticker that a friend gave me after they stayed with me for a bit of time that they said they thought reminded me of me. And it says, I don't F around. And the short version of that for me, that's actually from ⁓ a guy who's a local Bellingham guy, all hell to black market. He's the guy who made those stickers. But I think the version of that is if something is worth doing, it's worth really doing.

Right, don't dig around, just go for it. And the other one I think from, let me think here. You're familiar with the book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? It's a really good book. Even if you're totally not into the whole Zen thing, it's just a nice way to think about living life. What is the quote that he says in the book? like, sometimes it's better to travel than to arrive, which I think is in the sort of the now is the now, right? Enjoy the actual journey you're on and make changes now. Don't be looking always at this.

So powerful. That's so powerful and so hard to do. I don't question, what does it mean to you to redefine what's possible? I think it starts from yourself and then works outward from there. Not in a selfish way, start with yourself. But think if you want to change the world and or make the world a better place and redefine things, you should do it for the right reasons. Start by making your own contribution in a small way and work it out.

All right, Chris, thank you for sharing your story today. What I admire is how you've shown that mastery can take many forms, whether it's the precision of a surgery, the art of building a custom bike, or the courage it takes to reinvent yourself when the world expected you to maybe stay in one lane. Before we close today, I know our listeners may want to connect with you, whether it's to learn more about mischief and having you build a custom titanium bike or to seek your expertise as a surgeon.

If folks would like to reach out to you, what's the best way to do that? Probably the easiest way is just email docdoc at mischief bicycles.com is sort of the bike thing. If it's more related to orthopedics and stuff like that, then I'd probably get you in touch with our office to arrange a consultation or visit. But always wide open, love talking about bikes and or physical problems when I can help. And I want to say thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Yeah, no, this has been great. For our listeners.

Couple of my takeaways as I'm sitting here reflecting is reinventing doesn't mean leaving everything behind. I love how your passion for the OR and surgery is still there, but you needed to amplify it with something else and expand into a new passion. That also takes risk and risk is where possibility often lives. So stepping into the unknown, that conversation, just calling someone up, hey Bill.

I'm wondering if I can come observe you or shadow you at Davidson's cycle. That was a risk. You didn't know what was going to happen, but you did it anyway. And then joy. Joy matters. Like your comment on, if you're having a bad day, get on your bike. Joy fuels that resilience. So to everyone who is listening until next time, keep redefining what's possible. And if this episode spoke to you, I'd love for you to share it with a friend who might need it and make sure you're subscribed for our future conversations like this one.

Thank you so much everyone and have a great day.