The Art of Manliness - Become a Backyard Adventurer

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast a lot of people

00:00:11.460 feel like they've seen and done everything there is to see and do in their local area

00:00:14.860 the board of their daily routine and contemplate going off on some grand adventure in an exotic

00:00:19.300 locale my guests would say that you don't actually have to wait until your next big trip

00:00:22.980 they'll go far afield to mix things up and that adventure be found right where you are

00:00:26.480 in your ordinary routines the everyday landscape of your life and even diy projects if you decide

00:00:31.720 to approach them in a different way his name is bo miles he's an australian filmmaker who documents

00:00:36.040 his own small-scale adventures on youtube as well as the author of the backyard adventurer today on

00:00:40.460 the show bo shares his experiments and proving anything can be fused with the challenge intrigue

00:00:44.320 and fun witch mark adventure if you add in some intentional risk difficulty and simple what the

00:00:48.640 heck quirkiness he tells about some of the close to home adventures he's executed including walking

00:00:52.760 and kayaking his 90 kilometer commute to work reconnecting an old long closed down rail line

00:00:57.200 by running its often hidden overgrown path with a shovel in his hand making a paddle with scavenged

00:01:01.600 wood we then talk about how he created a gastronomical adventure for himself by eating his body weight

00:01:05.880 and beans even turned tackling his to-do list into an adventure by pairing the crossing off of its

00:01:10.820 entries with running a marathon in 24 hours along the way bo shares how backyard adventures help you

00:01:16.040 better get to know your local area how he deals with the police who sometimes check in on what he's up to

00:01:20.320 and how the next time you get some odd idea you gotta just go for it mate out of the show's over

00:01:24.200 check out our show notes at aom.is slash backyard adventure bo joins you now via clearcast.io

00:01:29.920 bo miles welcome to the show thanks for having me man so you uh you're an interesting guy you make

00:01:48.120 youtube videos of yourself going on these planning and executing these crazy close to home adventures

00:01:54.300 but before that you were a college professor so i'm curious how did you shift from college professor to

00:01:59.920 a guy who's documenting the adventures he's going on on youtube well in truth i never really stopped doing

00:02:05.860 the filmmaking gig when i was at the university at monash and so it was always kind of a a hobby that

00:02:12.200 crept into being more than a hobby and luckily i got made redundant so i didn't really get fired but i

00:02:17.460 suppose i got fired and that made my choice clear i'm just going to go off and be a filmmaker full

00:02:21.600 time which was kind of liberating to be honest after the shock of not having a solid paycheck for

00:02:27.240 a few days i thought you know what this is the best thing that's ever happened to me so away i went

00:02:31.340 and look at this part spread of my job and as an outdoor educator that i really miss i miss guiding

00:02:37.960 i miss students i miss going to the tea room with a whole bunch of workmates and having a cup of tea in

00:02:42.880 the morning i think that was really it was one of the best parts of my day but you know i've got a

00:02:47.140 small family now and a great little business working with a great colleague so i've landed

00:02:52.640 with my bum in honey and life's good mate and i'm just going to keep making films so you yeah you were

00:02:57.060 a professor of outdoor education so you've you've basically you've been doing outdoor stuff for a lot

00:03:01.580 of your life correct yeah i left school at the age of well 18 i was a school leaver and instead of

00:03:07.360 going to university i did an outdoor education traineeship and then went to university and so

00:03:12.620 i was able to work all through university as a guide and as a builder part-time so they were my

00:03:17.780 two kind of work incomes and making pizzas on the side so i had a few streams of income through

00:03:23.260 university but it was always sort of outdoor related and it sort of took off from there and so

00:03:28.040 while you were a professor doing outdoor education you started making these videos of you just doing

00:03:32.400 stuff that you just think is normal right like you just you know building things from scrap wood

00:03:37.600 just doing crazy stuff but what what's what i like about what you do is the adventures you do are close

00:03:42.660 to home you're not going up mount everest you're not doing the typical like going to patagonia or

00:03:47.720 whatever why do you think it's important for people because it seems like what you're trying to

00:03:51.940 do you're trying to help people broaden their their definition of what an adventure is yeah look i've

00:03:57.580 never sat down and thought about it brett in a sense of let's make a list of what i'm really

00:04:01.560 trying to do is this so-called backyard adventurer because heck you know people have been doing

00:04:06.660 backyard stuff and localized forms of of anything and everything forever i suppose my point of

00:04:13.060 difference is is that i'm doing it as a storyteller but i'm really doing it because one it serves a

00:04:18.580 practical purpose of being closer to home and more bang for buck i'm really into this whole more bang

00:04:23.080 for buck thing because we all have 168 hours a week and i'd rather not spend them on a plane or in a

00:04:28.240 car so why not do as much as i possibly can from my doorstep but secondly too the big thing that's

00:04:35.080 kind of hit me in this sort of emerging middle age is that i want to learn more about my local area

00:04:40.760 because there's so much of my local area i think i know about but i just don't and you don't have to

00:04:46.540 go far from your doorstep or from your own property to realize that man every little creek and alleyway and

00:04:53.000 old train line and edge of town these are all super interesting places that have something to offer

00:04:58.040 and if you create some sort of quirky idea around a so-called adventure then you can go out and you

00:05:03.600 can you can challenge the heck out of yourself you can find out cool stuff and you can have a bloody

00:05:08.740 good fun doing it you know and that's that's a big three in my book if you can check those three

00:05:13.400 off challenge intrigue and fun all in one hit then boom you know you've got yourself a combo and i love it

00:05:19.880 so is that your definition of venture if you have that challenge intrigue and fun is that what

00:05:23.520 needs to be yeah maybe i think i think i might have just come up with a big three that might be

00:05:26.820 my next book mate but um yeah i think so if you if those three things are percolating through your

00:05:32.160 system as you're traveling on that particular day then yep ripper you know you've you've signed off on

00:05:38.300 this really cool day and it's i mean what a great thing imagine going to your regular work day and have

00:05:42.980 all of those three things checked off and at my time at a university i would virtually never sign off all

00:05:48.860 of those three things on any given day unless i was in the field so which was only 50 days each year

00:05:54.780 in the end and the rest of it i'm behind a computer screen like anyone else so i get to live and die

00:05:59.300 by my own sort of it more as a filmmaker instead of being stuck up in a university and one thing i

00:06:05.260 noticed that you you did with a lot of your adventures your backyard adventures that you would

00:06:08.660 do is that you would you would increase the adventure level by increasing the risk by maybe not

00:06:14.340 planning or preparing as much as maybe you should have right so i'm gonna we'll talk about something

00:06:20.760 like you'd be like well i'm gonna walk to work and we'll talk about what that looked like instead of

00:06:25.140 packing a whole bunch of stuff it was like well what can i do with just the bare minimum and that

00:06:30.080 increased the intrigue factor significantly totally mate yeah so it's all about fiddling with your

00:06:35.280 ingredients and to come up with kind of a rule book of what you do and that can make you back out

00:06:41.120 adventuring as hard as those sort of everest things that you're talking about and look that's not

00:06:44.920 watering down everest everest is hard but but so is going down your old boyhood river if you do it

00:06:50.600 with really basic fundamentals it's it was that was hard i spent four days going down this river that

00:06:56.560 sort of that tracks through my entire history and it was it was a freaking hard four days it was really

00:07:02.300 tricky and so yeah i think the rule book thing is really important because walking off to work

00:07:07.100 for you know two days with all the bells and whistles in a fancy backpack and you're instantly

00:07:13.120 doing kind of an underwhelming bushwalk then or a trek or a hike whereas if you don't take anything

00:07:18.540 man you've got to you've got to look around and you've got to make stuff you've got to observe you've

00:07:23.380 got to be switched on in a particular way otherwise you're going to go thirsty and hungry and have a

00:07:28.600 real crap time and i'm not i'm never setting up to do these things to have a crap time ever i want to 0.80

00:07:33.500 have a really insightful fun challenging time all right let's talk about that that adventure you 0.63

00:07:38.420 want where you walked to work from home now a lot of people they walk to work from home but how is

00:07:44.240 your walk different yeah well i um this is when i commuted right mate so this is this is why i'm

00:07:51.180 living the good life now i'm not commuting anywhere i just come down the road to my mate's studio but i

00:07:56.380 used to drive 80 kilometers a day one way so 160 kilometers a day or 100 miles a day i'd drive my old

00:08:02.820 ute to the university and back and it was mostly country roads and i and i look i quite enjoyed the

00:08:08.280 drive it was a good way to sort of get into the day and unwind at the end of it and listen to the

00:08:13.320 radio and whatnot listen to the watch the seasons go by but it's a long time to spend in the car you

00:08:19.120 know i was still doing that at least three days a week so anywhere between six and ten hours a week

00:08:23.360 i was in my old ute driving across the country land to get to the university and i remember one day

00:08:28.620 thinking gee i kind of know these these grounds i know my commute really well i'd stop on apple trees

00:08:35.460 on the side of the road and get fuel sometimes and a coffee at a coffee van at the airport and

00:08:40.100 it was it was kind of fun but i don't know them well i know them in a commute way where i know them five

00:08:45.640 meters from the roadside so yeah i decided to walk to the university and away i went and it took a few

00:08:50.200 days and i i had nothing with me other than the clothes on my back i didn't even wear shoes the first time

00:08:55.720 i did it which was far more challenging than i thought and i had to put on a spare pair at eight

00:09:00.660 kilometers with the cameraman yeah and so i just ate whatever i found on the side of the road which

00:09:05.640 i thought would be far more plentiful i thought people would be throwing out more you know burgers

00:09:09.920 and half-eaten bananas and whatever and it just was nothing you know i've run forever and i'm always

00:09:16.100 finding food on the side of the road that people have thrown out but there was nothing and roadside

00:09:20.160 foraging is pretty minimal too you know there was a few clover leaves and rose bushes and fiddleheads and

00:09:25.460 little things with that are barely barely have a calorie to them so i was always after something

00:09:30.780 that was disused or thrown out by humans and it was it was tough i was freaking hungry but um

00:09:36.340 yeah two days later i i turned up to work pretty disheveled and on one occasion i just you know got

00:09:42.920 to work and had a cup of tea and thought wow that was it and then i had to drive home again and the

00:09:46.760 other one i had to give a lecture so it was an excellent experience of i kind of wanted to give my

00:09:53.440 students a total window into the other side of an adventure as raw as it can be so i walked in and

00:09:59.020 i'm stinking up the heart to high heaven and dehydrated and away i go so it was fascinating

00:10:04.320 so it took you two days so how many how many miles a day were you doing uh doing about 30 miles a day

00:10:10.800 so um just ticking along you know just it was super easy flat walking it was on a highway so it's the

00:10:16.160 easiest kind of walking a human can do basically at sea level along the side of a highway but

00:10:20.880 what it doesn't really and and what the film only does half a job of showing is just how

00:10:26.340 noisy and how kind of deadened the world is via a highway you know one there's road kill everywhere

00:10:34.220 but two you can't your senses don't work like they would usually because of the road noise road noise

00:10:40.580 is really oppressive and so you just have this hundred decibels of road noise constantly coming

00:10:45.760 at you so i put carpet insulation in my ears and tried to hum songs and there would be these

00:10:51.800 lovely brief moments of silence where there's not a car for 20 seconds and you'd and you'd really

00:10:56.980 realize it and you'd hear a bird song or you'd hear a distant farmer or a distant something and it was

00:11:02.020 quite unique so it was yeah it was it was a hell of an experience i i slept by a petrol station in the

00:11:09.820 blackberries in the gorse you know this off to the side where no one was going to come looking for me

00:11:13.540 other than potentially males having a leak in the middle of the night and yeah i got up sparrows the

00:11:19.340 next morning and walked into work so your food was your whatever you could find what about water

00:11:24.220 what do you do about water oh it's just opportunistic mate i'd drink water out of cow troughs or 0.90

00:11:29.420 whatever water i could find in the on the side of the road and and the big one which people are

00:11:34.080 disgusted by is old coke bottles and pepsi cans or whatever whatever was a half drunk bottle of coke or

00:11:40.760 something i'd drink the rest in for some weird way i i trusted carbonic acid as being so evil that i

00:11:47.280 thought oh it's not going to have any pathogens in it i'll just drink i'll just drink someone's

00:11:50.840 leftover coke and it was one it was calories and two i figured oh well maybe no no baddies are living in

00:11:57.620 this water and it seemed to work so besides the the noise factor that you discovered you can't hear

00:12:03.760 that when you're in your car right you don't know there's a lot of noise going on outside what else did

00:12:08.580 you learn about your environment because that's that you said earlier that's one of the reasons

00:12:11.620 why you want to do these backyard adventures see your local world in a different way what did you

00:12:16.680 learn about your environment walking it instead of driving it well i mean what you're doing is so

00:12:25.200 when you drive you generally you've got your your eyes out front and you sort of you scan the horizon

00:12:30.840 and you just you're cruising along you might be on cruise control who knows generally when i'm

00:12:35.940 driving that route i'm listening to the radio and i'm taking intermittent glimpses or or sort of

00:12:42.400 sound bites of the outside world you're in this little bubble and we live in this little bubble

00:12:47.440 and we get on with our world and we're often thinking about our to-do list and what's being

00:12:51.840 said on the radio or what song you're listening to or what you had for breakfast you're very you're

00:12:56.380 very much not in the place you're driving through i would say ever really you just have little

00:13:01.360 glimmers of it and so walking is is kind of the opposite you can't help but to be very very present

00:13:07.840 because um things are fairly abrasive i was constantly looking for things too so the fact

00:13:13.440 that i didn't take any of my supplies with me meant i had to look for everything i looked for everything

00:13:18.340 from a knife to water to food to shelter so i had to make my swag that night and so that took sort of

00:13:24.560 a full day just to find the ingredients of to sleep in you know old duvets and carpet insulation

00:13:30.660 and old bits of webbing and truck tires and all sorts of stuff to give me some sort of night sleep

00:13:37.740 which was really cool i mean it means you're occupied and you can't help but to be very there

00:13:42.560 you're very present so it was cool yeah i've noticed i've done things in here in my own town like a go

00:13:48.760 ruck challenge where you're you know you're hiking around in the middle of the night for 12 hours with a

00:13:54.200 ruck and doing that experience that really helped me to get my bearings better about my town like i

00:13:59.360 discovered things about how things are located that i otherwise would have wouldn't have known

00:14:05.240 because i just i was driving by it but when you're walking it like you notice you somehow like it embeds

00:14:10.620 in you more when you're walking the route instead of driving it's it's hard to explain i mean it's some

00:14:16.120 sort of embodied cognition maybe i don't know well it makes sense doesn't it you know we're basically

00:14:21.000 traveling at a slower speed we're able to look in a 360 view you can't do that in a car and in a car

00:14:27.980 serving a purpose a car is miraculous as is a plane because it gets us to where we're going pretty

00:14:34.280 quick it's very utilitarian and so yeah when you're on foot you just you go back to this ancient form of

00:14:41.320 thinking and being you know it's wayfaring purely because you just have to you have to find your way

00:14:47.480 and even if it's very basic like a highway when you're finding things or when you're having to look

00:14:52.120 around and you're still having to do road crossings and you're still getting beeped at by cars it's

00:14:55.960 still very interactive of the journey and all of the ingredients along that passage so yeah i think

00:15:02.460 it just makes sense that you just have to do more and see more and be more present because that's just

00:15:06.840 the form of travel you're doing someone's listening to this and they think man i want to do that

00:15:11.820 how would you recommend them going about it would you just be like all right just pick a distance and

00:15:15.740 like it yeah kind of mate look it was fairly practical for me because i was going to work

00:15:21.780 it's amazing how many people chimed in on after watching the film they say oh gee but didn't you

00:15:27.620 get sacked from your job that you took so long to get to work and i think oh that's a very practical

00:15:31.000 thing to think i think one of the days was a a weekend day so i was technically only sort of half a day

00:15:37.120 work late but yeah it was it was uh look for i suck at recommending things brett because

00:15:44.960 people have so many things to do in their own to-do list but you've got a i think a lot of

00:15:50.220 people think weird things as well and think up quirky ideas but they just don't do them because

00:15:55.820 their life is so busy around them or they they think that they'd be a kook or disallowed from their

00:16:02.120 friendship group i don't know or they'd miss soccer practice that night i'm not sure but

00:16:05.660 yeah next time you have a weird idea just try and you know try and do it and remove some of the

00:16:12.020 layers that you might have probably put to those things you know don't take all of your all of the

00:16:17.100 things that will make it easy just leave them at home and and you know what you're going to have

00:16:21.000 an adventure because of it right you always bring a smartphone a cell phone to if you need a bell out

00:16:25.740 for whatever reasons like that's like yeah turn the sucker off and put it as as far away as possible 0.81

00:16:30.760 in the back pocket or or with someone that you trust or you leave it at the 20 mile mark whatever

00:16:36.700 but um yeah try and have as few outs as possible force your own hand and so i often force my own

00:16:42.980 hand and if i've got people included right so if i've got mitch along filming the event my my filming

00:16:48.840 partner then if i've cooked up the event and i've got him out of bed real early and i'm doing this thing

00:16:54.560 then i've got a sense of pride to it as well i gotta i gotta see this sucker through because other

00:16:58.600 people are involved now so yeah force your own hand i think that's a good good idea all right so

00:17:03.580 after you walked to work you decided you're going to get there by kayak and this river decided to go

00:17:08.700 down this is this has played an integral part in your your childhood correct i suppose so mate yeah

00:17:14.280 look i don't think my boyhood river was like the mississippi was to huckleberry finn i don't think it

00:17:19.940 was integral to his day-to-day or my river was integral to my day-to-day it wasn't i'd go down there

00:17:25.440 once every two weeks go fishing or swim in it and it was kind of the threshold of my childhood but it

00:17:31.980 wasn't it wasn't a huge part of my life like other rivers are to some people but it was still always

00:17:36.140 there and i always i know the tarragon you know it was it's it's it's the bottom of everyone's farm

00:17:42.400 it's where all the water drains to and it's the one that is your closest to you that drains into the

00:17:47.200 sea so it sort of becomes this it becomes your river becomes the river that you think is like every

00:17:54.260 other person's river i suppose and so when i decided to paddle to work that was the river to

00:17:58.720 go to that was my local water body that would get me to sea which is near where the university is and

00:18:04.600 so yeah it became my transport route and away i went and this river i thought i knew man it just it

00:18:10.200 just wasn't it wasn't like i thought i knew well it's interesting thing is that a lot of times you

00:18:14.920 think well i'm gonna take a river people take waterways to get to places faster kayaking actually took

00:18:20.660 longer than walking to work correct yeah well what it says is to i mean our roads are so efficient now

00:18:27.600 and they go straight and they go through mountains or around mountains in the least with the least

00:18:32.620 possible distance they're remarkable you're sitting on 60 or 70 miles an hour 100 k's the whole time

00:18:38.300 because it's just it's this efficient line rivers don't work that way at all they're following the

00:18:43.480 path of least resistance which is the low ground which is the longest route it's uh yeah so it the

00:18:50.000 twists and turns in a river are full on and of course the river too it's where all our bad stuff

00:18:55.580 ends up it's where all our noxious weeds end up it's where farmers dump their rubbish it's where

00:19:00.480 it's where whole councils used to dump their rubbish a whole town would just come to the river and dump 0.81

00:19:05.260 their stuff and so because it had you know big big holes big holes in the earth and so that's a good

00:19:10.380 spot to fill it yes it took you yeah it took you four days to get down the river how much did you

00:19:15.900 prepare for this like how much did you bring food water with you in your kayak yeah

00:19:19.860 well you mentioned that before i sort of hybridized this one i took i took the bare minimum but i still

00:19:24.180 took stuff including a bit of cash so i knew there was going to be a donut band along the way if it

00:19:29.020 was open and i knew there was going to be a supermarket when i got to the sea or a little a

00:19:33.580 little you know supermarket in a little town there so took a bit of cash i took a lot of bananas i took

00:19:38.560 tins of beans i did basically didn't take any clothes as such i took a jacket and a spare set of socks but

00:19:44.760 otherwise i basically didn't leave my wetsuit for four days which was gross but a real experiment and

00:19:50.080 i heard it was doable so i thought i'm going to give that a go and then you slept just wherever

00:19:53.660 you could find correct on the side of the river yeah yeah i had no set places i had kind of an

00:19:59.060 inkling where i'd try and get to and they were all wrong so i ended up sleeping in spots that were just

00:20:04.560 end of the day or when i got too cold or when it was raining or uh you know that made sense so

00:20:11.040 yeah it was gross i mean that's such a liberating way to travel as well where you don't know where

00:20:14.760 you're going to end up it's just it's just fantastic it's uh and i and i don't say that to

00:20:19.480 be optimistic or cliche about you know i don't always want to be steve erwin but he was he was a

00:20:24.940 really cool dude because he was always chipper about things because he isn't quite he wasn't quite

00:20:29.180 sure what was going to happen and and that's a that's a nice sentiment to embrace well that's what

00:20:33.480 makes life interesting i mean this is a kind of another way i think we can get philosophical here

00:20:37.320 like i think one of the things that people in our modern world i think miss out on is that sense

00:20:43.100 of not being in control i think we've kind of just controlled a lot of our what goes on in our life we

00:20:49.100 can control the climate in our in our house we can control what stuff we consume we can control the

00:20:54.800 people we interact with when you're kayaking you're kind of at the the whims of mother nature

00:21:00.140 you don't have control and that that actually feels exciting yeah it was really excellent mate

00:21:04.860 for exactly that reason i came from a university system that i was still working in at the time

00:21:09.720 that is highly controlled and there are key performance indicators at every turn and you

00:21:15.660 have your you know everything's graded every time you deliver a class the student can give you a mark

00:21:21.380 out of one to five and in saying that too there was some great freedoms with my university life but

00:21:26.520 for the most part you were still part of this big orchestrated objective machine and to do the

00:21:33.400 opposite to that is to say stuff it i'm going to pack a little red kayak and i'm going to try and

00:21:38.000 paddle to work and there are so many unknowns in that four-day endeavor which i didn't think would

00:21:42.120 be four days by the way i thought it would be two or two and a half at max so yeah i was proven wrong

00:21:47.800 almost a hundred percent i had to double everything which was really liberating we're going to take a

00:21:53.840 quick break for your words from our sponsors and now back to the show so at one point in your

00:22:00.080 adventure of looking for adventure near your home you found yourself running with a shovel

00:22:05.760 along an old railroad line in australia what's the story there yeah this is probably brett one of my

00:22:12.620 favorite films because it's of its simplicity and its beauty and its cinematic qualities it was just a

00:22:18.640 grouse day i i live close to similar to the little river the tarrago an old train line that closed down in

00:22:25.720 1958 my dad went on it as a kid or at least he remembers it's going past and my um you know so

00:22:33.160 there's still very much a generational gap between me and it but it wasn't long ago that this train

00:22:38.840 line used to run from one town to the other and ran for about 50 kilometers and i've run on and off

00:22:45.080 patches of this line my whole life but i've never i never sort of thought to stitch the whole line back

00:22:51.500 together let's create a whole snake out of this thing that i just knew the head of and the

00:22:55.700 tail of and so that's what i did i grabbed my shovel which i thought that was going to be pretty handy

00:23:00.900 for all the blackberries and brambles that i'd see took some basic food with me which was far too

00:23:06.820 basic to be honest and off i set and had the film crew follow me in a sort of guerrilla way for the

00:23:12.820 10 hours that it took me to get out there and away i went basically trespassing all day to to get to the

00:23:18.920 end of the line and most of the american audience that have seen this film run the line say bo you would

00:23:24.060 have been shot an awful lot if you tried that in the states and and and then the the scottish or

00:23:29.420 the norwegian audience chime in go yeah fantastic this is right to roam you know you're off doing your

00:23:34.060 thing and australia is a bit of a hybrid version of that we have i was certainly doing the wrong

00:23:38.580 thing but i hope to to have done it with the least amount of animosity towards the landowners

00:23:43.660 well yeah people don't like well here in the states i know the rail lines are privately owned

00:23:48.180 so they don't owners of the lines don't like when people walk the lines for a whole variety of

00:23:52.880 reasons safety and then they're they're afraid that people are going to do things to to the lines

00:23:57.780 to cause havoc so the police are usually called when people are seen on the lines and that happened

00:24:01.880 to you a couple times i imagine did you encounter the police a lot when you're doing these crazy

00:24:07.060 adventures sleeping outside walking in places that you normally don't see people walking and if you

00:24:12.160 do like how do you handle the law enforcement yeah so the walk to work i had the police both times

00:24:18.180 paddle i don't think i saw them with the paddle i didn't but um yeah i have them let's say for

00:24:23.720 every five films i make i'll get police intervention on one of five and they're really

00:24:28.880 good in a sense they always take a bit of warming up the police because i think what the often the

00:24:33.880 problem is they have to be quite affronting and direct at the start to sort of see how the person

00:24:39.680 reacts and i'll always react in a very similar way that i know in my heart of hearts i'm never

00:24:44.520 doing anyone any harm right so i just i just talk to them and and then they tend to come down and

00:24:50.000 then you just have a chat and you tell them what they're doing and and often they're things that i

00:24:53.540 think they don't know if it's illegal or not so a lot of people in australia would think it's illegal

00:24:59.620 to hitchhike for example but it's just not you can hitchhike of course you can you can you can ride

00:25:04.060 a horse next to nearly every road in australia unless it says otherwise and so there's all these

00:25:09.240 strange bylaws that are out there that i don't think police quite understand and look i don't want to

00:25:14.060 exploit that but in some respects you've just got to know your rights and away you go and

00:25:18.100 to be honest i was amazed that the police let me go that day when i was trespassing on a lot of

00:25:24.400 people's property because in australia all the railway lines are owned by the government okay and

00:25:29.420 you're not really supposed to go on train lines but there is an easement that train lines are in

00:25:33.060 and often those easements have got bike paths in them and you know little nature reserves and all

00:25:37.840 sorts of things so in australia most train lines are sort of considered public lands as long as you're

00:25:43.200 not on the tracks so i think they probably thought that i was probably okay in an old easement and

00:25:48.940 i'm doing my thing and not harming someone so they they said no worries keep going mate yeah i thought

00:25:53.720 it was funny when they when you're doing the run along the rail line and they ask you why are you

00:25:56.960 carrying a shovel and you i think you said well if i was carrying a machete to cut the blackberries i

00:26:02.400 think you'd be more concerned about that so i'm just that's right yeah yeah i i chose a shovel because

00:26:07.200 it was very agricultural and i thought oh well i kind of look like i'm part of the landscape if i'm

00:26:11.340 lumping a shovel around if i had anything else with me then i look like a proper weirdo so

00:26:15.520 that was kind of tactical as well but to be honest i probably shouldn't have taken a thing i used it for

00:26:20.140 about 10 minutes and you know carrying a shovel for 50 kilometers is is hard work right and i imagine

00:26:26.140 the law enforcement it adds an element of entry or risk to the whole it's that that not being in

00:26:31.400 control and that's that's part of what makes it your adventures fun yeah yeah and look we've got a

00:26:36.920 good police force here and i i know that yeah there was chances are that every chance in the

00:26:42.120 world that that day i was going to get pinged i didn't expect to get pinged so early to be honest

00:26:46.680 but um yeah and you just talk your way through it and and even if they let you go great and if not

00:26:51.460 you've got to modify your journey and i don't mind that either all right so what i like about you too

00:26:55.260 your idea of adventure doesn't just encompass you know hiking kayaking sleeping outside it's also

00:27:01.340 just like making things with your hands could be an adventure and uh you made an adventure

00:27:06.060 out of making your own paddle so tell us about that how did you turn a you know a simple woodworking

00:27:10.760 project into an adventure well i've been teaching paddle making for a decade or so at university

00:27:16.320 level where look it was very basic and i never really taught much about the making process i'd

00:27:21.560 really just talk about why it would be important to do something like that or why it's cool and look

00:27:26.340 we all use outdoor equipment and at the time you know our university had this huge shed full of gear

00:27:32.740 all sorts of goodies and and you'd never have to make a thing you just you just turn up to the

00:27:37.520 shed and you get your 25 things you got to use and away you go but what if you didn't have those 25

00:27:43.160 things and you had to make some of them or borrow them or whatever and so it becomes a far more complex

00:27:50.440 human scenario when you've got to make something or borrow it from someone else and then deliver it and

00:27:55.840 pick it up and all these things so that was very important for these particular trips we used to run

00:28:00.900 and so something like paddle making became a bit of a metaphor for just the importance of equipment

00:28:06.000 and how we just use stuff and how the outdoor sector is so commodified and so students every

00:28:11.880 year would make a paddle out of whatever wood they could get a hold of that they that they couldn't buy

00:28:16.200 it they'd have to get it from their granddad's shed or their grandmother's cupboard or on the side of

00:28:21.500 the road or wherever go and see a hardware and see what pallets were out the front and so students did

00:28:27.660 this for years and I thought oh I could make a film about just making a paddle or I could make a paddle

00:28:32.720 that's has a particular story and then I go and paddle with it so I decided to just use junk wood

00:28:38.880 that I could find between the train station and work that I used to commute to and so I did that yeah I

00:28:45.080 just made it out of old wood that I could find between my 2.2 kilometer walk between the train station

00:28:50.180 and my office and away I went it was great I loved it and it's actually one my I think my the most

00:28:56.400 underrated film on my channel I really like it so what kind of scavenged wood did you end up using

00:29:01.140 I'd use beautiful hardwood I found it like a tree stake from the council someone had pulled out a

00:29:06.640 council tree stake and flung it into the train line so that was that made the shaft which is the hardest

00:29:10.920 bit to get and then pallets made the blades with some little timber inlays from some garden edging

00:29:16.720 and then there was a tree that dropped the limb right outside the shed at work and so I just chopped

00:29:21.920 it up and made that the handle and coated it in oil and away we went it was and we went down

00:29:27.500 the Murray which is Australia's biggest river and the 14th largest in the world that's where we run

00:29:32.740 a program and I did a week on the Murray using this junk paddle and that was the little film

00:29:37.540 and I think the idea I took from that adventure is that you can turn any type of activity into

00:29:42.240 adventure by again like going you're creating a rule book that you're going to follow where you

00:29:46.680 limit what you can and can't do and by doing that it you know increases the intrigue as you said

00:29:52.460 yeah I think so and it makes it very personal too mate so if the more ingredients that you shape

00:30:00.100 yourself then the more I suppose input and output you can have into those day-to-days because you know

00:30:07.400 you can go into a mega outdoor store and you can get yourself everything from a tiny miniature

00:30:13.100 waffle maker to a to a sock darning kit and and you know plasters that could go on every inch of your

00:30:21.280 body with the perfect bend in them you know and I think unfortunately that it's been there's so much

00:30:28.220 gear that that facilitate the outdoors now we often don't have a a really eclectic experience out there

00:30:34.900 because our gear kind of filters that away for us so I think it's really important to create your own

00:30:40.000 rules and really and pick and choose the gear you take with you so you also made eating in an

00:30:45.660 adventure and this one cracked me up because what you did is you decided to eat your body weight and

00:30:50.740 beans and I related to this one because it took me back to the beginning of the pandemic where

00:30:56.320 everyone wasn't like everything shut down and no one was sure like can I go to the store are we able

00:31:00.840 to do anything and so you know we were running out of food and I was like well I got this big giant

00:31:06.220 10 pound bag of pinto beans I'll just cook that up I made a big pot of beans and no one else my family

00:31:13.740 wanted to eat the big pot of beans but I just had this pot of beans I'd keep in the fridge I'd pull

00:31:17.320 out whenever I was hungry and I would just eat a couple scoops this went on for like man it lasted

00:31:22.580 me a good week so when I read about your adventure of eating your body weight and beans it took me back

00:31:27.200 to uh March 2020 how did John Steinbeck inspire this adventure of eating your body weight and beans

00:31:34.540 well first of all congratulations on doing that with the pinto beans oh it was I love even even

00:31:39.140 I love beans I think that's just great I love yeah I love beans too and I still do people ask me that

00:31:44.540 all the time and and one of the big critiques of my film of eating my body weight and beans which

00:31:49.260 was 190 tins from memory was that I didn't cook them properly like you did you had the proper beans

00:31:54.980 that you cooked up yourself that you made a lovely sauce for or a brine or something and away you go

00:31:59.600 whereas I just bought store-bought tin beans and mixed them up and ate as many as I could

00:32:04.520 I did that for a reason because of the simplicity of it and the fact that I could weigh things and

00:32:09.460 measure things and all that rather than having to do it on the fly but yeah the idea came from

00:32:14.640 of going through a bit of I was going through a bit of a Steinbeck phase which seemed to be

00:32:19.200 seems to find a lot of 30 year old males out there kind of the road tripping romanticized

00:32:24.480 hard life book to read and American culture American sort of 20s 30s books are always

00:32:31.580 fascinating too and I read Tortilla Flat and there's a great couple of pages in it where

00:32:36.100 Teresina Cortez the mother of nine kids with their tenth on the way basically only feeds her kids 1.00

00:32:42.720 beans off the floor with rice or tortillas and so these little kids were found out to be the

00:32:49.020 healthiest kids in town even though they were the skinniest and the scrawniest and kind of the

00:32:52.800 you know they looked like vagrants but they had strong teeth and strong bones and brilliant eyesight

00:32:57.920 and all their faculties and so I thought oh gee isn't that fun and I love beans what if I just

00:33:03.000 eat beans for an awful long time like these kids and of course the the failed part of the experiment

00:33:08.500 was I didn't eat tortillas or rice which was the carbohydrate or the main carbohydrate because

00:33:13.340 beans when they're come out in a tin form are basically just a slurry of protein all the

00:33:19.940 carbohydrates sort of being soaked out of them but anyway there you go so I just ate beans for 40

00:33:25.340 days and it was it was an awesome experiment where I didn't go anywhere just an experiment of the body

00:33:30.560 how did what happened to your body subsisting only on beans were you as healthy as the uh the kids in

00:33:35.980 Tortilla Flat no no so I ended up with some really good things about my health and some really bad things

00:33:41.960 so I got tested before during and after and I didn't make that part of the film as much as probably what

00:33:46.860 I should have but in some respects it was never about the science it was all about the felt

00:33:51.360 relationship with it I you know I didn't want this to be a breakdown of numbers I wanted it to be a

00:33:55.720 breakdown of of bow of how I thought of the world and if it changed my world view in a sense or how I

00:34:01.920 how I eat but yeah my b12 plummeted to really dangerous levels whereas everything else was pretty

00:34:09.020 good so my cholesterol dropped my weight dropped I felt really good I felt like a really lean sort of

00:34:15.740 acute version of myself and yet my moods couldn't crack above a six or a seven say six so I was never

00:34:23.220 a good version of myself in that respect so there was some massive downfalls the other way you up the

00:34:29.060 the intrigue factor was okay you said you ate tens of beans so you just like you got all varieties

00:34:33.940 so chickpeas baked beans pinto beans and then you would take the labels off of them so anytime you

00:34:40.380 opened up a can it was always a surprise what you're gonna get yeah spot on mate so I yeah I got

00:34:46.180 200 tins of beans from the supermarket I tried to get low sodium and organic beans so that was really

00:34:51.900 one of the only rules and and a big blend yeah exactly like you say a whole mix of beans and

00:34:56.680 I had a you know there was sort of a hundred of one variety and 20 of another and 30 of another and

00:35:02.280 10 of another and then there was some some blended mixes which I think there were five in there that

00:35:07.280 were like gold you know if I'd hit one of these five varieties that were the tastiest and most exotic

00:35:12.880 beans in a tin it was amazing there was one day there that you know because I'm just randomly picking

00:35:19.020 and I had five or six tins a day on average there was one day there was mostly black beans you know

00:35:24.300 and there was only about 20 black beans in the entire thing and I thought I'd blended them and mix

00:35:28.760 them pretty well but I had bloody black beans all day and I thought gee this is a bit rough

00:35:32.640 it was the only day where I thought oh this is a probably a dodgy experiment where I stuffed up

00:35:38.500 my blend but that was good fun too so have you eaten beans since then like have you already sick

00:35:42.120 of beans absolutely yeah everyone asks you sick of beans and so I I never skipped a beat and in fact

00:35:47.840 the day after the experiment finished I ate I ate regular food for a day or really exotic vegetables and

00:35:54.540 fish and whatnot and the day after you know you know what I was mourning beans already I

00:35:58.680 had a tin of beans on day 42 so no I'm not sick of them thinking about them being I love beans all

00:36:03.880 right anyways so the next what eventually did it was it's called mile an hour where you this is a

00:36:09.400 really interesting thing you you did you completed a task on your to-do list and then you'd run a mile

00:36:14.360 what and you did this for 24 hours what's the story behind that like why do a task and then run a mile

00:36:20.500 well you introduced me at the start of the show Brett as a as an ex-academic someone who worked in a

00:36:27.120 university and and when I was writing my PhD it was the worst physical shape I've ever been in I put

00:36:33.840 on a bunch of weight I didn't leave the house as much I usually would I didn't run as much as I

00:36:37.840 usually would so everything kind of ground to a halt particularly in the last six months of writing

00:36:41.840 my PhD which was sort of around 2016-15 era and I remember looking outside one day during a particularly

00:36:50.260 long period of writing I was under the pump to get a chapter finished and I just wanted to be

00:36:54.640 outside running and uh I thought right I write some more words mate write 500 more words

00:37:00.080 clock them you know make sure you're 500 words to the to the word and then you can go outside

00:37:06.720 that's your reward mechanism so I wrote 500 words they're pretty crap words but down they go and

00:37:12.200 I get outside I chuck my runners on and I go for a run around the block now I knew my block was roughly

00:37:17.120 a mile I didn't realize it was a perfect mile and that's a that's a very famous distance

00:37:21.480 I got back and I'd barely got a sweat up but I jumped back behind the computer and I felt really

00:37:26.080 refreshed I thought this is a cool idea I'd never run such a short run before and over the course of

00:37:32.560 I think a few weeks I realized that and I kept doing this I thought that was a really good circuit

00:37:37.200 breaker for writing and over the course of a few weeks I thought gee when I finish this PhD when I

00:37:42.960 hand this sucker in I'm going to run a marathon around my block and I'm going to do all the things

00:37:48.060 outside that I've been wanting to do for years whilst writing this PhD so finish off barn projects 0.98

00:37:53.440 finish off all the little niggling housework things that I've been meaning to do that are very easy 1.00

00:37:57.820 that you just don't do because they're right under your nose and so so was born the film and it's

00:38:03.620 probably my most successful idea where I thought I'm going to run around the block and for the 50

00:38:08.720 minutes each hour that I'm not running around the block I'm going to do all of these jobs I've been

00:38:12.620 meaning to do and I filmed it or we filmed it and it was a real great success it was a great film

00:38:17.400 so what'd you get done that day I had about 50 things written on an old bit of white laminex

00:38:22.860 a bit of kitchen shelving and I got done about 30 odd jobs and it was everything from

00:38:28.300 painting the fence with old sump oil to making the blanks of two paddles I made a table

00:38:35.420 pruned the trees did some lawns fixed a whole bunch of things I've been meaning to fix

00:38:41.280 cooked up some some great food for me and the crew and just it was a rolling list of things to do

00:38:48.120 that was sort of endless it was really great and and you know in the depth of the night I didn't

00:38:53.020 feel like doing things that required a whole lot of brain matter so I'd just do pretty basic things

00:38:57.420 like doing the lawns or pruning the the fruit trees so it was great it was a really eclectic

00:39:03.320 diverse day where it was I was knackered at the end of it well and you also said in the book you

00:39:08.120 mentioned that that that that video or that adventure you did inspired a lot of your viewers

00:39:13.200 like you had people with cerebral palsy doing their version of mile an hour like getting a lot done

00:39:18.140 while you know walking and doing something for a mile after they do that task yeah what it was

00:39:25.000 Brett was and I've since kind of stumbled upon this what made that idea so successful I suppose one I did

00:39:32.840 it with a sense of fun two it's not overly skill orientated or I didn't have you don't have to be

00:39:38.520 a great runner to do it and what those two things combined allow is a repeatable stunt people can

00:39:45.760 now do it themselves they can do it in their own way in their own house at their own pace whatever

00:39:51.340 they want to do and they don't have to do a full marathon they could do a half or a 10k or whatever

00:39:55.140 and just do a few things in between and what a great concept and so what it was was a repeatable

00:40:00.820 thing to do and then so people copied it yeah and I think that's another just a great example of how

00:40:07.440 you can turn you know anything into an adventure whether it's a daily routine or like a DIY project

00:40:13.080 or your commute by just mixing up how you approach it and by adding you know some additional challenge

00:40:19.380 to it and just being creative well this has been a great conversation Bo where can people go to learn

00:40:24.360 more about your work well YouTube's really good just type in Bo Miles YouTube but otherwise my website

00:40:29.640 will steer you in all sorts of directions so BoMiles.com it's got my book up there and all

00:40:34.120 the film links and a bit of bio about me and a bit of you know whatever else on there and then but

00:40:39.940 YouTube yeah YouTube's gold so Boism's on Insta if you want to jump on Insta I do some Insta stuff and

00:40:45.760 I need to do more I need to be more a social beast but I'm so busy making content that I sometimes forget

00:40:51.260 about the socials but yeah Boism's on Insta Bo Miles YouTube and BoMiles.com all right well Bo Miles thanks

00:40:57.260 for your time it's been a pleasure thanks Brad it's been excellent and I wish you well in Oklahoma

00:41:01.540 mate thank you my guest name is Bo Miles he's the author of the book Backyard Adventure it's

00:41:06.260 available on Amazon.com and bookstores everywhere also make sure to check out Bo's YouTube channel

00:41:10.240 just search Bo Miles on YouTube his videos are really well done a lot of fun to watch and check

00:41:15.160 out our show notes at aum.is slash backyard adventure where you find links to resources

00:41:18.620 where we delve deeper into this topic well that wraps up another edition of the aum podcast make

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The Art of Manliness - March 28, 2022

Become a Backyard Adventurer

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