Become a Backyard Adventurer
Episode Stats
Summary
In this episode of the Art of Manliness podcast, I'm joined by Australian filmmaker and author of The Backyard Adventurer, Bo Miles, who talks about his adventures in the local area and how you don't actually have to wait until your next big trip to go far afield to mix things up and have that adventure be found right where you are in your ordinary routines.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast a lot of people
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feel like they've seen and done everything there is to see and do in their local area
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the board of their daily routine and contemplate going off on some grand adventure in an exotic
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locale my guests would say that you don't actually have to wait until your next big trip
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they'll go far afield to mix things up and that adventure be found right where you are
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in your ordinary routines the everyday landscape of your life and even diy projects if you decide
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to approach them in a different way his name is bo miles he's an australian filmmaker who documents
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his own small-scale adventures on youtube as well as the author of the backyard adventurer today on
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the show bo shares his experiments and proving anything can be fused with the challenge intrigue
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and fun witch mark adventure if you add in some intentional risk difficulty and simple what the
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heck quirkiness he tells about some of the close to home adventures he's executed including walking
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and kayaking his 90 kilometer commute to work reconnecting an old long closed down rail line
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by running its often hidden overgrown path with a shovel in his hand making a paddle with scavenged
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wood we then talk about how he created a gastronomical adventure for himself by eating his body weight
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and beans even turned tackling his to-do list into an adventure by pairing the crossing off of its
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entries with running a marathon in 24 hours along the way bo shares how backyard adventures help you
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better get to know your local area how he deals with the police who sometimes check in on what he's up to
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and how the next time you get some odd idea you gotta just go for it mate out of the show's over
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check out our show notes at aom.is slash backyard adventure bo joins you now via clearcast.io
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bo miles welcome to the show thanks for having me man so you uh you're an interesting guy you make
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youtube videos of yourself going on these planning and executing these crazy close to home adventures
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but before that you were a college professor so i'm curious how did you shift from college professor to
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a guy who's documenting the adventures he's going on on youtube well in truth i never really stopped doing
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the filmmaking gig when i was at the university at monash and so it was always kind of a a hobby that
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crept into being more than a hobby and luckily i got made redundant so i didn't really get fired but i
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suppose i got fired and that made my choice clear i'm just going to go off and be a filmmaker full
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time which was kind of liberating to be honest after the shock of not having a solid paycheck for
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a few days i thought you know what this is the best thing that's ever happened to me so away i went
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and look at this part spread of my job and as an outdoor educator that i really miss i miss guiding
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i miss students i miss going to the tea room with a whole bunch of workmates and having a cup of tea in
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the morning i think that was really it was one of the best parts of my day but you know i've got a
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small family now and a great little business working with a great colleague so i've landed
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with my bum in honey and life's good mate and i'm just going to keep making films so you yeah you were
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a professor of outdoor education so you've you've basically you've been doing outdoor stuff for a lot
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of your life correct yeah i left school at the age of well 18 i was a school leaver and instead of
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going to university i did an outdoor education traineeship and then went to university and so
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i was able to work all through university as a guide and as a builder part-time so they were my
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two kind of work incomes and making pizzas on the side so i had a few streams of income through
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university but it was always sort of outdoor related and it sort of took off from there and so
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while you were a professor doing outdoor education you started making these videos of you just doing
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stuff that you just think is normal right like you just you know building things from scrap wood
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just doing crazy stuff but what what's what i like about what you do is the adventures you do are close
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to home you're not going up mount everest you're not doing the typical like going to patagonia or
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whatever why do you think it's important for people because it seems like what you're trying to
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do you're trying to help people broaden their their definition of what an adventure is yeah look i've
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never sat down and thought about it brett in a sense of let's make a list of what i'm really
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trying to do is this so-called backyard adventurer because heck you know people have been doing
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backyard stuff and localized forms of of anything and everything forever i suppose my point of
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difference is is that i'm doing it as a storyteller but i'm really doing it because one it serves a
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practical purpose of being closer to home and more bang for buck i'm really into this whole more bang
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for buck thing because we all have 168 hours a week and i'd rather not spend them on a plane or in a
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car so why not do as much as i possibly can from my doorstep but secondly too the big thing that's
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kind of hit me in this sort of emerging middle age is that i want to learn more about my local area
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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
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go far from your doorstep or from your own property to realize that man every little creek and alleyway and
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old train line and edge of town these are all super interesting places that have something to offer
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and if you create some sort of quirky idea around a so-called adventure then you can go out and you
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can you can challenge the heck out of yourself you can find out cool stuff and you can have a bloody
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good fun doing it you know and that's that's a big three in my book if you can check those three
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off challenge intrigue and fun all in one hit then boom you know you've got yourself a combo and i love it
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so is that your definition of venture if you have that challenge intrigue and fun is that what
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needs to be yeah maybe i think i think i might have just come up with a big three that might be
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my next book mate but um yeah i think so if you if those three things are percolating through your
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system as you're traveling on that particular day then yep ripper you know you've you've signed off on
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this really cool day and it's i mean what a great thing imagine going to your regular work day and have
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all of those three things checked off and at my time at a university i would virtually never sign off all
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of those three things on any given day unless i was in the field so which was only 50 days each year
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in the end and the rest of it i'm behind a computer screen like anyone else so i get to live and die
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by my own sort of it more as a filmmaker instead of being stuck up in a university and one thing i
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noticed that you you did with a lot of your adventures your backyard adventures that you would
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do is that you would you would increase the adventure level by increasing the risk by maybe not
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planning or preparing as much as maybe you should have right so i'm gonna we'll talk about something
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like you'd be like well i'm gonna walk to work and we'll talk about what that looked like instead of
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packing a whole bunch of stuff it was like well what can i do with just the bare minimum and that
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increased the intrigue factor significantly totally mate yeah so it's all about fiddling with your
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ingredients and to come up with kind of a rule book of what you do and that can make you back out
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adventuring as hard as those sort of everest things that you're talking about and look that's not
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watering down everest everest is hard but but so is going down your old boyhood river if you do it
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with really basic fundamentals it's it was that was hard i spent four days going down this river that
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sort of that tracks through my entire history and it was it was a freaking hard four days it was really
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tricky and so yeah i think the rule book thing is really important because walking off to work
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for you know two days with all the bells and whistles in a fancy backpack and you're instantly
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doing kind of an underwhelming bushwalk then or a trek or a hike whereas if you don't take anything
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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
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got to be switched on in a particular way otherwise you're going to go thirsty and hungry and have a
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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
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have a really insightful fun challenging time all right let's talk about that that adventure you
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want where you walked to work from home now a lot of people they walk to work from home but how is
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your walk different yeah well i um this is when i commuted right mate so this is this is why i'm
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living the good life now i'm not commuting anywhere i just come down the road to my mate's studio but i
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used to drive 80 kilometers a day one way so 160 kilometers a day or 100 miles a day i'd drive my old
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ute to the university and back and it was mostly country roads and i and i look i quite enjoyed the
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drive it was a good way to sort of get into the day and unwind at the end of it and listen to the
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radio and whatnot listen to the watch the seasons go by but it's a long time to spend in the car you
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know i was still doing that at least three days a week so anywhere between six and ten hours a week
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i was in my old ute driving across the country land to get to the university and i remember one day
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thinking gee i kind of know these these grounds i know my commute really well i'd stop on apple trees
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on the side of the road and get fuel sometimes and a coffee at a coffee van at the airport and
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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
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meters from the roadside so yeah i decided to walk to the university and away i went and it took a few
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days and i i had nothing with me other than the clothes on my back i didn't even wear shoes the first time
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i did it which was far more challenging than i thought and i had to put on a spare pair at eight
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kilometers with the cameraman yeah and so i just ate whatever i found on the side of the road which
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i thought would be far more plentiful i thought people would be throwing out more you know burgers
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and half-eaten bananas and whatever and it just was nothing you know i've run forever and i'm always
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finding food on the side of the road that people have thrown out but there was nothing and roadside
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foraging is pretty minimal too you know there was a few clover leaves and rose bushes and fiddleheads and
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little things with that are barely barely have a calorie to them so i was always after something
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that was disused or thrown out by humans and it was it was tough i was freaking hungry but um
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yeah two days later i i turned up to work pretty disheveled and on one occasion i just you know got
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to work and had a cup of tea and thought wow that was it and then i had to drive home again and the
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other one i had to give a lecture so it was an excellent experience of i kind of wanted to give my
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students a total window into the other side of an adventure as raw as it can be so i walked in and
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i'm stinking up the heart to high heaven and dehydrated and away i go so it was fascinating
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so it took you two days so how many how many miles a day were you doing uh doing about 30 miles a day
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so um just ticking along you know just it was super easy flat walking it was on a highway so it's the
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easiest kind of walking a human can do basically at sea level along the side of a highway but
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what it doesn't really and and what the film only does half a job of showing is just how
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noisy and how kind of deadened the world is via a highway you know one there's road kill everywhere
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but two you can't your senses don't work like they would usually because of the road noise road noise
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is really oppressive and so you just have this hundred decibels of road noise constantly coming
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at you so i put carpet insulation in my ears and tried to hum songs and there would be these
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lovely brief moments of silence where there's not a car for 20 seconds and you'd and you'd really
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realize it and you'd hear a bird song or you'd hear a distant farmer or a distant something and it was
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quite unique so it was yeah it was it was a hell of an experience i i slept by a petrol station in the
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blackberries in the gorse you know this off to the side where no one was going to come looking for me
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other than potentially males having a leak in the middle of the night and yeah i got up sparrows the
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next morning and walked into work so your food was your whatever you could find what about water
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what do you do about water oh it's just opportunistic mate i'd drink water out of cow troughs or
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whatever water i could find in the on the side of the road and and the big one which people are
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disgusted by is old coke bottles and pepsi cans or whatever whatever was a half drunk bottle of coke or
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something i'd drink the rest in for some weird way i i trusted carbonic acid as being so evil that i
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thought oh it's not going to have any pathogens in it i'll just drink i'll just drink someone's
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leftover coke and it was one it was calories and two i figured oh well maybe no no baddies are living in
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this water and it seemed to work so besides the the noise factor that you discovered you can't hear
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that when you're in your car right you don't know there's a lot of noise going on outside what else did
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you learn about your environment because that's that you said earlier that's one of the reasons
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why you want to do these backyard adventures see your local world in a different way what did you
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learn about your environment walking it instead of driving it well i mean what you're doing is so
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when you drive you generally you've got your your eyes out front and you sort of you scan the horizon
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and you just you're cruising along you might be on cruise control who knows generally when i'm
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driving that route i'm listening to the radio and i'm taking intermittent glimpses or or sort of
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sound bites of the outside world you're in this little bubble and we live in this little bubble
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and we get on with our world and we're often thinking about our to-do list and what's being
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said on the radio or what song you're listening to or what you had for breakfast you're very you're
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very much not in the place you're driving through i would say ever really you just have little
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glimmers of it and so walking is is kind of the opposite you can't help but to be very very present
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because um things are fairly abrasive i was constantly looking for things too so the fact
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that i didn't take any of my supplies with me meant i had to look for everything i looked for everything
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from a knife to water to food to shelter so i had to make my swag that night and so that took sort of
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a full day just to find the ingredients of to sleep in you know old duvets and carpet insulation
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and old bits of webbing and truck tires and all sorts of stuff to give me some sort of night sleep
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which was really cool i mean it means you're occupied and you can't help but to be very there
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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
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ruck challenge where you're you know you're hiking around in the middle of the night for 12 hours with a
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ruck and doing that experience that really helped me to get my bearings better about my town like i
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discovered things about how things are located that i otherwise would have wouldn't have known
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because i just i was driving by it but when you're walking it like you notice you somehow like it embeds
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in you more when you're walking the route instead of driving it's it's hard to explain i mean it's some
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sort of embodied cognition maybe i don't know well it makes sense doesn't it you know we're basically
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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
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serving a purpose a car is miraculous as is a plane because it gets us to where we're going pretty
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quick it's very utilitarian and so yeah when you're on foot you just you go back to this ancient form of
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thinking and being you know it's wayfaring purely because you just have to you have to find your way
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and even if it's very basic like a highway when you're finding things or when you're having to look
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around and you're still having to do road crossings and you're still getting beeped at by cars it's
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still very interactive of the journey and all of the ingredients along that passage so yeah i think
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it just makes sense that you just have to do more and see more and be more present because that's just
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the form of travel you're doing someone's listening to this and they think man i want to do that
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how would you recommend them going about it would you just be like all right just pick a distance and
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like it yeah kind of mate look it was fairly practical for me because i was going to work
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it's amazing how many people chimed in on after watching the film they say oh gee but didn't you
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get sacked from your job that you took so long to get to work and i think oh that's a very practical
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thing to think i think one of the days was a a weekend day so i was technically only sort of half a day
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work late but yeah it was it was uh look for i suck at recommending things brett because
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people have so many things to do in their own to-do list but you've got a i think a lot of
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people think weird things as well and think up quirky ideas but they just don't do them because
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their life is so busy around them or they they think that they'd be a kook or disallowed from their
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friendship group i don't know or they'd miss soccer practice that night i'm not sure but
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yeah next time you have a weird idea just try and you know try and do it and remove some of the
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layers that you might have probably put to those things you know don't take all of your all of the
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things that will make it easy just leave them at home and and you know what you're going to have
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an adventure because of it right you always bring a smartphone a cell phone to if you need a bell out
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for whatever reasons like that's like yeah turn the sucker off and put it as as far away as possible
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in the back pocket or or with someone that you trust or you leave it at the 20 mile mark whatever
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but um yeah try and have as few outs as possible force your own hand and so i often force my own
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hand and if i've got people included right so if i've got mitch along filming the event my my filming
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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
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then i've got a sense of pride to it as well i gotta i gotta see this sucker through because other
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people are involved now so yeah force your own hand i think that's a good good idea all right so
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after you walked to work you decided you're going to get there by kayak and this river decided to go
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down this is this has played an integral part in your your childhood correct i suppose so mate yeah
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look i don't think my boyhood river was like the mississippi was to huckleberry finn i don't think it
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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
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once every two weeks go fishing or swim in it and it was kind of the threshold of my childhood but it
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wasn't it wasn't a huge part of my life like other rivers are to some people but it was still always
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there and i always i know the tarragon you know it was it's it's it's the bottom of everyone's farm
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it's where all the water drains to and it's the one that is your closest to you that drains into the
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sea so it sort of becomes this it becomes your river becomes the river that you think is like every
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other person's river i suppose and so when i decided to paddle to work that was the river to
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go to that was my local water body that would get me to sea which is near where the university is and
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so yeah it became my transport route and away i went and this river i thought i knew man it just it
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just wasn't it wasn't like i thought i knew well it's interesting thing is that a lot of times you
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think well i'm gonna take a river people take waterways to get to places faster kayaking actually took
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longer than walking to work correct yeah well what it says is to i mean our roads are so efficient now
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and they go straight and they go through mountains or around mountains in the least with the least
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possible distance they're remarkable you're sitting on 60 or 70 miles an hour 100 k's the whole time
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because it's just it's this efficient line rivers don't work that way at all they're following the
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path of least resistance which is the low ground which is the longest route it's uh yeah so it the
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twists and turns in a river are full on and of course the river too it's where all our bad stuff
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ends up it's where all our noxious weeds end up it's where farmers dump their rubbish it's where
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it's where whole councils used to dump their rubbish a whole town would just come to the river and dump
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their stuff and so because it had you know big big holes big holes in the earth and so that's a good
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spot to fill it yes it took you yeah it took you four days to get down the river how much did you
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prepare for this like how much did you bring food water with you in your kayak yeah
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well you mentioned that before i sort of hybridized this one i took i took the bare minimum but i still
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took stuff including a bit of cash so i knew there was going to be a donut band along the way if it
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was open and i knew there was going to be a supermarket when i got to the sea or a little a
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little you know supermarket in a little town there so took a bit of cash i took a lot of bananas i took
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tins of beans i did basically didn't take any clothes as such i took a jacket and a spare set of socks but
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otherwise i basically didn't leave my wetsuit for four days which was gross but a real experiment and
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i heard it was doable so i thought i'm going to give that a go and then you slept just wherever
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you could find correct on the side of the river yeah yeah i had no set places i had kind of an
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inkling where i'd try and get to and they were all wrong so i ended up sleeping in spots that were just
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end of the day or when i got too cold or when it was raining or uh you know that made sense so
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yeah it was gross i mean that's such a liberating way to travel as well where you don't know where
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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
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be optimistic or cliche about you know i don't always want to be steve erwin but he was he was a
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really cool dude because he was always chipper about things because he isn't quite he wasn't quite
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sure what was going to happen and and that's a that's a nice sentiment to embrace well that's what
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makes life interesting i mean this is a kind of another way i think we can get philosophical here
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like i think one of the things that people in our modern world i think miss out on is that sense
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of not being in control i think we've kind of just controlled a lot of our what goes on in our life we
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can control the climate in our in our house we can control what stuff we consume we can control the
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people we interact with when you're kayaking you're kind of at the the whims of mother nature
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you don't have control and that that actually feels exciting yeah it was really excellent mate
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for exactly that reason i came from a university system that i was still working in at the time
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that is highly controlled and there are key performance indicators at every turn and you
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have your you know everything's graded every time you deliver a class the student can give you a mark
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out of one to five and in saying that too there was some great freedoms with my university life but
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for the most part you were still part of this big orchestrated objective machine and to do the
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opposite to that is to say stuff it i'm going to pack a little red kayak and i'm going to try and
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paddle to work and there are so many unknowns in that four-day endeavor which i didn't think would
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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
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almost a hundred percent i had to double everything which was really liberating we're going to take a
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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
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
00:37:53.440
finish off all the little niggling housework things that I've been meaning to do that are very easy
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
00:41:29.800
sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com where you find our podcast archives well as thousands
00:41:33.640
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