Interviewed on Roadtrip Nation
The snow has finally started to stick to the ground
at my house in Maine, a brisk reminder to finish sealing things up for
winter.
With so much of this year focused on getting
my new business going, the
sale of OceanPlanet, etc...I had completely forgotten about an interview that
I had done for Season 6 of "Roadtrip Nation".
Roadtrip Nation is a reality show where young
adults do a long trip together to meet interesting and inspiational people
from various walks of life. The travelers contact the folks they would
like to talk to, and arrange to meet & interview them. Their
goal is to hopefully find some direction about what to do and where to
head with their lives.
When I was called by a young
Australian, Su-Yin, who told me they wanted to meet as part of
their adventure, I wasn't sure if the whole thing was real...I don't have a
television and so had never seen the show. But I said "ok" and then
promptly forgot about it. Much to my surprise, a few months later Su-Yin
called again to say they were approaching Portland at the end of their
cross-country trip. They were finally ready to meet and do the interview
before heading back home. We met on Phin & Abbot Sprague's beautiful
schooner "Lion's Whelp" at Portland Yacht Services.
Before the interview, I turned the tables a
little and asked a lot of questions of Su-Yin, Camilla and Mariana to get an
idea of what they were doing and what they were looking for. I can't
remember much of what was discussed (this was months ago), but in the subsequent interview I seem
to discourage them from getting into solo ocean racing...;-)
It is interesting to watch and hear myself
talk about my own lessons from doing something so incredibly
difficult as the Vendee. What is clear to me now is that
the little things in life matter every bit as much as the "big" ones. With
OceanPlanet gone, I get enormous enjoyment from things like rebuilding my own
bicycles, finishing well in a tough bike race, or working on restoring my
1987 Honda CRX-HF car (50+ mpg!). Also a highlight of my current
life is playing music with my girlfriend Rosalea and other friends. In my
spare time (ha) I'm working on a new guitar piece that actually came to me
in a dream. That's right...I dreamed I was playing a new tune for friends,
trying to figure it out on the spot for them, and when I woke up I actually
remembered what I was trying to do. Weird, eh?
Anyway, shoveling the snow off the driveway also
makes me think about energy efficiency. I've been trying to figure out why
I've been so attracted lately to the new lightweight Genasun & RaceCell
lithium batteries and marine charging systems...and now I realize that it's
for much the same reasons I like high-performance bikes so much. It's all
about doing more with less. On a boat, using highly efficient batteries
and charging means less weight, less space taken up by systems, less fuel
burned, less time running generators, etc. Of course saving weight usually
costs more money, however over the long run it can often pay off with fuel
savings, longer generator life, simply the quality of the on-board
experience.
It may be too late to sign up but I'm teaching
another advanced
rigging class on Dec. 8 & 9 in Thomaston, ME...it's always fun to share
what I've learned over all these years... |
)