A friend came through town and offered to take me on a wilderness adventure in the mountains of Colorado for a few weeks. --- DONATE: CONTACT: SUBSCRIBE: GEAR LIST: NOTICE: --- ▶ Watch on 3speak.tv
Transcript
Hey everyone, Kellen here, and in this video, I'm coming to you from a completely new location. This is actually a completely different state from where I was in last time I spoke with you. Basically, it got towards the end of the gardening season, and, you know, bear, like, ate all my corn, and there wasn't really much to do that I needed to do where I was anymore, so... A friend was coming through town and heading up into Colorado and said, why don't you come with me? We'll go camping for a few weeks. And I said, that sounds great. I could really use that. So anyways, we are hundreds of miles away from where I was, and now I'm in the middle of nowhere. So I want to just show you, I brought my backpacking bike, which I've shown you a few videos ago, well, several videos ago. and I'm basically just trying to get back to a very minimalistic lifestyle for a little while and, you know, actually put my gear to the test again and maybe optimize beyond that, okay? So anyways, I'm just going to show you my camp setup as a little teaser because I think I'm going to be making probably at least a video a day again. I used to do that back in the day. But now I've got a lot to actually make content about now that I'm out here. So anyways, I'll just give you a teaser of the type of stuff I'm going to be talking about. So first of all, I just want to show you the landscape here. There's basically no one out here but us. There's a stream down there. That's where I get my water. There's also fish there. and I'm camped over in those trees behind that bush. Here's my folding solar panel, absorbing the morning sun. I'll tell you more about this guy. I had one before that's listed on my website still, but this one works much better. It's leaned up against my bike helmet, and it's charging this power bank here, and the power bank is also charging my phone at the same time. This is working pretty well. And over here we've got where I slept last night. This is my sleeping bag drying out in a tree. This is my poncho. And in here. Got an inflatable pillow. I got some bear spray. I've got a military bivvy. And I've got a military bivie. And I went back to my old sleeping mat just because it's much more durable. But I'll talk about all this stuff later. And then I got my backpacking bike here, which can carry most of my stuff. I do have to carry a little bit in my backpack, which is leaning up against it. But ideally, you don't want to be carrying much, or even wearing a backpack at all while you're riding. So I'm trying to work on minimalizing. So I see this... being out here basically as a time for me, it's like a, you know, a junction point, you know, from here in my life, I've been where I was for a while, and, you know, I could stay there, or I could, you know, just kind of commit myself to living like this, like basically full time, or finding another place to farm. And what I'm leaning towards is I like farming a lot, but I also like having time to do this. It seems like coming out like in maybe mid-September or maybe even October and just living like this for half of the year and even like going places that are warm during the winter like Arizona and stuff. And then once it starts to get to be planning season, having a place to go to farm for six months, that seems like the best compromise for me. So that's probably what I'm going to end up doing. So currently, I have, I'm here with my friend, you know, he has a van that he lives in, his van has Starlink, it has propane heat, it has diesel heater, it has a wood stove, you know, he's super set up to, you know, live like this, and this is what he does full time. So for me, I mean, back when I was hanging out with Chad a few years ago, he, and we were traveling around in his van, I guess it was a truck at the time, or what was it, I can't remember, anyways, We were traveling around and he's like, you know, people like what I'm doing, what Chad's doing, living in this vehicle, and what I'm doing at the time was just in my backpack. It's like, it's like a match made in heaven. And really it is because, you know, if I was out here all by myself, you know, I wouldn't have internet. You know, if something happened to me, I wouldn't have, you know, emergent, you know, someone to talk to, you know, to help get me somewhere, you know. and, you know, I might be really far from town, and so if I needed to get supplies, I would have to go, I would have to travel a long way all by myself, on foot, or on my bike, and then once I get there, you know, I'd have to lock my bike up and hope it doesn't get stolen while I'm going in the grocery store, or if I'm on foot, I can't go in with my backpack, right? They won't, most stores will not let you in if you're carrying this big backpackers backpack, because I think you're going to stuff food and stuff in there, so... Basically, having someone with me solves a lot of different problems. So, I could see this as being something that becomes, you know, a regular part of my life is just having people that I travel with. Also, another cool thing is where we are is very close, you know, I could bike into the Continental Divide Mountain Biking Trail in about 20 minutes. I could get there, right? So this trail goes from Mexico to Canada and actually well up into Canada. And I think it's the longest or one of the longest biking trails in the entire world. And like the most famous bikepacking race occurs every year on this trail. So I, for a long time, fantasized about basically living on the trail because the trail goes through towns and all these towns are kind of set up to accommodate people who are bikepacking, right? So anyways, being here will help me, you know, kind of see if that fantasy is something that I actually want to do, and also see if I can handle it, because I was biking a little bit up these, where I am right now, the hills are extremely steep, like, much deeper than the Continental Divide Mountain Biking Trail. But I was, you know, worn out very quickly. And, you know, we also were, you know, much, like, 9,000 feet or something like that, and where I was, was, like, 6 ,000 feet for the last five years or something like that. So it's like, uh, there's less oxygen up here, so that might be part of it. So anyways, I'm going to focus on getting into shape, maybe, you know, doing some exploring on my own, like venturing away from the person that I'm traveling here with for days at a time and then meeting up back with them and just kind of see how I feel about all this. So it's kind of an experiment. I want to take you guys along with it. I did want to mention it is... It's a little bit nerve-wracking because neither me or the person I'm traveling with have very much in the way of funds. And so if something happens, like his car, yesterday, we got, we ran a ground on a rock, and I had to climb under the van and dig out this giant rock and pull it out with a rope. And, you know, we could have been stuck there, and there's no way that we could have afforded to have someone come and save us. You know what I mean? or if we run out of gas, or if we run out of food because we don't have supplies, you know, we're pretty much screwed. And so basically I wanted to say, you know, this would be a time if you're, you know, appreciative of my videos and you want to help me continue to make more videos like this, then a donation would be extremely helpful. This is like a really good time where that could go to use and it would make me feel less paranoid. That's something horrible is going to happen. So anyways, currently at my website, you just go to calend.org slash gift, and the way I prefer is you send me cryptocurrency like Bitcoin or preferably Monero. And because I can get, you know, I can buy, I can buy gas cards. I can buy gift cards to like Walmart or even to an auto parts store if we need to replace them. part on his van. So there's a lot that I can do with cryptocurrency. So that's preferred. The other donation option I have on there for people who use US dollars or something like that, which I don't use banks. I haven't swiped or used any debit card or credit card for probably like five or six years at this point. So there's not really any way for you to send me that kind of money. But I'm going to look into seeing if there's a way, there seems like there must be a website or an app somewhere where people who just use normal money can use that and put in like an address to Bitcoin or Monaro, and the system will just convert that US dollars and just send it to them. And the person will not have to know anything about Bitcoin or Monaro. So maybe that already exists. If you know that already exists, then please let me know because I'd like to make that an option because I know there's a lot of people who you know, want to donate, but, you know, there's not really very many good options for them to do that. So, anyways, if you know about that, or if there aren't any, some of you out there are playing around with AI or you already programmers are familiar with cryptocurrency, maybe you could make something like that, and then let me know about it. So anyway, so I plan on making at least a video a day, so I'll see you guys tomorrow.