The Shorts — Two Wheels to Anywhere
Two Wheels to Anywhere
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“We opened my aunt’s basement door and walked into the dusty room. Among cardboard boxes and carpentry tools stood a bright red bicycle. The frame had a few patches of rust. The components looked clunky and the gears grated roughly when I spun the pedals. It had no seat post or saddle. It was unrideable, but it had character,” remembers Graeme Lee Rowlands. He had a few months before he would move from Oakland, CA to start college in Squamish, BC. And he had decided that he would make the 1000-mile trip on a bicycle that he would build himself. He didn’t know anything about building a bike, nor had he ever ridden more than 40-miles in a day. But he was determined.
Music: A Place I Know by MC Cullah • Title of Photograph Filled With Dread in Los Angeles by Chuck Hoffman • Intro by Angie and the Carwrecks • Wake Me Up by Publish the Quest • Animal by The British IBM
Learn more about our friends from Publish the Quest in the “Sodade” episode.
Other tracks provided by Mevio’s Music Alley and Free Music Archive.
The Shorts — Blind Date with the Desert
Blind Date with the Desert
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Four years later, Hilary and the desert got a second chance at their botched first encounter. Over the past ten years, they have developed a relationship with one another. Now, she has to learn how to share her place with all of the other people who have had their hearts stolen by the landscape of juniper trees and red and orange sandstone.
You can find more of Hilary’s writing at thegription.com
Music: Beelzebub by Black Pistol Fire • Stay Cool In The Dark In The Summer by Battery Life • Walk by Night by Ketsa • Auroras by John Berry • Mindless Radio by Connect and FTdub • Orater General by The King in Yellow • Tightrope Walker by Jason Tyler Burton
Tracks provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, Free Music Archive and Jason Tyler Burton.
The Threshold Moment
The Threshold Moment
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When Kevin Fedarko stepped through the door of the O.A.R.S. boathouse in Flagstaff, AZ, he didn’t realize he had crossed a figurative threshold as well as a literal one. Kevin had planned on rafting the Grand Canyon for a wilderness medicine course. Then, he planned to go back to his life as a successful freelance writer. But what he saw in that warehouse and in that first week on the Colorado River left him desperate to find a way to keep coming back. Kevin spent the next smelly, humiliating, beautiful and life-altering decade of his life developing a relationship with the Grand Canyon, writing about the Grand Canyon, and, ultimately, fighting to protect it.
To learn more about the current threats to the Grand Canyon and how you can help, visit Save the Confluence and Grand Canyon Trust.
You can purchase Kevin’s book, The Emerald Mile, here.
Brendan Leonard wrote and narrated this episode. You can find more of his work at Semi-Rad.com.
Music: Moving On by Andrew Ferris • Bad to the Bone by Finn • Existential by Gordon Bell • Shit Outta Luck by Life Has Teeth • Clover by Little Glass Men • A Garden Grows by Jason Tyler Burton
Music provided by Mevio’s Music Alley, Free Music Archive, Diaries‘ listener Jason Tyler Burton.
Additional scoring by Amy Stolzenbach.
The Shorts — The Swallow and the Anchor
The Swallow and the Anchor
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Check out “Going Into the Wild,” another essay Joe wrote on hitchhiking–but this time thumbing cars not boats, through Interior Alaska.
Music: Drop of Water In the Ocean by Broke for Free • In This Minute by A Single Voice • If the Battersea Power Station Could Fly by A Single Voice • We Wish You a Merry Christmas by United States Marine Band • Sailor’s Lament by Jason Shaw
Tracks provided by Mevio’s Music Alley and Free Music Archive.
El Avalanchisto
El Avalanchisto
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When Matt McKee first heard about the position forecasting avalanches for Minera Pimenton, a gold mine in the Chilean Andes, it sounded like the snow geek’s dream job. But mere hours after his plane touched down in Santiago, Matt started getting hints that maybe he had walked into a situation that more closely resembled a nightmare: a den of avalanche paths, a mine full of workers who didn’t believe in avalanches and a country that looked for someone to blame if things went wrong. Today, we bring you Matt’s story of trying to make it out alive.
You can read Matt’s unabridged version of the story from the 2008 International Snow Science Workshop here.
Music: Young Blood by Black Pistol Fire • mountain_soul_fire by woodrowgerber • Letters Home by emFrik • The Undefeated by Vienna Ditto • Dark Spots by A Crooked Pulse
Tracks provided by Mevio’s Music Alley and Free Music Archive. Additional music composed by our talented friend, Amy Stolzenbach.
