Travel Grit

Long-haul trucker Angela Wood drove a covered wagon 4,500 miles across America. Her team was an unlikely match. Renegade was a half-blind paint who disliked people and work but never once refused her. Starbuck was a rescue horse found starved to 250 pounds, so weak that four women carried him to the trailer on a tarp. Shotzi was a three-pound puppy Angela pulled off death row at a kill shelter.

Angela set out from Liberty, Kentucky and headed east to the Atlantic at Sunset Beach, North Carolina. Then she turned west and drove all the way to the Pacific. The whole trip took 15 months.

On the road, Angela's wagon sank so deep in Arkansas gumbo mud that it took a backhoe to pull it out. A runaway in Asheville scalped her and put Shotzi in the pound on Thanksgiving Eve. A rattlesnake struck Renegade on the Oregon Trail. When Renegade was injured 175 miles from the finish, Starbuck carried her alone into the Pacific at Bodega Bay.

In this conversation, Angela talks about growing up wild in the mountains of Idaho, gentling horses instead of breaking them, the strangers who fed her nearly every mile and the trip's mission of raising money for No Kid Hungry. She also explains why she says, "If you wait for perfect, you're never gonna do it."

Guest: Angela Wood — Long-haul trucker who drove a covered wagon 4,500 miles coast to coast

Links: https://challengeamericaequinetrek.wordpress.com/

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• (00:00) - Swallowed by Arkansas mud

Thies Matzen and his wife Kicki Ericson have sailed Wanderer III — the same 30-foot wooden sloop that legendary cruising sailors Eric and Susan Hiscock wrote about — more than 150,000 bluewater miles, much of it in the Southern Ocean. This includes two years overwintering at South Georgia Island under brutal conditions and a voyage to Antarctica aboard the smallest traditionally planked wooden boat to ever sail there. Along the way they won the Blue Water Award from the Cruising Club of America, one of the most prestigious honors in offshore sailing. In this episode, Thies talks about life aboard one of the most storied small boats in sailing history, navigating by sextant and stars in the Southern Ocean, what the ancient Polynesian navigators taught him about finding your place in the world, and why a small boat keeps the world big.

Guest: Thies Matzen — Sailor, shipwright, and offshore voyager who has spent decades aboard Wanderer III navigating the Southern Ocean by sextant and stars.
Links: [Guest website] Chapters: People: Creators & Guests

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

Sven Yrvind was beaten by his teachers, locked up for desertion and learned the value of books from a psychopath. Then he built a boat in his mother's basement and sailed into legend. 
In this Travel Grit episode, the legendary Swedish sailor and boat builder talks about crossing the Atlantic in his self-built twenty-foot Bris, teaching navigation to islanders on Tristan da Cunha, rounding Cape Horn solo in winter, and why at eighty-six he's still building boats and planning his next ocean passage.[Episode description goes here]

Guest: [Sven Yrvind — Swedish sailor, boat builder, and writer who has spent his life crossing oceans solo in tiny boats of his own construction and design.

Links:
Yrvind.com
YouTube Sven Yrvind

People:

Click here to view the episode transcript.

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

Sea G Rhydr bought her horse for a dollar. Then she rode him 5,000 miles across America.

Sea started her voyage in Northern California in the fall of 2011 with two imperfect horses, a diamond hitch she'd learned the night before, and a canvas tablecloth painted with fairies and mushrooms for a ground cloth. Twenty-five months later she rode into Minot, Maine — bridle-less, flag in hand, walking pneumonia — to lead a parade honoring the long rider who had inspired her whole journey.
It's a miracle she and her mounts completed her journey. Her pack pony colicked in the wilderness with no vet and no Banamine. A fistula on her horse's withers put the trip on hold for two and a half months. She survived six degrees in the Mojave with hand warmers stuffed in her socks and house wrap for insulation. She crossed the Mojave with a borrowed truck and a bucket on a rope thrown over a fence into a canal.

In this conversation, Sea talks about forging an unbreakable bond with a horse nobody else wanted, the songs she sang to keep them both calm on a trail above a thousand-foot drop, and the one thing that turned the whole trip around when everything else stopped working: having the right story to tell.

Guest: Sea G Rhydr — long rider and author who completed a 5,000-mile continuous saddle voyage from Northern California to Minot, Maine, finishing the first Mesannie Wilkins Memorial Ride.
Q&A with Sea G Rhydr: Driving a Wagon Through America

Links: FreeRangeRodeo.com / YouTube Hello Neighbor

Chapters:

People: Creators & Guests

Click here to view the episode transcript.

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

At 62 years old, Hugo Vihlen sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in Father's Day—a boat just 5 feet 4 inches long. He hand-steered through hurricanes, ate quarter rations, and lost a kidney somewhere between Newfoundland and England. His record still stands 30+ years later.

This is Hugo's second Atlantic crossing. In 1968, he sailed April Fool, a 6-foot sailboat, from Casablanca to Florida in 85 days. But the Coast Guard towed him in 25 miles from shore. That "rescue" ate at him for 25 years.

So at 62, Hugo built Father's Day in his garage, cut 2 inches off the bow to beat his rival Tom McNally, defied the Coast Guard, and sailed from Newfoundland to England in 105 days. He navigated by sextant, slept in the fetal position, and hand-steered most of the voyage.

In this conversation, Hugo talks about growing up poor in Depression-era Florida, overcoming his fear of rattlesnakes, becoming a Marine Corps pilot, building boats from Popular Mechanics plans, and what it takes to be a positive thinker when you're sailing a bathtub across the Atlantic Ocean.

Guest: Hugo Vihlen — Holds the world record for sailing the smallest boat across the Atlantic Ocean (5' 4"), former Delta Airlines pilot, U.S. Marine Corps veteran

Links:

• April Fool: How I Sailed from Casablanca to Florida in a Six-Foot Boat (Amazon)
• The Stormy Voyage of Father's Day (Amazon)

Chapters:

People: Creators & Guests

Click here to view the episode transcript.

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

Long Rider Gin Szagola and her wild Snowy Mountain Brumby, Fable, became the first person and horse to cross Australia coast to coast with no support vehicle or chase crew—4,400 kilometers over eight months.

In this conversation, Gin shares the complete story: training a recently wild horse in just 90 days, crossing 1,000 miles of Nullarbor desert with volunteer-organized supply caches, dealing with road trains at 80mph, camping roadside 85% of the time, and what it's really like to live with your horse 24/7.

Before Australia, Gin walked across America at age 18—failed after 4 days, went home, then succeeded on her second attempt. She's now working in Western Australia and raising funds to bring Fable home to the United States.

WHAT'S COVERED:

- Training a wild brumby in 90 days (5:50)

- Road trains and triple-length trucks (16:39)

- The Nullarbor: 1,000 miles of desert (28:29)

- Holes in a boat: Mental health on the road (46:02)

- Living 24/7 with your horse (50:15)

- Failed at 18, grateful for it now (1:02:31)

- Bringing Fable home: $20,000 journey (1:09:57)

- Why wild horses matter (1:19:26)

More about Gin:

Website: ginandfaith.com

GoFundMe: Search "Help Bring Fable Home"

Facebook: Gin and Fable

More podcasts, articles and art for and by ramblers, roamers and free spirits at TravelGrit.com

Click here to view the episode transcript.

This is the only audio interview available on the internet with anyone who rode in the 1976 Great American Horse Race—the longest horse race in history. As the 50th anniversary approaches, this conversation preserves Tom Sites' voice and the incredible story of the Great American Horse Race of 1976.

In 1976, Tom Sites—a Vietnam veteran haunted by severed heads and searching for peace—walked into a tack shop and bought a runaway horse named Jose Dante for $200. Six months later, he rode Jose 1,966 miles across America in the Great American Horse Race with just $500, no crew, and a single set of horseshoes that lasted 1,000 miles. Through small, consistent, dedicated steps across 13 states, Tom discovered what he couldn't find after the war: peace, purpose, and a partnership that would change his life forever.

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Reza Baluchi is attempting the impossible: running 21,000 miles across the world's oceans in a human-powered vessel called a hydropod — a 12-foot wheel he powers by running inside like a hamster wheel.

Reza calls in from Taiwan at midnight, making final preparations for his fifth-generation hydropod. He plans to launch in December, heading south through the South China Sea, then west through the Red Sea and Mediterranean, before crossing the Atlantic back to America.

This isn't his first attempt. The U.S. Coast Guard has stopped him multiple times, damaged one of his hydropods, arrested him, and sent him to a mental hospital. Now he's launching from Asia — beyond their jurisdiction.

Born in Iran, Reza was tortured and imprisoned for 18 months before escaping as a young cyclist. He's since run 150,000 miles across continents. At 52, after being stopped, arrested, and told his dream is impossible, he's ready to push his hydropod into the Pacific and start running.

"If you have a dream, you must follow your dream. Dream no coming after you."

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.
Click here to watch a video of this episode.

Webb Chiles has sailed around the world six times and is the first American to sail alone around Cape Horn — one of the most dangerous stretches of water on earth. He's also completed one of the longest open boat journeys in modern times, sailing a 19-foot open sailboat across the Pacific Ocean and beyond.

In this conversation, Webb talks about survival, resilience, and what keeps him going after a lifetime of pushing into the unknown. At 83, he still does his age in pushups every day.

For more stories of long riders, sailors, ramblers, adventurers, and dreamers finding their way, visit TravelGrit.com.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.