Start your day off the right way with a healthy dose of headlines from your pals here at THE ROCK FIGHT (an outdoor podcast that aims for the head)!
Today your humble rock fighting duo Colin True & Justin Housman tackle the following topics (with time codes):
What is Justin doing this weekend? Will he try indoor rock climbing? (01:03)
What foods can be described as a flavor and is Colin actually AI? (07:00)
Mail time! Responding to listener feedback on resoleable footwear and should THE ROCK FIGHT include hunting talk in future episodes. (14:50)
Crocs and Pringles launch a collaboration that is the latest and clearest sign that we are in the end times. (27:00)
The EXPLORE Act passes through the House of Representatives in part thanks to THE ROCK FIGHT. (31:08)
Send your suggestions for things Justin should do during future weekends to myrockfight@gmail.com
Head to www.rockfight.co and sign up for News From the Front, Rock Fight's weekly newsletter! Please follow and subscribe to THE ROCK FIGHT and give us a 5 star rating wherever you get your podcasts.
Have a question or comment for a future mailbag episode? Send it to myrockfight@gmail.com or send a message on Instagram or Threads.
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Episode Transcript
Colin (00:08):
Welcome to the Rock Fight where we speak our truth, slay sacred cows and sometimes agree to disagree. This is an outdoor podcast that aims for the head. I'm Colin. True and joining me today, he's still cleaning out kids' cups from under his wife's car seats. It's Justin Hausman.
Justin (00:25):
That's where they all went. That's where are all of our Kids' Cups America. Where are they?
Colin (00:32):
Do you have the grossest thing you've ever found in your car that was kid related?
Justin (00:36):
Not that jumps out at me. I mean, the things that are usually the grossest are, although being that I'm such a big fan of dairy products and the various forms of fermented milk, it's pretty gnarly. When you find a sippy cup, that's where the yellow one went and you shake it and it's solid. You know what I'm talking about And you open it up, you're like, okay, so it's cheese in here now.
Colin (00:56):
That's an interesting odor. Alright, well today we're going to run through some of the more notable or exciting headlines that come out of the outdoor industry and community. But before we get to that, we are recording this on Friday, April 12th, which is my brother's birthday. Happy birthday, Pete birthday. What's it? Yeah, Pete Pete's
Justin (01:11):
Birthday. Are you the middle?
Colin (01:13):
I'm the baby.
Justin (01:14):
Alright, so they're both older.
Colin (01:15):
Okay. Yeah. So that means you're listening to it on Monday, April 15th, and that means that in between we had ourselves a weekend. It also means it's time for America's favorite podcast segment. What is Justin doing this weekend? Presented by a long weekend coffee. So Justin, you got kind of an epic weekend coming up here.
Justin (01:36):
Well, so this reminds me of something I wanted to bring up before. It was like when we would, why is it that we used to record the, oh, because the show used to come out on Friday, huh?
Colin (01:45):
Yeah, I moved it to Mondays.
Justin (01:46):
Yeah. Okay. Because it would've been,
Colin (01:48):
Came out on Saturdays. Actually, what
Justin (01:50):
We should have done is had people suggest things and I would do them because that's a great idea. Frankly, I run out of ideas, so I don't know what's happening this weekend. The wife and girls are out of town. They just left about an hour ago. I'm still sort of dealing with what that feels like. I'm not used to that and I don't know, I had all these big plans to go mountain biking in Santa Cruz. We were going to, me and a buddy, I was looking at hip camps. We were all, because you can't book, one of the best things about living in California, Colin, is that you can't go camping on a whim. It's just so nice because there's eight bajillion people here and so
Colin (02:27):
You're like, oh, it's like Tuesday night on January 7th,
Justin (02:29):
Right? It's like, oh, it's a few days out. Hey, let's go ride mountain bikes and maybe surf in Santa Cruz and we'll just get a campground. No, no you're not. And so everybody that's camping in Santa Cruz's weekend booked their campsite six months ago. And so I found a couple of hip camps. There's all these random hippie retreats in the redwoods behind town and I found a couple of good options and as I was about to hit click, I hear my wife yelling in annoyance from the other room because she looked at the weather forecast and it's just supposed to dump rain all weekend basically in all of California. Are you guys getting rain this weekend?
Colin (03:02):
I haven't
Justin (03:02):
Looked. I bet you are. It's
Colin (03:04):
Point out this might be the one area that doesn't. It depends on what usually. Well, if it comes in and moves out,
Justin (03:09):
You do live in a desert.
Colin (03:11):
Yeah. Tomorrow 60% chance rain, just light rain later in the
Justin (03:14):
Day. Here's a hundred percent chance and an inch a lot. It's not like, oh, maybe it's just a passing. It's like it's going to be raining all day.
Colin (03:22):
Sunday will be nice.
Justin (03:23):
Don't know that plans out. So it might just be clean, the garage, fall asleep. Listening to baseball might be, I'm not. I might do a super last minute drive to the snow.
Colin (03:38):
There you go. That's a good idea actually.
Justin (03:41):
But I don't know what I would do. I'm not going to go ski. I guess I could snowshoe around for the day. Okay,
Colin (03:45):
There it is. There's some snow.
Justin (03:47):
Yeah. I don't know man. I was so excited. I was so excited for this weekend. It's been like 80 every day up here for a week.
Colin (03:54):
This past week was glorious. It was
Justin (03:56):
So nice outside. There was no rain in the forecast a week ago. It was like the rest of the month. It was just like, oh, we're done. That's it. Rain's gone. And so just all these wonderful summer plans started sneaking in and now they've just been dashed by the evil rain God, who next summer when we're in a drought. No doubt we are because switching to a La Nina, I dunno if you've heard the news. I
Colin (04:14):
Have heard that,
Justin (04:15):
But I'll be praying for rain and I won't remember what it was like in April of 2024 when I was like, if it rains again, I swear to God I'm going on a murdering rampage.
Colin (04:24):
Yeah, I had a similar situation a couple weeks ago where the family was out of town. I had the house to myself for a weekend and it dumped rain and I think I definitely logged some climbing gym time. It was like, it wasn't even like, yeah, that
Justin (04:36):
Would be good. I guess there is a climbing gym here. I've never done that before. Maybe I could do my first climbing gym day.
Colin (04:42):
Alright, let's do that and then next week you can report back.
Justin (04:45):
There's zero chance of me actually working up the courage to go into a place like that, having never done it before, all by myself and just doing it. But it's a cool idea.
Colin (04:52):
That is a rough, that'd be an interesting topic. What's the hardest thing to kind of crack into?
Justin (04:57):
I imagine that's probably pretty welcoming. I don't know.
Colin (05:00):
No, because all it is mean, I think all of it's generally welcoming in what we do, but there are certain things where, what has got hurdle, that mental hurdle to get it over because even you're not going to go, most people aren't these days aren't just going to go start surfing or skiing. You're like, oh, I'm going to go take a lesson. And then at that point it's, it kind of breaks the ice of like, I'm with an expert who's friendly and is going to help me through this
Justin (05:19):
Experience. You're going to learn all the little how harness works before you just show up at the crag.
Colin (05:25):
Yeah, and it's not to say that you can't do that in a climbing gym. You can, but that's kind of to walk in there by yourself and just be like, all right, I'm going to try bouldering.
Justin (05:34):
There's no chance. If you didn't need any equipment, I would maybe consider it. That's kind of the hard part. I think knowing, I don't mind not being able to do it or not really understanding. I mean, it's climbing, right? You just kind of figure it out. But not knowing how the gear works is such a huge hurdle.
Colin (05:52):
Well, it's like the opposite of going bowling. You know, go bowling and then you see the guy who's like, I got my own shoes, my own ball. And you're a little like, come on man, good for you. But stop showing it off. Of course he's a kickass bowler, but it's the odd duck now when you're the person in rental climbing shoes, everyone's good at you. Like that guy's got on rental climbing shoes. Actually that probably doesn't happen. That's probably just my Gen X asshole coming through. But no, I think that'd be an interesting thing to do though, for sure.
Justin (06:21):
Anyway. Not going to the more we think about it, the more we talk about it. Not going to.
Colin (06:28):
Alright, well what is Justin doing this weekend? Presented by a long weekend coffee and from now on, I guess send in your recommendations for what you would like to see Justin do this weekend to my rock fight@gmail.com and we'll see if we get any good ones there. But if you want to start off your days and adventures and your weekends, all the right way. You had the long weekend coffee, you got a whole bunch of secret handshake. That's the flavor to get. That's the blend. The roast. The roast, the roast to get is the secret handshake, the roast, and at checkout enter promo code rock 10 to get 10% off your first order. Long weekend coffee. More weekend please.
Justin (07:00):
I don't think it's a blend. I'm fairly certain it's not.
Colin (07:03):
Or flavor. Right. Can you refer to a beer as a flavor? Is there a flavor or a beer? That sounds weird, right?
Justin (07:09):
A flavor. No, you can't do that. What flavor beer is that? That would insinuate that it has juice in it or something. You know what I mean? Something or some added flavor. Yeah. Yeah.
Colin (07:25):
So before we get into some headlines, I got,
Justin (07:28):
Hold on a second, I got to get back to this. I'm thinking about it now and I'm thinking the only time it's appropriate to use. What flavor do you like? Ice cream. Maybe
Colin (07:42):
Ice cream is the best example.
Justin (07:43):
Snow cones.
Colin (07:45):
Sure. Slushies.
Justin (07:47):
But that's it, right? What flavor of
Colin (07:50):
Bubble? Gum. Gum, maybe.
Justin (07:51):
Yeah, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. But where you wouldn't sound like an alien if you said it, you would never say what flavor soda do you like? If somebody asked me that, I'd assume that they were ai. Ask what brand do you, you wouldn't say what flavor.
Colin (08:05):
That's a good point. So
Justin (08:07):
This is a good test. This is almost like the touring test sort of. You know what the touring test is? Well,
Colin (08:13):
No.
Justin (08:14):
Theoretically it's a way to tell between artificial intelligence and a person.
Colin (08:18):
Oh, Turin, this is the Turin. Or touring?
Justin (08:22):
Touring. T-U-R-I-N-G. Alan touring a while back. Anyway, so this would kind of be clear like that. It's funny, we used to always say this is how you'd be able to tell if it was an alien or a person, but now it's really AI or person. But if someone asked me what flavor of anything other than ice cream I liked, I think you wouldn't even say what flavor of cheese even. That's a weird question.
Colin (08:42):
Well, the reason I ask is emailing some of these companies or people about beers for beer and gear. And I almost want to say, what flavor would you recommend? Don't
Justin (08:52):
Ever say that. I
Colin (08:52):
Never have, but I'm just saying that feels natural to ask that question. Are you
Justin (08:57):
AI?
Colin (08:58):
Maybe.
Justin (08:59):
Holy shit folks. It's a good point. I've never actually met Colin in person.
Colin (09:04):
This is all screen. Whoa, you've never seen me in anything but
Justin (09:07):
This room. Wait a minute. Well wait a second here. How come that's not the subject of a thousand movies already? Are there a thousand movies being made currently about people who did podcasts or whatever together and one of 'em? No. I
Colin (09:21):
Think you're giving away a good idea though. I think we should.
Justin (09:23):
How was that? Not already. That seem like that would already be cliche.
Colin (09:28):
It is weird to think about the nature of our relationship and how it has existed over the last year and it is been solely, this is it
Justin (09:35):
Twice week. There's a part of me that doesn't even want to show up for the camp trip kind of cooler if we just have never met or never seen, just
Colin (09:42):
Never met, never hung out in person.
Justin (09:44):
I mean, oh man, I don't really have the bandwidth to take it on, but I guess I should write that book
Colin (09:49):
Or Yeah, write a script. It
Justin (09:50):
Works better as a
Colin (09:51):
Movie. I think it's a better movie. Visual. It could a book. It could be a book.
Justin (09:56):
That's weird. That hasn't already been a thing though, right?
Colin (09:58):
It might be.
Justin (10:00):
I mean, how did her come out already? Which I thought was really good. I dunno if you liked that. I really enjoyed that movie. But how did that already come out? But there isn't something where it's like, holy smokes, my best friend's in AI and I didn't know it.
Colin (10:10):
I mean, you really could do it low budget too. You don't need to have cool special effects. You frankly just need this. You capture this.
Justin (10:16):
It could be a movie. Yeah. Oh my God. You're totally right. You could just do the whole entire
Colin (10:20):
Thing. Well, I know what you're doing now. Can we go back and record that segment? What are you doing this weekend?
Justin (10:23):
See, this is something that I'm always just blown away by anytime. I mean, I'm literally a professional writer. Anytime I hear anybody go, I wrote a book, I'm always like, how did you do when and how I've, it's daunting. I've kicking around the idea of writing this book about Ralph Platon in the first North Pole expedition for at least five
Colin (10:40):
Years. You got to start.
Justin (10:41):
I'd have to lose my job and have a benefactor. I'd have to be, well, I guess I have my wife. We would need to walk into $5 million or something where it's like you don't have to even think about money years. Then
Colin (10:51):
Why would you do it? You're $5 million. You don't need to do anything else.
Justin (10:54):
Very good point. I wouldn't, don't think 5 million. I
Colin (10:56):
Think you need to have the motivation to do it.
Justin (10:59):
Yeah.
Colin (10:59):
I mean, how much, take away the topic. How much do you just want to write a book? I'd rather write a screenplay than a
Justin (11:04):
Book. I'd actually almost rather write a screenplay. It's an interesting point. Yeah.
Colin (11:09):
I'm not kidding. You should take a stab at this and be like, you met this guy via social media and it was like we started doing this podcast together and then just see where it goes and then take it to some weird conclusion of it could be somewhat true for the first third of it. And then where do you take it?
Justin (11:26):
What's interesting is, okay, so say it turns out who's more likely to be ai? Probably you because I,
Colin (11:32):
Because I'm in a booth.
Justin (11:33):
You're in a booth. You found me, right? Yeah, I guess so. Theoretically you could be. Well, you reached out to me, Bonnie. I did. Yeah. So you
Colin (11:44):
Could be, but you offered that you had opinions. You said I have opinions. That's
Justin (11:47):
True. That's true. But you could be software could be Fuck yeah. Yeah. And you could be part of some sort of weird podcast software network or something like that, and someone's just trying to decide whether or not do we even need hosts? We could just have AI do
Colin (12:03):
It. That's a good point. The question to answer before the big cataclysmic ending would be, why did I reach out to you? What's the hood? That's the hook. The only, and frankly, dude, that's the only question you have to answer. And then you've got a book. What is your role here? Why? I don't think that's true.
Justin (12:19):
I don't think that's the hook. I think the hook is what happens when I find out.
Colin (12:22):
Well, no, okay, you're right. That's what I'm saying. But I think that part of it, the easier part to write, you find out and then it's like then you could just rely on what your actual reactions would be. What would you do? But it all comes back to what's the motivation of the AI who contacted you? Well,
Justin (12:35):
That's true. That would be interesting. Were you looking for a friend or not? Are you already kind of self-aware or, by the way, I will kill you if you take this out of the podcast. I'll kill you. This is good.
Colin (12:45):
I'm totally taking this out of the podcast.
Justin (12:47):
No, this is
Colin (12:48):
Great.
Justin (12:49):
You got to keep part of this in. This is very good.
Colin (12:52):
I don't want to give away the idea. Fine. I think you should actually fucking write this. I'm not even kidding. That'd be a good idea. You should absolutely write this because that'd
Justin (12:58):
Be a good idea.
Colin (12:59):
If as a bridge into writing books, I mean it's a third of its autobiographical. You have had this sort of experience that has led you to this. It's truly that is the only thing to ponder is why would the AI reach out to you to do this's? Good point. Is it kindness? Is it fucking Hailey Joel Osmond in AI who's like, I don't know, am I a real boy? You know what I mean? Or is it never seen that watch? I'm using background using you to destroy the world. You know what I mean? What is that?
Justin (13:25):
Oh yeah. Well it depends. Okay, so that's how we go if it's going to be kind of a thriller or whatever, but I honestly think would be more interesting is if that's a good idea, that's a great idea for probably would sell better. But I think what would be more interesting on a personal level would be, okay, so you are literally just a creation from some content network that's like, I bet you we can make AI podcast hosts and we're not going to tell other people or whatever. And somehow, I don't know how, but I figure it out. Or maybe you and I become so close that your artificial intelligence evolves like a friendship level.
Colin (14:03):
Maybe I don't accept that I'm AI
Justin (14:05):
Or that or that, something like that. But somehow you figure it out or you decide to tell me, maybe I'm divulging some really dark secret or something like that
Colin (14:16):
Before they pull my plug. I'm like, Hey man, before I Or that, yeah,
Justin (14:21):
Those are all very good. But I still think that what would be cool is if it's like somehow it's just casually I figure it out and maybe you don't know that I know. And it's like, well shit, am I friends with what do I want to continue this friendship? Do I want,
Colin (14:34):
Does this me? Any one of these would be interesting to explore.
Justin (14:36):
Yeah, you
Colin (14:36):
Could almost do choose your own adventure with this and six different versions of it.
Justin (14:40):
Well, at that point it would be kind of like her where it'd be like, okay, I don't think I care. Okay, so he is ai.
Colin (14:47):
That's good point. He's like, that's fine.
Justin (14:49):
Yeah. Anyway.
Colin (14:50):
Alright, so before we get into headlines, I got a couple of mailbag items I want to go through. Did you happen to listen to Thursday's episode of the Rock Fight? So on that episode, I responded to a listener email and referred to a conversation that you and I had about how trail runners have kind of market corrected the trail, excuse me, the light hiker category.
Justin (15:09):
Okay, I can translate that. Did you? Yeah, lemme translate for you what
Colin (15:13):
He's talking about. I didn't the whole thing. Am I trying to force too many
Justin (15:14):
Words in? No, I get it kind of. But what he's saying is that because trail runners have kind of dragged, I'm thinking this is what you're saying, boots into being softer, faster, lighter. Is that what you're saying?
Colin (15:27):
Kind of. I mean if you listen to the episode, it would've used be a lot easier. Sorry, you don't have to just listen to the ones that you're on,
Justin (15:34):
Folks. We literally just took a pause so we could talk about a book idea I had in which I talked about how I don't have any more time in the day to do anything and Colin is now getting mad at me for not through the podcast the other day.
Colin (15:47):
Anyway, so on that episode I talked about how all boot makers should really just make boots that can be resold, which I think is something we can agree to 100%. And honestly, anyone who makes shoes should make them so that they can last longer resoling, whatever it is. So literally this morning get in my inbox, excuse me, the My Rock fight@gmail.com. Inbox an email from a guy named Bill Lockwood who's the GM of Oslo.
Justin (16:12):
Oh,
Colin (16:13):
And I knew this fact, but I was really excited that Bill reached out and said the email
Justin (16:17):
William Lockwood is a great name. Alright, so what did William Lockwood have to say?
Colin (16:20):
So Bill w writes in, he said, Colin, just listen to your podcast about trail runners and wanted to add the fact that all Oslo footwear is resoleable.
Justin (16:28):
Is that true?
Colin (16:29):
That is true because actually for that episode, I actually did a little research about who does it and I came across that they're the only one that their whole line, you can resold. There are lines that have resoleable boots from what I found just doing in-house.
Justin (16:41):
Right. You send it back to them. Or you can go to a cobbler down the street, presumably assuming that you live in 1745 and there's a cobbler down the street.
Colin (16:48):
If you can find the cobbler, you can.
Justin (16:50):
We actually have one, oddly enough, there's a very old man down the street who is a cobbler
Colin (16:55):
Bill Cobbler. Bill Cobbler. That's a good question.
Justin (16:59):
I need to get some Oslo. I
Colin (17:01):
Imagine they do some in-house, but probably meaning you can take it to anyone who would do that and it would get done
Justin (17:06):
Resoling service on their website, resoling service.
Colin (17:10):
So you can send it in. I mean Chaco does it to a certain degree too. They do some repurposing. Bedrock does as well. I think there's a lot of brands out there that do. But the point in the one email that I was responding to was how he had a pair of vast breezes who he called VAs. They said, we don't resold. You can call contact this other guy. The other guy said, yeah, you can't resold that boot. And I love that. This is what Oslo does. He also writes, we have a mantra at Oslo, reduce resole recycle, which plays in both the too much stuff in our industry as well as the amount of product that may be recyclable or made from recycled product, but at what cost of energy to do so, even if feasible, remove the leather from the textile, separate the metal hardware, pull off the EV midsole and separate from the rubber outsole. Too much work and not a sustainable practice. So I mean, look, bottom line is I love that. Thank you Bill for writing in. Yeah, thank
Justin (17:58):
You. That's great. Also, your boots look fantastic. I don't know, bill, obviously you listen to the show. I don't know who does your pr, I don't know who does Oslo pr, but have 'em reach out to us or me specifically? I would love to cover your boots. I don't think I've ever been pitched Oslo before. I dunno if I've talked about it on this. I'm sure I've talked about it on the podcast because you corrected me on how it's pronounced. But the first backpack boots I ever bought were Oslo fugitives. Is that what they were called?
Colin (18:22):
I don't know
Justin (18:22):
That I got at Granite StarWay Mountaineering in San Luis Obispo, California. One of three retail experiences. I will remember for the very rest of my life going into that store telling the guy that worked there who looked just like Steve Irwin from Crocodile Hunter, God rest, RIP, same
Colin (18:38):
Haircut and everything,
Justin (18:39):
Steve basically the same. It could have been Steve Irwin. I mean honestly. Do you
Colin (18:43):
Crikey what he saw you.
Justin (18:45):
Yeah, Mike,
Colin (18:47):
Look at this guy. He's six foot two.
Justin (18:53):
I actually have a pretty good Australian accent, but I'm too embarrassed to do it on the podcast just for my wife working there and me watching every surf movie every day.
Colin (19:00):
Don't be embarrassed in front of me. I'm just ai. It's
Justin (19:01):
Fine. That's true. Good point. Anyway, I go in there and I say, Hey, hey man, I'm so excited. I am going to spend all three months way up over 10,000 feet in the back country. I have a stipend to buy stuff from National Park Service. What do I get? And he pulled out a pair of Scarpa's and a pair of Oslos and he was like, these are the only two I would even remotely consider in my store. And I walked around 'em both and the Oslo's fit better and that was probably 2005. I just got rid of those boots last year.
Colin (19:33):
Why didn't you get 'em resold? You clearly get them resold. I did. Oh, okay.
Justin (19:35):
I did, but not through Oslo. Vem used to have this epic program where they would put new rum soles on anything. And obviously based on what Bill just said, it's really cost prohibitive to do that with stuff. But able, you could send in a pair of high heels and they would put a little tiny bit of rum on the toe part and the little heel. That's awesome. And so I had rum put on some new mega grip outsoles when the soles finally wore through, but I gave him away. I think I just left him on the front porch or whatever on the curb. Oh,
Colin (20:03):
So somebody else is using them
Justin (20:04):
Right now. Yeah, somebody else has 'em. Other than that, they were fine. So anyway, that's great.
Colin (20:09):
So one other email we got, and this is a quick one, I was just curious what you think Brian writes in it says he's not nearly the outdoor athletes that we are, however, something that he does regularly is hunts. I bet that's
Justin (20:19):
Not true, Brian.
Colin (20:20):
I know. Give yourself more credit, Brian. Yeah, come on Brian. He's curious of community as to our community's take on hunters and he has some other That's
Justin (20:29):
A great question.
Colin (20:30):
Yeah, we've
Justin (20:31):
Talked really good question, Brian.
Colin (20:33):
Agree and I feel like we need to have a, do you know we want to hunt? I feel like we should have hunters who's someone that maybe hunts that also does the stuff that we do and we should have a conversation about the wall that is up between the silos that we're in, right? Because it's way more common than different probably.
Justin (20:48):
Yeah. So Brian, you should, you know what, I'm actually going to take another note here because I need to put it on the AJ website.
Colin (20:54):
Need a work website where you're going to write a book,
Justin (20:57):
You're going to shoes. So Brian definitely knows who. Steve, do you know who Steve Ella is?
Colin (21:03):
Yeah, the meat. Meat eater. Yeah.
Justin (21:06):
Yeah. Wonderful guy. So I don't know him personally, but I've interviewed him once or twice and he's one of my favorite authors. But Brian, I will try to remember to put it up on the new AJ website soon. But I interviewed Brian, Brian, Steve Ella about this very thing a while back because I'm sort of hunting curious. Me too. And I think part of the problem is where I live there isn't really access to a lot of hunting, even though right now I'm not making this up. I'm looking at deer outside my window, but I can't do anything about it.
Colin (21:37):
I'm going to put a gunshot in right there. It
Justin (21:39):
Turns out again, I've always been hunting curious and I love fly fishing so much. I assume hunting feels like that, but more intense where you're really becoming part of. And when I talk about hunting, I mean the stuff I see Steve Ella do where you're out in the back country and you're stocking game. You're not like just deer hunting on the weekend at someplace where there's sitting in a hunting blind all day where you're out there and you are basically being a predator. I think there's something really interesting about that. I eat meat and I have always felt like there's a reason to hunt your own meat and to understand what you're doing and the sacrifice the animal's making and what you're asking from that animal. I think that's all really important. So yeah, I actually think hunting. I have no issues with hunting. I have issues with trophy hunting. I think anybody who's even Steve Ella, like hunts bears and I think that's abhorrent. I don't like hunting bears. I don't, don't think people should hunt. Not that it matters. I mean it's just my opinion. I think hunting predators is kind of odd. I would only hunt something I was going to eat. I have no interest in killing an animal just for the sake of killing it.
Colin (22:43):
Same.
Justin (22:44):
But I do think that there's something really fascinating about it. And I used to watch every meat eater episode on Netflix. I used to listen to most of his podcasts. I don't know, I guess I would say I don't know if I'm an outlier or not in my community, I think hunting is fine. I think hunters are interesting. I would be more interested in covering hunting stuff. I think it connects with nature and land in a way that few things do. And I have talked to my neighbor recently who works for the Nature Conservancy and is occasionally invited to go on bore hunts in places that are privately held land parcels. And I kind of want to go, but I don't have a rifle. I've never shot a rifle. I've only ever shot handguns. So I guess that's my take. What about you, Colin?
Colin (23:28):
I have similar interests. I mean, it's mostly rooted in the fact of you sitting there buying your meat from the grocery store and it's like, do I really appreciate where this comes from? I mean, I've done probably more research.
Justin (23:37):
I mean hunting a deer is not necessarily going to help that, but
Colin (23:39):
No, but I mean I think I probably am a little more educated than most folks, but I also know that I've never had the experience and there's a part of me that nags at me about that. And not even just on hunting. I know there's some folks we knew when we were living in Washington who as little in a neighborhood, they all pulled resources and built a paddock and raised hogs and then had them slaughtered and kind of did it more that way as opposed to actually going out and hunting. But then they all then split the meat and they have freezers full of meat and they all used it for the next few months. And even something like that I think is fascinating. Yeah, I think just the curiosity that you and I both have means it's something that we should really address here and we should find someone to come on the show and have a conversation about it. It comes back to me. The biggest thing for me on this stuff is we talked about it with the billion dollar outdoor recreation economy conversation and these 90 plus categories of outdoor recreation and how so much in common the crosses borders, but nobody really recognizes each other. We're human power people we're motorsport, we're hunting, and it's kind of like we're all sort of doing a lot of the same stuff just in different forms.
Justin (24:44):
Well, there's also no denying the importance of hunting to conservation and to dollars. I mean, if you don't know this, I mean I would assume a lot, most people listening to this podcast know this, but if you don't, I mean hunting and phishing licenses pay for so much of public lands maintenance and wildlife rehabilitation and any kind of conservation effort you can imagine. I mean, one thing Steve and I have talked about is I'm a big proponent of the, I shouldn't say I'm a big proponent, I am a lukewarm proponent. I guess it'd be more specific of a backpacker tax, which is the idea that anytime you buy a bullet, anytime you buy a gun, anytime you buy anything that has anything to do with hunting, there's an excise tax that goes directly into the Department of Wildlife or fishing game or whatever and funds things that you definitely think are important even if you don't hunt. Same thing with fishing. If I go by some flies on my trip up north, it doesn't matter where I go. A tiny bit of that goes to land use stuff. I don't know why backpacks and hiking boots aren't the same. It should be.
(25:45)I think it's a weird sort of thing that we've done there, sort of separating those two. And I don't think that's why the things are separate. I think largely if you're a gun person, you're a gun person. If you're not a gun person, you probably don't hunt. And it probably seems like
Colin (25:57):
It's
Justin (25:57):
A bridge too far. But I dunno,
Colin (25:59):
I don don't feel that way, isn't it? Like fly fishing easily rolls right into all the human powers. How many people do you know who do the stuff that we do like yourself who also fly fish, but then everything else is EB boden. We can't talk about those things. Can't.
Justin (26:10):
I don't know. It makes people queasy and weird. I mean that's the thing, if you're vegetarian and you're super committed to it, there's just not going to be a bridge. And I get that. I totally get that.
Colin (26:21):
But there's more people who are like us who would rather have a burger after the mountain bike ride. So it's kind of like it's
Justin (26:26):
Not going to go hunt a cow, but yeah. Yeah. Brian, good question. Really good question. I'll try to remember to put that article up that I think I've maybe talked to Steve twice. I can't quite remember, but I'll try to find him and put him back up on the AJ website, Brian, and you can go check it out@adventurejournal.com. Go check next week and see if one of them's up.
Colin (26:47):
If you have any questions or comments or anything you want to send to us, it's my rock fight@gmail.com. Send it on over. Those are some good ones though, and I'm glad. I'm glad Oslo is Resoling boots and I'm glad Brian wants us to talk about hunting. I think it sounds like we both want to talk about hunting.
Justin (26:59):
Yeah.
Colin (27:00):
All right, well, we got a couple of headlines to get through. First one actually just read this morning and it's made as a last minute addition to our headlines to run through, but Footwear News ran a story just yesterday, which would've been Thursday, about HELLP Spa Foot Footwear maker Crocs and their latest collaboration, which they call a fun partnership with Pringles. Have you clicked on this link yet?
Justin (27:20):
No.
Colin (27:20):
Look at it. I need you to look at this. I am actually angry about this. So they're continuing Crocs food-based series of products. Crocs has already come out with collaborations with Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes. Now, I poke at Crocs a lot, mostly because it has kind of bothers me that we've accepted these objectively poor looking shoes as generally people are okay with Crocs and they're made from foam and they're all going to outlast the human race on this planet. But is this is the pinnacle of hubris of like, fuck you, we don't care. We're going to make Pringle shoes.
Justin (27:56):
So
Colin (27:57):
I got really angry when I saw this. It made me mad.
Justin (28:00):
I guess what this means is
Colin (28:03):
We're packing it in
Justin (28:04):
Well, kind of right? It's not a good sign. No, I think I don't really care about the fashion part of it. Like whatever things are cool and for weird reasons, I get it, whatever. I don't have an issue with a chip holster. That's silly, but
Colin (28:19):
Okay. Which by the way, these have to the listeners. Yeah, sorry.
Justin (28:21):
They have a little circle where you, I guess put your tiny can of Pringles in your shoes, the little small cans. But what bothers me more is that there's something, I guess it's okay now to just be super on onboard with brands. I'm going to wear Pringle shoes. I like Pringles and isn't that funny and cool And there might be like a Screw it. I'm going to enjoy what I want to enjoy and I don't care what you think. That's kind of cool vibe maybe, but I don't think that's what it, but even still, it feels like the brand's won, doesn't it? It feels like branding one, it used to be, I mean, selling out was the worst you could do. It made more sense to be poor and live in your car than to sell out. It just was whatever that means, right? Selling out. Well,
Colin (29:06):
There's always been a level of hypocrisy that we've been accepted, right? Our generation for sure was like, you don't want to be a sellout, like oh, nine inch nail signed a big record contract. They're not cool anymore or whatever that was. At the same time, Nike was cool because Michael Jordan was a fucking badass,
Justin (29:20):
But Nike wasn't cool amongst cool people, right? You wouldn't have warned
Colin (29:24):
Nike. Well, that's a good point. That's a good point. But at least could understand the aspirational of when they have the athletes and those kinds of things. I get the connection even, but this is freaking mustache, but do
Justin (29:36):
You know what I mean? No. Oh, I do. But it's more like I'm going to wear shoes that have Frosted Flakes because Damnit, I like Frosted Flakes or I just don't care. It's cute. Where you would've rather been dead than do that in the nineties.
Colin (29:46):
Oh, ass kicked if you had worn these things.
Justin (29:50):
And I just feel like at some point, I mean at some point it became cool to be like, I don't care. I'm going to embrace brands. I'm going to embrace branding. I mean, look at how many creative people want to work in marketing. That would not have been the case. I mean, obviously creative people have always worked in marketing, but that's not what you would've done. You would've slaved away with your terrible band and poured beer somewhere until you were dead. That was the cool thing. Now people are just like, hell yeah, dude. Slap a brand on my stuff. So
Colin (30:16):
It's maybe less a win for brands and just a win for capitalism. Everyone's just quite Well the
Justin (30:20):
Same thing.
Colin (30:20):
Same thing. Good point. It's the same thing.
Justin (30:22):
So that's what this says to me. I mean, no matter what, once you're about 10 years removed from whatever kids are doing, it seems dorky to you. I mean, I thought teenagers were dorky when I was 25, so of course I do now at 45. But
Colin (30:35):
What my kids wouldn't wear, I know my kids wouldn't wear this. Kids actually have pretty decent taste. I mean the idea of wearing something like this,
Justin (30:43):
Honestly I feel like you probably have to be pretty cool to pull this off, just waltzing around like Pringle shoes. You can't just wear jeans and Pringles shoes. You got to have a whole lot of other stuff going on.
Colin (30:53):
There is some badass 17 year out there, 17-year-old out there that would look cool wearing these. For sure. That's always the case. I get that. It really made me mad. I'm like, these things can't be real. They cannot be real.
Justin (31:05):
They sadly are.
Colin (31:06):
Alright, well let's talk about some good news because earlier this week, as covered by many outdoor media outlets and a landmark bipartisan agreement, the US House of Representatives passed the expanding Public Lands Outdoor Recreation Experiences Act. That's the Explore Act demonstrating the momentum that members of the outdoor recreation Roundtable and industry partners have in helping promote policies that expand access to outdoor recreation opportunities. A couple things that this bill, which we've talked about here in the show before and now moves on to the Senate we'll provide once passed, hopefully fingers crossed, passed within the Senate, it will expand recreation on public lands and waters. It'll develop and improve in complete long range trails including some bike packing trails, boost Rural economic development. If you've listened to the show, we've had Jess Turner from the Outdoor Rec Roundtable on the Rock fight twice to talk about the Explore Act. I'm sure we'll talk to them again once this thing passes. She's called us her Good luck charm because both times that they've come on, something good has happened with the Explore Act. Any thoughts when you saw this pass?
Justin (32:04):
Well, I think it's going to pass the Senate, I mean,
Colin (32:08):
Pretty tough to stop it now, right?
Justin (32:10):
Yeah. I mean I think it probably had a harder road to hoe in the house than it does in the Senate. So the Senate has its own bill and I forget what it's called, that they're also working on that does something similar. And so I would imagine that what will happen next is they will merge both of those bills into an even bigger one. Whether it'll still be called the Explorer Act or not, I don't know. But from everything I've read, they expect it to happen relatively soon-ish within the next few weeks. And so it also does things like, it provides funding for urban recreation areas and green spaces and urban areas and getting disadvantaged communities, more access to green spaces, which is awesome. My main thought is it is just really nice to hear good news about the outdoors come out of the government.
(32:54)I mean, it was so long where you'd hear Ryan Zinke doing something awful all the time. We're going to take Yellowstone and turn it into an oil field or whatever, just constantly. And so what a breath of fresh air this is. So I don't think it has any, I'm pretty sure it's going to pass. I know one of the things that we talked about before was I don't know to what level I will notice any of it. It's hard to know, but I live in a place with really good access to all these sorts of things, so it's probably not really for my area.
Colin (33:24):
No, that'll be great. Once it passes, they have just back on and then that would be the conversation and alright, so what do we expect to see now we talked, what do we think it's going to do or what is it going to support? All those kinds of things, but and where do we start to see this show up? Right? That's kind of thing I'd be curious about.
Justin (33:41):
Yep, yep, yep.
Colin (33:42):
Alright, well lastly Justin, are you familiar with Tech Ball?
Justin (33:48):
No,
Colin (33:48):
I became familiar with Tech Ball this week. There was a press release about it. I think I would really encourage you right now to go on YouTube and look up Tech Ball TEQ.
Justin (33:57):
Okay, dude. You mean you want me to do it? Is that what you're saying? I want
Colin (33:59):
You to go look at it right
Justin (34:00):
Now. Okay. I thought maybe you meant
Colin (34:01):
Like it's fucking badass. Tech Ball is a soccer based sport, played over a specially curved tech table. It's played globally in over 150 countries, including the US and players use soccer moves to volleyball back and forth. Much kind of like table tennis or dare we say pickleball.
Justin (34:18):
Pickleball.
Colin (34:19):
I'm going to look at it. Which one are you looking at?
Justin (34:22):
It's the rally of the year. Okay. Oh, it's like mixed doubles. Holy smokes. Wow. Okay. So yeah, it's ping pong soccer. Look at
Colin (34:30):
This. This might be the hardest sport ever conceived
Justin (34:34):
Of. Yeah, so if you
Colin (34:37):
Need
Justin (34:38):
More explanation besides soccer ping pong, it's a ping pong looking table, but it's curved downward, so it's like an arch almost. And there's two players and they either kick it or head it over the net like you would ping
Colin (34:53):
Pong or chat. They use, it's all soccer, it's just no hands. Right? So it's almost kind of a soccer, it's like soccer table tennis and volleyball.
Justin (35:00):
Pretty cool.
Colin (35:01):
I am all in on tech ball. All my pickleball. Vitriol is fueling my support of tech ball because again, pickleball understand why people play it. Justin and I both admit if we played it, we'd probably have fun playing it. Of course, the whole, our stance against pickleball is everyone's trying to make it the next big sport and it's boring just to watch people play pickleball. This is dope as shit. I would watch this.
Justin (35:25):
The second comment on this page is, this is a sport I could watch despite not liking either football or table tennis. And I get it. There you go. Yeah, I get it. That's cool. I want to play it.
Colin (35:36):
I think you, I play, that would be a disaster. We don't play
Justin (35:39):
Soccer. No, I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't look, you know what looks harder to me? Have you ever seen the volleyball they play where they only use their feet?
Colin (35:47):
No. There's volleyball where you only use feet.
Justin (35:50):
Yeah, there's like a volleyball, soccer and I think it's a Brazilian thing and that looks harder. You have to kick it harder. I feel like I could kind of mean not against these people, but I feel like if you just got me and a couple of random people who don't play soccer together, I could do this, I could play this.
Colin (36:03):
No, probably the learning curve would be shorter than maybe I think it would where you could eventually figure out a way to get the ball back across.
Justin (36:10):
Yeah, and it's interesting how they're set up. There's one person right next to the net and one person kind of far away,
Colin (36:15):
And I assume they're singles as well. I would imagine there
Justin (36:17):
Is. Oh, there's got to be Singles would be way harder.
Colin (36:19):
There might not be Also pickleball when you see it, it looks kind of dorky, right? It's a small court with the paddles and the balls and this, the table looks cool, just
Justin (36:29):
It looks like something from Battlestar Galactica or whatever. It looks like a future sport.
Colin (36:34):
This is like the sport they're playing in some sci-fi movie during the training sequence or something like that, right before they go into some big epic battle.
Justin (36:41):
Pretty cool. I wonder if they have their own shoes. You think they have their own shoes?
Colin (36:45):
Probably. I mean there was another line, an announcement about a pickleball specific apparel line this week I saw an SGP and I'm like, I wonder if it wicks moisture.
Justin (36:55):
That's all it does.
Colin (36:57):
It is synthetic and probably has SPF properties. I'm sure that it does.
Justin (37:03):
And sound deadening so the neighbors don't get mad at the constant paddle sounds.
Colin (37:07):
I discovered a pickleball court not that far from my house. There was some trees. I walked by it all the time when I walk up to the mountain behind my house and I all of a sudden heard the sound.
Justin (37:17):
Did you see it? Did you hear it? Say you heard it before I
Colin (37:20):
I it. And then I was walking my dog and I stopped and I look over through the trees. Sure enough, four people standing around playing pickleball.
Justin (37:26):
Yep. Having a good time. Enjoying themselves.
Colin (37:30):
They were enjoying themselves and again, they were enjoying themselves. Enjoy yourself. Play pickleball. But it's not as badass as tech ball, I can tell you that.
Justin (37:37):
Yeah, no, just true. Check out tech ball. I mean I pulled both of my hamstrings but I could play it.
Colin (37:42):
I died. Tech ball killed me. That's all I got man. You want to wrap it up there?
Justin (37:48):
Let's do it. Alright,
Colin (37:49):
Well before you move on to that next podcast, which should be this last Friday's episode of Gear and Beer where we talk, what did we talk about? We talked about bike bags. Bike bags and the Cali squeeze blood orange. Not a Rattler, but kind of like a Rattler. Kind of like a Rattler but not an actual. Rattler. Tells an excellent episode of Gear and Beer. Check it out. Make sure you head over to rock fight.co as well. Sign up for our newsletter rate, this podcast, five stars. We're just making these awesome podcasts for you. All you got to do is just we click follow, click follow, and then click five stars. That's all we need you to do. That's it.
Justin (38:17):
That's it. We've gone off that.
Colin (38:19):
The Rock Fights a production of Rock. Fight LLC for Justin Hausman. I'm Colin Truth. Thanks for listening and here to take us out. It's Krista Makes with the Rock Fight Fight song. We'll see you next time. Rock fighters rock
Chris DeMakes (38:35):
Bike. We go into the bike where we speak our truth, stay sacred cows and sometimes agree to disagree. We talk about human power, outdoor activities and big bikes about topics that we find interesting. Black culture, music, the latest movie reviews, ideas, aim for the head. This is where we speak our truth. This is where we speak our truth. Rock bike.