Colin Pyle - Motorcycling across China

Full transcript: Colin Pyle on London Real

8:36 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. With me today is Patrick Vickers, which you have known as our co-host for the last, what, couple months now, right? He is a former guest on the show and a former derivatives trader with Goldman Sachs turned MMA fighter turned MMA organizer. And you might be going back to finance.

8:56 Correct. No comment on that. No comment at this time. No comment at this time. Very good. And our guest today is Mr. Colin Pyle, who was part of a successful currency brokerage startup in Toronto. Damn finance guys everywhere.

9:09 Too many of them around this table. You sold in 2008. I think you stayed on for a couple years as part of the deal where you became completely miserable. We sold a couple weeks before Lehman collapsed, so you can imagine. Good timing.

9:26 Good timing for me, not so good for the acquire, so life changed a lot after the sale. So you hung on for a couple of years and then finally you packed it all in, I think your brother was living in China at the time, Ryan was living in Shanghai, and you and Ryan basically achieved a Guinness World Record by navigating 18,000 kilometers in a circuit through China on motorcycles for 60 days. Correct. 65 days. days.

9:53 And yeah, the Guinness World Record was sort of awarded after the trip, it wasn’t sort of, we didn’t set out to set a Guinness World Record, which is just a nice, nice to have afterwards I guess. I saw the record too, it’s got like a thing and it says what he did. No, it looks really cool, you filmed it all and that’s currently on the Travel Channel right now. Right now, yeah. They can watch you.

10:16 Wednesday nights at 8 I think the episodes air and then they play again sort of through the week. Okay, fantastic. book about it, which of course you have to do these days, right? And it’s called The Middle Kingdom Ride, and we’re gonna actually be giving away five of those books to the best quote that people tweet out from this episode. So if you do the quote, put in our link to the episode, our Biddy link, and then we’ll choose them and send those out to you. Thank you very much, it’s been a pleasure.

10:43 So welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. I admire the show I watch it all the time and then so it’s so so weird maybe ten days ago I tweeted at you and was like I did a BBC Outlook interview and it was like six minutes and I was just like oh I have so much more to say so I just tweeted I was like you know I think your platform would be amazing for this story and and you got back to me so it happened like that quick I got his tweet and then he sent me an email and I was like tell me your story I read the whole email and I was like, yes, kind of epitomizes all that’s good about London Real. It’s like you get to you find the right content and immediately you put it in front of your viewers. Yeah, it was great. I had a phone call with him and then it was like, yeah, let’s do this. It makes total sense. It’s a cool idea. It’s awesome. I understand what you mean with that media frustration because like a lot of TV, you get 10 minutes and basically the questions are already almost answered for you. Yeah, they’re just looking for sound bites. Yeah, it’s candy journalism. Yeah, they just want sweet stuff to keep people engaged there’s not very much depth at all yeah and you know BBC I think it’s like 45 million listeners worldwide it’s incredible the reach they have right so it’s you know phenomenal that we got an opportunity to sort of even just put our website out there but yeah it’s just you don’t really tell the story it’s just sound bites that people can check in

12:06 More if they want to yeah no that’s definitely true well we got time today so I was gonna start off you you you said that you got the idea I don’t know This is true enough by in the movie Wall Street. You’ve seen the movie Wall Street. Great is good Yeah, great is good And I must have seen the movie Wall Street like 250 times right like when I was back in New York When I would be out with my buddies and we were in finance We would have a bunch of drinks and we literally would say do you want to go back and watch Wall Street?

12:30 I’d be like yeah, let’s go do that right. That’s what I used to do. So it had a big inspiration on me But there’s one point where Charlie Sheen is out at Gordon Gekko’s mansion in the Hamptons, and he’s hitting on Darianne, Darryl Hanna, and he’s like says, oh yeah, what I really want to do is, I don’t know if it’s a line or if it’s true. Is it a line just to get the girl you think? For him? Yeah. No, I think because at that stage in the movie he’s kind of, you know, he’s about to make it. And when you start to make it and you start making real money in the finance game, I think you’re always like, oh, I can just put enough away and just sort of take off. And so few guys actually do that. So I think it was both.

13:12 It was for the girl, but also I think he truly believed it, Bud Fox, the character as well. And what was the line he said? I think he said, I just want to get out of this racket and ride my motorcycle across China. Across China. It was like really nothing specific.

13:28 I don’t know about it. No direction, no nothing, but yeah, so yeah, you know, that was, what, 87 was the movie or something like that, so I was six. So obviously I didn’t watch it live, but, you know, huge Wall Street fan, a huge boiler room fan, you know, all those sort of great movies for traders. There’s only two, right? Yeah, there really is only two.

13:54 There’s a lot that have come subsequently post the greater, post the credit crunch. You had margin call and do it to fail and stuff like that. But the ballroom and Wall Street were like pro trader. Yeah. They’re just the lifestyle of the trader.

14:08 The Wolf of Wall Street’s coming out soon. Have you read that? The Wolf of Wall Street. Yeah. I think that’s coming out soon and there’s a book about it as well, which is apparently a true story.

14:17 Okay. We’ll check it out. Anyway. So tell us more about your story. This line resonated with you or what?

14:22 Yeah, so it’s a good movie, we always watched it together and we were just like, you know, we both like riding bikes and so we always talked about riding around China or riding in China regarding, you know, quoting that movie. And then my life progressed and all of a sudden I’m not in Wall Street but I’m on Bay Street which is the street in Toronto and I’m just sort of sick of the life, sick of the racket and so… How many years were you in? many to be honest and to be brutally honest, my currency trading past was very entrepreneurial so it wasn’t like I was even working for a big bank on a huge floor with 50, 60, 100, 150 traders.

15:03 It was very small, it was just the two of us at the beginning and then we grew it up to about 35 people across Canada and then we sold it. And what exactly did the business do? It was currency brokers firm. So we helped like small medium-sized enterprises in primarily in Canada doing cross-border business with the US Yeah so like you know XYZ company is buying five million dollars worth of widgets from the US and Helping them strategize hedge give them better rates. That’s that sort of thing. And so forward forwards and future. Yeah Yeah, but all dollar Canadian dollar 89% of our business. Okay dollar cad. Yeah, I went to parity right the looney went to parity Yeah, well, it’s been around parity now for quite some time for a few years.

15:47 So it’s hard to take 2% when you’re switching on the other side of parity because everyone’s reading the news saying, you know, the Canadian dollar is stronger in the US and my rate’s weaker in the US. So it created some problems with our traders, but yeah, just helping in that time period it was access to information isn’t what it is now. So there was still that value in being able to educate your customer and help them just get better rates. You said you were interested in going across China, have you been across Canada because obviously one of the biggest and most beautiful, large variety of different, have you ridden your bike across?

16:26 I haven’t. It’s sad to say. I’ve seen more of China and India, potentially of Canada. I’d like to someday, I just, I don’t know why I haven’t. I have to do it in the summer.

16:38 Yeah, absolutely. It’s something that I’d love to do. Canada’s a beautiful country, I love it. We’ll always be home. I was actually born in the west side of Canada, so in Edmonton, but spent my whole life in Toronto.

16:48 Right. So how did this thing actually happen? You were just talking with your brother, like this is a crazy idea, or what year does it finally seem like you’re actually gonna do this? Yeah, so I sold my business in 2008, just before Lehman Claps. Part of the transaction I had to stay on for two years, helped with integration and all this type of stuff.

17:06 The plan when I sold the business was to really grow it across North America. And after Lehman collapsed, the business that bought us was a transfer agent business in Toronto. So they, you know, deal with publicly traded companies and help them manage their stock certificates to, you know, easily put. So they just swallowed up our FX. So we were an FX business inside of this stock transfer business.

17:30 And after Lehman collapsed, they sort of contracted, right? All the businesses contracted and focused on what they did best, and FX just wasn’t it. So the whole growth model wasn’t there. And so they’re just like, yeah, we’re not really gonna grow this thing, we just wanna keep it how it is, and just generate cash as it’s been going. And so I was just like, well, that’s not really what I wanna do, right?

17:54 I’m an entrepreneur, I wanna grow this thing, I just don’t wanna sit and manage, you know, 25 traders. So, whatever, I put my time in two years later, 2010. My brother was in New York for a gallery showing his photographer in China and we just got talking. We were in Central Park and you know my two years was coming up kind of like jail. I could see the parole board ahead or whatever you want to call it and so we were just chatting and I was saying that I was going to take some time off.

18:23 I really wanted to you know find something new to do, maybe go do an MBA, maybe just travel the world and he said like let’s do an adventure in China and so we started talking about what it could be, how long it could be, do we hike a couple holy mountains in Tibet, do we spend a few weeks in Xinjiang and sort of hang out with some Uyghurs? And then we said, why not see all of it? So why not ride around China on bikes? And we actually went to the Apple store on Fifth Avenue and started looking at a nice big monitor and screen and started looking at Google Maps and figuring out how we could actually do it.

18:59 And- Like the route. The route. And so we, you know, my brother’s well traveled in China. So he’s been there for 10 years, world renowned photographer, travels the whole country for his business. So he knows the country extremely well.

19:11 And he, you know, we mapped it out and it was circumnavigating China. It was like 18, 19,000 kilometers. We’re like, yeah, you know, divide that by three, 400 kilometers a day and you know, it’s 60 days. So we were just like, yeah, let’s go for it. And that’s sort of what got the ball rolling.

19:29 And I went back to work, wrote up my resignation letter, handed it in, gave him four months notice, put my house on the market, and the rest is kind of, sort of, it took over. That sounds like fun as hell. Now, there’s obviously comparisons with the Ewan McGregor long way around, where him and his buddy Charlie Borman took a, they, whatever they do, they went. They did long way around, which was, yeah, and a long way down. Had they been, had they done this yet?

19:54 They had, yeah. Was this an inspiration? Absolutely, yeah, it was great. And I love those, I love the shows and I read the books and I look up to both those guys they’re great adventures, Charlie Borman still is quite active doing it, you and McGregor not so much. And yeah, it was, it gave us the idea, you know, if they can do it and one of the things we didn’t want to do was cross borders because that- That was what caused most of that house?

20:19 Yeah, and that’s where a lot of the money comes into play with having a team and dealing with all these visas and all these issues. And we knew we didn’t have much of a backing. We didn’t have, you know, we both had a little bit of cash, but we didn’t have this huge budget like they did. So we knew we didn’t have a support crew, you know, multiple support crews. And so we weren’t going to have a team in London or in Toronto or wherever helping us out on the road.

20:44 So we didn’t want to cross any borders. I think it’s a cool idea. I watched your trailer on YouTube and Jesus, that country is so diverse, isn’t it? Amazing, yeah. I’ve only been to Hong Kong guilty.

20:55 I haven’t even been to Shanghai. I want to go. But I mean, Jesus, can you tell us like what it’s like? I saw that. What was that movie?

21:02 Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragons. I saw all that. That’s a great representation. I feel like you see sand dunes and you see this. It’s horrible.

21:10 Yeah. Tell us. Yeah. I think everyone sees China. The media does such a poor job portraying China.

21:18 They portray the East Coast phenomenally well, but that’s not China. That’s where all the cash is, right? Yeah. where all the ports are and it’s realistically it’s probably where two thirds of the people are so that’s just what people know about China and that’s all I knew about China. If it wasn’t my brother you know my brother’s been going back to Kashgar which is sort of you know this amazing Central Asian you know city on the Silk Road he’s been going there every year multiple times because he’s creating like a black and white photo book about the change that’s happening in the city so if I hadn’t talked to him and I knew some of those things I wouldn’t wouldn’t really know that that existed I presume he speaks Mandarin or Cantonese yeah Mandarin okay yeah his wife is his wife is Chinese as well and and we run a Mandarin language school also so that helps as well but so you speak as well I don’t but you run a school I run the school here a lot of yeah just on the business I’m not I’m not I’m not so smart I’m no I’m good I’m just honestly thinking about what you were going to say yesterday.

22:20 I was like, what should I say here? I barely speak French. You’re supposed to speak a bit of French in Canada. I’m just not so good with languages. But that’s kind of an excuse too, right?

22:33 I think you’re good at it if you put the time and effort into it. I’ve just been so busy with getting the school going and sort of promoting this that I haven’t had the time to… Will that change? If I have more time, I’ll probably find something else to do in it, but it’s a tough language to learn. And had you ridden a bike before?

22:51 I had, just a bit though, to be honest, my brother and I aren’t these gear heads, right? We’re not these guys that have been riding since we were like 10. But if you look at you and McGregor and Charlie, they had the whole thing about they had to go and do all these tests, so I guess it was a bit of a similar situation. Yeah, I think Ewan and Charlie, I think they had ridden for a while since they were kids but I don’t think either one of them were really good mechanics at it. Were you going off-road? China was about half of it was off-road. Off-road means not paved? Not paved and I had never ridden off-road before so I had you know a typical banker thing is when you go make you know get a big bonus he rolled into BMW and I bought a bike. I saw it was like the typical every single biker hated me right I’m on my big R 1200 R BMW my first bike you know the dumbest thing You can possibly do and so I but but I did it. This is what you took to China This is what I wrote in Toronto. Okay, and that’s that’s all I had written I’d you know gone back and forth to work I you know, I went with a couple friends sort of on a four-day trip To Mont Tremblant, Quebec and kind of back to Toronto So maybe that’s 800 kilometers thousand kilometers a few hundred a day That would that was my longest trip and I didn’t know anything about motorcycles how to fix them So, we were complete novices at a lot of things, I didn’t even camp at that time, so I wasn’t

24:14 Even like this rugged adventure traveler. Were you going to have to camp at this trip? Yeah, we were. Because you’re going to be in the middle of nowhere sometimes. Sometimes you just get stuck.

24:27 We didn’t camp that much, to be honest, because, again, there’s so much commerce around China that there’s these sort of truck stops all over the place, that you can get a bed and some food pretty cheap and if you don’t have to camp, we just didn’t so, but we did, we got stuck a bunch of times, we camped to like 4,000 meters above sea level in western Tibet, we just weren’t going to make it and you go over these 5,500 passes and you don’t go up if you don’t think you’re going to be able to get down in daylight, so one night we just… Why? Because if you get stuck up there, you’re in some serious trouble.

25:00 As in exposure? Cold? Yeah, it’s freezing cold and just the elements are just gonna destroy you, you know It gets down to maybe minus 50 minus 20 and you see the bike not working as well as you got Yeah, you know the BMW bikes performed phenomenally well But but yeah, you do notice a little bit of torque gone But the BMW is a really good bike and it’s you know Super high-tech if you if you rode, you know, like a 350 Enfield, which is what we rode in India It wouldn’t have worked that high up very well at all. Okay now cameraman did you have a cameraman? We did. A Canadian guy as well who’s a photographer, he’s a great portrait photographer in China, so my brother and him kind of known each other. Again, the photography world and this sort of film happening play a little bit because the photography world kind of is just collapsing, right? No one’s really paying huge dollars for photojournalists these days.

25:53 Really? Yeah, they’re just looking for speed, right? They just want, whether it comes from from your iPhone or whether it comes from your $5,000 camera, they just want to speed quickly. So a lot of photographers don’t have much work right now. And if they do have work, they’re not making that much money.

26:09 So a lot of them are transitioning into being videographer. So this guy, Chad Ingram, came on the trip with us. He was an amazing guy. We had no money, really. We didn’t raise any money.

26:21 And we couldn’t really pay him very much. So he just sort of went for the ride to build up his portfolio and have a great experience. So it was amazing and you had helmet cams each one of you guys. Yeah, we had tons of tons of little cameras So they’re like GoPro cameras or sonic comms And and so we had one up here that that actually records audio and video together Which is really cool for you know You can just kind of be in the middle of nowhere and just have a little video diary or something while you’re riding I’m trying to sell it to go pros and advert. We did we cut a really cool GoPro footage from India It’s like a three-minute clip from India just with GoPros, all the different GoPros, and we’re talking to them about sort of trying to do something, but I don’t think they’ll buy it.

27:04 They might use it and help promote us, but I don’t think there’s any… They don’t have to pay money. No, no, no. These are little tiny cameras that you can mount anywhere. Yeah, you can put it in here.

27:11 It’s like surfers, skateboarders. Right. Yeah. Snowballs. It’s a ref cam now.

27:16 The referee in rugby now in the Super 14, where I think it’s the Super, maybe it’s 16 now has a camera on his head so you can see sort of close to the action yeah they’re amazing and they’re super high quality too now like we would in India we used use them a little bit more because we actually brought Chad was with us in India but then we had another camera guy like a backup camera guy so he would mount all these things all over our bikes and get some really amazing angles so what do you call the hard drives Jesus there’s a lot of footage. A lot. So that’s pretty much what goes into our support vehicle for the most part are these hard drives and China was a big issue because for the most part China we not for the most part we filmed illegally in China. So it was a huge fear of ours that again my brother and I funded this whole thing. So you’re extremely worried that at some point the Chinese government’s going to find out you know you’re filming and not like it and just take your stuff, and then poof, your TV show is gone.

28:21 Can you ever get internet access and just send a bunch of stuff back every time you do? You try, but it’s just too much, right? So we would actually have people fly in and meet us in certain spots in China, and then fly back to Shanghai or Hong Kong with the footage. Really? Just to make sure, yeah.

28:37 I mean, you couldn’t put it in the cloud anywhere. It was just too big? Just too big, yeah. Yeah, you know, you have terabytes of footage, right? A day, probably.

28:44 Sure, if you’re shooting 12 hours a day on HD, it adds up super quick. So crazy. It’s an editing nightmare. It is. So we edit with, yeah, down in New Zealand actually, the guys we used to edit, NHNZ, and yeah, it is, I can’t imagine the detail.

29:02 How many cameras are we talking for your China trip? So China was just primarily an EX-3, so Sony EX-3 sort of shoulder cam. That’s what the cameraman carried. That was the primary camera. And then we have all these little ones, but they’re not on all day because the batteries, you just can’t have the batteries going all day long, and the cards fill up pretty quick.

29:21 So if you have a GoPro going for 90 minutes, that card gets pretty full. I shot my short film on the EX-3, so you wouldn’t use it now probably, but back then it was the good tech. Back then it was what you use, so it worked out well. So we had that camera and then a bunch of little ones, but that was really it. We had some still cameras, some 5D’s, which come in handy because the Chinese think it’s just a camera, but you can actually sit there in a monastery or something where they don’t want you filming and just sort of pretend like you’re just taking pictures and actually take video.

29:58 It worked out quite handy because a lot of places in China, first of all, we were filming illegally, but even if they don’t care if you’re filming anything, you’re just not allowed to film in some locations, such as Tibet, like the whole thing. This is quite an adventure you guys are on. Yeah, you know, we were, again, in Western China, in Xinjiang, it’s called, is a very Central Asian Muslim community, and there’s a big uprising in 2008. So the Chinese government’s very aware of some of the regional conflicts in that area, So they definitely don’t want a bunch of white guys on motorcycles filming the whole thing.

30:40 Okay. Because it might go somewhere else. Just never know. It’s going to be anti-China. Yeah.

30:46 Exactly. They don’t trust you to edit it properly. So, but you know, saying that we actually, so after we filmed and we had all this great footage, then we go to, you know, we’re trying to raise money for post and no one wants to give us any money for post. And, and my brother knew a guy that worked post production. How much did you need?

31:04 Do you think to do post-production properly, what were you looking to raise? Yeah, they say 200 grand for an hour of film, US dollars. We knew that that was not going to happen, so for six episodes, three hours, 600 grand, we knew we could do it for way less than that and we would never raise that because realistically we’d never get that money back for our investors anyways, right? This is an industry where you’re going to make a ton of money unless you really sort knock it out of the park so so we wanted to we were trying to raise 150 250 grand we thought that would be enough but it it was extremely difficult and the trip itself what did that cost you trip itself was pretty cheap excluding the bike so we we didn’t get sponsored by BMW just didn’t happen again we were you know never do a trip like this if you can’t take no because we at the beginning we thought we you know China’s the big story and every all the brands are gonna want to be there and this is going to be easy. But everyone said no. You don’t have a show that’s bought on initially. So it’s not like we can go and say it’s going to be shown on Travel Channel. We didn’t know that beforehand. So there’s no guaranteed exposure for brands.

32:22 So no one really wanted to give us any money and a few people gave us product like Tour Tech, Oakley, some of these guys, but no cash. So BMWs in China are 100% luxury tax, and the only bikes you can get in China are BMWs, Harleys, and then Chinese local bikes. 100% luxury tax, so you pay the same price as a 10,000 pound bike, you pay 10,000 pounds in tax. Yeah. Jesus.

32:48 So our two BMW bikes cost us about 50,000 pounds, which was more than we spent on the whole trip in terms of traveling costs and then and then the expenses come into play for you know camera equipment it was hugely expensive and it’s also we had to get the right permits to travel not to shoot not to film in China but we had to get the right permits to shoot you have to have permits to travel around China between provinces yes it’s not so bad outside of Tibet but in Tibet you almost have to have like a daily itinerary of where you’re going with a government sort of sanctioned guide which is it’s extremely expensive too because you have to have the guide and then usually he comes with a car so it’s you know to travel in Tibet can be anywhere from like 500 US dollars a day which is really expensive and right now I’m not sure it’s still but a few months ago foreigners weren’t even allowed in Tibet so it’s it’s very hit and miss whether you can even go there all right so day three on this trip like you’re you’re like on day three and you’re outside of Shanghai I guess Yes, you started in Shanghai?

33:54 Yeah. What are you thinking? Are you like, this is too much, this is too easy, what was surprised you and what didn’t surprise you? Yeah, day one was like the hardest day of the whole trip. It’s one of those horrible things that you can imagine.

34:09 It was like 40 degrees out in Shanghai, humid, humid, almost had, you know, had heat stroke at lunch, almost wanted to give up. It was the worst day ever. And that night, I’m sitting there being like, what the fuck did you get yourself into, right? Like, how did you think you could do this? You don’t know anything about travel, you don’t know anything about riding bikes, and you don’t know anything about China.

34:31 But- How was your brother that first day? Yeah, he was, you know, he was a rock, right? He sort of organized the whole trip. He was really the pushing force behind getting this going. And so he was just like, don’t worry, it’ll get easier, it’ll be okay.

34:45 And, you know, just trying to really self reflect on where you are and how lucky you are to be doing this. You know, a few months ago I was a banker. I was in an office job working, you know, 60, 70 hours a week and not enjoying it. And here I am, you know, in the middle of nowhere, having all these great experiences, whether good or bad, just an experience. And so, again, just so fortunate to be having experiences.

35:11 So many people go through life with just kind of, you know, there’s a dull, you know, just flat line the whole time. you never really spike at all, whether up or down. And so, you know, just trying to think back and be like, you know, I’m fortunate to be here, sort of suck it up and get on with it. You know, we’re familiar with that book, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, you know. And you’re on a bike, you’re not on a car doing a road trip.

35:35 And I just wonder if you could just try to explain why that’s so much different being on a bike for someone who’s never ridden. Did you have communication with your brother? We did, yeah, yeah, which was awesome, yeah. Otherwise it’d be very lonely out in the morning. Yeah, yeah, you know it but that’s also meditative as well, right sure Yeah, there are some times when we just turn each other off 60 days not being able to speak to anyone for 10 hours a day. Yeah, kind of crazy It’s a monastery or about silencers. Sure. So yeah, what’s it like being on a bike?

36:04 So I you know I think the reason we chose a bike was because we really wanted to experience the culture and the people in between right and I Think what’s amazing about a bike is you you know, you you feel the elements, right? you you feel when it’s really hot you feel when it’s really cold you ride through a town and you smell the smells and then you know you can’t sit in a bike you can’t sit on a bike for 10 hours straight whereas you could potentially in a car right where you just kind of ride through and don’t stop so that element of stopping just when you want to because you’re you know your ass is hurting or you’re tired or whatever it may be with just you know quick drink of water or and so where you stop is sometimes some of the most interesting spots and and that element of being inside you know the country that you’re traveling rather than inside of the car is really important and you know it’s also when you drive a car you can kind of tune out a lot of time and all of a sudden you just wake back up and you’re like holy cow where am I right I’ve just I’ve just been in my head for like a half an hour you can’t do that on a bike, you kill yourself. So you’re really focused on sort of what’s around you and you’re watching so carefully, you know, the things are popping out all the time. So you’re really so focused and so much aware of what’s going on around you that you experience everything.

37:26 And he crashes or Harry moments? Yeah, I crashed four times. Now crash is fault. Well, yeah, they’re all down to me. I’d love I’d love to blame it on someone else, but I guess two of them were pretty bad crashes.

37:44 The other ones were just not so bad. Even full leathers all the time? Yeah. We had full gear, which has to be done. I think it’s just not worth it.

37:53 As much as you sweat, it just saves your life. Is it always hot? Yeah. Well, in some spots when we were in the mountains, it was freezing cold. Again, we weren’t experienced motorcycle adventurers so we didn’t bring the right gear and we weren’t sponsored so we didn’t have like this huge kit that they just gave us.

38:16 So we didn’t have rain gear, which was the worst decision you could ever make now. You get soaked. You just get soaked. Yeah, you get soaked and then if you’re in a cold area, so a lot of times we might do a 3,000 meter climb in a day. And so if you’re getting soaked at the base, by the time you get up, it just freezes over you and it’s the worst feeling you could possibly imagine.

38:43 Did you, I think I saw some footage of you guys going by a traffic jam that was like 30 kilometers long. People were in that traffic jam for 26 days. 26 days. 26 days. So I heard about this, this was like a famous traffic jam, right?

38:57 Yeah, it was. was just, you know, it was, you know, from the middle of China, you know, heading east to Beijing. And there had been some, you know, rare circumstances, I think some crashes and stuff like that that just clogged it up. And so we were on the B roads, which is kind of not the expressways. And it was just jammed up and we’re talking to these people being like, so how long have you been here?

39:21 He’s like, you know, 18 days. And we’re like, it’s just like, are you crazy? It’s just mental for us, like people in the West, the concept of time and how valuable time is here. You know, you have all these apps trying to save you like 10 seconds, right? I have my Starbucks app that I use every day and it saves me, you know, like five seconds.

39:41 And then here these people are with a completely different concept of time. For them, they’re getting paid by the day. Doesn’t really matter where I am. This is life, you know? And it creates this entire economy around this traffic jam.

39:55 Right, like restaurants and prostitutes. The whole deal, yeah. The whole deal. The whole deal, yeah, it was, and that really blew me away because you just don’t see anything like that over here. People complain about traffic.

40:08 They might show up to work an hour late. How about a month late? I just can’t get over that. Okay, I mean, just, can you give us like a macro perspective of China to you? If you had to just tell me about China, what would you tell me?

40:23 Everything you’ve seen. Yeah, I think China is one of the most diversified places in the world in terms of landscape, culture, languages, people, it’s everything. You really have everything in China, from snow mountains to deserts and sand dunes to people that look like you and me, to people that worship Allah, to people that worship Mao. The Buddhism is just incredible. have everything there. It’s just people don’t realize how diverse that country actually is.

40:57 And where is it going? This traffic jam exists for a reason. That wasn’t there 20 years ago. No. That’s because commerce is controlling this country.

41:07 You know, the last 20 years China has taken 400 million people out of poverty. And so many people, again, I don’t want to get political and get into that whole debate. And that wasn’t the purpose of our show. We just wanted to show what China was. And I think a lot of people say that, sure, 400 million people were taken out of poverty, but there’s some really bad stuff that happens in China.

41:29 And I agree with that completely. But it’s really hard to argue against the fact that still 400 million people are no longer impoverished and are now fending for themselves, have life, education is pretty good there now. So yeah, China still has a lot of problems, a lot of problems. But it’s, you know, and then traveling in India, China is 50 years ahead of India. Easily.

41:53 Really? Absolutely. And people look at India and say, yeah, it’s a democracy and all these things. You’re right. There’s still 50 years behind.

42:02 You know, it’s just kind of at some point you need to just look at what you value more. And the Chinese value setting up this phenomenal infrastructure that you can then grow, you know, a country with one and a half billion people on. And the way they’ve gotten there hasn’t been the greatest. But India, on the other hand, their infrastructure is crap. Their education system is getting a lot better and their university system is fantastic.

42:29 But yeah, India is a mess too. It’s kind of like, coming from Canada, there’s 30 million people in Canada, 35 maybe on a good day. And it’s huge. And then you go to China, it’s like one and a half billion India, one and a half billion in 1.2, it’s just these seas of humanity is just so fascinating to see from sort of coming from Canada. Did you see, there’s a buddy of mine who speaks Chinese.

42:58 He works for an investment bank in San Francisco and he was telling me some story that like five years ago or eight years ago he was driving through some part of China and they basically confiscated everyone’s mobile phones because it was some extreme poverty area where like people were walking around without clothes on and it was like crazy and then they took the phone back and let him know whether that was true but did you see anything like that that story wouldn’t surprise me sure they try to again my brother’s been detained as a photographer in China you know we we had some pretty hairy moments on our trip as well so they definitely they like to control the message that gets out and and if they can do it they will and so I that that that doesn’t shock me sure there were some areas that were extremely impoverished, but no worse in India. Do you know what I mean? And to be honest, China, the most impoverished areas were some of the cities. The rural areas in China are actually, you know, they’re not wealthy or poor, they just get by. Farming communities, they get enough, you know, they feed themselves. And they have a pretty good life, I think. You know, they’re happy and they’re living, you know, they’re living the life that they’ve They’ve been living for years and years and years.

44:12 And so you get a lot of people that come from the farming community into the cities. This mass migration is taking place in China, which the world has never seen it before. And that’s where you get a ton of poverty that actually happens in the cities, just because there’s nothing for these people to do once they get there. It’s like a mini industrial revolution. Yeah.

44:32 Yeah, or a major industrial revolution. Well, without the industrial revolution bit, but the migration to the city. Yeah. This is the largest mass migration to cities in the history of the world. So for crashes, what are the other notable events on this China trip, and then I want to get on later to you sell them the show, the India trip, but what other stuff happened in the 65 days?

44:52 My brother burnt out his clutch in Western Tibet, which was 4,000 meters above sea level, neither of us know anything but motorcycles, and all of a sudden one’s not working. And so that was a huge issue. We contacted BMW in China and they said it would take two or three months to get a clutch and obviously that doesn’t work. We actually contacted one of my buddies in Toronto who runs a BMW dealership and we got one flowing into Hong Kong, had to smuggle it into China and then got it flowing into Tibet in about six, seven days.

45:22 So that was incredible. And then we didn’t know how to fix it and no one else knew how to fix it in China because these bikes are way bigger than anything most people have seen in China. So literally looking up motorcycle blogs online on our phone and following the directions to fix a clutch. And you did it? And we did it.

45:43 Yeah. YouTube? No, it was this motor. I think it’s my China Moto or I forget the exact blog, but we figured it out and we didn’t do it right the first time. So.

45:54 Wow. So you were just sitting there chilling for six of your 60 days? Yeah. So it would have taken 59? 59, yeah.

46:00 Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, you get back, you’ve got all the footage in the can, have you ever had any issues with the Chinese government approaching you about it or not liking what you did? Yeah, the whole trip they didn’t like what we were doing. But did they know what you were doing?

46:15 They did, yeah. They have like the, kind of the foreign police, the Chinese foreign police in China. And so they really monitor what foreigners are doing for the most part. My brother being a photojournalist and had done stuff in New York Times and all sorts people know the Chinese government’s aware of some of his sort of what he’s doing so they they definitely knew what we were doing but and they didn’t like it but again it’s hard to know no one knew where we were going we didn’t even always know where we were going so they didn’t really stop us they tried I wouldn’t say it was a centralized decision to try to stop us I think certain areas we went to they were very much afraid of what would happen if if the people above them found out that a bunch of foreigners were traveling through.

47:01 But then after the trip, we actually showed them our footage and said, you know, from a tourism perspective, why don’t you guys give us some money and help us finance this thing? And they said no. But then afterwards, they said yes. And the Chinese government was a huge, CICC, which is part of the Chinese government, helped us, sort of helped finance and helped us partner with a company called NHNZ in New Zealand to get it post produced. And then also sort of retroactively essentially, you know, giving us permits for some of these places.

47:37 Cause Nat Geo and all these guys, they don’t want to buy stuff that’s done illegally cause it just creates a headache and a nightmare for them. So then sort of saying, you know, if you’re going to help us with this and let’s, let’s go big and why don’t you, you know, really help us out. So you couldn’t have sold this to the Travel Channel without their cooperation. No, I don’t think so. Did they have a rise to edit and veto stuff?

47:57 They didn’t. They were actually pretty, yes, they could have really sort of cut it up. And of course, the book is very different than the TV show because there are some things that they didn’t want in there. But to be honest, they really didn’t cut out that much. Now they own the rights for the China.

48:17 So they’re looking at translating it and getting it into the Chinese market, which we hope we think would be wonderful. And what type of stuff didn’t they like being in there? Well, so we weren’t, we were, you know, at one point on the border of Inner Mongolia, which is a sort of a province in China and Mongolia. You know, we ran away from the military because we were. What they were chasing you?

48:42 Yeah, well, there was only one road and it was the border essentially. And they didn’t, they told us we could go and then they told us we couldn’t go. And if we didn’t go, we would have to backtrack like two, three days and we were just like this landscape’s too beautiful. Let’s just give her. Let’s just go.

49:02 And so they didn’t really appreciate that footage. We’d go onto expressways. So brand new expressways in China are not, two wheel motorcycles aren’t allowed on it. And so some of the times we’re so tired, we have so much ground to cover, we’re just like screw this. And so we’d like hide behind a truck or something, and then when we get up to the sort of the toll part, we would just blow through and…

49:28 Because the toll people wouldn’t have told you to get off. Yeah, the toll people wouldn’t allow us to get off. So you’d jump the tolls? Yeah, just jump the tolls all day long. Wouldn’t that have sent the police off to you or something?

49:37 Yeah, they did a few times. And you just… Just kept going. And at one time, they actually set a roadblock up, like 50 kilometers down the road. And yeah, it was hilarious.

49:49 I don’t speak Chinese, so just… Wouldn’t it have been hilarious if you’d been caught? Well, we were caught when they… With the roadblock? You didn’t like…

49:56 No, no. At least to get off and back on again. No, they… Jump over the roadblock. No, like these are like elevated highways, right?

50:02 There’s nowhere to go. These are like modern elevated highways. So they set up a roadblock for you. You’re caught. And so they caught us and they told us to turn around and go the wrong way and express it.

50:13 And we’re like, what are you talking about? It’s 50 kilometers till the next exit. They’re like, yeah, turn around. We’re like, no, so we got off our bikes, you know, can them our keys and you guys drive it back. You know, that’s more dangerous.

50:25 And so, and so they said, okay, fine, follow us. We’ll get off at the next exit. And so we were like, okay, fine. They were driving this piece of crap. You’re not worried that you’re going to be yet put into the local Chinese prison?

50:37 Not really. Does being Canadian by white get you extra? It does for sure. Again, if you don’t, if you’re just sort of violating stupid rules essentially, I don’t think they’re really going to sort of drive it up the chain. And you know, you always play the card, it’s like, I don’t know, what are you talking about?

50:57 Oh, I didn’t know. Blue bars, five thousand. Yeah, exactly. I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to do that. No.

51:03 Well, and you just, the reality is, they don’t really have an argument, right? It makes sense to keep a 150cc bike off the Expressways, but it doesn’t make sense. When you’re overtaking everything? Yeah. When you have an 800cc bite.

51:15 So you’re saying you can play dumb as whitey, you can play dumb, and probably also as whitey the Chinese are less likely to throw you in the slammer? They’re probably just deport you. Do you know what I mean? For them, they’d rather just kick you out of the country and never let you back in rather than have like this huge international scandal or whatever it may be if they toss this in jail. Saying that, you know, I do not advise doing this type of thing in China.

51:40 You may not get a, you know, it really also depends on the day of the, you know, the police chief or whoever it may be. But then you also, your brother lives there, and so it’d be a big deal if he got kicked out and never got, you know, he’s married to a Chinese woman. Yeah, Chinese got two kids. His life is in Shanghai. We’ve been a huge deal.

51:58 Exactly. Yeah. So again- He must have been comfortable then to take that risk. He was. He was more comfortable than me.

52:04 For me, I’m like, what are you talking about? You don’t just like ignore a police officer. On the first morning… It had been shoved in the United States. Yeah.

52:12 Absolutely. What happened on the first morning? The first morning, we left Shanghai at like 6.30 and we were trying to get onto the elevated expressway in Shanghai to really get out of the city. And the first morning, a cop pulls us over and is just like, you can’t go up there, you have to go this way. And my brother’s like, ignore him, turn around and let’s just keep going.

52:31 And so the cop was behind me with his sirens going for like the first 15 minutes of the trip. brothers in my ear like just keep going, just keep going and I’m like what do you mean? This isn’t how it plays out in the West, right? So they don’t… I mean like I said…

52:46 That sounds fun. Yeah. That sounds fun. American police, you just don’t fuck with American police because they come strong. But yeah, the Chinese police more reserved or does it vary by region?

52:57 It does, it varies very much. I think it also depends who you end up dealing with. The military, you probably didn’t want to mess with. Again, you don’t really want to mess with any of them because you never know. We’d roll up to military checkpoints with an 18-year-old with his finger on the trigger.

53:16 It’s just scary. You just never want to test them. If you’re dealing with a low-level traffic cop, the effort it would take for him to really do something, do a bunch of foreigners on really expensive BMW bikes, is more than and I think he’d bite off for that day. Do you know what I mean? So it’s kind of like, you know, it’s poker.

53:38 At the end of the day, you’re bluffing, hoping that they’re not gonna call you. And if you have pocket rockets, fine. But if you got, you know, a para, you know, a two, three unsuited. But what cards did you have? Not many.

53:50 Is it because your bike is fast or just because it looks like you have cloud and money if you’re riding? Yeah, primarily, they don’t realize how fast it is. So like when they set up the roadblock the expressway and then, you know, they were going to take us to the next exit. He was going like 40 kilometers an hour because that’s how fast he thought we could go. And so my brother and I were like, this is going to take forever.

54:11 Should we overtake? So we did. And we just kind of left them behind because we, you know, we could go 140, 160, no problem. How fast were you going on those things? Yeah, for the most part about 80 to 120 kilometers an hour.

54:28 And the fastest you went? about 160 we got them up to 160 which is not advisable on those motorcycles they’re quite high up but about 100 miles an hour roughly yeah okay yeah wow that sounds cool I mean just all these stories sound cool yeah so all right so you you finally got it the Chinese government helped you they helped you they didn’t fund the editing so we worked with NHNZ which is a production company out of New Zealand and they do a lot of the Chinese government stuff so So the Chinese government, huge budget, spending tons of money on film, both for the international market and for the domestic market. So NHNZ does a lot of stuff with them.

55:07 The guy in Beijing from NHNZ, my brother had known, talked to him before the trip. He loved the trip, but he’s just like, I can’t get behind you guys unless you guys have a broadcaster. But talk to me afterwards. We showed him some of the footage afterwards. He’s like, this is awesome.

55:19 The Chinese government is going to love it. Hopefully they’ll allow us to sort of post it for you guys. So having the Chinese government sort of green lighted, okay, allowed NHNZ to then get moving on the post and do all the posts for us. Which was a huge help because as two independent sort of filmmakers, it’s so hard to get your stuff on TV and having the backing from NHNZ who produces factual film and extremely high quality for Nat Geo Discovery Travel Channel really gave us huge credibility.

55:49 And they didn’t charge you? government and them sort of partnered up so we partnered with the NHNZ and the Chinese government and then us so kind of three of us all together to sort of make this thing happen. Tell us about the television industry because you said this is like as big a part of your adventure as going in through China and India is trying to sell a program into television and it’s you said it as much harder than what you thought it would be. Yeah it’s it’s such a evolving industry right now and the way I see it is just you know the people that have made it so much money the last 50 years or whatever are just sort of grasping at straws, right? It’s almost like the music industry maybe 15 years ago. It’s a changing format, right? Yeah, the DVD industry. YouTube channel is gonna be the big, major channel more probably than NBC or whatever. And you’re seeing Netflix productions, you know, all these guys are starting to produce their own content now. Yeah. And so it’s just in this rapid stage of flux and you know that you got these people that have been in the industry for so long Just hanging on to the way it was and big margins big margins in again with with the rapid change There’s also you know, your margins are thin are thinning and so There’s not as much money and and when there’s not as much money, there’s not the risk the risk profile is gone So, you know you look at you and in Charlie

57:08 You McGregor, you know from that from a business perspective. It’s like what are you talking about? I can you know get you and McGregor show on TV and I don’t have to pay them five million dollars It’s a no-brainer. For us, just random nobodies who may be terrible in front of the camera, who may not have a good story, is anyone going to watch it? So I think that’s a huge factor too.

57:30 They just don’t want to take risk. And if you don’t have a guaranteed revenue stream once it’s finished, they just won’t even look at you twice. What if they’ve seen the show though and they like the show? That’s not enough? It’s not enough to get an audience sometimes.

57:44 Really? Right? Isn’t their job to take content and say, I think this will be popular and choose it? You think so. And I think, to some extent, they do, right?

57:53 So to some extent, I think they said, this is a cool story. China’s in the news, and it’s interesting. But there’s still that element of risk, whereas, are these guys likable? Are people going to resonate with them? Are people going to tune in on Wednesday night at 8 o’clock to watch them?

58:10 And that’s always the big question with unknowns. And I still don’t know if people tuned in. I don’t have those figures, so we’ll see if they pick up the India ride or not. If they don’t, I guess no one tuned in. So you work, what, two, three years to get this thing that’s on television now?

58:27 Yeah. It just came out two weeks ago in the UK. April 10th was the premier date, and again, my brother has been, he’s been the driving force behind this. is sort of his baby and he is just his determination and it’s just incredible and you know I commend him so much for what he’s been able to do and accomplish but yeah it took two and a half years. And is the UK the first place that it’s aired or was it in the US or Canada?

58:54 Yeah so the Travel Channel picked it up, the Travel Channel International picked it up so they showed it globally excluding North America, India and China and so it aired in the UK, and then it was in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, some places in Asia, so South Africa, we got some comments from people in South Africa, but no one’s picked it up in North America. So you’re waiting to see if someone wants to buy those rights? Of course. Canadian doesn’t want to take up a story?

59:22 Yeah, I don’t know why it didn’t get there real quick. To be honest, I think it’ll get picked up in Canada for sure. In the US, the US market in reality is the size of the rest of the world in terms of this type of stuff. So they kind of, they see two unknowns, they’re just going to wait and see, right? So if it does well internationally, I would think that, you know, the US might pick it up too.

59:45 I’d have thought with the plethora of channels and new formats that are coming up that they would require more content or are they just doing, repeat some of the same. Yeah, it’s, I don’t get it. You know, I’ve talked to some people in the industry and what’s really going now is kind of like having eight people, having these sort of adventures with a whole bunch of different people so it’s just constantly something’s happening with someone so there’s no downtime and all this type of stuff but, you know, it’s just that whole reality stuff that’s going on in the U.S. and really globally now is just…

1:00:18 It’s constantly changing and whatever’s hot at the moment. Because they’re in. And so, you know, two Canadians riding around China, sure it sounds like a cool story and some people might… There’s no Snooki. No, exactly.

1:00:30 I can’t compete with Jersey Shore, are you kidding me? You could try. My brother and I didn’t even get in one fistfight the whole trip. Yeah, I mean, were you conscious of that during the trip that, like, this might be recording or no drama or are you conscious of that stuff? Well, it’s like, you know, I was a trader, I was a finance guy, I’d never been on film.

1:00:51 So it’s really weird and sort of Chad, I’m just like, what are you doing? He’s like, I got to film you guys all the time. You get it. But at the same time, I just really just want to be myself, right? I thought I’m not an actor, so don’t try.

1:01:06 And this is not the genre that we’re going for. We’re just going for two brothers having a cool adventure. And part of it plays out as we’re idiots a lot of the time, it’s just who we are. I’m not this motorcycle genius. I don’t know how to fix stuff.

1:01:20 I’m not an adventure. You know, I don’t know how to camp very well and all this type of stuff. It’s just like that makes good TV Sure. I think so. I think You just be yourself. I don’t think you could act for 65 days. Anyway, that’s 12 hours a day It couldn’t act for an hour. It’s just yeah, it’s painful We you know at the end of the show We they wanted to do some voiceovers and I had to like act a few lines and I’m like, this is really hard Yeah, yeah, that’s crazy. So it turned out terrible You know just a second have you recouped costs then from this recent sale from like all the money that’s been put into it I’m not even close. Yes. Okay. The nice thing is about the story is that it it could it’s not timeless, but it’s No one else. I don’t think we’ll be able to film like we did in China Maybe not ever again, who knows?

1:02:08 And it’s such in rapid change that some of the places we went to aren’t the way they were two years two and a half I just thought it’s perfect for the BBC or ITV or one of those channels where you know people sort of middle-aged people want to sit down at eight o’clock on a Thursday night and watch some interesting television about you know guys traveling somewhere and it’s perfect sort of that sort of prime time viewing. Yeah and I thought you know China is just everywhere in the news. I thought it again you think you know what people are going to pick up but maybe we We swore too much.

1:02:43 I don’t know. Maybe it’s just going to take some time. Yeah, it might. It might. It might be a slow play.

1:02:48 And again, we hope that over time, we’ll recoup the funds. Who shared the long way, the long way down and the long way around? I think it was… Channel 4 or…? Yeah, but I think one of the big guys picked it up afterwards.

1:02:59 Maybe Nat Geo might have done the second one, but I think a UK like Channel 4 or someone like that picked it up originally and then the big guys sort of picked it up after and gave it a huge push. it was extremely successful. Yeah. And lots of DVD. I watched on DVD. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, exactly. That market’s dying as well, probably. Yeah, it’s dying. It’s two. It’s also, you know, we haven’t sold our, our show in the US. So we’re hesitant about selling the DVD because if some US guy might say, well, you don’t know if we want it because you’ve already sold a thousand copies in the US. And reality is it’s not like we have, you know, a 10 million person following in the US. So the DVD sales, would they outweigh the sale of a US broadcaster picking up? Not even close. So that’s why we have the DVD ready, but we’re just hanging on to it trying to see if maybe we can pick it up in the US. Because the last thing we want to do is put our foot in our own mouth and screw our market for ourselves.

1:04:00 Did you twit in Facebook as you went around? Not in China very much because Facebook and Twitter are both blocked in China. You can get around it, there are tons of ways to get around it, but it’s extremely slow and painful. In India, we did a ton of social media. Okay.

1:04:15 We got to talk about India. So first of all, I can’t believe they had like a separate task force in China that was watching you guys. I mean, that’s some crazy like KGB type shit. You know, and there were, again, you have to register with everywhere you stay in China with your passport. And so they call the local police and, you know, whether they’re, whether the guys in Beijing knew every time or just some of the time, but but they absolutely they keep track of foreigners extremely closely.

1:04:42 Really? Yeah. I didn’t even know that. Okay. So you finished this trip.

1:04:47 You’ve been making references to this India trip. Yeah. Why would you do this again? Why do it again? It’s fun.

1:04:52 By the sounds of it. I guess so. I’ve done it. Yeah. Yeah.

1:04:58 It sounds pretty crazy. It definitely sounds great. Yeah. It is a lot of fun. And I think, you know, China started gaining some momentum.

1:05:04 You know, we got it post-produced, it was done, we hadn’t sold it yet. When we did India, it was still unsold. So India, again, was a huge, huge risk financially for my brother and I because, again, we forked out the whole thing. We got some sponsors in India which helped out, like Lenovo, Mountain Dew, my business school sponsor is Halt International Business School. So that really helped out with the funding of the India.

1:05:26 When did you do India? September, October, last year. So part of it for me was I did China and then I actually took like 10 months off and just traveled the world with my wife. Just kind of hung out. And then I did my MBA last year.

1:05:40 And so I knew- Here? Here in London, yeah. And so I knew if I was going to do another trip, now is it, right? Because there was that time in sort of your life where you just finished school and I hadn’t taken another job or hadn’t started up the Mandarin school yet. So- Some people want to get a job right after their MBA.

1:05:58 Yeah, but I think you should sort of take time and enjoy those moments, right? There’s so few moments in life where you actually have these long periods where you can sort of just sit back, relax, and figure out your next move, because you don’t realize how important that next step is until you’ve made it. Because once you’ve made it, it takes so much more energy to change it than if you just go away. Do you think he’s trying to make me feel bad? Exactly.

1:06:22 No, I thought he was trying to make me feel bad. I’m sure everyone listening is like, you’re still doing it, man. I guess I’m still doing it. It’s funny because Patrick and I left the financial markets around the same time because, well, I guess we both weren’t happy doing it anymore. Is that it?

1:06:34 Yeah. It wasn’t particularly fun at the time either. No. I guess it wasn’t. And then we did completely different things for a couple of years.

1:06:41 And now you’re going back. Patrick’s going back. Instead of we wouldn’t talk about it. Oh yeah. I have no comment at this time.

1:06:47 Okay. That’s cool. So, all right. So you’re back in London. You finish your MBA and you’re like, okay, let’s do this again.

1:06:52 Or is Ryan like, come on, Colin, we got to do India? Yeah, I think again, this is my brother. This is his career going forward. He’s gonna Is this a way to move out of photojournalism for him? Yeah, well, you know, we created a production company called G2 and I productions to help produce these types of film And so I think we wanted to do another one together whether we’ll do another one now, who knows? We’ll see. You’ve got Russia and Brazil left. We want to do brick. Yeah, what’s for brick?

1:07:18 But so so yeah India was and you know, we thought about what’s what place could be as interesting and crazy as China And so, you know, it’s pretty obvious India. It’s just it just sort of jumps out at you And so we just saw it said give it a go and again It was a time where I had some time to do it. So we just we just did it and and it was So how same as what kind of distance what kind of time the distance was less So it was maybe 13 and a half thousand kilometers. I think okay time was about 54 days Okay, and it was way harder same bike. So did you sell them on the way out?

1:07:55 So we the BMWs we left in China. We sold mine. My brother still has his In India, we use local bikes Royal Enfield 350s because we realize our limitations of fixing motorcycles So we we wanted to ride local bikes so that if they got if they something happened we could fix them immediately What are those bikes like are they they’re pretty average motorcycles to be honest and they do the trick, right? They’re they keep going somehow. I don’t know how they keep going, but they’re cheap, right? They’re like thousand pounds 1500 pounds for a motorcycle. So you get what you pay for it, but but they worked they survived How is India different than China?

1:08:38 Cricket. Yeah How do you start? There’s so much critical. I’ve been to Bombay and there I went for a friend’s wedding and we were walking around and there’s a big park and where we would expect everyone to be playing football or ice hockey or pre-haven Canada there was like 35 games of cricket going on right next to each other it was I’ve never seen a country so obsessed much more so than in the UK in England yeah cricket was everywhere every corner of that country it’s the The biggest difference in India and China, to be honest, was infrastructure and the density of the population.

1:09:20 You don’t realize how small India is compared to China, and they really have about the same amount of people, so the same population on a third of the size creates just chaos to try to ride around. The traffic is worse, no 30-day traffic jams, but just the density of the traffic and the sheer humanity. It’s just less organized. It’s infrastructure is not there. Dirtier.

1:09:49 The food is a lot less safe to eat. So okay. I’m dealing with deli belly a lot, a lot. You almost feel like something’s not right every day. I didn’t go to my friend’s wedding because I had deli belly. I went all the way over there and really I was so bad that I was in there puking. Yeah. I got some good while they’re wetting on it.

1:10:07 Jesus. Yeah, it’s- So you feel sick the whole time, basically? Well, yeah, you just, you’re always, again, your body’s just not used to it. So you may not be at the situation you were where you’re just like stuck, but you just may not be feeling so well. Whether, you know, the water wasn’t as clean in the morning or whatever they washed the plates with wasn’t as clean.

1:10:29 And so you always feel like there’s some kind of bacteria or something not working right. whether you got like a giant tapeworm on the trip with you or not. I don’t know, but, uh, but yeah, it’s, it’s, you’re always feeling not so good. And China wasn’t like that. No, not at all. Are they very clean or they just, I just think it’s very basic. I think again, a lot of the China trip was emptiness. So we’re rolling into, you know, a tiny little village and they’re putting together a bowl of rice and some meat, uh, which is, you know, cooked well. Right. And so I think in India, I don’t know if it’s all the time the food, I think a lot of it is just the hygiene of the stuff you eat on or even just the money. They say they’re so filthy that you’re using money all day long and then you grab something and put it in your mouth and next thing you know, you should be in trouble.

1:11:17 So it’s… Jesus. Had you been to India before? Never. I’ve never been. I’ve been all sorts of places in the world, but I’ve never been to India.

1:11:24 I really want to go and then I also don’t want to go. Yeah. It’s an amazing place. Like, don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t maybe suggest riding motorcycle around it but it’s it’s a phenomenal spot and then the people are just so happy and so generous and so kind and and it’s again it’s just as diverse as you might as I just explained China was you know that you have the different religions you have the different dialects you have the different foods it’s it’s amazing. The envelope of English architecture sure and English cars yeah in some of the spots yeah crazy juxtaposition of It is the old sort of English car and the infrastructure is everything the English left in 48 or whatever when you left Pretty much. Yeah that like the rail system is I don’t think hasn’t been too too much improved There are definitely no high-speed trains going 500 kilometers an hour like in China. Okay, and then and highways and other basic infrastructure Pretty crap. Yeah, there’s some don’t get me wrong. There’s some good spots, right?

1:12:21 The last day of our trip, which was from as the Taj Mahal essentially to to Delhi They have this six lane brand new expressway, and it’s just like anything you’d see in the West, but a few and far between. Wow. That sounds so cool. Now, this trip you put updates on your YouTube channel, right? Yeah.

1:12:42 And you were a social network, and you were… Yeah, very active social networking. And again, we just do these trips ourselves. So after a 10, 12 hour day on the bike fighting against kind of Indian roads and dodging cows, we try to update as much as we could with some pictures or videos and that type of stuff to keep people engaged and also to provide value for our sponsors, to give them content for their social media pages also. And the Indian community was amazing, we hooked up with some Indian bikers kind of midway and it was just, it was really cool, they were following us and there’s a huge motorcycle community in India, whereas you didn’t get any of that in China.

1:13:20 How are they different as a people if you had to make some sweeping, horrible generalization, some racist generalization? What would you say? So comparing 1.4 billion against 1.4 billion, it’s tough. You can tell there’s value in the voice in India, right? You can tell that these people have been brought up and they’re not afraid of saying stuff, they’re not afraid of being out there, they’re not afraid of just, they’re just more open, they’re more engaging. I think the Chinese are very much standoffish, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, like some great hospitality in China and some amazing people we met along the way, but they’re very much reserved people a lot of the time where they just kind of keep to themselves.

1:14:06 It’s a climate issue, like compare the Norwegians to the Spanish. Some people talk a lot, some people don’t, or do you think it’s just a cultural thing? Yeah, I think it’s cultural. I just think, you know, it wouldn’t be uncommon for us to stop for gas in India and have like 20, 30 people around you kind of wanting to talk. I think also, you know, a lot more people speak English in India, so a lot more people felt comfortable coming up to us and chatting. And I love that. In China, again, English is in the West. I mean, in the East part of China, a lot of people speak English.

1:14:40 But in the West, it’s very rare that you’ll get someone that speaks good enough English to come up and have a conversation with you. That kind of engagement also didn’t really happen. What bad happened in New India trip? Did you run away from any police? We didn’t in India, no.

1:14:53 We did India very much above ground. We got journalist visas and we did it all legally. In some areas we actually weren’t allowed to go into in India and so we didn’t go. Like what? Like the Kashmir region and then there were some uprisings in the east, far east of India, sort of the Muslim area, and on the border, Bangladesh, Myanmar, and these places.

1:15:19 And so they didn’t want us to go there. So they just said, you can’t go there. You can’t film. Yeah. You know, I think, to be honest, I don’t think it was a filming issue.

1:15:25 I just think they really didn’t want us to go there for our own safety. So we didn’t go, we didn’t sort of, we didn’t go against them. And in India, there weren’t really too many highways to run away from, and so we didn’t have any run-ins with the Indian police and military. We actually were on the border of India and Pakistan called the Wagah border crossing. And you know, a lot of people think this is like the craziest border in the world, right? You know, two crazy countries. And here it is, it’s like this festival. You know, you think you’re in West London at a theater show, it was amazing. And they gave us full access, allowed us to film it, and it was great.

1:16:07 The Israelis hate the Indians and vice versa, or is it overblown? I didn’t really get that, to be honest. I didn’t really get in any huge philosophical discussions with people about, you know, what they thought of the Pakistani. You know, when we went to the border and saw this sort of ceremony that takes place every day, it was more of, you know, just patriotism. It wasn’t the hate, right?

1:16:31 You know, Canadians and Americans are friends, but it’s, you know, we’re patriotic. I think the US is one of the most patriotic countries in the world and I had no idea how patriotic India was actually until sort of I witnessed this take place. But I didn’t feel like there was hate in the air, but you know, you hear and I probably hear just as much as you do that. Yeah, there is tension there for sure. But it didn’t really come across to me.

1:16:57 That’s crazy. So is this trip in the can? Is this been made into six episodes? It’s being posted now. Okay, is the same format you know do success?

1:17:05 I think we’re gonna do eight just because I think we have way more footage okay again We were legally allowed to shoot and film in India So we weren’t afraid of getting our stuff confiscated or not being you know allowed to film whereas in China a lot of places We had to kind of covertly film which we didn’t have that much footage So a lot of crazy stuff happened in China that we just we couldn’t we couldn’t get on camera whereas in India We got a ton of footage. Do you pick up the camera too? No, no I’ll take pictures with my phone and put it on Facebook and stuff but you know it’s just I’m not very artistic and you had two camera men with you on India trip?

1:17:43 Yeah the second camera man actually drove which is crazy. Great guy Dan from Holland. My brother met he was doing so he was in film school in Holland and he went out to China and interviewed my brother and my brother was like we’re looking for a fourth in India you want to come and he’s like sure and that was you know four months later he’s on the road with us and so he drove the whole way and did a lot of sort of b-roll footage and managed just just helped out in general with sort of keeping track of all the footage and backing it up and he did a great job. Would he arrive like three hours later because you guys are darting through traffic on motorcycles? No because we have to stay with them right because if something happens and they’re not there to film it it’s kind of Do you know what I mean?

1:18:27 So we’re very much together, which can be hugely frustrating. It’s like 40 degrees out, you’re stuck in traffic and I could just really just go on the sidewalk or, you know, pop around. But you do what you do. You can’t. Yeah.

1:18:41 Wow. I just think it’s so cool you guys are doing this stuff. So what’s next? I mean, will there be another country? Brazil?

1:18:47 Brazil. Yeah. You know, I think from a business perspective, we have no idea if anyone enjoys this stuff. Okay. We’ve done two shows now, but they really haven’t been into the market for very long at all.

1:19:03 We’re not prepared to jump in and fund a whole other one ourselves. It’s just stupid to be honest. My brother’s going to do some shows on his own, I think, in China. There’s some really cool stuff that he wants to do in China. Travel stuff?

1:19:17 Yeah, travel stuff. He wants to do a cool show about the border regions in China because it’s so interesting over there. wants to do some stuff about you know some Tibetan holy mountains such some great stories in history around these mountains. How’s he gonna film there? Yeah it’s gonna be tough. The batteries is you know batteries is really really difficult but yeah I guess buying batteries or charging your battery? Just charging yeah you know if you’re on a two and a half three week hike and he’s not allowed right? Yeah we might be allowed now who knows if they trust us to sort of edit it properly and not take a political standpoint on it. But yeah, you know, whether we do Brazil, Russia, I think, I don’t know, it depends. It’s kind of where life is, right? Like these trips are really hard. They’re hard on you physically and they’re hard on, you know, your family. I’m a married guy and, you know, run businesses and invest in businesses here in London. And to spend 65 days on the road is a lot. It’s a lot to ask for your business partners and my wife.

1:20:20 What does she think of these trips? Yeah, I think she’s hugely supportive. She has to be, right? Otherwise, either we wouldn’t be together or we wouldn’t do these trips. So I think she sees the value.

1:20:33 I think in China, she really felt like I had never been on an adventure and it was kind of a once in a lifetime thing. Little did she know. It was the thin edge of the wedge. But yeah, don’t get me wrong, it’s hard, and it’s something that isn’t an easy sort of conversation. It’s a long-term sales process, but she’s hugely supportive and sees the value of doing stuff like this.

1:20:58 Do you get scared for your life? I mean, when you had those crashes and stuff, I mean, do you ever just like, wait a second, I’m going to come back from this trip like missing a limb, and this is not a joke anymore? Sure. I think towards the end of China, I skidded off the road in the mountains and fell like five meters into a tree and just got so lucky. My forks and my bike completely bent and I just, you know, thanked my lucky stars and you know my brother, my brother really hit him hard because he’s kind of an older brother.

1:21:29 This trip was kind of his idea and he’s, you know, he said how bad would I feel if you’re, you know, eating out of a straw for the rest of your life and it’s just, it does hate you. You kind of feel invincible until you don’t, right? It’s one of those things. human life. Yeah.

1:21:45 And so India was extremely dangerous. I would say more dangerous than China. The roads in India are just so dangerous. And then worse bikes, which makes a big difference. You don’t have the torque or the power to get out of difficulty sometimes.

1:21:58 Yeah. It’s a two-way street sometimes because you don’t have the torque or power, but then on the other hand, you’re only going 80 kilometers an hour. And in India, a lot of the time maybe we were only going 40 or 50, but there’s just so much on the roads in India. There’s cows darting out in front of you. There’s dogs, there’s roadkill everywhere, every day in India you’re prepared, you could really come off your bike.

1:22:23 You do think about it, it’s in your mind, but after a few days it just kind of goes away a little bit, right? Because it feels like a video game after a while when you’re riding a bike, it’s like la, la, la, la, and then when you just skid off and it’s like, oh shit, this is really real. Yeah, this is very real, yeah. You could, in another part of that road, I could have been off the cliff and just done, right? London’s good training then for India, just driving around the city, lower speeds about lots of things.

1:22:54 Just popping in and out. You know, the big difference, people ask me, you know, how’s it like riding in London compared to India? It’s just, in London or in any western sort of organized road system, you can predict what people are going to do. You can kind of predict what’s going to happen. Except for cyclists.

1:23:09 You can’t predict those guys. It’s true. But you can predict cyclists better than you can predict cows. Yeah, that’s true. Only just, though.

1:23:16 Yeah, barely, maybe. And dogs. There’s so many wild dogs in India who have no idea. And so they’re running out all over the place. And it’s tough.

1:23:27 And their cows, are they everywhere? The cows? Everywhere. It’s ridiculous. I still don’t understand it.

1:23:33 And I had a lot of guys from my MBA class were from India. I’m like, you guys got to explain this to me. There’s like people starving. and then like cows just running along the street. It’s like- Are they a holy animal?

1:23:44 They are, yeah. But- You still want an explanation. Then I like argue with them. I’m like, well, if they’re so holy, why do you let them live on the street? Do you know what I mean?

1:23:53 Why don’t you just corner off a place in Northern India and just let them live? You know, ship them all up there because these cows aren’t living a nice life. You know, they eat garbage and they’re, you know, getting hit by, you know, they get nipped all the time. I saw a motorcyclist hit a cow and you know, That’s not how I would treat a holy cow, but anyways, holy cow. I was wondering if you, what advice you would give to someone who’s listening, who’s thinking about doing something like this, who’s thinking about even doing a documentary film or putting themselves out there with the hope that it might get picked up by television.

1:24:29 What would you tell them? Yeah, be prepared for a long road. I think it’s great. I don’t think you’re going to make millions of dollars at it. I personally wouldn’t do it even just to make money.

1:24:42 I think you really have to do it and be prepared to sort of lose money. It’s got like, I like going to the casino just for fun. You know, I might put 200 pounds in my pocket or whatever, go play blackjack and be prepared to lose that money on an experience or on just some entertainment. And I think it’s really difficult to make money in this industry. And it’s just, just go and have a great experience.

1:25:02 If you want to film it great and share that with other people, but let that be your primary reason for doing it. not because you want to make money, it’s just too hard and again we’re showing we’ve been working so hard at this and we’re still not even close to sort of getting to buying a car with our profits or anything, you know what I mean? We’re still in the hole. You used to probably have tons of production costs to pay back and stuff if you ever do sell it.

1:25:29 Yeah, absolutely. My brother and I finance most of it ourselves so we still have a long way to go. I think all three of our experiences that to quit and do something that you really want to do, you have to be prepared to do it for a long period of time in order to get any rewards out of it. If you’re only in it for like a year, a year and a half, what’s probably going to happen is that you may enjoy that year and a half, but you’re not going to be sort of financially rewarded from it.

1:25:55 If you’re prepared to do it for the long run, two, three years, four years, whatever it is, then the propensity or the likelihood of you being able to be compensated for it goes up every year that you stay in it, I think, because it takes time unless you’re incredibly lucky and you find that sort of sweet spot on the market right there and then in order for you to build up a proper business where you can actually get money that can sustain your lifestyle. Yeah, I think if you put time and effort and work harder than anyone else is going to work for a long period of time, you’ll succeed in just about anything. So I think if you’re going to go at this, go at it full-time as much as you can and just work harder than everyone else, and again, I could be wrong.

1:26:40 You could go at it and it could suck. You could go at it and it could be amazing, but no one wants it. So I think it’s just reality, it’s a tough industry to get into. I think it’s becoming a lot easier to not only shoot these type of things for a lower cost, it’s becoming easier to produce them for lower cost, but there’s still not a ton of money in it unless you can somehow monetize it somewhere down the road. But if it doesn’t work out, you don’t care, right?

1:27:06 You’ve just had an amazing period of time and you’ve seen things that you’ve never seen and you’ve enjoyed in life and you’ve had an adventure, which I think is probably more rewarding than making a ton of money. So if you made a ton of money, then all you were involved in is the business side of this stuff for the next five years, that would probably depress you a little bit after a while. Yeah, it might be. And I think, again, this has changed the trajectory of my life.

1:27:32 And I think that’s important, too. So every decision you make changes what your life’s going to look like years down the road. And I think if I never did this trip, I wouldn’t be where I am now. I wouldn’t be sitting in this seat if I didn’t do something that was kind of cool that people are interested in. And I think being able to talk to people and inspire them to sort of get out there and live their life rather than just sort of saving now for living it later.

1:27:55 I just think that’s phenomenal for me and it’s great and that’s what I love to do. For me, that was the primary goal, the primary drive was to have this adventure inspire people and inspire myself to live a life that I want to live going forward. Yeah. It’s interesting how you talk about it as a passion as opposed to a business. I think you get the best content when you’re actually wanting to do it and you’re like, having fun doing this, we might sell it, we might not, but this is what we want to do as opposed to if you were really just doing these trips for that half a million dollars you’re going to sell it for.

1:28:29 And then I think it might start to look like you’re just doing it as a business and people probably tune out because they don’t see the love there. It’s true. When we started pitching the China motorcycle trip to people in Asia, some of the Asian broadcasters were like, oh, why don’t you bring some Taiwanese celebrity with you? And they would have picked it up, and you’re like, how bad would that have been? So we probably could have made money, we could have had a ton of bling on us or something like that and made some money from sponsors and picked up a couple of Taiwanese celebrities or Hong Kongese celebrities, and maybe I could have made a couple hundred grand off of it, but how unexciting would that be?

1:29:11 If I ping you on Twitter and be like, I rode around China with two Taiwanese celebrities And you know eight trailer cars you would have been like yeah, it’s not so interesting maybe not yeah, maybe not no And then also it’s nice to be able to be You know you don’t have anyone to tell you what to do sure you guys can do what the fuck you want to do Yeah, go here. You won’t go there. There’s having that independence. I know I was doing London Real. It’s just awesome I don’t really have to worry about some television networks, right? You shouldn’t have done that or you shouldn’t have done that You shouldn’t have that guy on the yeah So and that’s just creating your own content and that’s even if my brother You know travel channel has been great And if they pick up the India and maybe they say we want you to do this this and this But I think we still want to fund it and finance it ourselves Maybe in partnership with them But because we still want to control the ideas and the content do what we want to do Yeah, that’s that’s King and what you were saying about it I think it’s almost like a startup when you choose to change like careers or what we’ve done in the last two years It takes time.

1:30:08 And I’m a classic example of this, but everybody wants instantaneous results. The whole world that we live in today is about get ripped quick, or get rich quick, or do this quick. Nobody has the patience. And I’m living an example of it, to see things through. And the longer you can stay at something, the harder you work at it, the more passionate you are about it, the more likely you are going to succeed.

1:30:31 And with success will come, the ability to fund the lifestyle that you’ve developed for yourself. The other thing that you did is that you took your passion and turned it into a business which was difficult for you, right, because you found yourself kind of… Slightly less in love with my passion. With your passion. Yeah.

1:30:49 It became a job. Yeah, that’s tricky too. That’s the MMA side, right? Yeah. Yeah.

1:30:54 Wow. You have such a cool story. I hope someone’s listening out here, whether in Hollywood or whatever, and I hope, first of all, they go check out your show and I want to get all those details, but yeah, Yeah, it’s just I would really want to see this show now. Yeah, I want to see you running away from some Chinese place But that’s not okay. I want to see that. What is somewhere? Yeah there We have some footage of him of the Chinese policeman like screaming at us But I’ll never be seen never be seen. What could I see? What if some like us guys says I want all that Yeah, I don’t again I don’t want to sell out either I think it isn’t As bad as the Chinese government might have a reputation, they’ve been great with us and they gave us an opportunity that probably otherwise may not have happened working with NHNZ and them.

1:31:42 So I’m a man of my word and part of the deal was working with them. To be honest, that footage doesn’t exist. It’s not interesting. And maybe if it really was, maybe the deal would be different. But we knew what we had and the problem is you can’t pull out a camera in front of of a Chinese military officer, it’s just, that’s just, even you wouldn’t do that?

1:32:03 No, no, that’s just really stupid. So, so the, the footage just isn’t there. All right, cool. Well, we’re going to be giving away five copies of this book to the best quotes that are tweeted out. It’s called the Middle Kingdom Ride.

1:32:17 How do they get in touch with you? How do they watch the show, the YouTube channel, everything? You can get in touch with me. Easy. I’m easy to find pile C on Twitter, Facebook page.

1:32:29 I just sort of got one going, so I have like 50 likes. Okay. Pile C is P-Y-L-E-C. P-Y-L-E-C. Okay.

1:32:36 Yeah, we have G209 Productions, so we got a YouTube page. You can check out a bunch of clips. The book is on Amazon, so you can find it there. The TV show is on the Travel Channel, Travel Channel’s website, best spot for your various regions to see when it’s showing. It is being shown right now, so go check it out.

1:32:57 And if you don’t get the travel channel, then I don’t know how you’re going to have to wait until it’s on pay TV, some, hopefully someone pick it up. Okay. So the trial and will the travel channel put it on their website when they’re done filming it? I don’t think so. I don’t know those rights.

1:33:10 Yeah. No, I don’t, I don’t think they’ll, they’ll do that. They just have the rights to show it on the TV. So. And do you have any clips of your China trip on your YouTube?

1:33:16 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It’s a cool channel. Yeah. The YouTube one.

1:33:21 I was just watching your, uh, your clip of your, I think it was your India adventure. Yeah. Crazy. Some good clips up there, so check them out and tune in and yeah, just keep living life. That’s awesome, man.

1:33:33 I’m so glad I met you. Thanks so much for tweeting me the other day. I know. Thanks for having me on. And yeah, if anyone’s out there listening, yeah, if you’ve got a good idea or a good suggestion, give me a tweet and I might say…

1:33:43 It’s a perfect example of the London Real catch line. It’s about the journey. So there you go. Seriously, right? Yeah.

1:33:50 I don’t even know what else to say. What are you doing in London, by the way? So right now I manage, my brother and his wife started up a Mandarin language school eight years ago. It’s a huge Mandarin language school for foreigners in China. So we opened up a school here in London.

1:34:02 So if anyone out there is looking to learn Mandarin, we have a school now open in London. And you know, I work with some tech startups. What’s the school called? Mandarin House. Yeah.

1:34:12 So mandarinhouse.com. Again, starting up an online language social platform called lingos.co. Just really beta version starting out now. You know, I work with some tech startups, I work with some VCs. You know, I really think there’s an opportunity to work with entrepreneurs and help them not get ripped off by financing people.

1:34:31 So I’m trying to sort of get involved with some of the VCs and sort of get some respect with them with some of the entrepreneurs. And some of these guys that have great ideas don’t really understand how to finance a business properly and you don’t have to give up everything. And so there’s lots of opportunities there, so I’m just busy doing tons of stuff here in London. I think there’s a lot of opportunity here in London. Absolutely.

1:34:53 Yeah, I love this city. It’s amazing. Yeah. I think a lot of North Americans like coming over here because they see opportunities that might not exist in LA and New York. Yeah.

1:35:06 You’re from San Diego. Yeah. Yeah.

1:35:20 Such a special place where you can really hop on a plane and be in a completely different place, right? The reality is you travel from Toronto to New York, it’s kind of the same thing, right? Different cities, but same sort of accent, same culture for the most part. So you don’t really get that. Whereas here, you know, you’re on the Eurostar to Paris in a few hours and it’s completely different.

1:35:40 So it’s cool. Yeah, I love living here too. Awesome, cool. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, if you could subscribe, If you want to see our beautiful faces, come to our YouTube channel, which is LondonRealTV. This could be the last time that we see Patrick.

1:35:55 So, I don’t know what to say, you’re going to come back? Maybe. But if you’re fully- Who knows what the future will hold. But okay, I can’t say anything more. Now if you’re fully employed by the banking industry, you’re not going to see your face on this show.

1:36:09 No, no, no. Probably not. So, well, anyways, we’ll see, maybe they’ll sack you and you can come back, but anyways, Thanks so much for being the co-host. It’s been a pleasure. For like five or six episodes.

1:36:19 It was awesome. And, you know, best of luck. Thank you. We’ll kind of be, both of us will be kind of, you know, vicariously living our life through your traitor. Wow.

1:36:29 I would, wow. I don’t know. I have no words, but we’ll just see what happens. Okay. Cool.

1:36:35 Awesome. And if you want to get a hold of Colin, tweet him. We’re going to be giving away copies of the book. And that’s it. We’re on Twitter.

1:36:41 We’re on Facebook. It’s a big party. London Real, send me an email at info at London Real TV. We got like 15 interns all over the world. It’s a big party.

1:36:50 We go out in London once a quarter, we get drunk. It’s all good. So there you go. Until then, guys, it’s about the journey. I don’t have to tell you that.

1:36:57 And thanks for coming. Thank you.