[Music]
[Applause]
hi I’m bluey dye
I’m an average guy in fact it might be a
little bit below average when I was a
teenager I was in our school
cross-country running team where I
always gave an exciting finish at the
end of each race even if it was the last
place despite my below average finishes
my coach always supported me and I swear
it has nothing to do with the fact that
my coach was also my mom I was under
high school basketball team where I was
known more for my effort than I was
actual skills I grew up on a small
island in Lake Erie USA the little dot
for the population right around 450
people there was no tunnel or bridge to
the island so the only way back and
forth during the summer was by ferry
boat and in the winter and the lake
froze over was by small sticks passenger
planes we had no traffic light
we had no stopping law there was no
bowling alley to say that it was
isolated would be an understatement
in my class there were 10 students but
at least I finished top 10 in my class
there are so many excuses we can come up
with convinced ourselves not to do
something new I’m not athletic enough
I’m not smart enough I’m not talented
enough why would I leave I love my
hometown and with all the excuses in the
world it only takes one to convince us
not to try something new we all have our
comfort zones and we all have our
insecurities myself included my goal
today is to hopefully convince you to
embrace these boundaries these personal
boundaries but also ignore them
I want to talk to you about how I got
over my personal boundaries so I could
ride my bicycle across the entire United
States of America after my senior year
of university I decided it’s time for my
first big adventure and I moved from
very small town USA to Salzburg Austria
also kind of small I spent the year
working at an international high school
traveling around Europe meeting new
people experiencing new cultures and
after that year I’ve had this weird
feeling that of guilt almost that I’d
seen more of Europe than I had my own
homeland and so that second year I
clearly remember sitting around a table
with my new co-workers and expressing
that feeling is saying I think my next
ship needs to be across America I don’t
know how I’m gonna do it yet I might
even just ride my bike across there and
of course I said this in jest after all
I had never owned a road bike in my life
I never flagged more than 20 kilometers
in a day which is why I was caught
completely off guard when yawn the
Englishman who I had just met a month
before said I’d do that with you I
didn’t know how to react
so I laugh and I said let’s do it
now up until that point in my life
experiences that’s when the conversation
would end we would change the subject
but it didn’t we kept on talking about
it at first it was just between the two
of us but eventually we started talking
telling more and more people about our
idea until eventually so many people
knew about it we saw that we had to do
it in December when we decided we would
actually move forward with my idea I
realized something that changed my life
and that’s the power of saying yes and
that casual dinner conversation in
October when yon said yes to an idea
that I had never taken seriously he
convinced us to do something that would
probably change our life forever it
would be the coolest thing we would ever
do and so rule number one for pushing
your personal boundaries is to stay yes
in the following months we began
preparing for our trip we quickly
changed our Christmas and birthday
wishlist we no longer needed new clothes
or fancy toys but now we needed skinny
tight biking spandex we needed the
world’s smallest travel towels and we
need a chafing cream we naively
committed to biking across the country
before we had any idea how we would
navigate ourselves across it’s easy to
build a Google map luckily after a bit
of research we found by specific maps
that would guide us through the country
but even with these maps I still have no
idea how reasonably far we can bike in a
day could we do a hundred kilometers six
days a week for two months straight we
biked a hundred kilometers and go over a
2000 meter
in one day so I think what any good
navigator does and I guess by April Jana
had purchased his new bicycle he was
ready to go
I on the other hand or to mine over the
phones from the US I gave them my
dimensions and hopeful for the best
point out but I traveled back so high
other than two days before the start of
our trip I picked up my new bicycle
luckily like a dream young travelers
from Austria while I after my pit stop
in Ohio traveled on where we met up in
Oregon after putting my bike together we
began biking through the city of
Portland it seemed appropriate to start
in this bike crate city
seeing as we were about to end or one of
the most quite crazy things I could have
a thought on and all was good and so we
started writing that’s my buddy and as
we were riding I hit my first small bump
in the road literally in the front bag
on the front so right down that’s the
bag I needed to navigate my map was on
top oh no then biked a little bit
further I had another small bomb and
boom a two-front back started to fly
everywhere oh no at this point three of
my five bags
we’re either flopped down so I couldn’t
use it or ready to fly off of the hinge
de- one was getting off to a booming
start we woke up the next morning
excited for our new adventure my first
goal was to get a picture along the
ocean so that later on in the trip we
could take a similar picture in the
Atlantic Ocean
well eager and nervous that we would
miss the water we stopped at the first
beach the only problem was there was a
field of huge rocks in between us in the
water
the length of a football pitch so what
did we do well right over those rocks
forty kilo likes to take this picture
the worst beach we picked how we did the
break our ankles I’ll never know I swear
there was a whole page of rocks there
and after that our first mini adventure
we then reached our first stoplight now
admittedly young and I haven’t really
practiced enough on how to clip in and
out of our bike pedals and that became
comically evidenced when at that first
stoplight young fields unclip from his
bike and he fell over and was being like
slow motion I figured with my bag drama
and yawns falling over on day one at
that point there was probably about a
20% chance we actually made it to New
York City but we did what we always do
we laughed and he kept on going
despite out really drama we quickly fell
into a beautifully simplistic daily
routine we get up with the Sun we biked
for about eight hours this was stupid by
the way this was that about 130
kilometers in my legs were stationed so
that was a bad idea we would then set up
our camp and we’d go to bed with the Sun
we haven’t really trained for the
trigger so I expected the worst muscles
so sore wouldn’t be able to walk
changing between my legs so bad would
get infected and sunburns so extreme
that we would be glowing at night and
despite the fact that I thought all of
those things were gonna happen I still
thought this was a good idea
I tend to plan for the worst and hope
for the best
luckily hope prevails and we never had a
serious chafing we were never very sore
and I only had one bad sunburn and
that’s because I forgot the Sun would
get through the holes in my helmet
waking 140 kilometers a day six days a
week for two and a half months sounds
intimidating by the time we completed
our journey we had wiped through 14
states in over 6,000 kilometers let me
tell you that is a long time to look at
the same backside
in order to pass our time in the saddle
would come up with different games to
play our favorite game is called top 5
making your top 5 favorite musicians
name your top 5 favorite athletes well
one of the questions we came up with or
what are the top 5 words you would want
someone else to use to describe it
wasn’t all fun games for us on the road
sometimes we got philosophical
coincidentally at that time in our riot
I had heard from different family
members and friends who had said that
all right had inspired them to be more
active if even just a little bit it was
at that point that I realized I could
inspire people to be more active to do
more if again it was only on a small
scale this moral support reminded me of
what became the second rule – breaking
personal boundaries and that is believe
in yourself you can do more than you
think you’re capable of and when you
think of the five words you want someone
used to describe you I hope that small
scale inspirational is one of them for
the most part the biking itself wasn’t
terribly challenging we biked at a very
casual comfortable pace but when the
weather decided to get involved things
got interesting I remember taking our
last rest break on a hot 140 kilometer
day when I asked Jana said hey young
does that look like to you he said hmm I
don’t know we don’t have tornadoes in
England that kind of looks like what
I’ve seen in the movies I said yeah I
kind of thought it was like a funnel
cloud and a right at that moment a man
pulled over at his party said hey
there’s a tornado you guys got a go
right well couldn’t take a ride in a car
to be cheating we had to ride our bikes
across America and it was while biking
away from that tornado as fast as we
could that I realize we might have lost
just a little bit of our sanity
happy to report we were faster than you
tornado I don’t actually know if it ever
touchdown everyone as far as I know was
okay
while we were biking in Minnesota we
experienced an unbelievably intense heat
wave the temperatures in the road would
exceeded 48 degrees Celsius yeah and we
were still biking 130 kilometers dead
I’ll never forget being totally confused
by this weird popping sound that was
happening and so finally I realized that
was the sound of our bike tires going
over the road which was actually melting
beneath us we survived while the weather
made things interesting the most
dangerous part of Iraq was by far the
traffic and I got a quick introduction
into that on a third day when we had one
of our first big descents I wasn’t quite
yet comfortable with my extremely heavy
bicycle and maneuvering what all of a
sudden I found myself barreling down a
hill at 50 kilometres an hour
terrifying and so we realized there was
construction and we then had to merge
into traffic and I ended up directly in
front of a huge transportation truck I
have never been more aware of my
surroundings or my mortality then while
10 meters in front of that truck I’m
knowing that if I made one small move I
was doing I later found out those are
the stories don’t tell your mom
the landscape we crossed was absolutely
gorgeous and when we did have roads that
were long flat boring there were some
pretty major a sense that we had to bike
over and while they always expected
biking over the Rocky Mountains would be
challenging and it was that wasn’t even
almost difficult to senator it was in
the middle of the country I want to be
specific well there are no mountains in
study that we had our most difficult
ascent we were biking along the river
when all of a sudden the directions call
us Rick sharp right turn out of the
valley back steep unbelievably steep
rainy bike of that pillar
almost killed us again it didn’t we
spent most of our nights in a small
two-man ten better students for one
adult we found that in most small towns
we could pretty much set our tent up in
any public area as long as we asked the
right people only the police and we
could end up next to a playground or a
swimming pool was gorgeous we also set
up our tent along the Mississippi River
in the middle of random fields and in
people’s front yards with the permission
of course I also managed to get a shower
every night except for one which was
really important for me because after
sweating and sunscreen and bike dirt our
skin actually turned 20 colors because
the dirt the last thing I wanted to do
was climb into his sleeping bag over all
our camping experiences were quite
positive but by the time we were
finished with our big adventure and
never needed camp again
we obviously spent most of our time
biking that’s what we were doing but we
also found time to
everything that small-town USA has to
offer we visited the random tourist
traps across America that’s makes it so
endearing the world’s largest thermal
spa the geographic center of North
America the world’s largest boots
but for me I’m most exciting or fun
leisure activity was when we decided to
go to a baseball game in Great Falls
Montana now experiencing a baseball game
with an Englishman was interesting in
itself but it was an extra bonus when we
showed up and relaxed they were giving
away free boxes of cereal to the first
500 people now we didn’t have room for a
box of cereal on our bikes and we were
always hungry
so the who shamelessly ate those boxes
of cereals throughout the game which
surprisingly no one else did they were
pretty dry in the end the hardest part
of biking across America was having it
come to a close we’ve spent over six
months planning for it and over two
months actually doing it and we biked
through New York City and have a great
as a bike in the New York City
I was not only overwhelmed by all of the
carbons but also this mix of feelings
that I didn’t expect this only
intensified as we stood at the Atlantic
Ocean realizing we had made and when I
thought back to those first days and all
of the adventures in-between couldn’t
believe we were actually there and then
with the excitement of two small
children we plunged riding
that salt water has never tasted so
sweet before I was overwhelmed with
pride but also sadness that I was over
one thing was for sure though we had
accomplished one of the most special
things we ever would well also not just
inspiring ourselves but also inspiring
others when we completed the ride I
think that this would be the pinnacle
sure godmother well hopefully have other
lifetime milestones like getting married
and having kids but what I ever
experienced an adventure quite like this
probably not but I promised myself I
would be open to new ideas and that
leads me to the third and final rule for
breaking personal boundaries and that’s
to allow yourself to be inspired by
others especially after two people don’t
just hear people when they speak but
listen allow yourself to be moved and as
I mentioned earlier small-scale inspired
and with that I found myself back in
Salzburg back in the cafeteria when an
the other new staff member said was a
year ago today that my brother was on
top of Kilimanjaro yawn and I looked at
each other
thinking no our mold people climb
Kilimanjaro
but that is for another talk
[Applause]
[Applause]
hi I’m bluey dye
I’m an average guy in fact it might be a
little bit below average when I was a
teenager I was in our school
cross-country running team where I
always gave an exciting finish at the
end of each race even if it was the last
place despite my below average finishes
my coach always supported me and I swear
it has nothing to do with the fact that
my coach was also my mom I was under
high school basketball team where I was
known more for my effort than I was
actual skills I grew up on a small
island in Lake Erie USA the little dot
for the population right around 450
people there was no tunnel or bridge to
the island so the only way back and
forth during the summer was by ferry
boat and in the winter and the lake
froze over was by small sticks passenger
planes we had no traffic light
we had no stopping law there was no
bowling alley to say that it was
isolated would be an understatement
in my class there were 10 students but
at least I finished top 10 in my class
there are so many excuses we can come up
with convinced ourselves not to do
something new I’m not athletic enough
I’m not smart enough I’m not talented
enough why would I leave I love my
hometown and with all the excuses in the
world it only takes one to convince us
not to try something new we all have our
comfort zones and we all have our
insecurities myself included my goal
today is to hopefully convince you to
embrace these boundaries these personal
boundaries but also ignore them
I want to talk to you about how I got
over my personal boundaries so I could
ride my bicycle across the entire United
States of America after my senior year
of university I decided it’s time for my
first big adventure and I moved from
very small town USA to Salzburg Austria
also kind of small I spent the year
working at an international high school
traveling around Europe meeting new
people experiencing new cultures and
after that year I’ve had this weird
feeling that of guilt almost that I’d
seen more of Europe than I had my own
homeland and so that second year I
clearly remember sitting around a table
with my new co-workers and expressing
that feeling is saying I think my next
ship needs to be across America I don’t
know how I’m gonna do it yet I might
even just ride my bike across there and
of course I said this in jest after all
I had never owned a road bike in my life
I never flagged more than 20 kilometers
in a day which is why I was caught
completely off guard when yawn the
Englishman who I had just met a month
before said I’d do that with you I
didn’t know how to react
so I laugh and I said let’s do it
now up until that point in my life
experiences that’s when the conversation
would end we would change the subject
but it didn’t we kept on talking about
it at first it was just between the two
of us but eventually we started talking
telling more and more people about our
idea until eventually so many people
knew about it we saw that we had to do
it in December when we decided we would
actually move forward with my idea I
realized something that changed my life
and that’s the power of saying yes and
that casual dinner conversation in
October when yon said yes to an idea
that I had never taken seriously he
convinced us to do something that would
probably change our life forever it
would be the coolest thing we would ever
do and so rule number one for pushing
your personal boundaries is to stay yes
in the following months we began
preparing for our trip we quickly
changed our Christmas and birthday
wishlist we no longer needed new clothes
or fancy toys but now we needed skinny
tight biking spandex we needed the
world’s smallest travel towels and we
need a chafing cream we naively
committed to biking across the country
before we had any idea how we would
navigate ourselves across it’s easy to
build a Google map luckily after a bit
of research we found by specific maps
that would guide us through the country
but even with these maps I still have no
idea how reasonably far we can bike in a
day could we do a hundred kilometers six
days a week for two months straight we
biked a hundred kilometers and go over a
2000 meter
in one day so I think what any good
navigator does and I guess by April Jana
had purchased his new bicycle he was
ready to go
I on the other hand or to mine over the
phones from the US I gave them my
dimensions and hopeful for the best
point out but I traveled back so high
other than two days before the start of
our trip I picked up my new bicycle
luckily like a dream young travelers
from Austria while I after my pit stop
in Ohio traveled on where we met up in
Oregon after putting my bike together we
began biking through the city of
Portland it seemed appropriate to start
in this bike crate city
seeing as we were about to end or one of
the most quite crazy things I could have
a thought on and all was good and so we
started writing that’s my buddy and as
we were riding I hit my first small bump
in the road literally in the front bag
on the front so right down that’s the
bag I needed to navigate my map was on
top oh no then biked a little bit
further I had another small bomb and
boom a two-front back started to fly
everywhere oh no at this point three of
my five bags
we’re either flopped down so I couldn’t
use it or ready to fly off of the hinge
de- one was getting off to a booming
start we woke up the next morning
excited for our new adventure my first
goal was to get a picture along the
ocean so that later on in the trip we
could take a similar picture in the
Atlantic Ocean
well eager and nervous that we would
miss the water we stopped at the first
beach the only problem was there was a
field of huge rocks in between us in the
water
the length of a football pitch so what
did we do well right over those rocks
forty kilo likes to take this picture
the worst beach we picked how we did the
break our ankles I’ll never know I swear
there was a whole page of rocks there
and after that our first mini adventure
we then reached our first stoplight now
admittedly young and I haven’t really
practiced enough on how to clip in and
out of our bike pedals and that became
comically evidenced when at that first
stoplight young fields unclip from his
bike and he fell over and was being like
slow motion I figured with my bag drama
and yawns falling over on day one at
that point there was probably about a
20% chance we actually made it to New
York City but we did what we always do
we laughed and he kept on going
despite out really drama we quickly fell
into a beautifully simplistic daily
routine we get up with the Sun we biked
for about eight hours this was stupid by
the way this was that about 130
kilometers in my legs were stationed so
that was a bad idea we would then set up
our camp and we’d go to bed with the Sun
we haven’t really trained for the
trigger so I expected the worst muscles
so sore wouldn’t be able to walk
changing between my legs so bad would
get infected and sunburns so extreme
that we would be glowing at night and
despite the fact that I thought all of
those things were gonna happen I still
thought this was a good idea
I tend to plan for the worst and hope
for the best
luckily hope prevails and we never had a
serious chafing we were never very sore
and I only had one bad sunburn and
that’s because I forgot the Sun would
get through the holes in my helmet
waking 140 kilometers a day six days a
week for two and a half months sounds
intimidating by the time we completed
our journey we had wiped through 14
states in over 6,000 kilometers let me
tell you that is a long time to look at
the same backside
in order to pass our time in the saddle
would come up with different games to
play our favorite game is called top 5
making your top 5 favorite musicians
name your top 5 favorite athletes well
one of the questions we came up with or
what are the top 5 words you would want
someone else to use to describe it
wasn’t all fun games for us on the road
sometimes we got philosophical
coincidentally at that time in our riot
I had heard from different family
members and friends who had said that
all right had inspired them to be more
active if even just a little bit it was
at that point that I realized I could
inspire people to be more active to do
more if again it was only on a small
scale this moral support reminded me of
what became the second rule – breaking
personal boundaries and that is believe
in yourself you can do more than you
think you’re capable of and when you
think of the five words you want someone
used to describe you I hope that small
scale inspirational is one of them for
the most part the biking itself wasn’t
terribly challenging we biked at a very
casual comfortable pace but when the
weather decided to get involved things
got interesting I remember taking our
last rest break on a hot 140 kilometer
day when I asked Jana said hey young
does that look like to you he said hmm I
don’t know we don’t have tornadoes in
England that kind of looks like what
I’ve seen in the movies I said yeah I
kind of thought it was like a funnel
cloud and a right at that moment a man
pulled over at his party said hey
there’s a tornado you guys got a go
right well couldn’t take a ride in a car
to be cheating we had to ride our bikes
across America and it was while biking
away from that tornado as fast as we
could that I realize we might have lost
just a little bit of our sanity
happy to report we were faster than you
tornado I don’t actually know if it ever
touchdown everyone as far as I know was
okay
while we were biking in Minnesota we
experienced an unbelievably intense heat
wave the temperatures in the road would
exceeded 48 degrees Celsius yeah and we
were still biking 130 kilometers dead
I’ll never forget being totally confused
by this weird popping sound that was
happening and so finally I realized that
was the sound of our bike tires going
over the road which was actually melting
beneath us we survived while the weather
made things interesting the most
dangerous part of Iraq was by far the
traffic and I got a quick introduction
into that on a third day when we had one
of our first big descents I wasn’t quite
yet comfortable with my extremely heavy
bicycle and maneuvering what all of a
sudden I found myself barreling down a
hill at 50 kilometres an hour
terrifying and so we realized there was
construction and we then had to merge
into traffic and I ended up directly in
front of a huge transportation truck I
have never been more aware of my
surroundings or my mortality then while
10 meters in front of that truck I’m
knowing that if I made one small move I
was doing I later found out those are
the stories don’t tell your mom
the landscape we crossed was absolutely
gorgeous and when we did have roads that
were long flat boring there were some
pretty major a sense that we had to bike
over and while they always expected
biking over the Rocky Mountains would be
challenging and it was that wasn’t even
almost difficult to senator it was in
the middle of the country I want to be
specific well there are no mountains in
study that we had our most difficult
ascent we were biking along the river
when all of a sudden the directions call
us Rick sharp right turn out of the
valley back steep unbelievably steep
rainy bike of that pillar
almost killed us again it didn’t we
spent most of our nights in a small
two-man ten better students for one
adult we found that in most small towns
we could pretty much set our tent up in
any public area as long as we asked the
right people only the police and we
could end up next to a playground or a
swimming pool was gorgeous we also set
up our tent along the Mississippi River
in the middle of random fields and in
people’s front yards with the permission
of course I also managed to get a shower
every night except for one which was
really important for me because after
sweating and sunscreen and bike dirt our
skin actually turned 20 colors because
the dirt the last thing I wanted to do
was climb into his sleeping bag over all
our camping experiences were quite
positive but by the time we were
finished with our big adventure and
never needed camp again
we obviously spent most of our time
biking that’s what we were doing but we
also found time to
everything that small-town USA has to
offer we visited the random tourist
traps across America that’s makes it so
endearing the world’s largest thermal
spa the geographic center of North
America the world’s largest boots
but for me I’m most exciting or fun
leisure activity was when we decided to
go to a baseball game in Great Falls
Montana now experiencing a baseball game
with an Englishman was interesting in
itself but it was an extra bonus when we
showed up and relaxed they were giving
away free boxes of cereal to the first
500 people now we didn’t have room for a
box of cereal on our bikes and we were
always hungry
so the who shamelessly ate those boxes
of cereals throughout the game which
surprisingly no one else did they were
pretty dry in the end the hardest part
of biking across America was having it
come to a close we’ve spent over six
months planning for it and over two
months actually doing it and we biked
through New York City and have a great
as a bike in the New York City
I was not only overwhelmed by all of the
carbons but also this mix of feelings
that I didn’t expect this only
intensified as we stood at the Atlantic
Ocean realizing we had made and when I
thought back to those first days and all
of the adventures in-between couldn’t
believe we were actually there and then
with the excitement of two small
children we plunged riding
that salt water has never tasted so
sweet before I was overwhelmed with
pride but also sadness that I was over
one thing was for sure though we had
accomplished one of the most special
things we ever would well also not just
inspiring ourselves but also inspiring
others when we completed the ride I
think that this would be the pinnacle
sure godmother well hopefully have other
lifetime milestones like getting married
and having kids but what I ever
experienced an adventure quite like this
probably not but I promised myself I
would be open to new ideas and that
leads me to the third and final rule for
breaking personal boundaries and that’s
to allow yourself to be inspired by
others especially after two people don’t
just hear people when they speak but
listen allow yourself to be moved and as
I mentioned earlier small-scale inspired
and with that I found myself back in
Salzburg back in the cafeteria when an
the other new staff member said was a
year ago today that my brother was on
top of Kilimanjaro yawn and I looked at
each other
thinking no our mold people climb
Kilimanjaro
but that is for another talk
[Applause]
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