Pedaling and Paddling
/By Willow Belden, produced by Out There Podcast
Released On October 20, 2022
Welcome to Out There Podcast. Our stories are written for the ear, so for those able, we recommend listening while reading along. Transcripts may contain minor errors; please check the audio before quoting.
(Bicycle bell rings twice)
VOICEOVER: Hub and Spoke, audio collective.
(Bicycle wheel spinning and bells ringing)
WILLOW BELDEN: So, I have a tradition I want to tell you about.
My mom passed away in 2009, and since then, her birthday has always been really hard for me. So a while back, I decided to do something nice to mark the occasion. I went for a hike. And now, it’s become an annual tradition.
This year, her birthday hike took me up a mountain near my home in Wyoming. And from the top, I could see this beautiful panorama of mountains and plains, stretching way off into the distance. And I found myself wondering about all the far-off peaks.
So I pulled out my phone and opened up an app called PeakVisor.
WILLOW (tape): OK, here we go. Alright, so Elk Mountain we know. And then we have Pennock Mountain, which looks like it’s probably got beautiful aspens on it right now. It looks all golden…
WILLOW (narration): PeakVisor one of our sponsors. Their app is kind of like your own personal mountain guide.
Check it out in the app store. You just might love it.
(Out There Theme music plays - guitar plucking chords, wistful whistling)
Hi, I’m Willow Belden, and you’re listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories outdoors.
This season is called Nature’s Nostalgia. Each episode, we’re sharing award-winning stories and beloved fan favorites from the early days of Out There.
Today’s episode is about love. Love between two people who bonded over their passion for the outdoors, but who eventually realized that the thing they had in common was also one of their biggest differences.
Their story takes us from the mountains of Wyoming, to rivers of Arizona. And it shows us how hard it can be to share the thing you love most, with the person you love most.
The story first aired in 2015.
(Theme music concludes)
(Music plays, upbeat guitar strumming)
Dewey Gallegos started feeling a fiery passion at age three or four. Not about his future wife, Jessica, though. That comes later. The love affair at this point was with a bicycle. His earliest memory is of the first time he tried to ride.
(Music fades)
DEWEY GALLEGOS: And my uncle was supposed to be running behind me, helping me, because I didn’t have training wheels on the bicycle. And when he let go of the bicycle, I kept going and took off.
WILLOW: So you didn’t have to learn how to ride a bike? You just rode a bike.
DEWEY: I’m just a natural, you know. (laughs)
WILLOW: Well, sort of a natural.
DEWEY: It didn’t end well, I’ll tell you that. I didn’t know how to brake as well as I should have yet. But I was able to pedal and go and get moving. And that’s my first memory and it’s a really happy memory I have.
(Music begins, upbeat guitar strumming, whistling)
WILLOW: From that moment, Dewey was hooked. He loved the freedom he felt on the bike, and the intense rush of adrenaline.
DEWEY: I’ve just really enjoyed that feeling of “Oh my God, I’m going to die,” and then, pulling off a move you didn’t think you could do. And then just the relief that you lived through it. It was a sheer terror that I’ve tried to recreate every time I’m on the bicycle now.
(Music swells, fades)
WILLOW: Unlike Dewey, Jessica Flock was a river person. She preferred raging rapids to rugged bike trails. As a kid, she’d go on rafting trips with her family. Eventually, her parents let her row her own boat. She loved every minute of it – loved being out on the water, loved how capable she felt at the helm, loved the exhilaration she’d feel when she managed to navigate a particularly difficult section of whitewater.
Sounds a lot like Dewey’s love of biking, only minus the bike.
(Music plays, clean, melodic electric guitar)
After high school, Jessica borrowed her parents’ truck and went rafting for an entire month. In college, she pushed aside classwork to make time for paddling. She rafted the Grand Canyon 15 times in nine years.
JESSICA FLOCK: It became a huge part of my life. There were a few years there where I got to get down to the Grand Canyon two times a year and then still do, you know some shorter three or four-day trips as well.
(Music swells)
WILLOW: Growing up in southeastern Wyoming, near the Colorado border, Dewey and Jessica were friends. But it wasn’t until years later, after Dewey returned from the Marine Corps, that they finally went on their first date. And this may sound cheesy, but both of them felt they were meant to be together.
(Music fades)
DEWEY: We both had a real strong desire to have dogs instead of kids. Which is huge for me, huge.
WILLOW: Jokes aside, they shared a deep connection: they both had this intense love of the outdoors. They felt their best, their freest, their most capable when they were out in nature.
But Jessica wasn’t a biker. And Dewey wasn’t a rafter. The things they were most passionate about, things that had become etched into their very identities, these things, they did not share.
DEWEY: And when I saw what Jessica did, like when she showed me a video of what rafting was, the very first time, when she was getting ready to go to the Grand Canyon, I just remember thinking she was insane. Like, completely and utterly insane.
WILLOW: Dewey was bewildered by Jessica’s love of water sports. And frankly, a little scared. That’s because he grew up in a Mexican household, and was haunted by the chilling legend of the Llorna.
DEWEY: I don’t know if a lot of people are familiar with who the llorona is. But she’s a crying woman who essentially is a spirit that travels the river, searching for the souls of boys and males.
WILLOW: DEAD boys, that is. Boys who this spirit drowned. And the legend creeped Dewey out. A lot.
DEWEY: It affected how much I am terrified of water.
WILLOW: Of course, Jessica didn’t know this about Dewey, didn’t know he had this visceral fear.
DEWEY: And I remember the first time she invited me to go rafting with her, I was like, “Yeah, that’d be great.” You know, just trying to keep it together. But I was afraid. I was really afraid of what she did.
WILLOW: But he didn’t want to let on how scared he was. And besides, he figured it wouldn’t be raging whitewater the whole time.
DEWEY: Jessica assured me, “Yeah, that’s about two percent of the river.” The rest of it is sitting back and getting sun and drinking beer.
WILLOW: Sun and beer sounded pretty good. So Dewey agreed to go.
(Sound of moving water)
They set out for the Salt River in Arizona, with three boats and several other friends. The first day went fine. But once they’d gotten to their campsite that night, it started to rain. Hard.
JESSICA: And it rained for about 24 hours straight. And so by the time we actually decided to go, the river had grown in cubic feet per second, movement of the water, right, from 3,000 cfs to 30,000 cfs.
WILLOW: That basically means the river was TEN TIMES as wild as it normally is.
JESSICA: It’s pretty epic.
DEWEY: I was terrified.
JESSICA: I was scared too. It was dangerous.
WILLOW: So dangerous, in fact, that no one else was even allowed to attempt the river that day. But Dewey and Jessica were already partway down, and there was no way to get off the river.
JESSICA: I mean the hills are covered in saguaro cactus. And you’re already there; you’re going.
(Sound of water grows louder, faster)
WILLOW: So down they went. The river was raging. A class III rapid had turned into a 14-foot waterfall. Side streams had become violent waterways. One of their friends’ boats capsized.
And then, all of a sudden, something horrible floated by.
(Music plays, suspenseful bass chords)
DEWEY: There’s a dead cow right there. That’s like a dead floating cow coming down the river, and it’s dead.
I remember it was rolling. Like, the cow rolled over and over, and we were just like dumbfounded, quiet, watching this cow float by us. And it was bloated and huge. And here we are going, “Alright, now let’s put these rafts out in the same water that cow died in and go vacation.”
WILLOW: Dewey was horrified. But he knew there was no way off the river at this point. So he steeled himself, and kept going.
(Suspenseful music and river sounds fade)
Needless to say, Dewey was not sold on rafting. To him, mountain biking was way more fun. And he wanted to share his passion with Jessica. So he bought her a nice bike. And they started riding together.
(Music plays, bluesy steel string guitar)
But Dewey didn’t go easy on her. His idea of a good ride was a trail called Death Crotch, the toughest, most technical trail in the area. And he got her a set of clipless pedals. They clip into your shoes, so your feet stay attached to the bike. They’re supposed to make you ride more efficiently. But when Dewey took Jessica out with her new gear, it didn’t go well.
(Music ends. Sound of bicycle riding on a trail, wind)
She fought her way to the top of a hill, slowed down, tried to get her foot unclipped from the pedal, and found that it was stuck. She teetered on her bike, and grabbed for a little aspen tree, but it bent.
JESSICA: And so I fell over, because I just couldn’t get unclipped before I fell over. You know, went down kind of slow, but hard.
DEWEY: So we rode on, and the second place, just another little uphill with a tree root. The tree root slipped and she fell down. And I watched that one happen; I was right behind her. And I remember there were some explicitives. And that was the moment I thought, ‘I’ve ruined this for Jessica. She will never be a mountain biker.’
(Music plays, slower melodic guitar plucking)
WILLOW: We’ll hear the rest of the story after the break. But first…
(Music fades)
Support for Out There comes from Athletic Greens. They make a blend of vitamins, probiotics, and more, which is designed to keep you healthy and active.
Out There’s advertising manager, Jessica Taylor, has been using AG1 for months now, and she loves it.
JESSICA TAYLOR: I like that I don’t have to take any additional vitamins. Like, it covers the vitamins I would take specifically for like immunity. It covers vitamins that would cover for like my hair and nails. And then for like my gut and my stomach. It feels really good to know, ‘OK, my body is getting everything it needs.’
WILLOW: AG1 is lifestyle-friendly, whether you eat keto, paleo, vegan, dairy-free or gluten-free. And it costs less than $3 a day.
To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D, and five free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/outthere, to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional insurance! Again, that is athleticgreens.com/outthere.
Support for Out There also comes from About the Journey, an original podcast from Marriott Bonvoy Traveler.
What does it mean to travel better? In Season 2 of About the Journey, travel journalist Oneika Raymond takes us on a journey around North America to find out.
JESSICA: I checked out the episode “Denver Colorado: Hit the Inclusive Hiking Scene at Genessee Park.”
WILLOW: That’s my colleague Jessica again.
JESSICA: It’s a story about Beth Bradley. Beth is a plus-sized hiker whose relationship with her body and her hometown were transformed forever when she went for her first hike. She talks about learning to hike and be in the outdoors in the same way that we can think about sewing. When you want to learn how to sew, you’re not going to start with sewing an entire ball gown. You’re going to start with something really small. In the same way, she shares about how getting out in the outdoors can start with something really small. And then from there, you can grow with your experience. And I just really loved that.
WILLOW:To hear that episode and all the others, search for About the Journey in your podcast player. I’ll also include a link in the show notes.
And now, back to our story about Dewey the mountain biker and Jessica the whitewater rafter.
(Music plays, melodic classical guitar)
WILLOW: Over the years, they both kept trying, really hard, to like each other’s sports. But Jessica never felt truly at home on a mountain bike. And the next two times that Dewey went rafting, there were more floods, and more whitewater. It was clear they were not converting each other.
(Music swells)
WILLOW: Then, one day, they went to the mountains together. Dewey wanted to go for a ride, Jessica insisted on hiking. So they split up. When they got home, Dewey’s frustration boiled over.
(Music fades)
DEWEY: I guess the only way you can explain it is I was throwing a tantrum about her not riding this really nice bicycle I had for her. And it wasn’t that big of a deal, really, but I was kind of like, “You know, it’s a really nice bike and it’s just sitting there.” And she was like, “Yeah, but we just got back from the mountains” — and you know she was hiking, and I was riding — “and we seemed to have a really good time doing that.”
(Music plays, peaceful piano)
WILLOW: All of a sudden, something clicked for Dewey. He realized she was right.
DEWEY: Yeah, we did. We had a really good time.
WILLOW: And so he backed off. He stopped pressuring her to ride with him. And she didn’t push him to go rafting, either.
DEWEY: She’s not going to be the cyclist that I’m going to be, and I’m not going to be the rafter that she’s going to be. And there’s a nice happy medium.
WILLOW: The nice happy medium is a compromise. Dewey goes along on the more “tame” river trips – the ones where there’s lots of flat water, and hopefully some sun and beer. And he enjoys it. Jessica has a beautiful cruiser bike, and takes pleasure in commuting calmly around town, without clipless pedals.
JESSICA: Each of us found a way to be at least a little bit happy within the other one’s world.
WILLOW: And in fact, more than a little bit happy. They own a bike shop together now.
(Music fades)
Still, most of the time, they pursue their passions independently. And they’re ok with that. In fact, they say it’s better that way.
DEWEY: Now, I think we both have an understanding that if we were to share everything about the sport that we love, it probably wouldn’t be the same for us. It wouldn’t be that thing that we can use to escape. It is our place to be ourselves, for ourselves.
WILLOW: And he says having that makes their marriage stronger.
(Music plays, guitar strumming, happy chords)
Most of us want to share our greatest passions with our soul mates. But relationships are all about compromise, striking a balance. And as Dewey and Jessica found, sometimes you have to preserve your independence in order to grow together.
(Music swells)
This story first aired in 2015. In fact, it was one of the first stories we ever ran on Out There.
Dewey and Jessica still live in Laramie, Wyoming. You can find Dewey at the Pedal House bike shop. And not too long ago, Jessica opened a store of her own, focused on water sports. I have links to where you can find both of them in the show notes.
(Music fades)
Coming up next time on Out There, we get up close and personal with one of the gnarliest ultra-running races ever put on.
(Wind blowing)
JORDAN WIRFS-BROCK: The wind right now is absolutely ridiculous. It is just whipping past me, taking all my heat away. It’s not very fun. But, other than the wind, things are great!
(Wind fades out)
WILLOW: Tune in on November 10 for a story about failure — and how reaching your breaking point might actually be the best thing that could happen to you.
(Music plays, ambling guitar)
So, I’d like to give you a quick update.
Our current season will be ending soon, and we’re getting started working on a new season. Which means we’re taking story pitches. If you have a story that you think would be a good fit for us, click the link in the episode description. I have all the details on the season theme, and what we’re looking for in stories there.
Speaking of our next season, it will likely launch in the spring of 2023. And, in the meantime, I’ll be releasing bonus episodes from time to time. So don’t worry, you’ll have plenty of good material to listen to as we head into winter.
(Music fades)
If you heard our last episode, you know that Out There is now a member of Hub & Spoke.
Hub & Spoke is a collective of smart, independent podcasts.
Their shows are an eclectic mix, they focus on everything from science to history to language, but they’re all driven by big ideas, and they all place an emphasis on truly excellent storytelling.
I’m looking forward to introducing you to all of the shows over the coming months. And today, I wanted to start with Ministry of Ideas.
Ministry of Ideas is a small show about the big ideas that shape our world. And they’re about to launch a new limited series called “Illuminations.”
(Ambient sound, angelic ringing)
VOICE 1: Science, like religion, was conceptualized as a quality of the individual. Its intention is to perfect our inherent drive towards truth and knowledge.
VOICE 2: The religious impulse in humans is deep seated. So religion and science have to live together, and they have in fact lived together, and often very productively. These worlds do operate differently, and yet it's hard to completely keep them separate, because we also typically seek some sort of coherence.
VOICE 3: Science doesn’t have instantly, ready-made answers to every question. What we know about the natural world is the result of 400 years of enormous labor, intellectual labor. It’s the same in theology.
VOICE 4: I was thinking about how the devotees of the temples spoke about technology, and about divinity. And that there seemed to be a technological sublime at home. So there was a sense of mapping divinity onto technology, and technology onto divinity. And so these worlds seem very, seemed very easily transposable.
VOICE 5: The same is true for the natural sciences, in biology and in physics, trying to figure out what the truth is about organisms, or what the truth is about the structure of the world. And the same is true in religion: where did we come from, where are we going, what’s our destiny?
VOICE 6: Two paths toward truth. Centuries of unexpected entanglements. “Illuminations” is a new limited series from Ministry of Ideas, exploring the surprising and complex relationship between religion and science. Launching October 24.
(Ambient music fades)
WILLOW: You can listen to Ministry of Ideas wherever you get your podcasts, or at ministryofideas.org.
I’d like to give a big shout-out to Wade Roush, Jacob Yancey, Eric Biederman, Phil Timm, Doug Frick, Tara Joslin, Deb and Vince Garcia, and the family of Mike Ludders.
These folks are all patrons of Out There, which means they make monthly contributions to the podcast. It’s that support from listeners that makes it possible to produce Out There.
If you’d like to get in on the fun and become a patron, click the link in the episode description or go to patreon.com/outtherepodcast.
(Out There Theme music plays - guitar plucking chords, wistful whistling)
If you’re new to Out There, check out the Best of Out There playlist. This is a collection of some of our favorite episodes of all time, and it’s a great introduction to the range of stories we do on the show. You can find Best of Out There on Spotify, and at our website - outtherepodcast.com.
Today’s story was reported and produced by me, Willow Belden. Story editing by Leigh Paterson. Out There’s advertising manager is Jessica Taylor. Our audience growth director is Sheeba Joseph. Our ambassadors are Tiffany Duong, Ashley White, and Stacia Bennet. And our theme music was written by Jared Arnold.
Have a beautiful day, and we’ll see you in three weeks.
(Theme music swells, concludes)
So, remember at the top of the show, where I was talking about going for a hike on my mom’s birthday?
The app I was using while I was out on that hike is called PeakVisor. If you’re interested in making the most of your adventures in the mountains, check them out.
PeakVisor is one of our sponsors. Their app has super detailed 3D maps, which you can use to plan out hikes. They have peak-bagging challenges to keep you motivated. And they’ll help you figure out what you’re looking at when you’re gazing off into beautiful mountain vistas.
If you’d like your own personal mountain guide, check out PeakVisor in the app store. You just might love it.
