Hello, friends, both old and new. Welcome to the Bikes for Death podcast. My name is Patrick,

and I'm your host. This is a show that talks about bikepacking, adventuring, and the cool people

who participate. And if you're not into that, well, you're probably on the wrong show. But if you

are here for that, I'm excited to let you know that today we have Benjamin Johnson on the show.

And if you're not familiar with Benjamin Johnson, you may have seen his film recently featured

on bikepacking.com. Admissions of a beginner bikepacker. As soon as I saw the title, I got to be

honest, I was hooked. So much of what we see now is the polished perfect, the beautiful,

but we don't see the knit and the grit and the grind that takes you to those places,

that puts you in those places so that you can have those experiences.

So you can take that picture or record that film or whatever it is.

And the truth is that most of the people in this sport are, if we want to call it a sport,

are new.

They're still learning.

And looking at some of these guys go and do amazing things like the Tour Divide or bike pack across the Baja divide or whatever it is, there's so many examples you can point to of people just doing absolutely remarkable things.

But that's daunting.

For somebody just getting into the sport, it can be daunting.

Other people are like, oh my gosh, I want to do that.

That's what I, you know.

Some people just bite off the whole elephant at once, and that's cool too.

But I don't think that's most people.

I think most people are wanting to learn how to get into it.

And I think showing some of the less professional

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