Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Bikes for Death podcast. As always, my name is Patrick,

and I'm your host. And on today's episode, I'm talking with Philip Crosby, who went by the name

Weston in the book, To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedediah Jenkins. And if you haven't read this book, I'll give you a quick synopsis, but I won't give

anything away for those of you who may want to still read it.

But we're actually on the 10-year anniversary of when Jedediah and Philip set out on a bike trip that would start in Oregon and would take

16 months to ultimately get all the way down to Patagonia, traveling through Central America,

all the way through South America, and ultimately all the way to Patagonia.

So the book is about Weston and Philip as they go on this trip. And while they're on this trip, Jedediah is writing a book.

He has aspirations of being a writer.

And part of his own journey is his grappling with his own sexuality

and how that relates to his life growing up as a Christian in a Christian family.

And so the story is very much written from the perspective of Jedediah.

It is his story.

It is his experience.

And it is his perspective from which the book is written through.

And on this trip, obviously, there's Philip, his friend, who in the book goes by Weston. And in today's episode, we'll talk about

why that might be and why the name was changed. So Weston is kind of a character in this book,

and he's one that I found myself really fascinated by and interested in. He has deep philosophical

thoughts on money and economics and politics and religion

and drugs or a.k.a. plant medicine. And he ended up leaving the trip early. I think after 10 months,

he departed. And again, I won't give away any spoilers. But I found

myself curious about this Weston character. I wanted to know more. I wanted to hear more of the

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