Off the Hamster Wheel
Out There
Willow Belden
4.6 • 608 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2017
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For Matt Miller, cycling was golden. It was his exercise, his commute, and his therapy. When he was in the saddle, troubles seemed to melt away, and he felt free -- completely, utterly free.
So when he set out for a cross-country bike tour the summer after graduating college, he thought it would be the adventure of a lifetime. And for a while, it was. But then, something happened that turned his world upside down.
Producer Bianca Taylor brings us Matt’s story. It’s a story about how we define ourselves, and even distract ourselves, with the thing we most love to do. And it looks at what happens to us when that thing is taken away.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, I'm Willow Belden and you're listening to Out There, the podcast that explores big questions through intimate stories in the outdoors. |
| 0:14.2 | Support for this episode comes from Kind, makers of healthy and delicious snacks. |
| 0:19.1 | They have a special offer for Out There listeners. You can get a sample box with 10 different Kind bars for just $10 with free shipping. |
| 0:26.6 | That's a $20 value. |
| 0:27.6 | For details, go to kindsnacks.com slash out. |
| 0:31.6 | Support also comes from the Two Moon 24, a brand new 24-hour mountain bike race. It's being held September 24th in Glendos State Park, |
| 0:41.6 | which is just three hours north of Denver, Colorado. The course is beautiful. I've actually |
| 0:46.2 | ridden it with one of the race organizers, and it's in a lovely park with a reservoir and great |
| 0:51.0 | camping. You can do the race solo or with the team. For more information, |
| 0:55.0 | just go to Two Moon24.com. That's Two Moon, all spelled out, 24, as in the numbers, dot com. |
| 1:07.0 | Before we get started with today's story, I have one more thing I want to share. Out there just won a major national award from Prendi, which is an association of public radio journalists across the country. |
| 1:17.7 | They give out annual awards, which celebrate the best audio stories of the past year, and Out There took first place in the independent podcast category for our episode titled High on Failure. |
| 1:28.5 | If you haven't already heard it, well, we're not the only ones who think it's worth a listen. |
| 1:38.6 | Okay, so on to today's story. |
| 1:41.5 | This is a story about a young man and a bike trip and an incident that |
| 1:45.8 | happened on an open road in Montana, an incident that would turn this young man's world upside down. |
| 1:54.0 | So I want you to take a moment and think about the thing you love most, the thing you turn to |
| 1:59.6 | when you're anxious or depressed or angry, |
| 2:02.3 | the thing that makes everything better when life seems too hard. For some of us, that thing is a |
| 2:07.9 | sport, running or swimming or rock climbing. For others, it's reading a book by your favorite author. |
| 2:13.9 | Or maybe it's treating yourself to a massage or driving alone on a country road. Whatever it is, |
| 2:20.5 | this thing is your happy place. For Matt Miller, biking was that happy place. He rode all the time. |
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