Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There. This is a podcast about the outdoors, from your window box and garden, to the fields on the edge of town, to the forests, prairies, seashores, and wilderness.

On the show, we'll explore our relationship with nature through stories, interviews, essays, and even some fiction.

We'll travel around the U.S. and the world with tales of love and heartbreak,

passion and adversity, desperation, and triumph. Today's episode is a story 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 will take us to the mountains of Wyoming and the rivers of Arizona,

and it'll show us how hard it can be to share the thing you love most with the person you love most.

Dewey Gaiagos 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.

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 and kept going, I took off. So you didn't have training wheels on the bicycle. And when he let go of the bicycle and kept going, I took off.

So you didn't have to learn how to ride a bike.

You just rode a bike.

Just a natural, you know.

Well, sort of a natural.

It didn't end well, I'll tell you that.

I didn't know how to break 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, it's a really happy memory I have.

From that moment, Dewey was hooked. He loved the freedom he felt on the bike and the intense rush of adrenaline.

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