Miscellaneous
This episode features Tyler Lau, trail name: The Prodigy (@thehikingprodigy). He’s hiked over 8,000 miles in his lifetime including the Pacific Crest Trail, the John Muir Trail, and the Colorado Trail. He is one of 9 people to have completed a Calendar Year Triple Crown and the first person of color to do so. He is an active advocate for conservation and diversity in the outdoors. In this episode, we get deep. We talked for over an hour and I split our conversation into two parts. This is the first part. We’re talking about:+How it feels to complete a CYTC+Why it meant so much to him to do a CYTC+How comparison and expectations will hinder your thruhike+How the trail community really makes the hike what it is and why our community needs to step up right now in this time of global crisis+How Each thruhike is unique+How technology and social media affected his CYTC+Hikers having to cancel their plans because of the pandemic+How Prodigy got into backpacking and conservation in the first place+Becoming an advocate and putting yourself out there+The uphill battle of Instagram+Backlash in the media of outwardly identifying as POC alongside a big accomplishment+Access to the outdoors+The privilege of thruhikingProdigy shares wisdom, opinion, and feelings in this extremely candid episode. He advocates and elaborates. He tells us why and how we can be a better community from his perspective. Prodigy has offered to be someone to talk to about quitting your hike. If you’re struggling with this, feel free to reach out to him via Instagram DM. I am so grateful to Prodigy for coming on for this episode. This is the content I LIVE for and I hope you love it too. If you loved this episode, please support the show. You can share, rate, subscribe, or review the show for FREE which is a huge help to us. If you really really loved it and want more episodes, you can donate to PayPal.me/trailnamehere or click the link in our bio. Every cent that is donated goes to the server fees to get the show from my computer to your device. It costs me over $200 per year and if every listener donated just $1 it would be completely covered. Advertising only covers about 1/8th of the show’s fees so far, not including the time I spend creating the show. Thank you SO MUCH for listening. I’m extremely humbled and grateful to have you all here listening.People mentioned:We mentioned Elina Osborne. She’s making INCREDIBLE videos from her PCT thruhike: https://www.elinaosborne.com/Graduate and TRex completed their calendar year triple crown in 2018 and hiked portions with Prodigy. You can find them here: http://mymountainiswaiting.com/We mentioned Sarah Mowery and our chat about social media on trail. You can listen to her episode here: https://www.trailnamehere.com/show-notes/2020/1/22/podcast-here-e26-sarah-tunes-moweryMy life coach is Jessica McKinley. I’ve mentioned her magic in this episode. You can find her here: https://www.whatshappyning.com/This is the documentary of Prodigy’s CYTC that got backlash: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6i2Yz8rgzE&feature=youtu.beSupport the show (http://paypal.me/trailnamehere)