Valuable Lessons from Everyday Adventurers

Meet Brooke Goudy and Jessie Griffiths, experts in everyday adventure. Both have created unique and exceptional lives fueled by wildly different outdoor experiences. What they do share is an understanding of the lasting benefits of motivated activity—and a common love of the Taco that gets them there.

Get Ready for Adventure

Brooke Goudy

A few years ago, Brooke Goudy would have said her greatest accomplishment was a 55-day bikepacking trip completing the Great Divide Trail from Canada to Mexico. Now, she’s most proud of how her organization, Rowdy Goudy, inspires more women of color to experience the same joy she does on a bike. And though she continues building community and launching adventures on top of a busy day job as a Denver-based school nurse, Goudy still calls herself an ordinary, everyday person—proof of her message that everyone is capable of incredible feats.

What I’ve Gained from Adventure:

Those extraordinary adventures aren’t reserved for a certain type of people. They’re for all of us. And it’s a lot easier to believe you can do these big, incredible adventures when you can see representation of people like you doing extraordinary things.

Each person’s extraordinary adventure is different. In my mind, it’s got to be epic. When you think about it, your heart starts pounding and you’re so nervous and there’s a small part of you that thinks “I can’t do it.” It’s got to be something that I could be like “You’ll never guess what I just did!”

And I really like big adventures where you really have to prepare yourself. (I signed up for a half marathon this spring.) Sometimes it might take months of preparation to get there.

People say “How did you ride 160 miles in one day?” It’s just right foot, left foot. We all get to a struggle point, but you just have to keep going.

One of the most helpful things for me is getting out of the city. If we go into the quiet, we can hear those whispers of inspiration: “You’re amazing, you’re so strong, you are resilient, you are persistent.”

Cycling to me is my ability to show my resilience, my persistence, my strength. It allows me to show the world that I can travel far, that I can do hard things.

I snowboard every weekend in winter, and I do yoga. I run. I’m not averse to any outdoor activity there is. It really is about going out there and enjoying myself and finding joy and other people seeing that joy.

That overwhelming sense of joy that happens when I’m having one of those phenomenal days on my bike and everything’s really connecting is that there’s just not anything better than that.

Jessie Griffiths

Born and raised in North Texas, Jesse Griffiths loves being outdoors. Whether it’s fishing or hunting, most of Griffiths’ activities are food-motivated. He opened his Austin restaurant, Dai Due, in 2006 to define the regional cuisine of central Texas with local ingredients. He cares deeply about his ingredients’ sources and their practices. In addition to his restaurant, Griffiths is a father, outdoor educator, and occasional hunting guide. He also authored the James Beard Award–winning The Hog Book and upcoming The Turkey Book. With all of these pursuits, Griffiths’ greatest challenge is finding the time to adventure—and fill up his own freezer.

What I’ve Gained from Adventure:

When I’m preparing for an adventure, I constantly visualize and write a lot of lists. I enjoy the preparation. I try to think of everything I’m going to need. It just helps me to be very organized. And then when you’re there, you can relax.

One of the best adventures I’ve been on was one day hunting with my best friend. By the end of the day, we had walked about 14 miles in Hill Country chasing deer and hogs and never got anything. Then, in the last five minutes of legal light, we got a deer. We spent an hour before the sun came up until an hour after the sun went down just being out there doing it.

I feel a deep connection to the fishing and game in my native state. I love the bluegills and the catfish and the turkeys and the deer. I love all these things that are just intrinsically Texan.

Being able to see them out there in the woods or in the rivers, and then sometimes being lucky enough to extract them and use that as food, it fosters such a deep connection and a reason to steward—to make sure that’s going to be around for the next generation.

The greatest challenge in my life is finding time to do all the things I want to do. If you have an opportunity to go out and do things, take it. You have to remember that’s the fuel. You know you’re not going to be on your deathbed wishing you would have worked more.

We call mine the Truck of Preparedness because it has everything you need in it to survive, plus it’s a truck. It’s got flies and lures stuck in the roof from great days. When I get in there, it just reminds me of great times. It holds a lot of great memories.

My advice to anyone is to be patient. Go slow and build a reputation and know that you do that one person at a time.

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