288: Chad Caruso on Sobriety, Self Discovery, and Skating 3,000 Miles Across America

Before Chad Caruso set a Guinness World Record for skateboarding over 3,000 miles across America, before the viral YouTube channel and the documentary, there was a broken-down car at 4 a.m., a failed breathalyzer, and a man staring down the barrel of a second DWI charge and possible jail time. That was Chad’s rock bottom—a wake-up call that pushed him to turn his life around.

In this episode of The Light Watkins Show, Chad shares the raw, unfiltered journey of how that moment sparked his sobriety, how paying off $10,000 in legal fees with a minimum wage job set him on a path of accountability, and how leasing an iPhone kickstarted his YouTube career teaching skateboarding. But this isn’t just a story about skate tricks and social media growth—it’s about discovering purpose, self-mastery, and the power of committing fully to something you love.

Chad opens up about what it really took to skateboard coast-to-coast without a support vehicle—just him, his board, and the open road. From averaging 55 miles a day to icing his battered feet in hotel sinks, to facing his fears of wild animals, silence, and exhaustion, Chad talks about the mental, physical, and spiritual grind of chasing a big, audacious goal.

You’ll hear how his upbringing around Eastern philosophy and Buddhism quietly shaped his resilience, how sobriety unlocked new levels of self-awareness, and how the road tested him in unexpected ways. Chad also shares why community became a surprising highlight of the journey, with strangers showing up to support him in meaningful ways.

Whether you’re in recovery, chasing a big dream, or just curious what it takes to do something extraordinary, this conversation is an inspiring reminder that you’re more capable than you think.

Transcript

CC: “The drinking really started when I got my first knee injury skateboarding, I injured my knee, got knee surgery healed for six months, and then re injured my knee after that, like right after I was fully healed. And that kind of knocked all the wind outta my sails. There was a little bit of an uptick in drinking at that point. So I think I just slowly started talking more about skateboarding than actually doing it. And I didn't have an anchor in life. I didn't have a job, I didn't have like a purpose really. I was trying to skateboard, but I didn't know what I was aiming at. Yeah, I got pulled over, the car broke down and Breathalyzer. I tried to give a PBA card to get out of it. He just threw it right back at me and ended up getting the dewi and I just laughed it off, you know, I'm too cool for this, whatever, it doesn't phase me. And then just another couple of years of just continuing to drink. And then I got another one. And you get two DWIs within three years, and you're usually looking at some jail time. And I was scared of going to jail. That was the moment where, it just hit me with a ton of bricks that everything that, that whole situation brought for the second DWI is when I realized something had to change.”

[INTRODUCTION]

Before he got the Guinness Book of World Records for Skateboarding Across America. That's 3000 plus miles, before his viral YouTube channel and his book and his documentary, Chad Caruso was sitting behind the wheel of somebody else's broken down car at 4:00 AM on his birthday, and he had just failed a breathalyzer, which meant he was gonna get his second DWI, and it also meant that he was facing a felony and possible jail time, and that was the rock bottom moment that changed everything for Chad. He got sober, he paid off the $10,000 in debt that he had to borrow for his legal fees. He leased an iPhone and he started filming skateboarding tutorials for his new YouTube channel. His motivation was to give back, because he had taken so much from everything and everyone, and his sobriety journey inspired him to become more purposeful in the way that he lived. And this is what led to his biggest goal to date the skateboard across America from coast to coast alone.

No sponsors, no support vehicle, just him, his backpack, and 3000 plus miles of open road. And in order to finish in 57 days, Chad had to ride his skateboard an average of 55 miles a day. 

So Walmart parking lots were his morning routine motels and hotels became his laundromat and a chance to ice his feet, and the silence on the road nearly broke him. 

In this episode, Chad shares the backstory of how his felony led him to his purpose and what it really takes mentally, physically, and most importantly, spiritually to accomplish a massive feat like skateboarding across America. 

[00:03:02] LW: Chad Caruso, welcome to the podcast, man.

[00:03:05] CC: How's it going? Thanks for having me on.

[00:03:07] LW: So I got a chance to look at your documentary about skating across America, which is super inspiring, but was more inspiring than I was anticipating.

Actually, I love the timing. It's like 40 minutes, 45 minutes or something like that, which is like really sweet amount of time. And I've also looked at a lot of your videos on your YouTube channel, and so there's a lot that you put in there, but there's a lot that you didn't put in there because obviously, you know, there just wasn't enough time to do all of that.

So hopefully in this conversation, we'll fill in some of those gaps. And also, I just want to, get an, an idea of, of what led to that challenge for yourself. 

And I guess we'll start off talking about childhood. you, you grew up in very interesting circumstances.

Your parents were would, you could describe them as hippies or just like spiritual seekers or talk a little bit about those the early days of what your parents were into with the ashram and the, and the spiritual guru and all of that.

[00:04:03] CC: Yeah, definitely a little, you know, a little hippie, but not too much. You know, dad listened to Hendricks, but like, nothing, like they weren't all in on it. They were more about learning about Buddhism and, you know, just Eastern philosophy in general. And they met this woman. She came over from India and opened up an ashram.

So, they helped her write a book. My dad helped build the place, so I've just been around that, you know, environment my whole life.

[00:04:32] LW: Do you remember any philosophies or ideologies that your parents would echo to you and your brothers as you all were growing up, such as spiritual concepts? Everything's connected, everything happens for a reason and you know, these kinds of things that keep you present. I.

[00:04:44] CC: Honestly, I feel like I got more of an effect from just being around them and how they are as opposed to like, exact things being told. I do remember my dad saying things here and there, I'd be like, oh I'm doing this. I'm, you know, I have a big show tonight.

And you're like, who are you? Like who is Chad Caruso? And that would like Bri, that broke my mind just thinking about it. Like, wait, what does he mean? The more you think about it, you know, you like dissolve your ego and you're like, wait, what does that even mean? You know? But even though I didn't get to figure it out, it just thinking that way at that time.

You know, it just, it trains your mind to behave in it or think in a different way.

[00:05:24] LW: Did you do that at school at all, or with your friend group where you kind of adopted some of these ways of being.

[00:05:31] CC: don't know. I was just always floating around doing whatever, like, I didn't have a, I'd pop into different groups. I was always cutting school. I just didn't, I couldn't sit still, always getting in trouble, trying to make people laugh. So I don't know, maybe it helped me see through like the whole game or like, you have to go to school, you have to get this job, and it made me not wanna be a part of it.

Or maybe it was just that whole philosophy in general, just stepping outside of the norm. yeah, so something was pushing me away from just following a path that I wasn't choosing to be on.

[00:06:07] LW: And your parents separated very early, but you have a brother who's I think, what, eight years older than you or something like that?

[00:06:13] CC: Yeah I have two older brothers. One's four years older and one's eight years older.

[00:06:17] LW: Did they play sort of parental roles with you or did they not really have much to do with you? Or what was that relationship like with your brothers?

[00:06:24] CC: Yeah, no. They were always doing their own thing and I'd try to like tag along, you know, and if I got to go out with them, like I'd go play hockey with my brother and his friends and they would just like crosscheck me into the fence or, you know, I was always getting like bullied. But I think that helped me like level up, you know what I mean? I'm trying to compete with guys four and eight years older than me as a kid. Even just playing basketball in front or something. It's making me, you know, push myself.

[00:06:52] LW: Okay. So you were involved in sports, but then you get introduced to skateboarding as a early teenager. What, talk a little bit about that experience. What was it that drew you to skateboarding and away from everything else?

[00:07:05] CC: Yeah, so I loved basketball, I loved baseball. I went to camps for both of 'em. My dad would take me to like batting cages, so I was always all in on whatever I was doing and trying to be the best at it. But once I found skating, I was ju, I don't know, it just was way more exciting and the fact I could do it on my own whenever I wanted, you know, no rules, no teams, no arena, that just drew me in.

[00:07:32] LW: Who was your skate skateboarding friend? Your earliest skateboarding friend who you would, practice with the most?

[00:07:38] CC: There was this kid uh, Nick Sassa, I grew up with him. He's from Lindenhurst too. And we were like the two kid skaters, like everyone lumped us together as Jack Cruz on Nick Sassa. So we definitely had that competitive nature too as kids. I would do something and just keep building on it.

[00:07:57] LW: Do you remember the first major trick that you mastered,

Or one of the first?

[00:08:02] CC: yeah, Yeah, I think um, it was a varial flip. So it's like basically the first time I learned how to flip my board, which if you've ever skated, you know, it's just like thousands of tries. Hours and hours of failure. I would try in my basement just like every day. And then you finally land one and you're just like, I don't know, you get this crazy um, elated feeling that lasts like three seconds and then it's just gone.

[00:08:27] LW: Mm-hmm. So you like put in like, you know, days and days of work and then it's just like, all right, what's next?

Back when I was that age early teenager, I used to draw a lot and I used to make model like skyscrapers and stuff from scratch. I would just look at, go to the encyclopedia, find like the Sears Tower in Chicago or some tall building, look at all the angles and just eyeball a sort of blueprint of it and then cut it out on paper poster board and then create it.

And I'm sure that if you ask my brothers, 'cause I've got three brothers, you know what I was up to or what I was obsessed with, they probably would say something along those lines. He was obsessed with creating things, modeling things. If I asked your brothers back then what your biggest obsessions were, what would they have said?

[00:09:10] CC: Yeah, probably skateboarding, basketball in trouble. Yeah.

[00:09:14] LW: What kind of things would you get in trouble with though as a teenager? Just talking back in class or being a, you know, making jokes in the back of the room

[00:09:23] CC: I got an infinite list for it. We could do a whole podcast on that. For example, in like seventh grade science class, there was a substitute teacher and we had this thing called the doer. You mix chemicals in it, it's like probably a foot or two, big little glass kind of black thing.

And when the teacher was writing at the board, not looking, I chucked that out of the second story window and you just hear it smash on the ground on the first floor. All the teachers come upstairs and they're trying to figure out who did it.

[00:09:53] LW: that's like expulsion worthy, you know, misbehavior. You could, somebody could have gotten hurt.

[00:09:59] CC: I do. Yeah. Smoke bomb in the, in school, in the hallway. 

[00:10:03] LW: Was the objective to get laughs or was it to impress a girl, or what were you trying to achieve?

[00:10:09] CC: just laughs. Yeah, just laughs for some reason.

[00:10:12] LW: But really it was an act of rebellion. You probably didn't want to be there and or just didn't understand why you were there, right?

[00:10:19] CC: Yeah. Looking back, that's most likely why.

[00:10:22] LW: So you end up dropping out of school a couple of years after you start. Now I'm a little confused. Is that you did a trip with your mom to Montana? Was that's before you dropped out, or was that after you dropped out?

[00:10:34] CC: Yeah. So I was, I dropped out. I think that was, I. Maybe ninth grade. So I dropped out eighth or ninth grade. I just begged her. I was like, all right, I'll move with you to Montana if you let me drop outta school and just keep skating. So we went six months and I hated it. It was just in the mountains, you know?

So I just misbehaved until I got her to move back and then went back to school for maybe a year, not even. And that point, I was just so out. Like I was I rode off school in my mind, so I was going like, my arms crossed, like, you know, not talking to anyone. And then soon after that I just, yeah, dropped out. Maybe, yeah 10th grade. But I got left back once. So,

[00:11:19] LW: What's the protocol for dropping out? Like let's say you want to drop out. What do you, how does that even work? Do you have to go through some agency or file paperwork or?

[00:11:28] CC: yeah, I think I. To, to be honest, I'm not really too sure. Maybe your parents have to sign off on it if you're under a certain age, but I think, 'cause I got left back and I was, I think I was 16, I could do it myself. But maybe my mom signed off. I really can't even remember.

[00:11:45] LW: Did you understand like how money worked and about rent and all these kinds of things when you were thinking of dropping out, like, how am I gonna support myself? Did you ask yourself those questions? Or did you just assume that your parents would continue to support you or,

[00:11:58] CC: Yeah. But not at all. No I don't think I considered that until, I don't even know, like 30. I was just floating around doing whatever I wanted. I didn't care and I was so used to living with nothing. I didn't need things, material things. I can stay at someone's house on the couch or downstairs and help out with chores or, you know, work odd jobs I like.

I'd always figure something out.

So I never like, felt that fear of like, oh I have nothing. Or like, you know,

[00:12:27] LW: Was that something you got from your parents, from your mom or dad who were Buddhists and into all this ash from life? This idea of I don't need anything and I can adapt to anything that happens,

[00:12:37] CC: I think so, but not like it wasn't a told lesson, you know? I think it was just they didn't care for things. We didn't buy care for material things, have any flashy items, you know, we just, our walls are, were basically nothing on them.

[00:12:54] LW: right.

[00:12:55] CC: It is very simple, you know?

[00:12:56] LW: Yeah. And your mom said in the documentary something to the effect of Chad is is gonna do what he wants to do. She said it in a proud way, not in a negative way, but what's a story from those teenage years where maybe you displayed something like that after dropping out?

[00:13:12] CC: I. After dropping out?

[00:13:14] LW: Yeah. That kind of gave them an indication that you're gonna be okay. This is not, you know, you're not gonna be end up in some homeless shelter

[00:13:20] CC: Okay. I got one. So, I'm in my drinking phase at this point. I don't know if I'm maybe 24, 25. And I get a call from one of my friends asking if I wanna move to California with him.

Had no money at all, so I asked two different friends to borrow 150 bucks each. So I got 300 bucks and he showed up at my house at 6:00 PM that night, and I got in the car and we drove across the country.

I had no plan, nowhere to stay. I had, you know, that money was gone towards gas halfway through the trip. So I was stealing beef jerky from gas stations and like, you know, just figuring it out.

[00:13:57] LW: It is so interesting, man, because okay, you're a 16-year-old high school dropout. You're misbehaving you. You've got a rap sheet, I'm sure from school of just, you know, all these crazy things you've done. You're broke. You have no ambition to plan anything beyond tomorrow, but at. you are obsessed with skateboarding and you ultimately become this like inspirational figure in the world of skateboarding.

How do you, looking back now as an adult, as the adult Chad, how do you explain where that came from? If you had to go back in hindsight and connect the dots from you dropping out to you maybe starting your YouTube channel, right? And with the intent to serve, to give back instead of just taking and taking, what do you at attribute that, that to?

[00:14:46] CC: I think I always wanted to do what I wanted to do as a young kid. Even I just watched footage the other day of myself, five years old

On the board for the first time. My brother put me on his and I fall off. My mom runs over, try just to grab my hand and I rip my hand out. Like I just didn't wanna help. I wanna do it on my own, figure it out.

So I think going to school's kind of against that, right? You're just like, you're gonna do this and put you on this path. So I think it took me a while and I got deterred and I went, you know, into the drinking phase. But I think just that I committed to skateboarding or that I wanted to do what I loved, it led me back to, you know, the YouTube thing and skateboarding and, being able to share it.

Yeah.

[00:15:35] LW: And in a way, I guess learning how to skateboard learning tricks is like a school, it's like a self-administered instruction where you know, you do things a thousand times, like you said. You fail. You fail. But. When you pull the lens back, you're actually progressing, which is how anyone learns anything through growth through, through re repetition, through occasional pain.

The physical pain in the, in your case. 'cause you have that unforgiving asphalt and cement and then you build upon that. And that's essentially what people are learning in school. But it's, you know, you're doing it on your schedule and your time. You're picking challenges that appeal to you for whatever reason.

And you don't need anyone's approval. You don't need a team. We can, you know, it's a very individualized type of thing. So it's interesting how, I think in hindsight, you chose you still were in school. It's just a school of your choosing.

[00:16:30] CC: Yeah. And you know, now I could look back 25, 30 years, whatever it's been, of me focusing on this one thing.

That's, to me, that's the most important lesson in life is committing the one thing. So it's, you can go to school or play a sport, but I think if you master one thing for so long, there's the same lessons in everything. And sometimes people don't ever get to learn those lessons that are at the top of something. 'cause it's, you know, you commit to something for 30 years, it's pretty tough, you know? But yeah, from what I've learned, like I. Once you master something to such a high level, you could just apply it to something else like guitar.

Oh, I'm gonna learn guitar. First year is gonna be really hard. It's gonna feel like it's impossible. Then I'll break through and I'll meet a mentor. Like you get the whole trajectory,

You know, and how you're gonna feel and like there's ups and downs and then you become a teacher, you know, like, and throughout that you learn all these lessons.

But so really, yeah, it doesn't matter that it was skateboarding. Yeah. I was in school learning and figuring how out, how to be successful in life really.

[00:17:40] LW: Do you think your parents saw that they had that understanding, or do you think they were a bit embarrassed that you, they had a high school dropout on their hands who was, you know, looks like he to, to greater society looked like he was up to no good. How do you think your parents and your family related to that, to your story earlier

[00:17:58] CC: I think, 

[00:17:58] LW: years?

[00:17:59] CC: you brought up an interesting point. I didn't even pick up on that, that she was proud when she said it. So I think there's an element of, yeah, she liked that I was going after what I loved, but the mother in her was always worried, will you have a job? How you're gonna pay your bills?

Will you get hurt? You know? But I think both of them were so open-minded and they kind, they probably knew that we can make him do something. He's just gonna hate us and hate the thing. So like, I don't know, just, you kind of gotta let it ride, right? If someone's so into something, you are gonna have so much restriction. But even as a kid, I remember I was allowed to ride my bike across like highways and like further across town than most of the other kids were like, I felt like I had a little bit less rules or more freedom.

So maybe a little bit more trust there.

[00:18:51] LW: Did you ever have that thing where you wanted to prove to your dad that you would be successful or could be successful? Was there any any of that? I.

[00:19:00] CC: No, not at all. If anything, I was almost doing the opposite. I was, 'cause they were both, you know, into the Buddhist thing and I was trying to go, almost trying to be not like them as hard as I could.

And I don't know if it was when I got sober or years later, but I started to realize like there was no escaping that.

Like I was just, I'm like them, you know? Even in doing that probably and being rebellious and wanting to go on my own path was being like them. If that makes sense. You know, even though I thought I was rebelling.

[00:19:33] LW: Yeah, a hundred percent. Talk a little bit about your DWI and sobriety journey, like how that whole thing unfolded, where you started and where you ended up.

[00:19:43] CC: Yeah, so the drinking really started when I got my first knee injury skateboarding,

And, you know, it wasn't too bad in the beginning. It's never, it's usually not this like overnight thing, like you're instantly addicted, you know, I'm just hanging out, going to a party here, a party there. And then, I injured my knee, got knee surgery healed for six months, and then rere my knee after that, like right after I was fully healed.

And that kind of knocked all the wind outta my sails. Then it there was a little bit of an uptick in drinking at that point. Plus I'm getting to the age where. Starting to hang out with girls a little more, you know? So I think I just slowly started talking more about skateboarding than actually doing it.

[00:20:30] LW: Would you skate and drink or was that against your rules for yourself? 

[00:20:34] CC: No, I would, but if it was only like a party with people or something, or you know, a bunch of people around two to two to four beers, you start getting a little looser. Maybe you're a little more confident, but once you go past that, it, you are usually not skating that great. So I would have fun, but didn't really get in the way of my skateboarding like that.

But it was always in the background building, you know, year after year. It was like, it's cementing in a habit, you know?

[00:21:01] LW: Yeah.

[00:21:01] CC: And I didn't have an anchor in life like I was, you know, you were saying I didn't have a job, I didn't have like a purpose really. I was trying to skateboard, but I didn't know what I was aiming at.

So you combine those two and that addiction's like, you know, a strong anchor.

[00:21:16] LW: yeah, and then you got pulled over.

[00:21:18] CC: Oh yeah. Yeah. So, um, yeah, I got pulled over, where was I? Yeah, I got pulled over the car, broke down and got pulled over. Breathalyzer. I tried to give a PBA card to get out of it. He just threw it right back at me and ended up getting the dewi and I just laughed it off, you know, I'm too cool for this, whatever, it doesn't phase me.

Did a lot of money, you know, going through that.

And then just, you know, couple, another couple of years of just continuing to drink. And then I got another one. And that was the moment where, yeah, it just, it didn't even hit me with a ton of bricks then. I just kept drinking after that in denial.

But everything that, that whole situation brought for the second DWI is when I, like, I realized something had to change.

[00:22:07] LW: And you got it as the designated driver of your friend group, right?

[00:22:12] CC: Yeah, I'm not proud of it, but yeah, I was just taking, I was taking the keys from everyone, 4:00 AM end of the night. I was like, yeah, I'll get you guys home. Don't worry. You know, I didn't even have a car on my own. I'm just like taking the liberty of making it my responsibility and for some reason they trusted me.

But yeah.

[00:22:30] LW: So it was someone else's car that broke down and you happen to be driving it and then the cop pulls, pulls over, gives you the DWI. Now you're looking at a felony. You have to potentially do jail time, right?

[00:22:42] CC: Yeah, you get two DWIs within three years, and you're usually looking at some jail time. And yeah, so I got the felony. And well leading up to that was the thing that hurt the most. 'cause I was scared of going to jail.

[00:22:56] LW: Of course,

[00:22:57] CC: Yeah. I was like, frightened, you know, I was playing it out in my head like, I gotta do pushups all day.

[00:23:02] LW: were you imagining like gang rape nightmares and stuff

like that, 

[00:23:05] CC: and no, that I left out. But yeah, I was just focusing on like what I was gonna do to pass the time and you know, all right, if I'm on good behavior, I'll get out, 

[00:23:14] LW: Mm-hmm. 

[00:23:14] CC: year early hopefully. That's when I committed for the first time to like, all right, I can't go into this courtroom lying that I'm sober.

I need to actually be sober. The first time I lied, I faked it, went to all these like alcohol classes. I drink around them and pretend I was sober. But going into court, I was like, nah, this time I'm gonna try.

[00:23:39] LW: And so got in touch with your friend who had his dad or somebody like write a letter, a character letter to the judge. And that swayed the judge's decision.

[00:23:50] CC: Yeah. He was I forget his exact position, something in the Department of Health building inspector. Maybe that was it. And so he's higher up, knows all the people like in the community, and luckily he was. The father of a friend of mine. And so, you know, and I helped him out with jobs all the time. I had pretty good standing with him.

He didn't know of all my drinking escapades really. So he wrote me a letter and that definitely, I think helped me 

[00:24:14] LW: And this, ironically, this was one of your drinking buddy's dads, right? 

[00:24:18] CC: Yeah, 

[00:24:19] LW: If you hadn't been drinking, you wouldn't have known that he 

[00:24:22] CC: exactly right.

[00:24:23] LW: So you got a second lease at life and now you're taking the sobriety journey seriously. You know, I, there are a lot of like really good podcasters out there and I noticed that a lot of them have the history of being in AA and they're very humble.

They're very, they're good storytellers. What were some of the things you witnessed in the sobriety journey that you think maybe influenced your, how you showed up in life in the post sober years?

[00:24:55] CC: Yeah. So once I actually committed to being sober and it was my like, choice, not court mandated really. And in the sense it still was court mandated, you know, like I was impending doom, but I made the choice I'm gonna change. And that was the key thing. But just understanding that everything that led me to those DWIs and where I was at in my life was all my choice.

Every world wasn't happening to me and I wasn't unlucky. Every single choice and action I've done led me to be there.

[00:25:30] LW: So full accountability for 

everything I. 

[00:25:33] CC: hundred percent. Yeah. So like slowly unwinding that, you know, it took, it was a lot of years of compounding interest there. So I had to, you know, start one decision at a time and it took a long time to see anything change. You know, it was a slow, painful, you know, first couple of months, years. But yeah, you could see it like going in that direction. But it's tough when you're in it

'cause you don't know that it's gonna work. And that's where I think the idea of faith, I don't like to use that word or like, but it's like a trust.

It's, you have to believe I'm gonna make these decisions and life will get better. You know? And that's a tough thing. A lot of times you're like, ah, it's not gonna work. I hear all this stuff, blah, blah, blah.

[00:26:17] LW: Did you connect deeper to your spirituality or maybe to religious practices? Because I know the 11th step is about prayer and meditation, so did you do that as a part of the sobriety journey?

[00:26:31] CC: I did, but I actually didn't go to AA at all. I did the whole thing like completely by myself.

[00:26:38] LW: Of course,

[00:26:39] CC: so yeah, like, so I never I went once to help a friend or here and there and I have nothing against it, but I just didn't use it. But it turns out that's just the trajectory of someone getting sober.

You start to make your amends and you start to find that spirituality. So I find like the parallel there anyway. But yeah, I think pretty quickly I started, I. I was just, yeah, watching spirituality videos or things like that and picking up my mom's book. She had lying around like the Bhagavan Gita. You know,

[00:27:13] LW: Were you that sober guy who was going around talking about sobriety all the time?

[00:27:17] CC: almost never. Yeah. If it comes up, I'll bring it up. But even on my YouTube channel, I don't like shove it down people's throats 'cause that's not how I was. I don't like people telling me what to do, you know? I just tell what worked for me and what I'm doing, you know? I was never, it's hard when my whole life completely 180 to not bring it up and be like, Hey man, like this worked for me.

So if you're showing the struggle, like, I've learned from myself and from my brother who has recently gotten sober.

You can't tell, you're not gonna get through. It has to be their choice

[00:27:53] LW: There's nothing you can say. There's nothing you can do to 

[00:27:56] CC: now. I've tried, man. I've tried. It's, I don't, I think the best you can do to help someone is to be around them. Your presence, your interests, your overall way of being

Will affect them if you're around them more. 'cause you start to be like the people you're around,

Or you like, you're taking things in.

And so I think that's more helpful than telling someone to get sober. 'cause then you're just like, you repel, you know?

[00:28:22] LW: Yeah, that's the long game. And the irony is you don't wanna be around people who are drinking if you're sober. You know? So how do you navigate that, you know, that, aversion to being around someone who's like, not fully there. 'cause they're under the influence of something.

[00:28:36] CC: Yeah, it's tough. And with my brother, I helped him get sober and for a couple weeks I was just showing up. I'd show up at the liquor store, he'd be sitting out front and I would just sit next to him against the window. Just hang out there.

[00:28:49] LW: And just But yeah, but I think I was able to get through a little bit more than the average person.

[00:28:55] CC: 'cause he had known what I'd done and been through, 

[00:28:59] LW: Mm-hmm. 

[00:28:59] CC: know, if someone's telling you to get sober and they just like, you know, hadn't gone through it, really, it's harder to listen to, you know, he knew I was like, I was down in the dumps, you know.

[00:29:10] LW: So your cousin was doing YouTube vlogs. Was he successful with that or was he just starting out?

[00:29:18] CC: Let's see. When I first, got sober, he was still starting, he might've been at like 10,000 subscribers now. I think he's like close to a million.

[00:29:28] LW: Wow.

[00:29:28] CC: Yeah, he does like travel vlogs and stuff like that.

But, we grew up skating together. You know, I gave him his first board. He's, I think five years younger than me.

So I'd take him around, with all my friends. So, you know, we'd be traveling, he'd be with like 30 year olds, and he's like seven years old and we're all going skating. So he's been around my life and we've been skating together forever. So when I got sober, it was almost like a natural. Thing, like I looked over, I'm like, oh, he is making YouTube videos.

Like, it's kinda like what we did as kids. Like I'd just go skate and film ourselves. So, yeah, just, it was basically like I was picking up where I left off with skating.

[00:30:05] LW: Obviously if he's successful at it and you are thinking about doing it, I'm imagining you went and talked to him and said, Hey, I'm thinking about just starting a YouTube channel. Do you have any advice for me?

[00:30:16] CC: No, nah. Yeah, I'm not, I don't like asking really for advice.

[00:30:21] LW: Yeah, that's what I figure. If anybody's not gonna ask for advice, it's gonna be you. So

[00:30:26] CC: Yeah. And you know what? I was thinking about it the other day, why I am like that. I remember when I was a kid, I had this moment where I felt like someone told me something, and then I found out when I did it myself that it wasn't true. So

[00:30:42] LW: what was it? Do you remember specifically what it was?

[00:30:45] CC: I, I honestly couldn't tell you, but there were a lot of moments where I felt that, you know, and maybe it was true for them, but it wasn't true for me. And I started to just trust, like, I wanna experience things myself firsthand and not just repeat what someone's saying or what someone believes. I wanna know why I believe it.

And that's only really gonna happen through experience, you know?

[00:31:08] LW: So how do you know then how to start a YouTube channel? Like, what did you do? What was your preparation for that? You didn't have a cell phone at the time? I believe.

[00:31:16] CC: Yeah. Yeah. So, 

Um, 

[00:31:18] LW: that out.

[00:31:19] CC: yeah, I was in debt, $10,000 in first 

[00:31:22] LW: Was was that from the, was that from the DWIs? The $10,000

[00:31:26] CC: Yeah. Lawyer fees and all that stuff. Paying for everything. So, I'm in the

hole. 

Probation, all that stuff. So I'm committed now to turning my life around. So like, first order business, get a job, pay everyone back, and I'm like, all right, if I'm gonna do this stuff, I gotta enjoy it and also be on the path of my own.

And I'm sorry, I'm gonna start a YouTube channel. I'll do that on the side for fun. I'll film it with my phone. I see people doing that, you know, so I leased an iPhone.

[00:31:54] LW: What was your phone like? You had no phone or you had like a little flip phone or what 

[00:31:59] CC: Oh. 

[00:31:59] LW: situation?

[00:32:00] CC: I was completely against technology, 

so 

I was just like living off the grid, that alcoholic lifestyle, just like skateboarder, you know, I was against everything. So, no cell phone, no social media. So starting this whole thing was like just diving into a whole new world of trying to understand how to edit.

Even just posting online, like the apps. I didn't know anything. So I leased this phone, 

[00:32:25] LW: from Radio 

[00:32:26] CC: yeah. Oh, from like a Verizon store. $30 a month or something. Something just compounding my debt at this point. But I knew if I was gonna go down this path of like working, saving money, I needed something to keep me sane,

You know?

[00:32:41] LW: Okay. So, talk about where your YouTube channel started and then once you started to do the, your challenges, like how did you get that idea for doing your first challenge and what was the result of that versus, you know, just post I don't know what your cadence was in the very beginning, but just talk a little bit about the evolution of your YouTube channel.

[00:33:05] CC: Yeah. I think, getting sober played a huge part in the mindset about it. 'cause that clarity, I started to go, oh, you've only ever taken from skateboarding your whole life. You know, like, I've been doing it all these years and you love it, but like, you haven't really given anything back. You get, you know, I've been sponsored, so I'm taking boards.

I'm ta like, you know, I don't know. I just felt like I owed something to skateboarding, so I wanted to give back. So I've been doing it for 20 years at this point. Like, all right, what better way to do a YouTube channel than to share everything I've learned? So I started doing trick tips and just trying to teach people everything I knew and like emptying out my head like it was a library and just putting it down on paper.

[00:33:47] LW: Would you plan it out for the month or would you just show up at the skate park? Turn on the camera and just say, okay let's see. I'm gonna do you know, whatever trick.

[00:33:56] CC: I'll let you take a guess. What do you think? Nah, no plans, no content

[00:34:01] LW: Were you checking the numbers as you were posting to see if people were even watching or what they 

[00:34:06] CC: Not really n nothing. No, I was just like, I saw a giant hole in the market. There wasn't really very well done. Detailed trick tips about mini ramp skating. Which was something I loved. So I just looked like there was a hole in the dictionary or the encyclopedia that needed to be filled. So I was just like, all right, trick by trick.

What trick can you do? You know, each day I'd show up and just film one. So I was just rifling it off systematically and not thinking about, is this getting views? Is this getting views? Because I was like, the internet needs this in, like, Google needs this information,

[00:34:43] LW: What do you mean that there was a hole in the market for that particular approach? And what would you what, so when you created a video, what would you do in your video specifically that no one else was doing in their YouTube videos?

[00:34:59] CC: so the only types of tutorials I saw online were from like a big company, and they almost just made it for the sake of making content. And it was, you know, it was a while ago, long, 20 years, I don't even know at this point. And they would just grab a pro and they'd say, how to do this trick? You come up, you stall and you come back down.

You don't skate. You watch that video, you're like, what? I don't know. What am I getting from this? You know, it's not, it doesn't not help. It's entertaining, but it doesn't help. So, my dad was a yoga teacher, so I think I had an inclination to teach. I just loved teaching and sharing what I knew, and I loved going into detail.

So I would be like, all right, your shoulders need to turn beforehand and your board's gonna follow, and you gotta press on your heel. You know? So I would really go into like, fine detail and I'd chop away all of the bs. So it's just this dialed in two, three minute video of just the best information you could find.

So I think doing that for a year, people just like, how do you not throw that guy a sub? Like you're gonna subscribe. Like, all right, thanks man. He just taught me a trick and like, put in all this work, you know?

[00:36:10] LW: And you had been teaching a little bit too by that point. So it's not like you had to learn how to teach people how to do a certain trick. 'cause you'd already done that with kids and whatnot. 

[00:36:20] CC: Yeah. I've, I I ran a summer camp at the skate park for a couple of years, and I've taught one upstate, or actually it was in New Hampshire, so I had some experience, but I wasn't thinking that way. Like, these are just skate trips and escu. Oh, I ended up here. I ended up here. The skate park needed someone to teach, you know, it just, maybe I was called to do it or said yes because my dad was a teacher, you know, but it didn't feel like I was planning anything. It just led me, that's what, where my interest was.

[00:36:54] LW: Does your cousin give you any unsolicited advice or anyone reach out to you and say, Hey, you should start doing this or that, or do more of this, or more of that, or how are you?

[00:37:03] CC: My cousin never gave me advice, but we would make videos together. Like I'd go on a trip with him and sometimes he'd include me or we'd go skate and he'd tell people to subscribe, like in the beginning, which helped, like get it off the ground. But not many, you know, he didn't have a couple, you know, 50 subscribers or something like that would come over.

But um, as far as advice, no one really gave it to me. I just would nonstop search on YouTube day and night. As you could see, the obsession is kind of a part of my life. And so when I locked in on YouTube, I would just all day and night. You know, search how to up, you know, how to do this, how to do that metadata, you know, and just research the best I could.

[00:37:48] LW: Okay. So 2018, you start this challenge to show a new trick every day, four months straight. And this takes the blog from one to two a week to daily. So talk a little bit about what the unforeseen challenges were with that, and also what the learnings were as a result of that.

[00:38:09] CC: So I was working now at a taco restaurant, just trying to build, save anything I can, you know, I'm just packing tacos in the boxes and I start this series, so I'm getting off of work. So just taking the train and then skating a couple of miles just to get to the skate park to make these daily videos.

And mind you, I don't know what I'm doing. Like I've never daily vlogged before. I made a couple of videos, but, so it was definitely like a big learning curve of pushing myself to talking in public, what to say, filling that gap. You know, you need content every single day. The editing chops, you know, doing something for 30 days in a row, you're gonna get better at it.

So for me, instead of overthinking about it, setting like a game or a challenge, it makes it so much easier and almost gives you like a reason to fail or not fail. You know, you just start it and you're like, all right, I gotta keep it going. Keep it going.

[00:39:08] LW: And you said you found your voice through that. What was your voice? What was that? What were the characteristics of your voice versus what you were doing before? Were you trying to sound like somebody else and now you just said, you know what? I just need to be, I.

[00:39:22] CC: Yeah. I think the beauty of my path to YouTube was partially that I was off the grid and didn't have social media. So I wasn't in that mindset of like, comparing or looking or what anyone was doing, or I. I was just in my own world, I didn't know if it was stupid to make trick tips or if it was the coolest thing in the world.

I was just like, all right, I'm just gonna do it, you know? Now that I'm more involved, I can feel those things, you know? Oh, it's lame if you do trick tips and skateboarding, like there's the judgments within each community and things like that. But in the beginning, I was just so green, I just dove right into it, you know?

[00:40:02] LW: Yeah. You also mentioned that initially you were speaking to young skateboarders, but you realized that a lot of your content was being consumed by guys like you who were in their, you know, late twenties, thirties, maybe forties, who were getting back into it. So. Once you started to realize that, did you begin to to make videos specifically for that avatar?

[00:40:24] CC: No, and I've still never done that. I don't make any videos with like an avatar or a person in mind. I literally just think about what has helped me in my life and I just share that as honestly as I can. That's it. And the trick tips, you know, in the beginning, yeah, I thought, I teach kids at the skate park, so I think I'm teaching kids, you know, and turns out people wanna relate to someone like them.

That's all anyone's ever doing is like looking for the, you know, someone that's living life similarly to you. And if you see a 30 5-year-old guy at the skate park, it's easier to, you know, learn from him. 'cause you guys are the same age, you know? So I was attracting older people, even like 50, 60, you know, year olds getting back into it.

[00:41:10] LW: Okay.

[00:41:11] CC: It was cool. I wasn't expecting that.

[00:41:12] LW: so what were some of the outcomes with the YouTube channel from doing a trick every day? Did you notice your subscription rates go up, your retention rates go up? More comments, more likes?

[00:41:23] CC: Yeah, a lot of comments, a lot of engagement. But a lot of the things that I do tend to not get a lot of views because I'm not like doing like, outrageous thumbnails 

or 

maybe negative stuff or shocking things necessarily, you know? 'cause I don't know. I'm just,

[00:41:43] LW: This trick will you if you do 

[00:41:46] CC: exactly right. I've always wanted to do things solely on merit,

And if they work, I'm not gonna, you know, I know marketing is a part of the whole thing, but I don't know.

I'm just sticking to what makes me feel good and what I'm proud of, and I'm just gonna ride that out. If it works, it works. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

[00:42:04] LW: But you still, you began to formulate this community, right? And you didn't have that hockey stick moment. It's just slow and steady. Slow and steady.

[00:42:11] CC: Yeah, so it was maybe that first challenge I made it to 5,000 May, yeah, maybe 10,000 subscribers. Lot of engagement. People were sending me boxes of like, skateboards and shoot, my shoes were falling apart at the time, like giant holes in them, so people were sending me shoes, boards. So it was really cool to just see that support, in a world I had no known nothing about, you know?

And then I did another challenge, I think a year later called 50 Tricks. 50 states learned a new trick, new state in America every day, 50 days in a row, daily vlog, the whole thing. And that same thing. It just got kept compounding, but it wasn't like. I feel like you hear that and you'd imagine this big jump, you know, 10 to 20,000 more subs is a big jump,

But in the grand scheme of YouTube and like relatively, it didn't feel like that huge, you know?

[00:43:07] LW: You also have your cousin as a point of reference, I don't know if you were checking his numbers or, and stats and thinking, wow he's so far ahead and yeah, 10,000 is nice, but it's not, it's nothing compared to where it could potentially be, right?

[00:43:23] CC: yeah. I think it was more so comparing to the whole YouTube landscape. Like I look around and be like, look at some of these channels, like, and what they're doing. I'm like, there's so ma, some of these channels have so many subscribers. Like, you know, so, but on the other hand, the longer I've been doing YouTube, now I appreciate, like I know what 50,000 people is. When I was young and starting, it was just a number. It was just a sound, just like 50,000, you don't envision each single individual person,

You know, giving a talk in front of 50,000 people. That's a huge, that's a stadium, 

[00:43:59] LW: it's significant. Yeah.

[00:44:00] CC: Yeah.

[00:44:02] LW: so, but you also have a new appreciation for the challenges and presenting these challenges on your channel. 'cause you see that it actually, it engages more people. And which, let's be honest, it makes it more exciting creating content. 'cause you know, people are watching and, you know, people are engaged and people wanna support you in various ways.

So why not just. Do a series of challenges. So 50, 50 days in 50 states a new trick 50. So you'd already done the trick thing, right? So we got that down. We know how that goes. Now you add the new barrier. I'm gonna drive however many hours in my, what is it? The grand Marquee and post-op, go to a skate park.

And it's like a daily vlog now. 'cause you're showing the food you're showing the trick, you're engaging with your community that you're creating. And then you gotta get to the next state. And you're including Hawaii and Alaska in this as well. So what are some of the things that surprised you about that challenge?

[00:45:07] CC: So this one felt a little bigger, getting a bigger audience. You know, I'm raising money to help starting like a GoFundMe and stuff. And, 

[00:45:16] LW: And you're still on probation. You still had to do the breath breathalyzer

to just 

[00:45:20] CC: Yes. I'm not even allowed to leave the state technically, but because I was on good behavior and like, you know, he let me go and I'm checking in starting my car every day blowing into this thing.

And I had to like do check-ins at random auto shops. But something I learned with this challenge was it couldn't just be about the trick I'm going to every state in America. I gotta, like, show people what I'm doing, you know? And then I started filming the skaters at the parks and that kind of, I didn't even notice it until really right now.

But that made a shift in more focusing on the community and highlighting people and learning about people's stories and talking to 'em and like, you know, just paying attention to the environment.

[00:46:06] LW: But this adds more time on the edit, doesn't it?

[00:46:08] CC: Yeah. But I didn't care, you know, I, it's so weird 'cause like I'm always optimizing, but at the same time for certain things I'm not. And if I just deem it important, I'll deal with it. I'll figure it out. And so, yeah, you know, I'm editing two, three hours of footage at the end of every night, but that's what makes it meaningful. 

[00:46:30] LW: So when you have two or three hours of footage what is the editing time like per hour of footage that you have?

[00:46:35] CC: That's a good question. Each night it probably took me, it could be between two to five hours. It depends, you know, just depends. Uh, Picture me trying a trick for three hours, sometimes two hours. Think about how many attempts that is. So I have to go through and like, slice each one, trim it down, which one's best.

That's just that.

Then you gotta go through conversations and see what know. So like the good things someone said. So I'd say on average maybe three hours.

[00:47:08] LW: So a day in the life is you, what, waking up, going to Walmart, brushing your teeth or whatever,

[00:47:15] CC: Yeah, sleep in the back of the car. Constantly like, like freezing in the backseat, turning the car on to get warm and then being like, I can't leave it on. Wake up, turn it off. I dunno if you've ever slept in the car before, but

it's kind of the routine. Yeah, Go in, brush my teeth in Walmart

[00:47:33] LW: Is it crowded in Walmart in the morning? 'cause you have all the RVs and stuff, so you have to wait for a sink and wait for a toilet and all that. And then 

[00:47:42] CC: Not really, it's not, yeah, it's not too bad. There's other people that sleep in the parking lot, but usually, yeah, it's not too bad. You'll get in there, do what you gotta do and get on the road. It's like maybe two or three hours to the next state. Then I'll go, maybe I'll grab lunch film, like a local cool spot, to a skate park, maybe two, because I want it to be like diverse.

I wanna show, I don't wanna learn my trick at the park that maybe I filmed at first, you know? So I go to the first park, then I go to the second park, film some skaters. Then I learn a new trick. Try that for two, three hours, and then start driving another maybe two, three hours. Park, edit, sleep, and then rinse and repeat.

[00:48:26] LW: So when you're mapping this out, are you mapping it out according to where the Walmarts are or are you mapping it out, like finding a. Corner where there's like four states touching each other within like, you know, a few, a couple hours and that kind of thing. Or how are 

[00:48:41] CC: Yeah. So it started from a map I found online. Which was I was Google searching the fastest way to go to all 50 states. Some guy had a map on there where he zigzagged up and down. So I was like, all right, I guess that makes sense. That's my template. And then I went through each day and I'd find a skate park along that route or close by,

Wrote them all down and how long they would take.

It's like, all right, this one's five hours away. This one's, you know, two. And then I just went through each day basically seeing if I could learn a trick and make a vlog in a day, you know? But once I was doing that though I was like so feverish about it, you know? I was like getting through that whole list.

I was so excited just to see if it was possible.

[00:49:28] LW: And it was as long as you didn't leave your wallet behind.

[00:49:31] CC: Yeah. Brutal man. Yeah. Day was at 48. I stay in Seattle at a viewer's house. I sleep there, takes me to the airport. So I leave my car at his house and I change my pants. And turns out my wallet was in those pants. So I go to board the plane and yeah, I have no idea. So not fun.

[00:49:51] LW: How did you do that? How'd you navigate that situation? You mentioned you know, getting your parole officer to give you permission to do this trick, so there was something that, some magic that happened there and then you magically appeared on this flight with no id. How does that work?

[00:50:05] CC: You just push man. You just gotta push. You gotta ask, you know? And I found if you have a smile, you tell people your story, like what's going on. Luckily I had one that was pretty entertaining. You know, who wants to be the guy that like, I don't know, turn me away on day 48, you know?

[00:50:22] LW: Did you show them on your phone? Like, this is my YouTube channel.

[00:50:26] CC: don't know if I had to bring it up, but I told them, I'm like, oh, I have, you know, I'm doing this series. I 10,000 people are watching a day. You know, that definitely helped. But I think they would've let me on. I would've said some story or some reason to convince them. You just gotta ask. Really.

[00:50:43] LW: That's the secret to.

[00:50:45] CC: That's the secret. One time me and my wife were in Puerto Rico and she's like, oh, we missed the flight. We gotta get a new one. I'm like, Nope. Run out the hotel. I stop a taxi in the street, we hop in, get to the airport, run as fast as we can. Everyone's on the plane, everything's closed, and I could see the pilot through the window and I'm waving at him like telling him to stop and telling the people to let us on.

They never do this, and they open the doors and let us on. So I think it's just the point of. Who, no one wants to look like an idiot. You know what I mean? They're like, you know, begging people to get on a plane. But I found a lot of times in life, not just in these silly situations, but if you ask or have the humility to ask, you can get more than you think.

[00:51:33] LW: All right. So, you finish that, you complete all 50 states. Okay? Where's your YouTube channel at that point?

[00:51:41] CC: Okay. I'm probably at maybe 40,000, 30, 40,000. It's a little blurry because it's not just that. Maybe I got 10 or 20,000 from that video, but I did a video called Five Easy Mini Ramp Tricks Anyone Can Learn.

It's like one of those videos that like. Just a lot of good information and almost anyone could watch it,

You know, if you're first starting out.

Like, it was just really helpful. So that slowly helped build a lot of subscribers over time. Like behind the scenes,

You know, that's probably at like five, six, 700,000 now. So things like that can really move the needle, I don't like leaning into those. It's just like a layup, you know? Oh, I'm just gonna make list videos forever.

Like, I don't know, that's not my thing. I wanna learn the hard lessons and teach what people need or, you know, I just don't wanna just enter something into a machine just for numbers, you know?

[00:52:37] LW: And also how do you top that? You just did 50 tricks in 50 states in 50 days. You can't go back to just doing a, okay, this is how you do this trick. 

[00:52:47] CC: Yeah, that's a really good point. Like, I don't really talk about that, but I. It's like you do this thing, and I'm just gonna go back to talking about this one specific random trick that like 5,000 people care about. Maybe. You know, yeah. It feels like I'm almost stepping back down or something.

Like I've you know, I'm on a trajectory. But I try not to think that way. I think it's flawed thinking, you 

[00:53:12] LW: but but it feels like you've transcended skating at this point, so now you're not modeling skate tricks as much as you're giving hope. You're giving people hope. You're showing people what's possible in life in general, through your example.

[00:53:26] CC: Yeah. But I'm not thinking that at

the time. 

[00:53:28] LW: not. Of

course not. But that's what's happening in this community, that the community that you're building.

[00:53:33] CC: I guess. But yeah, I'm just oblivious, you know, I'm just doing my thing and hopefully my example is the thing that. Teaches, I'm unaware of it. I'm just trying to like, fix my life and the mess I made and if I can put that in the organized way online for someone else to try to do it, like, that's awesome.

You know?

[00:53:54] LW: Are your family and brothers and dad and everybody, are they noticing you doing this and finishing this challenges? And if so, what's the conversation like?

[00:54:02] CC: Yeah. So my dad actually he passed away from Parkinson's right after the 50 states, but that was a pivotal moment because I was taking care of him. I'm feeding him through a tube. I'm there every day. And he basically told me to go,

And like he wanted to see me like succeed and keep pushing myself.

He didn't want me to like stay there with him,

You know? So,

[00:54:27] LW: Did you think about him a lot during that?

[00:54:29] CC: yeah, of course. But I also thought like, all right, he's gonna enjoy these videos. Like, I'm gonna give him something to like, be excited about every day, you know?

[00:54:38] LW: All right. Take us to summer of 2023. This is your most audacious challenge yet. How did this whole thing come about and what exactly was it?

[00:54:47] CC: Yeah. So, I skateboarded across America completely solo, just myself in the backpack

[00:54:53] LW: Meaning no support vehicle.

[00:54:55] CC: yeah, no support vehicle, just me. That's it.

And yeah, like you said, it's tough to top the 50 States challenge. What are you gonna do from there? You know, I started thinking about every country, but it just felt empty,

You know, I don't know.

So I sat on it for a while, just kept skateboarding and just. Going down that path, waiting for, you know, these things to arise. And me and my cousin, who I make U well who makes YouTube videos, we came up with the idea to skate across Italy

Pretty small, much smaller than the us you know, maybe a day or two, fun, maybe do it for charity.

And then CO took off so we couldn't really fly and we called it off, but the idea stayed in my head, I'm just like, is this possible? Like, has anyone done it across the us? So I started researching and like once I saw that no one really had done it, I completely solo Guinness World Record. I was like that obsession came back

[00:55:52] LW: What scared you the most about the possibility of skating across America before you did it?

[00:55:57] CC: beforehand. Let's see, probably like bears. Bears like animals, you know, stuff like that. Just being out, I've never really even camped out before,

So I'm going across this whole country. I know what it looks like, but not really. Like, I don't know what I'm gonna be facing 12 hours a day going through the wilderness alone. So I'm calling ahead, like doing my research. I'm calling like the the conservation areas and stuff. I'm just like, are there snakes around right now? Like, what do I have to worry about? You know? So, yeah, I'd say probably an animals and running out of water.

[00:56:36] LW: Yeah. We've all seen those videos on YouTube where the person's on a bi on a road bike and the bear starts chasing them or skis, and the bear starts chasing them. Around highways and things, you don't really get a whole lot of wild animals like hanging out, waiting for the next prey to show up.

That kind of stuff usually happens deeper into the woods.

[00:56:56] CC: Yeah, but also I'm in 120 mile stretch of wilderness with no cars really passing by, you know? So in your mind, like you just don't know, you know? Or at least I didn't.

[00:57:07] LW: What were other people worried about when you told them the idea,

[00:57:12] CC: I'd say the biggest thing was getting like, be careful and watch out for this, that, and the other.

Biggest thing was getting hit by a car.

[00:57:19] LW: Did you think about wearing like a orange construction vest or something while

[00:57:23] CC: oh no, I could never, yeah. I thought it was funny to be honest. Like people were like begging me to wear one and I've been wearing like all black for years and it just like, it was just making me laugh throughout the trip.

So I just kept it. Kept it going, but like at the end of the day, if someone doesn't see me, like, like the orange vest isn't gonna help. You know what I mean? If they were looking down, texting, like you know, the vest doesn't change anything.

[00:57:49] LW: All right. So you're gonna do it. Tell us what you need to do to make this, to pull this thing off. And how did you obviously didn't research anything, you didn't talk to anybody. You didn't figure out what the best practices were for this, so 

[00:58:01] CC: I did. No, I mean, I researched, I was looking online, you know, just digging, researching my route, you know, I, going through Google Earth, like almost every single street,

Trying to see if it was dirt or you know, if it was open or closed.

[00:58:17] LW: Is it that good Google Earth that you can see, like if there's a shoulder or there's gravel or I, I don't know if it's Google Earth. I think it's actually Google Street. View. 

[00:58:27] CC: But yeah, you can pretty much go through almost all, any street you want.

[00:58:31] LW: So you did a street view of the whole route across America.

[00:58:34] CC: yeah, it took a long time. Yeah. Yeah. I'm doing it and sometimes there's no data, you know, so like, maybe for the most part everything's on there, but sometimes it's not. And I found out on my trip when there's no data, there's a reason why. Yeah. So, sometimes, yeah, there's no road there or

[00:58:53] LW: Did you give yourself permission if you needed to walk at certain parts just to like get across an obstacle or something? Or did you have to, were you like really strict, like, no, I have to skate so I gotta find an alternative route? How did that work?

[00:59:06] CC: so for Guinness, you're not allowed to push one inch at all.

And I don't know how strictly they mean that, but like for me, I just locked in on it and I was like, you know what? If I'm gonna do this. I'm pushing every single inch of America. I'm not skiing on a car. I'm not walking. So even if I fell off my board and got pitched forward, I would walk back to like, like a foot before my exact point to make sure I'm covering every inch.

[00:59:32] LW: Even though no one was watching, they would have no idea if that actually happened.

[00:59:36] CC: Oh yeah. Yeah. Even if like sometimes I went down the road, hit a dirt road and maybe it was only like half a mile to the next actual street, like concrete, and I'd be like, all right, I can't walk it. And I'd go back 10 miles and backtrack to another route.

[00:59:53] LW: Wow. So, 

obviously you can drive a highway across America, but you chose to stick to smaller roads to avoid traffic.

[01:00:03] CC: Not really. I was on highways. You can't go on interstates, so like five and things like that. Sometimes I'd be on the service road of those 'cause that's legal, but I was on highways a lot. Sometimes you know, you're on a one lane highway with trucks going 60, 70 and there's no shoulder, you know, what are you gonna do?

Sometimes I'd have to just physically jump off my board and let them pass and then get back on.

[01:00:29] LW: Okay. We're kinda getting ahead of ourselves. So your preparation, you have a, you know, your black outfit, you got a spare black outfit, you have a camel back backpack. How much does all that weigh, the stuff that you're taking with you?

[01:00:41] CC: I've actually never waited, but I'm gonna guess maybe 10, 15 pounds.

[01:00:46] LW: And the plan is to skate 50 something miles a day during the day. Only stay in a hotel at night, a cheap hotel that you could find. At night, go in, plug up, upload your stuff, post every day, get up the next day. Start again.

[01:01:01] CC: yep. Yeah, 50 miles was like my mantra. Basically,

It's like no matter what I'm doing this in two months and 50 miles a day is roughly 3000 miles. So I was just like, all right, you make it to 50 every day. That's it. That's your goal. It's what you focus on.

[01:01:16] LW: And you're starting in Venice, California, and then through what? Nevada, Arizona, Texas. That route, or how did you

[01:01:22] CC: not in Nevada. I was a little bit more south, so I did, yeah. Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, I think Arkansas, Tennessee, Virginia,

[01:01:32] LW: That's to avoid the Rocky Mountains.

[01:01:35] CC: yeah. And I wanted to stay in warm weather where it would be least likely to rain.

[01:01:40] LW: right. Okay. And then in Virginia. Why Virginia? Why not like Georgia? Why not just. Follow the 10 across and take it to Florida.

[01:01:50] CC: This company, jackalope reached out to me and they were doing a huge festival in Virginia Beach and they were like, yeah, you want to end here and, you know, we'll support the skate across America. I was like, yeah, why not? It makes sense. And Virginia Beach is actually an, a skate town, like a really historic skate town. Really good vibes there. Everyone's, you know, very supportive. So it just seemed like a cool place to end, even though I'm from New York, ev I was trying to stay south with the weather and that just seemed like a good spot, middle of the way across the country.

[01:02:22] LW: Also, they're mountains. There's the Appalachian Mountain range, which obviously you wanna avoid, right?

[01:02:27] CC: Yeah. I couldn't um, you know, escape all the mountains, so. There, there were some really heavy ones in Arizona too. But yeah, the Appalachians were, I underestimated them. Just the constant up and downs. And I'm going down these curved roads with no shoulders. There's bombing these mountains with trucks, you know, all over the place.

It's 

damp. I'm like sliding my feet around it. It was pretty dangerous. But that's kinda what makes it fun too, you know?

[01:02:57] LW: So did you pack did you have every, like, when you got out of LA did you feel like I have everything I need? Or did you realize really quickly, oh my God, I need, I should have taken more of this and less of that? Or how did you adjust once, once you got those first few 55 mile days under your belt?

[01:03:15] CC: Yeah. I would say I tried to pack everything as minimally as I could. I. Just basically like Bear Essentials, you know? And then maybe a week in I was like, my version of Bear Essentials completely changed, you know, so I lost like an outfit and a half basically. I'm just shedding stuff. I had a sweatshirt I left behind.

And yeah, it just kept getting lighter and I would try to put less and less water in my bag each day to just minimize the weight. 'cause you know, 12 hours you got this thing on your back, you wanna, you know, be as comfortable as you can. Yeah.

[01:03:52] LW: Did you smell like a homeless person after a few days or were you hand washing your clothes at Oh or how did that work?

[01:03:58] CC: yeah. So both.

[01:04:00] LW: miles on a skateboard 

[01:04:02] CC: Yeah. Um, so I'm sure it didn't smell great. Also when I called ahead every night from my hotel and like trying to find one, I. First question, like, do you have a laundry? Laundry room? Because I only have one spare outfit, so my sweaty one had to go in the wash at the end of the day

[01:04:20] LW: So you washed every night? Every night when you

[01:04:23] CC: every night.

So I'd put the quarters in the machine, you know, $2 or whatever it is. And sometimes they wouldn't have detergent. So yeah, I probably smelled like a hockey bag, but it was like clean.

[01:04:34] LW: What was the ice for? I saw in the documentary you would fill up a bucket with ice. What did you do with that?

[01:04:40] CC: oh. I try to mitigate the pain in my feet as best I could, but it didn't really work. The short list is plantar fasciitis, achilles tendonitis, ingrown toenails. I'm sure there's more, but those are like the main ones that were really hurting me every day.

[01:04:57] LW: So talk about that physical challenge of kicking you're ambidextrous, obviously even being ambidextrous 55 miles for fif, you know, for two months is a big it's a big task for your muscles, for your legs.

[01:05:15] CC: Yeah, no, I had to you can't stay on one leg, you know, you just like the blood rushes to it, like it's just not gonna work. So you have to push evenly. And I knew that early on, so I trained beforehand and tried to practice as best I could to be even,

[01:05:31] LW: Even meaning one to one or 10 and then 10 on the other oh yeah. So, on the other side, or how'd you, I yeah, that's a good question. Um, if it was a long, flat stretch, maybe I would do two to five minutes on one leg, go to the other leg, go back and forth. It's really when you just start feeling that pain, you know, maybe you're working out one arm or something and you're like, all right, move to the other one.

[01:05:57] CC: But if you're going up a hill, like a giant mountain, I'm basically doing like 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, just back and forth, just panting as fast as I can to try to get up it. So, yeah, that's what it looks like. But when you're out on the road with no shoulder and there's those ridges on the side, rocks and pebbles everywhere and you know, semi flying by it, you're gonna go back to your comfortable stance.

So I ended up probably doing maybe 60, 70% on my good leg, which is, you know, it worked.

[01:06:34] LW: And take us into the mentality. Was there, were there thoughts? Like, why did I put myself into this? You know, I obviously, since somebody was sponsoring it, you probably didn't think of quitting at all, but I'm sure you've thought I. This is ridiculous. This is, you know, what were you thinking the whole time?

Because you had a lot of time to think on your

[01:06:53] CC: Oh yeah. I had plenty of time to think. Yeah. The sponsorship thing had zero with, I don't care about quitting with that, to be honest with you. Like, that wasn't the, my, it was more of announcing it to the world.

I'm doing this, I'm skating and I'm daily vlogging, like, you know, and saying it for months and months, even years before that, that I'm gonna do this.

Like, I'm not gonna not do it. You know? So at no point did I ever this was stupid or whether did I get myself into, you know, if anything, all that pressure made it easy. Once I was out there, 'cause then it was just like, I don't know this machine.

[01:07:28] LW: Did you have mental games that you played with yourself, like counting signs or anything to pass the time?

[01:07:35] CC: Lemme not really to be honest with you. I listen to music and podcasts here and there, but after a while I just get bored of that stuff. It's like, how much can you listen to for 10 hours a day? You know?

[01:07:49] LW: So you would just listen you wouldn't listen to anything. You'd just be out there skating and

[01:07:53] CC: Yeah. I would just be in silence. Yeah. And like, just taking in the environment. I did set out with, you know, this thing was for sobriety and like mental health and silence is the best way to get the answers you might be searching for, or the things you're suppressing or the lessons you need to learn, you know. Everything we consume every day is essentially a distraction for the most part. Like every answer really is underneath that in the silence.

[01:08:20] LW: Did you work out anything about life or about yourself during that trip? I.

[01:08:25] CC: I really honed in on the fact that I'll think ahead. You know, I'm thinking ahead, how's this moment gonna be? Oh, all these people are waiting for me. You know, how should I respond? Or, you know, just thinking of maybe the next moment and I realized, yeah, you can plan, yeah, this or that, but for the most part, you do what you do in the moment and you're not even thinking when it happens.

You just react. You start talking, you're on autopilot, 

you know? So usually all the thoughts just hinder you, and they're unnecessary.

[01:08:57] LW: How would you know when it was time to, to vlog? 'cause I would see you occasionally, you'd stop skating, you'd sit on your board, you put your tripod up, and you'd start talking to the camera. Was there a certain, like key event that would initiate that for you on a daily basis? Or was it just a intuitive thing?

[01:09:14] CC: I would try to document things that looked beautiful, so if there were, or painful. So if there was a giant hill, as much as I didn't wanna do it,

I would put the tripod down, skate all the way up it, and then come back down, get my tripod, and then like, you know, so I'm creating a double the work and probably extra miles.

That was never calculated, you know, that, or just really I'd follow my thoughts when I had a moment where I realized something. Or you know, like my knee injury, for example, we talked about earlier.

If I had like a thought about how that led to my drinking and where, how the whole path led, I would just share that, you know, so just really just, if I felt compelled or learned something, I would share it

[01:09:58] LW: And your videos documenting this trip, have thousands of comments. Was there one that kind of caught fire and went viral that I guess gave momentum to the rest of them? When you started this trip,

[01:10:14] CC: com. I don't think so. Like comments as in like in the videos?

[01:10:18] LW: just a video that you posted, were they popular from the very first one or after Maybe like 10 of them after day seven, eight.

[01:10:25] CC: yeah. I, you know, in the beginning I think it only got maybe like 4,000 views. First one, you know, and I'm used to, my last series I did 10,000 a day. But I hadn't been uploading consistently. And so, you know, I'm just like, whatever. But I committed to this thing. So normally maybe I would've saw that and I'm like, ah, this isn't getting the most, you know, but I was committed.

So next day, maybe six K, eight k, slowly building, I guess the algorithm's starting to learn it too. Like people are watching now four videos in a row, or they're catching up or telling their friends starts picking up steam. I think maybe a weekend. It was probably at like 20 k

Pretty consistently. But the engagement from what I've heard compared to like other YouTubers, was extremely high.

And it makes sense, right? I'm doing this like huge thing. I'm completely alone and I'm being very vulnerable, you know?

[01:11:20] LW: And now you're meeting people as well. You're meeting people on the road, so people would just like camp out. They would hear that you were coming.

[01:11:26] CC: Yeah, 

[01:11:27] LW: were you posting the route? Did, was the route posted somewhere so people could follow along with where you were gonna be potentially on that given week or day or whenever?

[01:11:37] CC: yeah, I think I had my route that was on the app online, but I don't think many people followed it.

I think it became fun. Like a Where's Waldo kind of a thing? Like, oh, I think he's, oh, he posted that he was on, you know, route 66 yesterday. Like, he's probably gonna be passing here. And like people would wait on the road, you know, not unsure if I was gonna pass.

[01:11:58] LW: Yeah.

[01:11:59] CC: Yeah.

[01:12:00] LW: And you were so gracious. You know, I saw in the documentary you would stop and people would obviously have a million questions and just be in awe around the mission to go across the states. And you mentioned that was your favorite part of the whole journey at the end was just meeting people on the road, do you have any interactions that were particularly noteworthy or surprising to you?

[01:12:24] CC: There was a bunch. It's, It's hard to really, you know, pinpoint one.

I remember really early on, maybe day five, older couple, probably in their seventies, I think they'd been sober for about 40 years. They came out in the road and packed nice, packed lunch, some drinks, and telling me stories about sobriety and how they're like, just, you know, love what I'm doing.

That really set the tone. Other people started coming out more once they saw that. And but it ranges, you know, I would talk to, you know, even homeless people that didn't know I was doing anything. You know, I would just talk with them, sit down, down for 10, 15 minutes or, people would come out and tell me about how they have cancer and their whole story and journey going through it, and how my trip was helping them like push through or give them motivation, you know?

So it was just such a wide range of experiences and interactions.

[01:13:19] LW: Yeah. There was this one woman in the documentary who was like, be careful. Be safe. I always find it interesting when people say stuff like that, you know, she's funny. She's funny 'cause she almost had like an attitude of like, like she wanted me to fail. Like, there's a big mountain up there. You gotta watch out. There's 

Yeah. Weird 

[01:13:37] CC: almost seemed like, she's like, yeah. I'm like, all right, I think I'm good. Thank you though.

[01:13:42] LW: Like you couldn't be doing something more dangerous. But obviously you're thinking like no one cares about your safety more than you do when you're doing something

[01:13:49] CC: right. And in my head, you know, I'm just laughing. I'm like, she has not experienced the things, you know, I've had trucks ripping by me for months. Like 

[01:13:58] LW: yeah. You've had a couple near misses, right? People like being distracted and, and then 

[01:14:04] CC: Oh yeah, 

[01:14:04] LW: at the last minute.

[01:14:05] CC: yeah. A bunch of times. There was one guy who veered off the side of the road and I like had to jump off my board. There was that happened a couple of times actually. And then there'd be times where I'd just have headphones in, get a little too comfortable out there. Maybe you lean the wrong way or you stretch and then like a truck would, like, it almost felt like grazing my hand or something.

You go, wow, I could die. Like, I need to not have my headphones on the loudest setting,

[01:14:33] LW: Okay, so you're getting closer to the finish line. You're in Virginia, which is just crazy. What are you feeling once you start to, once you get at the point where you only have a maybe a day or two left, you're still on your own. You're wondering what the reception is gonna be like. I.

[01:14:50] CC: Yeah. My, I think it was either the last day or the day before it started to hit me that I was no longer just gonna be alone every day. You know, there was a certain silence and peace of being out there. Like I wasn't a part of the world anymore. Like, everyone had jobs and like doing these things, and I'm just like in my own zone for two months, you know?

And I'm about to dive back into, you know, tons of people and interviews and things. So I'm thinking like, I've done daily vlogs every day, so there's such a buildup. So I'm like. The finale has to be big. What am I gonna say? Like, what do you say if, you know, so you just start, I'm like, dude, I can't think, I just can't, I gotta just focus on what I'm doing.

[01:15:33] LW: yeah. Neil Armstrong talked about, you know, what is he, what am I gonna say? When we land on the moon,

[01:15:39] CC: Oh, really? 

[01:15:40] LW: To come up with something profound. You know, but meanwhile, he's just a regular guy like we are and just doing this thing and you know, just probably Were you wanting to, were you wanting it to end at that point?

Were you like over it completely

[01:15:54] CC: It was like a, it was a mix. 

[01:15:56] LW: Tired of washing your clothes every night? Tired of having the ice, tired of just being on the road and dodging trucks and all this stuff.

[01:16:04] CC: I was in such a rhythm and I felt so meaningful and purposeful and dialed in and had everyone's support, and so I almost didn't want it to end. I almost like, and I almost just felt like kept, like, my body could, I could do this the rest of my life, you know? But on the other hand, it's like, good things come to an end and it's like an attachment to try to just make it, you know, like it was the moment.

It is what it is, you know, like, so I just kind, I did well the rest my feet a little bit, you know, towards the end. But, yeah, I was just thankful I made it across basically healthy, you know? That was like the main thing.

[01:16:40] LW: And you skated on one set of wheels, but you did have a separate set. Why didn't you change 'em out? Even after the wheels started to decompose?

[01:16:48] CC: At first I just I was like, all right, I'm gonna make it across as long as I can let it go, you know? Maybe if I make it halfway, then this second set will get me across.

And I'm like, oh, I made it halfway. I could probably keep it going. They're not too bad. And then people are begging me to change 'em and they're like, and I'm like, I just start kinda laughing about it, you know, it's almost funny.

Everyone's like, no, you gotta change 'em. You gotta change 'em. So I just keep it going. Week passes by a week, passes by pieces are falling off. They're starting to look like cheese. My comments are lighting up every single video. Like I, I'm like, I almost got to the point where I stopped putting it in the videos, like video footage of it, because it was just too much.

And then I think it was, you know, day 47 of 57 and I was like, I can't change it now. I'm too close. I gotta see if like one set of wheels can really make it across the whole country. Like, when else am I gonna, when else is someone gonna test this, you know?

[01:17:47] LW: Does it change the quality of the ride when the wheels are deteriorating? Like is it slower? Do you have to kick more with bad wheels?

[01:17:55] CC: Yeah, it, yeah. It starts to slow down gradually, but not too noticeably until, like the point I was just saying, like day 47 ish. ' cause then it wasn't spitting on like an, a perfectly round axis anymore. It was like every rotation. And that's when I started regretting like, oh, this is gonna be a long week or two,

[01:18:17] LW: Yeah. But that becomes part of the story, you know? And then when it was all said and done, somebody offered to buy your board from you that you were actually prepared to throw away.

[01:18:25] CC: Yeah. Oh yeah. Tony Hawk he, like, he saw the wheels and, you know, he's a collector himself, so he saw this thing looked like an artifact by the time I was finished, you know, how like chunked up the wheels were and stuff. So he wanted to buy it and. But I wasn't thinking about that when I got to the finish line.

I was just gonna launch it into the Atlantic Ocean.

[01:18:45] LW: So talk about that experience crossing the finish line. How was that for you emotionally? What surprised you about that moment?

[01:18:54] CC: First things first is how many people were there? Because in my mind I thought there would be like five people and like four of them would be my friends, you know? So my wife called and she's like, should I come down? I'm like, nah, it's probably not worth it. 

[01:19:10] LW: Were your brothers thinking of coming or your parents or anybody? 

[01:19:13] CC: Yeah. Yeah, we're all distant and just like live our own lives, you know, like when we see each other it's cool, but we're not really like, you know, close in that way.

But yeah, pulled into Virginia Beach and then there were cops skating with me riding with me, like closing off the bridges.

And then groups of people just slowly started, do a mass and skated with me to the finish line. And then there was like 200 or something people there, big ribbon, the mayors of there. And I'm just like, in disbelief. I just couldn't, yeah I was like holding back tears, like I really couldn't believe what I was looking at.

[01:19:53] LW: Was the plan to jump into the ocean all along, or that's just something that happened spontaneously? You just thought, let me just go jump in the ocean.

[01:20:00] CC: Oh no, not at all. I thought like, all right, I gotta touch the water coast to coast. Let me just touch each one. You know? I get, I've skate past everyone. I get onto the sand and then I'm just kinda walking. And I'm like, I'm not like a runner. Like I don't get that excited about things. So, but then there was like all these cameras and people, I was like, I should probably just bolt it.

So I just started running, handing my camera off and sprinted and just front flipped in.

[01:20:26] LW: That's beautiful, man. So it's all said and done, right? You finish it, you accomplish this thing. Then what do you still feel tempted to wanna post? Like the day after video and the week after video? Like, you have this community that wants more and more.

Do you have to announce something? Okay, guys, the next thing is gonna come, give me a month. Like, what do you do strategically to help satisfy your audience?

[01:20:51] CC: it's tough because you just wanna keep going right. And keep the machine going and but like. The way I've operated my life was just, if I'm interested, I'm gonna do it and I'm not gonna do it for any other reason. If there's like a meaning there and I'm excited, then I'm gonna do it. So, doing all my challenges in the past, I felt this feeling of the come down, you know, I was almost prepared for it in a sense.

So I knew it was gonna be tough, breaking this rhythm and letting everyone down. But that's the thing. You have to do what's best for you. 'cause they'll just take and take and want you to keep making videos forever. You know what I mean? They, people were saying, go skate back. Like, what? What are you talking about? Yeah. I want more videos. I watch this every morning with my coffee. I'm like, dude, my legs are falling off. Come on, man. So

[01:21:41] LW: man. All right. So it culminated in a book called Pushing Through America. The documentary is, what's the documentary called Again,

[01:21:50] CC: across America.

[01:21:51] LW: Across America. And you're going on a tour, which is exciting. Talk a little bit about, so you're gonna do the exact same route that you skated on,

[01:22:00] CC: Pretty close at one point I go a little bit north and then get right back on it. But yeah, I'm basically recreating that path and doing premieres at skate shops and theaters all along the the route the whole month of May.

[01:22:13] LW: And is the book gonna be available online, or how do people get a copy of the book?

[01:22:19] CC: Yeah, it's available online. I think by the time this comes out, I'll also have a pro model skateboard out too. So all that stuff will be on my website.

[01:22:27] LW: Is that a collab with a larger company or is that something you completely created for yourself?

[01:22:33] CC: Yeah. It's from this brand called Chapman. They've been around for like 30 years. They're from Long Island. I've known them forever.

So they're putting it out and. Yeah, all that stuff's on my website and documentary is not out yet. We're trying to get it on a streaming service, so if you can make it to one of the premiers get a first glance at it.

[01:22:51] LW: And how do they find out about the premier? Is there a website? 

[01:22:55] CC: Yeah. The tour flyer is on my website, Chad cara.com and it's also on my Instagram, which is just Chad Caruso.

[01:23:04] LW: and what are the ma what are the places, the cities that like just a few of, just so they can, in case someone's listening and they live near some 

[01:23:10] CC: Uh, May 1st kicks off in Venice Beach then, so you'll be in San Diego? Arizona, Tucson. Where else am I going? Colorado Springs, St. Louis, Nashville. And then I end in Virginia Beach at the Jackalope Festival. And then I could have like a huge premier there. Right on the water.

[01:23:31] LW: Awesome, man. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast, hearing your story, and you did, by the way, raise money for what was the organization you raised money for with this Escape Across America?

[01:23:42] CC: it was called a natural high. They're in classrooms in all 50 states and they help kids focus on something they're passionate about rather than drugs and alcohol. So yeah, I wanted to give back to something that helped me and yeah, so we raised, what was it, like, $15,000 for them on the trip. So going from 10 grand in debt from de Wee's to that was, you know, that to me is just, one of the things I'm most happy about from this whole

[01:24:06] LW: That's awesome. Do you have another challenge in mind yet, or are you still incubating

[01:24:11] CC: It doesn't seem like it, but this whole tour, it feels like a challenge. I'm probably gonna daily vlog. I book all these things myself. I'm driving by myself and 14 stops across all of America. So, focused on that for now, and then we'll see from there.

[01:24:27] LW: And then we have the worldwide skate around the globe.

[01:24:30] CC: if you come with me, I'm down.

[01:24:31] LW: Awesome, man. Awesome. Looking forward to getting a chance to cross paths in person one of these days. I love what you're doing. I'm super inspired. Love the story. The documentary is fantastic. The book is awesome. I love the design of it and just everything about it, man. I started, following your YouTube channel, so I've been going back and retroactively looking at a lot of your earlier videos and the Skate Across America videos 'cause the way you shoot them, they're all very timeless.

And again, it's not about like, I could care less about skateboarding for myself, but it's really about teaching people to believe that things are possible for them that are probably bigger than what they imagined. So thanks for that example.

[01:25:09] CC: Thank you. And that's honestly a great point and really the underlying thing for everything I do is like, yeah, the challenge is fun and exciting, but it's like I want to show things that you didn't think were possible, you know? So I appreciate that and I appreciate you having me on the podcast.

[01:25:25] LW: Beautiful man.

[END]

Thank you for tuning into today's episode with Chad Caruso. If you'd like to follow Chad's journey, you can find him on the socials at Chad Caruso, that's C-A-R-U-S-O. And also be sure to check out Chad's photo book, which is called Pushing Through America, which captures the full story of his epic 3000 miles solo skateboarding journey.

You can also get information about Chad's Across America tour at chadcaruso.com. And if you enjoy Chad's story, be sure to check out episode 81 with Garin Jones, who went from living in his car and serving time in prison to helping others turn their lives around.

And episode 248 with Tom Tursi, who spent seven years walking around the earth and learning what really matters in life. 

And if you enjoyed this conversation and you found it inspiring, and you're now thinking to yourself, wow, I'd love for light to interview someone like.dot, do, please send me your guest suggestions to light@lightwatkins.com. 

You can also help to make that interview happen by simply leaving a rating or a review. Those are by far the most important metrics for inspiring a potential guest to accept my invitation to come onto the podcast, which is why you always hear hosts like me, asking listeners like you to rate and review the podcast.

Also, it only takes 10 seconds and it's completely free. Just look at your screen, click on the name of the show, scroll down past those first five episodes, and you'll see a space with five blank stars. And all you do is you click the star on the right. And you've left the five star rating. 

And if you feel inspired to go the extra mile while you're there, feel free to leave a one line review to saying what you like about the podcast. And also don't forget, you can watch my interviews on my YouTube channel. I do add some behind the scenes footage and some B roll. So if you wanna put a face to a story, just search Light Watkins podcast on YouTube and you'll see the entire playlist. And make sure you subscribe there as well, so you get notified when we release the next episode. And if you didn't already know, I post the raw unedited version of every podcast in My Happiness Insiders online community a day early.

So if you're the type who likes to hear all the mistakes and the false starts and the chit chat in the beginning of the episode, then you can listen to that by joining my online community, which is the happiness insiders.com. You will also have access to my very popular seven day meditation. Kickstart, which has a 70% completion rate, which is about 26% higher than your average online course.

And in the meantime, I will see you next week for another story about an ordinary person doing extraordinary things. Until then, keep trusting your intuition. Keep following your heart. Keep taking those leaps of faith. And remember, if no one's told you lately that they believe in you, I believe in you.

Thank you and have a great day.