The Search for Freedom Page #3

on a predetermined pathway.

There is a medicine career pathway.

And when I was taken

into the wilderness for the first time,

that disrupted my pathway.

It disrupted my life.

It was a liberating circumstance

that just happened

to explode my comfortable life

into a million little pieces.

The wilderness opened up

a whole new possibility for me.

It alerted me to the fact that there was

another, deeper, more multidimensional

person inside this doctor.

I get inspired by an idea

and the challenge, the excitement for me

is to make the idea,

the vision, a reality.

I wanted to jump off, base jump,

the highest cliff in the world,

the great Trango Tower.

For me, all adventure is a metaphor

for the journey inside yourself,

getting to know the darkest, remotest

corners of your own psyche.

Sometimes that means going way,

way, way outside your comfort zone.

So I started to pursue fear,

the mastery of fear.

The thing that I've looked at,

which is on a poster my sister gave

to me when I was a young kid,

was a picture of a really big wave,

and there was a surfer on there.

It said, "Face your fears,

live your dreams."

That sat above my bed

from my early teens till I left home.

That inspired me to work

the last 20 years of my life.

Almost killed myself,

but facing my fears.

My fears were fears of acceptance,

you know, and being worthy.

I was someone that was always pushed

to "100% is all that's acceptable."

Having that drive

to always push for the top,

it's driven me to want

to jump further than anyone else.

As a child I was the one in the block

where the parents didn't want

their kids to hang out with me

because I was crazy.

But one thing I liked doing

was riding motorbikes.

I was four years old

when I got my first motorcycle.

And that became the next ten years.

We just traveled the circuit.

We were doing all the state rounds,

and eventually

the national championships.

My dream has always been to jump

big jumps on my motorcycle.

I've always looked to the top of

the pyramid as, like, that's the goal.

I went to Evel Knievel's funeral.

It was something that I just really

wanted to go to and pay my respects

because I really felt

that we had some kind of tie.

I stood in line to go up

and just kind of say a prayer

and stood in front of him,

and, you know, kind of bowed my head.

I just said, "Evel,

I want to follow in your footsteps

and take the torch where you've left

it, and take it to a greater height

and I want to do that

with your blessing."

And when I said that,

there was this crazy rush of cold air.

I can feel my hair on my whole body

standing up right now.

It's like I feel like

I got the Knievel spirit in me.

It's just like

I felt like he gave me his blessing.

When we all got out of school,

it was like our skate gang.

There was no age discrimination

other than what my brother tried

to put on me.

It was always an uphill battle to get

his approval for me to be around.

Then I would also have

to impress his friends

for them to also, you know, to stand me,

to be OK to be in the crew.

So that drove me

to push myself quite a bit.

When I was a kid, I used to sit

in class and draw ramps all the time,

and I always had this vision

that ramps could be a lot bigger.

You know, why were they

the size they were?

I would sit there and brainstorm

new ideas of things I could do

when I got out of school

on the ramp that day.

When I think of a trick,

when I'm sitting at my house,

I come down here and learn it.

A lot of what I'm doing today,

I fantasized about it

as a kid quite often.

I was a bit of a daredevil as a kid.

Combine that with the creativity,

and that's really the formula

of what makes me tick.

When I started snowboarding,

I quit everything for it,

and it was the only thing

I thought about.

I was gonna move to Whistler,

be a professional snowboarder.

Every decision I made was for that goal.

I don't think I had that feeling

with anything else.

So there was no B plan.

There was no, "If it doesn't work out,

what's going to happen?"

That was just the plan,

and it was going to work out.

I don't know how to say it.

It's like I'm almost breathing.

Like the best breath you can take

of full bliss and happiness.

It's like magic.

I do tow-in surfing, kite surfing.

Surfing, stand-up surfing

and wind surfing.

I've been riding with Kai Lenny

since he was nine years old

and helping him through

the whole process of becoming a pro,

and now being, basically,

the best in the world at stand-up,

you know, an incredible windsurfer,

kiter, surfer.

He's kind of like me,

where he does everything.

You know, Robby, since

I was young, would always tell me,

you're a product of your environment.

I always knew what I wanted to do,

what I wanted to be.

Looking at Robby for inspiration,

he's old enough to be my dad

and he's still going,

stronger than ever.

And he sometimes... I sometimes

feel like he's younger than me.

Most people grow up.

You get out of high school

and they stop playing.

They lose that aspect of falling down

and getting back up

and brushing yourself off

and doing it again as an adult.

And I've never lost that.

I'm still doing the same thing

that I was when I was 12 or 16 or 20.

I think it's good for you.

I like riding bikes.

Man, I like riding bikes.

I was the thorough addict.

I was a road racer.

And when I was 12 years old,

I told myself, "I will never stop

doing this, no matter what."

I wanted to spread this thing everywhere

because I knew that we could just make

a lot of people so happy.

The first year, we made 160 bikes.

The second year, we made 1,000 bikes.

People lined up out the door.

In 1983, for the first time in history,

you could walk into a bike shop

and walk out with this fat-tired thing

called a mountain bike.

In another ten years,

when someone would say "bike,"

they'd actually mean a mountain bike.

You go to this amazing park,

there are two gigantic,

awesome artificial turf soccer fields.

There's a gigantic, beautiful dirt

and grass baseball field.

There's basketball courts.

There's a full swimming facility.

Then there's a gigantic skate park.

I think that says a lot

about the evolution of everything.

In this kind of community, all those

sports are kind of at the same level.

Skating is such an important part

of this community.

So many kids are doing it,

we have to include that in our park.

Action sports have become mainstream

because as soon as we step

on a skateboard, on a surfboard,

a motorcycle, a bike, it's on.

I noticed that contemporary

youth adored and respected

and revered these pro athletes,

pro skateboarders,

in the same manner that they felt

about mainstream athletes.

Whether it be a Michael Jordan

or a Tiger Woods.

You now have, at least

at a competitive level,

a ton of parallels

to these traditional...

Whether it's soccer, football,

you name it.

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