The Commute: Walking 90km to work

[Music] okay work bound we go i do this a couple of times a week driving into the university it's about 90 k's 75 minutes door to door i enjoy the drive enough but in many respects the commute is a means to an end it's about getting to work like so many people commuting in a tin can of some kind be the train or a bus or a car [Music] but you could say that it's a massive waste of time i do it five or six hours a week 40 weeks a year for it's been eight years now a lot of lost opportunity and so i've been adventuring my whole adult life saving up time and money to go as far away from home as possible up mountains and across seas my whole stick these days though is to ratchet back do things more locally try and shift my sense of perception and so what about my commute lance can my commute offer me the adventures of high mountain tops and wide seas so four years ago i walked to work took me a couple of days i left with just a big hat clothes on my back no food no water yeah nothing jesus i would force my hand at the road having to provide everything i'd have to problem solve and i'd have to really immerse myself in this place that i really just drift through each day the wastelands of a highway are kind of like a wilderness of another kind they're humanless we don't stop and if we do it's to throw things away [Music] it was a hell of an experience a real insight into myself the human condition and this idea and concept of adventure [Music] a few months ago the dean asked me to give a lecture at this new fancy building at the mothership campus i said sure john i'll do that why don't i walk to the lecture from home i've done it before it was a cracking experience [Music] and if there's one thing missing with adventure tiles it's often that they're told in the aftermath well beyond the experience this way i'll walk in with a cracked lip and stink into high heaven i'll be a mirror of the road having walked to work [Music] again [Music] i tell students all the time that i i eat at home like i eat in the field which i kind of do it's a more basic form of living then i can be outside more thinking more doing stuff i actually really like the pla the taste of plain pasta now if i put a sauce to this i don't taste the pasta anymore well maybe i do but what's happened in four years i'm a different dude you know i'm married now and this little kitchen's different to when you were here last time kitchens kind of represents where most people spend the majority of their time in their house and it's where all your comforts are as well so as soon as you leave your house and leave your kitchen and all you have on your your own devices these are the kind of things you think about and they're the kind of things you miss but otherwise i want to streamline the trip so essentially when adventurers go adventuring they only take what's necessary the bare minimum to get the job done that's the commuter so this is the lace up i didn't do this last time i thought i'd be able to walk i don't know at least some of the way without shoes until i found some and there's bits of sand in there i think there's a couple of snails still swirling around in my toes they feel completely disgusting and yet really good of course that was flawed i have white feet and i fell apart after 8ks and i had to go to the backup pair of shoes so this time around i'm wearing my most worn pair got good flexibility bo um last time i found a heap of money well about five bucks worth which is a good meal and i didn't spend it i thought uh i'll see how much i can gather up but this time if i happen to see a little food vendor along the way i'm gonna buy something i found this on the highway last time and i thought it's kind of red baronesque because it's cold i have no idea where i'll sleep tonight what i'll wrap myself in what my swag will look like by then yeah we set these arbitrary rules for ourselves when we go places and do things and my last set of rules not wearing shoes and not wearing sunscreen was stupid but he burned in a blizzard think of all your mates that have gone and done europe you know they've been to europe for a couple of weeks and they come back and they say yeah i've done that country i've done it i've done it i've been here 35 years and i haven't done the 85 kilometers between here and work all right half of my walk today i think will be are we pissed off at humanity and the other half i'll be thinking wow what an incredible species we are and what we can do i think adventure and commuting have heaps in common both are about not being late be it a lecture or a mountaintop tide or a zoom meeting and having to be on time means fewer distractions geez that looks neat see i've never eaten a rose petal it tastes like it smells yeah distraction shouldn't be a dirty word being distracted is where i learn the most i've never met this goat i've drove past it most days how are you yeah you're a friendly bugger aren't you and sure this is a stunt we can't all spend two days getting to work i'm doing this to question habits and formulas of a modern human and to experience and not imagine counterpoints to my everyday so what starts is the the swaggy's dilemma what do i take and what do i leave behind water bottles bits of plastic cool stuff on the side of the road you know because then you've got to carry it and that's the beauty of starting with a blank canvas of i probably should have started nude but i would have got arrested too early thought i'd found a um a lip balm up the road but it's actually just a uh oral antibiotic for a dairy cow and oddly enough now that i've picked it up now that i've picked up this bit of useless plastic i feel obliged i don't i feel like i don't want to throw it back again i can walk on a road unless it says i can't unless there's a sign saying i can't or a policeman tells me i can't so they're the two barriers shoelace first bit of kit that i'll take with me [Music] a little bit of community service yeah a punching bag [Music] i live on a hill and so i'm now descending down to the highway out of the forest down to the flats and then onto the big four or five or six lane highway the metaphor is not lost on me at all that you're sort of descending into another world [Music] that's even butted it's probably perfectly fine it's a bit manky i can't see any mold but i've had two breakfasts so i think i'm just going to leave it why would you throw out half a loaf of bread no that's a nice gum boot if i find the other eight helen's in luck found some earplugs good one might be good for the highway because the highway is bloody noisy that'll blow up the lawn mower man i reckon there's still a bite in that let's have a go here half a bite of a banana good good too perfect ripeness marvelous sweet and sour sauce from mackers awesome unopened [Music] and i'm also just starting to get into the rhythm of the walk there's one thing that's rhythmical that's walking you know it's so repetitious of this 90 odd kilometers that i'll do that's over a hundred thousand steps you really just become a metronome and i'm sort of starting to get to the threshold of where i know and where i i don't one is commute lands and the one the other one is homelands [Music] and i know who owns these paddocks and that there used to be an orchard here and that's lavatouch creek and this is where my mum grew up the mountains i run in and you know maybe the closer i get to work the less i care for what's on the roadside and all the rubbish and all the stuff good roadside water trying to avoid the hepatitis c i'm about to cross onto the highway and like any academic i've got a bit of a theory that well i got a theory or one that i prescribe to more than others and that's roundabout theory because so much good stuff falls out of cars at roundabouts you know yout's going around the corner things flop out all the time so i'm gonna have a good look around at the the two roundabouts uh near the highway there you go first cash first cash 20 cents [Music] roundabout theory man on the highway now and it's just freaking loud you know to bombardment to the senses [Music] [Music] so [Music] i really like finding golf balls if i could be a professional anything it'd be a golf ball hunter but next to that is um finding really nice bolts that you could have still got a good thread on them that you could actually use as a bolt and the highway is full of bolts all the way from the usa that bolt it's a nice fault aldo leopold has this great quote related to roads and the human mind saying that the more roads we have the less beautiful our minds are as if our bodies and senses are underdone because we're no longer on our feet i believe it this is not beating up on roads not really it's more about advocating walking and not just in pretty serene and pleasing places but commute lands which are dirty and loud and bomb your senses but they're often the most unwalked places on the planet the motherlode two dollars in the road [Applause] yes two bucks cut myself whilst getting the two dollars out of the road [Applause] first uh first break in five hours 15 odd minutes first time sitting down hips are a bit tight feels really good quite serendipitous when someone throws away a couch bastards i know i wax in and out of thinking humans are horrible and thinking humans are great you know a guy pulls over to give me a lifter and then 10 minutes later i hit this old country road and uh it's just a dumping ground and people have filled their old tent with rubbish and then throwing it away yeah it's disappointing uh so that's finding a bed so now it's being a swagman and looking for a tarp some insulation something warm maybe something waterproof uh yeah so now i've got to sort of make home in a sense i haven't i haven't been picking up tarps and plastics and things yet but i will now for the next 20 25ks i've been on my feet now for about um uh a nudge in eight hours so i thought uh took five minutes r and look what i sat next to so these are about 150 calories and i've had a little tiny bite of banana it might seem that this walk is just one great treasure hunt but it's more than that because my well-being depends on finding usable things that others have thrown out it's a cruel twist that the very thing i detest the most is going to sustain this commute and i've lost all tribes of where i am all right what do we have here a duvet it's a bit too big and heavy but am i looking a gift horse in the mouth probably i'll see how big it falls down to not sure if it's a duvet or some sort of 1970s tablecloth isn't it the closer i get to a city of 4 million people the less i'm able to get clean water by natural means so i think that says a lot the closer i get to the city the harder it is for me to find the very thing that makes me operate and this is full of electrolytes yo beauty they're an athlete they're an athlete they're they've got no badness in them whoever left this other than being a litterer i think most of the honks too you know you get a sense for honking that they're either trying to call you an idiot or going good on you mate you're swaggy you know and i think most of them are positive i don't know why i think that but [Music] yeah i can feel it i don't feel it my feet i got my running shoes on my running shoes i don't um i don't walk in and so my heels are just spaghetti at the moment got um anything goes that song in my head run repeat for the last bloody two hours you know it's pitch black and you've got huge streams of cars only five or six foot from you doing 100 kilometers an hour and you're just there wandering along in your own little world that's kind of surreal it's a salvador dali moment because you sort of no one really does it blessing people pull over and think you're in trouble good on you for stopping see you mate you know i don't think you're doing this for an adventure or doing it for your own state of mind they think you've stuffed up and you're on the bones of your ass and you've got to walk walk there yourself what a great surprise look at this chickadee ah you look good you look okay hi hey hi there you go you can have that now oh thank you yeah that's right there you go well done where's good fair county money wow it really is banged up this one it's not even money but it was so impressive i thought back in medieval times that would you buy a horse with that see that's that's not even australian that's malaysian cool smells and that's probably me so i might spend five bucks on dinner and then four when i was 25 on breakfast [Music] he found a dinner i didn't even need to bring him one yeah wow so are you spending the night with him no no no hell no it's cold out here and i you should see the look of the doona i think i'm in perfect harmony dorito chip she's not impressed i don't like his choices cherry thanks mate i think it's all legal tender i had to dig that one out of the road don't talk just enjoy it did you know that there are other shops in here besides the service station shop a pasta would have been good of course and so would have sold a masseuse in a hotel right now but that's you know we have have you noticed that there's other food like a food court over there i did this last time i just went and laid in the bush imagine if i required air as well what a perfect little a perfect little station give yourself some air and water i've got a beanie to put on the gulls right that's gold house paper that goes on first a towel and it's somewhat clean well that's ridiculous oh my bloody water bottle leaked bastard oh well and that i reckon pretty bloody good don't need to wear shoes to bed i can have the night off sleep's really important but feeling safe is just as important you just think would other humans think there is a human sleeping here and no so i'll sleep really comfortably and that's it rock and roll nine o'clock it's about right haven't brushed my teeth i feel a bit a bit feral but we're done geez all right 4am sleep um i'm not actually sure i've slept it was really good rest and there's the highway there oh those heel blisters are bad that's a doozy [Music] isn't really anywhere to hide on these new highways [Music] coming into peak hour traffic in the morning or just starting i suppose around 6am heading into uh one of australia's largest cities on one of the main arterials here i am in this great trade-off what i'm gaining in roadside experience in the name of adventure i'm losing in work time which depending on how you look at it would determine if you'd ever walk for two days to get to work it's about putting value on such a thing much like baking your own bread or taking karate lessons i think that experiences like this are the essence of being human which to me is our ability to question everything we do i'm finally leaving the highway which is just great because man it's noisy and high speed and it's just hectic the traffic the traffic sound just completely blocks out all natural sounds you know and freeway you're a little beauty that's enough it feels better to um to slightly jog because of these stupid runners first traffic light of the trip got the green it's a good start that's a good looking apple it's been bird eating rather than human eating i'm happy to share an apple with a bird oh yeah that's a beauty they're doing well i'm doing a roman run too so when i shuffle along and i don't actually touch down much with my heel it's much nicer down the phone got a nice samsung battery's dead 32 gigabyte there you go brett nice to be in the burbs too and off the highway you can think a bit more with slower car traffic i've had a lot of negative honks this morning you know yesterday i think i had positive honks but negative honks today if adventure is about anything it's about finding a newer version of yourself in hard to reach places a main road that you regularly commute is obviously not a hard to reach place so much so that you have to reinvent your idea of adventure if you're willingly set out across these mapped and often dead fiddled with terrains i'm fairly uncomfortable right now my feet are i've got a bit of chaff i'm really hungry um and yet i'm here by choice and so i really like that choice and so i've kind of got to be optimistic about those bad things i don't really think they're bad i think they're great because i can feel them i've been fantasizing about this and um sure enough here in dandenong and there's a five buck note making bacon good timing what'd you get i found five bucks in the bush and turned it straight into a giant cookie whatever it is half moon and a coke okay so a couple of marathons to this point almost um i can feel it my legs for sure so what a what a treat it is to just sit against a gum tree and have a think about things for half an hour i didn't think i'd get this luxury i thought i'd be busting it a bit more to get there on time so this is good didn't need to get up so early i've been planning this thing for a while even just a two-day stint from home really different experience in life oh this is a that's all i'm doing it for it's a really different experience and i'm already starting to miss it miss the the newness of it all and that's why you don't sit down when you're on the job because it sucks getting back out [Music] everything changes you you cannot take away what just took place until i start to go batty maybe in my older age that is now with me it is part of the fabric of beau it is my world view it's how i teach it's how i see the world it's how i see that road from that point on and yes a lot of it will just filter away as i get further from the walk but it's still there famous for our balls yeah well you got me i'd go in for some balls but i gotta go give her a workshop oh if you think about something hard and long enough it comes true and it's doing it a kilometer from the office that is so good hell i'm eating the skin i'm not quite sure what the point is when you're the last five or 10k thing right here bo what are you what are you doing this for but the love is returning don't you worry it's a hell of a trip so bloody weird and different i've had more experiences in the last 30 hours then 10 years of driving that route [Music] so that's the point and it's hard so there's the adventure part of it you know just to stitch it together [Music] i've only ever given one workshop in here and i don't know my way around at all in fact i only bought a few um things with me that i actually kept and one of them is a map to tell me where to go one four one up [Music] you can over theorise a walk like this in the same way you can undersell it as i made eye contact with our caterer i considered my opening line i'd give to a room full of people what's the message here bo well you can choose to do something like this or not i chose to walk to work and this is why [Music] well i'll be i'm only according to three i'm only what's that one day and seven hours late sweet oh and look at that there's been some sort of function on and the sandwich is there you see that in the door there you go there's my commute to work as long as we turn on the light turn the computer on and start work i'll tell you what now let's hit those sandwiches up

Channel: Beau Miles

Views: 633,614

Rating: 4.9513969 out of 5

Keywords: Adventure, Backyard Adventure, Beau Miles, Documentary, Long walk, Journey

Id: R-Zyud8xh2c

Length: 28min 27sec (1707 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/MmmmapleSyrup]

I can’t get enough of Beau’s videos. The man is just an utter joy to watch and listen to him wax poetic about life. Seems like such a solid guy.

[u/hexdurp]

I need to go for a walk. Thanks for posting this, it was inspiring.

[u/Uncle_Magic]

This dude can’t stop eating random shit off the floor wtf

[u/TheNeolisticKid]

That was pretty cool! I do a lot of walking compared to most humans. I have averaged 10k+ steps per day for the last three years in a row. I've got some walking goals I might try to pull off at some point. But this was definitely some next level shit. Love this perspective of trying to insert adventure into your every day life and see things differently.

[u/HHirnheisstH]

What the fuck is he drinking out of that pepsi bottle about a minute and a half in? It looks like someones piss bottle from the side of the road but I really like to think it isn't.