Pedaling with Purpose

Jerry Kopack [00:00:02]:
Welcome to Bike Life, a podcast from the Warmshowers Foundation. Here we celebrate our global community of touring cyclists and hosts who make life on the road unforgettable. Through stories, insights and shared experiences, we explore the connections that fuel every journey. Whether you're pedaling across countries or welcoming travelers into your home, you're part of a movement rooted in generosity and adventure. Discover more and join the community@warmshowers.org now let's hit the road together. Hey everyone, this is Jerry Kopeck, the host of Bike Life, coming to you from the Rocky Mountains of Breckenridge, Colorado. There's an old proverb that says if you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with them. On Bike Life, I spent a lot of time talking with touring cyclists and geeking out over those adventures.

Jerry Kopack [00:00:56]:
But behind many of those journeys are the hopes hosts who open their homes, share a meal, or simply provide a safe place to rest for the night. So I'm going to spend the next couple of episodes highlighting those behind the scenes heroes like today. I'm talking with Tim We, a longtime bicycle tourist who discovered Warmshowers while preparing for a second ride across the United States. Since then, he and his family have hosted cyclists from all over the world and built friendships that continue long after the bikes have rolled away. Tim, welcome to Bike Life.

Tim Oey [00:01:27]:
Thank you. Glad to be here.

Jerry Kopack [00:01:29]:
Now, my right, you discovered Warmshowers while preparing for your second cross country ride. Tell me about that.

Tim Oey [00:01:35]:
That's correct. I'd heard about Warmshowers earlier, but then in preparing for my cross country ride, I really wanted to get a feel for the local areas that I went through. And I found the best way to do that is to meet people who live there. So Warmshowers was like right up my alley.

Jerry Kopack [00:01:51]:
What a great idea. And where do you live currently?

Tim Oey [00:01:54]:
Currently live in Sunnyvale, California, which is smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley.

Jerry Kopack [00:02:00]:
Gotcha. And what was your motivation for this? For this cross country tour? It was your second ride, right? So you'd already done it once?

Tim Oey [00:02:07]:
Yeah. And this was actually the second business trip across the country. I took on my bicycle as well. I rode from here in Sunnyvale, up to San Francisco, down to San Diego, and then across to Washington D.C. up to Boston. It was to give talks about oceans, plastic, climate change, and kids across the country. I did 90 days of biking, 5,000 miles and 254 talks.

Jerry Kopack [00:02:31]:
Holy moly. Wait a second. You said 90 days and 254 talks. Did I get that?

Tim Oey [00:02:38]:
About three a day.

Jerry Kopack [00:02:39]:
Yeah, I was wondering about the math there. That's incredible. Wow. What do you do for a living that you are involved in this kind of amazing philanthropic endeavor?

Tim Oey [00:02:52]:
Well, I was in tech for a very long time, like 35 years in product development. But I've always been a bicyclist and I've always been environmentally oriented. And this trip was inspired by the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I saw their exhibit on plastic in the early 2000s and said, Holy moly, we're really polluting a lot in our ocean. So I wanted to do something about that. So I went zero waste. And then when I left tech and shifted gears into the nonprofit world, I did one year with the Santa Clara County Public Health Department doing a bike program for them. And then they knew that I could only stay for a year because I want to do this cross country ride and talk to people about oceans, plastic, climate change and kids, because I love working with kids.

Tim Oey [00:03:34]:
So, yeah, so that was the inspiration for the trip and my talk.

Jerry Kopack [00:03:39]:
And yeah, that is really, really important material to cover, especially in this era that we're, that we're currently in. I remember I was in Thailand, I don't know, probably a decade ago, and I had the opportunity to go visit a local school there in Chiang Mai. And they were doing some really progressive things. They did this, did this play and the kids were probably 10, 12 years old. And the play was called Plastic is not Fantastic. And it just totally made my heart warm because plastic is a pollutant for sure.

Tim Oey [00:04:12]:
Yeah, it's an amazing material, but we should use it wisely and have it reused rather than just pick it up and toss it away. We buy so much trash. So I was trying to get rid of the trash. We buy.

Jerry Kopack [00:04:23]:
Nice. Okay, so you heard about Warmshowers and you decided to give it a shot. What was that first night stay like for you?

Tim Oey [00:04:34]:
The very first night stay was interesting. Let's see. Yeah, you may hear some dogs barking behind me now. Someone visiting. So let's see. It was a Monterey, I think it was in new Warmshowers. Toast. And he was sort of getting used to Warmshowers.

Tim Oey [00:04:53]:
I was getting used Warmshowers. So, you know, he actually treated me to dinner, which is cool. And that was fun. Yeah. Actually, my second warmshowers host. That was absolutely amazing. I'm just going to jump to that one.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:07]:
Tell me.

Tim Oey [00:05:08]:
He was in Big Sur. Murdoch Martin in Big Sur. A lot of Warmshowers. People have probably stayed with him and he's hosted hundreds of people and he's become a really good friend afterwards. He wanted to become a bicycle tourist. So once I got back home after my tour, he visited me and he got some of my old touring gear that I was no longer using so he could start touring. Also because he'd hosted so many times and he was an inspiration and so I use him as my role model when I'm hosting.

Jerry Kopack [00:05:38]:
Yeah, Murdoch is a legend. He has been on our show before, sharing some of his stories. And you're right, he's hosted hundreds of people over the years. Now you said he has been kind of an inspiration. What does that look like for you as far as your, your hosting or your offering?

Tim Oey [00:05:54]:
Well, I, as much as possible, I try to host people in their own room. Like we, we had two sons growing up. One of them is living back with us, but the other, my other son's room is empty. And so we can use that some of the time when it's not being used for other projects. Otherwise. Yeah, so it's nice to have a room for the, for guests, it's just easier for them. And then two people can stay in there. But we do have a nice backyard also, which they can camp in.

Tim Oey [00:06:19]:
And we've also hosted on couches in our house when it's gotten crowded. So I have to admit, one place, I think the one host, I think it was in Massachusetts or maybe it was in Connecticut. They were a hosting phenomenon. Also. They were hosting, they had like three or four graduate students. They had me as a Warmshowers host. They had, I think a second Warmshowers person there also. And they built a bed for me that day so I could sleep in a particular room.

Tim Oey [00:06:45]:
It was really amazing.

Jerry Kopack [00:06:46]:
Wait, they went and got a new bed or they built a bed.

Tim Oey [00:06:50]:
Tell me more. They had parts for putting together a bed and they put it together and so I could sleep over this other spare room. Pretty amazing things.

Jerry Kopack [00:06:58]:
That is pretty legendary. So do you feel like meeting Murdoch may have inspired you to be a host then yourself?

Tim Oey [00:07:06]:
Oh, yeah, definitely. I think one of the first people I hosted actually was someone I met while I was biking across the country. As I was going into Washington D.C. i met Pierre, who was coming, who's from France, who was biking from New York City to San Francisco. And our paths crossed in opposite directions on the, let's see, Gap trail right there. So, yeah, he was, he was head one way, I was headed the other and we saw each other. He had a two terrain, really nice French touring bike. So we chatted.

Tim Oey [00:07:40]:
I said, okay, when you get to San Francisco, look me up, spend a night and he did.

Jerry Kopack [00:07:45]:
Oh, that's so cool. It just is a further demonstration of this amazingly intimate yet diverse and widespread community that we create just by traveling by a bicycle, right?

Tim Oey [00:07:59]:
Yeah. And a really cool thing I like about hosting is the world comes to your door. You know, even if you can't travel yourself, you can still host because it's a lot of fun to have people from all over the country, all over the world just come by and get their perspective, hear their stories.

Jerry Kopack [00:08:15]:
Now, are you said you're in Sunnyvale, Are you on a pretty well established route that people are coming through on a regular basis?

Tim Oey [00:08:24]:
That is a great question. No, we don't get as many people here in Silicon Valley as they do, like along the coast with Santa Cruz, Monterey, you know, people doing the Pacific Coast Trail. But we do get a fair number. So I'm usually host. We're usually hosting, I'd say three to seven people each year. It's not. Not a huge number, but thumb sometimes it goes down. We were actually just before the pandemic, we were hosting like a lot of people just before the pandemic.

Tim Oey [00:08:52]:
And the last person that we hosted, oh, they were actually on a really interesting trip. They were a couple that was. They were doing a bicycle cleaning trip around the world. They were bicycling and cleaning up the environment by picking up trash, which was. They read about what I did and they said, oh, yes, we got to stay with him. Which because they were on this quest to also clean up the world.

Jerry Kopack [00:09:15]:
Now, did they actually coin that word bicycleaning?

Tim Oey [00:09:19]:
Well, they were French and I mean, from their perspective, they did. I don't think they heard someone else do it, although I have another friend who's also a bicycleaner. He just started before I hosted them completely independently. This other person, a former eraser, he just organized people to go clean up places where a lot of people bicycled. And they just clean it up by bicycle and pick stuff up.

Jerry Kopack [00:09:45]:
Oh, man, I feel like the world needs more of that. That's incredible. Do you remember your first person that you host or first couple that you host?

Tim Oey [00:09:56]:
I think it might have been Pierre. Was actually. I may have first of some before I left. I don't remember exactly. Yeah, a memory gets fuzzy. The first person I remember distinctly was Pierre because I had met him on the trail and then he was back at my house afterwards. So that was pretty cool.

Jerry Kopack [00:10:12]:
Yeah, that. That's super cool. I. I guess I'm just wondering, do you remember the first time you. I don't want to call People, strangers. But I think you, you, you had an interesting expression that our world needs more people turning strangers into friends. And I was wondering which I really love and I will come back to that a little bit later, but do you remember the first person that you invited into your home who maybe you didn't already know? And what was that?

Tim Oey [00:10:39]:
Well, I mean, everyone else in Warmshowers, I have not known them before.

Jerry Kopack [00:10:43]:
Right, right.

Tim Oey [00:10:44]:
They're all strangers.

Jerry Kopack [00:10:45]:
Yeah.

Tim Oey [00:10:46]:
And yeah, we, we live in a world where so many people are in their own echo chamber and we need to get out of that and explore the world and encounter people, which is what I like about bike touring and about Warmshowers. So all these people, they come to your home, they get to, you know, see your community, see how you live, you get to get to know them. It's a much more laid back way of seeing the world than being a tourist and going into tourist traps and just seeing the fancy stuff that everyone sees. Yeah, I really enjoy seeing normal things. I like going to grocery stores. How do you shop? You know, how. What's your recycling like? How do you get rid of stuff? What is native plant life like? What do you just do for fun, you know, hanging around your little city? So that's the kind of stuff I enjoy learning about versus the big splashy stuff where everyone's just trying to sell you something.

Jerry Kopack [00:11:38]:
Well, and again, another reason why I think it's so amazing to travel by bicycle because someone had put it. Had shared this with me on a couple episodes ago, is like you're traveling at the speed of bike, and I've said this over the years, is that you can get on a plane, you can get on a bus, you can drive in a car, you'll still end up at the place that you're going to end up. But it's all those small, seemingly benign occurrences, people you meet at the grocery store or in a Warmshowers host that you wouldn't have gotten if you were just going point A to point B. Yeah.

Tim Oey [00:12:16]:
And those personal connections and interesting stories, what they do and how they live their life, it's just fascinating.

Jerry Kopack [00:12:22]:
Yeah. And have besides Pierre, have you stayed in contact with any pd?

Tim Oey [00:12:27]:
Well, Murdoch Martin, I've stayed contact with him. There's some people I'd like to get back in contact with. Actually I'm Facebook friends with a host I stayed with in Missouri near Route 66 when I was going across Missouri. She and her husband and her kids had just moved to that area and they felt a little bit like fish out of water. It was very conservative where they were living and they didn't have very many friends there. And they were happy to have a bicyclist come through because they like bicycling and just environmental stuff. So I've stayed in touch with them via Facebook. Actually, there.

Tim Oey [00:13:01]:
There was another couple of German students who stayed with me. They had an unusual experience. They were biking from Los Angeles to San Frisco, and after they stayed in San Francisco, they were going to stay with me on the way back down to Los Angeles to do so, doing a round trip. But they had their bikes stolen in San Francisco. They thought they had great locks. They had really strong U locks, but they locked them outside. And San Francisco is a really high bike theft city. Even with the U lock, their bikes were gone.

Tim Oey [00:13:32]:
The U locks were just there in pieces on the ground because someone, you had used a angle grinder, just chopped them up. They called me and said, we can't get there. I still had a car at that point. So I went, picked them up, brought them back to my house, and they're both my size and I had a lot of extra bikes. So I lent them two of my bikes to bike back to Los Angeles. And then another friend of mine down there held the bike and brought it back to me up here in Sunnyvale afterwards.

Jerry Kopack [00:13:59]:
That is incredible. The fact. I mean, your generosity and willingness to offer your bikes to people that may have been strangers that have now become friends. Yeah, yeah. And. And how fortuitous that they were the same size as you. Right?

Tim Oey [00:14:15]:
Yes, they were the same. Same height, but one of them was six. The other one was 5 11. I'm a 5 11. So they. They fit my bikes just fine.

Jerry Kopack [00:14:21]:
Yeah, totally. Just a little notch here or there on the seat post. Right?

Tim Oey [00:14:25]:
Yeah. And it was pretty cool because I also, when people visit me, I like giving them a tour of my area. And we, just to make sure the bikes really did fit them well, we did a little bike tour. We went by the headquarters of Google and Facebook and intel and Apple, and let's see if. Oh, Nvidia. So all of these mega companies that are located around Silicon Valley, so they got to see them all from these trails that were near their headquarters.

Jerry Kopack [00:14:53]:
That is so cool. And so that brings me to a thought that I had. I hear so many times that people will say that they don't host because they don't have a big enough house or they don't have anything to offer or something like that, but hosting can mean so many things. So I'm just Curious. It sounds like you like to give people tours. Do you have any other kind of go tos or staples when people come stay with you?

Tim Oey [00:15:20]:
Well, I like cooking. So whether I'm hosting or visiting people, I'll often cook for my host or cook for my guest. And I enjoy it when other people want to say, oh, let me show you what I can make too. And then we'll go out and shop if they don't have it and they will pick up some stuff. We're lucky to have several markets near us with a lot of different stuff. So we can just go locally and to some farmers markets and pick things up and then cook. I was in Roswell, New Mexico. I made eggs Benedict for a couple I stayed with there who had never had eggs Benedict before.

Tim Oey [00:15:49]:
They just happened to the makings actually, just in their kitchen. I said, hey, you know what? You want to try eggs Benedict? I'll make it for you tomorrow. That's what I did.

Jerry Kopack [00:15:58]:
Do you have a, a standard dinner or breakfast that you offer to your guests?

Tim Oey [00:16:04]:
No, I, I ad lib a lot. I mean, I make fried rice a lot, which Indonesian style fried rice and rice porridge is called boober. I make salads a lot. I make omelets. I can make everything in breakfast. I used to be a short order cook, so. Okay, omelets, eggs, any way you want. You know, poached, fried, scrambled, whatever.

Tim Oey [00:16:24]:
I like them all.

Jerry Kopack [00:16:25]:
It sounds like if someone's rolling through Sunnyvale, they should definitely come and look you up because you're going to get a great tour and it sounds like you're going to get an amazing meal. You're a former short order cook. That's incredible. Yeah, I feel like my offering is a little bit more limited as far as dinner. We typically vacillate between either either curry or burritos because I feel like depending on how many people will show up, sometimes it's one, sometimes it's four. However, I can usually scale those meals up pretty easily.

Tim Oey [00:16:58]:
Yeah, my scale meal is typically like a stir fry. Those are just easy to scale up. The scale down, you just take whatever vegetables or meat you've got and stir fry it up and away you go. Just figure out if you want a sweeter or a saltier sauce with it.

Jerry Kopack [00:17:11]:
Nice. Today's episode is brought to you by bikeflights.com Bikeflights delivers everything you need to ship your bike, whether you're riding a bucket list tour, selling your bike online, or moving across the country. Bikeflights easy to pack bike boxes, carbon Neutral shipping and pickup to delivery monitoring. Make it simple and save you up to 40%. Visit bikeflights.com warmshowerstoday to book a shipment. Now back to the show. Yeah, and kind of getting back to just the offerings again. People think that it means offering someone their own private bedroom or a dinner or a breakfast, and it's really not the case.

Jerry Kopack [00:17:56]:
I've heard other hosts on the show talk about, like, well, we don't really have a dedicated room, but we have a couch in the living room or you can camp in our backyard. There's been times when I haven't been home, when people have reached out to me and I have said, hey, I'm not there. I'm going to be home in a couple hours. But the back door is open. Here's the address. The guest room is down the hallway on the left. Make yourself at home. And it's amazing.

Jerry Kopack [00:18:22]:
Just the, I don't know, just the comfort that the Warmshowers platform provides for hosts and for travelers.

Tim Oey [00:18:31]:
Yeah. As I mentioned earlier, we've hosted all three ways. Private bedroom or just on the floor or on a couch or in the backyard. It really depended on what else was happening in our life at the time. Depending we had other guests or other things that were happening or. Both my sons were home. It's very flexible. And when I was traveling, I also.

Tim Oey [00:18:50]:
When you're biking, you're really happy to get a flat place just to lie down. That's, you know, either camping, you're someplace safe where your bike is safe and you take a shower. Shower, bike and a bathroom. Yeah. And then you're. You're good. You just. Any horizontal spot, you're.

Tim Oey [00:19:08]:
I was like a light when I was bike touring. I sleep through anything. I just sleep really well.

Jerry Kopack [00:19:13]:
Yeah. And. And I love the fact that you started off as a touring cyclist who then through your experiences, became a host, because as a touring cyclist, you've been on the other side. You know what it feels like to be tired, to be hungry, to be dirty. Just having a shower or washing your clothes can just translate into a complete reset for the next week or so.

Tim Oey [00:19:36]:
Absolutely.

Jerry Kopack [00:19:38]:
Yeah. I mean, just. Just think of that benefit. I want to. I want to go back to. In your application, you mentioned some really interesting people that you had met from around the world. You mentioned the. The bison cleaning crew, which is fantastic.

Jerry Kopack [00:19:53]:
You also mentioned that you met a puzzle nomad wandering the world. Can you tell me what that means?

Tim Oey [00:20:00]:
So he was kind of an artist, kind of person who just make enough money to just Sort of live and continue traveling. He started someplace like in, around New York City or in Pennsylvania or New York, someplace in the rural areas there. And, and it wasn't holding on a regular sort of job wasn't quite his thing. And so he decided just to check out the world. So he'd worked for a while, he just kept biking and he had a really basic setup. So he took one of these old mountain hardtail, hard front mountain bikes which make great touring bikes. And he was just riding it and adding to his collection to make sure he could tour more easily. And since hosting him, we're on his email list now, sometimes he'll mail us paper, although I've told him I prefer just electronic versions.

Tim Oey [00:20:53]:
He'll create these puzzles along the way that are like part art and part brain teaser. And he'll send it out to the people who have hosted him or he's encountered and tell people what he's up currently. Last I heard from him, he was someplace in South America heading down. I think he'd actually finished getting to the end to Argentina, Patagonia, but I think he was wandering around more. He didn't quite start in Alaska, he had swung up through Canada and he was coming down the coast when I met him. But yeah, it's a very interesting person.

Jerry Kopack [00:21:24]:
You never know who you're going to meet, who's going to, who's going to show up in your, in your living room one day. Right, Yep. Yeah. I reminds me, I met this couple from German retired couple, I think they're probably in their 70s. And they were coming through, they were doing part of the great divide route from Canada down to New Mexico, but they also weren't really following a strict route, just kind of going whatever felt good and we hit it off. They stayed with us for a couple of days and they told me that they were heading further south towards this other town a couple hours from us called Gunnison. And I reached out to a good friend who lives down there and I said, hey, do you have availability to host this amazing couple? And of course he said yes. And they went down there, stayed with my buddy for probably another week and, and my, my friend Jason called me.

Jerry Kopack [00:22:13]:
It's like, hey, I'm so glad that you connected me with that couple because they were fantastic. They stayed with us for a week and even ever since now they've been. That was probably a couple years ago. We still stay in contact. They still message me. They were bike touring through Spain and they're updating me and I just love how Again, back to your point, Strangers become friends.

Tim Oey [00:22:36]:
Yeah. Another stranger that stopped by my place, his name was Tim. He's from New Zealand. He was checking out the United States and checking out bike infrastructure because he was a professional planner from New Zealand that helped design bike facilities. And it was just fantastic bumping it in. And we've been in Touch by LinkedIn ever since because he does some really great work over in New Zealand and Australia and around that area. It was fun chatting with him, I think. Here's one other person.

Tim Oey [00:23:04]:
Maybe I get confused sometimes. We have so many visitors overlapping. Sometimes there was someone else actually who is visiting every single state in the United States. That's like a mega trip, like multiple times across the country to visit every state.

Jerry Kopack [00:23:19]:
Yeah. I don't even know what that route would look like, but I guess it could be very interpretive. Right. Just kind of meandering your way around and trying to follow the seasons because ideally, you don't want to be going through the. The Rocky Mountains in the winter, but you don't want to be going through the Southeast in the summer. But wow, what a cool adventure.

Tim Oey [00:23:35]:
Yeah. So we've had some mega athletes, like, hitting every state. United States, that's a big trip. And then we've had other people who are doing shorter trips. They'll just pop through. Just taking a tour of this English couple. Sorry, Father, son, pair were the most recent people who stayed with us. Just last week, they were just checking out the Bay Area.

Tim Oey [00:23:59]:
They've flown in from London and they went up through Marin and they've gone through the East Bay through Oakland, and they're coming through Silicon Valley. So I got to talk with them. Very interesting pair. The son was software development. The dad was a retired person from the movie industry.

Jerry Kopack [00:24:17]:
Wow, that is so cool. Have you gotten any reciprocal invites by the people that you've hosted saying, hey, if you find yourself in England or Germany, look me up.

Tim Oey [00:24:28]:
Yeah. This pair from London said, yeah, come on by if you want to stay with us.

Jerry Kopack [00:24:33]:
I love that.

Tim Oey [00:24:34]:
Just outside of London.

Jerry Kopack [00:24:36]:
Yeah. Any chance of you making across the pond and go and do a little tour?

Tim Oey [00:24:41]:
Well, I have done seven tours, but with a deluxe Backroads Deluxe touring company in Europe. And I've also done two of my own tours in Europe where I have done Warmshowers, mainly in Holland. Stayed with two different Warmshowers when my wife and I were bicycle touring on our tandem through Holland, we stayed with some warmshowers hosts, and we want to come back. I've got a cousin in Utrecht, which is A great bicycling town so we can stay with her and then we can just go zipping around. I'd like to take a ferry over to England and do a bike tour of England. I have not biked in England yet. Biked in Ireland but not England yet.

Jerry Kopack [00:25:24]:
I, I just got a. I've been to England and I've been to, to Holland and two really well thought out, amazing bicycling countries. I mean, I feel like Western Europe as a whole is, but I feel like those two countries really have it

Tim Oey [00:25:38]:
dialed in and my goal is to make my community as good as those communities. Oh, I like that. Sunnyvale, like the name says, we have great weather year round. It's really nice here. Winter or summer. It's not too hot, not too cold, mostly sunny. A great place for biking. We've got pretty wide, pretty clean, pretty well maintained roads.

Tim Oey [00:26:01]:
We just have to add a few more bicycle facilities to make it more like Holland. But we've got lots of real estate that we can do that easily. So. I've spent 10 years at the bicycle pedestrian commissioner for my city of Sunnyvale. I termed out. I'm currently sitting on the roads commission for our county, making our roads safer for everyone. Motorists and bicyclists and pedestrians.

Jerry Kopack [00:26:21]:
God, I love that. I, I grew up in Boulder, Colorado, which is a fantastic bicycle city with bike lanes everywhere, bike paths everywhere. So it's really cool to hear that Sunnyvale is, is following in that same sort of mindset of making it really a bicycle friendly community.

Tim Oey [00:26:42]:
Well, from my perspective, we're making good strides, although we're not as good as Palo Alto, which is right next door and Menlo Park. Palo Alto, Menlo park are further along that path than we are. And then Davis, California is even further along. If you ever get a chance to visit Davis, that is a super bike friendly city.

Jerry Kopack [00:26:57]:
Is that a, would that be like a good tour route up in your neighborhood?

Tim Oey [00:27:02]:
Yeah, actually. There's so many different routes. There's lots of great biking all over the place. We've got mountains if you want mountains. We've got flats if you like flats. Go around the bay, oceans, lots of variety. The only thing that I have not done which most people probably wouldn't do during the winter. If you go over the Sierra Nevadas, that can be pretty challenging going through snow drifts and ice and snow.

Tim Oey [00:27:26]:
It's just very slippery on a bike. You need studded tires. I have not done that on my tour across the country. I left in February, in which case a lot of the passes are closed. So that's why I went down to San Diego so I could go across the Rockies where it wasn't snowed under and avoid that extra gear. I'd have to. Gary?

Jerry Kopack [00:27:45]:
Yeah, I want to talk a little bit more just about. About your. About your hosting mindset and your offering and basically just like, what do you think you or anyone else personally gets out of hosting, or for you specifically, Tim, like, why do you keep saying yes to being a host?

Tim Oey [00:28:05]:
Well, we don't always say yes because sometimes life happens and we have to say, sorry, we have to be out of town or there's a concert, and the logistics don't quite work out. I do prefer actually to be here to host people. So I haven't yet hosted anyone like you have where we haven't been present. But you need some flexibility and know that as either a host or a guest, it's not the Ritz Carlton and it's not perfectly planned. Random things happen. We have dogs. I do try to educate people on being zero waste because it's cool to learn how I live my life. So if you're flexible as a host, that helps.

Tim Oey [00:28:46]:
And flexible as a guest also, both sides. And then you have a great conversation and get to talk. Some of the places I've been have just been very simple. Just lay out on the floor and the host is busy working, which is fine. The most enjoyable ones, though, are where I'm able to talk to our guests and just like, that's why I like making a dinner or a breakfast so that we can just sit back, have some tea. There's a great book I read, Three Cups of Tea that's kind of you become friends. Like, the first cup, you're a stranger. The second cup, you're getting to know each other.

Tim Oey [00:29:18]:
By the third cup, you're a friend.

Jerry Kopack [00:29:21]:
And for brooch, I love that. And yeah, it's just further demonstrates and exemplifies and personifies why this idea of hosting and bicycle traveling just really makes the world feel a little bit more familiar, a little bit more friendly.

Tim Oey [00:29:40]:
And I would say it's fundamental for our future existence for us to talk to each other more. We just can't be so walled apart from each other. Then if we're strangers, we're afraid of each other, we go to war. But if we're friends, we'll work it out.

Jerry Kopack [00:29:56]:
Yeah, I love that. So I just want to come back to this because it just really. It just really kind of frames, in our whole talk today, you've said the world needs more people turning strangers into friends.

Tim Oey [00:30:12]:
Absolutely.

Jerry Kopack [00:30:14]:
Yeah. That's just it. So if someone's listening to our show today, Tim, maybe on the fence of being a host, why should they give it a shot?

Tim Oey [00:30:23]:
And another piece of advice is you don't need a fancy house. You just need some space. It could be a floor that is just fine, just a backyard. Everyone typically has a bathroom available and a warm shower or something like that. That helps. Yeah. So like Warmshowers says just a warm shower and a safe place to sleep. A safe place to put your bike and you're good.

Jerry Kopack [00:30:46]:
Yeah. And I want to go back to something else you just said too. It's not always just about the accommodations. I love your offering that you take people on a tour because so many times that is such a vital component of the experience. So it's really easy to look at a map and I'm going to ride my bike from here to here. But to have that local intel from a host that you can have dinner with and say, oh by the way, this path is, is snowed in right now or this road has a lot better bike lanes or you should definitely not miss this.

Tim Oey [00:31:24]:
Yeah, that is very. I find it very helpful for the guests who stay with us. They tell me where they're coming from and I'll make route recommendations. Oh, you've got to see this cool thing you're going to go by or avoid this area because there's a lot of construction there. Some other event happening that you don't want to be near or try this trail out or these little hidden passageways in our neighborhoods that you would never discover otherwise.

Jerry Kopack [00:31:45]:
Yeah, yeah. I, I'm very fortunate that I live in Breckenridge, Colorado. It's kind of at the apex of three pretty distinct routes. The Colorado Trail, the Trans American route and the Great Divide from Canada to, to New Mexico, which I think I just saw a bunch of the racers roll through town recently and they obviously weren't stopping for Warmshowers cause they were racing. But the people who do ride the Divide Tour, they will stop and they'll ask me what I think of say Boreas Pass or this alternate route. And it's so cool and so gratifying and so rewarding for me to tell them about this pass is going to be the best thing you've seen all day. It's a 12,000 foot pass. The views are iconic.

Jerry Kopack [00:32:30]:
Make sure you stop at the top. There's a great pull off for pictures and just the gratitude in their faces. And when I've been traveling too. Whether it's across the country or in different countries. I rely so heavily on that local intel for people who live there to tell me, don't miss this. That's what the trip is all about.

Tim Oey [00:32:48]:
Yeah. One of the people we stayed with in Holland and Delft, we were, we stayed with them three nights and they, we did two different loops they recommended near their place. So we, you know, that would made it very easy. We'd leave our gear behind, we'd have to haul it with us so we could actually do two really fun rides on two different days. And then on the third day we departed.

Jerry Kopack [00:33:11]:
Yeah. Have you ever, like, I know that you said you, you loaned out your bikes to people, which is an amazing act of generosity. Do you have a. You said you used to have a car, but you don't have a car anymore.

Tim Oey [00:33:24]:
Yeah. So when I was in Boston, I didn't have a car.

Jerry Kopack [00:33:27]:
Okay.

Tim Oey [00:33:27]:
And then I moved to Silicon Valley and I got a car because everyone got a car. Didn't drive it all that much. I still was bike commuting a fair amount, but I was driving and driving kids around. Our kids grew up and I wanted to be even more respectful of our environment and other people's lives and decided driving a car that just creates too much pollution, too much climate change, too big roads, uses a lot of resources. By not having a car, I'm saving money so I can retire more easily and I am not at risk of killing anyone else when I'm on my bike.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:03]:
Okay.

Tim Oey [00:34:05]:
That's why I bike everywhere.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:06]:
I love that I am a. I'm a daily bike commuter as well. I guess the reason I brought that up, I wasn't sure if you had ever offered to pick anybody up who was stranded. And the reason I asked is because recently this year, right before the Great Divide was starting, there was one of the elite racers who had landed in Denver, had flown in, and her plan was to cycle from Denver up to Breckenridge, up to Leadville, Colorado, where she could altitude train at 10,000 plus feet. Well, the spring being that what the spring was in Colorado, she got partway up to the mountains and got stuck in a snowstorm. And because she reached out to me, I knew who she was. She was an elite racer. She's like, hey, you know, stay for Warmshowers.

Jerry Kopack [00:34:52]:
My partner happened to be driving back from Denver after a business trip that day and was able to pick her up on the side of the highway and bring her to her house for dinner and stay over. So that was another really cool benefit that kind of doesn't always get looked at as something for Warmshowers. And again, we're not. I'm not advocating for people to have a taxi service. I'm just saying it was just. It was really fortuitous that because of our network of touring cyclists and hosts, we were able to pick her up and get her out of a snowstorm.

Tim Oey [00:35:24]:
Yeah, those. Well, there's two German students from San Francisco I picked. I did pick them up.

Jerry Kopack [00:35:28]:
Okay.

Tim Oey [00:35:28]:
Although now that I know our transit system better than I did before, going car free, you actually really learn transit really well. It's actually a really easy train ride, and they electrified it since the time those German students were here. So now it's much faster and quieter and easier. So without a car coming from a lot of places, I can tell people how to get hurt by transit.

Jerry Kopack [00:35:48]:
I love that. Tim, I want to wrap this up with one last question and really kind of drill into this one. What do you get out of hosting? What's the draw for you?

Tim Oey [00:36:04]:
So many draws. I just like exploring the world so I can explore the world. With coming to my doorstep, I can talk to people from around the world, share stories with them, learn what they're about and what they do and what they like. And yeah, with the rest of my life, I'm both trying to save the world and learn more about the world at the same time. And this accomplishes both of those by hosting.

Jerry Kopack [00:36:28]:
What a very noble thing to pursue. I love that. I want to thank you so much for hanging out with me today and everyone out there listening. If you're rolling through Tim's neighborhood, through Sunnyvale, reach out and everyone else is listening to my conversation today. If you haven't hosted a tour in Cyclist before, hopefully stories like this will give you a little bit of a nudge to maybe help turn strangers into friends. And until then, keep the wheels rolling and the stories coming. Thanks for joining us on Bike Life. I'm Jerry Kopak, and I hope you enjoyed today's episode as much as we enjoyed sharing it with you.

Jerry Kopack [00:37:05]:
Please leave us a rating and review or just tell your friends. This helps us reach more cyclists and hosts around the world. To learn more or become part of this amazing community, Visit us at warmshowers.org or follow us on Instagram at warmshowers_org. If you'd like to be a guest on the show or have a question you'd like us to explore, email us at podcast@warmshowers.org.