How to Eat a Mountain - Episode 24

Summary

The Musers The Podcast

Episode 24: How to Eat a Mountain
Original Air Date: December 10, 2025
Hosts: George Dunham, Craig "Junior" Miller, Gordon Keith

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Episode Overview

This episode, sandwiched between the Musers’ Thanksgiving and upcoming Christmas specials, dives into the theme of “the hardest things we've ever done.” Through a blend of humor, heartfelt honesty, and the group’s signature camaraderie, Craig, George, and Gordon share stories of personal challenges—ranging from grueling physical achievements to emotional trials and everyday struggles. The episode is a testament to resilience, the value of incremental progress, and the universal experience of reaching for something you’re not sure you can accomplish.

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Highlights & Key Discussion Points

1. Listener Mailbag & Global Fanbase

• [03:16] Listener Letter from Brazil:
  • Felipe, a longtime listener, writes in from Brazil, recounting his journey as a fan, moving back home to care for family, and finally ticking off "write the Musers" from his own bucket list.
  • Felipe’s Suggestion: The Musers should take their podcast on the road to Brazil, prompting the group to joke about their travel budget (“Let’s try to make it to Bedford first. Go to Brazil. Yeah, Bedford’s first; Bedford, then Brazil. Alphabetical order.” – Gordon at [04:51]).

2. Hardest Things We've Ever Done: Physical Feats

Craig’s Endurance Stories

• Bucket List Adventures & Cycling ([05:06]):
  • Craig recounts his lifelong passion for cycling, checking off world-famous climbs in the Alps, Pyrenees, Italy, and Belgium.
• Qualifying for the Boston Marathon ([06:03] to [10:32]):
  • Describes the obsessive and difficult journey of qualifying, failing multiple times on different courses, and finally making it at the New York City Marathon:
    • “With about three or four miles to go, I’m looking at my watch and I’m not fading and I’m thinking, wow, I think I’m actually going to do this… My legs were killing me, they had turned to concrete. I kept looking at the watch and I was still on pace, still on pace. And I made it by 20 seconds.” – Craig ([10:03])
    • On the physical impact: “…I could not walk for the next three days. It was so difficult.” – Craig ([10:30])
• Ironman Triathlon: The Ultimate Challenge ([13:37] to [27:10]):
  • Shares his experience training for and completing the Ironman in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, confronting swimming (his weakest area), punishing weather, and moments of near-quitting:
    • “It was that $20 T-shirt that kept me going. So I did mile three and I did mile four… at some point you’re so far out where you gotta keep going.” – Craig ([22:43])
    • “I’ve been moving nonstop from sun up to sundown.” – Craig ([24:42])
    • Afterward: “I remember being so happy that I had finished, but I was just, I was a mess. You know, my legs were a mess, my mind was a mess. I had been through hell and back.” – Craig ([25:33])
    • Bonus memorable moment: Craig ends up sitting across from the “most beautiful blonde… from Sweden” after the race, only to have her boyfriend join their table ([26:04]).

George’s Toughest Work Experience & Family Loss

• Physical Labor on a Burned-Out Basement ([29:31] onward):
  • George describes an unforgettable summer spent hauling burnt roofing insulation out of a gymnasium in blistering Texas heat:
    • “It was like I was sentenced to hard labor for five days. But it was good for me. It really was. It was eye-opening.” – George ([33:57])
    • Insights about hard labor granting appreciation for physical workers and instilling a sense of accomplishment.
• Loss of Siblings and Emotional Hardship ([34:50] to [40:43]):
  • Opens up on losing his sister and brother within two years, both on family birthdays—a sequence he finds both painful and strangely poignant:
    • “It’s just hard, you know, losing your parents… But losing a sibling… it’s losing a piece of your soul.” – George ([36:18])
    • “It’s not something you get over, it’s just something you get through.” – George, quoting Willie Nelson ([36:44])
    • On grief: “You’re overwhelmed with a sadness that you’ve never felt before… it took a long time just for waking up and just not feeling the sadness. And I felt that with both of them. And it’s getting better.” – George ([39:13])
    • The role of music and songwriting in processing grief.

Gordon’s Construction Projects and Performing Fears

• Renovating Houses ([41:53] to [45:37]):
  • Gordon reflects on self-driven labor renovating homes, facing literal “mountains” of work with no help and the spiritual benefits of pushing through:
    • “When you’re in it every day, it doesn’t look that much smaller until you remember back to the first day when your eyes took it in.” – Gordon ([43:01])
    • “The lesson is always the same… you can only eat it one bite at a time.” – Gordon ([44:04])
• Facing Fear: Stage Fright & Loneliness ([49:40] to [58:15]):
  • Shares the emotional challenge of TV work—having to perform live, alone, with high stakes, and how daunting that can feel:
    • “Those seconds [backstage] were the loneliest seconds of my life.” – Gordon ([51:09])
    • “We always think that if something looks easy to someone else, then it must be easy. And if other people are able to do this, it must be real easy for them… and that’s not the case.” – Gordon ([52:34])
  • Cites a memorable interview with Zach Galifianakis that he had to conduct right after finding out his aunt died, pushing through grief to still create something special ([54:03] onward).

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Themes & Insights

Overcoming the Impossible – Physical and Emotional

• The group highlights how many of life's greatest accomplishments or sources of pride are tightly bound to hardship, pain, or a sense of impossibility—whether that's pushing physical limits, enduring loss, or tackling the “mountains” of life.

Incremental Progress & The “One Bite at a Time” Principle

• Through both literal (Ironman, roofing) and metaphoric (grief, television) mountains, the Musers stress the value of focusing on the next step rather than the overwhelming whole:
  • “How do you eat a mountain? One bite at a time.” – Gordon ([44:04])
  • “Your slowest run is faster than your fastest walk. So just keep running like a grandma if you have to.” – Craig, via advice from his friend Grant ([22:52])

The Universality of Anxiety and Self-Doubt

• The trio normalizes feelings of inadequacy, loneliness, and fear, even (or especially) among people who outwardly “have it together.”
• The myth that life's hardest things are easy for others is debunked:
  • “It’s not the case that everyone just always seems to be doing so well and has it figured out… our internal lives actually are very transportable into other people, if you really think about it.” – Gordon ([52:43])

Humor Amid Hardship

• Even as serious topics are broached, the episode is punctuated with classic Musers banter, self-deprecation, and bits about old cars, lunch dates, electrocution, and faux-macho anxieties (“I could barely pump gas into my car.” – Craig, [47:36]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On bike marathons:
  “If a marathon were 20 miles, everybody would do it and could do it pretty easily. There’s something about the final six… those final six are unlike anything you’ve ever experienced. It’s just absolute hell.” – Craig ([11:13])

• On emotional loss:
  “You’re overwhelmed with a sadness that you’ve never felt before. And… it took a long time just for waking up and just not feeling the sadness. And I felt that with both of them. And it’s getting better.” – George ([39:13])

• On biting off more than you can chew:
  “Everything that I’ve done that has been worth anything has been because it was something that I couldn’t do. And I just somehow found a way to meet the challenge… If you sit around in life waiting for being qualified, then you’re not going to have a life.” – Gordon ([57:27])

• On asking out Grace:
  “I was shaking. I’m so scared to death. And I just did it... would you like to go out and have dinner with me sometime? … She stopped and she looked at me and she said, ‘You do know I have a boyfriend.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me. Do you still want to go out?’” – Craig ([63:00])

• On incremental effort:
  “You gotta go small. What’s the old analogy? How do you eat a mountain? One bite at a time.” – Gordon ([44:04])

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Inspirational Takeaways

• The “hardest” things in life can be physical, emotional, relational, or simply everyday battles with self-doubt or inertia.
• Progress comes incrementally—whether clearing a burned-out gym, running a marathon, or dealing with loss.
• If you’re facing something you think you “can’t” do, don’t wait to feel ready. Take the next real step, even if you fail or fumble.
• Humor, friendship, and compassionate honesty are powerful tools for climbing life’s mountains.

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Segment Timestamps

• Listener Mail & Brazil Letter – [03:16]
• Physical Hardships & Bucket List – [05:06] to [27:10]
  • Craig’s marathon: [06:03] to [10:32]
  • Ironman journey: [13:37] to [27:10]
• George’s Hardest Work/Family Loss – [29:31] to [40:43]
• Gordon’s Construction Stories – [41:53] to [45:37]
• Stage Fright/Performance & Emotional Hardship – [49:40] to [58:15]
• First Time Asking Out a Girl – [59:07] to [65:35]
• Closing Reflections (Incremental Progress) – [65:42] to end

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Whether you’re eating a mountain or just facing down one more mile, The Musers remind us: you only have to take the next bite.

Transcript

[Gordon]

Coca Cola for the big, for the small, the short and the tall. Peacemakers, risk takers for the optimists, pessimists for long distance love for introverts and extroverts, the thinkers and the doers for old friends and new Coca Cola for everyone.

[Craig]

Pick up some Coca Cola at a store near you.

[Gordon]

Why is she going out with another guy if she's well, why is she going out with you when she's got a boyfriend?

[Craig]

Maybe she fell under the spell of one Craig Miller and she just could not resist.

[Gordon]

Welcome to the Musers the Podcast. This is episode 24, how to eat a Mountain.

[Craig]

Welcome to another edition of the Musers the Podcast. I'm Craig.

[George]

I'm George.

[Gordon]

I'm Gordon, your favorite.

[Craig]

This episode is sandwiched between our Thanksgiving episode of last week and our upcoming Christmas episode next week. And we should probably do a New Year's episode, a Valentine's episode, a St. Patrick's episode, a boxing Day episode, et cetera. We'll keep you posted. This week we're going to talk about the hardest things we have ever done.

Now this could be something physical, could be a relationship, it could be a puzzle, it could be a college course. I think we're going to have a lot of good stories to get to today.

[George]

You guys like puzzles?

[Craig]

I love puzzles.

[George]

Really?

[Craig]

Yeah, I do a lot now with my daughter.

[Gordon]

Well, those don't.

[George]

Those are the only ones I can do. The one that has the dog with the little label on it that you can put the foot on. Yeah, I can do those.

[Craig]

She has like 100 piece, 200 piece puzzles that we do.

[Gordon]

What about like a thousand piece puzzle out?

[Craig]

Those get a little overwhelming, but I still like them.

[Gordon]

Man. We went through a kick recently, I'd say about a year ago, doing these thousand piece puzzles.

[Craig]

Really?

[Gordon]

Yeah. It's kind of fun because, you know, everyone kind of gathers around the table and, you know, works together. Yeah, it's great.

[George]

Love it.

[Craig]

You do. You can get lost in the weeds though, those huge puzzles and at times it'll feel hopeless.

[Gordon]

Is there anything more defeating though, when you. You got a puzzle that's been taken up the dining room table for six or seven months? No, I'm finished. I promise. I promise. Just leave it there.

[George]

Yeah. What do you do with them?

[Gordon]

Well, you leave them there until you finish it or someone has to say, look, you're not going to finish this. And they just scrape it off into the box.

[Craig]

I think that's weird when people frame them and hang them in their home.

[Gordon]

That is Weird.

[Craig]

That's a weird look.

[George]

Maybe it's because it's the hardest thing they've done and they wanted to.

[Gordon]

There's something cheap about it. Like, wouldn't it feel cheap if we looked really closely at the Mona Lisa and notice that it was puzzle pieces, and we're like, oh, Leonardo, the puzzle he did.

[Craig]

Well, we are going to talk about the hardest things we've ever done, and maybe a puzzle will come up. But first, let's get to our letter of the week. By the way, this spot still for sale. This podcast is one of the biggest in the world, as we have listeners all around the globe. And this week's letter comes to us from Felipe in Brazil.

[Gordon]

Nice.

[Craig]

And he writes, I'm a longtime listener of your radio show, and I love the podcast as well. I've been meaning to write you for years. In fact, after moving back to Brazil in 2024 to help care for my elderly parents after 20 years in Dallas, I even created a dedicated email account just so I could communicate more often with my radio heroes. That grand plan resulted in exactly one email to Gordon back in September, and then procrastination took over. But today, while driving back from my dad's house on the coast, about an hour and a half from my hometown and listening to your podcast episode about actually doing things on your bucket list, I realized how sad and funny it is that writing the musers has been on mine. So I dusted off that old email account and finally decided to follow through. During the same episode, both Craig and Gordon mentioned wanting to take a trip to South America. So I'm going to selfishly recommend Brazil. It's a country that can deliver just about any experience you're looking for, and it's much safer than it's usually portrayed in the United States media.

[Gordon]

Yeah, man, all the videos I see from Brazil are always carjacking gone. Funny.

[Craig]

Yes. So he says. How about a Muser's road trip to Rio?

[George]

Interesting. Okay.

[Gordon]

All right. Do we have that in our travel budget?

[George]

Not this year.

[Craig]

Do we have a.

We have actually been talking about taking the podcast on the road a little bit here in 2026. I don't know if Rio's in the cards, but that would be fun.

[George]

Yeah, why not?

[Gordon]

Let's try to make it to Bedford first. Go to Brazil.

[Craig]

Yeah, Bedford's first Bedford, then Brazil.

[Gordon]

Yeah. Alphabetical order.

[Craig]

Thank you, Felipe, for sending that email all the way from Brazil. It took a long time for that email to get here because it came from Brazil.

[George]

Sure.

[Craig]

We also got A couple of emails that lead us into today's topic last like this one from Christopher, who writes, I loved the Bucket List episode. But Junior, you said that you had already checked off most of the big things on your bucket list, but you never mentioned what those were. We heard about Gordo's and Georges, but you never told us yours. Christopher. You're correct upon further review. That's my bad. I think I got sidetracked at some point. But my mistake in that episode actually segues nicely into our topic this week, because several of the things that I've already checked off my bucket list have also been the hardest things I've ever done in my life. As we talked about in the Feels Like Flying episode, from the time I was a teenager, I was obsessed with riding my bicycle. So a lot of my bucket list stuff revolved around that. I've taken several bucket list trips with my bike to ride the famous climbs of the Tour de France and the Alps and the Pyrenees. Those were dream trips for me, going up those climbs that I watched the racers go up all those years on tv. I took a trip to do the famous climbs of the Tour of Italy and the Dolomites, the famous cobblestone roads and the Belgian Spring Classics. I've ridden those. So all of those were huge bucket list items. And once I started racing my bike, I put several races on my bucket list, either ones that I wanted to win or races I just wanted to take part in. And I've checked most of those off the list, but on my list of hardest things that I've ever done. And bike races are always hard, but I was always pretty well trained for those because that was my love. But there were a couple of things that I put on my bucket list early and then in middle age that I wanted to talk about here in this episode. And those were running a marathon and completing an Ironman triathlon. So around 20 years ago, when I was about 40, I still hadn't done either of those and I'd been racing my bike for 20 plus years and I decided I wanted to try running marathons before I got much older. So to make it more complicated, I decided that I didn't just want to run a marathon, I wanted to try to qualify for the Boston Marathon. So I put that carrot out there and that became a major bucket list item that was probably in some ways became the biggest bucket list item ever.

[Gordon]

So what do you have to do to qualify?

[Craig]

So it's based on your age, but you just have to run a certain time in an official qualifying marathon.

[George]

Okay.

[Gordon]

And there are like, what, a hundred of those? And.

[Craig]

Yeah, probably even more than that. Yeah. But it's got to be on a certified course. And I started this quest right when running got really popular around 2005, 2010, and so entries to Boston were kind of hard to get. And trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon almost drove me crazy. And it almost put me in a grave. I did my First Marathon circa 2007, 2008 at Dallas, the Dallas White Rock Marathon. And I thought, I've been riding my bike all these years, I can breeze to a. I needed to run a 3 hour, 20 minute marathon. Said I can do this. But so many people told me, you have no idea what you're getting into if you've never run a marathon before. And so I started that and all hell broke loose. I had all this gear and it all fell off in the first couple miles. I missed the qualifying time by about 10 minutes and I was just exhausted. It was awful. And it took me five more tries. I tried flying to fast courses. I did a marathon in Athens, Ohio, because it was supposed to be a flat, fast course and I didn't qualify there. I flew to Eugene, Oregon, because it was a fast, flat course. And, you know, six months later, I ran that marathon and I was running with the pace group. And by mile 21, I had lost touch with the pace group. I was leaking oil badly and I saw my hotel. And at mile 22, when I got to the hotel, the course went right by my hotel. I just exited the course and went right up to my room, Kept jogging.

[Gordon]

The whole time into the elevator because.

[Craig]

My qualifying time was gone.

So finally I agreed to run the New York City Marathon for my buddy John, who had a charity team. And we ran for his son Sam and raising money for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. And I was not thinking about qualifying for the New York City for the Boston Marathon at New York City because it's a very difficult course. And probably freeing my mind allowed me to run my best marathon that I'd run up to that point. And with about three or four miles to go, I'm looking at my watch and I'm not fading and I'm thinking, wow, I think I'm actually going to do this. But those last four miles, I turned myself inside out. It felt like I was sprinting, but I was probably poking along, but it felt like a sprint. My legs were killing me. They had turned to concrete. I kept looking at the watch and I was still on pace, still on pace. And I made it by 20 seconds. I crossed the finish line and qualified for Boston by 20 seconds. And I could not walk for the next three days. It was so difficult. But I checked it off the bucket list.

[George]

I can't imagine running 26 miles. That is just.

[Gordon]

Yeah, I don't think I've done that my whole life if you put all the little segments together.

[George]

But when I used to run in high school, you know, to try to build up my legs for golf and stuff, two or three mile things just seem like, okay, I'm not doing that again. Just a mile or a mile and a half. Dumb question. Do you ever run 26 miles before a marathon or is it always like you work up to like 12 miles or 13 or.

[Craig]

No, most runners will work up to 20. You'll do a 20, maybe 21 mile run. Your long run will be 20, and you may do that two or three times.

[George]

Okay.

[Gordon]

Why not the full. I mean, is it just. That last part is so difficult that.

[Craig]

You don't want to. Yes. So I was told this by many too when I started running marathons, that if a marathon were 20 miles, everybody would do it and could do it pretty easily. There's something about the final six. The 20 mile mark is halfway, and then those final six are unlike anything you've ever experienced. It's just absolute hell.

[Gordon]

It's so weird that so many people choose that suffering. Yeah. Like that is. And still to this day that that is such a thing that people desire to do.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[George]

But is it the most rewarding thing you've ever done physically, would you say?

[Craig]

That's a good question.

[George]

In other words, for something really rewarding, that needs to be difficult.

[Craig]

Yeah, for sure.

[George]

Yeah.

[Craig]

I think the most rewarding things I've ever done outside of having a child and, you know, all that stuff.

Have been physical accomplishments where I push myself a lot. But I think there were some bike races that I always wanted to win that I won that probably would be higher on that list because the bike was more my passion.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

So in. In marathons, don't people. You used springing oil as a metaphor, but don't some people do it more literally?

[Craig]

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

[Gordon]

Things spring loose and you see it.

[Craig]

Oh, yeah.

[Gordon]

When you're running in the marathon, you can see the person in front of you.

[Craig]

Not a lot, but you either see them pulled over to the side of the road, dropping their shorts and letting fly, or occasionally you will see it having run down the back of their legs because they don't want to stop because they're trying to hit a goal. Time.

[George]

You got to do what you got to do.

[Craig]

It's part of it.

[Gordon]

I don't understand it.

[Craig]

You're just pushing yourself and it's fog of war and you just don't care about your appearance or you just want to get.

[Gordon]

You've trained tunnel vision.

[George]

Yeah.

[Craig]

You've trained for months and it may be a lifelong quest, and you just want to get to the finish.

[Gordon]

How many calories do you eat before a marathon?

[Craig]

I mean, a lot. Yeah.

[Gordon]

They don't load up like they do in a bike race like the Tour de France when they eat like 10,000 calories or something.

[Craig]

So I think, I think the max that you can kind of keep in your stores, your, your glycogen stores, your sugar that you're burning is 2500 calories. So you don't really need to eat more than that.

[Gordon]

Okay.

[Craig]

After that, you need to fuel on the course.

[Gordon]

Right. And so. And you're doing gels. What are you doing?

[Craig]

Yeah, gels. And the next story I'm telling you, you get to the point where you will eat anything. Absolutely anything. And that is after I fooled around with marathons for a few years, I decided that I wanted to get to the other thing that was on my bucket list. And this is the single hardest thing that I've ever done in my life. And that is I wanted to complete an Ironman triathlon. And from the age of 13 or 14, when I first read about the Iron man, which was Invented in around 1980 in Hawaii, four guys took part in the first Iron Man.

[George]

What were they thinking?

[Craig]

It was a bar room bet.

[George]

He came up with this idea.

[Craig]

So that's a good question. It was a bar room bet. And one of the guys was a cyclist, one of them was a swimmer, one of them was a runner. And they were arguing who was the fittest athlete, what was the hardest sport. And they had the idea, why don't we put them all together and let's all race and let's see who wins.

[Gordon]

It plays to each one of their strengths.

[Craig]

Yes.

[George]

Interesting.

[Craig]

By the way, a cyclist won that first Ironman, John Howard. But an ironman, for those who don't know, is a 2.4 mile open water swim, a 112 mile bike ride and a 26 mile marathon run. All done back to back to back.

[George]

All of those things are brutal.

[Craig]

Yes.

[George]

Swimming over two miles and then 120 on the bike.

[Craig]

112.

[Gordon]

And they come up with it when they're dying, laughing and drunk.

[Craig]

Yes.

But I remember reading about it and just being fascinated with this event and seeing it on Wide World of Sports and thinking, I wonder if I could do that. Because I was riding my bike a lot at the time and I just thought, well, maybe one day I could do it. Well, after I'd run marathons, I thought, okay, I've got the bike thing down, I've got the running thing down. I just need to figure out how to swim. And so I started training for swimming and I set a goal that two years later I would do an Ironman. So I did a half Ironman, an Olympic distance and some shorter ones along the way. And I got to where I was swimming three days a week in an Olympic pool. Not doing much open water stuff.

[George]

Swimming's so technical though. I would think that would be so hard for someone who hasn't done it competitively before to try to propel yourself in the water. Yes.

[Gordon]

And you trained in Georgia's backyard Olympic.

[George]

I don't have an Olympic pool.

[Craig]

And it was very difficult to learn how to swim properly. I think my form, even by the time the Ironman rolled around was really poor. I did a lot to try to refine it.

[George]

But you may have been working harder than you should have.

[Craig]

No doubt. Swimming. Yeah, there's no doubt. I was.

[Gordon]

And you can swim what? However, which way you want. Right. It's just you got to cross that distance.

[George]

Got to go.

[Craig]

You could do backstroke the whole way if you wanted.

I picked Coeur d', Alene, Idaho, Idaho for my Ironman course. And a lot of people had recommended this. It's not the fastest course, but it was in the summer up north. So you were probably going to get cooler weather, which is big for me. I don't function well in warm weather.

[Gordon]

What's the ideal temperature for say, a marathon?

[Craig]

For a marathon, for me it would be about 40 or 45 degrees.

[Gordon]

Wow.

[George]

But then that water though, if that.

[Craig]

Water is really cold now, that's just for a marathon.

[Gordon]

Yeah, that's marathon. So what about cycling?

[Craig]

For cycling, probably for me again, I like it on the cooler side. 50 to 60 is perfect now for an Ironman. People like it a little warmer 70s and 80s for warmer water water and things like that. But Coeur d' Alene had some mountains and a rolling course. The running course though was pretty flat. So I think I'm pretty well trained. I've done some tune up races and I get there. It's June something. I get there a couple of Days early. And I went to the expo and I bought a T shirt. And this is something to remember for this story. I bought a T shirt that said Iron man on it. I thought, I got to get an Iron Man T shirt. Took it back to the hotel room. A couple of buddies were up there. I went out to dinner with them the couple of nights before. And then race day is here and I wake up and we all go down to the water and it is incredibly windy. And we're looking out at Lake Coeur d' Alene and there are white caps on the lake. And I'm thinking, I'm already a poor swimmer and now I've got to get in the water with a thousand other people. So you're shoulder to shoulder.

[George]

Open water swimming is difficult. It's so much different than swimming in a pool, too.

[Gordon]

How much open water swimming have you done, George?

[George]

Not a whole lot.

[Craig]

Yeah. George is our Olympic swimmer.

[George]

Yeah. Not. Not even close.

[Gordon]

When you made the Olympics, were you open water swimming sometimes? No.

[George]

I had a nephew and a brother that were really good swimmers, but no. And I did some open swims. Open water swims with my brother. That's really tough. Yeah, it's really tough.

[Craig]

And it's a windy day and there are white caps that made it really tough. So there's nobody saying a word on the beach as we are about to get in the water. Everybody's just freaked out looking at the weather and the white caps. So the gun goes off and we all dive in the water. And here we go on my day, and I start swimming and I'm kind of staying to the outside because I don't want to get kicked. And I don't care if it's going to take me a little longer. I just don't want to drown. You got a wetsuit on, so that helps keep you buoyant.

[George]

Okay.

[Craig]

And you had to swim, swim and swim, and you're doing two and a half miles. And I remember at one point I was swimming along and I looked at the mountains off to my right and I could see the sun coming up over the mountains. And I thought, that's cool. Kept swimming. Kept swimming. Well, one of the buoys that they had anchored had been ripped out of its place by the wind. So we actually swam longer than 2.4 miles. And there was one race organizers who was out there in a boat and he's directing everybody saying, no, you don't have to come this far. Turn, turn, turn. It took me. I want to say, it took me an hour, 45 minutes or something to swim two and a half miles. And I got out of the water and I couldn't see straight. And I went to the transition area where you go into this big tent and you peel off your wetsuit and you put on your cycling stuff. And I remember I got in that tent and I just sat there catatonic for about 10 minutes trying to absorb what I just went through.

[Gordon]

So what's the order again?

[Craig]

It's the swim, then the bike, then the run. They want the swim first because you don't need to be doing a swim when you're exhausted.

[Gordon]

Right.

[George]

May lose a few people doing that. Yeah, but now you're going to your strength.

[Craig]

But now I'm going to my strength, so I'm so, I'm happy. So it took me about 15 minutes in transition where it takes most people.

[Gordon]

In the catatonic state, People poking you.

[Craig]

It takes most people three or four. Four minutes in transition. But I was just sitting there stunned. Put on my bike stuff. Okay. Now I'm in my element. And so I'm riding and I did the bike leg in a pretty respectable time. I can't remember, but I do remember getting to the 80 mile mark and thinking, I am exhausted. How am I going to run a marathon?

I don't know how I can continue. And I. There were a couple times on the bike that I almost quit and there was a place where I could turn, make a shortcut to the start finish area. And I thought, no, just get to the run and maybe, maybe you can do it.

[Gordon]

You took your precautions and didn't book your hotel on the route.

[Craig]

Right.

[Gordon]

Because you knew it was too tempting.

[George]

Did you feel like you were passing people on the bike? Like, okay, they got me in the swim, but I'm.

[Craig]

Yeah, yeah.

[George]

Moving past people here.

[Craig]

Yes.

[George]

That encourage you a little bit?

[Craig]

I was making up time on the bike, but. And again, I was not trying to win this. I'm just trying to finish. I was not.

[George]

But just for encouragement to think, okay, I'm still going here and I'm doing better than some people.

[Craig]

Well, because I was one of the last ones out of the water, then I was passing a lot of the spares on the bike and it felt pretty good for a while. But then around mile 80, I'm starting to get pretty exhausted, so I just, I finished.

[Gordon]

How far back were you in the swim order? Do you think you're in the last quarter of people?

[Craig]

Oh, yeah. I would say if there were a thousand of us, I probably finished in the last hundred, probably the bottom 10% somewhere in there.

[Gordon]

They didn't have to get you out with a bass net, did they?

[Craig]

No, like they have that. A giant bass net. So I finished the bike, I go into the transition there, and I put on my running gear and then I sat there for a second and I thought, I don't want to do this. I don't think I can. I said, just go run one mile and see how it feels. So I start the run and my legs are really heavy and I'm way back. I'm way off my goal time by now. And I start running and I do the first mile and I thought, okay, that wasn't terrible. Try one more mile. And so I run one more mile. And it felt awful. That second mile. And then this thought came into my mind. You have to keep trying because you bought that T shirt at the expo and you can't wear an Iron Man T shirt if you don't finish the Iron Man.

[Gordon]

I mean, you're out 25 bucks at that point.

[George]

If you give it to somebody.

[Craig]

Those are the stupid deals you make with yourself when you work.

[Gordon]

Whatever works.

[Craig]

And it was that $20t shirt that kept me going. So I did mile three and I did mile four, and then I got. It was an out and back course. You did 13 miles out and 13 miles back. So at some point you're so far out where you got to keep going. And I remember my buddy Grant, who did a lot of Ironman races and was a really great triathlete. He told me something that I kept thinking about during that run. He said, you're going to want to walk, but your slowest run is faster than your fastest walk. So just keep running like a grandma if you have to. And I did. So you can run like a grandma and you'll do 14 minute miles, but if you walk like a speed racer, you'll do 16 minute miles. So I kept running, but every mile they had an aid station and I stopped at every mile and they had everything. Chicken soup, anything salty you were talking about. What do you eat during a race, Gordo? They had all sorts of junk food and crap and I just.

[George]

Yeah, we would have gone for that.

[Gordon]

I was always amazed that, that these highly trained athletes that I would think pay attention to their nutrition so much when they're in these races. All that goes away and it's given. Give me Coke with sugar and corn syrup. Give me just anything. Yeah, any calories I can burn here.

[Craig]

Because you are burning them so quickly. And Every mile I stopped. I couldn't wait to get to that next aid station to have that chicken soup. And then I get to about mile 19, 20, 21. I realize I'm going to do this. And I'm running alongside Lake Coeur d'. Alene. I remember looking over, seeing the mountains and seeing the sun go down. And I remember thinking to myself, wow. I remember when the sun was coming up over the mountain during the swim. I've been moving non stop from sun up to sundown.

[George]

Wow.

[Craig]

And the whole feeling, the whole gravity of it kind of hit me there and I thought, this is, it's really beautiful. But God, this is this good for me. Am I going to make it? I eventually made it. I crossed the finish line. I missed my goal time by a couple hours, but I was well inside the 17 hour cutoff.

[Gordon]

And what happens at 17 hours if.

[Craig]

They will let you finish? But you don't get the medal, you don't get the reward of having completed. So you have to make it inside 17 hours.

[Gordon]

You have to give back the T shirt.

[Craig]

You have to get back the T shirt. I think I did it in about 14 hours, which is a long time to be out there moving. So you cross the finish line and they immediately take you into this medic's tent and they give you the look over and they'll stick an IV in you if you need it or make.

[George]

Sure they don't have to take you to the hospital or something. Geez.

[Craig]

They get, they gave me the okay so I got to leave. And then they funnel you into this area where they have pizza and coke. And so I remember going over birthday cake, animals, mascots. I remember being so happy that I had finished, but I was just, I was a mess. You know, my legs were a mess, my mind was a mess. It was, I'd been through hell and back. And I got a couple pieces of pizza and I sat down at this table. Nobody else was at the table. Two minutes later.

Maybe the most beautiful blonde I've ever seen in my life comes over with a couple pieces of pizza. She just finished her race and sat down right across from me.

[George]

Do you think it was a dream? Well, I thought you're hallucinating.

[Craig]

I remember saying to myself, thank you, God, this is my reward for that hellish day that I just had. And I started talking to her. Oh, did you just finish? Yeah, I just finished. Where are you from?

[George]

So much in common.

[Craig]

Yeah, where are you from? Get this. She was from Sweden.

[George]

Oh my gosh.

[Craig]

And I'm thinking, this is my lucky day. This is the greatest day in my life.

[Gordon]

Your soulmate.

[Craig]

I just did the hardest thing I've ever done, but I'm being rewarded with this. Well, about five or ten minutes into our conversation, here comes this tall, handsome blonde Swedish male who sits down next to her. He's already showered and is in street clothes. He did the triathlon as well, finished five hours ahead of me and was her boyfriend or Beyonce or something. And I just kind of sank in my chair and finished my pizza and left.

[George]

Well, at least you finished number one, which is just incredible that what an accomplishment that is.

[Gordon]

Is it? It's only a day's worth of work.

[Craig]

Yeah, but I checked it off my bucket list. It was a huge bucket list item for me and that was the hardest thing that I've ever done in my life.

[George]

Man, that is amazing. And it's going to make whatever we say over the next few minutes.

[Gordon]

The hardest thing I've ever done was following your story there about how difficult.

[George]

12 hours straight of YouTube. That's the. That's the toughest thing.

[Craig]

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[Gordon]

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[George]

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[Gordon]

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[George]

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[Gordon]

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[George]

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[Gordon]

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[George]

A lot of people who will give.

[Craig]

You money for them. Sell on depop where taste recognizes taste.

[George]

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[Craig]

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[George]

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[Craig]

Well, like I said in the beginning, the hardest things we've ever done in our lives may not all be physical, right?

[Gordon]

Yeah, guaranteed. Mine and George's aren't.

[George]

Well, I had to think about it because that really is. I have two of them and one is physical. And it was when I was working for my dad and working with my brother who is still in commercial roofing. And he always says there's a, there's a test that you get as a roofer and they give it to you on your first day and if you come back the second day, you have failed the test. And it was hard work. And one summer we were working at what we called the burned out basement. We were both Neil Young fans. And it's, it's a line from after the gold rush. I was lying in a burned out basement with a full moon in my eyes and I was looking for replacement when the sun burst through the skies. It was a school that was under construction and the roof had collapsed because somebody set it on fire. And as it turned out, my dad's company did the roof deck, which is insulated concrete. And then they put the. Either a rubber roof or a, you know, a tar roof over it. And something went wrong. So that allegedly that roof company set it on fire so they'd get the insurance. So we had to clean out this basement. It wasn't a basement. It was a gymnasium of a new school that was huge, you know, like double gymnasium, Boys jam and girls gym.

[Craig]

By the way, do you want to name that roof company that set it on fire?

[George]

I can't remember it. I can't remember who it was, but.

[Gordon]

We had arsonist roofing maybe.

[George]

And the thing that made it so tricky was there was no big garage door where you could put a skid steer in there or some sort of front loader and, and move all this insulated concrete out of there and these big, huge sheets of insulation that were soaked with water. They were heavy soot all over them. And for five days, my brother and I and two other guys, we cleaned out this. And you had to carry the insulation. Wow, what a beating in the middle of a Texas summer. So it's 105 or what? It's got to be 120 in there and we can only work till about 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Then we'd basically collapse like we had just done a Iron man and collect our thoughts and go home. I think that was one of the days it was in Waxahachie and we would load up this truck of all this junk. And one of the days I think I drove by your house in Lancaster.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[George]

And just to say hey. And. But that is the toughest thing. And I remember thinking at the time.

[Craig]

Can I do something like this for.

[George]

The rest of my life? And my brother, you know, he became an estimator and didn't have to necessarily work on the roof crews or a cleanup project like that like we did. But man, physically, I just. It gave me such a great appreciation for those who do construction, who roof, who plumb, whatever they do. And they do that every day. And some of them, from the time they're in their. Their teens till they can't do that anymore, in their 50s or 60s or 70s if they become, you know, maybe the manager of a project or something like that. But I just remember feeling so hopeless too, that it was this huge. And it seemed like we made no progress from day to day, you know, and here we worked. We'd start before the sun would come up and then the sun would burst through the skies. And so many times I've related things to music. When I wrote a song about my two brothers called Neil, because that's what I remember about them. Listening to Neil Young when I was young.

There's a line in that that I took from Neil Young. I remember a burned out basement. And that's about that week of taking that insulated concrete out of this building that had been burned. And it was. I don't know. There was something about that though, that was also.

It was really a sense of accomplishment that I was able to work that hard. And it's only for five days or maybe we went into the next week and I think they had to come up with a better solution like knocking out more concrete so they could get a skid steer in there just because the progress was so slow. And that's a long time though.

[Craig]

Five days to be doing that kind of work.

[George]

Yeah, it was like I was sentenced to hard labor for five days. But it was good for me. It really was. It was eye opening and it was.

[Gordon]

Sounds like prison camp work.

[George]

It did sound kind of prison campish. It did sound kind of prison camp.

[Craig]

It's rewarding though, to complete something like that to do those things and know you can do it.

[George]

Yeah. And I felt like at the end of that week, I think I was as strong as I've ever been. I think I was like 19, you know, and I felt like I could do work like that every day. And there was something about that, like, yeah, maybe I could do this.

[Gordon]

Then you quickly atrophied.

[George]

And then I was like, nah, maybe not. I don't think I could.

And I did think about that from physical challenges. I thought about, you know, 2A days in Texas and football. That was, that was really challenging physically. But it was so long ago. I just, I don't remember that. Like, I remember the burned out basement, but emotionally.

Yeah, that's where I think the last two years and you know, losing my sister and my brother and lost my sister Nancy in 2023. June of 23, it was on my birthday, which some people see as, oh my gosh, what a terrible thing. I. I saw that as something almost a nod from God. You know, I thought that was. That was actually comforting to me, you.

[Craig]

Know, I'm with you on that. I think if I were to lose a loved one, losing it on my birthday or them on my birthday wouldn't be that bad.

[George]

And isn't this wild that it'd be bad, losing him? But, yeah, this is a wild thing in our family.

[Craig]

My niece.

[George]

My niece's birthday, January 9, is the day my dad died. And then the day my brother died. My brother Tad, who passed In February of 2024, he died February 1st, which was my mom's birthday.

[Craig]

Wow.

[George]

Strange thing. Yeah, it was a strange thing.

[Gordon]

But bookends.

[George]

Yeah. I also realized that it's all happened in the last two years. And I know we've talked about life and death here on the podcast, and again, I will relate it to music. It's like that Willie Nelson song that I played for you guys on our radio show. It's not something you get over, it's just something you get through. I feel like I'm still trying to get through it. And, you know, to be honest, I. I don't, I don't think I am. Yeah.

But I'm getting through. And it's just hard, you know, losing your parents, it was really difficult. You guys have been through that. But losing a sibling and our family was very tight, the five of us, as I told you guys, it is, it's. It's losing a piece of your soul. It really is. And I don't want to bring the room down, but this Is therapeutic for me.

[Craig]

Sure.

[George]

You know, music was too. That's.

[Gordon]

Which one of those deaths did you feel? Did one of them surprise you? That it hit you harder than another one, or do they hit you equally?

[Craig]

That's.

[Gordon]

And I'm including your parents, too, in this, or your siblings.

[George]

I think, you know, maybe Nancy, because she was the first one to go and.

You know, that was my first experience with it. But then Tad, you know, less than a year later, and he and I had such a unique relationship and, you know, that involved music and writing, and they were both just, you know, punches to the, you know, very fabric of me.

[Craig]

And parents are expected.

[George]

Yeah.

[Craig]

You know, losing parents is expected. That's the order of life.

[George]

But siblings, and I tell you this too. It, you know, it made me re. Examine the fact that, you know.

I'm behind them by years. 16 and 14 years. But it really hit home with me, like, okay, you. You don't have just a really long time left, you know, and it really hit me for the first time.

[Gordon]

Readjust your mental time horizon.

[George]

Yes, yes. And it's, It's. It was really significant. And, you know, I just realized recently I internalized a lot of it. Music really helped me, writing music. And this record we put out a few months ago really helped me because there was a song about Nancy and there was a song about Tad in there, and that helped me. And then other music helped get me through. But I've also realized. Had this just realization here in the last month or so that I'm not. That I probably. I do need. I think I do need to go and. And talk with someone about it, because grief, we think of it as. Okay, well, yeah, you'll grieve for months or maybe a year and a half. And I have a friend who lost his wife within the last two years, and, you know, he's not over yet. I don't. I think Willie's right. I don't think you ever get over it, but somehow you manage your way through it and, you know, it's just something that it will make you sad. And those who lose children, they never get over that, you know, but somehow they make it through and they get on with their lives. But, yeah, I don't know if. If they ever really get over it.

[Gordon]

Which part do you think that you like? What is the most difficult thing for you? Is it being struck with sadness? Does it create depression or hopelessness sometimes? Or what is the thing that you feel like you're stuck on?

[George]

Yeah, I guess just the overall, you're overwhelmed with a sadness that you've never felt before. And I guess be with my sister. She was first and I think I told you guys and we were at the same time going through some things that are stationed, which were really, you know, disruptive and, you know, disturbing and, and I just remember waking up, I, I'm gonna guess for three months, and I was just sad, you know, and I would, I would have my day and come to work with you guys and that would, you know, give me something to get through and start pushing forward. But I just remember it took a long time just for waking up and just not feeling the sadness. And I felt that with both of them. And it's getting better.

My old coaching friend Daryl Dickey told me after my mom passed, it hurts like anything, like nothing you've ever felt before. But every day gets better. And he's right about that. Every day does get better. But there's still that feeling of loss that I just don't think you ever quite get over.

[Craig]

This makes my triathlon story seem superficial. It's amazing.

[Gordon]

No, because I think back to your accomplishments, Craig.

[George]

That is the difference of physical and mental. And I almost didn't bring it up just because he's like, oh gosh, he's talking about that again. But I mean, I think.

[Craig]

But that's a hard thing.

[George]

We're all facing it.

[Craig]

That's fair. That's on your list of hardest things you've been through.

[Gordon]

This episode is brought to you by NBA on Prime. The NBA on Prime is back with an exciting week of Emirates NBA cup action. The knockout rounds begin with quarterfinal doubleheaders on Tuesday and Wednesday night. Then it's a semifinal doubleheader on Saturday. And it all culminates with the championship game next Tuesday. Tuesday night only on Prime. If you're not a Prime member, sign up for a 30 day free trial to get started today.

[George]

Restrictions apply.

[Gordon]

See Amazon.com amazonprime for details.

This episode is brought to you by State Farm.

[Craig]

Listening to this podcast. Smart move. Being financially savvy.

[George]

Smart move.

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Another smart move, having State Farm help.

[George]

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[Craig]

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[Gordon]

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[Craig]

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[Gordon]

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[Craig]

Eligibility vary by state.

[Gordon]

Yeah, on the physical thing, you know, you mentioned all that physical hard work you did related to construction or demolition. I've had lots of times like that. That I didn't even think about to where I just. I'm looking at. Because I used to redo old houses and stuff, and I'd be looking at a mountain of stuff to do and no one to help me, and knowing that I'm just working from the end of our show till I fall into bed the next night, and I would do that for months on end.

[George]

That's crazy.

[Gordon]

I know, but you're exactly right. And the. The thing that it does for you spiritually is kind of amazing because you spend all this day and the mortification of the body, you're just pushing yourself and pushing yourself, and then you get that sense of, you were looking at a mountain yesterday, and you're looking at a mountain today, and three weeks from now, you're looking at a mountain that day. And then if you were able to zoom out, you'd see, wow, the mountains got about half the size. It's still a mountain, but it's smaller.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

And when you're in it every day, it doesn't look that much smaller until you remember back to the first day when your eyes took it in.

[George]

That's what I. That's what I truly love about sports. And I know it's an overused word now, but when Saban started talking about the process and then Jason Garrett talked about it, there is that process, whether it's taking on this mountain as a construction project or a football team. That is a mess in August, but maybe by December, you're a functioning unit. I love that about sports. I love that about football or a triathlon or whatever it is. And that was your own triathlon, of trying to take something that was broken and make it work again.

[Gordon]

Yeah. And the lesson is always the same in every one of those stories, which is that you. Craig didn't have to worry about finishing the triathlon or the marathon. He needed to worry about taking a next step. And then that next step, and then that next one you just got to take. You gotta go small. What's the old analogy? You know how to. How do you eat a mountain one bite at a time? Yeah. Same way you eat anything else in life. It's a hamburger or mountain. You can only eat it one bite at a time.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

I made it through it.

[Craig]

I made up a saying many years ago. You take things one step at a time.

[Gordon]

You made that up.

[Craig]

I did.

[Gordon]

It's yours.

[Craig]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

I think I bought that T shirt then.

[George]

You weren't you so exhausted one time that you fell asleep underneath a house.

[Gordon]

Several Times I was redoing a house, and I was. At this particular point, I was redoing all the gas lines, all the plumbing of the gas lines. And I was just so tired and so worn out and hit in the middle of the day, and it was hot. You know, there's no electricity at this place. There's no air conditioning anywhere. And it's middle of summer and everything. And so I would just be up under the house and I'd be worn out and I just take naps. Up under the house. It was a pier and beam, so you could get up under it.

[Craig]

Right.

[George]

Crawl space right next to some snakes.

[Gordon]

Yeah. No telling how many snakes. And black widow spiders.

[Craig]

All that.

[Gordon]

All that up under there. Yeah. But I would just take a nap up under there. And it was so cool. And it was like, you know, those are the times when you rest the most. And I think it has to do something more than physical. When you've worked all day, Giorgio, and you fell in bed at night or whatever. There's also that additional thing of I pushed myself today. Yeah, I earned this rest. There's something psychological in that where you rest better than you ever have. Not just because of the physical tiredness because of. But because of the mental and spiritual alertness that makes you sleep so well, because you've actually earned your sleep for once.

[George]

I think that's a great point in.

[Gordon]

A way that most people don't do anymore. Most people don't engage in hard physical work. This whole segment population that does, and God bless them. But I think that me in particular, I've always felt a little bit lesser that I haven't had a physical job. That's why I've always loved redoing houses and doing big construction projects.

[George]

That's what's so impressive about what you've done. I mean, just taking on doing the work of an electrician or a plumber or doing some, I guess, light foundation work that just intimidates most of us. Like, geez, I don't know where to start on something like that.

[Gordon]

Well, I'm facing my next big challenge, which is that I always. All these are based on. I feel like less of a man if I don't learn how to do electricity or learn how to do plumbing. I don't know where this is. It's probably from when I was a kid, watch my dad be a handyman and know all this, and it would. And my grandfather in particular, just like, you know, that guy built, like, all of the houses he lived in.

[George]

Wow.

[Gordon]

He built Them. And, I mean, like, how does a guy learn all that stuff? He just seemed to know everything. That's so cool. There wasn't a subject that, you know, and I thought that was so cool that he knew the way the world worked.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

Like, this whole house that he provided his family with.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

He created it. He made it happen, and it just seemed like magic to me. So maybe that lesson sunk in or whatever. But now my next one is this.

Money pit of a car that I. That I went.

[George]

Are you going to do some of the work yourself?

[Gordon]

I'm determined to do it all myself if I can.

[Craig]

Dang.

[Gordon]

If I can. I want to learn.

[George]

That's a new world, isn't it? You've never, like, taken apart an engine?

[Gordon]

I've only done light repair or, you know, changing oil and. And spark plugs and things like that. I've done those kinds of things, but I've never had to, you know, take apart the engine and change all the, you know, upper. The upper manifold, lower, man, all the gaskets.

[George]

You have an idea what he's talking about?

[Craig]

No, I couldn't do any of it. I could barely pump gas into my car.

[Gordon]

Change your shocks. You ever change your own shocks? No, but the thing is, there's guys out there.

[George]

Who are they in the trunk?

[Gordon]

They do this all the time.

[Craig]

I think they're on the steering wheel.

[Gordon]

They handle their own car, and that's a real.

[George]

I know, I know. That is good. It's a good thing.

[Gordon]

Now I recognize that I'm messed up for thinking that that's a real man and something else isn't.

[George]

No, you're not.

[Gordon]

I'm kind of exaggerating when I say it, but. But still, that lessons in my mind.

[George]

I think that's admirable because I just pick up the phone and say, hey, did you schedule me for new shocks this afternoon?

[Gordon]

Well, but I bought the car as a project. I have the other one that I. Yeah, I have to depend on. Although that one's in the shop right now. Hey, I'm getting things done right. Based on the users, the podcast episode, whatever.

[Craig]

Right. You're not riding it out anymore?

[Gordon]

Riding it out? I took the car in to get it fixed.

[George]

Okay.

[Gordon]

And so we'll see how that goes. It's still in there. It'll give me the diagnosis. Is it terminal or not?

[Craig]

With. With your construction work and working on houses and things like that. How many times have you electrocuted yourself?

[Gordon]

Only. There's only been a few times that I've shocked Myself.

[Craig]

Is it funny when it happens? Does your hair stand on end?

[Gordon]

I don't stand on end. It's a weird feeling. You'll feel stupid because you'll be like, ah, geez, I. I swore I turned off that circuit. Or, you know, that's my fault because I didn't take two seconds to put the circuit tester in here to make sure I turned it off.

[Craig]

Does your heart skip a couple beats?

[Gordon]

Probably.

[George]

You ever walked into an electric fence for, like, cattle or something? It's probably the same type.

[Gordon]

No, I haven't. You've done that?

[George]

Oh, yeah. Really?

[Craig]

Oh, yeah.

[George]

I mean, yeah. You can vulce a little bit.

[Gordon]

At least.

[George]

I did.

[Gordon]

Wait, how often do you walk into electric fences?

[George]

I mean, this is when I was young, visiting, like, either my grandfather or my sister's farm. They would have, you know, just that metal wire going across, keep the cattle in. And there are several times at night when I would walk into it.

[Gordon]

And then when you get into, like, things that are emotional, you know, George, you covered part of this with the grief and everything. And I've certainly had that experience of carrying my parents to their. Their great reward. But the. The other emotional things that I think of challenges when I've been at that point, which is similar to the marathon experience that you say of thinking I can't go on is I've been at that point several times, professionally, emotionally, when I'm like, I'm scared to death. I'm facing this huge challenge, and a lot of mine had to do with, you know, when I was doing that TV show and that TV work of when I would have to go out there and I'm standing backstage. I did a TV show in Dallas Fort Worth for, like, two years where we were canceled due to low ratings. So not anything big, right? But that feeling of standing backstage and hearing the theme music going on and knowing I have one shot to get out there and do this monologue and I can't mess up. And there's no one that can help me, because at this point, all the producers and everybody. Everybody's standing to the side. I just have to go out there and do it. And every single one of those times were like. Those seconds were the loneliest seconds of my life, really. And I would have that experience also when I would have to go in and interview celebrities for their. You know, they're promoting their movies and stuff, and it could be someone that I grew up watching on tv. So you're incredibly intimidated to begin with, and you're so worried that you're going to tank and you're so scared. Just that feeling of being so scared.

[Craig]

Yep.

[Gordon]

And then realizing that. That you just have to do it. You have to go. And I would always have to trick myself of, okay, I'll just go in there, and if I freeze in front of them, then I'll leave. Okay, well, I'm sitting down. I might as well ask my first question at least, you know, and just have to take it one bite at a time out of that mountain and do it. And it sounds so silly and stupid, but we all have these things that we've been so scared to do, but then you're on the brink of doing it. And to me, the emotion I always had with it was just loneliness. And loneliness is one of my. For a person who isolates, it seems very strange and counterintuitive for me to say that loneliness is, like the scariest thing for me. I don't know why that emotion in particular affects me the most. Yeah, I'd rather be sad than having that saturation of loneliness, that just desolate, forlorn loneliness I can't stand. And I would get that feeling when I was up against this large task, that I always thought that, oh, this is easy for other people, but it's not easy for me. Yeah, I feel the fear. And. And I think every performer is probably this way. Heck, I think all people are this way. We always think that.

If something looks easy to someone else, then it must be easy. And if other people are able to do this, it must be real easy for them to do this.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

And that's not the case. It's not the case that everyone just always seems to be doing so well and has it figured out Right. It's like our internal lives actually are very transportable into other people, if you really think about it.

[Craig]

Absolutely.

[George]

Yeah. There's the. The guy who has to make his business presentation who probably has those same. Yeah, your type of feelings that.

[Gordon]

Scared shitless.

[Craig]

Yeah. Yes.

[George]

You know, Michael Irvin and Troy Aikman have told us before about their hearts, about pounding out of their chest, about going on the super bowl field for the first time.

[Gordon]

Could you imagine that nervousness? Oh, my God, the world is watching.

[George]

And here we go. And, yeah, you just got to perform what you're good at, but you're reduced to, can I do this? And that failure, that loneliness, whatever you want to call it, the fear of failure is, I think, overwhelming to everybody.

[Gordon]

And it's also that feeling of you can't quit. It's like Junior was saying with. This is like, you don't want to just quit. You can't go back. It's like you. When you're approaching that turnaround point, it's like, there's no point in turn around now. Let's just keep going forward.

[Craig]

Right.

[Gordon]

So, yeah, those were huge for me. And one in particular I remember was that Zach Galifianakis interview, which is probably the most watched interview, I think, of all ones that I've done.

[George]

You look like a guy who was just like. You and Zach were somehow friends for 20 years, and you just did a bit together.

[Gordon]

But that was the morning. I mean, it was probably one hour before I did that interview with Zach that I got the call that my aunt had suddenly passed away. She was in her 50s. This is my only aunt, by the way, on my mom's side.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

So it wasn't like I had a lot of aunts. And, you know, we were years away from anyone in our family dying at that point. And. And that just shocked me. I mean, it was my favorite aunt. And she just passed. We were still getting information. She had had surgery the. Like that morning and had gone home to sleep and had accidentally rolled on her back and vomited.

And of course, aspirated on that. And so she had passed away. And I got this call, and I was just in a daze. And I thought, there's no way that I can go in there and do some interview right now. Particularly now. You have to understand, I was also. Zach Galifianakis is one of the people I was most scared to interview because it could go sideways with him so easily, and he's smarter and quicker than I am. So it's like, you know, to go in there and match up against him, even on my best day, was going.

[Craig]

To be a huge hurdle, but it turned out great. And I wonder if your fear of that interview, your fear in that moment, was also motivating and focusing.

[Gordon]

You know, to me, it always has been. Every time when I get ready to do one of those interviews, I always do a thing where I don't think about it until I really get up against it. And then the morning of those interviews, I would lay in a bathtub. This is my ritual. This is real seedy Hardy's bathtub. No, no. Be in a hotel room, wherever they flew us to in la. And I would sit there, and all I would do is just lay in the bathtub and watch the interview in my mind.

[Craig]

Interesting. Visualize.

[Gordon]

And I would take notes on what I said.

[Craig]

Interesting.

[Gordon]

Oh, that's a funny line. I would just, like, watch it and I don't know, for whatever reason. And then I would say, oh, that'd be a funny question to ask. Oh, yeah, that's good. And then if they say this, then I would imagine what my response would be, and I just do that. And, and at the end of it, I would feel like, okay, well, I think I have a few solid questions. And I went in and that particular morning.

Sitting in the bathtub, and I said, I just. I have to put aside that grief and that.

That fog of confusion that I was in about her death as I'm getting, you know, reports and calls from family every five minutes, trying to tell me what more they know now and all that. Just had to put it aside. And then I went in and did. Did it anyway. That's the lesson in all these things, is you feel the fear and you do it anyway. And thank God I went forward with it because I was so sad of that.

[George]

Yeah, it'd been understandable. Hey, I've just had a death in the family. I don't think I can do this. I'm really sorry.

[Craig]

And he had 20 other interviews that day, so it wouldn't matter.

[Gordon]

Yeah, it wouldn't matter to him. And the people would have understood. And, and, and I'm glad I did it because it turned out to be the most enjoyed thing that I've done.

[George]

I guess I can still picture the look on his face and some of.

[Craig]

Your questions just like, trying to compute it.

[Gordon]

Just thought it was such an idiot. He thought it was such a treat.

[George]

To follow along with the line of questioning.

Wow.

[Gordon]

But, yeah, when you, when you take on a big challenge and then you think that you can't do it, you're basically taking on a challenge that you're convinced that you can't meet. Yeah, that's the. And that's. Everything that I've done that has been worth anything has been because it was something that I couldn't do. And, and I just somehow found a way to meet the challenge. You know, when it was writing, I had no business writing. I wasn't a good student. And so you have that feeling of a complete fraud. I didn't have the credentials to write a column for the morning news, and then I started writing them and just did it. If you sit around in life waiting for being qualified, then you're not going to have a life, right?

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

You just have to do things.

[George]

You got to step out there, and.

[Gordon]

Sometimes it's electrical work and you get shocked.

[George]

Well, it's funny to relate it back to sports so many times. Gordo, on our show, as we do a sports show, always like, okay, is that really true? That just sounds like a sports cliche. There's a lot of athletes and coaches who visualize the game that they're about to play. Yeah, it's kind of the same thing.

[Gordon]

Absolutely. There's value. All the lessons that they say in sports, they're all worn out.

But there is truth to them. I acknowledge that.

[George]

Okay, yes, we've had a break.

[Gordon]

It's about. It's about process. It's about stacking.

[George]

That's right.

[Gordon]

You know, stacking those days on top of. All of a sudden you got your construction incremental gains. Yeah, all of that is true.

[Craig]

Okay.

[Gordon]

But it hadn't made me an athlete.

[George]

That's all.

[Craig]

Right. Along those lines of. Of being so scared to death that you didn't think you could do something. I have one more story. And when we thought about doing this topic, the hardest things we've ever done, this, oddly, is the first thing that jumped out. It's a very small thing. It didn't lead to a million YouTube views like your Galifianakis interview or any emotional or spiritual enriching or anything like that.

But it was the time that I asked out a girl, and this is in college, and I asked out a girl that I didn't think I had any shot at, and it turned out I didn't.

But I have never been more, in my own way, more consumed with getting something done than when I decided to ask this girl out. And we had a class together, and she was probably the most beautiful girl in our school. Her name was Grace. You know her? Remember Grace? Every guy loved Grace. She was just gorgeous and she was cool. And we sat next to each other in this class. And I decided early that semester I was going to ask her out. I am going to ask her out.

[Gordon]

Goals.

[Craig]

And so I set up a way to do it. Okay, I'll walk out with her, and then we'll be over here. And every plan I had just visualizing.

[George]

Good.

[Craig]

Yes. I was visualizing.

[Gordon]

Here we go.

[Craig]

Every plan I had went up in smoke. Somebody interrupted us, or she went. Took a left when I took a right or whatever it was. And. But I was so obsessed with asking her out, and I just. I had put it on my bucket list. I am going to do this. And so one day I went to that class and I said, I don't care who gets in my way. I don't care what she does. I am not going home without asking her out today. This had been like a two month deal.

So I didn't pay attention to anything in class. I'm scared to death to ask her to go on a date, but I get my courage up and the class ends and I walk out with her and I'm making small talk with her and our friend, Mr. Cheese.

[George]

Oh, thanks, Mr. Cheese.

[Craig]

Meyer was walking with us, so it was the three of us.

[Gordon]

Was he part of the plan?

[George]

No, he played for the Hoopers.

[Craig]

But the plan was she and I walking out together and not a third. But I had made up my mind.

[Gordon]

That that was going to be the day.

[Craig]

That was the day. And I didn't care if there were 50 people listening.

[Gordon]

Why are you doing. See, you should have had contingency plans for change in battlefield conditions.

[Craig]

I had done that for two months and it never worked out for me. So I am shaking. I'm so scared to death. And I'm wishing Mr. Cheese would peel off. And he never did. And he was just walking with us.

[Gordon]

I think he had shake voice that day.

[Craig]

Oh, my God.

[George]

Shake voice.

[Craig]

And now I see.

[Gordon]

What are you doing today?

[Craig]

We're at the end of the sidewalk where I know she always goes left. And so we're gon about to split up. And so I just did it. And I said, I don't care if Mr. Cheese hears this. And so, so I just listen to this. We're making small talk. And I just finally interrupted. Probably somebody or something she was saying. I said, hey, I've been wondering, would you like to go out and have dinner with me sometime? And as soon as I said that.

[Gordon]

Coupon for Gaddy's, and as soon as.

[Craig]

I said that, Mr. Cheese exited stage right. He realized he was cringing. He was cringing. He was in an awkward moment. And he just took off to the right. And so there I'm left with her. And she stopped and she looked at me and she said, you do know I have a boyfriend. And I said, yeah, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. Do you still want to go out?

[Gordon]

Gosh.

[Craig]

And I don't think I knew she had a boyfriend or I was fuzzy on that.

[Gordon]

And she said, bro, coat man.

[Craig]

She said, okay, I'll have lunch with you. And I said, okay, I'll call you. And she gave me her number and I went home. And the day later I called her. And then like a few days later, I took her out to lunch to Guadalajaras in Denton. Quality Place, Terrible place to take a date.

[Gordon]

Why is she going out with another guy if she's. Well, why is she going out with you when she's got a boyfriend?

[Craig]

Maybe she fell under the spell of one Craig Miller and she just could not resist. But I actually took her out, picked her up, dropped her off. Obviously we didn't kiss or anything like that, but I, I, that was probably out.

[Gordon]

Did you rent a car to pick her up in or did you go?

[Craig]

I picked her up in my beaten down Monte Carlo.

[George]

Decent car.

[Gordon]

Monte Carlo. All right.

[George]

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

[Craig]

It was okay.

[George]

It was all right.

[Craig]

I was keeping two tires afloat with fix a flat. So it was. Oh no, it's not doing all that well. But. And I knew we would never go out again when I took her back to the apartment. But still I asked out the prettiest girl at school and she said yes.

[Gordon]

Why did it not go well at the lunch? Like what happened at the lunch?

[Craig]

It went fine. It went fine. But I knew we would never be a thing because she had a boyfriend.

[Gordon]

Okay. You couldn't just be her lunch boyfriend and he's the dinner boyfriend?

[Craig]

No, I just assumed that we were done at that point and I never asked her out again. And I think she kind of made it clear that she had a boyfriend and wasn't going to date anybody and.

[George]

But that gave you the bravery to ask out somebody else.

[Craig]

Yes.

[George]

And yeah. Establish relationships.

[Gordon]

I don't know that I've ever asked the girl out.

[Craig]

Really?

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[George]

Never had to make that phone call in high school or.

[Craig]

That is a life experience. Things you should have.

[Gordon]

I just always fell into relationships one after the other. It seemed like never had the nervous phone call has to start at some point.

[George]

You just. Yeah.

[Gordon]

It's just always the same party or something. No, just like I don't know, they laughed at jokes and so it just. Hey, hungry. So we go out this place. But they weren't dates. It just never felt like I dated.

[George]

Okay. I guess that question of are you hungry? Was.

[Gordon]

Yeah, but I mean that's the same for like a friend. It's just like wasn't anything weird.

[George]

Yeah.

[Gordon]

I don't know. My whole love life history is checkered and sorted and for a different time.

[Craig]

Let's make that episode 30.

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Isn't that weird though that this, that when we talked about doing the topic of hardest things you've ever done in your life, that's the first thing that came to my mind. That's how traumatic it was.

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[George]

It's Funny.

But it made you better. Maybe that's the lesson.

[Craig]

I think so.

[George]

Doing those, those hard things, sometimes those difficult things makes you better.

[Craig]

Yep.

[George]

Or electrocute you.

[Gordon]

Or electrocute you. I learned to ride a motorcycle. That was very difficult.

[George]

Oh, yeah.

[Gordon]

Most people, I think, quit after that first day of motorcycle training. If you've never ridden before. Right. Which I hadn't at the time. But it was so scary and like. Yeah. Oh, so scary. And the first day they're just barking commands at you and you don't understand anything. You don't even know how to work this thing because you got controls on every appendage and you're just shell shocked and shattered. At the end of the day, you just.

[George]

Like the vibrating seat. That's your big thing.

[Gordon]

Yeah. I was like, can I have just a vibrating seat and forget the motorcycle?

[Craig]

And since you've learned, you've wiped out a bunch of times still, right?

[Gordon]

Yeah.

[Craig]

Like you're always laying it down.

[Gordon]

Yeah, I'm always having to lay it down.

[George]

Worry about you on that layer down.

[Craig]

Okay, that'll do it. For this episode, Hope we've encouraged you to tackle some things that might seem like they're impossible to do.

[Gordon]

Everyone go out there and ask out Grace.

[Craig]

Yes.

[Gordon]

Find her.

[Craig]

Or hopefully we haven't discouraged you from doing hard things with our stories of trauma. Yes. Thanks to Peter Welton, our producer. Next week it's our special Christmas podcast. Don't miss that. What better way to celebrate the birth of Jesus than by listening to the Musers? The podcast.

[Gordon]

If there's any chance that you are the Grace in the late 80s attending.

[George]

University of North Texas that went out on that lunch date with Craig Miller.

[Craig]

We kind of need to hear from you.

[Gordon]

Themuserspodmail.com Funny bits are also accepted.

[Craig]

The Musers.

[Gordon]

The podcast is a tired head production.

[George]

Huba dooba duba yabba dabba doo. One, two, three and abc. How's that?

[Gordon]

I Too sexy for my shit. Too sexy for my shit.

[George]

Whoa.

[Gordon]

The United States Soccer Federation presents the U.S. soccer Podcast.

[Craig]

This is the show where we bring you in depth interviews with U.S. soccer stars.

[Gordon]

This time, Sam Coffey. The World cup is in two years. Is it time yet?

[Craig]

Like, can we get back into camp?

[George]

Tim Ream. We're going to continue to show other countries we're not going to be pushed around.

[Gordon]

And Jedi Robinson.

[George]

Every time you come back and you put the jersey on, it means more and more each time.

[Gordon]

So we'll be back here with all the best stories. The U.S. soccer Podcast.

[Craig]

We've got a lot to talk about.

[Gordon]

Follow and listen on your favorite platform.