Diabetics Doing 1000 Miles of Portraits with Annalisa Van Den Berg and Erik Douds

[00:00:07] Rob Howe: Welcome to the Diabetics Doing Things podcast. We've been telling the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics all across the world since 2015, and we have over a thousand years of living with T1D on the podcast. The interviews range from incredible feats to everyday victories, and we celebrate them all just the same. Thanks for listening. And if you want to get involved even further, just send me an email at rob at diabeticsdoingthings.com. This podcast is sponsored by Health IQ. And if you don't remember Health IQ from the previous episodes that they've sponsored, Health IQ is an insurance company on a mission to improve the world's health by rewarding runners, cyclists, weightlifters, swimmers, yogis, well-managed diabetics, and other Americans living a healthy lifestyle. They're actually the first insurance company rewarding patients with type 2 diabetes who manage their A1C with a healthy diet and exercise, with large savings on their life insurance. To support the show and get a free quote, go to healthiq.com slash DDT. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Diabetics Doing Things. We're telling the amazing stories of type 1 diabetics from all across the world. And we've got a really rare interview today. We've got two people on. Also, major diabetes online community celebrities alert. I've got Erik and Annalisa from the Diabadass Tour. You guys know them from the interwebs. Maybe encountered them on this wild journey like I did. um not Annalisa unfortunately but eric at least and they're both here on the podcast to join us today so welcome to the show thanks for having us thank you for having us rob well um Annalisa i hate to like i hate that i didn't get to meet you because i got to meet eric and hug his face

[00:02:08] Erik Douds: yeah i heard about the skydiving the non-skydiving adventure yeah like the you mean just the down and back daily trip to Austin. Five hour car ride to a brunch. Hey, you know, if you don't have friends

[00:02:24] Rob Howe: that'll drive five hours down and back, I guess probably six hour round trip minimum for brunch. I mean, get new friends. That's all I'm saying. It was worth it. It definitely was. So, all right. My show is typically starts at diagnosis. I want to touch on that a little bit, but then I really want to dive into you guys' relationship and where it started, how you guys met, where this idea came from, and then what it was like to just go on this journey. So who's going to start the diagnosis? I guess who got diagnosed first, and we'll start there.

[00:02:58] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: I think Erik did. I was 10 years ago, so I'll dive into it. It's interesting because I'm actually with my high school friend right now, Matt Scott, and so I was 16 when I was diagnosed but right at the beginning of sophomore year and for those of you who haven't met me like always been this skinny kind of lanky kid and I came back to school and everyone's like Erik you're looking so skinny I remember looking back I'm like I'm always skinny you know it's like meeting Rob and saying wow Rob you're so tall it's like what else what else do want to obviously point out but that's when I ended up in the hospital for you know four or five days but I lost I think 15 pounds in about two weeks so I was just shedding weight I had all the water bottles in my room the classic signs of peeing every 20 minutes and I think it's surprising that I didn't catch it earlier because my grandfather actually had type 1 he was diagnosed in like 1940 and lived with it for like 83 years so when i try to do awareness campaigns i think about my own life in terms of like the warning sign should have been very obvious and on my mind

[00:04:15] Rob Howe: but it still was missed by my family for a while well and i mean you weren't around in 1940 neither was your parents right so i don't know how much time you know you spend on a daily basis with

[00:04:28] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: your grandpa but right you know there's uh you know it's kind of interesting because my i mean my dad lived obviously with with his father so it's something that i think families can be more aware of and obviously there's some you know kind of antibody testing and stuff we can do but you know if you have a parent who's type 1 and then you have kids you think it would be kind of you'd be hyper aware to it. Should I go ahead?

[00:05:02] Rob Howe: Yeah, go on. Dive on in.

[00:05:04] Erik Douds: All right. Yeah, so I also had, I was 17 when I was diagnosed, and I had all the classic symptoms, like textbook symptoms, you know, being really thirsty, having to go to the bathroom all the time, losing I think I lost like 20 pounds and I just remember eating so much like I remember eating a whole like plate of funnel cake when I was on the beach in California and yeah I just had all the classic symptoms and I remember like sitting in English class and the teacher like we were just going around reading out loud from like Othello and I just remember it like coming to my turn and And I just couldn't, like, I just couldn't even read the words in front of me. And I usually have, like, perfect vision. So, yeah, when I told the pediatrician that I had to go to the bathroom all the time, that's kind of, like, when the penny dropped for them. But it took six months for them to figure it out, which is insane. Because it was just, like, textbook symptoms, as I said. um so yeah I just remember going um like sitting in the subway with my mom on the way to the hospital and just like like I had no idea what type 1 diabetes was and the only thing that I remember was like I thought that it meant that you had to take a shot like once a day um and so I just remember being like nervous about that to my mom that I would like would have to take a shot every day for the rest of my life um and it's just like funny because like little did I know

[00:06:41] Rob Howe: right like how lucky could we be just one yeah so yeah apparently I had like my blood sugar was

[00:06:48] Erik Douds: so high that it couldn't even be right on the monitor and I like I could have been in a coma

[00:06:53] Rob Howe: with what I had so I guess I was lucky yeah I mean it's so interesting I think a because we were all diagnosed like on the relatively around the same time of our lives like 16 17 years old. There's like so many changes going on anyway. And, you know, like we said, there's all these like classic symptoms then, and yet they go unnoticed, right? Because they're relatively normal. And sometimes, you know, you lose a little bit of weight. You know, you are going to the bathroom a little bit, you're a little bit tired, but you know, you're a kid, you're a teenager, there's like all these other changes, and all these other things that are occupying your attention. um what do you guys think was the biggest obstacle that you had to overcome just like because of that part of your life like being a teenager

[00:07:42] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: just having to like apply to colleges at that time and like juggling the fact that i was like my life was changing in that perspective but then i also had to deal with this new like disease that i had to learn how to manage yeah yeah and i remember just coming back to high school and every like teenager knows how many things you're trying to juggle and is having another thing on top of that felt like a lot especially the first kind of two years of there's so much and I think a lot of people look back on that but there's so much that's going on just in your normal day-to-day life and then all of a sudden you have these extra 10 things you know 10 plus things that you have to be dealing with I think that's a lot to to adjust and figure out yeah I'm thankful that I'm like naturally an organized person

[00:08:31] Rob Howe: I don't know what I would do if I wasn't yeah is that something that you just always had or did you just like magnify it more after you you know were diagnosed yeah I think that

[00:08:42] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: definitely helped especially with just like being good about checking my blood sugar and everything like before the before the Dexcom was like obsessively checking my blood sugar I think it was

[00:08:52] Rob Howe: like 14 or 15 times a day. Oh, wow. I guess I've always like, you know, I've never been like that type of sort of obsessive blood sugar checker, I guess you would call it. And like obsessive, I feel like has a negative connotation. And I don't mean it that way at all. Right. But I know people now, people who don't wear CGMs, or even people that do they like check their blood sugar all the time. What do you think? Is that just a like curiosity? Is that just a, did you ever journal or like track all your blood sugar throughout the day and just like look at that bell curve? What was that? What was that like? What drove that? And, and Erik, are you the same way?

[00:09:34] Erik Douds: Yeah, I think I got it from, um, from my mom because she was a graphic designer and she would make all these really detailed charts for me to fill out with all my information, like my blood sugar and what I ate and everything. And I was just really good about filling those out. Yeah. And I feel like I've always been, I think diabetes has forced me to be a more organized person, but I think someone who's naturally a go with the flow, figure out the plan. I think there's times where I've had to be very diligent and mindful about trying to recognize patterns and stuff. It's something that doesn't come naturally. Like other people, I'd say I check my blood sugar a lot, but I've never really reflected on what's the thing causing a reoccurring problem. I feel like when you go to the endocrinologist, they're like, why does this specifically happen? And you're always like, oh, I haven't actually thought of it that way. and so I feel like having diabetes for 10 years now it forces you to become more organized with it

[00:10:37] Rob Howe: yeah and I think you know it's just one of those things that turns you into more of a type a personality right or you know a to quote like a Lauren Bongiorno type quote like decide and conquer or a hey I've got this happen and so I've got to act this certain way um or you know taking in that data analysis, like feedback, like real-time data and real-time feedback, and then deciding and making an actionable response. I was very similar. I was not a very like data oriented, like organized type person until I was diagnosed. And it's like, no, okay, now here's my routine. I do this. This is what I do because now it's part of my life. It's always interesting. So how did you guys meet? Give me this story. Who wants to tell it? Who tells like, and it's always interesting. I wish I could interview you guys separately in closed-off rooms so you guys could see whose story holds up or who remembers the exact moment. Who wants to take this one? I'll go.

[00:11:43] Erik Douds: As we both wait and then both wait. For those of you listening, Annalisa and I are actually in separate cities right now. So it's a balancing act between all three of us.

[00:11:52] Rob Howe: Yeah, it is. And you guys are doing great, by the way.

[00:11:55] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: Go ahead, Annalisa. Yeah, so I think I was like, it was only, let me think, I was diagnosed in 2009. And for a while, I just didn't really know anyone else with type 1 diabetes. Until like in 2015, my friend was like, why don't you go on meetup and just like look for a support group? Or I guess we don't want to call them support groups, but just like other diabetics. um so I joined this meetup group um based in New York and that's where I met Erik at this potluck that was actually on my father's roof um and so yeah that's where I met Erik and we kind of like had been talking about the idea of biking across the country um I don't know if we want to like get into that story now yeah um but yeah we had been talking about it for a while I had done it actually when I was 16 years old. I biked across the northern part of the United States, and it was just basically the highlight of my life. And I figured if I had the chance to, I would do it again. So I guess the moment that I remember deciding that, or just thinking that this could be a possibility, is when I had coffee with Erik a few years later, and we had both been laid off from our jobs and Erik just told me that he was going to like let go of his lease and rent a van and like drive around the country and try to talk to a lot of diabetics which like eventually became the Diabattest Tour um so when I when I heard him say that and I was um I was just like freelancing at home kind of going crazy from being at home all the time um but when I heard him say that I was like wait a minute like why can't I do something like that and that's where I was just like like why don't I bike across the country again because that was just like the yeah like the craziest thing I've ever done and something that I would do again so that's where um I kind of like came up with that idea and then we eventually did it a few months later

[00:14:03] Rob Howe: that's so cool like and i mean i think really too as my my puppy is like sneezing this is just like a funny little thing i wish you guys could see his dumb face so um for you guys like and analisa like when you when you're 16 talk to me a little bit about like i don't know i feel like it breaks down a barrier when you do something dramatic right like bike across the country that's like a huge peak experience do those like do those types of decisions now like with that sort of in like already sitting on your shelf of like life trophies did this sort of idea come a little bit easier or you know was were there still those sort of hesitations fears like typical voices in the back of your head like ah I don't know if this is such a good idea talk through those types of things and maybe Erik chip in as well sure so um

[00:14:56] Erik Douds: Yeah, another reason, so there's a lot of reasons why I chose to bike across the country, but like the main one was my mother. She passed away a few years ago and just like the PTSD of like seeing her in the hospital unconscious and like unable to even take like two steps down the hallway just made me want to take advantage of my own health and like the fact that I could do something crazy like this. So that's what kind of made the decision for me.

[00:15:28] Rob Howe: yeah yeah that's so powerful right like taking advantage and like you know putting it into your own you know taking a glimpse of you know what you sometimes like take for granted right like it's easy for for people i think and i don't want to generalize but you know you get that sort of autonomic response where you're just like walking through each day and you don't really consider where you are in your life so come what like a gift almost to see you know that you kind of in those moments of pain, see your own mortality a bit and get to, you know, get to act on it. For sure. Yeah. What about you, Erik? Was it, was it tough? What was, you know, you, you get laid off. A lot of people may, you know, take that as like a negative thing and yet you both like turned it into a positive. Yeah. It's interesting because,

[00:16:19] Erik Douds: so I ended up joining Annalisa like a week into her trip actually. And it's because, So I was bouncing back and forth for six months. I was like, should I do this? Should I not do this? Which I think all I have is do with many ideas. And so right after I left, or right after that job ended, my old company reached out to me. I was like, Erik, it seems like you're having a lot of fun. It seems like you have some free time. And they're like, you want to come in on an interview? and that was the moment I actually flipped a switch where they're like do you want to start on Monday and I was like I have to go bike across the U.S. and it was only like three days later that everything was thrown together. Did you say that out loud to them in the interview? Yeah I was like it was just this like a rush of like rush of emotions where I was like I couldn't imagine myself being back in an office I couldn't imagine myself waking up and doing this thing when I've been telling people or debating with this idea for five or six months. And I was like, Annalisa at that point was like, I'm going. And so we did it with another girl as well named Taylor, who's down in New Orleans. And Annalisa was like, I'm doing it with Taylor. I hope you come with us. And I was like, I'll let you know. And it was just back and forth, back and forth. And that was the deciding moment. And that's what I think is so difficult about leaving for a trip. Like so many people who've been traveling for a long time, they're like getting out the door was the hardest part. And I totally resonate with that.

[00:17:54] Rob Howe: Well, right. Like the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but you still got to take that step. I was at the students with diabetes conference this past week. And Sebastian, I'm going to butcher his last name, so I'm not even going to say it. But he is this French Canadian and he ran across Canada and like climbed Everest. and you know he was saying like these giant trips like that seem like these huge peak moments he's like to run across the sahara i trained and i kept my training but i started rubbing my foot in gravel for five minutes a day in my backyard and he's like it's these simple type things that when you look back you've come a long way but they start with these just actions so you know I mean, I think it's awesome. Like for those things to all click in place while you just got your offered your old job back and you're just like, no, I got to go do this.

[00:18:51] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: That reminds me of this quote. Um, I actually, I wrote an essay about the trip, uh, from Medium.com after, um, after the Trans Am and I was collecting like quotes from different people who I met on the road who were also biking, um, just about like what they learned from the journey. Um, and I actually just like pulled up the quote now. this was from Noah Nassari who was going he was also going on the Trans Am and he said 100 miles is a long way but 10 isn't a pizza cutter was invented because it's so much easier to eat pizza slice by slice than to attempt the whole pie I've tried I just thought that was like a good summary of it

[00:19:33] Rob Howe: do you manage your A1C through eating well and exercising regularly? of course you do you listen to this podcast You're on the cutting edge. Then you deserve the lower life insurance rates from Health IQ, the only insurance company that's giving you savings rewarding your healthy lifestyle. Just go to healthiq.com slash DDT, Diabetics Doing Things DDT, to get your free quote and support the show. And yeah, like when you're, you know, like you said, 100 miles is a long way, but 10 isn't. And then it's just 10 of those, right? What, did that ever like come, like when did that come into focus for you guys when you're on the road also like how do you eric how do you just go find her and meet up with her on the road like analisa was obviously like ahead of you where did you just wait what was the how did that work i'm just interested in like the actual tactics of this happening there are a few

[00:20:26] Erik Douds: logistical uh complexities throughout the trip yeah it started with a it started with visiting rei about five times to actually get my bike put together and everything loaded but then it was a road trip to basically Western Virginia slash the beginning of Kentucky. And that's where I actually meet them. And I remember first time seeing Taylor and she's like, wow, I can't believe you're actually here. Like, like you're real. I can't believe you're a real person. And this is actually happening. And there were some other logistical. So like halfway biking, halfway across the, um, the U S I was already signed up for the New York city triathlon. and so I had to fly out of Denver and then figure out at what rate Annalisa and Taylor would be biking and then ship my bike ahead and then land and rejoin them and that was an interesting logistical feat as well. Wow that sounds like a lot of math. You're like are they gonna go 40 miles a day 100 miles a day pretty good weather bad weather

[00:21:32] Rob Howe: and like past Denver like west of Denver obviously like there are the mountains but then it's just like the badlands of utah it's like nothing yeah we didn't go through utah we went

[00:21:44] Erik Douds: through wyoming um but it's it's funny like the rockies sound like really hard but um like the first the first week was through like the appalachian mountains and then the ozarks in missouri and those are actually much harder than the rockies because they're just like totally steep um the grades are really intense um they basically just like build a road straight up a mountain like they don't do any switchbacks um so once we got to the rockies like they seemed

[00:22:14] Rob Howe: like a breeze compared wow that's interesting you know i guess you know you don't think about it because you look at the numbers and it's like oh yeah this would be harder but i guess it's all in

[00:22:23] Erik Douds: who built the road right yeah they're more gradual but they're higher what stands out to

[00:22:31] Rob Howe: you guys as like but you know maybe besides eric going and running the new york city triathlon halfway through um what were like some obstacles maybe just in the day-to-day that you guys came came into maybe diabetes related maybe not what do you what stands out

[00:22:49] Erik Douds: i think we were go ahead eric i just think about those first days when we were at mammoth cave national park i remember that was This is a very diabetes thing. But figuring out the first two weeks on the bike, I remember that was the day I hit the highest high and the lowest low on my Dexcom. And it was just trying to... The biggest challenge was trying to figure out how to eat close to 4,000 calories on top of biking roughly 60 miles a day on top of just adjusting to all these different factors. And it was extremely tough. I look back and I'm like, my blood sugars were crazy. the beginning because it was so many factors that were like extremely difficult to try to figure out how your body's adjusting to that yeah I remember in Virginia like before Erik joined us I was just high a lot of the time maybe it was because of the dehydration and the fact that there was like a huge heat wave in Virginia that was maybe making my insulin bad but I just remember being high a lot and like hitting 300 and just thinking from like what doctors have told me in the past that I like I should not exercise and I should drink a lot of water take a lot of insulin and just wait it out um but when like when Erik joined us he was just like yeah like don't listen to the doctors just like take a drink a lot of water take a lot of insulin and then just like keep pedaling and then it drops in like 20 minutes right it's like it's just funny i feel like that sums eric up a

[00:24:25] Rob Howe: little bit just like come on don't listen to the doctor just like go through you'll be fine

[00:24:32] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: you know the real life version but yeah i think we were both high a lot also at night um because our bodies were so used to biking like all day long that when we like we joke that when we put our foot down in the campground our blood sugar would just like skyrocket like a switch and our Dexcoms were just like beeping all night long and like in those moments like because you guys are

[00:24:55] Rob Howe: going through a lot of the same like metabolic reactions right and response what was it like to have somebody there with you because obviously Annalisa you experienced it you know without Erik there you know the first couple weeks um you know what's it like to have somebody that knows what you're going through as those things are happening does it make it easier or you know somebody that's like hey oh yeah don't worry just give yourself insulin and write it out

[00:25:26] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: did we lose you oh no i just wasn't sure if who wanted to go um yeah i think it's i think it's easier um just because you have that other person who like understands what you're going through and like why you have to stop and wait um yeah what about you eric what was like you know for you

[00:25:48] Erik Douds: like i'm you're in those moments you're staying present and you're still like man i'm frustrated with my diabetes but at least i have somebody here with me it's it's definitely reassuring because when I was biking on the West Coast, I was just by myself. And I was kind of, so I was on a pod for a little bit of the trip and I was on Medtronic for a little bit of the trip. But, you know, as much planning as you do, I was always like, oh, well, if something happens, I kind of have Annalisa there as a backup. You know, so it's like if my pod expires, you know, there's someone else that has pods on this trip. If I need, like if my meter, you know, something happens to it. And just that reassurance was very nice to have. There was at least one really scary moment going along Oregon where I thought I lost my meter. And then I had all my test strips, but I didn't have a meter for those test strips. And I was like, oh, I'm here out in the middle of a fire road. I'm by myself. Annalise is nowhere around. I was like, this could be a serious incident. that when you have people that have type 1, it helps build some resiliency around those issues. It's actually funny because we met another diabetic who was bicycle touring across the country but going the other direction. It was a sibling team, and they were raising money for type 1 diabetes. It's called the Livabetes Tour. But we bumped into them in the middle of nowhere in Kansas. um and it was funny because like i was out of um i was out of good insulin because all my insulin had gone bad um and he was out of dexcom sensors so we just like had this little black market trade

[00:27:38] Rob Howe: in the middle of nowhere so that's kind of cool don't you love how like black markets can just pop up wherever there's a group of type ones

[00:27:50] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: what are you way too much of what are you way too little of yeah it's like hey i oh yeah you

[00:27:55] Rob Howe: don't use these oh i use those all the time i need let's make this uh let's make this easy um so for you guys like um when the journey was over or or continued over for you Annalisa and then uh you know eric obviously you continued on and then you know started jumping on trains as well uh when did this sort of die badass tour become a little bit bigger than just you guys riding across the country when it when it became um sort of a figurehead in the community because i remember when i saw it you guys were already underway um you know you were really sort of more close to the end and that's more of just me maybe not paying as much close of attention as i could of uh rather than you guys uh you know promoting it but i was like wow okay this is like a really neat thing these people are just did this on their own not necessarily as part of like a bike beyond type uh endeavor uh when did you guys know it's like oh wow we like we're we're doing something here you know we have this community behind us i mean i think it's i think it's a side like

[00:29:03] Erik Douds: things that kept me going is that some realizations of biking every day is that, you know, especially when you're on a self-supported tour, is that there is so much that Annalisa and I were doing every single day just to keep things going. And so, you know, you're doing your logistics, you're trying to ride 60 miles, you're trying to figure out where your housing is next. And there's a certain beauty to that. And there's a lot of communities that you up getting involved with but why I wanted to continue on a train tour was really to spend like a week in each place and that's how you know like when I was down in Texas you know I was able to hit San Antonio, Austin, Houston, Dallas and that was like super awesome that there was I was in that community for like almost three weeks actually and actually get to meet people, have those exchanges. And I think it's just exciting, you know, kind of talking about our next steps that Annalisa and I, you know, we just pitched the Adventure Cycling Association to write a whole article about traveling with type 1 diabetes. And I think her and I usually try to think about how can we expand spreading knowledge outside of our specific community? Like how do you actually get the message beyond type 1 diabetics. And so I'm really excited to write an article for the cycling community, which is about type 1 diabetes, you know, because their network is 100,000 people who read their magazine. But then it's also people who might read that article who haven't been exposed in the diabetic realm at all and start learning something. Yeah, we're gonna go ahead.

[00:30:44] Rob Howe: I think about that sort of juxtaposition a lot, right? Because, you know, it's easy to get caught up in the diabetes community because we're, you know, obviously that's where we are all, you know, first involved. But then there's all these other things that we do as people, as people with diabetes that, you know, may not know. And you're able to, you know, expand on those sort of tactics. Exercise is one, health and wellness and nutrition is another. They're obviously cycling and, you know, people that run triathlons and marathons. And there's sort of these sort of niche communities of people living with type 1 that they do. And they can, you know, pass along that knowledge share. It's always interesting to see the response, right? Because you put in all this effort on your end and really taken all the risk to experiment with and learn about. and then passing that on to other people. And people who maybe don't have diabetes can still learn something from those things. That was sort of just a looping. Yeah, there we go, looping again. Just inside of, you know, what's it like for you guys? A, what do you think the biggest tips are that you could give somebody riding with type 1? Like what's your big three? If you're going to ride across the country with type 1 diabetes, what are your big three uh what's your top three list and then how how can that apply

[00:32:13] Erik Douds: to someone without diabetes i think my top three applies number one is just to get out there um you know i talk about how i left this trip without any training like so day one was the first time i ever had my bike assembled and had all the gear on it and i remember one riding up the first hill which was just going out of like a driveway and I was like I'm in for a little bit more than I realized but I talk about how the first moments of anything the first two weeks is going to be tough no matter what when Sebastian was running across Canada or if that was the Sahara that we said like I'm sure the first two weeks was insanely tough for him but going back to the you know to go on a thousand mile journey you have to do the first mile out your door and I think that's so true for people of any age. I think being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, we realize that your health is no guarantee. I think to an extent when I look at my friends with type 1 and what they accomplish, it's so incredible. I think this disease motivates them to go above and beyond and push themselves. And then, you know, kind of tip two and tip three are pretty practical. Tip Two is probably actually set a timer every hour, and that's just to check in on water, nutrition, blood sugars. It's very easy to get caught up in cycling or any activity. I think as diabetic athletes, you have to check in on your body more frequently. And then tip three is if you have to crush calories, I crush a lot of peanut butter. We ate so much peanut butter. It's crazy.

[00:34:00] Rob Howe: I was going to say, before we dive into breaking down those tips because I think they're great, you mentioned you're trying to eat 4,000 calories a day after you ride 60 to 100 miles. What did you guys eat? Because you can't carry all that food with you, so you're going into small towns across America. Are you guys just crushing pancakes at IHOP? What was the deal?

[00:34:25] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: We ate a lot of gorp. I don't know if you know what that is. Good old raisins and peanuts. I learned that from Erik. Wow. It's like trail mix that usually hikers bring. But we would basically just have like a whole bag of gorp and just like put a bunch of like cereal, raisins, like any sort of trail mix item in there. And just like shove handfuls in our mouths like every hour or so, every 30 minutes. Because you got to keep that blood sugar up. Got to keep it up. I think it's crazy and you know what diabetic athletes or athletes with diabetes can teach other people my my sensitivity so normally my carb ratio so I take about 50 units a day and my carb ratio is generally around one to 10 so one unit for every 10 carbs and when I was biking it got close to one unit for every 100 so I remember like eating an entire loaf of bread in one day and I was like I would never do that if I was just sitting around like that would be like me being in the 400s all day and I was just like that happened so easily yeah it's funny you eat so many calories like probably triple what you usually eat um and you usually end up people end up gaining weight because you just like eat more than you burn because you're just so hungry all the time

[00:35:47] Rob Howe: yeah I remember I played in a like a three-on-three basketball tournament not even that like serious competition but it was from like 7 a.m to 2 p.m and you know every half hour playing like a pretty intense game and I probably drank like four 32 ounce Gatorades during that time with no like no no insulin at all on board for those like like and my body was just like I need more give me more I'm an engine burning down yeah and there's so many other factors that affected

[00:36:22] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: our blood sugar that like I had no idea about like when we were in Colorado and we started gaining elevation I think we were at like nine or ten thousand feet um my yeah my blood sugar was just like really high and it would not go down and yeah I think Erik had the same problem yeah I mean uh Rob you know I started looping now but it's it's interesting because I wasn't we weren't on any of these systems so we're trying to do it all manually and that comes into the challenge of generally you know we're biking until four or five o'clock and then we're having this huge dinner and we're no longer biking and we have like the elevation gain and all that stuff and that's where i feel like a lot of times we're just high all night which was really tough to deal

[00:37:09] Rob Howe: with in the morning do you guys find and this is just my own personal experience like when you after a night of sleeping when you're even if you're not super high you know over 180 but lower than 250 you just feel like you've been put in the dishwasher or just like the washing machine and like you didn't get any rest at all yeah it's a diabetes hangover

[00:37:34] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: mostly just from not like from not sleeping and being you know awoken by those alarms

[00:37:42] Rob Howe: so uh Annalisa for you what were your big three well uh we heard from eric they were which is great and we're going to go to into a little bit um but what were your big three and how are they

[00:37:52] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: different yeah i think um yeah eric covered a lot of them um but i think the first two weeks were definitely like an experiment um because we really had no idea how like how this much biking would affect our blood sugars. So I think I learned the most about like how to fine tune the ratios as much as I could in those first two weeks. But then it really helped to be organized with my trip and kind of set out places across the country that my dad could send resupply boxes of my medications. So I would like, I grouped boxes together of like certain amounts of Omnipods and you know different medications and then he would ship them to like gas stations across the country so that was a nice way to kind of not carry all my medications with me so being prepared in that sense helped and then yeah I guess just smaller things like always carrying enough snacks on you you never know if you're going to be like in the middle of nowhere with nothing

[00:39:02] Rob Howe: yeah i think it's like you know diabetes i try to always equate to like the boy scouts motto right like or i guess the scouts motto now like be prepared uh because it's just one extra step to everything you're gonna do for the rest of your life and just requires that like mindfulness and thought um and it's kind of interesting like back to uh to eric's number one of like just take the step. I mean, taking the step is also being prepared. Like those two go hand in hand. Like you've got to start planning those things out logistically, uh, being ready to measure them. Um, and I mean, so many things in life. And I think I hear it more and more through the, you know, lifestyle entrepreneur type community that's sort of having its moment right now is like starting something and just doing a little bit every day is really the common denominator for anybody who is living a happy life, a quote-unquote successful life, doing what they want to do, and then not giving up. Because I'm sure there were tough days on, and we've heard about some of them already, tough days on the trail, on the road across the U.S. that you guys were questioning whether you could go on or whether you wanted to keep going or whatever the case may be.

[00:40:17] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: Yeah, 100%. I mean, there's so many things that happened over a year. But I think I mean it's fascinating because so many when you're doing the Trans America Trail you actually are kind of in a group of 20 I would say so there's three of us but then we have what we call our trail family but there's a veterans group that left because it's like you all leave at a popular time and getting to observe a lot of these groups interact over three months and kind of what divided people what were the challenges you leave with one group and end with another and overall I think most people don't go on a trip that's long and it really tests you a lot of ways both physically but then the mental side is is very challenging to deal with and so you kind of have to learn how to always adapt and always change your plans yeah I feel like a lot of people ask me like what the downsides were and if there were like moments where I thought that I would not continue um but yeah like not to sound cheesy or anything but just like looking back on it um I just I feel like all those moments kind of like fade away because I'm just so glad that I could even take the trip in the first place um but yeah like some of those those low moments um like I remember one of them in uh Wyoming I was climbing on this path called Togwotee Pass and like Every single thing that could have gone wrong was going wrong. I had a flat tire and it started raining. And there were these swarms of mosquitoes that just would not stop swarming you unless you went faster than 10 miles an hour, which you couldn't because you were climbing a mountain. And then my blood sugar had the two down arrows and I had to stop and eat, which attracted more of the bugs. but I think that's like what people call type 2 fun which is like like it was miserable at the time but like looking back on it it was just funny so I feel like we had a lot of those moments

[00:42:23] Rob Howe: what is it what does it I say tragedy plus time equals comedy yeah exactly yeah it's great and I mean I think you're right you know if you don't sweat the small stuff and even in those moments like just keeping it on going and pushing forward to the next thing what seems like a big like deal at the time ends up not being one yeah becomes a fun anecdote right that you get to tell those are

[00:42:49] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: the stories you share when you're having uh you know beer with your friends yeah i also think it's

[00:42:55] Rob Howe: funny how people are so fascinated with like the hard like down moments no one ever asks you like oh what was your favorite part like oh what was the best light-hearted moment they always want to know like when did you have to pull pull yourself up by your bootstraps and everything is super easy yeah so what's next for you guys what's uh what's on the diet badass

[00:43:18] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: horizon for you two so we just launched a kickstarter i guess we can talk about that yeah plug it this is your plug chance sure um so on that trans am trip last year um i took a picture of everyone that I met, not everyone, but a lot of people, the people that I met along the way. So riding a loaded touring bicycle, excuse me, bicycle causes a lot of people to like stare at you and ask you questions. We kind of joked that we should carry a sign that just like answered all the usual questions like, where are you coming from? Where are you going? Like, how much does that bike way um so people would just ask us so many questions and so I just decided to like turn the question around on them and kind of take their portrait and kind of jot down just an anecdote about like our our meeting and something that I learned about them and this collection came to be known as miles of well it was called 4,000 miles of portraits at the time um but since I kind of want to continue this around the world um eric and i are actually continuing the project in alaska this summer where we're going to ride a thousand miles and document the people that we meet there um and eric will actually be shooting a short film while i'll be taking i'll be like focusing on taking the pictures um but yeah it's like a great um way for us to get to know a place and kind of the ways that the bicycle brings people together.

[00:44:52] Rob Howe: Oh, it's so cool. Love that. So it's kind of like a, I mean, like a humans of New York, but on your journey, you get to, and from your perspective, right? That's super neat. That's super cool.

[00:45:04] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: Exactly. So we just launched a Kickstarter today, actually, to fund the production of a magazine and a short film.

[00:45:13] Rob Howe: um so well now you guys have done it because uh because you launched the kickstarter today and all kickstarters have a time frame now uh i've got to get off my butt and publish this uh podcast before and move it up in my queue so uh you guys did it you guys catfished me into getting this uh to the front of the line so congratulations thank you beautiful can't wait yeah just i do it for you guys this is uh this is i'm just like oh yeah oh no now i've got to get this thing out all right time to get you have until june 30th to pledge great well then that is perfect i'll make sure i get it published with a couple weeks time so people can donate that'd be great thank you um and eric i mean you uh you're going back to jersey next week uh what is that going to be are you looking forward to like that sort of symbolic moment i know you've been back but like you know know this is the the loop that you're closing the loop of your closed loop yeah so i actually

[00:46:17] Erik Douds: leave tomorrow at 7 a.m and no i'm i mean i'm extremely excited it feels i think being on the road for a year now partnering up with annalisa there's a lot of lessons that were learned over over the entire year but you know i'll be taking a month off and then i say a month off and you I'll be speaking at Camp Najetta, depending on when this is published, and hopefully going up to Maine to join the Connect in the Motion group. So it's going to be busy, but I'm excited to take a month off, one, because there's so much footage and photography, and there's probably photos of Rob I've never posted. So I'm excited for that month kind of just to share things, and then to have this focus project with Annalisa where we're going out. and you know i think something that on lisa and i talked about for a while with this project is you know how prominent should diabetes be portrayed and i think that's an interesting thing about the creative process is that it originally started as a pitch of calling it carrying the burden because we have a panniers like a small backpack on our bike that legitimately is all of our diabetic gear so i was like it's a very physical representation of our stuff right we ended up changing that into miles of portraits where we'll tell other people's stories but then share our own story so diabetes will be in there but kind of will be secondary instead of the most prominent thing so i'm super excited for that yeah we also have this article that's going to come out later this year and it's telling the story of the adventure through our

[00:47:58] Rob Howe: our blood sugar grafts. Well, and I think too, you know, it's a, it's an interesting way to look at life with diabetes, right? Because it's a, it's a big character. It's like a recurring character in all of our lives, but it doesn't have to always be the star. And, uh, there are sometimes when it is, and like you have these big victorious moments or these, you know, shortcomings or obstacles that you overcome or run into but it's sort of a thing that can just be addressed when it's when you feel it's appropriate and everyone's relationship can be different along whatever

[00:48:35] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: journey that they're going on a hundred percent i think it's you know someone like yourself that's so involved in the diabetic realm i think it's interesting to see how we play it and you know I love that you have all these conversations with different people and to see how we all approach the exact same thing I think that's kind of what keeps you involved in the diabetic realm is just hearing everyone's stories and it's like we're all brought together by something but everyone does it so differently which is what's it's cool it is and it's like

[00:49:12] Rob Howe: it's very it's refreshing I think I pick up something from everyone and you know it all Also, though, I am more mindful now because I see it all the time of diabetes burnout. And if you're not afraid and not just burnout of like taking care of yourself, but burnout of talking about it too much or seeing too much of it. And it's a real thing. And I can always tell when, you know, a new diabetes account will pop up or a new diabetes campaign. I'm just like, OK, one day at a time, one step at a time. And if you keep pushing, you'll be fine. but I see a lot of like, you know, the first two weeks will be really like consistent and then people fall off because I think they underestimate how heavy that burden can be. If it's that main character, if it's all about that, but if it's about something else or someone else you know, what kind of power and like energy you can get from that. So I'm really excited for you guys. That's super cool.

[00:50:08] Erik Douds: Thank you, Rob. And then, and then you, do you think the skydiving events going to happen soon?

[00:50:13] Rob Howe: oh man I uh I'm super stoked to do it like I honestly I just had like a tough day a couple weeks ago and I was like man I might just go up and do this myself um but then I knew that uh I never live it down from Marie so I have not done it so um yeah it's gotta happen uh I'm real excited to when it actually does we can all actually make this thing go because I still have never jumped out of a plane that's still a thing I gotta cross off my list I've never done it either

[00:50:43] Erik Douds: well you got to come with us ride your bike down maybe i'll ride my bicycle there yeah just

[00:50:52] Rob Howe: so you know as we're kind of coming towards the end of the the time um i asked the same question to all my guests and so i got to ask you both uh the question so context is important and you know since eric's been traveling around to stations of many kinds train stations airports airports um and annalisa you've been along as well uh imagine you're in an airport and you're at the at your gate and they're about to close the door to your gate and for whatever reason you can't miss the flight like there's something on the other end that you've got to be at it's important but you bump into somebody who's either been recently diagnosed or is struggling with their type 1 and you have 30 seconds to tell them one thing what's the one thing that you tell

[00:51:35] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: them in that time? I think I would, yeah, I would tell them that, I mean, it's kind of, it's a downer to be diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, but there's like so many upsides to it. Like, I feel like I wouldn't have been so knowledgeable about nutrition if it weren't for diabetes. And I wouldn't have, like, I feel like before I was diagnosed, I just didn't eat as well and so I'm just so much more aware of like my nutrition and the ways that my like body works and I feel like I've learned so much from having it and so I guess I would just tell them about like the fact that there are upsides to it yeah I love that super true Erik how about you I'd probably tell them that life is one giant experiment and just to tell them that they can go do anything and often they might have to figure it out on their own way but there's always a way to accomplish it um and i think there's many moments in my life i felt that way

[00:52:37] Rob Howe: yeah i mean it's interesting like diabetes is just that microcosm of of your entire life right just in little moments like every single day is an experiment 10 different times with diabetes

[00:52:49] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: and just like that graph is like a metaphor of your life at every moment it's just like we've

[00:52:54] Rob Howe: come back to that loop of that, the loop of life, the closed loop of life. That's great. Oh man, you guys are, you guys are great. I feel like we touched on like four or five different subjects that we could have entire podcast episodes about. So, you know, I know this will not be the last time that the two or the three of us have conversations either together or one-on-one and I really look forward to the next ones um for people who want to know where to follow you guys's journeys like where to get involved online I'm going to post the kickstarter in the show notes but uh where do they find you guys on like social media

[00:53:35] Annalisa Van Den Bergh: go ahead Erik uh so they can follow diabadass.com is all the Diabadass stuff and then personal account is eric douds e-r-i-k because i'm scandinavian and then douds d-o-u-d-s and i'm also on youtube so i'm on instagram as analisa a-n-n-a-l-i-s-a vd berg and i'm also on medium that's where i have my blog um it's medium.com slash work dash from dash bike um and if you want to read my story it's at work from bike.com um and our kickstarter is miles of portraits.com slash kickstarter i love it i think that was the first medium plug uh on

[00:54:26] Rob Howe: this podcast which is uh which is great so you should uh you should feel really good about medium out there um which is uh which is fantastic guys like um i really appreciate you taking the time making this super easy to to schedule and uh you know in the midst of all your planning and traveling and all your multiple things that you both have uh going on all the time uh it was really great to talk to you great to meet you Annalisa and man eric i look forward to the next time we bump into each other hopefully on a plane that we're jumping out of

[00:54:58] Erik Douds: I'm expecting a good adventure.

[00:55:28] Rob Howe: their life insurance. To support the show and get a free quote, go to healthiq.com slash DDT.