¶ Road Trip Stories and Adventures
Absolutely nothing beats windshield time , a road trip and good conversation in the car . Welcome to another episode of Dan the Road Trip Guy , where we have entertaining conversations about cars and road trips , life lessons and maybe , every now and then , a little advice . I'm your host , Dan Neal Road Trip Extraordinaire , and now buckle up and enjoy the show .
Alright , I'm excited . Today my guest is longtime friend Liz Kaser . Linda and I have known Liz and her husband , Kurt , for probably about 26 years . Our kids went through grade school and junior high and high school together and I'm just excited to spend a little time with her on this virtual road trip .
We're both here in Cincinnati but separated by a few miles , and I'm just thrilled to talk to her . Welcome to the show , Liz .
Thanks , thanks for having me , dan .
Pleasure , let's start this off with just take a couple minutes and tell people who is Liz Kaser .
I am a mother of two grown sons . I have a adorable granddaughter . I have my own private practice doing eating disorder recovery coaching here in Tarris Park , but I have clients from all over really all over the country because I work online a lot , so that's been helpful . I am an avid cyclist . I love to do anything in the world outdoors .
I've been married for gosh 37 years . Well , congrats I married the boy down the street . So , yes , that's a lot of my work . I'm doing some adventuring , dipping my feet into maybe getting my master's in theology and culture . So I've got a lot of things on my plate right now . So that's it .
That's great . Yeah , Thanks for sharing that . So you are on Dan the road trip guy , because I love road trips and cars and all that good stuff and I love to start this with . Okay , take me back in time , and what was that first car that you drove around ?
Oh my gosh . I don't know if people even remember it . It was a Renault La Carr .
Oh my .
We got it . I'm a twin , so my sister I got it for college so she could get tuned from her student teaching . I got to have it then mostly on the weekends , which was great because I came home a lot on the weekends to see my now husband . But the car was just , it was its own unique little personality . My husband could do bicep curls with it .
It was so little . It had an old rubber hatch on the top that you could kind of just like pull out . And you know , back in those college days I like pulled them out , I opened the little sunroof and drove home my college days I thought I was really cool if I smoked once in a while .
So I thought my mom wouldn't know when I smoked , like poured out of the car on me because I had my little sunroof open . Exactly , yeah . Yeah , Not a habit I'm into now , but it was , you know , back in the 80s . So that's what . Yeah , my first car it was a five speed .
You could get her up to about 45 or 50 before she started to vibrate all over on the highway .
There you go .
Now was that a new car ?
Did you buy that new or was it used it ?
was used . My parents bought it from friends on the street . They actually , I think , had like a GMC , amc , something like that . They had a dealership and so their daughter had driven it for a while and then we got it from her .
Yeah , what color was it oh ?
she was so cute , she was white .
Okay .
With little red pinstripes about a third of the way down on her . So yeah , it was a great . I mean really , it was a great little car .
Yeah , you refer to her as a she . Did she have a name ?
Elsie . Yeah , See , Elsie the Elsie , the car and and Elsie did really really well for us until I believe my brother Rect her along with some other cars and a family . Okay , she met her demise .
You have a cool car to . One of your cool cars today is Sob convertible right .
Yeah , I love my sob convertible .
We Got that when I went to take my Lexus which , by the way , was my favorite car ever okay to get serviced and there was this really cool blue sob on the lot and it was like I want to say it's a 2000 , 2009 maybe , and it only had 7,000 miles on it's got it drove around Cincinnati for a while and then , three years ago , I drove it up to Michigan
and that's where . That's where she lives now , all right , and she doesn't have a name .
Yeah , very good . Yeah , people don't don't name their cars today . So that was something , I guess , from back in our day early days .
Yeah , yeah .
Yeah , all right . So tell me that's great , great stories . I love the car epic road trip in your life , one that you just looked back on . It was just such a memorable event . And tell me about it .
It's kind of sounds weird for an epic road trip , but my husband and I were talking about this and I would say our epic road trip Was coming home from Michigan gosh 22 .
Okay .
So we were driving home from Michigan after we stayed Later than the rest of the family my sister and her family and we Went to look at a cottage on Walloon Lake . We didn't say we're to each other in the car , we just got in . We Were both afraid to say let's buy it . I think it's such a memorable trip because it has been .
It's evolved into road trip after road trip after road trip back and forth To the cottage . We really didn't have any idea at the time , mmm , how , how important it would be the legacy for the children . Yeah , after thinking about , that was my favorite road trip .
We came back and Finally about , let's see , we came from Ptoski and finally , about the time we got to Toledo , maybe we started to really talk like this is a possibility . Yeah , so that's . That's kind of one of my favorite road trips that that we've had you go up to Michigan a lot .
When did you start going up to Michigan ?
We started going up gosh . We bought the cottage when I was 40 or 39 , so , and I'm gonna be 60 . Yeah , about 20 , 21 years .
Yeah , it's cool story .
Yeah , it's a yeah . So we go back and forth from there a lot , and my only other good epic road trip was when my Three-year-old decided he was gonna be potty trained on the way to West Virginia . Okay do you know how many scary places there are to go to the bathroom in West Virginia for a three-year-old ? So that was our .
That was another pretty funny one .
That's a good one . Yeah , I like that . So this summer you went on an adventure and I want to talk to you about that , but it was Everstein 29 029 , right ? So let's , let's talk about that a little bit . And , just first off , I doubt many people listening this podcast know anything about it , so tell us about the event .
Well , 29 029 is the amount of elevation you gain when you climb Mount Everest . Obviously I wasn't gonna go climb Mount Everest because it would involve camping , so instead it's a big just Event . In the country they're normally at like four or five , six different mountains . They run out the whole mountain resort .
I did my trip to Sun Valley this year and what you do is actually lapsed . So you start at 6 am In the morning and you climb up and you take a gondola down . So for Sun Valley I had to do 15 laps no-transcript up and down . I think I slept maybe three hours . I was on the ground on my feet for about 30 hours climbing and moving .
So and this is over 36 hours . Oh , okay , it's over 36 hours .
You have 36 hours to complete the event . But what was so neat about the event is we all had our own , like Everest , that we were climbing a different reason and it's a very encouraging welcoming community . It is you against you against the mountain .
There were as many cheers erupting for the woman who just wanted to finish four laps and that's the elevation of . Is it Coastal Yesco in ? You know Rdacast , so you get seven different mountains from each continent that you climb .
Okay .
So yeah , I mean , and it was just like she was sobbing , everybody was sobbing . At the end my husband he never cries sobbing because that was her , that was her Everest . It meant was the world to her , though .
Yeah , and your family went with you .
My family did go with me . Mitch and Brad were both going to do the climb with me and they did . They climbed . Unfortunately , neither one of them finished , but I'm really proud of them . They left everything they had on the mountain and that's really the goal Like just don't leave anything behind , like just go and leave it all in the mountain .
That was cool , yeah .
Yeah , how long did it take to do a lap for you ? You mentioned lap .
At lap . Was it anywhere from an hour and a half to an hour and 45 minutes , depending on the gondola , depending on if I wanted to stop and eat at the bottom , those kind of things .
Okay , what led you to do this ?
First of all , I saw it on I don't know Instagram or something . I thought that looks really cool and the more I thought about it , the more I thought I can really do this .
I had for years a pretty severe eating disorder and I had left my smallest pair of jeans with my therapist so that she would have them and I wouldn't have men here taunting me and I could really work on my recovery .
Okay .
Somewhere in the last year or so I started thinking like what am I going to do with those jeans Because I don't really need them back . So I put them . I decided I was going to take them and put them in my pack .
I was going to leave them at the very end on the mountain and kind of cutting the ties with the eating disorder , my identity in the eating disorder . I got to about the fourth lap .
Those jeans were pretty heavy and I stopped at the top of the mountain and I looked down below and all I could think of was the 23rd song , because you could hear the water rushing and it was so green and lush and I kind of felt like God said you don't have to carry these anymore .
Like this is a burden you don't have to carry anymore and you don't have to carry the burden of the eating disorder . At the fourth lap I stopped at the top and I took my pack off and I left my jeans at the summit on top of a rock or under a rock , I think .
Okay , so that was kind of my , my impetus for doing it and also I wanted to do it and prove that I could do it and still stay well and not fall back into the eating disorder and the over-exercising and maintain my weight . And yeah , it had a lot . It was almost more like a pilgrimage to me at that point .
Okay , yeah , their website says you know , I was reading their website after you know , trying to learn a little bit about it and it says it's a what they wanted to be as a transformational adventure that unlocks a better version of the person participating and I assume you found that to be the case .
I , I really did , I was . I just can't even explain the exhilaration of coming up that final lap , the knowing that I can do something really hard , that I got to choose I feel like a lot of my things in my life I didn't get to choose and I got to choose that hard .
Yeah , and afterwards , even today or this week , I had a kind of bad day and I was feeling like , oh , I just don't know if I can do this , and I had a playlist and I put it on and my world just goes right back to yes , you can do hard things .
Yeah , I think for me that's jumping in the car and taking a little road trip and that kind of brings me back into focus .
Yeah , yeah .
And I was thinking about road trips and I was thinking about you mentioned . You're an avid cyclist . I don't know how long you've been doing that . We'll talk about that in a minute . But I know you ride a lot of miles and I know you do some of those as solo ? Was there a particular reason you decided to do cycling ?
I think I decided to do cycling just to kind of give my knees a break from running .
Okay .
There was a great group that rode out of a bike shop that I went to , that I got my bike and we just ended up kind of breaking off from that group and maybe like eight , 10 of us just became really close . So that's kind of how I got into it and that's what kept me going is just the people .
I mean , there's something about a bike that's more of an equalizer than , say , running with people different shapes , different sizes , different levels of strength , and so it was just a great community .
¶ Cycling, Long Rides, and Road Trips
I'm not a cyclist . I assume you're not just always racing against a clock when you're running . You're always looking at your watts . Did I run that mile faster ? Did I run slower ? I don't . I always see these cyclists , and I'm sure some of them . That's important to them . But then I see some who just seem to be enjoying the solitude .
Speed has never been important to me . I think I have a pretty good clip that I go with . It's more about either what I'm riding with , the people it's about being with them and just the variety of people that I've come to know the supportive community . I also love when I just ride alone .
What's your longest ride ?
100 miles .
Okay , wow .
Yeah , century .
That's kind of a . Is that a day or most of the day ?
It's a long day and this I didn't really choose to do 100 miles . I was only supposed to be doing like 50 , and then at the break off they all talked to me into doing another 50 miles .
And you just thought I can do that . I'll do that .
Sure , why not ?
Is there kind of like the road trips ? Is there a particular bike ride that I don't know ? You know , it was just one of those . It was kind of moving , maybe the sun set , the sunrise , just something in particular that you just said . Yeah , life is good .
There's so many of them , I think I would say mountain mayhem in Northern Michigan .
Okay .
It's a 62 mile ride , I think 62 . So it's considered a metric second century . And I did that by myself . For me it was also a I don't know like a sense of independence , that I didn't have to be doing it with some friends . So I was kind of like out of my comfort zone to go and do this by myself and make conversation with people .
It's a pretty big bike ride . That was Probably one of my favorites . It was hard , hence the term . Mount Mayhem it was . I mean , it's beautiful . The scenery just in Northern Michigan is just phenomenal .
It was just , yeah , I would say it was just a really , you know , we saw sunrise because we got right as we started to get on our bikes , the sun was rising . It was just a great day , yeah .
Thanks for sharing that . That's cool Shifting gears a little bit in that little car . You know we'll shift gears since it was five speed . Nobody knows how to drive a five speed today , but no anything on your bucket list you and I talked about this anything on your bucket list that you want to do before you die .
Wow .
It's got to be something out there in this big world .
I mean I don't have places I'd like to visit .
Okay , tell us about one of those .
Yeah , I always wanted to go to Alaska . I've always wanted to go back to the Mediterranean . I did that a few years ago and I'd love to do that with my husband .
Okay , See , there's two trips and you can just tell Kurt hey , we're going to fly out to Seattle , rent a car and we'll drive to Alaska . Now , while you have a great road trip .
Yeah , I would love , actually I would love to do that . I would love to just get in the car and drive some of these places .
So much out there . This is one of my favorite questions . Okay , if you could take a road trip with anyone , living or deceased , who would it be ? Where would you go ? What would you drive ? Maybe that little car ? What would you talk about ?
Wow . So that was an easy one for me to answer . My good friend , nancy , who is more like a mom to me , passed away almost exactly a year ago today . I would love to ride in a car , any car , maybe a convertible , because she always had a convertible too . Okay , and I just would love to soak in her wisdom Like one more time .
I'd like to be able to laugh with her again , cry with her again . I think she has some really funny stories about cars , actually , because she for years was married to a car dealer in Cincinnati . But yeah , I would , just , I would give anything to go on a road trip with her . And where would we go ? It's a good question . I always wanted to try and go .
She's got a place in Cabo that she had . I would love to have gone to Cabo and just driven on the roads and the mountains there and just take it all in . I mean , that would be my , that's my person , yeah . So good . Yeah , that's great yeah .
And kind of getting to the end of our little virtual road trip here . It seems to go back quickly but , you're in a room full of people maybe or maybe it's just a person . If you could offer some words of advice , encouragement , what do you think those would be ?
Well , I think the obvious , this will pass eventually . This too will pass . I think maybe the mantras I used on the mountain it's really , I think , kind of a metaphor for life , and that was be where your feet are , and that's the only place you have to be in this moment in time is right where your feet are , yeah , okay .
I think the other mantra that I used a lot was I got to choose this hard . And the other thing that's just so relevant on the mountain was just keep climbing . We would say just turn right and keep climbing , because that was the way off the like don't stop , don't think about it , just keep climbing .
Pretty easy to give up sometimes .
Oh my gosh , yes , mm .
Hmm , well , liz this has been fun . This has been a pleasure . I took us a little bit to hook up , but I hope you enjoyed our little drive here and chatting and I told you before we started maybe , maybe Lynn and I'll listen into this someday and when she wants to hear your voice .
So , yeah , I'd love that . That would be great for her to have .
Yeah , and I like to wrap up . You are an author , we didn't talk about that much , but I like to wrap up the show with just give my guest time to promote themselves . A charity , a book in your case , whatever you want to do .
Yeah , so I wrote a book called Eating by Faith A Walk with God my Eating Disorder from the Inside Out . Honestly , I think God had my hand and just helped me write the book , but that's available Amazon . You can go to my website , which is eatingbyfaithcom . That is also how you can get in touch with me .
If you ever need somebody to do any public speaking on eating disorders , body image , self image . I also again have my own private recovery coaching program for eating disorders right in Teres Park , but again , also you can do that from anywhere . Again , people from Portland to Portland each coast .
That's great . Thank you for sharing that and I'll put that in the notes . So we hope people will check out your website , check out the book .
Yeah , great .
Well , this has been fun . Probably see you soon , because we live pretty close to each other .
Yeah , I would . I hope so . Yeah , we need to re-celebrate your wife's birthday .
Oh , Liz , this was fun . Thank you so much .
Great , thank you .
Until we meet up again , you can find me on the Internet at dantheroadtripguycom . I hope you will follow this podcast so that you don't miss any upcoming episodes and share it with your family and friends so they can enjoy the stories of my guests also . Until we meet again on a future episode , keep having conversations with each other and keep driving .