Travis Pastrana & Nate Wessel

Jeremy Perkins 0:00
This is bucket talk, a monthly podcast taking you across America meet the most badass trades, people, industry leaders and personalities. If you're looking to level up in the trades, you're in the right place.

On this episode of bucket talk podcast, we're here with the legendary Travis Pastrana and Nate Wessel. How's it going? How are you great? Hell yeah. So we're here down at Pastrana land. Want to get to know a little bit about each one of these two individuals. Nate has been building ramps and also in the BMX Pro Series, and then Travis has done anything and everything. So yeah, let's, let's dive deep. Nate, you're originally from Ohio, correct? Born in Pittsburgh, so kind of have pa blood in me, but grew up in Ohio, all right, yep. So we had done a walk around early on, which is great, because I get to know these guys intimately, and then they'd be able to sit down that intimately. Yeah, exactly. But then get to sit down and, you know, kind of hash through some of the stuff, and kind of go deep. But I was incorrect when thinking that you were a BMX rider first, and then a ramp builder second. You were actually a ramp builder first. All kind of happened at the same time. I actually grew up skateboarding for eight years before I even got into BMX, jeez. And I started, you know, building ramps when I was a skateboarder, yeah. And so I was, you know, not doing it professionally. And then when I got into BMX at 16, which is kind of late in the game to become a pro or anything like that, I just never thought I'd be pro. And I was building ramps, so it was that

Travis Pastrana 1:30
engineer and Carpenter, and you kind of, I mean, starting at eight years old, he was stuff out

Jeremy Perkins 1:35
installing wood floors at eight years old. I wanted to kind of jump in there, because it's like little child labor laws and stuff like that. But that's the way it was done back was done back then. You know, you joined dad on the job site. And my dad was, he was a many of many talent, a man of many talents, yeah. And so all the homes that we had built, he basically was the project manager on the homes. He'd have a builder come in, and they didn't like that, you know, a lot of the builders. So he had always find a builder that he liked working with. And then we literally went to the home every single night, every single day after the guys were gone, and we'd just add wiring and for intercom systems and just stuff that they didn't want to pay anything, you know, other people for, yeah, and that's like, where it came to nope, leave that unfinished. And all of a sudden we were doing it. I didn't know any better. I was just like, didn't know that I was, like, learning these skills that were gonna be, like, completely so valuable to me later in life. Yeah. So one thing that I was kind of mulling around in my head as we were kind of going through everything, is, is the fact that, like, the amount of science, mathematics, which you're not good at we had talked about originally, which, you know, I mean for for blue collar guys, I mean practical application Exactly, exactly. But it's kind of, you know, building on that and compounding on everything you've you've kind of gotten to where you are now that you've become a name in the industry, people call upon you to do a lot of these things. But honestly, what's one of the most challenging, I guess, adventures or projects that you've worked on thus far to

Travis Pastrana 3:04
date. Can I answer this real quick? Yeah, sure. The most challenging project for Nate Wessel is doing something that he already knows. The outcome. It's not using his brain to figure out something that's impossible. Nate's easiest projects are the ones that everyone thinks is impossible, and that is why people call on Nate Wessel to do things that have never been done but continue on.

Nate Wessel 3:27
There's a lot of truth to what Travis just said. It's crazy, because every project you know, I'd be bummed out if, like, Hey, I only built backyard mini ramps, yeah, or something like that. But I tackle anything that comes at me, whether that be like, Hey, do you think you can figure out this car jump or this, you know? Or can you figure this out? Can you and it might be something for a scooter, or is it parkours or whatever? And the most challenging things are the stuff that I've never done before, but I never say, No. It's just like, Yeah, I can do that. I'll figure it out, you know. And Hot Wheels came to me at one point when they were doing all the real, actual size card jumps and stuff like that. And they're like, Hey, do you think you can figure out the 1970s James Bond Barrel Roll stuff from that film? Yeah. I was like, absolutely. And they're like, Well, how would you figure it out? And I'm like, I've actually done all the research, because somebody else asked me about it, and so I looked into it, and I didn't know any of the mathematics of it, but I'm like, I can 100% build that ramp, and I can make it work. And once I realized how their car was built, we were using a desert buggy. And it's like, it's funny because I built the ramp for them. They did the jump, and it like, only, like, spun halfway. And I'm like, and I just brought up, hey, let me change the ramp, and I'll flip the car. And they're like, Well, no, we're gonna change the suspension. We'll do all this stuff. So we had all these stunt coordinators and all this crazy people that were super intelligent and knew all the math. And I kept telling them, hey, just let me fix. The ramp and it'll flip the car. I know what's wrong. No one would listen to me. They went through 15 jumps, and they're like, Okay, well, Nate's gonna build the ramp after this, and we'll just go, I'm the landing ramp. And I'm like, well, actually, no, I'm not. Like, what do you mean? I'm like, I'm sick of being part of stunts that you're just you're gonna hurt the driver, and I'm not gonna build something that the car is gonna wreck on when you won't even let me change the ramp? Yeah, look, what do you want to do with the ramp? Sat down with all my information. I researched all this crazy stuff. And I'm like, this is why this this, and this car was this, and their bug is this, with this wheel base and whatever. And this is what I'm seeing happening off the ramp. Well, what do you want to change? I'm like, this. And like, how long is he gonna take him? Like, 15 minutes. And they're like, what? I'm like, Yeah, I did it. They jumped the car. It spun perfectly all the way around. And they were like, holy, like, and I'm like, you know, it was simple to me, but it's like, I have this natural knack of like, even if I don't do a sport professionally or something, I can look and go, I see what's wrong. Yeah, and it's been a beautiful thing working with this guy, because he'll come to me with all these things that have never been done, and we talk about them together. There's things that he disagrees on, there's things that I disagree on. Sometimes he's right and sometimes I'm not thinking the right way. But I would say, the majority of the time.

Travis Pastrana 6:23
So I just want to bring something to the table here. And this is now. We've got to a point where we've made so many impossible things possible that people don't question us, which is really scary. It's very scary because when someone wants something done that is probably physically impossible, the first person they call is Nate, and if they want a stunt man to do it, and I'm I'm starting to get older, and they call me, and they're like, so when something for a movie needs to be done, it happens first year when something for a world's first needs to be done. And we did the triple backflip on BMX build was here the same week the triple the quadruple backflip for BMX and the triple backflip for motorcycle. Backflip for motorcycle, was both done here in the same week. All builds, all different geometries. And it's you have to have stunt people that, like, honestly, the mathematicians have injured more of my friends, and there's stuff that you can't calculate for. But if you've been in this situation and in this game for as long as we have and stayed alive, as long as we haven't seen all this stuff, we might not nail it on the first go if it's never been done. Yeah, but we know how to make it safe enough that you can get up and try it again, like landing bags were built for the first time out here now. I mean, all the Olympic teams from all over the world and snowboarding and BMX are all using these landing bags that were designed here. When a movie needs to be done, they do it here, when a world's first needs to be done, they come be done, they come here. But this place must start on land. People almost think it's mythical, like, I'll show that something's possible. He'll build the ramp. We'll figure it all out. I'll do it. I'll land it. I'll be like, All right, take it from here. And they're like, well, we can't do that. I'm like, What do you mean? You're the best in the world. I'm an old, washed up guy. And this is the ramp. This is the specs. Like, well, you don't count. It doesn't happen if it happens there, yeah? So people come here, they do it, and then they take it somewhere else. So it's real

Nate Wessel 8:08
in the biggest thing, I think, for me, and it's, it doesn't get talked about a lot, but the level of trust I have with Travis, yeah, vice versa, like with what we're designing, what we're doing. I wouldn't just do this for anybody. I would literally need to know I'm I'm having this with Banksy now, yeah, you know I have that level of trust with him, where I know, personally, he's going to give it his all. We've been in situations where I've, like, pulled him aside and said, Hey, you're in this situation. You're doing this, like, you give it your all because, and you have to have that trust, because we're doing things that you lose, literally, it's ending your career. Could possibly end your life at that point?

Travis Pastrana 8:47
I know we're not giving you a lot of chance to talk, and we're taking all these different directions. But so I knew that I was getting a knee replacement, and that was, you know, doctor say, once you start getting stuff replaced, like I knew my life was gonna be slowing down a little bit, so

Jeremy Perkins 9:02
I'm in the operating room. Should have been,

Travis Pastrana 9:05
but I want to do this trick. I saw someone. They did a nose bonk, front flip, okay. And I'm like, we can do a back flip, up to nose bonk, front flip off. And it was raining, it was cold,

Nate Wessel 9:17
but before he even goes there, he had, like, told people about this stunt, and they're like, that's like, No, it's not gonna

Travis Pastrana 9:25
work. Instead, you can do, I try to get everyone else in the world to do it, and everyone's like, it won't work.

Nate Wessel 9:29
He comes to me the year, two years prior, and he's like, Hey, Nate, what do you think about this? And I thought about my Yeah, it i that'll work, but we're gonna have to angle the platform. I just mentioned that. He goes, No, we're gonna do it this way. I'm like, Okay, well,

Travis Pastrana 9:40
then I was then I was wrong, so I broke my hand into a bag, yeah, but I got a broken hand. It's raining. It's literally, like, 30 degrees outside, like just on the edge of, like, everything's kind of frozen. When we get up and I'm like, This is my last day before I have a knee replacement. I'm like, I'm gonna do it. And I went and we were trying to do things safely. Yeah, and Nate pulls me aside because I literally got a broken hand. Yeah? He's like, like, never, like a fatherly figure. He looks at me, goes, this can work. You can do this, but if you're not going to commit, you're going to break your neck, you're going to hurt something that this. Like, look at me, and he's like,

Nate Wessel 10:18
I'm like, you either be all in because, like, the thing is, like, I've been there, meaning, like, there's stunts that I've done and, like, street gaps that I've jumped, yeah, you're not all in. Like, Well, screw it, I'm I have to get surgery on this other thing. Anyways, I'm going in. This is the, this is what we're talking about. Yeah, well, if I get hurt, who cares? I'm getting surgery on this other thing. I'll just get fixed up. Yeah, I know the mentality. I've been there. I lived it, and that's like, what I was talking about to him. I'm like, Look, you're doing this regardless of whatever you're doing, don't he keeps thinking about the back flip and where he's at. I'm like, Dude, that's happening no matter what. So you need to so literally,

Travis Pastrana 10:56
he tells me, right before I go up and I'm having when I look to spot the landing. It's making my flip not work the way it needs to, and I'm not bracing enough. So if I hit my front end, and I'm looking up here, I'm just getting like,

Nate Wessel 11:10
whipped, yeah. And if I just said, Forget about that. You do it every time you're you're so dialed, you do it every time you need to prepare yourself for the front flip, for

Travis Pastrana 11:19
the front flip. And so I took off, never looked at landing. Now, what I was scared of is, if I'm literally, if I'm three to four inches low of where, like, literally, that's it, because that's gonna land that far down. My front tire is gonna hit and I'm gonna break both hands clean off and knock myself out before the 220 pound bike lands on me and then get with flung

Nate Wessel 11:40
the whole thing's insane, but like, that's the level of trust, yeah. So he's

Travis Pastrana 11:44
like, don't look. He's like, if you want this to work, you have to do it. Don't look. Just know that you're perfect and stick it. And I'm like, well, but if, um, he's like, then don't do it. So I get stubborn. I do it once it works perfectly, I hung on with my broken hand, and I never had a chance to, like do it again. But thank you. Appreciate

Jeremy Perkins 12:09
That's wild. You know, it was kind of funny, because I got an opportunity to try to do a back flip in the foam pit. And the first time I did it, it was a new trick, yeah. Well, besides, the reality was is, you know, coming into these stunts, or coming into any of this stuff, it is trust I I'm not gonna say I didn't or did not, did or did not trust you, but the fact is, I didn't commit the first time, the second time, even though I didn't complete the the back flip, it was, it was like, give it your all. Go all in. Like, you're not gonna overshoot the foam pit. So it was cool. It was empowering, the fact that you guys have that level of trust. And you know, at that moment in time, I had a lot of trust in you to be able to

Travis Pastrana 12:49
say not anymore at that moment.

Speaker 1 12:52
But it was, I mean, it was interesting too, because like me approaching this, and we go back to ramps too, is like being a person who's looking at a ramp and going like, hey, you know, am I gonna go up this and go the complete opposite direction of the foam pit? You're like, there's no way, like, you're going to fly into the foam pit, whether you do a back flip or you just fly into it. You know? Well, it's crazy thinking from the like, I've ridden ramps my whole life, but it's crazy for somebody like say that's never rode a ramp there. Yeah, it looks like you're seriously gonna die, like there's no way the bike's gonna make whatever they're thinking Correct? Yeah, it's, it's all common sense to us, but that's like my brother in law came here and, I mean, he's rode Harley's. He doesn't ride dirt bikes, right? He pulled a, literally, pulled a back flip first track, wow. He front nose wheel case, like it was, like a spine flip. He did it still, yeah, you got to go a little faster, yeah. But his speed, he has no bad, yeah, it's like, that's the problem is, like, a person like me, I could get on a pit bike. I've done back flips on my BMX bike, and I'll muscle it around like my BMX play, yeah? My problem would be, get on the 250 and go to try to do it. Unless I listen to this man, I ain't doing a back flip because it's a totally different concept. But if I listen to him, and I completely trusted everything, he said, I could do it. Yeah, my brother in law, he did a back flip on Travis's 250 because he just was like, okay, whatever. And he just listened, no bad habits. Yeah, I mean, and that actually translates into the trades. I mean, some of the, some of the guys that I get when we we hired them, or whatever is, is like, if they came from another company, they they come with a set of habits, whether they're good or bad. But you know, somebody out of the trade school doesn't know anything. They're easily moldable, and that you can teach them the way that you want to teach, and it's hard to break some of the habit. Some of the habits if you've been doing something for 10 years, absolutely. Yeah, some

Travis Pastrana 14:45
of the hardest people to teach to do a backflip are the best riders, yeah? Like, honestly, if you if you can do a gainer on a trampoline, and you've never ridden a dirt bike before, right? My So, my wife, she's a skateboarder. She's like, you know, flying through the air, going upside down, comfortable in the air. Yeah, her first ever day on a motorcycle, barely got to the takeoff, like it was so scary. I was like, Oh, this is horrible. But as soon as she got in the air, back, flip came right around, yeah. So let's

Jeremy Perkins 15:10
talk about this place. And, you know, obviously this is you've been here since you were 16, right? And, you know, obviously this, this place was built when you were 17, and then it's just kind of been built, you know, year after year after year been a

Travis Pastrana 15:25
lifetime, literally, for a half lifetime, anyway, of just making this exactly what? So a play land, yeah, and my dad was laughing. We built the skate park 10 years ago. You know, he's like, you're 30 years old, and you just built a kids like skate park in your backyard, and now we're building the she shed. We got all kinds of stuff. It's kind of wet.

Jeremy Perkins 15:44
She shred. She shred. Sorry for my wife, but it's, it's a combination of of carpentry, welding, mechanics. I mean, you guys are doing dirt work and excavation like there is no shortage of trade work that you guys do. And you know, you guys have just gotten better year after year after year. What is outside of the she shred? What's the next big thing for Pastrana land that you two are working on go kart track, possibly a mini version of a nitro cross course? Okay? I mean,

Travis Pastrana 16:15
yeah, so that's gonna be concrete paving. We're gonna try different so everyone says you need dirt, yep. My theory is that, like polished concrete, you come in here and it's slicker than any dirt surface, but you don't have the dust, yep. So and to make lines, so usually, like, there's one line around track, right? So if the inside is polished concrete, which is super slick, and you're backing it in, looking all cool, but the outside, maybe it's not concrete, maybe it's pavement, or maybe, and then maybe on the outside of that there's a polished concrete corner, but it's vertical wall, so your full drift like, what I really want is a Speed Racer. When you watch the Speed Racer cartoon, that's what nitro cross should be

Nate Wessel 16:54
awesome. We got a turf pit bike track going in. Heard you pit bike track. We got turf for free from like, a football field that was getting torn out, yeah? And there's a couple tracks that exist right now that are turf. But, you know, with some of the weather here, we have beautiful dirt back here, yeah, sand in it, yeah, but it's great. But we get some weather this thing, you're gonna be able to ride it year round.

Travis Pastrana 17:17
My main goal right now is that it takes a crew of all of us, 24/7 to it rains almost daily, you know, hard thunderstorms, and it washes the dirt around off. So my goal is to make this as turnkey as possible. And as we get older, like my wife's, like, I want a skate vert every day. And in the winter, it's cold and snowing and kind of miserable like it is today, yeah? And in the summer, it's, it's hot, it's scorching out here. So we got an air condition. I mean, it's like, you know, we're getting older. They're getting

Nate Wessel 17:49
I mean, we'll have dirt stuff for life here. But the thing, what Travis is saying is like, Hey, let's go rip side by sides, dude. We haven't gotten to the ruts back there or whatever, the washout. It's like, okay, let's go rip the Nitro track, you know, and we're gonna be able to, like, rip the go kart track that's around the she shred. And we got so many ideas that we probably can't even, like, say, all of them, because, like, we want to build the back backyard redneck roller coaster. Yeah, that's been a dream of Travis's for the last 15 years, with

Travis Pastrana 18:20
the main goal being, I mean, you know, my wife, three time X Games gold medalist, two time world champion. I want to give her the she shred where she's up there get, I mean, legends like Tony Hawk and people that want to, actually, that are still skating, that want to come over along with the the new up and coming in with the Olympics being, escape being Olympic sport. And, yeah, kind of that's actually,

Nate Wessel 18:39
yeah, we're literally going to be able to hold like a contest here. It could be an Olympic qualifier. It could be, you know, Lindsay teaching all the up and coming girls that are, you know, prospective athletes for any country, you know, like Lindsay, such a badass skateboarder, yeah, and just a badass human, badass mom, badass everything. She has this place that we're all going to have fun at. We're going to have a basketball court and a pickleball court, and it's going to have Pastrana rules on that stuff. And we have a rehabilitation center going in this thing with every apparatus that we need to rehabilitate his knee and his hip and and rehabilitate all of us. Yeah, we're all like these older athletes that really have gone through a lot of trauma to stay and be where we're at. You know, we

Travis Pastrana 19:21
want to try to be as fit and healthy as we possibly can for as long as possible, and do with family friends. And, you know, we got Walter Reed right down the road. We got a lot of sponsors, like black rifle that that do a lot with veterans. And yeah, for me, it's, I still want to win everything we do, but it's less about winning and more about just getting everyone involved and just being surrounded with people that are super passionate, and I don't know why we're still passionate about all this stuff, because

Nate Wessel 19:44
he still wants to beat me at shuffleboard. You played me one time twice. Actually, I got $2

Travis Pastrana 19:50
off you, one of my favorite bills. I don't know if we can really talk about this, but I was like, hey, I want to do a flare on a dirt bike. So Wes. Was like, well, we. We got an 18 foot quarter pipe out there with, like, yeah, like two feet of bird, or whatever was on it, two and a half feet. And I was like, oh, okay, well, the suspension, It's too, too much suspension. You know, it's gonna bounce me off, so I kind of hit it a couple times, half assed. He's like, dude, our camera guy could go higher than that. And then sure, sure,

Nate Wessel 20:15
if he does, he does it on a BMX. He doesn't flare, yeah. And Travis is having these problems, gets the suspension on his bike, still, tries it again. So

Travis Pastrana 20:24
suspension, I'd sent it off to, like, the factory zoo guy, I have four inches suspension travels to, it was a suspension, but it

Jeremy Perkins 20:31
made four inches of suspension travel, right? Yeah, it's like, with

Nate Wessel 20:35
anything we do, it's a process. You know? It's not only like the mechanical process. So like, Hubert's working on stuff and cranking right stuff and whatever and everything's a process. Like, we might have built something for BMX and skateboarding, but Travis, like, everything's rideable, right? All of it, yeah. And it's like, what do we need to manipulate and change? And like, hands on, I'm here. So whatever needs to happen, you bust the drills and saws and welders out, and we do it. So

Travis Pastrana 20:58
a lot of the times it just comes down to skill. It comes down to a person's ability to just overcome the obstacles and make it happen. Yeah, but when you're doing some for the first time, you're not sure if it's lack of skill or lack of ramp or lack of equipment, so we kind of work everything at the same time. And Nate was about 100% sure that I could have flared on the, you know, the quarter it was, but I wasn't 100% sure. And is that as the person doing the trick, if you're not 100% sure? So I was like, could you just build me a little extension? He's like, you just need balls. I was like, just, okay, maybe, but just build me extension. And

Nate Wessel 21:32
so I built this extension. And, like, he hadn't seen it yet. And like, Hey, I got your extension. Did it actually have balls? It was a and balls. And he like, I was like, Hey, I got your extension. What do you think the camera pans up to it, and it pans back to us, and he looks at me, goes,

Travis Pastrana 21:49
it was, it actually was pretty funny. We didn't use it because

Nate Wessel 21:51
that's like, you know, I have an art background. That's what I did in college. Artists in college, graduated with bachelor of science and in computer art, whatever. And so I have this, like, artistic mind, yeah, so even in all of my builds and like, how I create stuff, it's not just, like, cutting plywood to me, right? It's like, okay, I'm gonna make this extension. And I just laugh, because my brain never shuts off when I'm building or working or the process of what we do, and I'm like, and I like, literally, I was about to cut the extension, like I'm

Travis Pastrana 22:24
making it was a curve as well because, so I go up on this and the first time I jump in, he's like, hit it harder. He's like, You got it. So I do this flare, and I land the first time, and I kind of over rotate a little bit, and I get up, and it was like, the best one he's done? I was like, yeah, it worked, yeah. And they definitely would have worked. And the next time this one he's done, got it the best extension. So I land, and I knock myself out. And Nate is some snoring on the ground, no shit, but I'm snoring. And Nate comes down. He's like, hey, hey, buddy. Hey, buddy. I've,

Nate Wessel 23:04
you know, over the period that I've been Pro and all, I've been around a lot of Kos, lot of, yeah, all that stuff. So, you know, I just went through, like, the process of, like, keep talking, you know, like, right, hey, don't move, whatever. What's up, buddy? You okay? And just patting his back, and just went through that whole process, and it sucked.

Travis Pastrana 23:24
Yeah, so we're, we're pretty much doctors, you know, we haven't had any degrees. Well,

Jeremy Perkins 23:29
it was to that point, it was wild, hearing your story last time I was here about challenging the doctors on your internal bleeding. That was, that was wild. And you know, a lot of people, again, you know, you have a better understanding for all things, you know, being in the trades. And the problem is with me, it was like, the pain tolerance, yeah, they just were like, there's no way that this dude's either on something. And I've never taken a drug in my life, right? And I'm sitting there, like telling him pretty much what's wrong. I don't know exactly what's wrong? But yeah, I'm like, Yeah, this is real bad. And they're just like, whatever. And it was like, almost game over for me, yeah, and

Travis Pastrana 24:06
similar, like, you can diagnose pretty much everything. So I landed at a base jump crash, and I landed, and I got to my knees, and as I got to my knees, I felt all of my pelvis just shift around, and my stomach started to get warm. And the medics ran over and they said, You okay? I'm like, I'm fine, but I gotta get the hospital. I shattered my pelvis, and I'm bleeding out. And the lady's like, Okay, well, just roll to your back, and, you know the medic, and she was super nice, yeah? And I'm like, no, like, I'm definitely, I'm bleeding out. And she's like, well, the doctors will tell you what, you know, what's wrong? We get there, and they got me to the hospital pretty quick and everything. So it was funny, because that same medic, that same medic came back the next day and she goes, Hey, I really didn't believe you when you were saying that, but yes, you shattered your pelvis and you were bleeding out. I ended up getting six blood transfusions at the hospital and had surgery that next day. She goes, you also. Broke your back, you split your tailbone down the middle, and you tore your urethra. So you were shy. You didn't, you didn't diagnose everything. So, you know, we're not always 100% but I can give you a pretty good analysis of what's going on. I can do it in a way that you would think, yeah, like, collarbone. I was like, ah, yeah, I brought my collarbone. Like, you sure? I'm like, well, it's through the skin that's pretty, pretty positive. I can see it. So what else is done? So

Jeremy Perkins 25:24
one thing I learned when I was working under a welder. This guy was this guy had 40 plus years in the in the trades as a welder. Awesome dude. Love the sauce. But anyway,

Travis Pastrana 25:37
you're better pyramid. I just got one.

Jeremy Perkins 25:41
So it was interesting. When I started welding, he told me that, you know, it's literally 1520 minutes of, you know, laying the bead, but it's all in prep work, and it's all in finish everything, prep work. And, you know, all I wanted to do was weld. And he's like, no, no, no. It's like getting into an excavator. It's like, you got to learn how to the machine. You got to learn all about the machine before you get in and operate. But here it's probably the same thing, like it takes you possibly 1520 minutes to do, to execute that that jump. But how much time do you guys spend on building time, really, unlike building out jumps and no, what he said is true. It's a lifetime, because we wouldn't be able to do what we do right now without the 150 other things that we did coming up to it. So it's like hundreds of hours, 1000s and 1000s and 1000s. So that Red Bull jump that you did, obviously, you went out and built it right? And then which Red Bull jump? I don't Oh, which skyline? Yeah, the one that it was in France, yes, yeah, Skyline, so, but that was, like, you had to be, obviously, there's the the lead up time, but you built it. And funny thing about Skylines, when I got an interview on it, like nobody had asked me, I didn't even think about it. They're like, Well, how did, how the hell did you think of designing this, really, these are designs from 10 years before that nobody would let me do. And I would pitch, like, one of them, they were like, no, no. No one's ever done that. I'm like, exactly, let's do it. Yeah. They're like, No, it's too gnarly. So I would keep pitching these things. And that was just ideas I had for 10 years prior to the contest, right? And I did it, and Red Bull's like, hell yeah, we want, we want something big and monumental. I'm like, Yeah, I got it easy, whatever thought of it, but walk me through the setup time and then the breakdown time. It was a short window, correct? Um, it was crazy, because, like, there's the guys that were on the crew. We had two crews running for setup time. We had did how many guys on a crew? Let's see. We had, I think, five Americans and we had like 11 Germans. Okay, so I don't know. Do the math, what's that together? I'm Team 16. I got 16 guys. You said, okay, like I literally, my brain just doesn't go I don't care, like, I counted on my fingers, because, like, my brain, they're there we got so we had like, two crews running, so we split it that in half, but I was staying up for both of them. Okay, so everything we were doing doesn't

Travis Pastrana 28:12
need sleep. And the interesting thing about Nate, I mean, he probably needs sleep, but he doesn't sleep. He time you can sleep when you're down. No time. Doesn't so if you make a living at a hobby, yeah, you have to work so many more hours. But it's not work because you're in it. Nate can go two weeks, I shit you not. I've seen him do it two weeks with like, two hours of sleep a night maximum, sometimes just 24 hours straight times. And he'll get done the two weeks and not really know that he forgot to eat for a full day, that he just keep that

Jeremy Perkins 28:43
figure. He No,

Nate Wessel 28:45
I'm kind of overweight right now.

Travis Pastrana 28:50
He just goes in, and that's the passion, yeah, you can't do there's not enough money in the world for like, if you counted the hours that it takes to do this, the jobs that Nate does, you're waking half of minimum wage. Yeah.

Nate Wessel 29:06
Think people understand, like, what he's talking about, because it's the truth. It's like you and for

Travis Pastrana 29:10
the riders, though, the amount of injury and the stuff that you go through, it's not worth any amount of money, but I would pay every dime and Nate, it's not. If you think of like, Oh, I'm gonna make money and I'm gonna be famous and I'm gonna do cool No, it has to be, I am going to do cool stuff, no matter if it kills all over the game, no matter how much it costs, yeah,

Nate Wessel 29:30
and it's, it's the passion. So, like, when I was on that Skylines job, you know, I didn't want it to fail. Want everything to be successful. And it's not just the contracts you're signing. You're signing a contract like, hey, this has to happen. If you screw up, you owe us some 2 million bucks or whatever it is, really, yeah, I signed contracts like that for X Games. Like, if you screw something up, and the event doesn't happen, and it's a live, covered thing that has to happen at this time, you're screwed when you don't get it done. Yeah? So it's like, Hey, I wonder you don't sleep at night. You're Yeah. That's not it. You know, it's just like, my brain won't shut off. I mean, I tried to sleep, and I just, I couldn't, yeah, you know, I'm like, Oh, I guess I'll stay up, and I'm just gonna make sure this happens. Yeah, my crew could have handled it 100% if I had to, like, I don't know, had a heart attack on the job. The job's still happening. Yeah, it's not like, it's like, an end right there. Yeah, it just might not happen exactly how I wanted it to happen, but it's still gonna

Travis Pastrana 30:19
go. It's crazy. So the difference between having someone like Nate and having the best at a trade that doesn't, that hasn't been there, that hasn't written, that hasn't seen all this stuff, is that it's just a nuance. It's a fraction of something. It's something that you can write. You can do it on CAD you can write everything up. And there's that in person, thing that is not detectable by any AI yet. I'm sure they're getting there. But at the moment, you have to visually see it. I had a jump, for example, everything was built right. It looked right. And I just was coming at the jump, and I thought, it's wrong. And I looked at it from the side, and I had one of my friends, like, no, it's perfect. I'm like, it is perfect. All the things added up, and there I was, fast, the bike would go flying through the air on 150 foot jump. No bike blow me. And I was like, You know what? My gut was, right? And I had a little smile, because I was in the air for six seconds before I hit the ground. And then I realized I can't run 75 miles an hour, and I can't drop from five stories. And then I woke up and my season was done. So everyone at the end of the day, they see someone do a son, they see me do something, they're like, Oh, that was so great, yes, but the process behind anything that you do, you have to have a team with anything. And so just for instance, Josh Ian triple backflip. And everyone's like, it can't be done, because you go through stages where you're like, the best in the world are here. This is the best ramp that we have. And it's like, okay, what are we missing? And when everyone says it can't be done, that's when Nate smiles, and that's when Nate forgets to sleep.

Nate Wessel 31:57
And the funny thing about this, the process we went through. We figured it all out. Yeah, I told Travis, like, straight up when we did this, I'm like, you know, like, because we kept changing the ramp, figuring things out, those changes help, for sure, yeah. But I'm like, You got to give some of these ramps a chance and learn the ramp, because you keep hitting. It very similar. And he was hitting, he won't really wanted to do this on a two stroke, like, super bad. The four stroke was the bike to do it on. But hate when that's right. But what I was very right about, I said, you know, we're gonna be able to take we could do this ramp at half the size or 30% less, and it's gonna work. And he goes, No, I disagree, yeah.

Travis Pastrana 32:34
And now they're getting better. The bikes are getting lighter, they're getting older.

Nate Wessel 32:38
And it's literally, yes, you can. There's higher consequences on some of that, because you can push something and Trav and I are both right. It's not that I was trying to prove him wrong or anything. I just saw what we were doing. I knew things could happen, but you can max something out, where you're geeing out your suspension, and a lot can go wrong at that point. So the things that we did, and it was Travis's vision, it's almost like Matt Hoffman's vision, because, like, hey, let's increase this, and we'll do this, and this is going to be safer and all these different things. You're gonna have the airtime and all this. So yes, you can do it on a smaller ramp, but there's higher consequences, but

Travis Pastrana 33:18
it's also so my biggest thing with having Nate. So, for instance, the double backflip, 360 we're looking at this. We I worked on this trick. So I started on a bicycle with, they call it the Aussie roll, which sucks as a guy did it on a scooter, who was Australian, but anyway, dirt bike. But so in 2002 I did my first Aussie roll on a mountain bike, just into the into foam pit, right? Not, not real consequence, in 2014 I did my first Aussie roll to a landing came the first person on a mountain bike to ever do like a an Aussie roll. And in 2017 we're out here, and everyone said it wouldn't work on a dirt bike. They're like the gyro. It's just it will not work. And Nate's out there working. He's like, this ramp will work. And I couldn't even try it to the the airbag, because the way it was coming around. I'm like, it's gonna nose in. I'm gonna, like, have internal bleeding. I mean, it's gonna be bad. And Nate's like, Absolutely, you got it. And it took that. So I land the first time I hit so hard, I concussed myself. I might have pooped my pants. I said, poop in my pants. Little bit. I hit it again with poop my pants. I got my shoulder. So I had my shoulder comes in and out pretty easily. So dislocated, pulled it back in, and I'm sitting there with poop my pants. Just dislocated my shoulder. My wife's like, literally, there's 10 people here. Yeah, she goes, You're there's no money on the line. You're gonna freaking kill yourself. You got poo in your pants. Like, what are you doing? And this kid that was, he qualified for the Olympics as number one, yeah, as a joke, as a hobby. Trevor, Jacob, he's a super talent. And he goes, it's a double cork, 1080, man. He goes, Ian. Don't, don't go back to like, if you go back, you know you're never coming back. I was like, yeah. He's like, you're gonna do it. I was like, I think I can do he's like, No, are you gonna do it? And same thing that Nate told me the other time. He's like, Look, you can't check. And the exact same thing, he's like, You are gonna come around perfectly. Nose down. I see what you see? Yeah? But if you check the landing to make sure that it's right. You're not gonna get around. He's like, You need everything that you have. And it's not just like a triple backflip, where it's one pull, it's one pull backwards, like a triple back, it's a pull sideways, and then it's another pullback again. He goes. You have to hit these three motions at the exact moment without hesitation, or you're going to break your neck. You got lucky that you're sitting there with poo in your pants, and you just had a concussion, dislocated shoulder. And I know you have all that still going on right now, but you have adrenaline, yeah, so get your sissy butt back up the hill and freaking commit. And sometimes you need that now, it could have still gone wrong, and I could have, but I didn't check, and I just went with it, but and it landed, yeah, and I'm still, to this day, the only person on dirt bike yet. I mean, get it,

Nate Wessel 36:04
I don't care what anybody says, That's the craziest that's ever happened in action sports. That's wild.

Travis Pastrana 36:09
But the key is, you need someone that has faith in the ramp, that can see what things are doing, that you I can feel it, but I can't see it, to be like, Yes, I can see this working. You have to have people around you to when you're doing something that's never been done, because when you're doing something that's been done, you simply like, it's easy to replicate success, yeah, but it is damn hard to be the first person to do it, and that's why Nate is the when someone is doing something that can't be done, they hire Nate. Hell

Jeremy Perkins 36:39
yeah. Hell yeah. All right. And so the last question I want to bring up before we wrap this whole thing up is channel 199 right? This is a new endeavor for you, and kind of want to get, you know, a quick background on on the thesis behind it. And then, you know what? What are some big things to come in the future? And what do you guys kind of leveling up to? Well,

Travis Pastrana 37:02
I'll start this from the beginning. Brian Deegan, you know, we had a huge rivalry, not the same characters at all, you know, but Deegan, he always came to me when I was younger, yeah. He was like, dude, Metallica, that's metal militia. It's my thing. He goes, You have a brand. Make it your brand. Okay? It's somebody else's brand, and for me, like Nitro Circus, I was just really happy to be able to do cool stuff. Yeah, and was the, the figurehead of it. But I didn't want any responsibilities. I didn't want I didn't want to deal with cameras, I didn't want to deal with payroll, I didn't want to deal with travel. I didn't want it. I didn't want to, like, I just want to do really cool stuff. Yeah, and it was awesome. And now Dana White and that whole crew and they they're making great things, and it's the best of the best of the best has become something really cool. But even Ken Block, the late great Ken Block, he started Hoon again. He's like, man, and he kept telling me. He's like, Dude, I hire my friends, yeah, to film. We know all the film crew. We know all these people. He goes, I hire my friends to do the ramps. I hire my friends to build the cars. He's like, when you really want your family around and you're good enough to do stuff that no one else can do with people that are the most talented people in the world. He's like, bring that family together. And I really took that to heart. And now with my wife, you know, with my kids, with my friends, we're all getting older. Hell yeah. And I said, Look, I want to have fun home. And with that, we our friends are some of the best production people in the entire world. We can make anything happen. We can build any ramps. We can build any dirt works, anything. And channel 199 is my attempt to basically pull all my friends and all my family so my kids can see the passion and the hard work that it takes to do amazing things. And yeah, we'll have Olympians come to the house, and we'll have people that are successful in many different ways, but this is going to be a place that we can have so much fun, and we can test our creativity and build stuff that probably shouldn't be built for any reason. We're going to launch sea news through the air. We're all cliffs.

Nate Wessel 39:00
That's like, one of my favorites. It's one of my favorite builds, you know, to Travis's point, with channel 109, when this thing started, it's, I was out with my two daughters over at his place. Yeah, he had these little boats with some motors on it. And they're like, they're cool, but I'm like, Man, these are kind of slow, you know. And I'm like, this ain't Travis's style, yo, you're getting a jet boat. Like, anytime soon, he's like, I'm actually having one build right now. That night, I couldn't sleep. That's one of those nights, you know. And the next day, I'm like, Travis, I couldn't sleep last night. He's like, Oh, yeah. Why? I'm like, I thought about a stunt we can do with the jet boat. He's like, what you got? And I'm like, well, it might break your jet boat. That's not even done yet. And he goes, Okay, what do you got? And I'm like, Well, that wasn't a yes or no. Like, well, you know, the foam pit, super iconic here. And, like, there's so many crazy things that have happened. Street bike Tommy became street bike. Tom, right, because of the foam pit? Yeah. I. Yeah. And, you know, people going right, don't turn right, and all this stuff, dude. I'm like, how crazy would it be if we jumped your jet boat into the foam pit? And he's like, Well, how are we gonna do that? I'm like, don't worry. I'm gonna build a canal. He goes, Okay, yes. And I'm sitting there going, he just said, Yes. What did

Travis Pastrana 40:19
you use? Flex Seal? What did you use? Like, no, seriously.

Nate Wessel 40:26
He's like, No, really, how you gonna do this? We're gonna do it. I'm like, I don't know. You know those infomercials you see with the flex shield?

Travis Pastrana 40:32
I'm

Nate Wessel 40:35
like, let's, let's, like, just use it. Who cares if it works or not? Really, it leaked a little, but it's like, Dude a wood canal, and we sealed it and flex sealed it, but we ended up not jumping into the foam pit, because, like, we went and tested the boat. Yeah, on time. So we go out, me and Trevor piranha go out, and soon as we got the thing, like going, because it like, takes a second to get on plane. Yeah, it's got a supercharger, and it is violent, and you're just like, holy, like, we're not I like, we're gonna over jump the pit, probably like I did, because one time it was a little bit weird. It didn't get up on plane, like I might. We got to jump into the airbag. So let's do that. We so we built the canal and set up the airbag, and we're like, Yeah, let's try this. It was nuts, dude. So

Travis Pastrana 41:29
he lands, he downsides the back of the bag, which would have broken the end of the foam

Nate Wessel 41:32
pit. Oh, yeah. Oh, it was beautiful. It was awesome. So that's what the channel is about. Like, dreaming of these ideas, like I was in here one day, and he's like, Nate, what are you doing? I'm like, my homies from never summer snowboards sent me a bunch of boards that were gonna get destroyed because they're ruined in the process of making them. And he's like, Well, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm building a snowboard ramp. What summer, you know? And I was like, Don't worry, you know? And that's a I mean, it's just like, literally thinking of something one night and going, we're creating it the next day. But

Travis Pastrana 42:05
I call it redneck ingenuity, and I know that way too long. But like, everyone's like, Oh, it must be nice. I'm like, Dude, we just jumped 160 feet with a car that we bought on the side of the street for $200 $50 in to get it running and then put it for $300 back to the savage yard. We made for the dollars. What do you mean? Must be nice. And I built

Nate Wessel 42:25
a snowboard ramp. It cost $100 only because I got all the snowboards for free connections. But these boards were getting they they were like, unsafe boards. Like, hey, they grind at this one too much the edge. Like, it's, they can't even sell it. They can't give it away for a blend board. I'm like, No, I'm, I'm going to build a ramp out of that scores. That's cool. So I'm basically made unridable snowboards rideable. But it's like, it's just cool. It's like, we're, it's not, must be nice. Yeah, there are definitely things that we have connections with, and we have, I mean, Travis has, like, definitely some toys, but guess what? His friends are building these toys for him. Yeah, we put the work and the effort and the energy and everything into it come up with these ideas around

Travis Pastrana 43:09
Steve, throw to that. Now that was that was for

Jeremy Perkins 43:12
free, Aladdin, Steve was for free. And it was an idea that, like, I just, like, randomly came up with, and was like, this would be sick, get him, buy the Aladdin costume on Amazon. Yeah, there's a genie. There's a genie. Freaking Hell yeah. All right, so we're wrapping this up. Give you guys a chance to shout on anything or plug where you guys are at

Travis Pastrana 43:36
To be honest, like, hey, let's take a step back and just Brunt boots. So what was really cool, started talking to Brunt and Hubert, everyone's favorite redneck, everybody. He been wearing Brunt for quite a while, and we started talking like we're in an awesome position to be, where none of us, we don't take sponsorship or even associate really, with anyone that that we don't really use a lot. Like, I've never been a fan of the steel toed shoes and our boots since I was a kid and just had cold I always had cold toes. I don't know, maybe I'm a sissy. Like, that's why I wore hand guards on the dirt bike. I like my fingers getting cold and hurt. That's your style, bro. That's where he draws a lot broken hands and cold fingers, man. So it's cool with the brunt toe. Like, I've just started wearing those, and I'm so freaking excited. I'm like, where was I on the composite toe? Like, this is, they're so comfortable. And just really enjoy having boots, yeah. Like, I've always kind of like, my ankles SUCK MY and everything, and usually I'm just wearing them. My wife always like, Oh, you're only using the, you know, plus 40 dad shoes. I'm like, I'm plus 40, and I'm a dad. I fit all the categories, but these like my knees, my back, everything feels good. I just got hip replacement, knee replacement. So shout out to brown boots. If you like comfortable stuff. You freaking give him a shot.

Nate Wessel 44:53
I mean, seriously, I liked how organically all this happened, because I didn't even know Hubert was talking to brunt. I. I got hit up on Instagram, on a DM like, Hey, can we send you some boots? I'm like, Yeah, I'm pretty picky about boots because I got these, you know, hardware in my leg and all this stuff. And I was like, Yeah, I'll try some. But honestly, you know, it's really tough for me because I'll go in and try, like, multiple pairs of boots, and they don't, they just can't do it. I was like, send them to me, and I'll let you know honestly, what you in the like, Yeah, you don't need to post anything. I'm like, Cool. So they sent them to me, and I ended up really liking them. I was like, holy, this is there's actually another boot I can wear. And I was stoked. And all of a sudden, Brunt came on board after all that. So we had already basically done the leg work of wearing all the stuff, and they were so sick, you know? And I use them every day. So

Travis Pastrana 45:38
even to that, I mean, Brunt has where, you know, you wear them. I forget it was 4060, days, something, you don't like them. You 30 days. 30 days, yeah, send them back. And I think that's like, you know, for someone like piranha prana is like, yeah, like, I'm going to wear these boots. And that's a really cool but that's something that Brunt really reached out to a lot of people in our right kind of in our space. And was like, try the boots. And everyone's like, no, he's the best we've ever worn. They're awesome. That's kind of cool. So it's good anyway. Sorry not to make a sales pitch. No,

Jeremy Perkins 46:07
no. I mean, it's absolutely humbling. You know, I came on with this company for that specific reason. It's, you know, it's a life blood. It's, you know, something that we don't want to worry about when we're on the trades. We we want to figure out, you know, the ramps, everything you know, the last thing we need to worry about is the clothing and the and the boots that we're wearing. So as long as that's not bothering you, we're good. All right. Fuck

Travis Pastrana 46:33
yeah. Check out channel 199 absolutely doing some fun stuff.