Love Upstream Watch Online
Karri Weston
Michael: I think you should tell me that first date story that you're saying is so good. I'm guessing it's funny. And, I also think it will set you up nicely to be the guide for the rest of these stories. We're gonna tell today about love and you know, it's going to make listeners trust you. So, um, can we do it that way?
Paddy: Oh, my gosh, Mike, you softie. I'm so glad you asked. Okay. Sorry. Had to. It's two years ago. It's the height of the COVID panic days. Right. And even though Carly and I live in this extra small mountain town and have 95 bajillion friends in common, we connect over Hinge.
Paddy: Yes, I get, yeah. Hey, I'm a millennial. What do you want me to do? Okay. So we decided that our first date should be a socially distanced dog walk. Right. It's kind of awkward at first because we're trying to stay like six feet apart. And, we're kind of nervous, but then we'd just like to drift in and kind of melt into this like, amazing conversation about our mountain experiences about like how we want to have a family and want to set up roots and like marriage and all of this great stuff.
And all of a sudden, like, this short little walk turns into like miles and miles and hours and hours. So it's getting dark. I walk Carly home after this wonderful first date. And what do I do after an epic first date? Mike, I wave goodbye from six feet away.
And you know, like so long that I actually have to use the light on my cell phone to like illuminate our path back to the trailhead and we're holding hands and we're walking. And this is where I turn into a nervous horse's ass, even though we've just been like, you know, tongue punching each other's molars for the last night, two and a half hours or something, I can't stop thinking about our hands touching and my need to like douse myself in hand sanitizer.
Michael: Yeah. All right. A nice story now you get to introduce us other people with, uh, wilder, tales of falling in love outdoors. And why they think there might be something about being out there that made it happen.
Katy: He's a great cook. He is from South Africa. So I'm not sure if you're familiar with South African cuisine, but they really love a good braai, which is a, like, a barbecue. So oftentimes, especially in summer, his beard has this great braai smell to it. And I really, really appreciate that.
Paddy: That is Katy Baker talking about her shiny beaux hunk, Mike. In addition to maintaining his glorious beard, Mike runs ultra marathons. And so does Katy. And their shared love of running unreasonable distances is how they met.
In 2019, Katy was in the midst of a personal renaissance: she quit her job in New Zealand, sold her home, and used her savings to travel open endedly. That September, she was in Gressoney-Saint-Jean, a very small town in Northern Italy, for the Ultra Tour de Monte Rosa 100k race. But on the morning of the run, snow was stacking up on the course, threatening to cancel it. Katy, along with all the other runners who were staying in the same hotel, waited together for word on the race.
Mike probably stood out to me because he was kind of quietly spoken, but when he did have something to say, he was kind of a person that you'd listened to because what he had to say was interesting and valuable and, you know, thoughtful.
And basically all of us had traveled to Italy specifically for this race. And, you know, it's a 100K. So a lot of training had gone into it. We're all really keen to be out there running. We got the email confirming that the race was not happening. So that was when plan B was created.
Paddy: Charlie suggested that Katy, Mike, and Dana, one of the gals from the States, all head to his home in Chamonix. They'd spend the night there, wake early the next morning, drive 30 minutes to Courmayeur, Italy, and run the roughly 60 miles back to Chamonix. Everyone was game.
Michael: Their route, which included some 18,000 vertical feet of climbing, was in fact quite brutal. Sure, the mountaintop restaurants serving delicious sammiches and cappuccinos helped. But, Katy says it was Mike that made the day enjoyable.
Paddy: Patient and supportive. Katy had been tracking their distance during the run and when they arrived at Charlie's apartment in Chamonix her watch read 98.5 kilometers. So, absurd as it was, Katy started running up and down the road until she passed the 100k mark. Rather than go inside, gorge on food, and pass out, Mike stayed with Katy and cheered her on. So, of course, Katy asked him out on the ultimate ultra-runner first date ever.
So, we all went out for breakfast together and lunch and dinner and things. And, because Mike and I are introverted people, sometimes a little bit of social lubrication and the way of alcohol can, can kind of, you know, help to, um, to push a relationship along if I can put it that way.
Paddy: Mike couldn't make it to Slovenia, but he joined Katy in the Dolomites a few days later. And even though Katy did not think any kind of long-term relationship would materialize with Mike, since he lived in South Africa and she lived out of suitcase at that point, well, things happened.
Paddy: Five weeks after meeting, Katy and Mike were living together in South Africa. And then Mike went with Katy back home to New Zealand for Christmas, where he met her family and paced her for her first 100 mile ultra marathon. Then the pandemic hit and they figured out extending work visas and remote work and how many laps around the backyard would make up a sufficient run.
Today, Mike and Katy's nomadic love affair has them in Canada, where Mike got a job and Katy was granted a visa after proving the validity of their relationship to the Canadian government through shared AirBnB receipts and--get this--screenshots of their Strava accounts showing their joint runs.
While all this might seem both insanely romantic and completely bonkers, Katy says that that first group run they did together in Chamonix opened up possibilities that don't exist when you meet someone in a club.
Katy: Running a 100K kind of breaks you down, or it does for me anyway. You can't fake your personality when you're 95 Ks into a run. Like if you're, you know, you are who you are and when you see someone, when they're at their most tired and hungry and they're in pain, I think there is an element of seeing kind of their core self.
And. You know, I wasn't dressed up in my nice clothes and I didn't have makeup on and my hair or pretty like I'm bright red in the face and I'm sweaty and my hair's a mess and that's what I'm like most of the time. So it's, no point in like getting some kind of fake view of, you know, oh, she cleans up real nice. Well I might do, but I don't do that most of the time.
Paddy: Not all relationships forged in the outdoors start off like adventurous fairy tales. Consider the case of mountaineer Erin Parisi. Erin has been in the news lately for her attempt to be the first trans woman to climb the highest peak on every continent, the so-called Seven Summits. So far, she's stood atop 5 of them. But while Erin is a wiz at the planning and logistics it takes to execute lofty goals, her romantic talents are, well...
In the Fall of 2018, Erin was on mandatory vocal rest after throat surgery. Some friends dragged her out to a bar in Denver to curb her post surgery blues and that is when Erin met Allison. Sort of. Since her doctor said no talking, Erin could only give a head nod and a little wave, which came off as a lot rude.
Erin: We sat there for the rest of the night and we just kind of like traded notes. And I really didn't think that she was interested in a relationship. I was super committed to climbing and, you know, I was at that place we all talk about where, you know, you don't, you're not in a relationship and you, and you don't even want to be in a relationship.
She asked me out and I still don't get it. And she sends me a Facebook message cause she doesn't have my phone number. And I had said no, a couple of days before that I couldn't hang out with the friends and she was going to be there.
Paddy: When their friends left, Allison very bluntly told Erin that she was interested. They had a good laugh about the entire thing. And a few more dinner dates and a few more weeks later, Erin and Allsion went on a ski date to Arapahoe Basin, a resort about 60 miles west of Denver. The snow was, uuuumm, challenging
I say all the wrong things, I guess. And that's what you get for dating somebody that is like by themselves out climbing big hills all the time, just oblivious and not knowing what to say when there's an actual physical person in front of their face.
Paddy: That night at the party when Allison recounted their seemingly awful day, everyone had a real big laugh, including Erin. Because that's what happens, right? A painful misadventure usually turns into a funny event with a little space, some perspective, and community.
Erin: My goal with my climbs is always to feel closer to people. And that's why I chose like expedition mountaineering, where it's, it's really a goal of being attached to a rope and being, you know, attached to your team and trusting your team. And when you're trans or different, it's hard to trust other people or when you've got something that's in your background that makes you feel unlovable, it's hard to trust other people. And, I think that as I grew and I found my ability to get back on a rope team and take risks and be vulnerable and trust other people, that probably contributed to the point at which Alison and I met.
Leah McDowell: For sure we could tell something was going on when we reached the takeout. So we pull up. We see the river. My friends are there. And we can't see any blue sky. It's covered with smoke and there is, yeah, ash falling from the sky and like landing in the parking lot. So we're pretty certain, this isn't just some type of brush burn.
Paddy: That is Leah McDowell talking about the start of kayak adventure back in April of 2008 on the French Broad River, just outside of Asheville, North Carolina. She was with a dude named Corey that she'd just met the night before at a Barrack The Vote concert. They both were avid kayakers so, after chatting for a bit, they made plans to paddle the following day after work.
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