Skateboarding Across America with Chad Caruso

0:03On March 23rd, 2023, Chad Caruso hopped on a skateboard in Venice Beach, California and started riding. His goal was to skate all the way across the country. Along the way, Chad skated through the desert, over mountain ranges, and across the Great Plains. He pushed through rain, extreme heat, and strong headwinds. After 57 days, Chad arrived in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and set a Guinness World Record for the fastest crossing of America on a skateboard. It was kind of hard not to cry, skating up to the finish line. 25 years of just all the falling and pain and everyone telling me to quit skateboarding and I dropped out of high school and not having a job.

0:49It felt like all of that like culminating. Chad grew up on Long Island and has been skateboarding since he was 14 years old. He stuck with the sport through some major setbacks, including injury and addiction. It took blood, sweat, and tears for Chad to overcome these challenges and to get to the point where he could ride across the country. But it ended up being the most fulfilling adventure of his life. I'm Shelby Stanger, and this is Wild Ideas Worth Living, an REI Co-op Studios production presented by Capital One and the REI Co-op MasterCard.

1:27Chad Caruso, welcome to Wild Ideas Worth Living. I'm so excited to talk to a skateboarder. Thanks for having me on. A Guinness record-breaking skateboarder. So how did you get into skateboarding? And when you say, okay, so there's lots of different types of skateboarding. What skateboarding do you prefer? Like street skating, going to a park, skating as a way of transport? Yeah, when I first started skating, it was only tricks, you know, street skating, all that stuff. And I'd throw myself downstairs and be filming videos with my friends. so I did that for I don't know 15-20 years then I had an injury I tore my ACL and PCL in my left knee I was doing something very easy just kind of warming up fell awkwardly and that kind of changed the whole trajectory of my life I you know started drinking more and just going down more of like a negative path so what happened it sounds like this was a little bit of a destructive period of your life.

2:27Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, I think it started because you get put on pain medication after a surgery normally, you know, so that kind of like hooked me into that world a little bit. And then yeah, just kept running it like into the ground till I was 29. And then I got a DWI, got another one, like hurting the people around me and stuff, putting them in bad situations. That's when I knew I had to change. Thank you for sharing that. So what made you kind of get sober? Like, what was that like? Was it skateboarding? Is that when you had your wild idea? Yeah, I mean, I had a wild idea then. So the idea was like, I need to replace drinking with something exciting.

3:07So I was like, I'm gonna bring back skating into my life and start a YouTube channel. And I just wanted to shift my life to doing positive things. So I'm like, I'm going to put all the information I've ever learned skating online. And I just kept doing that for years just to stay sober and stay focused. And is this how you fund your life as well as your full-time job? No. Well, so when I first got sober, I made a choice to become a server, which I had never done either. But I just wanted the time to be able to skate during the day. So that was a whole other struggle. Nobody wanted to hire me because I had no experience, a little rough around the edges still.

3:45so I started at 29 as a to-go person just packing food in the boxes did that for a year and just like slowly climbed my way up out of the hole so how let's talk about that I know we're supposed to talk about skateboarding but I'm curious how did you get over to tell them about this well I mean I just tried to shift my perspective as everything was a learning experience so instead of shying away from the pain and drowning it out with like alcohol or drugs or whatever I would face it and try to learn. So the uncomfortable feeling of talking in public at the restaurant, I tried to face that and like embrace it, get better at like speaking more clearly, cursing less.

4:26Just like, oh yeah, I mean. Italian New Yorker. Yeah, exactly. Who would have thunk it? No. So I had, you know, and then also YouTube helped with that too, because I'm putting myself out there and then I'm watching it back and I'm seeing little kids copy me, I'm like, oh, you got to quit smoking. You got to stop cursing. Like, you know, and it just made me become more conscious of everything I was doing. Oh, good for you, Chad. Yeah.

4:56Chad took a less conventional approach to sobriety. He made the choice not to go to AA or have a sponsor. Instead, he channeled his energy into rebuilding his life through skateboarding. During the day, he focused on skating and making videos, and in the evenings, he worked as a waiter. On his YouTube channel, Chad gave skate tutorials and captured daily life at the skate park. He received a lot of positive feedback from viewers and eventually came up with a wild idea to take his skateboarding adventures beyond his local skate park.

5:352019 i'm laying in bed and my girlfriend at the time i turned to her i'm like i think this is possible i'm like i think i can learn a new trick in every state in america 50 days in a row and i'll daily vlog the whole entire thing every single day i'll upload it people will be along with me so that means i have to drive from like you know four hours from maine to new hampshire like fly to Alaska day 49 Hawaii day 50 you know a couple months later after a lot of planning I went for it what did that look like I love this so I was still picture the guy that I described like I'm not far from that person you know I still have no money I saved a little bit to buy the car and then to take with me this thing had like already like 230 ,000 miles on it I'm just like yeah well hopefully it'll work we'll see and i started the go fund me and just i was like i'm doing this no matter what i don't care if i run out of money i'm figuring it out and i had this belief like if i put it out there and people see me just all in like they're hopefully will support and they did like some people did and i had enough to make it through the go fund me i love that how much money did you raise i think it was like 8 000 or something it was like just enough to kind to circle the states pay for the gas and food and everything did you sleep in your car a lot of nights yeah okay so it sounds like it was just a really rewarding trip i mean how did it change you um i mean there was a lot of ups and downs right because you come back from that and then i had to go back to just working like you know at the restaurant you know what i mean just like normal everyday life serving uh not as exciting you know definitely like an adjustment It opened my mind to what was possible, but I didn't realize it in the moment.

7:29On his trip through all 50 states, Chad kept things simple. He filmed each trick on his iPhone, edited the videos himself, and slept wherever he could. Sometimes in a hotel, sometimes in his car. Once he finished his 50th trick in Hawaii, he finally took a few days to let the accomplishment soak in. The adventure proved to Chad that his skateboard could carry him further than he thought.

7:55So when did the wild idea to skate all the way across America and break a Guinness record come about? Let's see, maybe 2021-ish. I think it was like a year or two even before I left. And it was the same type of thing as the last one. I turned to my girlfriend and I'm like, she sees that look in my eyes where I just lock in and don't talk about anything else. She saw me like get that look. And yeah, I think that was like a year out. So a year out, you're like, you turned your girlfriend and you said, I want to skate across America and break a record. Yeah. And she thought I was insane. Was the wild idea to also at the same time break a Guinness record or was it just to skate across America?

8:39so it really became exciting for me when i looked it up and saw that it hadn't really been done like cleanly guinness book measured on a skateboard most people use like a longboard you know for long distance trips uh i wanted to do it on a skateboard like represent you know skateboarders that's what i did my whole life you know um let's describe really quickly the difference between a longboard and a skateboard skateboard because some people might not know that okay longboard much bigger wheels closer to the ground so you're not bending your leg as much so it's just much easier on your body to push and you cover way more ground but you wanted to do it on like a traditional skateboard which is short has two kick what do you call those yeah a nose and the tail yeah it's a nose and the tail so you can do tricks on both sides how i did work for vans back in the day you'd think I'd never touch a skateboard in my life.

9:34Yeah. Yeah. I wanted to do it on the thing I used my whole life, you know? Um, it's harder obviously, but like, I don't know, you wouldn't tell, you know, a tennis player to use a volleyball. Okay. So it took how long for Guinness to like say, okay, you can go do this and this is how you have to do it. Maybe it took like a year or so um in total but you'd already planned your route in that time i was doing all the planning you know so i'm just watching any videos i can find online people that have biked it i'm like well they can ride over dirt and i can't on a skateboard so i gotta find my own routes so i go on google maps or google earth every day and literally street view across all of america I didn't know if a skateboard could go up a mountain You know so I'm looking at the grade Like a 14 % grade And you know There's some pretty big climbs going through Palm Springs And going through the desert And all these things I'm just like can I skateboard through this 120 miles of wilderness And there's no frame of reference So I just kind of had to And New York, Long Island is pretty flat So I had like nowhere to really simulate Yeah So yeah, I would just research all that stuff as best I could.

10:51All day and night, I'd be laying in bed just watching videos or Googling.

11:11Chad Caruso has been a skateboarder his entire life. But in 2021, he had a wild idea he just couldn't shake, to skateboard across the United States. His route started in Venice Beach, California, and carried him across the southern half of the country all the way to Virginia. After two years of dreaming and prepping, Chad finally pushed off on March 23, 2023.

11:39You started the hub of skateboarding, Venice Beach, California. the home of dogtown and z boys and so much like skate history that's amazing what was that like it was weird i mean it was like in my head i'm just like all right i'm about to do this trip just showing up here like moseying along down the you know like i don't know how this is gonna go um and then people started kind of gathering around more than i expected you know there was someone there with a camera like a news crew um but in my mind it's just me crossing the country alone so in my head it's i have no support it's just me you know um but yeah people started gathering around and at that point you forget what you're doing because you're just kind of like in the moment talking to everyone but i remember leaving people skated with me the first maybe mile to like kick me off you know and then once they left it all sank in like all the fun and excitement and planning it went from being an idea to like like a vacuum like it sucked in and like oh wow i'm actually doing this like two months on the road alone you know and then you really feel the distance when it's in your head you don't really you think about it but you don't really get it i completely understand that so the reality kicks in and you're like i gotta go far so tell tell me the first night how did you feel do you remember yeah 100 i can't i think i made it to was san bernardino does that sound right yeah um the first night i set out to daily vlog this whole thing and i'm sore i'm you're working out all the kinks when you do something new like right in the beginning so it's rough around the edges i'm getting sore there's things you can't really account for like traffic slowing you down and all different types of things so i finish and i'm like there's no way i could edit and upload a youtube video today like there's just no way and then i i even said it at the end of my video that i filmed i was like all right we'll see guys like you know i don't know if i'm gonna do it we'll see and I'm happy I did I just finished one and I was like all right let me just see how I feel tomorrow so I stayed up all night long got it out and just started the next day but yeah I was destroyed so day two you you hadn't even slept and you have to go from San Bernardino somewhere else yeah I had to make it to pretty much right before Palm Springs which was like one of the most intimidating parts of the whole trip that I sized up the whole time.

14:27I'm like, one, there was a road that was questionable if it was dirt or not. Two, there's a huge climb there. It's 14 % grade. And then after that, you're skating through the desert, uphill all day long, and then there's 120 miles of wilderness. So I'm like, that's the point where I'm like, if I could do that, I probably could do this trip.

14:51Chad didn't have a support vehicle following him. Aside from a few meetups with a film crew, it was just him alone on the road with his skateboard. The whole way he wore a backpack, which held three liters of water, food, sunscreen, and a single change of clothes. The most important piece of equipment was his watch, which allowed him to log every mile an hour he spent on his skateboard. This data had to be submitted to Guinness as proof of his record.

15:22Did you average 50 miles a day? I did. At the end of it, I did 56 or so miles a day. I didn't take one break. The most I did was 80. I did that like two times in the trip. You must be in great shape. So besides actually skateboarding a long distance, what did you do to train? I mean, you're on your feet all day if you're a server. So that's like actually kind of good training. I did no other training. I just pushed. I went every – so I would go down to this beach path, like a bike path down by the water, and push in the blazing sun with my backpack on, like simulating it. I'd do 60 miles and be like, okay, I can do 60 miles.

16:01And then I'd get home, shower, barely be able to walk, and then go to work and serve for like six hours. What was in this backpack that you were carrying? Not that much. It was two outfits, just like a shirt, Under Armour, pants, and the bare essentials, you know, deodorant, toothbrush, skate tool, extra bearings, and that's kind of it. Okay, so Under Armour, you mean like your chonies? No, like just to guard myself from the sun. Oh, so like an Under Armour long sleeve. Yeah, yeah, sorry. I don't even know what it's technically called. Yeah, but just something to guard my skin because I was just like, I don't want to deal with putting on lotion every day.

16:48If it sweats off, I'm just going to melt. What about a hat? Funny. I showed up about to skate across America and someone's like, yo, the company Jackalope, who I ended up finishing at the festival in Virginia Beach. The owner was there and he was like, yo, dude, you probably want a hat for this trip. I'm so thankful he gave me that hat. I'm sure he's thankful for you too because you also gave him free marketing for your entire skate. That's true. Yeah, no, but I mean, I needed that hat. I didn't realize it. I was just going to be frying out in the sun the whole day. I don't even have any eyebrows.

17:27I don't know if you could tell. So I'm already at a disadvantage in the sun. So you're 50 miles a day. What did you eat? So I started out like, oh, I'm an endurance athlete. I'm going across the whole country. I'm going to eat healthy. That went out the window. real quick because you're in the middle of nowhere you know what i mean i'm burning so many calories so it's like a super eight and a mcdonald's it's like what are you gonna eat you know so some nights i have that sometimes i would crave a soda at the end of the day you know like a big ice like double gulp or something uh i had never drank soda before that you know but like i think it was the depletion of you know electrolytes or sugar or whatever it was um it just made me crave it but during the skate i would try to not eat except for trail mix or like beef jerky like light things that filled me up what about water did you ever worry about running out of water was there always water oh no i yeah plenty of times uh was close or did run out of water the water thing is like it's a give and take because that's the heaviest thing on your back so i'd wake up every day and be like all right how much water do i want or how much i want my back to hurt basically and uh see you always try to be like all right i'm only gonna do two liters today um but then going through the desert i'm from new york the east coast and it's different Like it doesn't feel as hot at all, but you lose that, that water much quicker.

19:02It creeps up on you. So one moment in the desert, I ran out completely. I'm at this one little weird broken down gas station and a, um, a public service worker stopped there and he gave me four bottles of water. Amazing. Did you take electrolytes with you or? No, I didn't even know what an electrolyte was at the time. I'm dead serious.

19:29In the spirit of keeping things simple, Chad wore the same clothes every day. One outfit for the daytime and another that he'd change into while doing laundry at night. When it was raining, Chad used a garbage bag as a poncho and on sunny days, he slathered on sunscreen. About halfway through the journey, he wore a hole through his shoes. But luckily, some viewers met up with him and gifted him a new pair. A few of Chad's followers even came out and skateboarded with him for sections of the trip. But most days, he skated solo, pushing mile after mile down rural roads.

20:09I'm trying to figure out where you were. So if you went Palm Springs through San Bernardino Mountains, did you go through like Idlewap? Did you go through kind of where the Pacific Crest Trail goes? It's called the Sheephole Valley Wilderness. Yeah, and it puts you into Arizona. I don't know much more than that. I know I called them beforehand asking what animals I had to worry about. Battlesnakes? Yeah. They basically said snakes was the main thing. They said coyotes a little bit. Coyote's not going to really chase a skateboarder. I got chased. Oh, you did? Let's talk about this. They told me.

20:45Terrifying. They told me only in a pack is the thing you have to worry about. Who's they? I can't remember who it was. maybe some preservation or like whoever's in charge of that land. I was just Googling and I called them up. Okay. So you called these people the preservation. I don't know. Whatever. You might maybe call like a national park. I'm not sure who you called, but this is hilarious. So they told you the only time to worry about coyotes is if they're in a pack. Yep. Yeah. That and snakes. They were like, they sometimes crawl out onto the road. So those are the main two things you got to worry about.

21:20And then I got chased by the coyote and I was like, oh, he's cute. He's just, you know, little coyote, whatever. He's not going to hurt me. He's like a dog. Just one coyote? Just one by himself. Okay. And then he started running faster and faster towards me. And I was like, this probably isn't a good idea. Like, I shouldn't get close to this thing. And he's, like, running fast. So I start pushing as fast as I can. And he's keeping up with me. And I actually, for a second, I was filming. But I, like, panicked. I didn't really film it as good as I could have because I genuinely panicked. Well, yeah.

21:53Yeah, you're worried about your life, not the footage. Yeah, and then a couple minutes later, I got pretty far ahead and he slowed down and lost interest. I still don't know if he was friendly or not, but didn't really want to find out. Any other funny stories of stuff that happened along the way? Yeah, I mean, this is fast forwarding a little bit, but in Tennessee, I think it was around the day 45-ish mark. I'm skating down the hill I finally got up this huge hill I'm like all right I'm gonna put my headphones in I'm gonna relax eat some trail mix you know listen to some music I take out my headphones I'm about to put them on and a moth flies straight into my ear gigantic moth I didn't know what it was at the time though so I just start freaking out shaking my ear put my camera on the floor filming and I'm just yeah I'm just like my ear is getting so red because it's one it's sunburned it's like burnt to a crisp and two i'm just ripping it shaking it trying to get this thing out no luck that's terrifying yeah and then on top of that a viewer pulls up he's like yo i'm psyched to meet you i want to skate with you you know and i'm like talking to him and telling him what happened he's just ignoring it he's just like yeah yeah nice to meet you man i'm like all right cool so he gets out of his car and skates a mile with me and i'm just talking to him pretending like this thing's not still in my head uh fast forward another hour another viewer comes i tell him and he i clock out of my journey like you know the guinness record measurement he gives me a ride to urgent care and they flushed it out and i got video of the whole thing oh that's amazing so then you get a ride back to this where you left off back in hour later i clock back in and i finish my day and i hit like 50 60 miles oh gosh amazing what about the people did you have good interactions with humans um yeah that was that was the best part of the whole trip you know if people were coming out it all started i think on day seven this older couple came out they're like 70 years old they've been sober for 50 years they came to the side of the road and brought me a packed lunch sandwich fruit all this stuff soda water and they're just like we love what you're doing this and that we'll buy you dinner at the end of the day and that was in the video and i think when people saw that it motivated other people to want to come out and support that's really cool you know so as the trip grew that was in in the vlogs and it just kept growing and growing as like the trip went on but um yeah i mean there were there was all all sorts of people would pull up to me in the cars most of them good occasionally though you would like not be sure but people would just pull over on the shoulder out of curiosity and just be like what are you doing man like i'm just curious like tell me about it uh yeah and i had people just it's funny because people lose their minds when you tell them like you're skating across them like they can't compute it you know so either they have this crazy reaction or i'd tell someone at a gas station and it would be the other way They would just not acknowledge it.

25:09They would just be like, oh, he just means like he's just skateboarding at skate parks across the country. You know what I mean? Like it was almost too big of an idea to register. So they're just like, yeah, I just won't pay attention to that one.

25:23Chad's biggest takeaway from the trip was that people are kind. And the energy that you put into the world is what will be reflected back to you. His positivity carried him thousands of miles, and it stayed with him as he skated toward his final destination.

25:43How did that feel when you finally got to Virginia Beach, which was less than two months after leaving Venice Beach? Yeah, it's so hard to describe it. It was the culmination of this 25-year path, it felt like. you know and I'm skating up to the finish line well first right before that I'm still in dead silence I've been in dead silence for like two months so now I'm just going straight into this scene you know I'm skating up police are following with me police officers skating with me how did you know that they were gonna come I did your friends call I had no idea and my wife called me and she's like should I come down for the finish and I go probably not there's like five or six people probably going to show up like don't it's probably not worth it luckily she came because there was like hundreds of people there um how did they know about you like who organized this well there was some news stations covering it in virginia beach that just randomly followed your blog yeah uh i mean i i think people just heard about that it was coming in and virginia beach is actually a pretty big skateboarding town uh hundreds of people skating with me up to the finish line and it grew it started like five ten but you didn't do pr like you didn't have someone reach out to news stations no i wasn't trying to get people to skate with me i didn't i didn't that's one thing about my whole channel i never ask anyone to subscribe or like me like if you do it you do it i'm doing things based on my merit and like what i want to do and like if it works it works you know so i wasn't asking anyone to come out and it just got that way and it increased as it went on but yeah rolling up to the finish line the 25 years of just all the falling and pain and not knowing everyone telling me to quit skateboarding and I dropped out of high school and not having a job and losing tons of girlfriends it felt like all of that like culminating and all these people supporting me it was like it was like kind of hard not to cry like skating up to the finish line that's beautiful i think people love your story because you're so authentic like you're not trying to like make money or like get famous you're just doing what makes you happy yeah i mean that's what to me that's what life's about right it's trying to do the things you love to do and enjoy them share them so at the end you know there's all these people um and it's just I'm sure like such a whirlwind for you.

28:18It's crazy. Um, I skate through a sign. They're holding up a huge banner that says like, congratulations, like welcome to Virginia beach. I don't think I even broke it, but it like fell when I went through it. I'm skating through everyone. I walk onto the beach and they're like all following me. I'm just kind of walking to the water. Cause I'm not much of a runner. I'm not like, yeah, I did this. I'm just like, yeah, like cool but then they're all behind me i'm like i should probably run this is taking way too long so i just throw my backpack off drop my board and i just sprint into the ocean and front flip in oh that's so cool love it yeah it was surreal it was honestly i can't even like i'm trying to describe it but it's tough to really put it to words

29:05chad made a documentary about a skateboard journey across the country you can find it on his youtube at chad caruso we'll also link to it in our show notes keep up with chad's latest adventures on instagram at chad underscore caruso or at chad caruso.com that's c-h-a-d C-A-R-U-S-O. Chad's Ride also raised funds for Natural High, a nonprofit that supports drug prevention programs for youth. You can check them out at naturalhigh.org. Wild Ideas Worth Living is part of the REI Podcast Network. It's hosted by me, Shelby Stanger, produced by Annie Fassler, Sylvia Thomas, and Sam Pierce Knitsberg of Puddle creative.

29:54Our senior producer is Jenny Barber. Our executive producers are Paolo Motula and Joe Crosby. As always, we love it when you follow the show, take time to rate it, and write a review wherever you listen. And remember, some of the best adventures happen when you follow your wildest ideas.