Hi, I'm Joe.

And I am a hike-a-holic.

I'm Ray.

I too am a hike-a-holic.

We like to hike a lot.

A lot, a lot.

We need help.

hoo - hoo There goes Ray.

In spite of the fact that there's 30 years between us, I'm 66 right now, he's 36.

Joe is sort of an old soul and everything from music our outlook on life is very similar.

And we've never had a bad time out in the woods and up in the mountains together.

There you go.

We're like two children.

Like, we've never grown up, you know, he's thirty years older than me.

I'm thirty years younger than him.

We both act like we're 10, 11, 12 most of the time.

Five or six sometimes.

But we laugh at the same jokes.

We think the same things funny.

And we both love Seinfeld and we love the Office.

We love that kind of comic humor.

Listen to the same music.

We love the same, you know, alternative rock, classic rock stuff for that so mean, you know, when he's like, getting up.

Yeah, I got this idea let's let's stages photo do this video, you know, like it's that's a good idea.

we're the only two that laugh at it.

We're the only two who think it's genius.

It's it's a really special bond that they share that has really stood the test of a number of years.

And I think it's really rare for somebody to find that.

And and it's really sweet to watch, actually.

About 12 years now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

About a dozen years ago, we both signed up for a group hike with the Adirondack Mountain club.

It was like 4:45 in the morning.

It was dark.

It was a dark parking lot.

There's a spot in Queensbury where everybody congregates.

So you take a few cars up to the high peaks as possible.

And Joe just happened to hop in my car, first time out and we were doing the Seward Range, which is a long, tough day up in the Adirondacks.

And there are some people that you just you hit it off with.

And Joe and I wound up driving up to the trailhead together as part of this 80 K hiking group.

And we've been knocking out the trails in the mountains ever since.

We both signed up for the next group outting.

And it was two weeks later, you know, that's like, hey, you want a sign up?

Just like he happened to sign up.

I signed up, I was like, Hey, why don't you ride with me again this time?

Yeah, ok.

So and we started talking more.

I don't believe in coincidence anymore that things just happen by fate it was an older woman who told me a number of years ago, there are no such things as coincidences, just small miracles for which God is not been given credit.

So call her small miracle we wound up in the same car together, spend all day together, and gosh, I don't know how many miles and mountains and, car rides since.

Ever since.

A whole bunch.

Every time, end of the day.

It's always that kind of right handshake.

Low at an angle, like, hey, pleasure meeting you, Joe.

We'll do this again some time.

Maybe we'll see you on the next hike.

Been a while, since I wore micro spikes.

Yeah.

I will not miss putting on snowshoes.

This has been probably the most consistent winter that we've used snow shoes on every hike.

I mean, over the last five, six, seven years have long been winter hiking for, you know, the weather patterns are changing.

We have times when we aren't snow shoes, but a lot of times micro spikes are just not enough snow or things just melt and come back later.

It's been pretty consistent snowy winter.

So I carry this my pack, wherever I go, it's like my good luck charm.

In 2012 two of our close hiking friends and I went over to Tanzania to climb Mount Kilimanjaro.

And so I pulled this thing out to show it to our guide, Protus Maiunga and he asked me, says, what's his name?

I said, I dont know, he doesn't have a name.

And he said to call him Kifaru, which is rhinoceros in Swahili.

And because he's strong like a rhino.

And if you guys want to see this is bandana, I mean, Walmart cost me $0.99.

I call him Bandy.

Bring him on every hike with me, you know, in case he had a little sweaty, I want to blow my nose.

I think Joe and Ray have a great relationship.

I think it's I think it's awesome.

I'm happy that he has Joe to go hiking with.

They just have a lot of fun.

They both enjoy everything the same.

They have the same sense of humor.

They have the same.

So it's it's really been wonderful, really been wonderful.

We've climbed over 400 individual mountains each.

It's cool to like go back and repeat mountains, but like, we don't need to have our footsteps going over the same trail again.

Like, yeah, you know, granted every time it's a different experience, but it's like, no, let's go find something new.

We don't need to retrample that old one.

Well, we're working on a group of mountains in New Hampshire called the 52 with a view.

We've got fifty of them done, and we're saving the last two for spring time.

And then after that, what's our next list, Joe?

We're kind of we're quarter third of the way through the Vermont long trail, doing end to end, not like overnight, like people do the long trail.

They take like take three or four weeks off and go hiking straight through.

We're just doing section hiking it.

Yeah.

So kind of working along that in the way.

There's a bunch of other list out there and patches and challenges people do.

I know, we talked about the Cranberry Lake 50 a while back probably section hiking that.

I know, you're working with Mary with her on her fire towers.

With Ray, that's his life.

I mean, he when he is stressed out or anything, he has to he goes into the woods and he just comes out like so refreshed, just being outside and being in the fresh air and the trees and nature and everything else, I think it just brightens your day and just brings you energy.

Thing I like best about morning hikes, especially real early morning hikes, is the quiet, the solitude.

I don't think it's any better way to start a day than getting out here in the woods or getting up on a mountain.

Yeah.

See that first ray of sun coming through the trees?

Don't worry about a parking spot.

Yeah, that and then.

Yeah, it's the solitude, the quiet.

You know, this is my primary source of exercise these days.

It's getting out on the mountains, on the trails.

It became a substitute for running when my joint started to give me problems.

But I never feel a lick of discomfort out here.

Something soothing and calming about being out here in the woods.

Hiking is Joe's outlet.

Hiking is where he tends to be most at peace.

It's almost like a moving meditation for him.

You know, It's one of the ways I identify myself, as a hiker.

As someone who likes to hike.

If I didn't have it, who knows how I'd be feeling or what I'd be doing.

But what I can say, it is who I am as a part of who I am.

And, you know.

Probably the most important thing I've learned from Joe is he's become my fountain of youth.

There is something magical about being out with people who are younger than you are in years.

He's got a certain vibe and energy that that I experience with him every time that we're out.

And I feel like at least from here up, I feel like I'm 36 years old, just like he is.

I realize from here down I'm 66, and sometimes at the end of a hard day I feel it.

But at least you know in my mind and my soul I'm still a kid.

Knowing Ray is like knowing an onion and constantly peeling away at that onion.

It's just there's so many layers.

It's like when you cut through a tree to see, like, how many years is this tree been with all the rings?

It's always something new to learn or hear.

And I look up to him like he's just he's done so many things.

He's got one of the biggest hearts is so kind about everything and help, he boost everybody up.

Like he just talks positive about everybody.

Joe, really he speaks so highly of Ray.

He so values the friendship and the relationship.

You know, anytime Joe is wrestling with something or wants to talk something through right there, both love to talk about politics and things like that.

Ray is his, his person like that's who he will let you let me talk to Ray about this.

Let me get Ray's take on this.

Ray teaches me so much about the world and what I'll what I need to know in the next 30 years.

We talk nonstop about economics and politics.

I love that stuff.

It's so fascinating to me.

And you've had so much experience over time and, you know, in, you know, setting up my own life insurance, and the retirement.

And Nicole and I buying the house like so much valuable information from a banker.

Right, mortgage banker for that.

So I mean that's been super helpful.

I do have quite a bit more experience on the planet, you know, than Joe does.

But we'll talk about things.

And, you know, I'm sure from time to time I share with you more fatherly advice, you know, then friend or brotherly advice with Joe.

And the same thing you know, he gives me a perspective, you know, from a younger man's point of view of, you know, a way that I wouldn't have thought, you know, about an issue.

Joe and Ray really have an incredible friendship.

Like their relationship is unlike anything I think I've witnessed in two people before.

They are they are the same person, 30 years apart, you know, like almost any way that you could possibly imagine.

Their sense of humor is the same.

They just fit together.

In some ways, like I see me as him 30 years ago, too.

Like there's our lives are running almost a parallel trajectory, just 30 years, literally 30 years and 30 years to ten day difference, like his birthdays, the 19th of April, mine is the 29th of April.

You know, it's a funny thing.

You know, there's a 30 year gap between Joe and I age wise.

But I yeah, somehow we grew up both grew up on the same sort of music, have the same tastes.

So, you know, regardless of whether we're, you know, on a short drive to our destination you where you know, driving 6 or 7 hours out to Maine.

We always have a lot of tunes that we both like to listen to.

When you see such a close friendship with that amount of age difference, I think it's kind of a perfect storm of Joe's an old soul.

He he really is.

You know, he'll say or do something and I'll look at him and be like, you realize you're only 36.

Like, what are you doing?

And Ray is like a little kid.

And so they just meet in this perfect kind of middle place where it just works.

And I think that's so, so, so rare with, like, an intergenerational friendship like that.

I don't ever want to become that old, cranky, cantankerous guy.

And so if I'm not if I'm not in the best of moods, a phone call, a text message, whatever is, you know, helps me get back in the right frame of mind.

Usually like a Seinfeld gif.

Yeah, something like that.

Yeah, a Seinfeld meme or something like that, yeah.

You know, we find a way to laugh about almost everything.

If one of us takes a fall, you know, after that initial, gosh, you know, is Ray ok, or is Joe ok. You know, we laugh about it.

Maybe we fell in the mud, maybe we fell in a stream.

I don't think I ever saw you laugh harder than when I wrapped myself around that tree.

Once, right.

Sliding down the mountain and literally.. Hey Ray, what happened here?

Hey, you know I had a 50-50 chance of getting around this tree either way.

And just didnt work out, Joe Wait, wait dont move, I got to take a picture of you first, injured on the ground for posterity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Scrambling for your phone so you can take my picture.

This is why Nicole doesn't understand why people are friends with me.

The upside to being out there and, you know, and hiking, being out in nature is probably primarily threefold for me.

It's good for the body and helps keep me in shape, helps keep me young physically.

It's good for the mind when you're out there.

No cell phones, no iPads, no computers, no televisions, nothing electronic.

I don't believe in electronics in the woods.

So it's a total escape.

And then the other thing is it's good for the soul.

So I'm fond of saying, you know, for the mind, for the body, for the soul, there is no place better to be than out in the wilderness or up in the mountains.

The mountains and nature and know our adventures and time spent on trails really forged our friendship, brought us together.

Yeah, yeah.

And it became became infectious where there's really a week now.

In fact, I said to Joe on the trail earlier today we didn't get out last weekend together and circumstances didn't allow it.

I said, you know what, I really missed, you know, not sharing a trail with Joe for the past seven days.

For him, hiking puts it all in perspective.

Right?

It's very easy in kind of your day to day life to feel like every single thing that happens, every problem is huge, right.

But when you're on the peak of a mountain in the Adirondacks, you suddenly feel very small.

And I think it provides the perspective of there are bigger things than me, there are bigger things than what I'm going through.

There are bigger, more important things.

And hiking provides that perspective on a regular basis, and it is probably the most important outlet.

Yes, he still runs and he still does all of that, but hiking is probably the most important outlet that he, he has.

We've climbed probably 40, 45 different fire tower mountains.

But getting up to the top of that tower sometimes a challenge.

Yeah.

I've only been at the top of two of them ever, I don't like heights.

So I think, I'll go up like, you know, two landings, maybe three.

But I usually don't go that much higher.

Yeah, And it always struck me as odd because, you know, we've walked on the edges of cliffs where there's drop offs that, you know, are a couple of hundred feet behind some ridgelines that are pretty scary.

But it must be something about just having your feet on the ground, right?

Yeah, my feet are touching the ground.

I'm here.

I am safe.

But that's not the ground.

That's a manmade structure.

That thing could fall right over.

High camera.

I'm Joe.

I didn't go all the way up because it's too high.

You know, there's a certain exhilaration about getting to that last mountain on the list, whether it's the 46 high peaks, the northeast 115.

There's a little bit of sadness, too, because you know that that portion of that goal is done.

And that's why we quickly pick up where we left off with another goal, another mission ahead of us.

You know, when we get done with a hike and we get home and, you know, take off my bags, you know, take a shower and stuff, to me, it's all right.

When's the next hike?

When are we getting back out there?

Like, you know, already like its set.

It's Saturday or Sunday.

We're getting home.

It's like which day?

We're going out next week.

What's the ten day forecast look like?

Like, what's the weather going to be?

When can we be out there again?

Sometimes it's a seasonal challenge that we chase after.

So, you know, after we did the 46 high peaks, we said, you know, we got to be the winter forty sixers.

So we went back as many times as we needed to to get those mountains.

And you have to climb them between December 21st and March 31st.

20/21st.

Or 21st.

Wintertime.

Yeah, the official winter season.

And we did that with the fire towers, the Adirondack Fire Towers, the Saranac Six, Lake George 12.

So we did that with a few of them, all the ones.

You know, I've introduced a lot of people to hiking and, and some people like to do some of the crazy stuff.

You know, that Joe and I typically do.

But for most people, even to take a walk for an hour in one of the local preserves, like the Wilton wildlife preserve or the Fisher Ferry preserve, there's so many trails, so many opportunities around here to just get people started on.

And and invariably, no matter who tries it, they just love it.

So no matter your fitness level, no matter the amount of time that you can devote to it, you don't need a lot of fancy equipment, you know, a decent pair of walking shoes.

And that's about it.

But it's it's like magic out there, and I think most people find it that way.

It's those experiences, those the memories, the experiences that I enjoy most.

Yeah, we've we keep track of our mountains.

We know we've got over 400 different mountains done together.

There's always another list, There's always another peak.

We're going to be at this for a really long time.

I figure I'll be doing this until I'm at least 100 years old, so I've got a few more decades on me.

There's this beautiful backyard we have, you know, called the Adirondacks called the Green Mountains, called the White Mountains, called the Catskills.

You know, I often say, so many mountains, so little time.

He is able to think about nothing else than where his foot is landing, where the next mile, you know, marker is on a tree.

The things that I enjoy about hiking, whether it's in the Adirondacks or any place up to the northeast, is there's always a lot of variety.

There are very arduous trips that we go on.

Some that are easier, that the combination of closed summits, open summits, rocky trails, streams, lakes, ponds, the wildlife, I mean, there's just no shortage of new experiences that you can have by, you know, traveling all over, you know, the Adirondacks, the Appalachian Mountains, heading up into the most desolate areas of Maine.

It's an incredible experience no matter where you go, and no two places are alike.

Want to go back to Maine, to Mount Katahdin, Baxter State Park, and hike across the knife's edge.

Yeah.

So come up from Chimney Pond there, I think.

Come up on the east side and then come across the knife's edge to get up to the peak.

Yeah, because we didn't do that when we were up now and that's a, that's one of those fine line adventures there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's one of the most unique pieces of geology in the northeast and a little scary.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's what I would say.

Yeah.

That would be fun.

Your mind is constantly going.

You're constantly thinking, you're constantly planning, hiking takes that away.

It forces a slow down.

It forces him to let go of everything else.

Ray, you go first.

I want to see if I'm right.

There's two mountains, I think you're going to say that you want to do bucket list with me.

Yeah, so on my broader bucket list is to get to the highest point in each of the 50 states.

I've got 15 of them knocked out, and next month I'll have at least a couple more.

And I'm saving Mt.

Rainier and Denali for last.

And so if I could drag Joe to maybe cross in that fine line between bold and stupid adventures, that'd be the two.

The relationship that Joe and I have is very special.

Joe has a circle of friends.

I have a circle of friends, you know, that are not connected in any way.

But there's there's something about I don't know if call it his vibe, his spirit, his enthusiasm that I find infectious.

And whenever I'm around the guy, you know, whether he's intentionally sharing it with me or not, you know, I'm feeling it so that when we're out on the trails or up in the mountains, you know, he's not the only 33 year old that's out there.

I'm out there, too.

I feel every bit as young as he does when we're out there.

And and we just have so much fun, so many laughs.

One thing I'll say is somewhat philosophical.

There's a statesman and philosopher, Johann Goethe that said, whatever you can do or dream, you can, begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

And gosh, we've been out on 400 different mountains together and I can't recall an instance where you didn't have at least a little bit of magic, right?

Yeah, especially along AT.

Gosh, what's next for us.

I got it Ray.

What?

I think we should have a below average day.

No!!

No, there is no day where you and I spend out in the wilderness or up on a mountain that will ever be a below a below average day.

They are all above average days.

What that guy said.

Yeah, I think a warm shower's next for me.

Pretty freaking cold sitting on this rock Freezing my ass, my arse, my arse is frozen.

Scene 3, take one, Ray's Above Average Day.

No ordinary Joe, scene one, take one.

Action.

Action, action.

We want action.

And that is how it's done!

Choo Chooo!

Mary O'Connor interview.

Take one, scene one.

Action!

Scene one, take one.

Nicole interview.

That was perfect.

Thank you.

Joe and I are so excited about this project that we are beside ourselves.

We're just sitting down there, you know, while our better half were being interviewed talking about which film festivals, how we're going to help promote it, who we can tell about it, avenues to share it.

Look at me.

I'm in the U.S., I'm in Canada and in the U.S.

I'm in Canada.

Now I'm straddling the border between the U.S. and Canada.

This is very cool.

This is very cool.

This is real deal.

Yeah.

(speaking Spanish.)

I'm glad you had those answers Ray.

I've had an hour to think about this.

I didn't come with any.

One, two, three.

And that's, a, wrap.