Episode Two | Chris Loizeaux

Summary

In this conversation, Casey Hyde and Chris discuss the best age to travel and the importance of not letting age hold you back. They share personal travel experiences and talk about a road trip to Wyoming. Chris also shares the story of how he transitioned from being a fly fisherman to starting TEREN. They discuss the design process of the Traveler Pants and the use of insect repellent in TEREN products.

Takeaways

The best age to travel is whatever age you are right now.
Age doesn't determine your ability to enjoy and appreciate travel.
Don't let concerns about your age hold you back from pursuing your travel dreams.
TEREN's Traveler Pants are designed to be clean, simple, and have unique features, including insect repellent properties.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Journey with Rolf Potts
01:01 The Best Age to Travel
02:58 Don't Let Age Hold You Back
03:27 Discussion on Age and Travel Experiences
04:52 Taking Action and Not Waiting
05:21 Personal Travel Experiences
06:16 Wyoming Road Trip
07:14 Camping and Food on the Road Trip
08:12 Packing for the Trip
09:12 From Fly Fishing to TEREN
10:39 Starting the Fly Shop and TEREN
11:54 Fly Fishing Motorcycle Trip and Idea for TEREN
13:39 Designing the Traveler Pants
14:05 Cabin Trip and Connection with Nick
19:39 Favorite TEREN Piece
21:06 Discussion on Insect Repellent in TEREN Products

Transcript

Casey Hyde (00:00.142)
The best age to travel is whatever age you are right now. So starting this off with a shot across the bow. Wow. All right, Chris. So you don't know much about what we've got going on here, do you? No clue. You are just super blind on this one. Well, let me tell you what it is. We are going on a journey with Rolf Potts, reading the Vagabonds Way this year in 2024.

And yeah, they're just daily meditations. I've picked out a couple we're going to do once a week and talk to our customers and engage with our customers that way and like open up and share about who we are. So I'm going to ask you a couple of questions afterwards, but I'm pretty much just going to start by reading this. We'll listen to it and then we'll see if we have any cool takeaways. And yeah, sounds good. So let's see here. We did January 5th. So now here's January 8th.

The best, and I promise I did not pick this specifically for you. The best age to travel is whatever age you are now. Without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. One day it will be too late. Gosh, to Ashoka and Jumpa Lihiras, the namesake 2004. I can't say half of these names in this book.

I was in my late 20s when I visited Europe for the first time. My journal entries from the initial journey as I traveled from hostel to hostel in places like Latvia and Greece and Austria were almost comical in their faint concern that I had perhaps grown too old to properly appreciate the European backpacker trail. Decades later, having backpacked around Europe in my 30s and 40s as well, I can see that the anxieties of my late 20s were not well -founded.

While there are, and no doubt always will be, a plethora of young people on the indie travel circuits worldwide, the freedom to wander doesn't hinge on age so much as attitude. In fact, around the same time I was worrying about being in my late 20s as I traveled Europe, Australian ethnographer Klaus Westerhausen published a study asserting that age had ceased to be a core factor in backpacker culture.

Casey Hyde (02:30.83)
There are those in their 50s and older engaging in long -term travel and adopting a way of life that previously had been the preserve of youth alone. He wrote, travel is open to all who subscribe to similar norms and values, irrespective of age or background. So this in mind, don't let concerns about your age be you in your teens or your 70s keep you from putting your travel dreams into action.

The best age to travel is whatever age you are right now. So starting this off with a shot across the bow, wow. Yeah, so Chris, how old are you? I guess is a good question, number one. Not on the too far over the, yeah, I'm 42. 42, nice. So nine years older than me. So you have it, you're still less than 10, which keeps you single digits, which keeps you young.

Right? Right. Exactly. So, so in our main ad on like Facebook and Instagram, what do people like just dog on you so hard for? Tell us, tell us your experience with that ad and being the face of one of the, Chris is a founder of TEREN, but you're also a good face of our brand. What, what do you got here for me?

It's all over the place, but primarily bald. Randomly, we got the short one, which I mean, in some countries, I'm not short at all. Standing next to Tom Cruise, I wouldn't be short. Nice. In that video, you're not like next to tall people a lot. How many they even know you're high? Yeah, it's bizarre. I get fat as one of the random ones. And then, yeah.

Who does? Well, from that, I'm not shredded. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah. The Internet is not kind in many ways, but yeah, we get crazy comments. So if you're a customer and you love TEREN, please go comment on our ads. Positive things because Chris gets gets put through the wringer sometimes. But OK, so let's open up. So was there anything that stood out to you about this?

Casey Hyde (04:52.942)
The best age to travel is whatever age you are now. I mean, it's kind of similar to the, like, if you wait on having enough, like, I remember when my wife and I were thinking about having kids and someone was like, if you wait until you have enough money, you're never going to do it. Because financially, like, it's easy to be like always pushing it back. And I think that's probably very, very much similar to.

Yeah, I'd say that. So I was actually doing this exact same thing when I did my European backpacking experience. So I went to Camino in 2018. I was 28. And then I went like three months through hostels and I was definitely one of the older people. And I felt weird. But now, like, you know, I traveled to Columbia and stayed at a hostel last year and...

I didn't feel that much older, even though I'm like five years older, I still felt like, oh, I can still do this hostile life. Yeah. Yeah, but you're right. Like, if you don't do it, then when are you going to do it? Yeah, absolutely. Well, one of the latest trips that you went on was, what, last year on August, September, you went out west. Can you tell me a little about that trip and kind of, you know, what it meant to you or what you guys did?

Yeah, so it was super awesome. Went out to Wyoming, got some buddies. I used to have a fly shop and so I had some buddies that I had told about a really cool spot that I had camped next to but hadn't actually gotten to fully explore. And so I had given them all the beta on that and they came back with just rave reviews of like, dude, this place is so epic. It's back country. Like you're...

off the beaten path and then from there off the beaten path a couple times removed, you know? And so, yeah, we did, I guess, a 10 day road trip where it was really just straight drive. You guys drove like, 30 hours or something. Yeah, right on. And so, yeah, it was just drive straight through. We picked up a buddy in Denver and kept on driving and got really efficient at.

Casey Hyde (07:14.412)
gassing up and pee breaks and basically just hoofed it there so that we'd have more time on the water. And so we had all in, we ended up with more food than any other gear. So it turned into as much of a, as it was a fly fishing trip, it was also really, really stinking good food. So we got super notey on our camping What was like the craziest thing that you did over a fire or like?

camp food style. I mean we had everything from tikka masala to some of this stuff like I mean like did a ton of meal prep ahead of time and and so one of the dudes is his girlfriend all their family came from Italy and so the mom had helped prep like this epic pasta and stuff like that so we were pretty bougie. Nice so actually when you were

Where was this exactly again, did you say? Outside of Jackson, about an hour in Bridger Teton. So when you were in the Tetons, I was in the Dolomites. Yeah. On my trip, I packed a 30 liter pack, that pack on the wall there. And obviously I had to bring food or a tent, but like, how did you pack for this? What was your like, so you're gone 10 days. What did your kit look like? I mean, I packed as far as,

Gear goes a decent amount because I had waders, a couple of back, you know, a fly rod, and then I think I had two backup rods. And then all the flies, which is so many. But then aside from that, it was pretty minimal as a backpack with a couple of our pieces and it kind of covered the entire gamut. So. Sweet. Well, well, like you said something, you used to be a fly guide.

And you had a fly shop for TEREN, right? So walk me through a little bit, like let's dig in and learn a little bit about the history from being a fly fisherman. I know you're a designer fly fisherman and then you had your fly shop and then TEREN. Like kind of bring us up to speed of like just the history of you and your, like, I guess maybe the question I'm asking is like,

Casey Hyde (09:39.534)
you know, where were you when the idea came? And, and like, because I know that the idea has been a long process, but kind of walk me through that for so we can learn about that. So I had, I guess in 2011, started an outdoor brand that was just small. And it was primarily t -shirts and hats. And so,

I remember kind of sitting there and going, man, if I had it to start over, it felt like I was only a t -shirt company. So little side nugget here, I bought, or my sister bought me one of those t -shirts and that's how I met Chris like 10 years ago. Had no idea we would be doing business together. But yeah, but like keep going with, I know you've got a long story here, so I won't interrupt too much. All right. Well, yeah, so.

did that for a couple years and I was all custom cut, sew and dye. So it was custom, not just buying bulk kind of garbage shirts. And so it was kind of my first foray into customizing a product. And so really enjoyed it, but definitely felt a little bit pigeonholed by the...

previous success in just t -shirts and everyone kind of just seeing it as that. And, um, and when I ended up getting an office for my brand, it had this cool little retail space upfront or at least really good window and it had a coffee shop next to it. So there's a lot of foot traffic. And so I had a little bit of extra funds that I just started a small little tiny selection of fly fishing goods. I was in.

sharing the front space with a buddy that did a crash pad rental and like small. That Anvil right? Yeah, Anvil crash I rented those crash pads too, not even like making the connection. Yeah. Sometimes that that was you. Yeah, so my buddy Brian started it, but he was the manager at a climbing gym. So really I was essentially manning the desk for him.

Casey Hyde (11:54.35)
And so I just wander up from the office and take care of people. And so I started tossing some fly fishing gear in there too. And it blew up on me and I ended up with a top 10 fly shop. Oh nice. In the US. So was pretty rad. Oh wow. What year was that? So it was from... year do you think you peaked I guess? 2017 financially. But the...

So we did about four years almost and just glad to be out of that business partnership, but also stoked because at the same time as that was basically hitting a wall, I was on a...

fly fishing motorcycle trip with Nick. Okay, yeah, so this is getting to the good stuff about TEREN. So, here it is now. Yeah, so we had what? I think we had five guys in a cabin for seven days. And the idea is, it's called a shamrock tour or a cloverleaf. And so basically you have one central base camp and they can just do it in different trips around the area to explore.

And so it's little day trips throughout. And so we would have, you know, a little bit of time each day to go out and explore. But it had been just crazy monsoon for the entire week. And so we were basically rained out outside of one to two hours a day. And so that turned into a whole lot of sitting in the cabin. We had crappy guitar that the strings were way too high. We had a deck of cards that.

that were missing. It was missing a couple of cards. I had some fly tying stuff and we had beer. And we also had a sketch pad. And so... Okay, how much beer did you have? 168 beers were consumed over seven days with us guys. We ended up going through all of our beer and then it was my headguides cabin.

Casey Hyde (14:05.21)
and Buddy and we ended up rating his entire beer stash and then pinning a couple 20s to the fridge at the end of the trip. If that doesn't say TEREN, I don't know what to do. Thanks for the beers, a couple 20s. So yeah, it was really good. But in that, it was five of us, but of the five...

I was friends with three of them and Nick was friends with three of them and we hadn't met. And so, you know, seven days where you're just in a cabin, you just start getting to know people and having lots of conversations. And one of the kind of the cool things right off the bat when you're talking to Nick about, you know, all of his travels, you start asking him like, okay, where have you gone? What's your biggest trip? And he had ridden his motorcycle from.

South Africa all the way up to Norway. And it was a big six month trip that on a motorcycle you have very little extra room. And so while at the same time I'm a guide, I can also I'm doing stuff in the US cars and planes. I can carry whatever I want. But at the same time, I was curating products for customers for my fly shop. And I kept on hitting a wall where

I wasn't happy with the appearance of a lot of the stuff. And so while it might perform pretty decently, it looked like MC Hammer pants, just like super baggy. I'm like, why is it looking so I that was for me on the Camino. It was fine for walking, but then at night, and then when I started traveling Europe, I had to just drop all my gear.

and then buy a completely new set of clothes because I couldn't get into places where I looked like a thru -hiker. No matter what gear I would wear, I was a thru -hiker. Yeah, I could have brand new, nice gear that looks very much like the outdoor industry, especially at that time. And I'd get out of a drift boat and my wife would be like, hey, we're doing something, but...

Casey Hyde (16:17.838)
do something about that first because that's not the look. And I was like, yeah, fair, I get it. But there's no other option. And so Nick and I were sitting there in the cabin and we both kind of had the same complaint. And within a few minutes, instead of complaining about it, he was a mechanical engineer at the time. I'm a designer. And so we...

pulled out a sketch pad and each of us kind of went to separate corners of the cabin, which was not far away. It's a small cabin. And we each drew our ideas for a pair of pants that would be clean, simple, but also have a lot of unique features. And they basically like lined up perfectly. And we're like, okay, so I guess we're doing this. And so started sitting down at coffee shops when we got back.

So that's where it kind of started. And that's our traveler pant, right? Yep. Yeah. So that first piece for us and even our flagship, one of our best sellers still to date is our lightweight traveler pants. And actually, I now I knew you a couple of years. And so I backed on Kickstarter. You came out to our Kickstarter party. I gave my $100 of support. Like, go. Yeah, good luck, man. Go do your thing. And then little did I know,

Couple years later, I'd be a part of this as well. So yeah, the story and the silver linings and the connections and all that is just crazy that we have going back 10 years even. But yeah, so that's one of our still today best sellers. So that's really cool. And then, as we've moved along, we have that same ethos or that same design principle.

that it's performance and style and all of our pieces. We've come from those one pair of ants to now 12, 13 products a couple of years in and so, and more to come. So I'm stoked on that, but yeah, that's pretty good. Anything else you want to share on that story or origin of the idea to reality here? I can't think of anything right off.

Casey Hyde (18:34.83)
Yeah. Well, while I'm looking at the next question, find a sticker and tell people what the sticker is and why you like it.

Casey Hyde (18:45.262)
You got multi -colored Sasquatch. That's pretty funny. I'm seeing actually a theme of Sasquatch because there's El Sasquacho. So I started this and then I got an outdoor sticker pack from Amazon and apparently that means Sasquatch.

There's also a UFO somewhere. Yeah, there's a I want to believe UFO over some pyramids. Yeah. Okay. Well, thanks for the distraction. So my last question, just to wrap this up, we're going to try to keep these quick. One page read, get to know Chris, the founder, or get to know other customers or adventurers or whatever. But what's your favorite TEREN piece? You've been a part of like all the design from start to finish.

What piece is your favorite? I need to do this. I needed to have done this on the last one. This is a good one to... I haven't even thought about that. I know. I did not give him any information. None whatsoever. I mean, based on like use case and probably the original Travelers, like Summertime in the South, Summertime in the South is like just crazy humid.

You've got ticks and mosquitoes and chiggers all over the place. And, um, and I've got so many horror stories from friends and, um, and, you know, buddies that are guides that had, you know, like thousands of ticks on them, um, to, you know, my dad, uh, having the can't eat red meat anymore from the tick -borne, um, disease thing. And so, yeah, I mean, the fact that in the last five years since we've had, uh,

traveler pants. Like I haven't had a single tick on me outside of on my shoe, but never anything has gotten past my ankle. Nice. So a lot of people actually, I have another question now. A lot of people actually have a lot of like questions about that. Like am I wearing chemicals on my body or like why do like, you know, that's one of your favorite features of our favorite pieces. And I know you're really like,

Casey Hyde (21:06.082)
scientific and you're thought out on a lot of those things just personally you you're well versed and Which means he knows how to use reddit but And yeah in Google, but um, why is it? Why do you why are we safe to advertise that? How do we feel about it? Like a lot of people have a question of like isn't that not good to have chemicals on your body? Yeah

What we use is significantly different than your typical insect repellents based on how it's applied. So we use permethrin and so you've got, when you're looking out at all the different bug sprays that you can get, whether it's just spraying it on yourself or applying it on a roll, there's deet, there's permethrin, there's a couple other eucalyptus type things.

But obviously DEET is super effective, but also is pretty strong stuff. Any and all of the sprays, especially for the fly fishing world, but in general for outdoors, when you're dealing with that stuff, it will ruin fly line. It'll eat straight through fly line. It'll eat through a lot of the tent and bag linings that you have. So if you're setting up a rain fly and you had some spray.

get wafted over there, it'll completely jack up that entire, and so all of a sudden you're flying, it might not happen right away, but over the course of the next few weeks, it'll slowly eat away so that the next time you're not as waterproof as you thought you were. And so that's why people have these questions about what we're doing. Yeah, so it's pretty potent and caustic if it's introduced to the wrong materials.

And then permethrin itself, while it's completely non -toxic, it's a basically a formulation based on the chrysanthemum, the flower. Dude, I can never say that. I was like, I'm so glad you just said it because I can never say that word to say my life. Yeah, it's like saying rural jerk. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So.

Casey Hyde (23:28.43)
Basically, it's synthetic version of the Chrysanthemum. I got me overthinking that one. I'm sorry, that was my fault. But essentially, if you go and you buy the store version of it that you treat your clothes with, it has a six to seven wash cycle on it, which means that it washes out really fast. And also you're using the liquid and in a liquid form.

hermethrine is toxic to both aquatic species and cats. Yeah, a lot of people ask about cats. Yeah, so it's toxic to both feline, but it's safe for humans, like completely non -toxic. But at the same time, when you look at that spray is only good for six or seven washes, means that it's getting washed out into the water column as well. So it's going out into...

to nature wherever you're at. And then also it's going to your skin, but also if you were to have pet cats, then it's also not healthy for them because it's at the surface treatment level. Whereas ours is at the fiber level.

We have it baked into the actual system. So what that essentially means is that even after 70 washes, that's still 85 % proof, which means that like you can with our antimicrobial and stuff, you're not having to wash them over and over. Like I put a load in once a month. I usually just change pants on Mondays. So I'll wear the same pants for the seven days and then I throw those in the

the hamper and then I put on a new pair of pants, but my hamper stays pretty low because all our stuff has those antimicrobial properties like a merino traveler tee. Like I can wear that thing for a month without needing a wash. And so like, yeah, so it's just, I rarely wash clothes, like you said, once a month. So yeah, you're, you're washing so infrequently. Right. And then, and then of course you also have the stain release, which means that.

Casey Hyde (25:42.414)
most of the stuff that you get on your pants, you can just wipe off with like a wet wipe or something. But the fact that over 70 washes, it's still at 85 % strength means that it's not leaching out of the pants into the system or to pets or anything like that. So it is baked into the system and it's not going anywhere. Meaning it's not.

transferring to your skin, which it's still non -toxic, so it's not an issue. But at the same time, it just gives you that added confidence that it's much safer. Well, that's pretty cool. Yeah, so good idea to have question and concern. Oh, yeah. And we've got a safety sheet on it, like the safety data sheet. So it's called an SDS safety data sheet that's on it. And it's significantly safer than...

Basically any household product including fingernail polish, which is on the higher end of the toxic scale. Yeah, this is on the bottom. So sweet. So that's good. So yeah, like again people out there asking those questions keep asking those questions. We we also ask those questions and yeah, ask us because we have answers like this because we ask them. Yeah, because we don't want to be putting stuff on our body that we don't want or that is toxic. So we're going to all this non -toxic more natural derivative.

from the flower I can't name. And then I can't name it because I can't name it, not because it's secret. But yeah, so, and then we also, we want it to last long so you don't have to keep reapplying it or anything like that because it would wear out. So that's awesome, man. Well, yeah, thanks for digging in there. I know, like I said, I didn't prep Chris with any of that. That's just knowledge up here for him.

So yeah, so thank you and until next time, I don't know how to sign these off yet. Do you have any ideas? I have no clue. Maybe some chug a beer? It's dry January, so I can't do that right now. Maybe next episode. All right, cheers. Peace. Yo yo.