YouSaid · the spoken record

Tom Hale

lines on the record: 76
first: 2025-11-10
most recent: 2025-11-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So this makes some side money to finance this business. Okay, so basically the idea was very straightforward. You were going to do biking trips where people would camp. But I guess pretty early on, maybe even in the first year, you realize that maybe camping wasn't the...”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Take the pot. Everybody shared tips, so it didn't matter to me. I didn't want to talk to anybody. So chipping as fast as I could. And we listened to music.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, they didn't cost very much. And I worked on the side at night at Fondue Fred on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley. I chipped the cheese out of fondue pots.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Bicycling magazine, outside magazine. I think outside was in existence at that point. And we probably rented some mailing lists, bike club mailing lists. I don't know. To this day, I have no idea if much of that paid off. It's so different now you do digital advertising. And today and tomorrow, you know if it worked or not. Back then, you'd like find out a year later.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We would charge what we felt was fair and what people could afford to pay, and we look at how much we spent and that we got to make a margin. And so we charged way too little probably back then. But, you know, we learned pretty quickly.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, exactly. Yeah. You know, we were cooking with Dutch ovens, made some great, great food, learned the hard way, like Dutch ovens, for instance. You don't want to put the riquettes right in the middle of the Dutch oven when they're stacked up. It gets too hot and they crack, which they did. And when you're out camping, food tastes better, but we did a really good job made lasagna all kinds of good things.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the very beginning, I believe we felt like it was a good thing to have people participate. I think that could not have been more ill-founded personally. But so they did actually pitch their tent. And anyway, it didn't take us very long to realize that they don't really want to.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we still go to Death Valley. We don't do camping there anymore, but we do go there. And it was such a fun experience, but we couldn't have done more things wrong because of the camping venue, the weather conditions, the winds are crazy. But, you know, we had a good time and we ran a trip.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, no, but there still aren't necessarily bike lanes where a lot of people do long bike rides. And so you're sharing the road with cars. And so riding a bike by yourself is a very solitary experience. You almost never, and back then, like you say, there weren't that many bikes out. So I was by myself the whole time, a lot of room for introspection and thinking about was a good idea. And I was initially going to start a company in a geographic area like the Northern California where I'm from, but I got back and realized that, oh, God, there's all these national parks that would be great to do. So that 5,000 mile ride became a formative aspect of the company.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm curious in 1979. I mean, today it's so common to see packs of cyclists everywhere, like just all over the country. But in 1979, was it kind of an oddball thing to do to get on a bike and just ride around the country? There wasn't the infrastructure. There weren't bike lanes.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Camping stuff, yeah, which it turned out. I was by myself, so going through the Mojave Desert, I remember stopping at night and listening to all the critters out in the sagebrush. Lizards, snakes, et cetera. And they're really loud at night. So the thought of putting a sleeping bag down amongst those critters is not very pleasant. So anyway, that was my trip.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I was going to do. But then I realized there's a whole lot of cornfields to get through. I thought going around the loop in the Western United States, I did about a 5,000 mile loop. I started in San Francisco, took BART to the end of the line and got out of BART and rode down the coast and went counterclockwise around the country or around the west.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I came up with a name for the company Backroads. And that was the first name I came up with. And I Was going to go on a bike trip”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so this is the late 70s. You decide you want to lead a bike trip. And you're obviously pretty good bike cyclist. You cycled up the California coast. But, you know, you had to presumably do some kind of reconnaissance or planning or studying. What was the first thing you did to figure out whether this was feasible?”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I didn't do it like a lot of people do it, which is they keep their day job and then they start this sort of hobby thing. I quit my job, you know, that I had gone to school, college for seven years. So I quit my job, had no income coming in. So I was going to make something out of this, a company that would lead Bike Trust. But I couldn't see beyond my hand as far as where it was going to go.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm just curious if you can take me back to that time in 1979. Did you have a vision of like a large, huge company, or did you think I just was as simple as I want to just lead people on bike tours in different places?”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's about as random. I have asked myself that question hundreds of times, and I cannot remember anything that led up to me waking up. I literally... Think it was a reaction against Las Vegas. I believe I had got a hold of a book, What Color is Your Parachute, which I could summarize by saying, find something you love doing that you're really good at. But what I saw as I read it is like, oh my God, this is a perfect thing for who I am in my personality, whether as far as wanting to have control of my life, wanting to do something exciting. I might have seen something in a bicycling magazine maybe, a classified ad. I'm not sure there weren't too many companies doing this sort of thing. I don't even know if I had seen a bicycling magazine at that point, but it must have been something like that, some trivial thing that said, well, that's interesting maybe. Yeah, this shouldn't have worked. I didn't have a nickel to my name practically. And, you know, just jumped in.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Woke up about two in the morning, got out of bed, and took eight pages of notes on what it would take to do this.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I rode my bike up the California coastline. Against the wind that was it. I think I did that maybe in between quarters or something when I was at UCLA.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's pretty accurate. I never really gave up on running. But Baikon did, you know, I commuted by bike and it was six months into the job that I woke up in the middle of the night with this idea that I wanted to take people on bike trips.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'm in an office now, actually, a lot of the time, but it's a very different environment. But yeah, so that was in the back of my head or the front of my head.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The city of Las Vegas, yes. I worked on air quality, water quality, solid waste plans, et cetera. And, you know, I remember driving up the coast, and my mom was saying, Tom, you are somebody that needs to be passionate about what you're doing. But the implication was, Tom, you don't love what you're doing. And she could not have been more right on that count. And I think I recognize that when I was in Las Vegas and I didn't like Las Vegas. So the whole do something you love to do. I made the wrong decision. I see so many kids doing exactly what I did, which is I love the environment. Okay. I always have. I've been running out in the woods all my life. I love the environment. Well, I love the environment. So why don't I do environmental planning? There was nothing about that job that resonated with me. You were in an office.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, it was a very weird place. I remember I started biking, commuting by bike to the Valley Bank building and would go past the clubs that had lines out the door at six in the morning. It was just like such a juxtaposition everything about my life. It was just odd, really.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And more than 60 countries. And Tom did it all without taking a dime of outside capital. He grew up in California and he ran track at the University of Oregon alongside the legendary Steve Prefontaine. After injuries put an end to his running career, he earned a master's degree in environmental planning, and his first job after grad school? It took him somewhere unexpected to Las Vegas, a place that was very different from what he was used to.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Have you ever taken a trip that left you feeling different when you came home? Not because of what you saw, but because of how you moved through it. Well, that's what Tom Hale has built his entire life around. Back in nineteen seventy nine, Tom quit his job with no plan, no investors, and almost no experience, just this idea that people might actually want to ride bikes and camp their way through places like Death Valley. His first trip, just four guests, and Tom let it himself. To stay afloat, he washed dishes at night. He lived in a house with a bunch of roommates and chased down stolen bikes from the back roads office, but over time his bet paid off. Back roads grew from a one man operation into one of the world's largest active travel companies, offering hundreds of biking and hiking adventures.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we were driving crossing the Nevada desert and the driver went off the embankment and we rolled the vans a couple times. I felt like we were in a rock tumbler and it was all steel tool chests, propane containers. Just imagine all that was going around as we're spider-manning through the air. Anyway, we came to a rest, made it over to the edge of the freeway. We're laying there side by side. And Bill, one of the leaders, said, well, I guess that's it for the summer.”
2025-11-10 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Backroads: Tom Hale. How a desk worker became a trailblazer in active travel · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT