Listen to the PODCAST HERE – LIVE WITH ULTRALITESACKS

The following is a manuscript of the interview with Luke Nalley from www.ultralitesacks.com  He visits with Gia and myself about their outdoor lifestyle, how they got started with UltraliteSacks and their daily lives of running a small business.  How can they help you stay organized on the trail and while traveling?  Read on!

Joey – Hey, everyone. We are live on the Overland Podcast. We will… be talking to some friends here in just a little bit. I’ve got my wife on here. Thanks, babe, for joining me.

Gia – Thanks for asking me.

Joey – You bet. Well, Tony, his wife is off in North Carolina and she has had to, he’s had to do some dad duties. So, thank you for stepping in on that and always being willing to join me.

Gia – It’s a blast. It’s an hour of conversation with my husband and a friend.

Joey – Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Well, for years we have been a traditional overlanding podcast, but we have expanded into different areas. We’ve been talking about quite a few different things, about backpacking, backpacking, and getting out, because there’s so many ways to explore our beautiful planet, and it’s all traveling over land, whether you’re doing it by wheels or whether you’re doing it by boat. And so, we want to bring on someone who is a part of this community, living life, but not only living the lifestyle that we love, but it also has taken that lifestyle and has started a very unique business and one I’ve grown to love and use products from and helping others to stay lighter. So today on the podcast, we have Luke from UltralightSacks. Luke, thanks for joining us.

Luke – Yeah, it was my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Joey – Yeah. Welcome to the show. So, what I like to do when we come on and start the podcast is just tell us a little bit about yourself. Where are you from?

Luke – Yeah. So yeah, my name’s Luke, founder of UltralightSacks. And originally my wife and I both are from Illinois, like smack dab in the middle Bloomington, normal area.  We’ve, we’ve lived in quite a few places since then, but yeah, we’re originally from central Illinois.

Joey – That’s awesome. You have, you found yourself in, in moving around, you were in the Pacific Northwest for a little while. And I find that interesting because I’ve never been there before. And next summer we’re planning on going there. So, did you enjoy your time there in the Pacific Northwest?

Luke – I did. Yeah, absolutely. I was very fortunate enough to be able to spend just about five years in Southern Oregon, like right on the coast. So, we’re like right there where Oregon meets California. It was a really special place.

Joey – Yeah, I imagine. So, since we’re planning on going out there, any places that you can tell us that we would want to put on our must-see list?

Luke – Oh man. Well, there was quite a few places out there. I guess it depends on, you know, what do you guys want to get out of the trip or is there, you guys have any type of priorities on?

Joey – We’re going to do it all. We’re going to do it all. We’re going to do some hiking and biking and getting out and seeing the sites and hopefully get to the coast for a little bit. So yeah, trying to make a list of the things that we want to see. We’re going to have quite a bit of time, but we’re going to take a little bit of time getting out there and coming back too. But that’s one of the places that I personally have never been before. So, I want to take it all in. I want to take it all in.

Luke – Yes, sir. I mean, I could not recommend Brookings, Oregon enough. That’s where we lived for five years. And so, it’s down way in the corner on the coast, and it’s in a little banana belt. Brookings. Um, like temperatures year-round, you’re either at sixty-five and sunny or it’s fifty-five and rainy, you know, just summer, winter.

Joey – That’s perfect. That is perfect. I wish I could stay that way here all the time.

Luke – And it is extremely remote out there too. So you’ll be able to find a lot of really good back country backpacking and some like killer forest roads, you know, you could go anywhere and just camp anywhere out there.

Joey – Brookings. Put that on the list, babe.

Gia – That’s what I’m doing right now.

Joey – She’s got a list for everything. I bet she’s got a thousand different lists on there.

Luke – I could send you pins on maps too. I could get you right into some

Joey – That’d be horrible. I’d hate that. I’d absolutely hate that. We will be taking our, our dress down, you know, secondary overlanding vehicle, mainly because it gets almost three times the gas mileage as the big one does. So, we won’t be able to do anything rough and tough, but we can get to most places and we have the tent and the, and the fridge and all that. So, we’ll be able to go and stay just about anywhere. Pretty excited.

Luke – Yeah. Well, I tell you what, if you take a look at our Subaru, you’ll be able to see some scars on that, taking it places we should not have been taking it.

Gia – I wonder what he’s going to cry more at, our Subaru’s first scar. It hurts so bad.

Joey – People rib me all the time. You need to get this out on some trails. And I was like, I don’t even have fifteen thousand miles on it. It’s still new. I take it to the car wash at least once a week and vacuum it out, clean it up.

Gia – Someone tells me if I’m the one that puts the scar on it, he’s going to be crying harder. No, I’ll be crying harder.

Joey – And you’ll never live that down.

Gia – I know.

Joey – Okay. I need to make sure that happens to you first. So, what brought you back to Arkansas from such an amazing place as that?

Luke – So, you know, a handful of things, but I feel like we had our good time in Oregon and you know, it was time to move on to something else. And my wife has a lot of family out in the kind of Northern Arkansas area, came out and we visited, we’d been down here a couple of times, I believe, and I’ve always liked it. Jesse’s always liked it. So, we said, you know, why don’t we give it a shot out there and, and, and really see, you know, in the housing market out here was really, really affordable at the time. And so, we kind of slid right in at the right time and that chapter in our life where we’re kind of more or less, you know, looking for getting a, getting a property to have as our own, you know, before we lived in a tiny house, that’s why we were so lucky enough to be able to live out West and like in Brookings and in Arizona, Colorado is we had a tiny house.

Joey – Yeah. I knew you’d have her on that.

Gia – Tell me about this tiny house.

Joey – Yeah. Like a house, but it’s really small.

Gia – That’s right. I was wondering, could you fit it in your pocket?

Joey – Pretty much, yeah. It’s like a wittle watter.

Luke – Yeah, we’d tow it like with, you know, just a diesel truck. But yeah, I think it was like, I think it’s two hundred and forty square feet.

Gia – Wow. So, were you like loft, like had a loft that you guys slept like, okay?

Luke – Yeah. Yeah. So, we were also very lucky at this junction of our lives too. When we were wanting to do the tiny house, it was kind of, it was established, but it wasn’t really a big deal yet. So, we got in with a really great company as they were kind of getting started up too. And we got to design everything we wanted in, in the floor plan. And at the time I was working remotely for an insurance company. So, I needed to have an office like literally with a door that could close. And that was like the biggest hurdle. So, we were able to design with the team and get a king size bed and an office that had a door that closed it all in this, you know, little tiny house.

Gia – Okay. I’m Googling two hundred forty square foot tiny house right now just to see what it looks like.

Luke – You can Google our tiny house if you wanted to.

Gia – What?

Luke – yeah you want me to you want me to send it to you joey?

Joey – yeah

Luke – I’ll send it over to you

Joey – okay while you’re sending that …

Gia – speaking of to go back for just a second Oregon one of my favorite state parks in any state is in Oregon what is it Silver Falls State Park.  It is amazing it has there’s a one trail that you can hike like to like eleven different waterfalls or something like that. And half of them you get to like walk behind. It was a state. I mean, it was one of those where when I clued in, I think that was the trip where after I went to that state park, I thought, you know, I need to like look at other state parks in other states and not just think it’s all about the national parks. Is that one is one of the prettiest state parks I’ve ever seen in my life.

Luke – Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s a neat little spot. And then if you guys do go on the coast, I think it’s like the Samuel Boardman, Samuel H. Boardman. There’s like a whole corridor, essentially, that’s like thirty miles of coastline. And it has like the sea stacks and there’s tons of coast trails and whatnot.

Joey – Oh, how cool.

Luke – Yeah, it’s really neat. That’s cool.

Gia – I’m just amazed that you fit a king size bed in a square foot tiny house. I’m like, how many square feet is a king size bed? It’s a lot. It’s probably pretty close to ten by ten.

Luke – It’s somewhere around eight by eight, I think.

Joey – Sixty-four square feet. A fourth of your house was bed. Yeah, but you know it was well they have two dogs too…

Luke – and we had to have stairs too you know like because a lot of them have ladders up to the lofts and you know and we didn’t want to be hauling dogs up and down

Joey – Well, before we talk about UltralightSacks, I want to just visit with you a little bit more and get to know you a little bit better. So, what would you say contributed to you falling in love with the outdoors? Take us back to a time when you fell in love with the outdoors. What triggered that?

Luke – Sure. So, it really comes down to one trip, to be totally honest. I think it was back in 2013. So unfortunately, my dad passed away. And one of his biggest goals, like he always wanted to go to Alaska. He was obsessed with that really dumb show about Alaska, Mountain Men or something Alaska. Alaska’s last frontier.

Joey – Yeah. Last Alaskans.

Luke – Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’s a funny show. He was always like wanted to go and then he passed away and never made it so my brother and I said we’re going to do an epic trip to Alaska and we went for it was like two weeks essentially and we got to go to Denali and you know and do the whole nine but we got to go to homer Alaska and take it was killer at the end of the canine yes okay uh we took a float plane from Homer into Kachemak Bay state park. Cause you can only get there by boat or by plane. I mean, it was like a super epic adventure and we’re both from central Illinois and you know, yeah, the whole time we’re, we’re both just awestruck and completely underprepared, I mean, yeah, it was like going straight to the NFL, you know? It was like, what are we looking back on it? I mean, thank goodness it turned out as good as it did. Cause there’s a lot of times where it could have taken a turn and not been good, but yeah. So that was really what sparked it for me after that.

Joey – Yeah. That’s cool. Well, you’ve really, done a lot of things and, living in a tiny house, you’ve kind of really bought into the minimalist lifestyle. And then you went from that to building out or buying a pretty cool van. We went camping a few weeks ago at Rendezvous. Rick England is on here, one of the ones who puts on Rendezvous. And so, you came to Rendezvous on that Saturday and you got to camp with us and you brought your van. So, tell us about your van and what you’ve all done to it and outfitted it and where you’ve taken and stuff, how you love it.

Luke – Yeah, yeah, definitely. So, it’s an Econoline and we’re really just kind of wanting something minimal, but simple. So, we could take it on road trips and then also be able to get back to trail heads and camp out. So, it’s a two-wheel drive, but it’s got a little bit of a lift to it, bigger tires. So, it does get back to some, some cool places, but it’s just a simple build in the back, just a platform for a bed, a lot of storage underneath it. I can have my, you know, all my gear, my tools and stuff like that. And then I, I built out an electric system for it, you know, with the house battery and chargers and I love. Twelve-volt electric systems. So, I got to really nerd out on. know bus bars and everything else building that out so making it look clean…

Gia – you just were speaking his language… making it look clean. that’s him! he’s like I it’s got to be clean

Joey – and there can’t be any rattles! it drives me insane! We were driving… we had to go pick up our Honda got worked on and all the way there, a drawer in the back of the Subaru was going out and in, out and in, out and in. I was going insane. I was fixing to shoot somebody. So as soon as we stopped, I had to pop the trunk open and deal with that. It’s got to be clean. It’s got to be quiet. Everything’s got to have its own space.

Gia – Considering that I was the person sitting next to you in the car, I’m very glad that you refrained from shooting anybody. I’m very glad. Thank you. I didn’t know how close I was.

Joey – You were very close. Yeah. About a foot and a half away. So, I know you’ve been a few places in your van. So let me ask you this. This is one of the questions I like to ask everybody that comes on the show. If money was no object, where would you like to take your van and why? Bucket list. Give me a spot.

Luke – Yeah it would probably be up somewhere in the, PNW, I guess maybe like, British Columbia trying to get up to, yeah, the Rockies up there and maybe even more towards the coast, maybe more towards, Vancouver Island, maybe a little bit more like towards the Squamish area. Yeah, ‘ve been to Seattle and that was about as far north as I got, in that area, but I’d love to be in BC and check that out.

Joey – There is a, I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not. We actually accidentally, was filtering through YouTube one day and it was, there was this trail came up that’s right on the coast of, just right above Washington, right there in British Columbia. And it’s like a 120-mile trail. That’s actually is like the Appalachian Trail. That’s got huts on it every ten miles. We watched that video and I was like, I’m putting that on the list. That’s on the list. I want to do that so bad. We’ll have to do it. We’ll have to do it. I love it.

So, you’re one of the sponsors of the show. UltralightSacks is one of the sponsors of the show. And we love to highlight the sponsors. But since you’re on here, we’re highlighting you. But last week you texted me and you stated… you said something about another one of our sponsors you actually went on a little hiking trip and you said Mamoo’s kitchen has ruined all other freeze-dried food for me so I want to want to throw that out there you enjoyed it?

Luke – that’s a hundred percent accurate it was so good I was so mad it was over.  Whenever I finished It’s so cozy, tasty.

Joey – It just is. What was the one that we tried when we went camping that day? It was the chicken, King Ranch chicken. Yeah, King’s Ranch. So King, King Ranch chicken actually has Doritos in it. And I don’t know how they did it. I don’t know how they did it, but it still had the crunchy Doritos in it. And I want to ask them how did you do that because this stuff’s been soaking in water for ten minutes and it worked! I don’t know how it worked!  You had the Bayou Blend you said it was the seafood one that’s their claim to fame that’s their the one that they say is the best one

Gia – so I just always, every time I’m at home by myself, I’m like, I think I want some, the chicken spaghetti.

Joey – She brings them out. She brings it out all the time. She’s like, what are we having for dinner? She’s like, we can have Mamoo’s Kitchen. Well, every now and then I get out my, I get out my, stove and I practiced with it because I got a beer can stove and I absolutely love cooking with this beer can stove and I was trying a few things out on it so every now and then we get one of our freeze-dried meals out and try it out but she always pulls the Mamoo’s kitchen we could try this we won’t be missing out on anything good if we do that but anyway All right.

Gia – Did you tell him when you were speaking about him last week or the week before so much that when it did the transcript for the show?

Joey – Yes, I texted him the next morning. And I’m actually going to have to pronounce my words a little better tonight than I did last week. And it’ll be UltralightSacks and see if it comes on there. So, speaking of UltralightSacks, tell us how did that get a start? How did you get started on that? When did you get started making your own gear?

Luke – yeah so it was late 2018 so my brother and I went on the Alaska trip in like twenty thirteen and it wasn’t too long after that when my wife and I got the tiny house made and we moved out west and we were kind of around Arizona and Colorado and then out to um Oregon and you know I had been doing quite a bit of hiking and peak bagging and all that kind of stuff the whole way out there and you know I discovered Dyneema equipment. So that’s really what, that’s what did it. And you know, that Dyneema equipment had the price tag on it. So, yeah, I just decided, I was like, you know, I needed a hobby and I said, I’m going to try to make some stuff. And I made a few bags like I made like a pouch a wallet out of some Dyneema and I used it and it was working so then I got some more Dyneema and I started making more stuff and then it got to the point where I just buy it and I would make a couple things for me and then I would make the rest of it and sell it on eBay and it was getting snatched up so quick I mean like just Sometimes not even a full day. It would just sell, sell, sell. So, then I started doing that just kind of as a little bit of a side hustle because I was still working remotely for an insurance company out of Illinois. And, you know, so now I kind of could do whatever I wanted because I could make a couple bags to, you know, buy something so I can make it for myself. And I started making some backpacks and stuff for myself. And it just really just slowly took off until I decided I want to jump in with both feet, really. Yeah, it was a lot of fun though.

Joey – So, some of that first stuff that you make, do you still make the same stuff today that you made like some of the first stuff? Oh, he’s backing up. He’s fixing to pull some stuff out of the archives.

Luke – Well, I, because you got to stay, you got to stay humble and you got to know where you came from. That is like the first pouch and any eagle eye people out there will be able to tell you that I definitely made this wrong side out. I love it and oh man the stitching is terrible but yeah, I use this for my first aid kit for years and cool and then another little wallet but that’s this is that’s where it started

Gia – my wallet my wallets and my credit card holder my purses are Dyneema

Joey – Would you guys mind just talking about, there might be some people that are not familiar when you say Dyneema, like what you mean by, and what’s so special about that fabric?

Luke – Yeah, yeah. That’s a great question.

Gia – That is something that wasn’t, it wasn’t until the Brofessor and I got together that I was like, Dyneema, what? And then I was always like, you know, that fabric, that fabric that you’re talking about.

Joey – I have his website pulled up here right on it. Oh, my goodness.

Luke – Oh yeah. There it is. Yeah. So, yeah, Dyneema is a branded name of a fiber. So, it’s a let me let me do this one. So, it’s UHMWPE ultra UH ultra-high weight molecular polyethylene. is what the name of the fiber is. And the Dyneema is a brand of that type of fiber. So, it’s an extremely tough and very, very lightweight fiber that you can use in multiple ways. But with Dyneema, what they’re really known for is they take those fibers and they’re able to lay them out in a crisscross, ninety-degree fashion. And they’re not woven together. They’re just laid on top of each other. And then they’re bonded with a proprietary mylar layer and some type of like a bonding glue in there. And so, it makes like a space age looking fabric. And it’s really not fabrics the wrong word for it. It’s more of a material.

Joey – Yeah. It looks like plastic. It really looks like plastic to me.

Luke – It does. And it’s got a crinkly sound to it. It’s got a very, yeah, the texture.

Joey – It’s like once you feel Dyneema, you can pick it out and the other. And it’s so much stronger than what it looks like. When I got the very first Dyneema thing that I ever owned, I got it in and I thought this isn’t going to last a week. I had no idea. No idea how strong it was, how durable it was, abrasion resistant and all that. It’s a crazy, crazy.

Gia – Now, is it also it’s also waterproof, right? Like is or no.

Luke – So, it is the material itself is actually it’s technically hydrophobic. So, it’s not only waterproof, but it doesn’t even absorb water. So, yeah. So, if you take that material and you just like hold that material underneath the water, it’s going to weigh the exact same tomorrow. than it did whenever it went in. Whereas like a sill nylon or a sill polyester, what you’ll see it mostly with like a tent rain fly. Like if you were to do that with a tent rain fly, if you were to just hold it underneath the water, it’s going to absorb a percentage of the water into it. So, if it’s a one-pound rain fly, whenever you pull it out of the water, it could be two or three pounds at that point. Yeah, so really good for backpacker’s not only is it super-duper waterproof but then whenever it gets wet all night in a rainstorm it still weighs nothing the next day whenever you go to pack it you just shake it off and stuff it in your outside pocket so it dries so quick

Joey – Yeah, it’s amazing. It truly is a wonder material. Well, not material. Like you said, it’s yeah, it is. It’s crazy if you ever deal with it. Have you ever tried and made anything and thought this is awful? This is never going to work. I know you start off; you know, you start off with the small stuff and you think, oh, I can make this. And then you’re just like, oh, yeah.

Luke – Oh, yeah. I’ve got like my first backpack that I made. I probably made it. three or four months after I started making ditties and pouches and stuff like that. And I just came up with the dimensions in my head and cut everything out, sewed it all together. It wasn’t terrible, but it was not good. Yeah, yeah. It was, you know, it was just too blocky. Whenever you make in a backpack, you needed to have some form to the back of it. So, it distributes the weight to your back and your hips, right? It can’t just be a box that’s hanging off of your back, you know, and that’s what that was.

Joey – So, yeah, I’ve been there. The reason I ask that is because I’ve been through that. I’ve been a crafter for a few years. I got into leather work. And the reason I got into leather work was that I was in the motorcycle scene and I was also a police officer. And I wanted a biker wallet, you know, the big chain biker wallets that would carry a police badge but nobody made one and so I googled and googled and googled and I finally found one but it was it would have been a custom completely custom and this wallet would have cost me almost seven hundred dollars for this custom wallet and I thought screw that I’ll make one myself so I bought all the stuff and I sat down you know at my desk and I got this I got this leather, I wore this leather and I cut it all out and I measured and I measured, you know, what a credit card would be. And I measured what a dollar bill would be and I cut it out, but I didn’t allow for the stitching. And so, when I got everything done, nothing would fit. Not one thing would fit. It was so small and completely, absolutely worthless. And yeah, I’ve still got that wallet. I still got it. have it here as a reminder of, you know, two hundred and fifty wallets ago. This is how I started. And that’s how far I’ve come. And it’s a definite reminder of, oh, man, I’m so glad that I’m not where I used to be. You know, come along here, baby.

Luke – That’s a great story. Yeah. Forgetting your seam allowance. I love that.

Joey – Yeah. It’s a total experience on my part, you know, just like sewing it inside out, you know, I, it just, it was just one of those things where I like, I had no idea. Yeah. Well, um, You and I met for the very first time by email. Oh, yeah. Because one of the places that you sell things is on Etsy. And I love Etsy. A friend of mine a few years ago, he said, man, you just need to get on and Google ultralight backpacking on Etsy. He said, all this homemade handcrafted stuff will come up and you’ll find some of the coolest stuff on there. So, I got on there. And the thing that I was looking for was a Dyneema compression sack. And I couldn’t find one anywhere. And when I Googled that, yours came up because you make one. And the reason I wanted one was because… If you put something that has a loft in it, if you, you know, put something that has like a, like a puffy jacket or a sleeping bag or something like that, and you put it in a roll top sack that you just roll and it clips, you can’t get it small enough. You know, if you want something that really compresses down small and I wanted a compression sack. And so, I was so pumped and I ordered two of them. And then, you know, you were having you were having a problem getting material. And so, we emailed back and forth and you were like, oh, man, I can’t get this material. I shipped it the wrong place. Yeah. And so, I understood at the time. it helped me understand a little bit more about the industry. You know, you’re not a huge company. It’s you and your wife. Y’all work at home. You work together and you’re not a huge company that orders all this material in bulk. And sometimes getting materials is not easy. So, I understood the process a little bit and how that constantly affects you. And so is, is that a problem that you face all the time in your business is getting materials in order to make things or,

Luke – I want to say not all the time and it’s not but it is it’s more frequent than I would like especially when you’re talking about Dyneema that one that one’s probably the most problematic because there’s only I think there’s only two companies right now that sell Dyneema at least the variant that I use so And neither one of them really get it super frequent. Yeah. So… The main barrier to Dyneema is the minimum order quantities and how expensive it is. These companies are putting up almost a house price to get their shipments of Dyneema. It’s tough for them to do it and then for me to be able to get it downstream. Anyways, there was an unfortunate event. where they sent it to Brookings by mistake. And, yeah, and then the post office in Brookings sat on it for a good two or three weeks before they actually sent it back.

Joey – Oh, they sent it to your old address? I get that now. That’s been a while now, but I don’t understand why they sent it. You said they sent it to the wrong address. They sent it to your old address.

Luke – Yeah, I hadn’t been there in almost two years. Oh, okay. That one was very unfortunate. Brookings was not in a hurry to get it back either. So, it sat there for a very long time.

Joey – So, speaking of Dyneema, on your website, you use, I’m going to say, I’m just going to describe it like this. It’s a foreign language to a lot of people. You talk about different materials. You talk about eco-packed. epx two hundred epx four hundred ultra-tx ultra-grid ultra-800, ultra four-way stretch I mean there’s just a whole lot of stuff that the normal everyday person like me has no idea what you’re talking about but that’s the different materials that you use for the different things that you make so how do you decide which materials you use for what?

Luke – that’s a great question and honestly the if you don’t stay on top of it just passes you by like overnight it seems like you wake up one day and you didn’t check your emails and all of a sudden you don’t know about three materials that are out there and new but anyways, we really want to stay up with what is going to perform the best you know it has to be waterproof you know for ninety-eight percent of our applicability’s. It needs to be waterproof. It needs to be strong. And we want to keep the weight down as small as possible. Those are the main things that we look for in materials. Now, in recent months, we’ve been able to bring on a couple of other, I would almost call them almost like budget options. They’re still outrageously phenomenal materials, but like in an ultra-grid, material that’s one of our newer options that we’ve got out there and we can carry that in like six or seven different colors it’s fully recycled it’s a really cool material very tough especially for all of the material I’m sorry all of the products that we make with it you know it’s very durable and then we’ve also been able to bring on ultra-tx and sometimes it just depends on what’s in stock, but I was actually very fortunate enough to work with challenge sale cloth whenever they were originally designing this material and give quite a bit of feedback on the smaller bags whenever they were designing this material. And so. I’m a little partial to it because I actually did have a little bit of a hand probably not but I like to think I maybe had a little bit of a hand in when they’re making we’ll do that at least send it to me and ask me what I thought and I told them whether or not they listened I don’t know but it’s a cool material it’s very comparable to a Dyneema where um you know the weight is it’s like a two and a half ounce material as opposed to a one and a half with Dyneema but it’s the closest I can get but it’s also a little bit less expensive so I’m able to offer that at a little bit lower of a rate than Dyneema so it’s a little bit more of a budget option um but it’s still extremely strong it uses those UHMWPE fibers in a x pattern that’s really what we’re looking for is lightweight, waterproof, you know, something that’s going to hold up through a through hike. I won’t sell something that’s going to not hold up for a full through hike of the Appalachian Trail or whatever it is.

Joey – Yeah, sure. So, my wife and I, well, I don’t know about my wife, but I am. I’m a gearhead. You know, if I was going down to the altar, I would just… Admit it. You know, confess. I’m a gearhead. I love gear. I love all the stuff, all the things. So, let’s talk about your gear. What is your favorite thing to make? Out of all the things you make, what’s your favorite thing?

Luke – My favorite thing to make. I really enjoy making the roll tops, like either just roll top dry bags or the compression bags. I love making those. And my ditties, like those little cube bags that’s got a zipper on them. I mean, I love making them. I have so many of them. It’s insane. I use them for travel. I mean, anything. We just went to Oklahoma over the weekend. We had a whole slew of them holding different things. You know, they’re just they come in handy for everything. So, yeah. Yeah. Roll tops and the ditty bags. What would you say is the most popular piece of gear that you make? The one that everybody likes the most? Yeah, and depends on the month, but it’s one of those two. It just, yeah, every month seems to kind of go back and forth, but mostly it’s the ditty bags because we’ve got so many different colors. And like I said, you can use them for overland. You can use them for travel, bike backpacking. Yeah, pretty much anything. My grandma uses them for her cough drops.

Gia – That was one thing when I first started traveling with Joey, he was like, okay, there’s rules.

Joey – There are rules. Everything has a place and everything goes in something.

Gia – Nothing’s just like laying out, not in it. And no Walmart bags. No Walmart bags. You don’t put stuff in Walmart bags and put that in the car.

Joey – Well, when you’ve got a small vehicle and you’re gone for an extended period of time, you have to be organized to some degree. And so, the very first time we went somewhere, I handed her a box and I said, everything you take has to fit in this box. Because when you’ve got a small vehicle, like I’ve got an FJ Cruiser, and you put a kitchen, you put a refrigerator-freezer, you put everything you need to cook and live and all that in the rear of it, you take up. Forty-percent or more of the storage space. And then you’ve got a little bit, just a little tiny space for you know, what you’re going to have to wear and, and, you know, all that stuff with. So yeah, I gave her a box and I said, everything you go. She said, everything. I said, yes, everything, everything you take in this box.

Gia – I was very good. I was already.

Joey – She was awesome. Yeah. Totally amazing. And you’ve gotten so much better. Not really, but you’ve done really good. You’ve done good. You’ve done good.

Gia – No, but it is. He does. He likes for like, it’s not, it can’t just go in the FJ. It’s got to go in something and then it can go in. Yeah. And then like the roll of toilet paper can’t just like. and so, when he gets your bags, he’s so excited to open up and think oh I can go in here

Joey – yeah exactly I love that oh these will be our perfect snap bags these are perfect for snap bags. I think yeah well, it’s organization is one of my loves and I dream about it and it’s just it’s just something cool, you know, and I’ll talk about that here in a minute. What is the one thing that you’ve come up with that you’re the proudest of?

Luke – Oh, man, I would say for we’re talking like design wise on products. OK, well, there would be two of them. Number one, I really like our food bags that we do. So, you know, most companies have some type of a food bag and they roll down and they clip. But I. Oh, there you go.

Joey – I just happened to have one. I love it. It’s so crazy. I just I just emptied this out from my deer hunting trip. So, yeah, this is this is my food bag that I took with all my snacks in it.  You know it rolls down and it clips just like this yeah but I like it because it’s got a zipper on it that’s and see that’s it.

Luke – I always I didn’t want just a normal roll top style and those are great but like I really wanted something with a little bit easier access and I don’t always want to roll it down sometimes. I just want to open it up I want to grab my thing and either just kind of chuck it over to the side while I’m eating or if it doesn’t need to be rolled down in my pack, I just want to stuff it in there and not have everything fly out. So, I came up with that design. That was one of my very first products that we were offering was that. And those have been pretty successful. I really like those. I’m really proud of that design and have not changed. I brought on the larger size, but haven’t changed anything about those. And then also the compression bag was the other one because, yeah, at the time we were the only ones making a Dyneema compression bag.

Joey – And, yeah, here we go. I have one right here. I absolutely love this this is probably one of my favorite pieces that you have and you know I don’t know if you can tell but you can you can almost see through this this stuff it is so light and thin but in order to keep everything dry and compressed And I love how you’ve got, you know, it goes down and then these clips right here make it suck down into something that’s so small. It’s so amazing. I love it.

Luke – And you can get it down to where you can roll it, roll it, roll it and get your knee on it and then really press it down, clip them in and then pull them tight.

Gia – He’s like Rumpelstiltskin with his gold, except he’s Joey with his Dyneema, like his bags. He’s like, gets all his bags up and ordered from you.

Joey – It goes down to nothing. I mean, it’s so nice. I can just sit in and I can sit in here and play with this stuff all day I’ll put stuff in it you know and when we’re watching like YouTube and stuff, I’ll get my I’ll get my gear out I keep all my gear in milk crates yeah and you know practicing packing everything and seeing which bag is going to work best for which thing and okay let me try it in this bag and

Gia – meanwhile I’m sitting there watching with my and then I have a book on my phone like

Joey – Yeah, I watch I watch videos all the time about the best way to pack your best way to pack your backpack and all that stuff. And then I’ll carry my stuff in there like, oh, I need to try that. So, I take my bags in there and my packs in there.

Gia – How do you make your patterns now? Are you like, do you just yeah? How do you make your patterns now? Well, for a majority of my products, I’ll cut out my blanks. I still do everything by hand.

Luke – so when we lived in Brookings, I did actually have a company that was able to do laser cutting for me. And that, that did make things a lot easier. I could just drive down to, it was in Northern California. I just drive down. drop it off and they laser cut all my fabric and I’d come back and I wouldn’t have to do any cutting and everything would be like very precise. But so right now can just throw material down and roll it and I can cut out my blanks that I need off of the table. It sounds a little bit odd and if you’re not actually doing it, it doesn’t really make sense, but it makes sense to me. So, I’ve got my own system down to where I can just throw the fabric down, roll it out and cut what I need to write off of it. And, you know, over the years I’ve kind of honed it in a little bit, but yeah, it’s, it’s still all by hand. But for like backpacks, whenever you have, you know, actually like just panels that you have to cut out. I have templates that I’ve had laser cut out and I’ve done like worked with a CNC machine and then cut out all my templates from there. I just input all of my measurements in and yeah, and it pumps those out and I just trace them and cut them for some of those. It’s just fascinating.

Gia – You know, my, my mom is a quilter and can sew anything seamstress galore. And my grandmother was as well. And all my aunts, like they just all have grown up doing that. And so, to think that the way that you like create gear so much, you know, I’m like, Oh, it’s the same kind of stuff. You just don’t realize. I just never realized like the same work that goes into it.

Luke – Oh man. Well, the quilting though, I’m sure that that takes a lot of time to do that.

Gia – Oh, it’s, I’ve seen some of the stuff they do, and yeah, that really does put me to shame. It always takes one generation for it to be lost, and I am the generation that’s dropped the ball. Oh, no. Well, it’s never too late.

Joey – You do stuff. You make stuff.

Gia – I do, but I crochet. I don’t sew or anything like that.

Joey – Okay, well, that’s still… I mean, you take a… long thing of something and you make something from nothing I do and that’s still pretty cool well thank you yeah, I think it’s cool well I was thinking today earlier today you know how everything has a story all the gear has a story the different places that you take the things it’s been through and it creates a story and one of the things that as a gear maker that you probably look forward to is compliments and encouragement. Well, we carry things out. We use it. We do it again. We drag stuff all over a plant all over the planet. So, what’s a cool story or two about something that you’ve heard about where your gear’s been or what it’s been through or something like that? Tell us tell us a little bit of encouragement that you’ve got from people that use your stuff.

Luke – Sure. And that’s a great question. There’s one specific story that definitely comes to mind. This is fairly recent within the past year or so, I think maybe a couple of years. But a guy reached out. He had bought a Recyclops backpack from us. And I think it was pretty close right after we launched them. And he emailed us and he’s like, hey, just so you guys know, I bought this pack from you. It’s been about a year. but here’s what happened to me. And essentially, he went on a, like a very remote back country type of situation. I don’t know if he was kayaking or floating a river by himself. Like, I think it was like Northern Idaho or something like that. The way out, it was in a way out West. And he, he had to bail. I think that he, his canoe or whatever it was that he was in flipped and he got into a really, really bad situation really quick by himself. And he lost everything in the trip. And so, he had completely written it off. And it was just I think it was just before winter. So, he had this trip and he did not. I mean, he just barely made it out alive. Like it was not a good situation for him. And I don’t know if search and rescue was called or whatnot, but yeah, he said that he made it out. And anyways, it was springtime and he decided he wanted to go back and try to find all the stuff that he had lost. And he said that he found the backpack and it was caught into a tree actually in the river. And it was just like had been, you know, caught in a tree over the river. And it was like water was still like rushing over it. And he sent me pictures of it. And it just had like one little tear where the tree had actually like pierced into it. And that was it. Everything else seems like you’d think it was brand new. And I tried to buy that backpack off of him and send him a new one. And he was not having it at all. So that one was a crazy wild story. And we shared it on our Instagram and everything. So, I’m sure it’s still out there. But yeah, and pretty frequently we get time to time or specific stories on, hey, your gear helped me go here, do this, do that. And yeah, sometimes I do think about it whenever I’m sending out this large set of orders or And I’m like, man, I wonder where’s the craziest place one of these things are going to go to.

Joey – It would be nice if you had trackers on them and you would be able to track where a lot of it’s going. I know a lot of the stuff you sell; people probably buy it just because it’s cool and never use it. But a lot of the stuff… You know, people actually use it and take it to some pretty cool places and it would be really neat. You know, a lot of people say I’d love to be a fly on the wall. Well, I’d love to be a tick on that bag or something, you know, every place where this thing goes. But I know you’ve told me that, you know, your stuff has been on the Appalachian Trail and different places like that. So, you know, several places where, you know, big time places where your gear has been. So that’s pretty neat story.

Luke – Yeah, yeah. It’s been really around the world now too. So, we sold a lot of gear to this, an ultimate racer or something. I can’t remember what they were doing. It was ultra marathon or something in Uzbekistan. Went out there. We actually were able to do ultra race at one point so we had a lot of stuff that was in Humvees out in Afghanistan like holding like big um first aid kits with our Dyneema roll tops um that was kind of that was kind of crazy because that was really early on after I’d started doing this and they found us on Etsy and that one was kind of crazy it was a contractor who reached out

Gia – Okay. That’s hysterical. I love it. It was weird. It was like, yeah, it was kind of surreal. And all the bids and all the stuff you have to do.

Luke – Okay. That’s cool. Yeah. Yeah. So we’ve gotten to do some cool, cool projects so far that you never really would think about just, you know, making what we make, but we’ve been super fortunate so far and I’m sure our gear has seen some crazy stuff oh my gosh like some of your gear is holding my uh wet wipes and my toilet paper and it was just on the boy scout trail a couple I love it so there you go I love it I know And I know, I know too, that, um, now three of our Alpine fast packs have been up to Everest base camp too. So that one’s, that one’s kind of cool. We’ve gotten reports back on those. Um, Yeah, it’s like Island Peak. I can’t remember how high up that was. It was like twenty-four thousand feet or something that they were using it for. And yeah, it was.

Joey – That is so cool. Yeah. So that was pretty neat. Yeah, this is the one that’s holding my wife’s toilet paper.

Gia – Oh, yeah. Paper holder. He came and he said, he’s like, I can’t find. I can’t find the pink one. And I was like, because you gave it to me. Yeah, this is uh so which one is this this is a little ditty bag here right yes sir

Luke – so those are the that’s the regular size ditty and actually with that one specifically I had ordered some different colors of zipper in because usually they just come in black. So that one’s a little sneak peek. I’m going to probably be doing a limited release of orange and neon yellow zippers.

Joey – I love it. You know, and the thing about these is you won’t ever lose them in the leaves or anything like that. So that’s what I love about that. I like being able to find stuff because… You get done packing stuff. You’re like, where did I put that? Well, if it’s like this, you’re going to find it. Yeah, absolutely.

Luke – Yeah. Yeah. And when I backpack, I, it really, I’m the same way. I, it drives me crazy to have a whole bunch of like loose stuff in things. And so, I have a lot of bags and they’re so nice and light. It’s really nice to be able to.

Joey – This is one of the first ones I got from you. So, this is a flat pouch, right? This is a I love that you put something on the zipper. It makes it easier to pull. I love that.

Luke – They’re reflective, too. If you’ve got them laying around your tent at night and you hit your headlamp, you can see where your zipper pulls are.

Joey – I absolutely love it. Every time I’m looking for something, it’s dark. All the time, dark. We’ve got a couple of these that are this size.

Luke – These are the I think this is an eco-pack is this right white that one’s that’s the ultra-tx that’s the tx that would sound like brooms from Harry Potter like I’m telling you it’s foreign language I really like this one.

Joey – I used the I use the brown one last weekend for our food. It was perfect. I actually had everything that I needed in here. I actually had all my food snacks and an extra my extra socks with my food. So everything was in there. I had never had one this shape before. And I think I talked about this with you. I’d never had one in this shape before. And I didn’t know how I would like that because almost everything you buy is a vertical bag. And so, if you, if you look and if you look on the backpacking stuff, almost everything that you, that you see as a vertical bag, and this is actually can be used as a horizontal bag. And so what I did was, as I put my, put my puffy jacket in there and I was able to lay this perfectly down on top of it and it just packs so nice in there and I thought I don’t I don’t know I’ve never used anything that shaped before but I actually love this size

Luke – so that’s the xl size ditty bag and um for overlanding purposes I use those XL ones to hold, like, my, like, wrench kits or sockets. A lot of tool kits. I’ve even got, like, a toe strap, I think, and some ratchet straps in one, too. That’s cool. Yeah. And you get different colors, you know, and then that way you know what’s in the different kit bags. It’s the overlanding in organization.

Joey – Well, one thing that we have been using ever since we get it from you, I love this tote. Oh my gosh. This is one of my new favorite things. This is your tote bag and what, I don’t know what material this is, but this is super strong.

Luke – Yeah. So that one’s made out of an ultra 200 materials. I tried to make a few of them out of that and we’ll be releasing those on our website here in the near future. Um, right now we just do them in an ultra-grid. Um, but yeah, it’s got a little internal pouch so you can slide your phone in there or maybe keys whenever you’re, you know, going shopping or whatever you need. Um, it’s got a little gear loop. You can clip stuff onto on the inside. Um, you know, if you’re going climbing or whatnot and you want, you’ve got a rack, you know, that you’re, you’re going to be carrying with you. You can hang that in there. So, it’s easily accessible. Yeah. You can use those for anything.

Joey – Well, you know, in Arkansas, we can have all four seasons of weather in one day in one, twenty-four-hour period. So, we, we, I’ve learned my lesson since I lost all my weight. I’m always cold. So, I’m always having to carry a puffy jacket, extra, you know, pants or something like that. So, for clothes or puffers, that doesn’t really fit into like, you know, whatever you’re taking, as far as you’re putting your clothes in, that works so well. With comfy jackets, vests, different things like that. Jackets like this, hats, shoes in the bottom of it. It is absolutely phenomenal. Food bags. My wife is all about the snacks. So, we have to have a snack bag. And so perfect for that. And, uh, I absolutely love it. We never leave home without that anymore.

Gia – Snacks mean that you can keep going.

Luke – That’s right.

Gia – Okay. The other thing is I love about that bag is one of my travel tricks is you always take an empty bag with you. You always pack an empty bag because souvenirs or whatever, dirty clothes, because you always forget something and you realize if we just had… Or when we go somewhere and we’re going to a campground and we just need to throw our stuff in a bag to be able to walk to the showers or something like that. It’s always so handy to always have an empty bag. And that one is perfect because it fits plenty, but it packs up so small. And it’s got straps where you can just carry it with you. It’s fantastic.

Joey – Awesome. Love it. Absolutely love it. That’s great. And my last thing is I got… I got an order in today. Oh, yes. And I can’t tell you how this has been killing me not to open this until now because I wanted to do like an unboxing. It’s not a box, but I’m going to do it. Unbagging. And so, I’m so excited. I did cut it open. Or break it open just to save some time since we were going to be live on the show, but I have not looked in here. I promise. I have not looked in here. I haven’t seen all this stuff yet.

Gia – The man is so funny. Keep doing your unbagging, babe. He can resist anything except the lure of a possible present or a new thing. So, like there were some things that came in today from Amazon that we store in our guest bed. And the man never goes in the guest bedroom. And today he’s already been in there like four times. The light’s on in here. You need me to turn it off? You need me to?

Joey – I needed to be in there for a reason. I had a reason. So, tell me what this is. What am I looking at here?

Luke – Oh, yeah. So that is a pack liner made out of our Ultra TX-50 material.

Gia – Oh, my gosh. The man has a pack liner.

Luke – It is like a huge roll-top dry bag, you know, fully taped, all that good stuff. But, yeah, it’s to help, you know, keep your gear dry.

Gia – He likes a pack liner better than he likes a pack cover.

Luke – Sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Joey – Oh, yeah, I don’t like pack covers.

Luke – Yeah, and that one should last you.

Joey – Oh, my gosh. That is so cool.

Luke – I love mine that I’ve got. So those aren’t available yet on the website. But a few years back whenever I climbed Mount Shasta, I used one of those because I hiked up to like, I think it was like ten thousand feet the first night. And then I did a bivvy camp. And what I was able to do is use that as, like, a really big food bag, essentially, and pack all of my stuff I didn’t need for the day. And I can hang that in a tree. Because if you look, you’ve got some D-rings on those.

Joey – Yeah, you’ve got the D-rings on there. Look at there. So, yeah, you can either, like, show them. That’s the world’s biggest food bag.

Luke – And it’ll hold whatever you need. And then that way I could go super lightweight up and back. Yeah. And I use it like whenever I’m not hiking, I’ll use that to like hold some, you know, like sleeping bags or whatever. You can just throw your stuff into that.

Gia – OK, that’s fantastic, too, because, yeah, having a nice bag that when you are hiking, because a lot of people, we know that they’ll have their, they don’t keep their bedding up in the rooftop tent. They keep it somewhere else. So that’s a nice thing to be able to fit lots of bedding in.

Joey – I also have a, uh, ultralight fanny pack in here. And this is also going to double as a chest pack or a, uh, what did you call it? A, uh, something to go on top. What’d you call it?

Luke – Oh yeah. So, you can, you can use that as a fanny pack, a chest rig, or you can have it on top of the backpack as like a brain. A lot of backpacks. Oh, yeah. Or you can attach it to the front of your backpack, too, using the different loops that are on the backpack.

Joey – Look at that. That’s cool.

Luke – Yeah. So that’s a prototype that Joey’s going to be trying out for me and going to be giving me some much-needed feedback on.

Joey – Oh, am I ever. Yeah. Feedback. Oh, my goodness. I cannot wait to it. I’m going to be up a little while tonight. Oh man.

Luke – As you can tell, I put like all the straps on there. Like it’s, it’s straps galore. You won’t need to use all those at once, but they’re all on there for you to show you where they go. And we can talk, we can talk later on how exactly I had it in my brain. But yeah, I’m pretty excited about that one. And let’s see.

Joey – Oh, man. Look at this. Oh, that’s some attachments. Oh, look at here, babe. The ReCyclops. Wow. This is the Recyclops. And this is in, what color is this?

Luke – That’s the dark chili.

Gia – Oh, that’s one of the chilies, one of his favorite things. We’re going to Albuquerque just so we can get some. Red chilies and green chilies. You’ll fit right in with it.

Joey – Yeah. I’ve never seen one of these.

Gia – How many liters is that?

Luke – So, it’s about thirty-five liters with the pockets on the outside, about thirty inside. So, it’s great for overnight. If you were doing a through hike of the Appalachian Trail, be great for like shoulder and summer seasons. But yeah, you know, you can be out there for two, three, four days. Just depends on how you pack with it.

Joey – Oh, how very cool. I’m so pumped. Yeah. Oh, very cool. I’m so excited.

Luke – They’re really cool. I really like those packs and they’re made out of an ultra-grid material. So that’s why we call it the Recyclops. It’s kind of a, if there’s any office people out there, that’s a Dwight Schrute dressed up as him for a birthday one time. But yeah, it’s made out of recycled materials. So that’s why we call it the Recyclops.

Joey – Thirty-five. Oh, that’s so cool. Yeah, I am super pumped about this. I’ll be wearing this around the house when we get off here. I’ll have it loaded up with puffy jackets and try it out and all this stuff and driving.

Gia – I mean, if that’s the only thing you’re wearing.

Joey – Oh man I’m so pumped about that Luke and I think it’s going to be absolutely amazing we’re going to do quite a few trails when we go to New Mexico in a couple weeks so that’s going to see a lot of time in the red dirt so that’s going to be perfect I love that. Well, you know, when I was younger, organization was not my thing. I really couldn’t care less. I was like most of the kids today. I was a slob. You know, I had everything shoved up under my bed and my truck was a mess. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve figured out. that being organized makes for a happier life. And there’s a lot of people out there that hasn’t figured that out. You know, Tony, who co-hosts the show with me, is one of the most organized people I’ve ever seen in my life with his deck system in the back of his Gladiator and stuff like that. So, in your experience, how does using gear like what you make, like the ditty bags and the wallets and the zipper bags, how does that make life easier on the trail?

Luke – Yeah, it’s mainly for whenever you get to camp, you know where everything’s at immediately and how you pack everything. You know what you’re grabbing and you packed it in an order. Whenever you unpack it, you’re using it as it’s coming out of the bag. The other one and probably even more important is on stops along the trail. So, my goal is typically to not really have to open up the backpack until I get to camp. If I’m if I’m moving on the trail the last thing that I need is to have a gear explosion you know at my lunch break and then spend fifteen minutes getting it all packed back in and everything else because I couldn’t find something yeah um you know that’s one of my biggest pet peeves so yeah whenever I’m whenever I’m out hiking, I usually stop and I usually don’t even open up the pack and sometimes I don’t even take it off. I’ll just undo it a little bit and then use it as a backrest and have everything else that I need up front or in my fanny pack throughout the day. Taking breaks is really where it comes in handy.

Joey – Yeah, I’ve seen people, you know, I get cracked up at some people when every time they stop, it looks like they’re having a yard sale. Yeah. Because they’ve just got stuff everywhere. And, you know, that’s the people that you go and you’re like, hey, you want to trade some, you want to trade some oatmeal for some sardines or something, you know, because you can see everything that they own. Yeah. Yeah. What about the overlanding community, those who are not into backpacking, traveling overland? How do you see your gear helping people that travel by vehicle?

Luke – Yeah, absolutely. So, with the ditty bags, with the pouches, you can use them for pretty much anything. Like whenever I’m using for van life and whatnot, I’ll have my bathroom kit set up in one. I’ll have a first aid kit set up in a pouch. In one of my large pouches, I’ll have an extended first aid kit with my meds and whatnot. I’ll have fuses in a small one. I have wrenches in one. I’ve got sockets, three eight sockets, and then I’ll have my half inch stuff in another one. All of my tools are just like a tire repair kit. Everything’s set up so whenever I open up the back of the van, I can tell by the colors of everything and I can just grab what I need. You know, and, and I know that this is, this is this, or this is that, for, you know, if you’re carrying stuff on top of the rig, um, roll top dry bags, if you’re in something that’s not completely waterproof, you know, if it’s not in like a Pelican case or whatnot, those can really come in handy on keeping. different supplies they’ll keep them you know keep the dust out keep the water out you know if they’re exposed the totes we use the tote every single time we do any type of traveling sometimes we’ll share a tote if we’re on a short trip or we’ll each have our own tote with all of our you know that’s how we know what we can pack our own yeah so we’ll each have we each have our own tote And then pack everything in there and we’ll unload it into the drawers. And then you got to tote, you know, for whatever you need. And yeah, it comes in handy on a lot more things than, than you’d really think. We’ve also got some duffel bags too.

Gia – Oh no. This is going out. We already talked to you. I love a good duffel.

Luke – Yeah. And it’s fully seam taped and it’s got, you know, it’s not exactly dust proof or fully waterproof, but it’s about as close as you can get, you know, and you can get those in different colors too. And they’ll hold about thirty-five liters of stuff. So those are good for gear hauling. And, you know, they got like haul loops. You can take it, you know, remove different things.

Joey – Love it. Absolutely love it. Well, we, we love good organization and we use, we use all this stuff pretty much everywhere we go. So, it’s, it’s made it so much easier, so much better. We’re so much happier people. Now we laugh more, we smile more. It’s always good. So, so I’m interested, you know, in, in your, in your day to day, what is, what is a day in the life look for, look like, for you in, in this business?

Luke – Yeah. Yeah. So, with just my wife and I doing, you know, everything starts to finish from cutting, taping, sewing, everything like that. So, we’ll usually, if we’re kind of looking out for the week, we don’t really take weekends off. We do try to hold ourselves and take a couple of days off during the week, but we’ll typically look and see what the weather looks like. And then we’ll kind of eyeball those better days for taking those days off instead. Whether it’s a Monday or a Sunday, whatever it is, but yeah, well, you know, we, we just kind of get up and we get moving on and on whatever the set of orders are for that day, we’ll batch, one- or two-days’ worth of orders together. And, we put it up on a board and we just kind of get right into it. So, we each have our things that we do, but we just get right into it and get one- or two-days’ worth of orders done and bag them up and send them out the next morning and get going on the next one.

Joey – I love the pictures of you uh you’re sitting there sewing you’ve got your headphones on in the zone oh yeah like oh he’s in the zone right here he’s just he’s just putting stuff out putting it out

Luke – yeah noise canceling headphones I’m completely in my own world and I got a little phone holder on my sewing machine, you know?

Joey – What do you listen to?

Luke – Oh no, I’m, I’m really bad. I just watch YouTube videos on cars and bigfoot whatever it is that day I’ll go down a tube and just you know I’ll see you tomorrow I’m going down a hole today that’s great that’s it’s kind of like my playlist you know it’s every genre it’s everywhere it’s …

Gia – oh yeah, I know everybody always asks me like what kind of music does joey like and I’m like everything but yeah

Joey – Everything and nothing. It’s everything and nothing. A lot of times I just like quiet. We do like quiet. Working in middle school will do that to you. Oh, I’ll tell you what. When you’re around young children all the time, you just want to sit there and just enjoy the peace and quiet. You know, when I was in the deer woods this past weekend, sitting there and it started raining and it was just a light rain. rain and it was hitting the top of the deer stand and it was just coming down and there was no wind whatsoever it’s nice and cool and I thought this is heaven there’s no I can’t hear any sounds but the birds and the rain I could just sit out here for days and days and days it’s so nice so oh boy yeah, it’s

Luke – so nice so yeah that that sounds amazing

Joey – Oh, I love it. I love it. Well, we can find you on Instagram at UltralightSacks. Your website is www.ultralightsacks.com. You have your different gear, your contacts, and different things like that. You’re on Etsy. You’re on Garage Grown Gear. You’re all over the place. So just encourage people to check out your stuff, see what you’ve got. It’s high-quality stuff. I wouldn’t recommend it if it was not. You’re very good at customer service. You know, in a world where when we have a question or an issue and we call and we have to talk to an automated service, you know, and we want to scream representative! Representative! you know, we actually get to talk to a person. You’ll email them back, you know, and that’s really nice. So, I love the customer service. I love that you’re local. I love that you’re in Arkansas, that you and your wife are a small business person. I love how you support the rigs and coffee up there. You came to Rendezvous with us. Just love everything about you. And you’re just a really cool, neat guy. And I love to hang out with you. So, I want to support you and recommend you to everybody, everybody that I see. And I cannot wait to try this backpack out. Hey, babe, have you seen my new backpack?

Gia – Yeah. Yeah.

Joey – Well, Luke, I want to really tell you thank you for coming on the podcast tonight. Michael, thank you for being here. Michael’s way up in Alaska. Oh, wow. So he’s up there at the Keweenaw. Is it Keweenaw?

Gia – Keenai. Keenai. He’s way up in there. So, yeah, good friend of mine. Actually, got me started on the podcast. Well, thank you, Michael. But, yeah, thank you for being on the podcast. Thoroughly enjoyed getting to know you a little better and taking time out of your day to come visit with us. And you and your business love your products. And just want to tell you thank you. We appreciate it.

Luke – Thank you for having me on. Yeah. Oh, sorry, Gia.

Gia – Sorry. I was just saying so nice to meet you.

Luke – It’s nice to meet you too, Gia. I’ve heard so much about you. Wonderful. Thank you for the kind words, Joey. I appreciate that.

Joey – Oh, you bet. I’d say that to anybody. But I want to thank everybody who’s tuned in. I want to thank everybody who’s going to listen to this on all the podcast platforms. I hope you’ve gotten as much out of this as I have got to meet a super cool guy and learn about super cool things. gear and uh hope you have a wonderful week thank you for listening to the overland podcast whatever you do look out for number one and don’t step in number two we are out!

In the following, I have included the show notes so you can have a better understanding of the flow of the show!  No pros, just bros, but there has to be a FLOW!  Here we go!