Learning How To IRL

Hot off the lifting of mask mandates and making it through a winter being fully vaccinated, Jen and Jillian chat about what it's like getting back to things IRL. Warning: It's kinda messy. As always, we want to hear from you! Share your feedback at [e-mail] and leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.

What is Juicy Bits?

We created Juicy Bits because we wanted to continue the conversations that we start out on the trail and on the chair lift. Hosted by our CEO Jen Gurecki and Ambassador Jillian Raymond, they talk candidly about everything from dude soup, to sex, to politics, to equity in the outdoors. We occasionally (read: frequently) drop F-bombs, interview some of the most interesting people in the outdoors and beyond, and say things that many of us think but don’t feel comfortable saying out loud. If you are easily offended or looking for something that is G Rated, this is not the podcast for you. But if you love truth-telling and irreverence, get ready to laugh, cry, and maybe pee your pants a little bit. 

Participant #1:
Hello and welcome. I'm Jillian Raymond, the co creator of Juicy Bits and a Coalition Snow ambassador. And I'm Jen Careki, your co host and the CEO of Coalition Snow. For those of you who are new, get ready to laugh, cry, and maybe pee your pants. A Little Juicy Bits is about taking the conversations that we start on the chairlift and at the trailhead and bringing them to you to explore alternative narratives that challenge the status quo about what it means to be a modern woman in the outdoors. Grab your helmet, because sometimes it's a bumpy ride. Fyi, friends, this podcast is for mature audiences, so you've been warned. Let's get to work and juice the patriarchy. This is my piece there to distance for you on my reentry. Now that I no longer get to wear a mask or have to wear a mask, rather, I have to monitor my chin hair like it's a fucking part time job. I did not realize how quick these little fuckers grew, how I need tweezers in every pocket. And to me, that I realized was my silver lining of mask mandates was just letting it all hang out. Well, Julian, I have to say I can empathize with you, because while I'm not overly concerned about what's happening on my chin, my sort of re entry into the world has included dating people again. So I'm managing hair all over my body and certainly having those inner dialogue of like, that's just the patriarchy telling you you're not good enough and you can keep it grown out and then

Participant #1:
getting naked with strangers. There's cleanup. There's a lot of clean up happening over here. And, you know, I have hair on my toes that literally looks like I have spiders, like, posting up on my feet. So I sometimes even do it to yes, we have the inner dialogue 100% imposed upon us to look a certain way and be hairless. But there's also times where I'm like, I don't really want to startle strangers now that I'm wearing flip flops. So this is a little less related to coming back into the world in our sort of endemic stage, but it's more just in hair management where I'm like, okay, I thought I had a lot of this kind of dialed. I thought I've had a lot of really come to self love, a place of self love. Right? And then I'm like, oh, my God, what's that? I'm like, oh, it's fucking hair on my toes. It's not like a huge Spider. Someone's going to smash my foot down because I've been wearing flip flaps. I'm going ski booths to flip flops because we have May and March. Now that's what happened these last two weeks. Yeah, we have a lot now. It's definitely getting hot in here, Julian. It's getting hot over here. Let's see. So the last time that you and I recorded together, what has changed? Let's see. No mask mandates anymore. I'm back out into the world, traveling again, seeing friends. I put myself back on hinge. All right. I have been very happily single for many a month now. Very happy. Like, pretty much just kind of like, I need no one in my fucking space except for people like you. Ovs, friends, yes. But otherwise, I'm like, I don't need it. And then I went up to Portland to do some events with Next Adventure, which is an outdoor gear shop that carries Coalition skis and snowboards. And I had so much anxiety about going up there because I was like, oh, my God, I'm going to have to talk to strangers for the first time. Like, lots of strangers for the first time in a long time. And I don't get to be on my couch behind a Zoom screen. I have to, like, face to face. Not even FaceTime. Just face to face it with people. And I was super nervous about it and went up there, ended up having a great time. And on that drive back, because I drove from Reno, I was just thinking to myself, like, it's time, grecci. You have got to get yourself back out into the world. It's been two years since you've really done anything, and it's time. It's so easy to fall in those habits of just riding your bike or skiing during the day, and then you Cook dinner, and then you're on your couch, and then obviously, you work in between then, but not a lot of motivation to hang out with people. And so I told myself, I've forced myself to get back out into the world. And so then I got on hinge. And wow. Also, anyone is dating in 2022 different than it was in early 2020, because it is for me. It's wild out there. No complaints, no one's complaining. But Holy shit. So, yeah, full on. Full on, like, reentry into the world. It feels like. I don't know, Julian. I'm excited about life again for the first time in a long time. Well, I can empathize in respect to the kind of enjoyment I had in being really insular in Covet. Granted, I have, you know, our little tripod, Brandon and I, he wasn't traveling nearly as much. Micah is not so much immune to some of the Kobe complications because she had her own little share of four year old disappointment. But we could see a lot through her eyes. And I'm a really social being. But I, in many instances, was like, I do not want to be around people. I actually realized I don't like people that much, and I like the ones I like to be around. So it's been hard to be like, no, remember, you're actually like the friendly Gal on the list. Like, you're actually nice to people in public places. You actually socialize. Because I caught myself, and I don't think this human is listening. But if they are, here's your apology. I was still wearing masks even when some of the mask mandates were starting to lift. Right. And I'm in the little convenience shop getting def and something else for this sprinter everyone's mask. And this person walks in without a mask, and I literally turn around through my mask and say, what the fuck is wrong with you? And they were like, excuse me? And I was like, oh, my God, Jillian, look away. You need to go home. You can't be in public. You can't start attacking strangers that don't have a mask on. You're not in charge of everyone. So I had a lot of those moments of and I just actually said nothing and looked away because I caught myself many a time over these last two years feeling like I had to protect myself, protect community. It just really felt muddled. And what I'm appreciating right now is there's a few spots that I frequent that still have very clear please wear your mask. All of our employees are masked, and I don't know how long that will last. And I don't envy them having to enforce it. But I'm like, right on. I still keep them in the totes. Now the Tweezers are in the totes with the masks and the lip balms and the things I need. Yeah, now we have to have lip balms. Now there's, like, not only cute lip balm, but also the cute lipsticks. Also, watch out. Hinge. Because I have three new lip gloss balm. Cute things. You don't see it now because I'm on my couch with you drinking wine, as everyone knows, but cute stuff. Cute colors, cute spring colors, very nice things happening there. The thing about masks. Everyone who's listening probably know you and I were very pro mask. We didn't have a problem wearing masks. We wore a mask with no complaint and just did it. I will say, however, what I have noticed is it's so much less tense out in society now that there's no mandates. I find myself I occasionally will still wear. I've been flying a bit, so I've obviously been wearing my mask in the airport and on the flight, but people aren't being hectic about it. You go into the grocery store and you're not mad at people. I am fundamentally less annoyed with people now than I was when we had the mask mandate because I couldn't stand it when people wouldn't follow it for the exact same reason. Can we just all agree to protect communities here? This is like the smallest sacrifice that we can make. Also, everyone knows you motherfuckers who are running around talking about freedom. You 100% haven't done shit for reproductive rights and anything around abortion. But okay, yeah, your mask is serious. So, like, I would just be filled with an incredible amount of resentment around, like, why can't we just make this happen? So this goes away faster and we can protect people. But I don't know. It kind of has been a good thing. Life just feels less hectic like, I'm less frustrated and disappointed because there's no mandate. You can't judge people. That was like the math was such a signal of what side were you on. No, I think you nailed it there. There is like a lifting or a little less. The air is a little less thick metaphorically because now I look out and I'm kind of like, oh, we don't have them on. We spend a lot of time outside too. So that's kind of been helpful in getting through these last few years. But indoors really just again, following the mandate, thinking about protecting community, and then just sort of embracing like, well, I don't have any symptoms. I feel good. We can go in and we can do this and a little bit of a freedom with that. I will say I also appreciate the fact that I'm hoping to see less mask trash now that the snow melts is melting. My daughter and I and I usually we kind of promote this at our school. It's around Tahoe the snow melts. We're coming up on Saturday, Japan's Day of Service. We're coming up on our Earth Week events that we do at school, and we do a ton of trash clean up. And I'm hoping to see a lot less of that as an issue of just masks littered everywhere, hopefully because we're not consuming that at the rate that we were. Yeah. I will say, though, I think one thing that's worth talking about that I don't necessarily hear it being spoken about publicly all that often. We're still not a collective trauma that I think a lot of people are feeling. So I was in Colorado a couple of weeks ago. Coalition had gone there to participate in the Boot Tan Fest, which was an event that Wild Barn Coffee put on where 200 plus women showed up. We skinned up to top of a peak like a Hill. It was nice leisurely skin up. And, you know, if I'm saying it's leisurely, it was a leisurely skin up. And then we skied down naked. So I was in Colorado for that. And then we started our demo tour, and it was probably like day five or day six into this trip into Colorado, which I had driven out from Reno. I kind of had some coveted PTSD. I went to a great concert at the Larimer Lounge in Denver, and I was reflecting on it was like the weekend. And I was reflecting on everything that I had done the week before. I was like skiing at Steamboat and going to the concert and being at this event and seeing friends, and I felt super fucked up. Like, oh, my God, look at all these things that I just did in the last six days, which is more than what I've kind of done in two years. And I was staying with Cambo, the ex that I hadn't seen in two years and the dogs didn't remember me. And I was like, I know it's awful. And I was like, Holy fuck lifestyle. Things were bad. I feel like I was so much in the every day. Like, I got to make this work. Like, I run multiple businesses and have teams of people across continents. And so I felt like COVID for me was so much about managing the teams and trying to make sure that other people, like the people who worked for me and with me, felt safe and felt good about our working situation and getting the team in Kenya Vaccinated and making sure the team here felt supported with masks in the shop and like, do we have enough money in increasing people's wages? And just, like, dealing with all the emotional trauma during COVID? I feel like that's, like every day I was just like, dealing with all this other stuff. And so for the first time on that weekend, I kind of thought about my experience and I was like, Holy fuck, it's been fucking hard. It's been harder than I recognized because I was so in it that it took getting out of it and looking back, even just like a month back and being like, Dang, I've been fucked up too. And I think we're all still fucked up. So I think, yes, and but that experience and that collective trauma, which everyone had varying levels, I kind of think it on like, almost like this continuum of trauma because I think there are some people that are still very sick in it, whether they're housing, their employment, relationships. I mean, the amount of people that were maybe they were going to get divorced before covet, but got divorced during it. The idea of just shifting and sharing space, not being able to start a business, not being able to keep a business. But I think that sense of kind of resilience and that collective trauma will serve us in ways that we cannot see quite yet, though it's important to recognize, like you said, that you're so in it when you can step out, you're able to understand how it could be impacting you moving forward in that sense of a little like a post traumatic stress situation, which I think will have multiple iterations of for all of us as we move out of this. I think I heard it and it made a lot of sense. We're not really going to hit like a covet zero, right? It's going to be something that we're living with, but we're not going to again, no mass mandates. We're not going to be. I think of these kids. I'm sitting here in my van and looking at my booster seat and car seats, this little carpool. And the kids, literally two days a week at the elementary school, were getting marched down to the office, temperatures taken and coast is swabbed and then tested and sent back to their classrooms and to me. I'm like that's something you would almost read in like a science fiction book. But it's something that was happening in our little community of a few thousand people up the road at elementary and the kids around, like germ, phobias. And just the sense of do I have it and what's wrong with me and what that will mean for them in respect of their emotional health. And then also, I think just their relationship to infectious diseases and germs. Because one thing I will say is I hope that people who have symptoms choose to wear masks or stay home. I hope hand washing sticks around. I hope there's movements in those large gathering spaces that people have that compassion towards. Like, doesn't it feel good to be healthy? Like that sense of gratitude for when we are healthy and not laid up with the sickness? That's highly contagious. And I think that resilience again will service in ways that we can't see yet. Because I do know people. They're in our circles, Jen. There are those that we spend time with and they're those that we understand on other levels that are still in pretty tough situations, I think based on the pandemic. Yeah. With the questions we need to ask, are we still in a pandemic? Are we in a pandemic or is it an endemic pretty much everything's just moving forward Besides having to wear a mask on an airplane and maybe in a hospital. Like, everything is moving forward and really going back to before times, whether you like it or not. So I'm not actually saying it's good or bad. It just is. It's just really wild to think about. It so fucking wild as we're talking about it right now. I almost feel like I'm outside of myself listening to us being like, what are we talking about? What did they live through? What just happened in the sense of two years in a Blip? Only because I like to think I haven't aged a day. I will say that this filter on the Zencaster is really it does nice things for me. The filter is good. But let's be honest, I'm fucking aged. Anyone who there are lines on my forehead. There are stress marks on my forehead that I can't even pull them apart. I can't even pull them. And that is from two years of stress. When you furrow your Brown, you're like, also it might be because I still only have a 13 inch screen and I should probably wear glasses and maybe get like a bigger screen because spreadsheets and things. But Anywho certainly aged. I'm definitely exhausted. I think that a lot of people are still suffering. I mean, just to give everyone context, we're recording this on March 29. It was just two nights ago that Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars. Yeah, we're not okay. Yeah, we're not okay. Anything that wants to be said about that, we're not. And this is something that when we were debriefing it, we were just chatting about it in our team meeting at Coalition. That's what Sarah, our operations manager, said. She's like, we're not okay. And I was like, yeah, that's what explains all this. We're all still fucked up. Everyone's fucked up. Like, we're actually not okay. But we live in a society that's telling us everything's. Okay. Carry on. No more masks. Travel, go out, do all these things. And so it is like you said this out of body experience where you're, like, doing all these things like you used to do, except for your looking down on yourself being like, what the fuck are you doing? You weren't doing this two months ago. Now you're doing, like, all these weird, weird feelings. Yeah, weird feelings about potentially thinking about feeling regular again, so to speak. I don't really like the normal. I don't like the return to normal because I don't think that there was a lot that I wanted to return to, back to. And what does that even mean? But I'll say one of my more positive experiences on some early reentry was us down at the High Sierra for cat skiing. And I remember being really nervous about it. But what I loved about it was we all talked about the fact that we were nervous. We all took tests. We were, like, doing our things. But I remember getting in the car and there's four of us, and only one chose to kind of have their mask on. And I thought, well, should I have my. And I remember for, like, an hour of the drive, I'm just having this constant, just cycle of mental exhaustion of like, well, if I had my gun. But what if I breathed in this? Did I disrespect her? And just this dialogue to the point where I was like, I can't wait to actually open up and talk about this with a safe group of humans. And I guess I would offer that up right now. Is that to me, one of those reminders of, you need to be able to say what you're thinking and feeling to get past that. So maybe it was like anxiety. It was a little bit of stress. It was like uncertainty. And it was just wanting to feel at ease and comfort and enjoy. But what it took was being around the right set of people that I felt like I could say that to and with. And then everyone has their own safe space, if you will. And I don't know if we say safe spaces anymore. Maybe that brave space or just that sense of wanting to move past all that and just fucking enjoy being in a yurt with a group of humans and not worry like, oh, my God, I just breathed in that from the woodburning stove. Do I now have cobbt? I'm actually looking forward to those stocks fully exiting, but they haven't fully. It was the first time for all of us, just so that the listeners know what we're talking about. In January. Hi, Sierra Snowcat. And you're invited us to come out on a trip, and six people could be in the yurt. And it was going to be like the first coalition trip that we had done. And so I required vaccines and I required negative tests before we all showed up at the year together. And because it was the first thing with strangers. So even though I knew everyone, a lot of you were meeting each other for the first time, and I always forget that at coalition, I'm like, oh, yeah, people don't know it because for so many years now, we've been doing these things remotely. So everyone ended up being a little bit nervous. And then we got together in the year and we started talking about it, and then we're like, oh, we're all nervous. We don't know what people are going to think about us. We don't know if we're going to be able to have the conversations. What if we're socially awkward? What if people don't like us? And it did really take a lot of the pressure off when everybody spoke openly about nerves, even around our other people going to like me. I don't know. I don't know if I can have conversations with people. I mean, I've barely put myself out there to anyone in years now to have even a new friend of, like, do people like me? I don't know. I mean, I know you all tolerate me, but I don't know. I am actually so thankful that you just said that. So here's the thing. You are such a likable lovable beyond tolliber human. But this is the other point. The lack of your presence out in the larger world, that has been something that you don't how would I say? How do you recoup that? Because there's so many interactions and cool relationships and fun humans that we often we feed off of, we network with, we learn from. And I think that's a piece that I'm like. I don't need it to accelerate. It doesn't need to go zero to 60. But I think of some of my very dear and close friends that have helped me in this later stage of life and some of the friends from 20 years ago that I don't wish any ill will to. But it's just your lives evolved, right? And I'm like, I still want to be open to embracing those humans in my life and actually making new friends. I just said that out loud, and it feels silly to say, but it's real. We deserve that in our lives, and we all and I think for me, maybe even coming to it as well, you kind of missed out a bit because it was really easy, like you said, to just not do it. I was like, it's way easier not to not worry. Yeah. And it was like there was for me back out in the world. Yeah. Prior to COVID, I had a really public life. There are personal things that no one ever knows about, people who I'm dating and things like, you would never see a picture of me with anyone who I'm seeing. You would never really know about these intimate moments in my life or like the super personal stuff. But I had, like a pretty public life before covet lots of public speaking, lots of being at events. And it was nice for two years to be like, no one sees me. No one fucking sees me. No one hears. That was a nice break. And now I will say, well, by the time everybody listens to this public speaking of engagement that I have, next week will have already happened. But next week, I'm going to go speak in front of hundreds of people for my first live public speaking event in years. And that I'm just like, wow. Like, okay, so I'm going to be in front of people again. Can I say the things also, have we come to a point where we can say fuck on stage without people being weird? I don't know. I kind of feel like we have. But also, have we not? No one knows. What if I'm too much for all of these outdoor executives who are like, Whoa. And then before times I didn't give two fucks about it. And then I got to hide. And it was great because it was like, no one even knew that you were alive. And now I'm like, oh, fuck, I'm putting myself out there again. And people are going to know that I'm out in the world and opening yourself up to that, which is like the anxiety around making new friends or the anxiety of going out and dating again or the anxiety of doing these public events. I'm like, fuck, I haven't put myself out there in years. Well, I have three thoughts for you on that is whether it's undated in front of this public speaking event. I feel like the other receiver of the energy is as excited to be in a spot where they're getting a live presenter. Right. So there's going to be that kind of reciprocal energetic. And the second thing is, there were people that didn't like the fucks two years ago, but fuck them. And here's the thing. That shirt that I think Lauren made it for your Kenya trip with the asking nicely with a middle finger. Yes. Your listeners can't over the Africa. It was the cycling you're wearing it. It is literally like my second skin. And I will tell you. And this is kind of going back to the fuck statement. I literally don't take it off. Well, sometimes I do, but we need to bring that shirt back. Okay. Again, no one can see the video that Gillian and I see right now. Sorry, everyone. So like, four years ago, I cycled from Nairobi to Cape Town. And Lauren, who's our creative director, made me outfits. And one of the outfits was this graphic that had middle finger with red nail Polish. And it said asking nicely. And I wore this tank top all across the continent. I have photos of myself with Rangers with semiautomatic weapons in where were we? Tanzania and Malawi or something. And they were like, yeah, they were so into it. And I wore that thing every day. I still have it. It's just worn. So that's true. I have been, well, we have to bring it back, because if mine wears out, it will be very sad. I will say I rocked it recently at an Easter egg Hunt for, like, four to seven year olds tubing at home. I skiing the other day, and most humans will pause, look and give me this smile where they're just like, yeah. Or I've had people look at me and literally not that I'm projecting like a power play, but literally look like, wow, this woman is going to fucking tear me down. I'm out of her way. And I'm like, oh, I kind of like that. That's fine. So I think you need to embrace the fuck. Give the zero fuck. Because that's like, it is who you are. Not that you need like a fucking peptop for me, but I think it is about that the good old V word, right? Putting ourselves out there and then also being willing to almost Googled. I was like endemic versus pandemic. And I was thinking of one of the reviews that was like a Recky loves to Google shit. I'm like, you know, fucking Google shit. How else are you going to find out something you need and like a point to notice? But we embrace the fact that we just don't give a fuck. Yeah, we don't give a fuck. Okay. Also, I know Jillian thinks I've gotten, like, all woo woo during the pandemic because I meditate now. And so I have, like, all these shit tonight. I will call you on it as like a kind of a flower child stuck in the body of a ski bomb and a fucking pissed off person. But you're a New Yorker. You're an East Coaster. Totally different. But maybe that's one way the pandemic has changed us or changed me is that like years ago, I'd be like, Fuck everyone. Fuck it. Like, whatever. And now I'm like, perhaps I should be thought one thing and this could be a whole other other podcast, but I'm going to go there now because we're only at 30 minutes. So I'll just keep going. One of the things I've really been thinking about. So I was listening to this podcast that I listened to. I'm going to pull it up right now. Come on. So it's the Podcast Festival of Dangerous Ideas, and I was listening to episode six, which is from last month, that has Roxanne gay and Kate Mann on it. And

Participant #1:
they were talking about this Kieran Gandhi, Madame Gandhi, who you all should go listen to, who Jillian and I went skiing and Mammoth with lovely human. This idea of like, we know that we have so much change to make in this world, and how do you bring people in to be able to make that change? And it's so easy to be reactionary and like, Fuck you, fuck this. I'm done with all this fucking noise. But what would it look like if we actually approach things with incredible empathy and really try to meet people where they're at now? I do remember in the car, I was like, Karen, you're a better person than I am. I don't even know if that's possible. But I do feel like the pandemic certainly softened me in ways of like, it's just not fucking worth it to be that upset all the time about things. And it hasn't lessened my motivation to make change. I'm still at it every day, doing things and talking about things and working with people. And so it's not like I've taken a backseat.

Participant #1:
I just don't think I need to be angry about stuff. Kobe exhausted me. I'm fucking exhausted beating the fuck down. I don't have that energy anymore. And so I think that maybe that's where I'm like, oh, yeah. Like, a couple of years ago, I'd be like, oh, fuck this. Well, perhaps one way to look at it yourself from a couple of years ago was up above listening down to yourself right now. They would have been like, what the fuck are you talking about? But it's like a beautiful evolution, because here's what you just nailed, and I'm sorry to represent this idea, like, you haven't lost the motivation or the desire for the change, right? So here's the sense you don't have to do it from a place of anger. We can see it in the literature. We can see it in great leaders. They turn that anger into momentum and activism and vehicles for change. But what if it does come from this place of light in this place of love, this place of self love, this place of momentum that actually people are drawn to and not necessarily repelled from? And I think that's a piece. If you can not be upset or not be angry all the time, then you are better able to show up. And whether it's on your yoga, math, on the meditation fee, you show up for yourself, you're better equipped to show up for others. And so we can do. I think that's what you really know. It's not about not doing the work and not being pissed off sometimes, but it's not doing it from a place of anger. I'm just not interested in the fight anymore. Like, I have no fight left.

Participant #1:
Like, oh, you want to be dramatic? But I'll see you like, oh, you want to argue with me? I'm out of here. Oh, you think there's a debate to be had? No, I'm good. I'm just not going to fucking show up. I'm not doing it. And I find that there's, like, so much there's so much more that I gain from

Participant #1:
being, like, with community and being with people who are on who are trying to make change that's like I don't have any energy to fight with people or do any of that. I don't know. I feel like all the ski Bros right now are taking this deep sigh of relief of like, does this mean that I don't know. No one knows because certainly I do have my days and also when I have a little bit of whiskey, things get wild. But it is but I think maybe that's part of that covet PTSD again reflecting on like, I'm fucking beaten down I'm still reflecting on the struggle that I had that I didn't even recognize over the past two years because I was so focused on keeping these businesses going so that people would have jobs that you're just like, oh, yeah, fuck fucking that was a lot and just like, I think being incredibly humbled by that. What is it from the I think it's the feminist collective that I love. Hydrate, masturbate, meditate. Yeah, right there. I mean daily. Daily. Yeah. I think we leave our listeners with that and all that we've given them tonight in hopes to give them the motivation and a little bit of that strength. They might need to be like I need to have these fucking Coba conversations with my loved ones and with my friends because shit is weird. We're still not. Okay. Hopefully you didn't yell at anyone or slap anyone today and if you did lovingly apologize and yeah, hydrate, masturbate and meditate back to reality. Back to life. Back to reality.