Adventures Big and Small with Leah Day

On today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, Christopher Robbins, co-founder of Familius Publishing, husband, father of nine, author, fisherman, backpacker, and aspirational musician based in the Central Valley of California, is going to talk to Leah Day. She has worked as a clinical social worker for over 25 years. She has helped 1000 individuals and families in a variety of settings and parent support groups on extended wilderness expeditions for youth at risk and in private practice.

Episode Highlights:

• 00:49: Recently Leah had chosen to switch careers, and in May of 2021 She opened the lighthouse bikes.
• 01:12: Leah and her husband are the parents of four children and when she has free time, you can often find her hiking mountains, cross country, skiing, skating, or canoeing with some variation of this pack accompanied by their two dogs at home.
• 01:32: Leah and her husband have always believed that the outdoors and adventure, as well as connecting with others in the global community, can have life-altering effects on people for bicycle rides across the United States.
• 01:58: Leah has logged over 10,000 miles touring and feels this may be just the beginning. She has written for Adventure Cycling magazine, spoken on several podcasts, appeared on NPR's Marketplace, kept a running blog called Bike Mum with over 68,000 views, and written a book called Changing Gears all, focusing on the importance of adventure.
• 03:30: Leah talks about the book that she wrote, called Changing Gears, which tells the story of her desire to connect with her son. 
• 05:38: While talking about teenage kids, Leah shares her best approach to managing them.
• 05:55: Leah wanted his son to do something he could feel really proud of. He wanted him to be able to brag a little bit and say, "I did this, and I feel really good about it."
• 06:47: It's hard to get teenagers to agree to anything, Leah shares her experience and how she convinced him to take up biking.
• 07:18: Leah's son relished the opportunity to get out of school for three months and to see the world for three months and not to sort of wear the same pace to the school doors every day, which was becoming difficult for him.
• 09:06: Leah talks about the moments in the road when she really needed Oakley. That really changed their relationship in a pivotal way.
• 11:07: One of the beauties of being out there for so long is there is nothing else to do, says Leah.
• 13:00: When Leah finished the biking adventure, he promised that he would go on an adventure once a year for five years, not like months long, but at least for a week or two.
• 14:26: Leah writes about big adventures and little adventures often related to just people, so they are not just adventure stories. They are sort of introspective about how adventure affects me and the people around me, so that's called bike mom.

3 Key Highlights

1. Leah shares how her son's confidence sort of had a lot of hard knocks because when you are constantly not quite meeting the standard, it's hard for you.
2. Leah shares how she motivated her son to go on a biking trip and how the trip changed their relationship in a positive way.
3. As teenagers, kids really need to be proud of themselves. And today there are just constant comparisons and social media makes it so intense. They can see a million people doing a million things and it's easy for teenagers, to opt-out and to just not get as engaged in things because somebody else is already doing it.

Tweetable Quotes

• "Leah loves sharing her love of cycling with others. She finds it great fun to help others discover the world around them, as well as the world inside them." - Christopher
• "If I did something short term, it wouldn't stir up the pot as much as it needed to be stirred up." - Leah
• "I would read to him for a while, and then we both had our own books, so we would read together." - Leah
• "We read Winter People, which is about the native people of Maine." - Leah

Resources Mentioned

• Helping Families Be Happy Podcast Apple
• https://bikemum.com/
• Podcast Editing