David Lee Roth Kayaked in New York in the 90's | Joe Rogan

I've always tried to follow something as opposed to thinking of as training. Even the word training tastes like homework. Right. So I've always tried to... I was running for a long period of time. It was about seven years when I jogged and ran, and I decided on the road I'll run across every bridge in America that we tour through. So probably 15, 20 different bridges. Golden Gate, Brooklyn. That's where I ran. Now I did smoke a joint and run the New York City Marathon. And I came in right behind the wheelchairs in the back. Well, some folks need the ribbon and they need to see the clock and everybody clapping. And then there's some folks who just... They did okay and they had took down the clock, but the line was still there on the cement in Central Park. Hopped over the line, got the picture airborne. Went home, took a nap, and that night I went out and got drunk on tequila. How long did it take you to finish the marathon? About five and a half hours. That's not bad. That's very good. It's better than Burke Chrysler. No, come on. Let's be complimentary. It's the worst. It's definitely not the worst. Yes, that's about the absolute worst. What's the winner do at hour 20? I think they get it in around two hours. Like two hours in seven seconds or so. I think they're trying to break two hours. Isn't that what's going on? Yeah, someone's trying to break two hours. But that's what I did for a period of time. Keep going. Kayaking. So you've just always been involved in physical activities that were fun. In the early 90s, kayaking was illegal in Manhattan. Because it was dirty water and people would get trundled over under the ferry boats. Oh, God. So what we did is we cut a hole in the fence next to the 14th Street Sanitation Department. Over by the West Side Highway. You all know what I'm talking about if you're from there. And we did it exactly like movie style, like The Great Escape. Where we fitted the fence back with duct tape. And we would drag our kayaks from Union Square West all the way down 14th Street. And you pick up your provisions for it. You got to get your bagels. You got to get shit out of something like this. You got to get something to drink. Get some Gatorade. Not to drink the Gatorade so you have something to whiz in. Serious. And we'd get the girlfriends to wait up. It's in the meatpacking district right there. It's dead silent. It was a ghost town then. It was not hip hop. It was not going, which is what it's doing now. You go to shopping with your old idiot, Satella McCartney, down there now at Benton. It was a ghost town then. It was great. Scary. Dangerous. And one girlfriend would say, I got to be careful of names. They're all married now. How'd you manage a ducky? Mine, Karen, would always go north and wait around because if the cops come, they would step out. We would see them or whatever. And we would sneak our boats through the hole in the fence into the river, right where Sully landed his plane. Right there. All right. And then girls would come in, jump in a boat, and we would take off. More than two or three times, local PD would show up going, hey, what are you going to touch that water? Back then, no. That was death. Inky black horror death. Did you have a dunk in it? Accidentally? No. Not in that river in particular. But we started a number of the trips today. There's probably six different kayak clubs that you can do. Manhattan kayak club and Brooklyn. Many, many. Now the Boomers with senses of humor figured it all out. All right. And we would go, Jesus, we started trips. We'd go at midnight under the Verrazano Bridge in the winter. All right. And you wear dry suits. Something, you know, you're, long johns inside of a dry suit like this. And don't get me wrong. I would be the DJ. I have a tape player, and I would bungee the tape player like this. And everybody would have, this was primitive times, you know, it's 19, early 90s, you know, like this. And we would have little microphones in the earpieces that you use on motorcycles back then. So you have communications from boat to boat. Oh, wow. And I would put mine on the tape player, and I'd be the DJ. Oh, yeah. And we'd listen to the ballgame late at night sometimes. And you'd hear laughing all, you couldn't see anybody in the swells. And we'd go under the same bridge that John Travolta sits and looks at with the girlfriend in Saturday Night Fever. Same bridge, you know, that Woody Allen in Manhattan looks at. You know, you have a wonder what's on the other side. It's terrible imitation of either of them. And we'd float under there full moon, midnight, February, snow drifting like this. And since it was illegal to do it, we had a buddy who owned a plumbing company in Brooklyn. And he would bring his truck and park it right off of Coney Island. You're still well avenue where the Ferris wheel is. And he would blink his lights, Allied Forces style, blink, blink, like that. And we'd be about a quarter mile off having come from under the Verrazano Bridge. No wonder we'd see those lights blinking nowhere to turn left. Do you even want to hear this? Yes. And okay, we'd have to make the left and we'd wait for the swells. He'd give us another blink when all was clear. And just beat ass all a quarter mile off row, row, row. Catch the wave, get out of the boat. You know, silently drag it all the way up the beach, okay, like you see in every war movie. All right, otherwise it's about a, I don't know, $200 fine or something like this. And we would put the boats, big two-person kayaks into the back of the plumbing truck and on the top of it. Drive it back to the coffee shop on Union Square West. It's very well known like that. And get drunk with pretty girls and tell them about adventure stories. And all this was going on while you were air quotes David Lee Roth. I mean, this is the 90s. You're a fucking huge. You're still a rock star. And you're going through polluted water in a fucking kayak hiding from the cops with a tape player and some sort of jury-rigged microphone system. Some of the best places that I went rock climbing were on walls of hotels in Europe. We'd toss a rope out the third floor of a bed and breakfast in San Sebastian, Spain that's covered from flagstone with flagstone from the 1400s like that. And then yo-yo, you know, one guy would stay up, watch TV and work the belay, and you'd climb up the outside, you know. Jesus Christ. Hardcore jollies. And you were doing this all around the same time. Oh, yeah. I took my bicycles with me. I'm going to – outdoors is in the blood, you know. It's part of growing up without any real things. My dad was a student. So take this stick. For you, it'll be a bow. And for me, it'll be a baton.