The Guy Who Cycled Naked Across Part of the US

Rob Greenfield is a self-proclaimed adventurer. He has spent his life traveling. In college, he studied abroad five times—not just to your typical European tourist hotspots, but to Colombia, New Zealand, and Australia, to name a few. After college, he added some more places to his long list of explorations, including Southeast Asia and Kenya, where he went on his own safaris, wandered through the jungle, and rode with the buffalos.

Now Rob, the 26 -year-old founder of the Greenfield Group, has just finished another adventure closer to home. He began his journey three months ago in San Francisco and reached his destination in Wakefield, VT, last week at the headquarters for 1% for the Planet, where he's an ambassador.

As an environmental science student, I knew I needed to chat with Rob. The farthest I’ve gone to live more environmentally-conscious is giving up meat and maybe driving a little less. Maybe. But Rob took environmental awareness to a new level that, quite honestly, seemed to me like a form of torture because of the hard rules he adhered to. I tried to suspend my suspicions when I spoke to him about his journey, the challenges he faced, and what it was like to ride a bike naked.

MOTHERBOARD: So what'd you do, exactly?

It was a 4,700-mile bike ride over 104 days. I left from San Francisco after a birthday celebration and rode to Wakefield, Vermont. The entire idea was to raise awareness and inspire people to start living an earth-friendly life and start enjoying life more in a way that actually benefits the environment.

I had a list of rigorous rules I had to follow in order to demonstrate extremely earth friendly living. One was to only use electricity I made myself, so I used solar panels. Another was that I could only use water from natural sources, so lakes and rivers, streams and wells, leaky faucets, things like that. Or wasted water. And then I could only eat local organic unpackaged food or food that was going to waste, so I ate food from dumpsters and only shopped at sustainable businesses. I wanted to make as little an environmental footprint as possible.

You rode 104 days straight?

Oh god, no, not completely straight. I spent an entire week in Brooklyn and Manhattan and three days in Chicago. But another rule was that I couldn't step foot in a car, even if I was in a big city that required one.

You only cursed nine times during the trip. Was that hard? I would've cursed a lot.

I think some of the best things that people can do to live a good life is be positive and be happy, so the idea was to practice just being positive all the time. It actually got pretty easy after a while. The only times it was really hard not to curse involved my cameraman. He would really make me mad and then I'd want to swear.

How did you become interested in these environmental issues? Did you study environment science at school?

I didn't study environmental stuff at school. I went to school for biology and aquatic science, but I was always interested in the outdoor world. Basically I've just loved the environment since i was young in little ways, like if I saw someone else killing a frog, I always didn't like it. I always insisted on being good to the earth. A couple of years ago, I realized the actions of one individual can make a huge difference.

On your trip, you asked people to give you locations of leaky faucets through social media. Did that actually work? People didn't think you were crazy?

Yeah, that's about the time you and I got linked up, when I was running that project. People were actually helpful! I met two people who contacted me about leaky faucets. I had about 10 or 15 people who contacted me saying they had leaky faucets or showers, but most of them weren't on my route, so i didn't go see them. But I did have two people who actually saved water from their leaky faucets and gave me bottles of that saved water when I stopped by. I stayed with a stranger, too. I was riding my bike and some 18-year-old kid rode up next to me and asked what I was doing. I told him and he said I could stay with him for a bit. He asked his mom, and she said "yeah!" We swam together and when they turned off their water hose, it leaked, so I drank that water. He was a sweet guy.

Was it hard to find water otherwise? Carrying a bunch of bottles must have been heavy and annoying.

Well in New York, there were leaky hydrants everywhere because I was here during the heat wave. In the Bronx, there were nine leaky fire hydrants just in the area I was biking through. I just had one [bottle] that I kept refilling. I never carried more than one and a half gallons at a time. If I had carried more than that, it would have made my life easier because I could only fill up when I found natural water or leaky faucets. Originally when I left San Francisco, I had a big three-gallon jug.

What happened to the trash you generated?

I had to carry every bit of trash I created all the way to Vermont with me. It's actually quite a bit less than two pounds. It was closer to one pound. It comes down to a couple of key things. A lot of waste comes from food packaging. I didn't buy any packaged food, just a couple of times when I bought local stuff from farmers markets and bulk food. The second thing was, since I was trying to eat 100 percent locally-grown, organic, unpacked food, a lot of times that food was unavailable where I was biking through. I allowed myself to eat food that was going to waste because it was going to landfill anyway. I ate around 280 pounds of food from grocery store dumpsters.

Like freegans.

I guess, kind of. Well not really, actually, no. I don't know. I don't know much about freegans, but I think they eat pretty much any free food, it doesn't have to come specifically from dumpsters. I could be wrong. But I only ate from the grocery store dumpsters. Freegans are interesting.

Which city was your favorite?

The thing about this trip is that there is so much stimuli everyday, especially when you're on a bike. You see so much new stuff. Even when I went to Kansas, where you think it's going to be flat and boring, when you're on a bike you see every contour and thing on the roadside. I feel like I lived years and years on that bike, even if it was just three months. It's pretty damn hard to pick out a favorite place because everywhere I was was pretty awesome.

Bikes tire me out.

I wasn't tired too much because I just have to be wherever I am whenever I'm there and enjoy it, not think about how my body feels all the time. I'm not more tired on the road than I would be at home sitting inside.

So I saw a photo of you riding a bike naked on Facebook.

I only rode seven miles naked in the deserts of Nevada, maybe a 30-minute ride. Anybody who rides a bike will tell you it's super liberating, and most people who embrace being naked will tell you the same thing. It's just being you, being natural, so I just combined the two. Most of the United States doesn't allow for nude riding. Although you can in Portland, I think. [You can't, except during the World Naked Bike Ride].

Portland? Really?

Yeah, I heard it’s legal to ride a bike nude there apparently. It's also legal in some parts of Vermont, so I've heard, but I don't know where. It should be legal in more places. It's really awesome.