RUFFLY

02/11/2025

ONE.

Nothing extraordinary is written on a list.

Lists are ordinary and pedestrian, useful for crossing off or ignoring, but not for revealing something truly important.

That’s why my eyes rolled and the bile rose when the consultant told us to list the values behind why we created RUFFLY.

The bullet points scribbled out with the wrought iron groan of brains in mechanical revolt:

Valuing culture and preserving traditional techniques

Independent workshops provide better conditions and wages

Opportunities in the home country reduce immigration

Quality, local manufacturing improves sustainability

“All important and true, and also just as equally bullsh*t,” Greg confessed.

“At least not the truly motivating thing,” I agreed.

“So, what is the one true thing?” she asked.

A long silence because the words didn’t exist for this idea that we had never been able to express.

Then, suddenly, almost magically, in place of the list just one true thing revealed itself:

RUFFLY slows things down.

It’s the hands and rolled-up sleeves that make something meaningful for those who mean the most to us.

What could be more important in this petroleum-and-plastics world that spins at electron speeds and whirs to the hum of robot arms and city-sized server racks?

Plasma screens, algorithms and AI, Amazon same-day, fast fashion, fine print, and the godlike worship of the economic bottom line.

It’s not a rejection of all that – because the modern world moves necessarily and inescapably fast along its conveyor belt.

But just for a moment and for something this important – not a smartwatch or basketball shoes, but for the collar around my dog’s neck – things move at a human pace.

RUFFLY slows things down.

It’s the vegetables picked from my kitchen garden, the eggs collected from my chicken coop, the quiet drink enjoyed on the veranda, piling sticks to make a campfire, or rolling a joint if that’s your thing.

It’s the firm hands of skilled craftspeople – flesh and blood in their inefficiencies – who make something extraordinary.

RUFFLY slows things down.

It’s our one true thing so we can enjoy the moments with those who are the most important – and least efficient – in this one and only life.

02/01/2025

OUTRAGE.

Does your dog speak to you?

Always and in every way not spoken.

Psychologists say half of communication is nonverbal, which means dogs posses a nearly limitless vocabulary for wordless self-expression.

Any doubt, for example, which treats are your dog’s favorite or how they compare kibble to the cornucopia of flavors on your plate?

Do you discern their pleasure when you return home after work? The abandonment or disappointment when you leave them alone?

The concern or excitement in the tone of a bark? The tremble at being dragged to the vet?

No celebrated Shakespearean monologue could express a feeling more precise and exquisite.

We who hold dominion know their wishes and we mete out jealously the small agency we grant them.

Which is why I never understand the outrage.

“They don’t get to choose!” is a common refrain when someone cries havoc about the cruel risk assumed in bringing a dog on a motorcycle.

Because they so obviously choose instead to spend 12-hour days holding their bladder while crammed into a studio apartment?

Or pick a single-serving of well-balanced kibble while we shovel triple-patty burgers and curly fries into our faces?

As, for that matter, when did they ever get a choice in whether or not to join our pack?

“After reviewing your resumé and cover letter, I’ll have to pass on this proposed adoption,” they might likely say. “I’m just not compatible with a video-gamer, couch potato, urbanite who lives on a noisy street with no grass.”

Might that caged, stale life not feel more unimaginably cruel to a free-spirited camp dog than the horrible fate that risk-adverse people imagine comes from motorcycling?

“But they can’t understand the risks” is another strain of this argument.

Because, just like us, dogs opt for more years over better ones? Trading away today’s vigorous, youthful adventures for a retirement plan that offers 6% matching kibble?

Choose the safety of a 6-foot leash and a hip dysplasia-plagued dotage over the thrill of the hunt, play, and chase?

And, finally, there’s my favorite: “They can’t tell you they want to do it.”

Yes. Yes, they can.

Every way but in words and every time they leap onto their Cockpit.

01/28/2025

Currently traveling around through South America with her dog, Whimsy, Jess Stone of RUFFLY offers some advice.

YouTubers Jess and Greg Stone, currently traveling the world with their dog, Whimsy, offer some advice for taking your best friend along for the ride.

01/15/2025

RAW.

There’s a joke about the home-movie enthusiast.

He’s so engrossed in all the tinker, toil, and precise ex*****on to capture all the fun that the family’s NOT actually having!

We try not to do that.

Not to put the storytelling ahead of creating a story worth telling. Not to reach the destination before finishing the journey to get there.

That’s why we publish a complete miniseries all at once and only at the end of each season.

It’s gives us the time it takes to get where we’re going, look back at the tire tracks, and consider what it all might mean.

That’s how we like to tell the story.

And yet there’s another way – opposite and yet equally wonderful in contrast as like an x-ray negative.

That’s to share in the moment nearly as it happens. To show the full joy, to chew without covering your mouth, and expose the wounds to sunlight while they’re still raw, red, and not yet clotted.

That’s GoRUFFLY in Realtime.

Each episode covers one full day on the road. It’s everything that happens without chiseling away at the rock face, but, also, without the empty calories either.

It’s the raw meat on the bone and the Down to Patagonia season begins today.

We pick up in Sucre, Bolivia, having finally gained Greg entry after three failed and frustrated border attempts.

With shiny new kit for Tuskarossa and Tenderfoot, we’re setting off to reach the bottom of South America.

But, first, Bolivia is in crisis.

Major gas shortages create a frenzied search for fuel while massive protests block major highways.

Episode 1 posts today on YouTube and it takes us back to early November as we prepare to travel a ludicrous, roundabout detour to La Paz.

These first manic episodes quickly catch us up to “realtime” as we bypass roadblocks and make black market gas stops. The police shake us down for money – twice – and then Greg crashes at the iconic spot on the Death Road.

Crossing over the Uyuni Salt Flats, we travel a destroyed road to reach the place where outlaw time finally caught up with Butch and Sundance.

This is GoRUFFLY in Realtime: raw, fresh-squeezed, and cold-pressed.

It starts now, ‘drops’ nearly as it happens, and I think you’re going to love it!

https://www.goruffly.com/world-adventure/

12/17/2024

Do you want to do something valuable and get to live in an incredible place?

RUFFLY ethical outdoor dog gear is looking for an Operations and Marketing Support Consultant who will work with our Guatemala team to improve the logistical and administrative processes involved in manufacturing our artisan-made products.

At RUFFLY, we work with indigenous, Guatemalan artisans and craftspeople to create durable, outdoor dog gear, including the K9 Moto Cockpit motorcycle dog carrier.

Our office is located in Panajachel, Guatemala, on the shores of turquoise Lake Atitlan surrounded by three majestic volcanoes.

Learn more about us here: www.goruffly.com/about

Start Date: Mid-January 2025
Duration: 12 months with the possibility of extension
Location: Panajachel, Guatemala

Requirements:
• Native/fluent English speaker and advanced/intermediate Spanish
• College/University degree
• Experience with content management systems (i.e. WordPress, Shopify, Wix)
• Experience with email marketing platforms (i.e. Active Campaign, Mailchimp, Constant Contact)
• Experience in customer service role
• Experience creating and scheduling social media content (Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube)
• Willingness to travel throughout Guatemala

Benefits:
• Flight to Guatemala and return at contract end
• Support in locating housing in Panajachel, Guatemala
• $2,500/month

Send your CV to [email protected] to apply.

Imagine if Vera Wang and The North Face had a litter of dog gear – and raised it to do good like Oprah. That’s RUFFLY.

11/23/2024

FUTURE.

What do you do after you’ve lived the great adventure of your life?

It’s not a question we ever ask ourselves, nor spend even pocket change thinking about.

Who can or would want to imagine life after this amazing GoRUFFLY journey? Who has spare time or blood pressure to worry about sometime-later when there’s so much worry to fill the right-here-and-now?

Nor enough leisure time to ponder ‘What’s next?’ or what to do when, one day far from now, a few fugitive hours slip through the fist of RUFFLY’s mighty and amazing grip on our lives.

And, especially, with much more of this still ahead – so many countries and continents to explore – and upcoming Gen2 Cockpit enhancements to reveal…

Anyways, too much of life’s fleeting here-and-now is lived for an imagined future that might never realize.

If ever I had a sand grain of doubt, then living this journey forged my certainty in the hardest way.

Losing Moxie to the last and least expected cause – a routine knee surgery – and nearly losing Greg to the very most common one – a traffic accident – teaches only one lesson in my mind:

The only life to spend time living is the one right now.

No other way to live our RUFFLY motto – ‘Live Extraordinary Together’ – than right now.

And, still, for all those platitudes, I admit I’m worried about something ahead in the murky future.

A burrowing tick that every athlete, influencer, actor, and businessperson must routinely ask themself: Are my best days behind me now?

Will we ever match the extraordinary experience of that great, terrible journey Across the Darien?

And, yet, at every age of life, and every stage of accomplishment, the future is a forever treadmill that paces faster than your resting heart rate – no matter how fast the hard running builds it.

So, worrying as we went, we did the only thing to do:

Push. Hard. On.

Set goals that capture our fancy, leap in before we have all the answers, and give the very full measure of what we have in the tank.

Defining success only by how closely we’ve worn our boot soles and tire treads bald.

Over the Andes is our great, big, here-we-go leap into ‘What’s next?’

And it’s out now!

Jess Stone rides around the world on a motorcycle with her German Shepherd Moxie to fundraise for girls’ empowerment nonprofit Girl Up.

09/19/2024

Whimsy gets handsy when we ride……or maybe “paws-on” is the nicer way to say it. Anyway, each hold, tap, embrace, and nudge conveys a different message of excitement, surprise, or it’s time to use the bathroom. The tricky part is interpreting her signals correctly. It would be a lot simpler if we gave her a Cardo Systems intercom and she could use her words – if only!..📍 Posted from Porto Velho riverside.. 🎶Shout it Out by Midnight RiotSyncID: MB01NCKTMG5MLNV...

08/07/2024

Greg, Whimsy and I rode the Trampoline of Death road in Colombia.

It’s 80 km of unpaved road throughout the Andes with 18 curves per kilometer, on a single lane road.

In our case, it was pouring rain so the unpaved road turned into a muddy mess. The route ranges from 600 to 2800 meters above sea level with huge dropoffs - many of which still don’t have guardrails.

We started In Pasto, Colombia and made our way to the start of the infamous stretch - but first, a cup of coffee!

Whimsy was quickly decked out in her K9 Moto Rainfly to protect against the rain and cold.

The first part of the road had decent traction but it soon turned to mud with numerous water crossings caused by the overflowing waterfalls. A beautiful area, that I wish I could have ridden through during a bone dry afternoon!

We made it through with a few close calls from oncoming truck traffic. We stopped at one of the only turnouts for a round of catch and then continued on.

But 4 hours later, we ended in Mocoa where we promptly went to a local vet to prepare Whimsy’s documents to cross the border into Ecuador!

🎗️Thank you to Tractive for helping make GoRUFFLY Around the World possible!

❗Use GORUFFLY40 for 40% off at Tractive.com!
..🎶 New Light (With Oohs & Ahhs) - Instrumental by ADELINE RIVERSyncID: MB01HRZNFSYXFYF

07/28/2024

Had a wonderful time sharing stories from our recent trek across the Darien Gap with Jim Martin of Adventure Rider Radio. Hope you’ll give it a listen!

https://adventureriderradio.com/adventure-rider-radio-episodes/2024/7/25/go-ruffly-across-the-darien-gap-jess-and-greg-stone

Go Ruffly Across the Darien Gap

Jess and Greg Stone follow a route that only those with little choice would go willingly to begin their motorcycle journey into South America.

The Darien Gap is one of the most dangerous routes in the Americas.

This week on Adventure Rider Radio.

Listen in any podcast app or visit the Adventure Rider Radio website. Link below in comments.

07/10/2024

TROLLS.

“The best thing about travel is the people you meet.”

That’s the most common reason people give for what they love most about travel.

I believe that the people who say it believe it, but it always leaves me grappling with a couple nagging questions:

Are the quality of people you encounter abroad somehow better than those at home?

Or are you better as a traveler, which draws out the better in them?

Maybe neither or both, but I think there’s something very human if less polite at play beneath the surface.

A traveler represents something new and different, which elicits interest.

Interest causes people to pay attention and ask questions.

Now, when, in contrast, does that ever happen in everyday, ordinary life?

In ordinary life, you can attract and hold people’s attention only by the hardest, and still they will turn the topic towards themselves at the first breath you take.

But, as a stranger who is different in looks and manner, just being yourself might be interesting enough to tear someone’s attention from the flashing notifications on their phone.

And here’s the point:

What greater dopamine hit to the human metaphysic than receiving other people’s attention just for being yourself and moving through the day?

So, when someone asks what’s the best thing about travel, I believe they mean it when they say “It’s the people you meet.”

But, I wonder if what we really mean is: “It’s that people show interest in me!”

It’s not a polite thing to suggest.

But I think about it often because both Greg and I are quite the opposite.

As dedicated introverts, we’re like trolls under the bridge.

Only not the kind you see in the fairytales because we’re happy to be alone and yet never grumpy if you engage with us – we’re just not likely to initiate the interaction.

Which is why one of the reasons we love to travel with Whimsy – not the best or only, mind you – is because she breaks the ice and elicits interactions.

Through her extroversion we’ve met amazing people who have made our lives and travels immeasurably richer.

But ‘for the people you meet’ isn’t why we travel.

It would be a polite, politic answer to give, but not an honest one.

06/22/2024

If you’re curious what it is like to cross the Darien Gap on foot, watch our 5-part Across the Darien miniseries.

You’ll see how we got the permissions, the SENAFRONT patrol that accompanied us and the hundreds of migrants we encountered along the way.

We are very proud of this series and I sincerely hope you’ll enjoy it!

***We ride from the U.S to Panama in Parts 1-3 and the Darien trek covers Part 4 and 5!

The GoRUFFLY pack welcomes puppy Whimsy, trains her to ride on a motorcycle, and then journeys south through the U.S., Mexico, and Central America to trek ac...

06/14/2024

STORYTELLING.

After months of sharing this journey, we came to a realization.

We were telling the story before we knew what that story was.

Instead of raw and authentic, our weekly realtime episodes felt out of character to how we do things.

To everything else – these posts we write, every RUFFLY collar we make, and K9 Moto Cockpit we build – we try to live by a simple rule:

Do less but better.

But vlogging led us down the opposite path.

We tried all the usual techniques: clickbait titles, trending keywords, and preposterous thumbnails.

Worst of all, feeding the rapacious Algorithm means posting more frequently and producing more publishable minutes, rather than crafting a better story.

So, we went quiet quite simply because we didn’t have something to say.

That is, the story, which we were living out over the long months and hard, dust, muddy miles wasn’t ready to tell.

We trained Whimsy to ride in her Cockpit, traveled through the U.S., Mexico, and Central America, trekked across the Darien Gap, and then reached the foothills outside a small village in Colombia.

That’s where we ended the Across the Darien leg of this journey and had the opportunity to reflect on the most important question:

What story did we live to get here?

Rebounding from the double-barbed tragedy of Greg’s accident and Moxie’s passing.

Then opening wounded hearts to a new puppy to discover her discovering the world as we rolled riot on two wheels and four paws.

And then summoning our moxie more than ever before or imagined to tackle the challenge of crossing the Darien together.

We think the result is a story much better told and more worthy of telling. It’s more modest and far grander than anything we’ve shared before.

It spans eight months and 12,000 kilometers of this still ongoing journey as we try to live extraordinary together every day by making our home and running a business wherever and everywhere we are.

It’s a story in five parts, told as honestly and thoughtfully as we can, and true to our north star of doing less but better.

*** All 5 parts of the GoRUFFLY Across the Darien miniseries are live on YouTube. So watch now or binge this weekend!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNib4j0pHl43Xt-v326Py5HYjoDS-xKly

05/08/2024

The Knotted Collar is made to go everywhere and look amazing.

The handwoven cotton fabric is soft on your dog’s fur, naturally dyed, colorfast, and covers sturdy industrial nylon webbing. Skilled indigenous women artisans create the elegant, knotted band over 4 to 8 hours in small, home workshops.

05/01/2024

Just because your dog might plop down and snooze wherever they are doesn’t mean that a comfortable bed isn’t just what they need.

It’s a simple equation really, and it works for dogs as well as humans:

Greater comfort → Better sleep → Less irritable → More active

That’s why we think the TenderPaw TREKKER Bedroll is one of the keys to having a happy, healthy, active dog – at home and everywhere you go together.
🛍️ TenderPaw TREKKER Bedroll in Badlands

05/01/2024

NAMES.

She had a truly marvelous name.

We named her in hopes of who she would become, and also that it might help kindle boldness in my wimpy belly.

It was a lot to live up to, but it turned out to be a named that suited her perfectly.

Like a flower dress matched with combat boots and brass knuckles, she wore it brashly and effortlessly right from the start.

Never effortless for me, she taught me to follow her example so that, over the years, my shadow grew taller.

I can’t explain exactly how but I’m certain it’s her name that helped make me strong enough to ride us to the Arctic Ocean together.

Thus was Moxie, which is a good name that she made better: the best you can hope for with names.

Now is the time of Whimsy.

Another hard path for me to follow towards becoming a lighter more joyful version of myself, but likewise a name that suits her flawlessly.

And though they couldn’t wear their names better, Whimsy, like her bareknuckle predecessor, has a million fitting nicknames too.

Wrecking Ball was the first of these, given because of how she would stir and rise throughout the night, throw herself against the opposite side of the metal crate, nearly knocking it from atop the dresser, before collapsing back into deep slumber.

After that came Feather Duster for the most delicate way she wags her tail in excitement, clearing nearby surfaces of mugs, cups, keys, coins, and once even a smoldering cigar in a dirty ashtray.

White Devil is another nickname, given when she first began teething and reaffirmed daily each time she blasts through a mesh door or she chews firewood down to kindling.

One of Moxie’s many names found its way into black ink on Greg’s forearm and surely one of Whimsy’s will too.

But for now, today, we celebrate her first full year of life.

A year in which we traveled 20,000 kilometers with me and crossed a fearsome jungle.

A year that she chewed down to the marrow and slashed to ribbons by swinging her tail like a machete blade.

Happy birthday, Whimsy, and thank you for what you’ve taught me.

04/29/2024

Every dog deserves this extraordinary collar designed for the fashion runway and built for the great outdoors!
🛍️ Knotted Collar in Primrose Pink

04/27/2024

A dog bandana should be just that – a bandana – not a bulky, flowing cape or heavy, scratchy knitted throw.

It should be slender, low bulk, and super easy to wash. And, of course, it should look amazing too!
🛍️ New Horizons TREKKER Bandana in Wildflowers