NEWRY — Tapping into one’s inner child is the premise of a popular and rollicking Travel Channel program that debuted last year.

“Bert the Conqueror,” featuring the exploits of Bert Kreischer, takes go-and-do to a thrill-seeking level, especially for those who are into offbeat and decidedly wacky adventures.

Sunday’s Season Two opener at 8 p.m. features Bert and his wife LeAnn competing with 50 other twosomes in Sunday River Ski Resort’s 11th annual North American Wife Carrying Championship last fall.

“The show in general is basically, ‘I’m on tour for thrills,’” Bert, 38, said Tuesday from New York City.

“I go around the country, find out what the locals are doing in their neck of the woods for thrills, for adventure, you know, for adrenalin, and I just immerse myself in it,” he said.

“So, anything as silly, wacky, as dangerous, as wild, as fun-filled that you can find, I’m in,” said the Tampa, Fla., native.

Each episode opens with an activity that’s accessible and everyone can do it. The next two segments quickly ramp the thrill meter to extreme.

“The premise is literally thrills and rekindling that inner child in all of us, that kid that hides in all of us until that one day when your kid says, ‘Dad, I want to do a Slip ‘n Slide,’ and you set it up and you’re like, ‘Let me try,'” said Bert, who is also a stand-up comedian.

“And then you try, and then you realize you have a credit card and you can go out to Lowe’s and get a huge tarp and put it in the backyard and make the most killer slide you’ve ever seen, and then you make a ridiculous Slip ‘n Slide, and then all the neighborhood kids are there and the next thing you know, you’ve got a Slip ‘n Slide that the community talks about and everyone’s doing, and that’s when I show up,” he said.

Although the first season featured 10 “intense” episodes, Bert said this season, which begins April 3, has 16 weekly episodes.

Last season, Bert jumped off the Stratosphere in Las Vegas and went to Tennessee for some “catfish grabblin.”

“Grabblin’ is like ‘noodling,’ where you go into the riverbed and you stick your arm in a hole underwater, and you reach into the back hoping that a 50-pound catfish will bite your hand so you can wrestle it to the surface,” Bert said.

“I mean, we even went redneck water skiing, which is a huge picker like (an excavator) in the middle of a lake and then they just attach a ski rope and put you on skis and spin you in circles like a rodeo to see who can hold on the longest.”

Basically, any huge event with thrills will attract Bert and his camera crew.

“Like our premiere episode this season is the wife-carrying championships in Newry, Maine, and that was a big, massive event,” he said.

“And then we do the more off-the-chart ones like redneck water skiing or the belly flop contest down in south Florida.”

So, for a guy who once let a 50-pound catfish chomp his hand, carrying his wife atop his back on a Maine obstacle course should be a walk in the park, right?

“Tell that to my wife,” said Bert, who carried her upside-down and draped over his back, her legs around his head and her arms around his waist, hanging on for dear life as he maneuvered around the 278-yard course.

“We had problems with the hurdle, we had problems with the mud pit, we had problems with the hill,” said Bert, indicating falls.

“We only beat one team solidly and that guy broke his ankle. We were covered in mud after the race, freezing cold and sitting there like two giddy schoolkids in love.”

Sunday River staff were excited to field Bert the Conqueror.

“This was one of the most fun productions I have had the pleasure to work on,” resort spokeswoman Darcy Morse said Thursday by email.

tkarkos@sunjournal.com

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