Jocko Podcast - 356: We Can Determine What Manner of Men We Will Be. With Ed Thelander

Episode Date: October 19, 2022

Ed Thelander is a retired Navy SEAL, small businessman, volunteer firefighter, reserve deputy sheriff, loving father, and devoted husband. He has never sought political office before but is answering the call to serve his country once more.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 356 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Gettysburg was a great battle. Its action, its tension, its hazards, its consequences. In it were involved questions of gravest import, the decision of which makes history, interests social, political, moral, personal. of gravest import for ourselves, for others, for our country, for man everywhere, for the present time, and for the future, for which also we hold a trust.

The pressing question before us was whether we had a country, whether we were a people or only a populace, whether we were a mere chance partnership, Only holding only by human will or a nation constituted in the purpose and calling of divine providence bound together for the noblest ends of living by ties of mutual interest and honor bonds both of love and law all the great ruling sentiments which have their vital source in this idea patriotism loyalty self-devotion for the sake of others nay what we consider the supreme of earthly blessings largest scope for individual life endowments powers genius character these were the prize for which we wrestled in that terrible arena more than this involved here too were the widest human interests we fought for the worth of manhood for law and liberty which mean freedom for every man to make the most of himself with goodwill of all others without oppression or depression

we had a deep inward vision of this at the time though unspoken and perhaps unclear but no man even now can realize in thought or recognize in fact all the reach of good coming forth out of that struggle and that victory for the country and for mankind and that right there is a quote from a speech by colonel joshua chamberlain and he was at a banquet to honor the 16th main infantry and the fifth main light artillery battery and it was a 16th main who on july first 1863 they were ordered to hold a position at chambersburg pike but this element of men was eventually overrun. And as they were being overrun,

they took down their flag, their regimental flag, and they ripped it to shreds so that it wouldn't be captured by the Confederates. And of their sacrifice, of their 275 men,

11 were killed, 62 were wounded, 159 were taken prisoner. But because they did that, because they held the line as long as they did, it allowed 16,000, and other union troops to retreat and regroup around Gettysburg. And, of course, it was the next day, July 2nd, when the 20th Maine under the charge of Joshua Chamberlain

was able to hold the union's left flank on little roundtop with a bayonet charge that stopped the Confederates, the Confederate Army's best chance for victory in that battle. And essentially, at that point, turned the, or at least started to turn the tide of the war. And it's no surprise, in my humble opinion, that these soldiers from Maine accounted themselves so well. They're from a state that has harsh winters,

rugged terrain, and a culture of hard work and self-reliance. And today we have someone with us that has become a Mainer after retiring from the SEAL teams and is now looking to serve his country and his state again. His name is Ed Thielander, and he's here with us tonight to share some of his experiences and lessons learned.

Ed, thanks for joining us, man. Hey, thank you very much for having me on. This is awesome. It was awesome to get out here. You know, I went out to Coronado last night and watch some, you know, some tadpoles playing on the O course. And it hasn't changed much, you know. that's one thing I missed from, you know, jumping over to the East Coast

was seeing these young frog, you know, men wannabes just get after it and try and figure out, you know, how to negotiate the obstacles on their own time after training. And, yeah, watching them run back and forth to chow. You know, you run six miles a day just to go eat in boots. That's not counted workout. That's just to go eat. And watching that was pretty cool. So, yeah, it's great to be back out on the West Coast.

Check it out for a little while. And I'll be popping back over to the East Coast tonight. Yeah, the O-Course is all fenced off now. You can't just walk out there and do it. I mean, back in the day, a civilian could basically walk out there and just run the O-Course. And now it's all fenced off, which is a bummer because, you know, it's kind of cool that you could just roll out there and run that thing. Yeah. That's a pretty brutal O-Course.

And we'll get into that. Before we get there, before we talk about your buds, your teams experience and all that, let's start at the beginning. Let's start where you came from, where you grew up, what was going on. You're originally from Michigan. Did that right? Yep. Romeo, Michigan.

So what was going on growing up? So, yeah, born in Marquette, my dad was going to school up there. You know, my dad did six years in the Navy. What do you do in the Navy? He was a missile tech, you know, subs. He was trying to talk me into being a nuke. Dang. That's a hard conversation.

He was telling me, yeah, you get steak and lobster, you know, and you don't even have to get up to get a drink, you know, because people, yeah, that's because you can't get up to get a drink because it's so crowded. Yeah. And then you run out of fresh milk on, you know, with the fifth day. And, you know, they never turn the lights off in the hallways, you know. it's uh, I'm sorry, in birthing.

In birthing, they never turn them on except once a week to clean. And then they go in there and pull up all the deck plates and get food out. Did you ever do sub-ops when you were in? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I was at SDV. Oh, gosh. Okay. Which is just funny.

Yeah. You know, team guys with nothing to do because we're kind of all ready for whatever we're going to go do. And we've got nothing to do except make jokes and cause trouble. Yeah. You know, we were on the Dallas. And, uh, we're the first ones, you know, getting ready to eat because we're ready to go do our little gig. And there's this little S turn.

And so we all line up and there's this pipe that sits right about head height, right about here. And we all lined up so you had to hit it. But all the sub guys, now they just, you know, shifted the head around it. It was every diver and team guy that whacked right into that thing. Yeah, that submarine life is a different kind of life. Yeah. Respect to the guys.

to do it. I mean, it's, I could, I, I would, I think the longest I was ever on a submarine for was like, maybe a week and a half or something like that. We were on, we went on to go do some, to go get inserted somewhere and bad weather came and it wouldn't launch us. So we were just stuck there. Right. That was my first experience with hot racking.

Right. You know, you know what that is, Echo? No. Hot racking. It means when you share a bed with someone. So like, you're, you're working one shift when you get done. when you go to work, I get in your bed. So we share a bed.

Yeah, take turns. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You can have two to three guys. Yeah. Not cool. So when you get on with the SDV, you know, the SDV is a little wet submarine for folks that don't know.

And they put this, basically this garage on the back of a submarine. And it is wildly awesome because that whole thing is dedicated from moving, you know, two or six guys from point eight. to point B, this big giant garage door opens up, the SDV goes out, you know, 10, 12, 20 hours later, that thing comes back. It's pretty wild. But we bring a bunch of folks on there to help us out and get everything ready.

So they clear out a rack of torpedoes. And that becomes your beds, you know. It's just, so I gave up my bed to one of my guys because I was getting off and he was going to stay on and work the comms problem. and I'm you know decent sized guy I can't turn in

under that torpedo rack because the next torpedo above you and I actually have to squish my shoulders in tight and they in the torpedo area they do not turn the lights off ever that thing's just always on

everywhere else they kind of cycle daylight in the work other working areas except the torpedo area so you're just in there you know they do put up a curtain it means nothing your shoulder to shoulder head to head with you know whatever it is 20 other dudes and your dad's trying to convince you that this is the way to go yep go be a so was he a submariner yeah yeah he did uh six years no he was a torpedo man he was trying to talk me into being a nuke and uh those newke guys they work hard man it is no joke that job is a tough grueling in the freaking

nuclear engine room or what I don't know what you call it the reactor room right god so to work out on a submarine you got to put your dosometer on because you've got to walk past the nuclear reactor and then they've got it's they're all quiet workouts they did have a square block of uh dumbbells you know which is you know they all wear tennis shoes so you don't make noise you know so you don't get no can hear you from above and then it's you know it's an elliptical not a treadmill so you know you don't want to pound in other feet It's, yeah, you can do pull-ups on something, and you got those dumbbells in an elliptical.

Yeah, it is not an ideal life for a guy that has more of a propensity to be a seal. Right, right. All right, so your dad, so what'd your dad do after he got out of the Navy? So, yeah, he went to college up in northern Michigan, Michigan Tech. So driven, in three years, working two jobs. He got his bachelor's and his master's. and, you know, with three boys,

and then moving down to Southern Michigan teacher, electronics teacher. So, in high school? High school electronics teacher. Yeah, and it was legit. We were, he would do all this after school work and weekend work with his kids, you know, his students, and we'd be in there climbing in and around all the electronic gear,

and he'd have us making circuit boards. It's what I remember to be a ridiculously young age, a good, ridiculous, you know. I mean, like five years old burning circuit boards. You know, we made stuff flashing lights, whatever. But it was all fun in games, and then all of a sudden we can do some wild stuff. You know, we were always forced to figure things out. I took electricity in high school with a teacher. I don't, we all, everyone called him Scotty.

but that's where I learned how to like wire houses you know yeah and to this day like I mean at one of my houses I this is when I was still in the teams like took a weekend redid put in an electrical subpanel redid all the wiring in my kitchen because it's all jacked up and like such a great skill to have oh yeah and it's yeah it's all stuck with me you know I figure stuff up we never had a new TV ever we fixed all those old tube TVs you know and change the channel with the pliers. Yeah. We fixed our cars, you know, from fixing our bicycles when we were young, young, and then we got motorcycles, you know, a little, you know, YZ 60s, and we tore those down

to nothing and put them all back together again. First truck, you know, that was given to me to use, you start that thing up at a cloud of smoke, and then we tore the whole thing down, you know, in high school on the weekends, because they had a little. and all that stuff. So did you go to school where your dad taught? No, no. He was like the big high school north or south of us. You know, 2,000 plus kids.

We were like the smallest of the big schools, you know. So 32 mile center of town was paved, 33 mile road was dirt. So we live close to the dirt road. And so what, when you were in school, are you into school, Are you getting good grades? Getting decent grades, you know, into the sports, you know, football, wrestling, and then track, kind of dropped track off at the end and just concentrated on football and wrestling. You know, like school, but not crazy into it, you know, like the math, you know, decent grades.

I was a B-ish student, you know, nothing, definitely not way into it. Were you thinking you were going to go to college or what was your dad steering you towards or your mom steering you towards. So I was getting steered towards the Navy College, Navy College, Navy College. You know, my dad really, you know, went up to Ferris State University, Division II school. It was a college. First year I was there became a university, whatever that jump is. Wait, that's where, so you end up going to college?

One year of college. Yep. And you said you got a scholarship? No. Oh, no, no. No, no. No, just my dad went up there to introduce me, get me on the wrestling team, wanted me to, you know, do that, you know. Good team.

So you're a good wrestler. Decent. How did you join high school state wrestling? Did not make it a state's messed up my knee in, ended up having surgery on it. Yeah, I just had like two thirds of menisics taken out. When you're like 17? Yeah. Yeah.

So I had that surgery and in two weeks I went to wrestling camp. So was that your senior year? Yeah, that was my senior year. And then you healed up enough that you could go up And you walked on to this wrestling team At Ferris State University Yep, and I was a red shirt You know, I did not compete

But I stuck it all the way out I mean I started we started out with like 90 kids And it was like 17 left you know at the end But I was good weight for my coach What weight were you? 163 165 whatever it was in college So you're just scrapping with the

Yeah our coach was you know Number one in the nation You know when I came out here to San Diego, his big rival, Butler was, you know, they were number one, number two. I mean, my coach in college was number two. Butler was number one. And it was cool because I was working out under Butler at the time. I would go work out at San Diego Community College and Russell there, you know, where Dean actually ended up going.

We had the same coach a couple of years of difference. That's wild. Yeah, yeah. So you say you only went to, you only went to college for a year? Yeah, halfway through. And I was on a plastic engineering program. There wasn't room for everybody to do all the plastic classes. So I was on a waiting list.

So I was taking my English, my math. I took a 300-level metallurgy class as a freshman. And I got out of there halfway through the year. I said, yep, I'm going to go do the option. finish this year out strong and then I'm going to go be a seal. How'd you hear about the teams? Did your dad tell you about him? No, Adam, I guess I'd say,

Adam Blake, good dude, in high school. He was reading Men with Green Faces. Like the only book about seal teams at the time. And I go, hey, what's that about? He goes, oh, that's a seal teams, you know, blah, blah, blah. I go, oh, that's cool. He was trying to talk me into joining the Marine Corps with him, which he eventually ended up doing.

But I said, hey, how come you don't want to go do that? Oh, that's crazy. You know, that's so hard. It's not really possible. Check. And then so that put it in my head, that's what I want to do. And I'll go and do the college and then, you know, can't quit anything. Never allowed to quit anything as a child, you know.

So I finished the year out strong. And I signed up for the late entry. I worked out a little bit in the summer, did a couple of triathlons, you know, because I didn't know anything about it. what I was really good. There were no books about it. There was nothing, really. No prep courses.

What the recruiter say to you? Come on in. Yep, sounds great. Looks like you're going to make a great seal. Yep. Great thing. He tells everybody else. Right, right.

So, you know, took the as fab and all that happy stuff and, you know, smoke that qualified to be a new, qualified to do whatever. And was your dad like, C-Sons? Yeah. Yeah, you could be it. You know, what did your dad say once you told me you're going to try and go on the teams? Uh, yeah, cool, but the same time, hey, you, you really want to look in, you know, being a nuke, you know, uh, you know, being on subs is cool, you know, the whole steak and lobster thing and, you know, they don't have to get up to get a drink and, you know, they're all a bunch of good dudes, but, uh, yeah, I don't belong in a submarine. Yeah.

I get on the sub to get off the sub to go do something and then. So, so did they have die fair? Were you a die fair? I was a die fair. That's what I was, too. So yeah, you get a guarantee to take a tryout in boot camp. And then whether you pass that test or not, you are in the Navy for six years. Yeah.

It's a great recruiting tool. It is a great recruiting tool. And the seal teams is a great recruiting tool. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, they say that the nutrition rate is like 80% people quit or whatever, something like that. Right. But if you start taking all the people that came in the Navy to try and go to the SEAL teams,

I mean, there's most people don't even make it, you know, two butts. Or at least a bunch of people don't make it two butts. So they're getting the Navy's getting a lot of, a lot of people. Well, just, you know, Blue Angels. I mean, that's on all the commercials. That's true, too. Yeah. Who gets to do that?

There's seven of them or something like that. You know, and it's cool to be on the Blue Angels changing tires. but that's not what they're advertising. All right, so you joined a Navy. How's boot camp? No factor, you're a wrestler. Yeah, no. Boot camp was just something to go through.

It was pretty wild to see. You go to Orlando or Chicago? Yeah, that's where all the die fairs went at the time. Okay. Yeah, that's where I went too, so I guess that makes sense. It's wild seeing all these folks come from, you know, that boot camp was a factor, like a wow factor, either the teamwork part of it, you know, People get in authority as a recruit that, like, yeah, you never have to,

you should never have authority. And seeing people stressed out about the simplest of things. And that was wild to see those differences in people that, that, wow. You know, so, yeah, boot camp off the books, you know, boot camp, Navy boot camp is different. It's a lot about isolation and staying on a ship. You're only allowed off the ship one time, you know, for like a recruit weekend or something like that. You have, you know, that's what the Navy's about.

You're stuck on a boat. And the Navy's about like blue collar industrial work. That's what most of the Navy is. Sure. And that's why Navy boot camp is a lot about attention to detail. Sure. You know, following directions to a T, you know, checking what you're checking your work. Because, you know, if you're working on an aircraft, or you're working on a.

engine or you're working on a parachute like all these jobs they're industrial jobs yeah and you got to be squared away at that thing you know as opposed to the army or the Marine Corps a lot of those are field jobs you got to be doing something in the field I mean of course the Marine Corps has aircraft mechanics and everything else too and so does the Army but that the Navy is vast majority of it is industrial work people that know how to work on engines people that know how to work on electronic equipment that's what it is right so that's what the Navy boot camps geared to I think it's come a long way now. If you go watch like a Navy boot camp video,

they have a simulator in Chicago, like a ship simulator that fills with water. Right, right. They got to fight fires. And so I think they did do a good job. It looks like they've done a good job at making it more, a little bit more combat related or at least like Navy war fighting to at least get you that mentality because you should have that mentality if you're in the Navy.

So I think they've done a good job moving in that direction. But essentially, it's a bunch of industrial work that you're learning how to do. Yeah, you know, thick, thin, thin, thick. Yeah, yeah. I don't want that the T-Sat the way you fold a T-shirt. This is the Echo Charles.

So when you fold a T-shirt for Navy boot camp standards, there's like a certain way to fold it and it ends up looking like there's a thin layer. A thick, thin layer, then there's a thin layer or thin layer, and then another thick layer. And you've got to learn this and you do it. Like following orders, tension to detail. Tension to detail.

Before you get to play with the nuclear reactor, We want to make sure you can fold a T-shirt. Wait, what's thick and what's thin? It's the folds. You know, there's other material under there. So the first fold is thick. The next two folds are thin. And then there's another thick one.

It's just a way. It's just a, it's, it's this funny thing that, you know, I mean, that was 1980. Yeah. I don't know if they still have it, but I know Leif Babin still folds his shirts like in a Navy manner. Is that right? Yeah. I was like, bro, he went to Naval Academy? What the hell is like?

I saw this stuff folded. I was like, damn, what's going on over here? It's stuck. It is a little attention to detail things, but, you know, some of these folks couldn't, there was this brilliant, you know, young man kid and whatever, and he wigged out in the end. Started crying. Oh, yeah, you definitely see some people wig out.

I mean, there's no doubt about that. Wow. No doubt about that. I mean, I understand some other things. You know what I wouldn't have wigged out for that, but I get, you know, I didn't see anybody wig out in the teams, but I saw him see it. out in Sears school. But not Navy boot camp.

They yell at you. Yeah. That's an expectation. Should be. You know, but some people just aren't used to that in their life, you know, and, uh, wow. Yeah, I think also people get the impression that this is what the whole Navy is going to be like for the rest of my career.

People are going to be yelling and screaming and right. And you think, yeah, I can't take this and leave or, you know. No, they just want to make sure you can stand up to a little bit of stress because eventually something might get stressful. Yeah. For sure. So you get down. So do you a stress?

to buds after that would you go to a school yeah corman eight so remember maps right yeah your military in processing yeah put a fifth choice down because i put all i only wanted to be a a seal you know our source ratings you had to pick a source rating because if washed out you would go to the navy and do that uh so i put down you know three choices in an alternate well i still didn't pick corman yet so said why don't you to put down a fifth alternate and so i got the fifth alternate course school but it was in the Navy yeah last easy class it was only eight weeks the next class shifted like 14 weeks and uh you know trudged through that and uh off to what should have been buds but they messed my orders my orders my orders up and sent me to belboa you know because they were like we're not a my

class 163 didn't start till whatever it was April whatever so they weren't going to get me there till like a week before you know but you still had pre-training and they were didn't care. They needed somebody to go work, you know, somebody at the hospital was saying, hey, we need some bodies. So they sent me there. And I was working for a really good senior chief.

And I said, hey, you know, this is what I got going on. I don't think it's quite right. And, you know, I'm just a new kid in the Navy. And I'm still like, hey, this isn't right. Can we check it out? And so what I would do is I would go run down to RTC from Balboa. And I found, you know, senior chief,

Billy Hill and Goward. and I said, hey, you know, senior chiefs, can I get a little help here? Because I don't think this is right. And they go, yeah, that's not right. Go get your swim in. We'll fix it. So they fixed my orders, but it took a couple weeks. So then I got to Buds, and a week and a half later, I classed up and started.

Damn. And you're in class 163? Yeah. And you classed up a week and a half after you got there? Yeah. You said? That's a little bit of a quick start. Yeah, because I didn't know anything.

You know, I'm seeing everybody there, they like got their, you know, that rope around their belt. You know, I say, hey, what's that about? Oh, yeah, we're doing underwater not time tomorrow. Jack. Yeah. Were you a good swimmer? I was a decent swimmer, you know. You know, I sink like a rock.

I basically, you know, beat the water into submission. Everybody has ever been trying to be a real swimmer. You cannot beat the water into submission and go faster, you know. Yeah. You sound like my kind of swimmer. Yeah. It's me against, it's me fighting the water. Yeah, somewhat vertical through the water plane.

Yeah. I sink like a stone. But you were comfortable like knot-tine when it did come down for not-time. I dove as a kid, you know. Okay, but no, knot-tying. Okay, how do you tie that, you know, those series of knots? You know, I didn't know. And, you know, that's what we're doing tomorrow.

Okay. How do you tie those knots? How was Hell Week for you in your class? Yeah. You know, summer hellwool. weeks, you know, just, they're warmer, you know, these other guys that are thinner are, they are going to suffer before I was because I was, I'm, you know, the mesomorph, you know, a naturally heavier guy. So basically they kept that boat on your head longer. And, you know,

my neck will tell you about that today still. Yeah. Yeah, you know, remember in all the wild things about hell week, you know, you know, what was your worst, you know, thing in hell week? Tuesday. So, I was say, Ryan, Zinky, what was our first phase officer? And at chow times, eat four times a day, at chow time, he would go around and make sure no one fell asleep. And if you nodded off, you were going to get a halibou. You know, so Ed being from Michigan and, you know, roast beef and mashed potatoes, you know, peppers like the ultimate spice and used sparingly. My mom's, you know, French can eat. It's a lot more bland food. I've never had a jalapeno in my life. And your lips are blistered, you know. So it eats the jalapeno check. And I threw up, you know, it's a one mile run with a boat on your head. I threw up for a mile.

a little bit because we ran all the way to the oak course and we did the oak course with our boat and I threw up all the way through that oak course hauling the boat around and then I've got no fuel in the tank that was a long long day yeah I remember that you know and then remember the other things about you know hallucinating you know you know lion's lope you know you know getting mad at my paddle I remember it though my paddle is not You know, making us go, I'm crying hard, you know, that this paddle should make me go faster. You know, uh, yeah, remembering paddle prayers, you know, uh, uh, what's paddle prayers?

So they would put us together around in a circle. Oh, we had paddle above the other guy's head. You got your paddle. You got your paddle. So you're like this. And when you fall asleep, it's, you try and catch yourself and you whack the two in front. And it's like, is that in the program? Yeah.

You know, I was a really motivated young, you know, number one bow line man, you know, the guy, the guy that jumps out on the rock porters and acres, the boat. I wanted to be that guy. Yep. You know. That's the spot, man.

That's the spot. Get in there. Let's do this. And when that boat's upside down on your head, that's the spot too because you're taking some serious weight. Yeah. That's a dangerous evolution. big waves man good old rock part you know we didn't have helmets yeah you know we had

K-pox you know big giant you know horribly uncomfortable life jackets uh and uh wow now they got helmets you know dude i i i noticed they took the stump jump completely out now yeah they reduce the stumps first and now the stumps are all gone and they're tires and that's kind of because that's a mental thing you know um everybody knew the right stump to jump on it's just just that all the fear of falling. Yeah. And I don't remember anybody falling. You know, I don't know that somebody fell

and they hit their head to, I don't know. Echo, this is on the obstacle course. One of the first, well, I guess it was actually the second obstacle. You go across that dip bar thing. Right, right. And then you'd hop off and there'd be telephone poles caught off at various heights in the ground like stumps. Yeah.

And you would have to jump from stump to stump to stump. And they'd kind of increase in heights. And the last one was a little, was, depending on which route if you took the right route which everybody knew right last one was the tallest one Had to jump a little bit further for it and then you could jump you jump up onto this Grab this wall this low wall which is probably like 10 10 feet tall or something like that from the stump from the stump But it did take it did take like what's the commitment right commitment to to jump from stump to stump Yeah, and it got you used to committing right and now it's just the tires like

like you see on a football field, you know, you run the tires. Oh, yeah, you're right about that psychological part. Right, right, there's a fear of falling. It's just like, you know, if you focus on the stump that you might fall on, you're not looking at the stump that you want. You know, like if you're, are you skiers? Yeah.

If you ski with a helmet on and then you take your helmet off, you see, you ski slower, especially if you ski in the trees. I mean, if you're skiing in the trees, and if you're looking for the gaps, you're good to go. If you're looking for the trees that you don't want to hit, you're going to find that tree. Yeah.

You know, and the same kind of thing. It's a psychological thing, you know, to get you moving forward. Yep. And they got helmets now, too, that they wear all the time. Which is weird, too,

because, like, even during Hell Week, they wear helmets. Really? Which is, to me, the agony of that boat grinding on your head was like a huge part of what sucked. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. That boat was freaking, Because you're getting, you know, your head, getting some serious sunburn. You don't have a whole bunch of hair. Yeah. It's, yeah, your head's getting blistered. It's a psychological part of it, man, that, that, yeah, I don't know if I'd want to wear a helmet or not, actually. I keep a little warm, you know, I don't know.

Any other, so once you got done with Hell Week, you're in the rest of buds, was there any other major challenges for you there? Eating dry out of the island. Would you say eat and dry? Yeah. So, you know, at least one meal a day, you had to either do the pull-ups, the frog hill run, or the rope climb. What, did you suck at something? Pull-ups. Okay.

I could not. Yeah, gravity. You know, rope climb is fine because you use your legs technique. But, man, I ate wet a lot in a pull-up day. It was funny because for whatever reason, I never did pull-ups growing up. And, yeah, that was, the island was second phase for me. that switched eventually yeah we're back to it I guess so yeah eventually I mean I became a pull-up freak you know as a big guy you know I was I think uh even after my

shoulder surgeries I did you know 26 pull-ups like six months later it's like it's personal challenge but yeah so so pull-ups what was one you know running not a great runner you know swimming but you know you're swimming you know yeah that not a top performer by any means, but just kept going forward, you know, and, you know, just all you had to do is perform, you know, pass, you know, perform, you know, not tying, normally no factor.

We did it in the dive tower. How deep? Well, the ropes, same depth 10 feet. Zinki took me down. to 50 feet. And we just hung out there and looked at each other. And until he was, you know, tired. And then we came up to the top.

And there is a set, you know, it's all set, what you're supposed to be doing. And I was like, okay, you're ready to go? Yeah, ready to go. You know, and we went down. And then we came back up, you know, and bam, next knot. They're back down again and back up and down.

So I failed that. Yeah. You know, that's one thing that's interesting. What I remember about some of the breath holding stuff, like 50 meter underwater swim. You're going to buds. You're like, ah, that's no big deal. I could do that.

But and not tying. It's like, it's nine feet. Go down there tie knot. But you're in buds, because of everything that's going on, you're constantly like beat down. So you almost always have a cough. You kind of have a cold. You kind of have like eukas.

You're always like that. You're always tired. Like a four mile time run. Four mile time to run. First phase was 32 minutes. Four mile time run. You look at that in paper on the outside. You're like, what's that?

That's a freaking, you know, I can do that. No problem. Then you get in there. You got boots on. You got pants on. You're running in the soft sand. And the run is not four miles. It's like 4.2 miles, 4.4 miles, 4.5 miles.

Right. And then. And what did you do the night before? The night before that morning, four o'clock in the morning, four mile time run, you did, you know, a thousand eight count bodybuilders. So you did buddy carries up and down the burn. So everything is harder than it than you think it's going to be in buds. It's not what's on paper. It's what actually happens is harder.

Yeah, no. You didn't get to eat, but you had to run to chow and you had to go through the line and touch the hamburger that you want to eat. But there was no time to actually eat it. You know, you wasted time running all the way, but you, that's what, you must go there to do that. Yeah. But there's no time to actually sit down and eat. And then you run and you go do the evolution because you have to be at the evolution on time. Did you get rolled for anything?

No. No. First time every time. Yeah. Well, I mean, I failed that, but my lungs were messed up from Hellweek. Not tying right after Hell Week. That's the kind of thing that makes it hard. He's like, you get done with Hell Week.

You're jacked up, man. Right. And now you've got to go do these knots. underwater and you're like you can barely even hold your breath for 10 seconds it sucks and then you get taken down to the bottom yeah you know 50 feet going down to 50 feet is no joke i mean that's a that's a legit that's a legit swim right uh subsurface swim that takes a that takes a decent amount of time just to get down to 50 feet right right and now you got to do your little happy time to not with us the tower yeah the tower yeah we went to the bottom of sat did you see it's gone now the tower yeah yeah yeah

That's a bummer. Yeah. Yeah. I drove around there just checking everything out. And so what do you? Are you like a seaman apprentice at this point or just an E3? Yeah, yeah. Just there happy to be there.

Check. Yeah. I mean, knowledge of the Navy, knowledge of what I'm, you know, other than I'm signing up, you know, I'm going to get to shoot, blow things up, skydive, scuba dive, serve my country. Hell yeah. You know, let's rock and roll. Let's right. Hey, cool.

It, you know, like, um, you know, like, um, pool comp. Uh-huh. You know, that was another one where, you know, and I had, uh, um, one of the mean instructors. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Was he a senior chief at the time? Yes, he was.

I know exactly you're talking about. Yeah. And, uh, uh, hey, great respect, you know, um, but he ripped my mask off at the beginning, you know, so basically you got your, you got these old scuba tanks on with, uh, flexible hose. that you can tie knots into, not modern gear. They're actually soft hollow hoses. So you can tie knots into them to cut the air off. And, you know, he takes my mask off but leaves it on my head.

And I said, okay, I'm not going to put it back on. I'm just going to keep, he's just swim back and forth. And you get to the end, you turn around. And while they're doing that, they're just coming in on you and wrecking your gear. And you have to do everything procedurally correct. And I did everything. everything procedurally correct, but since my mask was accessible, I should have put it on. Fail.

There you go. So I had to do that again. And I got even harder instructor, we're considered harder, but fair in my mind, you know, a super dude. But he, yeah, I got put through the ringer again, but, but, you know, I put my mask on one of those available. And, uh, lesson learned. Lesson learned. Yeah, I was a whole bunch of learning because I didn't do any of the, you know, well, they didn't teach you that prehand because that was third phase for me.

You know, I've been there and, you know, you know, back into shape again. It takes like a year, this is what they say, to recover from Hell Week. You look at some of those cats. And I remember, you know, I was a class corpsman, you know, sending dudes at the hospital with encephalitis, you know, their hands are just, you know, big giant puff balls and their feet, you know. It's, and we didn't get any sleep in hell week. You're supposed, they're scheduled sleep, you know, but we did not get that.

Yeah, I think the scheduled sleep might be a couple hours total, something like that. Yeah, there's two blocks of it and you're supposed to get dry first. That one I know my class cop because they, you know, they tell you some story like, hey, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, we're being too hard on you guys. We're, we have to stand down for eight hours. You guys go get dry and you guys can go to bed and we'll wake you up tomorrow. And I mean, you know it's bullshit. But still, you put on dry clothes and then you go and you actually get in your bed. And this is probably Tuesday. Yeah.

And then, you know, half an hour later, they come in and they get you up and hit the surf. Right. But guys quit because it's a smart move to get people to quit. Oh, yeah. Because they go into the comfort zone. Right. And then they bring you back out. You know, you got to watch out for that comfort zone, bro.

That thing will grab a hold of you. Oh, yeah. That's like when you're doing a long rock march. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you stop, you've got to stop for like five minutes, eight minutes, 10 minutes at the most, then you've got to get your ass up and start walking again because you start going into that 15 minute break, 20 minute break, your body gets cold and you're screwed getting back up.

But, yeah, so we slept that point. And, you know, you fall, sometimes you're just falling asleep. I mean, there's nothing you can do about it. You're just going to fall asleep. Yeah. Yeah, so they got us into dry clothes. And we had a kid in our class that quit on Tuesday, you know, whatever 20 class, or whatever, you know, years before came back.

And so he had knowledge up to Tuesday. And so, you know, he knew something about that. So we got dry, but then they put us on the grinder and on the pavement where we worked out. You know, we started doing flutter kicks and instructors up there doing our flutter kicks. He brought the class leader up there and headed the class leader started leading us. And then the instructors walked away. And we're on our backs. We're in dry clothes.

That's the standard. Class leader would not let us go to sleep. It's like, you know, he's trying to go around making us say our social security numbers or birthdays, you know, trying to keep everybody away. and just like, I go, and I'm, I am a kid. You know, I go, you're doing the job for them. And so then they, at the end, because they're, you know, in that first phase corner office, just giggling.

I imagine, you know. And then they let us, you know, said, right. They're trying to figure out how to make that officer quit. Yeah. This guy's too dumb. They weren't going to make that guy quit. That guy's a hoss. He doing the underwater swim.

You got to swim tight up. And you got to do a flip into the water. And then you swim 25 meters, flip, and then turn around and come back. Without a mask on. So he did it. Flutter kicking. Damn. Yeah.

No, no, this is not the tight up one. The one you just the regular underwater swim. The 100 meter tied up one. you know but but you have a mask on i think on that one uh but the other one you didn't have a mask he's flutter kicking it and he swam off course finally got back on course made it there and back it hard hard to stone yeah college football player you know uh but yeah so they put us put us to bed and um somebody had a watch hidden you're not allowed to have a watch you have no concept of time day or anything.

And you're always trying to figure out what day it is a little bit, you know, you know, trying to remember what meal. You count for meal to meal, basically. And, yeah, so it was 22 minutes. That's what we got for Hell Week of sleep. It's not a lot of sleep. No, legit. So you graduate from Buds and did you want to go?

Where did you end up going? You went to Team Three, right? Yeah, I went to Team Three. So you get the Dream Shit. And, you know, I put like all, I wanted to go to Maine because I love the snow. And it was like, start to go, yeah, no, you can't do that. That's stupid because you can't. You got to go to a team first.

You know, we have four billets up there in Maine. That's how I eventually got up there. But I put team, I want to do cold weather. I put team two. You know, I put team four. I don't remember what else I put. But you put all the East Coast teams. I think so.

And the Navy said? West Coast, Steel Team three. And, you know, I had a great time there. You know, the first platoon that, you know, Mark Crampton, Bob Edwards, you know, folks that you remember, you know, Miss Mark. Mark was friggin' awesome, man. Yeah, dude. Crazy. You know, we can talk about that.

Just the whole, we've got to watch out. Mark, you know, say it, you know, committed suicide and completely unexpected. Totally. You know, I mean, that dude was solid as stone. Yeah, and just an awesome guy. And just a mentor to so many people. I mean, mentor. Yeah.

Wow. A smile on his face, every single time I interacted with him, which was sometimes on a daily basis, but I mean, for his whole career, he just always had a good attitude about everything. Right. About everything that was going on. And, yeah, so totally unexpected. You know, he retired. He's been retired.

He had been retired for quite a few years, maybe. be what do you think five years seven years something like that something like that yeah i mean he kept on just moving on up and doing good things for the teams and everybody around them i mean always uh self-motivated self-improvement guy always looking for that next thing to make him and everybody around yeah and helping a not just the teams when he would like help kids that were wrestling had like a wrestling club he's just doing everything right yeah no but yeah that was that was a uh that was a Great platoon, you know, Westback, you know, did, uh, got back. So where'd you deploy to? The PI or did you go, where'd you go? P.I. Um, PI. Um, PI, um, Peno Tuba hit. Oh, okay. You know, just after we left and we came back,

uh, I came back with Fox drop platoon. Um, and, uh, you know, the ashes everywhere, you know. So you weren't in the Pia when Pena Tuba hit? No, no, I was not. You came, how was it workup and everything, your first platoon, being a new guy? What, what? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, you were I was a corpsman taking the hits you know uh we had a good bunch of new guys uh you know yeah gino bam bam uh big ghost man Dave casper lost him to cancer uh recently uh I don't know if these guys were still around there at the time um yeah uh just a good yeah uh but legit you know we you make a mistake as a as a new guy back then you know, you're going to pay for it.

I really didn't get too much grief. I mean, one day out at Nileand, you know, with the old Nileland, you know, with the trio woe and, they were, they were, you know, tuning some folks up. I was on watch, you know, it was not touchable. Dave, the ghostman Casper, they were going after him, and they chased him. He got up on top of the mill vans and the RSUs that were over by the fence. And that's, there's a gap big enough to drive a summer. my tractor trailer and unload it.

He jumped over that barbed wire and made it out into the desert and spent the night out. Freedom. Freedom. Right on. And then, so what did you do on deployment back then? You know, I deployed. But training, you know, a fed, you know.

Do you go to any cool countries? Yeah. I had a blast in, you know, South Korea. You know, we went to Japan, did some sub-ops there. We did, uh, shoot, where else? you go. I mean, there wasn't a whole bunch of traveling. You know, the golf kicked off. We deployed early. You know, it did not, we didn't do. Did you backfill someone that went to the golf or something? Yeah. Yeah. Steel Team 5. Worst job ever in the teams. Hey, we just need you to backfill

for the guys that are going to war. You're like, no. So yeah, I missed out, you know, significant parts to work out, you know, as a new guy too. And, you know, and as a corpsman, back then, we didn't have the training that they got now. Yeah. You know, and, you know, And I could have got some more of that, you know. But, I mean, the first stitches I ever did, other than on a, you know, a fruit was my own knee. We were to work up out of Nileand, and they had a pistol course we were running.

There was a pipe you had to crawl through that had bullet holes in it and, you know, dug on my knee. And, you know, I never even used lydicane because I was not taught. that in course school you know and I hadn't been through the EMT course where you got all that yet at this point in the workup and so a whole platoon watching me because I'm the doc in the platoon and which again was just crazy wrong you know from what they get a platoon guy now had

the regular platoon guy now had more than than what I had they're so squirt away and uh you know I've never tied a knot on a human you know a stitch and so everybody everybody's watching it. And, you know, figured it out. Yeah, Herc. Herc, Herc, Doc. Yeah, Doc Herc was, you know, supervising me. And I figured it out, you know.

Cleaned it, cleaned it out myself. And that was, you know, but, you know, we came back to Second Petun. We were, like, getting ready to get Corazonokinos out, you know, 92 timeframe, 91, 92. And that was a fun little, you know, jump into the deployment. We jumped into doing that. And you've done the quick ducks where you're in recoveries

where you're driving right in the back of a 47. Yeah. Yeah. We were doing it in the back of 53s. Oh, that's wild. Tail rotor. Yeah, how's that work? That's got to be sketchy.

Especially when you're by yourself. But I, you know. Were they like, hey, you got this. You drive it in there. We'll wait. Yeah, so, so we, you know, everybody goes out and no big deal, you know, but they're, it's a, it's fully inflated just about, or it was a drive, take everybody on shore and then recoverer back onto the same helo by yourself. It's 240 not rotor wash from a 53. Yeah, so echo, just to explain what you're talking about.

So a CH 53 is a big giant helicopter, but it, you ever seen the helicopters? that have two big rotors on top, right? That's what we would normally do this on. Well, it's called a 47 or a 46 is a little small, but a 47's big. But the 53 has a tail rotor, like a normal helicopter. So when you drive in the back, you're coming close to this thing for sure. Oh, yeah. No, you come in, you're coming in at a 45, and you've got to make sure your engine's on tilt.

You're coming in at a 45 to avoid the tail rotor, because it's legit. Again, that rotor wash can flip that boat. I put anything extra into the bow of the boat, and I would lean forward, and I'm holding out of the tiller, it would lean it forward into the boat. You punch through that, and it's a wall. When you get through it, there's dead space.

So you've got to make a right hand turn and gun it one more time and tilt you're inside the helicopter. It's like by yourself, it's pretty wild to do. And as a new guy, It was my second platoon without a workup. So that was pretty wild. And that whole, so those were Air Force spec ops guys. I know there was their big thing.

And it was, yeah, we did exercise with those guys too in the Philippines. You know, the C-130 that they had, they got shot by, you know, NPA or some farmer didn't like a flying, serving their yak or whatever, whatever. And so it took a round through and through the plane. We never knew. They landed it, patched it is their exercise. And that thing was back up in the air. When an Air Force bird breaks and it's in a nice place like Hawaii,

you're there for a couple days. We never knew it even got hit. Yeah. And this is training again. I'm not you know it's uh um yeah that was that was pretty wild now is this didn't you fall somehow like oh yeah what was that all about ouch just um so I always went off to uh Joshua tree um or I had a while to go climbing on the weekends you know uh Lou Langless you know we're all in um Andy Rios Lou um who else was in the barracks um you know we know we know

go off climbing on the weekends. You know, we were still in the barracks in the teams of that time. And so, you know, off camping. And I was a pretty decent climber right off the bat. You know, my uncle up in Canada would take me climbing once in a while as a kid and rarely, but I just liked it.

And I went up there. No one could go climbing with me. So, cool, I'd just go find somebody when I get up there. So I had the soloist, you know, it's a self-ballet device. You tie off to the bottom, and as you progress, you keep putting pro in, and it's a camming unit. And I did like a 5-8, and I'm funny, I remember the names of the client. Mike's books.

It's on Intersection Rock right there in Joshua Tree. And then I just hung dog this. I got to the top, set up a top rope, making it safer. and I just did like a Mike's book was like a 5-8 and then the next one was like a 5-11 which is above my what I could do I was a 10 C-ish climber so I just kind of cheated my way up on that

literally you know because you can you can hang on your pro hang on you whatever yeah well you just pull on your rope a little bit because I'm self-bullying top rope again oh okay get to the top and and you know there's a lady that wants to go climbing with me I'm like check you know

And it's all downhill from there. Yeah. So I throw my rope down and I go do the down climb and I look up and there's my rope. It's caught in a crack. All right. I got to hurry up. I got the four pieces of pro that I set that top rope up with. And I climb up there, get to the rope, put it back through the belay device.

And when you're using that soloist, if you're off track, it drag. So I'm in this bowl and there's a there's an overhang so I got to reach out and around And I was doing it and it's actually a pretty easy climb is like a five seven But I didn't feel comfortable with it and I had no idea what was really up above me it was really it was dumb And so I said no, not gonna do it So I jumped back into that bowl but I took up the slack and that one piece of pro that I said in and that one piece of pro that I said in kept my feet from planting. But it popped that pro, and I flipped out of there backwards.

And I, you know, I'm 40 feet up. And I come against the vertical face. I palm the rock, broke my left wrist, tucked into a good PLF, and I landed in this standstone wash, and it folded me like a book. Separated both my shoulders, chipped my ankle, and whatever else. That was a train wreck. And there was a class for guides just 100 feet away,

and they got me the rest of the way down. They didn't have far to go. And I called, you know, and the ranger said, hey, you know, we've had a lot of people fall from there. They either land here in the sand. Because if I would have pushed off a little bit further, I would have landed in the sand. probably wouldn't have been happy either.

And he said, yeah, they usually live and they land over here, or they land where you do, and they don't. Just by chance, I landed right in the middle of the wash. I was tucked into a tight PLF parachute landing fall. You know, just not a recent graduate of because this is before my first platoon.

Oh, okay. I was not going to not deploy. So I didn't want to go to 29 palms and get stuck out there. I called Gino. Wup. Gino came pick me up. and was another team guy and uh you know said yeah just dropped me off at balbo i'll get it you know and they you know did a couple you know basically you get into going to belbo on a saturday night

what do you got a whole bunch of colds whole bunch of you know that's what they have for an option to get their kids taken care of and uh and go up to the nurse you're gonna say when i've had to go belbo on like a sat depending on what time it's like saturday at two o'clock in the morning it's like drunk sailors that are oh got in fights you're going to say that are got in fights, beat up. It's like such a disaster. Now, this is, this is early, uh, our late evening. Yeah. So you're all right. They haven't gotten drunk enough to get, end up in the hospital yet. Yeah, but, but I'm there. And, uh, uh, the triage nurse, you know, says, uh, hey,

I'm Ed, you know, I, uh, you know, I fell and I hurt my, you know, got, I'm banged up. Whatever I said, it was fill out this clipboard and come back to us. And my neck is jacked up. I can't turn, you know, and I sit. down and I start to think about filling it up and I'm looking you know I'm looking like this you know I can't turn my head and I go I just stand back up and I said ma'am I fell 40 feet and a rock fall and my neck hurts sir please don't move and they strapped me into a backboard when you know x-rayed my neck you know what else hurts you know this is 10 hours after the fall everything hurts and they x-rayed me they didn't find anything you know they didn't x-rayed

everything there was more things that hurt than than my wrist and my my ankle you know but uh yeah later on i found out so i went climbing two weeks later with my this is three weeks before deployment but i had no strength in my left wrist i didn't know why um and my little brother wanted to go pre-deployment leave we went up to canada went climbing you know um young kid drive uh but i deployed in in in a i think a total of three weeks. I got acupuncture like the next day because I could not raise my arms above my head, you know, but I got acupuncture stick a needle in my ship from an acupuncture student in Coronado. So that's good. It worked. She was, you know, uh-uh, uh, enjoy it. Yeah, stuck a needle in my hand and my shin and all of a sudden I could raise my hands above my head.

And, you know, we went on deployment and I had to do, we had to do a PRT. Um, and I'll, Tell it on camera here. I cheated. I did not do the pull-ups. I kind of cycled around, but I did the run, probably the slowest I every ran three miles at that point in my life.

But I was able to pass everything. And, yeah, so wrestling tournament, the fleet comes into town and carrier group. So all kinds of activities that don't go out in town and cause trouble,

you know. And so I'm wrestling in this tournament. And I re-adgetated the break in my wrist in the first match. And then in the finals, I re-separated my shoulder. And I bowed out at that time, happily took second. I kept re-separated my shoulders like every three months. One, left one of the right one, left one of the right one. You know, just a young kid.

Keep going forward. And I was the corpsman, but I didn't really know a whole bunch. You know, so, yeah, keep moving forward, keep going. Yeah. So what did you do when you got done with that second platoon at Team 3? So in between those platoons, I screened for dev group. Oh, okay. And, yeah, they said, we don't want you as a corpsman.

Can you cross rate? I said, yes, because I didn't want to be a corpsman. I could have stayed with more training and all that. Okay, but I just want to be an archizer team guy. you had to cover your own evolutions back then. And I never did because I always found somebody else to cover them. You had to work at it, though. And I said, I should not have to work to have someone else cover my platoon evolutions.

That's just the way it used to be from moons ago. And so I screamed positive. I jumped right into a fox drop platoon, did that the end of their workup, really, and then jumped right onto the deployment and came back from that. And young kid, you know, we never did a CQB work up. I made the mistakes I made. And then I said, you know, so I didn't make it through. And then where do you want to go?

And, you know, SEAL Team 4, just because the reputation. And I wanted to get to the East Coast. You know, I said, I think I put, you know, two and four. And they said, they didn't give them whatever I wanted. And I said, let's go to 4, you know, South America. And so I went and did that. And then you show up at team four, just back into platoon life. Yep.

Hey, can you deploy in two weeks? Check. Are you a six gunner? I am now. So that's your third platoon and you get assigned as a pig gunner. Yep. Well, I mean, as a corpsman, I wanted to carry the pig, medical gear, and everything else. You know, again, happy new guy.

But so, so, yeah, you know, I can work the pig. And so I went out and bought myself some, you know, 200 round pouches and figured out, made some gear up and off to deployment I went. And yeah, they said, can you be the dive rep? Yeah, I could be the dive rep. You know, I was diving since I was a kid. You know, I died, I think I had qualified when I was 15 or 16. Very comfortable in the water. And yeah, so we, I got dengue fever, bad deal.

So what's the deal with that? Yeah, you know, get bit by a mosquito. And, you know, I got up to 106.5 temperature. Bad deal. Not at that point, though. So we were in Panama and I got, I didn't know what I had. I was just trashed, you know, just hot spikes. colds, I mean, can't walking outside, just go put a piece of mail in the mailbox, you know, outside the barracks, and I'm freezing and it's 98 degrees.

And then, you know, go back inside in the air conditioning, and I'm just all of a sudden, you know, just up and down and up and down. But then I got better. So there's a trip to Columbia. Can I get on there? Yeah, throw them on the bird. when we landed in Brantirinca and they literally kicked our palate off at the end of the runway because it was a very hot area it just hit again you know I got better for like a couple of days and and we go I can't remember trace a skeener or something the town we were in and my fever got up to 106.5 and you know

is the other new guy Corman I wasn't a Corman anymore but it's like you feel good i think i'll get better in a little bit you know but yeah i iced in and luckily we were there with the sb u guys and uh um they brought an air conditioner you know we put an air conditioner in the building we're in we're talking one dirt road town you know the t's into the river and uh yeah that was uh does dengue fever stick with you for the rest of your life like uh not not you don't get this um if you get it again it's supposed to be a really really bad but no it's not like malaria um but man it takes forever to recover so on that trouble the month long trip um so this is why i don't like freaking travel bro i'll stay right here

well i don't like leave in america my wife's always like hey let's go to this place i'm like no how about you want to go somewhere panama how about freaking northern california how about you know how we'll go to temecula how does that sound yeah she wants to go to some foreign place but i did that and I didn't get dangee fever and I don't want to get it no bad deal from from from seal team four I've known somebody that's had everything yeah leech maniasis yeah so back in the day in in the 90s well even before that the teams were geographically oriented so seal team one was southeast Asia seal team two was Europe seal team three was supposed to be southwest Asia seal team four was South America.

And Steel Team 4, you know, had done the stuff in Panama, had lost guys in Panama, had, you know, the combat experience, really, of the era. So I can imagine that probably played into your mindset of wanting to go to Team 4. And Spanish speakers

were going to Team 4. Right. And, I mean, there was still, you know, all the snow cap ops that they were legit doing, you know, where there was just you know, sitting on a mountain top with a radio or getting involved with the DA. I mean, that was happening. And this was one of those gigs where we were going in and training these folks,

and then we were going to go in as a radio relay. So at the end, we were going in as a radio relay, except we walked an insane amount. And I'm the 60 gunner. And I'm weakest snot from dengue fever. And sunup to sun. down, we did, ridiculous. So it was not through the jungle.

It was through the edges of open fields that had all these lava rocks, you know, softball size, a little bigger, smaller. To get into Columbia at that time frame, the Marines controlled the mill group. So to get access to the country, you had to go through the Marines. Marines were trying to build the Riverine assault teams, the rat teams. So you had to take a Marine fighting force with you. you know, an 01, you know, a staff sergeant and, you know, a corporal. So we tagged on and, yeah, two stayed back.

And what, you had your platoon? Right. Or did you have a squad or how many guys did you have? This was a squad. Okay. But then we had all the SBU guys. And we were, so we were training, the SBU guys was training their folks up. We were training our folks up.

And, you know, we were in the middle of 30 dudes, you know, plus. on this hike. And we never saw anything. You know, we went in, dry hole and back out. This Marine lieutenant read a book where seals don't wear socks. And that dude's feet were Kaz-wrapped. Just trash. Yeah, bad, bad deal.

Yeah. How far of a hump was it? Ridiculous. It was, it was, it was, it was like 20 clicks. We walked from sun, before sundown, we did two hours in the daylight through the night, and they came up two hours after. And we never stopped. We got there, dry hole, turn around, go. You know, the foot thing, like, 20K.

You got to condition your feet for that, like, a lot. And then there is some advantages to it, because, Sox hold water and if you're like working in the jungle. You can get used to it and you can be a good thing. But if you roll out for your first time, no socks on a 20-click hug. But team guys were doing that because they weren't walking anywhere. Yeah, that's, that's another thing. They literally, I mean, swimming up the edge of the stream or the river, you know, 50 tops,

yards, if not 50 feet doing the hit and back in the water again. There was reason for it. that this was known to be a long walk. Yeah, that's going to be a problem. Yeah, no, his feet were not serviceable. So you're down there, how many platoons do you end up doing at Team 4? Three. I know one of these platoons you meet your wife, right?

In between, actually. Okay, well, how'd that go down? Yeah, EOD's explosive ordinance disposal guy, married to Spanish lady. Lillianna was up in Virginia Beach learning English. No kidding. And yeah, so I was trying to learn Spanish. You know, I took a couple little, you know, classes on it.

But so I, you know, yeah, it was perfect. How did she get to come to Virginia Beach to learn Spanish? She knew English. Funny, she knew another team guy's wife and was going to stay with them. ended up staying with cheese, Branquizio, and his wife. And then, however, the EOD guy and his wife introduced us.

Yeah. And she's from where? Venezuela. Okay. Yeah. So she's got an interesting viewpoint on the way things go down from a governmental perspective. Yes, she does. You see what happened to her?

No, she sees it's coming here, man. She sees it coming here. and yeah, we'll get into it later, I'm sure, but definitely the big push to do this thing that we're doing now. Yeah, that's got to be crazy. So you end up getting married to her? Yep.

Yeah, we got married and, you know, I was always trying to not get married because I liked exactly what I do because I was always in a platoon, you know. And at this point, you know, still happy to be in a platoon. Our first, you know, first six months of marriage, marriage was awesome. I was on a platoon, I was on employment, get back from that.

And at that point, we still had training at the teams. And so team four used to just be rotate out, do a stint in training, and then back. I mean, it was really like a crazy quick handover. Team four, you know, this is just before we started putting it to the groups. And Team 4 said, no, you're in training for 18 months, which is right. I didn't have to like it, you know. So I was in training and Mar-Ops. I was like, you know, and diving. I was like, not what I want, but I made, what I ended up doing with it is training it into,

you know, even though there, we had turnover, which was, you know, minimal turnover in batons back then, too. So we had a lot of folks could just do things, you know, you could. could do ops right at the beginning of the platoon workup. It wasn't going to be perfect, but they'd figure it out. So I took Marops and basically we ended up doing some downpilots with it and other things. We, you know, it was any five. And they just needed somebody in there they could, you know,

because there wasn't any live fire in it, although I did end up putting it in there with Pat, the guy running the diving portion. We were doing some sniper shots with diving our gear and doing some pretty complicated. You know, we'd get the Coast Guard involved or the auxiliary, which really is your personal boat, you know, a bunch of older dudes that just wanted to do good with her personal boat and doing indigenous, you know,

we had a blast going down to North Carolina and doing a live fire shot, you know, in town. You know, two E5s. You had to bring us a chief on board to, certify the shot with good and safe and all that and stuff but we were just, you know. Yeah, that's awesome. It was good. You know, made, you know, Adam Winters got involved with it. He was the captain at the team captain at the time and he loved it and he loved the brief because I was always doing these curve balls in there just not not straight on. You get to have a happy successful training mission. You know, there's always a curve ball and I he wanted, you know, I briefed it that way and we did it that way.

and he actually had his brother who's a, I think, Navy pilot, you know, a 14 pilot at the time, I think. It would be the down pilot for us one time. You know, we're doing a bunch of stuff out in town instead of just around the base and, you know, turning rectangles and triangles out in the ocean. We actually were doing ops. We went out to Ches Light, you know, over the horizon,

launched off the whole piece, the PCs. And over the horizon, over the beach, into back bay, and all, it was 75 nautical miles, and they actually did a pilot recovery in the intercoastal waterways on a piece of property that I was going to buy. And then later on a property that I bought, had to do reconnaissance on it. And just try to, you know, it wasn't going to be regular old Mar-Ops. Yeah, that's what it takes is guys that are going to take the training and just, step it up to the next level. It's always what's awesome about the teams.

And the next folks took it even higher than that for me. That's the idea, you know, always better, better, better, without getting too many crazy drift into it. Then you end up going to DLI, right? Yeah, yeah. My shoulders were getting really bad. You know, I literally could move, you know, like refrigerator magnets around anymore.

And so I went out there and rehabbed, you know, that was the idea of rehabs right there on the base. Did you have to get surgery? Yeah. So I didn't get so. Yeah, they wouldn't do it. I wanted to do it right off that deployment. And they wouldn't do it.

They wanted me to do rehab first. And I got orders DLI for the basic and the intermediate. And I went out there with, this is 97-ish, something like that. And, yeah, taking her out there without fast computers and these, you know, phones you can talk to to to translate for you. I mean, DLI's six and a half hours of Spanish a day, every day, and four hours of homework a night. And legit. I mean, I can speak. And definitely, you know, my mother-in-law living in their house at various points in father-in-law.

I mean, I got it down. Would your wife speak Spanish to you all the time when you got home from DLI? Yeah. I mean, so she spoke better English when we met than I spoke Spanish. So our natural language together was English. It was kind of like the go-to when my brain got tired. But yeah, for the most part, I could say, hey, how do you say this?

You know, instead of, you know, look at it up in the dictionary and figure out how to, because you couldn't, right now you can just talk to your phone. And it'll tell you. So that was cool. It took you about four months to get it to click where you can actually go out and see, you know, Monterey and everything else out there.

But man, that was a great experience. And it was just us. No kids, you know, us and a dog. When you're speaking Spanish now, do you think in Spanish? I can, yeah, yeah. I don't speak it as much as they used to. Right now, my mother-in-law is living with us, so it's back in the game again.

Does she speak in English? She does. It's just, it's never clicked with her. You know, she's older, and she's always taking the classes. I mean, genuine effort, it's just not clicking, you know. But she can't and she can get along, but she wants her brain to rest, you know. If you go, when you go to a foreign country and you are trying to speak in their language to whatever degree you can, it's tiring. And, I mean, I can speak, you know, to the Cabo, to the corporal, and I can speak to the, you know, Secretary of State in Spanish.

and a half, you know, so it's varying degrees of Spanish, you know, what's, what you, J, Ministeria de Justicia and Go bien, no. It's like the Secretary of State and Secretary of Justice all wrapped into one dude. And, you know, as a chief, you get to talk to these folks, and you're talking about how to develop, you know, ranges in Panama or wherever. But, man, at the end of the day, your brain is tired. Uh-uh. Because all the colloquialisms for the different countries, they all come into play. You say one thing in one country that means something else in another country, and you can get yourself in trouble.

No, but it's a whole different animal once you get to speak. So the total time at DLI was, what was the total time at DLI learned in Spanish? 10 months. Yeah, I graduated the basic class early because the intermediate class was going to overlap. And so I jumped into that. And then, again, it's just us, too, and a dog and a cat eventually. And, yeah, drove back across the country and said, hey, my shoulders are trashed. So we cut on both shoulders seven weeks apart.

Just as soon as I gained enough function with my left hand, you know, they did the right one or whichever one it was. And I've had it tuned up since. I had another one done a few years ago. Yeah, it's an ongoing problem. And then obviously you go back to Team 4 after you get done with D.A. Yeah, I went back to Team 4.

And yeah, I went into... And you're a chief now? No. Okay. No. First class, maybe? First class. Okay.

No, second class. I was not a rate grabber. I was not a... I was happy where I was. I mean, it was happy with the leadership, you know, and I'm not always completely happy, but I always say it. Yeah, you know, you really shouldn't be,

if you're happy with what's going on, hey, and it's working, you're a team, be happy with it. But when you finally decide at the end that you're not happy with it, it's kind of too late. So you're an E5, and now you go back to Team 4.

and then jumping into another platoon. Your shoulders healed, healed up enough? So I was in Echo Platoon, knowing that I was going to get the surgery. They were a seedy counter-drug platoon, you know, doing stuff mostly in the Caribbean. And the master chief said, yeah, hey, we broke you, we'll fix you. And it was just with the idea, hey, you know, Ed squared away, he'll do the paperwork, whatever, stick him in the background. I got the surgery's done. You get a month.

convalescent leave and I literally because I did the surgeries without any anesthesia just the nerve block off the table and went to the team to give them whatever paperwork checking I was just an

I was excited that chief said that and I never took leave I just wanted to get signed up to start my physical therapy I did physical therapy twice a day at work Our medical's right in the middle of the compound, and I'd get a full session, and then I would get like a partial session.

And then I brought my wife in. They taught her how to do all the exercises. I built the pulley at home. You know, to pull my arm up and down. I built a fingerboard so you can climb the wall with your fingers. And, I mean, six months, you know, I did the PRT. And legit, though. You know, they cut, so they did it fully open.

They did rock blazes the same week, same doctor. And they did his, they scoped his. But mine were pretty much kind of collar bones were tent stakes and, you know, kind of big piece of cauliflower. So you wanted to get his big hands in there and trim them down. So they remove your deltoid. And I'm awake. And they have a Makita drill. Check.

And they drill two holes. at 90 degrees of each other, and then lassoe that thing and tie your deltoid back down. So it's because they want to get in there and see it all. And six months later, PRT,

with, you know, a very stern-matched chief there that's very strict on pull-ups. I, yeah, 26 pull-ups, 105 push-ups, the whole swim and everything. So you're pretty much good to go. Six months later.

Yeah, I mean, I was tuned up and ready to go. And, yeah, into the platoon. You know, I even built, you know, before all the cool Connix box, workout boxes. I went over at SDV and got them to weld some stuff up, weld a bench that would collapse up and fit in one of those ISU 90s. Nice.

You know, built a pull-up part to go across the doors when you open it. And you should have patented that stuff. Yeah, buddy. Hey, you know, team guys are pretty innovative. You know, Dane, a guy in my second platoon, you know, he kind of invented the camelback, you know. What do you use? Like an IV bag or something? He used a two-quart collapsible canteen and an IV tube, you know, and had it on his back.

But hey, you know, you can, it's cool to come up with the idea. There's innovation, you know, inventatives and innovation. You've got to get it to market. Yeah, well, there's execution too because you've got to be able to actually do it. You actually make it happen. Right. I always, you know, this sounds so obvious now, but I was a radio man, right?

Yeah. And so when I was carrying the radio, I had my little flashlights and do regular double A flashlights, little double A flashlights, you put the red lens over and you tape them all up. So you'd be like a little pinhole of light. Right, right, right, right.

But still you gotta worry about the batteries. I mean, you do go like on a four day recon, your batteries are gonna, so it's a pain. And I remember looking at the pilot, with their lip lights, just the little LEDs. And I'm thinking, wow, I wonder what that thing is. And then by the time the war started, someone made those little just LED click flashlights.

I was like, oh, that's the smartest thing ever. Yeah. And I had two ideas in my freaking head, and they didn't connect together to say, hey, man, it's real obvious. Here's a cool little flashlight you could use and make it into like something everybody could carry. Yeah.

You know, until until somebody comes up with a limpid backpack, team guys were swimming with this bomb with magnets on their, in their hands. You know, I've seen the drawings of that. You know, Rico, he, and I think you know what I'm talking about,

you know, he invented the limpid backpack. No kidding. Simple idea. You know, this thing is a backpack that with a metal plate in it that you stuck this limpid explosive mine on it And you would swim with it on your back. Yeah, it seems so obvious.

So obvious because somebody invented it. Yeah. The chest seal. The Ashrman Chess, the team guy. Yeah. Yeah. Made this thing that everybody carries now. And it seems kind of obvious, but, you know, it's everybody was happy with a glove.

Yeah. You know, or your ID card. Your ID card. That's what I always taught as an EMT. Yeah. What a brilliant thing. Yeah. Not everybody comes up.

Well, sometimes you come up with a great idea. So you made your ISU 90, you're out there, you're ready to work out of a box. Yep. And, you know, back with a platoon again, you know, tuned up. And you guys are doing counter drug. What was that deployment like? So it was just a bunch of little deployments? They had the CD money, you know, and then you named everything you bought was a counter drug stapler, you know, car.

You know, it's a different pot of money. Right. And you're going down. You're doing recons? What are you doing? No, we're just working with the locals. It's really fit for an internal defense, really, just getting them tuned up and some huge exercises.

We would island hop for some of them. And, you know, the Navy, the Army has more commissioned ships than the Navy, which is pretty wild. Army's a big machine, you know. Is it still like that? I don't know. Someone said it's not.

And I know desire to confirm it or not, but it's just a wild stat. They have more helicopters in the Air Force. I mean, they're a monster. They're huge. The big green machine. So we would island hop on their LSU 2000, a big giant landing craft. And we'd get off there and go stay in a hotel and go teach, you know. And then another year we went to Belize and they had us staying in the middle of a soccer field with,

countries, you know, and a line of outhouses, not as nice. Belize the islands, you know, vacation land, inland, different animal. And that was wild, you know, there were some countries that did not want to be there, and they just wanted the gear, and they weren't there because they were told. And, you know, that was like a hurricane disaster giant exercise where, you know, You know, terrorists take over the local school while, you know, everything's going on. And, uh, huge monster exercise. My first, uh, my first bout with killer bees, you know, uh, have you ever done the scene

that, uh, swarm of killer bees? I think I've, no, actually, no, I've, I've driven, remember in San Diego for a while? Echo Charles? There was like bees. Like, so, yeah. I've driven through some swarms of bees, you know, and I don't know if it was quite the murder wasp or whatever those things were right but no i'm not dealt with actual legit killer bees no cloud just coming across and uh um yeah one guy just screamed get in a vehicle or lay down

flat and this cloud came over the entire field and then just went away it was the craziest thing did anyone get attacked no one got hit uh significant that i remember it was just the weirdest thing um but that happened they weren't really living up to the rep no um we we're not um we're We were in Columbia once and actually doing, you know, kind of something, you know, going in, you know, and the locals sat down on a hive, an underground, you know, ground hive and jumped up and ran and left all their guns. And I don't, you know, literally, I mean, it was horrible. It was a cloud again. And we're in a bad spot. actually you can't be without your gun.

And so I've got... Unless you're getting attacked by bees, then you said, hell, it's... But it's also where these guys live. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's just, yeah, just outside of Cartagena, where, you know, they take the mothership down.

That's, you know, it's a sandbagged, big giant ferry. And they take it down and in and then go in. And it's bad guy land. Don't drop a gun. But they did. And so I've got my beekeepers hat that I, you know, when you want to relax in the jungle, you throw that beekeeper's hat on.

It's your turn relax. It's so nice. Yeah. Don't like breathing the area back in on me, but hey, I'll take it. You know, and I've got my gloves and I got the, you know, the tips cut off of index finger and thumb and middle finger. And so Ed's going to go get their guns. And I've got my hands cleansed, hiding those little

exposures. As soon as I reached out to grab one of the rifles, I got whack, whack, whack, whack. It was a crate. They are just honed in. And we smoked the area too to kind of try and calm them down. The idea was, I don't know how much it worked, but yeah, legit. Not cool. So what happens you get done with Appletoon? So I got to fix my air, you know, and I'm going I'm going back to Green Team. And yeah, a lot going on in the household at that time. I was building a house. I had drafting in like a half a semester in ninth grade.

So I drew the complete plans to a house. And yeah, not a great plan. The house plan was great. The Green Team plan, not so much. Not at the same time. Her dad was sick in the house. So we had, our first child, you know, was being born all the same time. And, you know, we're out at Shaw is doing a CQB.

And, you know, everybody's taking a nap. And I'm talking to the plumber who's trying to put a bathroom in the closet, you know, literally. You know, you know, the city held us up back because, you know, the city employees disagreed with the guy with Ph.D. in dirt and said the septic field had to be this. So it held everything back. And I'm doing this. I got 110 days leave that I took to do this thing. And I'm doing it in blocks.

You know, I'm relinquishing, you know, what I'm doing at silting poor. And just, you know, set a trip up, do the trip. Take two weeks of leave. And just knocking it out. Because I'm talking, I'm digging the foundation. I'm, you know, I've cut trees down, milling. the trees. I built the cabinets. I built from scratch, the stairwell, you know, all the cabinets, all the window trim on the second, first and second floor. It cost $180,000 to build it and it appraised for

720. I sold it the next year when I'm up in, or several years later. So I refinanced it when I moved to Maine because I didn't want to have two home loans. And, uh, Yeah, so I did a refi for 720, sold it the next year for 610. Put it on the market that day and it sold in a day, a half a day. So it did very well with the house, but smashing everything together, a green team and the sun, you know, Tommy being born and, yeah, I went home to see him actually heard his birth over the phone and then flew into, to, you know, make sure everything is all good.

I was supposed to try and be there. But on the plane, you know, pre-9-11. Yeah, not a great plan. But it worked out, you know. So where'd you go after that? SDV-2. Did you want to go to STV? Yeah.

We were told we were going to be the snipers for all group two. And, yeah, you said you heard that too. Got to tell all the group two first. All kinds of interesting things. things yeah you know SDV's awesome went at the SDV school which everybody there gets qualified to drive that and even though the plan was to be in the backs just to get out of it and go do something and come back but neat to go to the school learn not learn all of that I did a platoon there you know the war kicked off and we ended up no one from the East

Coast was going you know We deployed with team two, and I think they sent a squad. You know, at four, they sent a squad to Afghanistan. And no one was going. And we went to Kosovo, and we were doing reconnaissance there. That was, some of it was a little sketchy. We were getting to use some cameras and do some things. We were looking for specific people.

You know, some of it was walking around town, plane closed, which, you know, we really hadn't had anything at that. point to just be a team guy you know in a foreign country you know that was easy enough and really just were you at SDV when when September 11th happened yes 600 yard line and getting out of the van at sniper school and that you you were going through sniper school yep so when you heard that SDV was going to be a sniper's that for everybody you said oh if I go there I can go to sniper school they said you will go to sniper school right away.

That's cool. Yeah, no, I mean, sniper school, I won't say it was easy, because it's not. It's very difficult. But our workups at Team 4 were basically a lot of it was, especially the basic warfare report, was mini-snipers school. Really good marksmen's really getting after it. You know, the month of field craft, you know, and then another month of land warfare, and then you get it all over again going back into the jungle.

that field craft that you needed sniper school was all there all the math was there for the shooting you know it was all taught to us over and over and over and over again so um yeah i missed honor man by half a point for sniper school yes that's a bummer yep uh and uh you know it was uh yeah a little bit of love hate relationship there because i was always trying to get you know it was uh yeah a little bit of love-hate relationship there because I was always trying to get the guys on the reconnaissance side more reconnaissance work and not SDV support stuff you know so then I became the LPO for all of it you know the whole task unit and I had to shift and be nice to everybody you know when you're you you fight for your squad you fight your for your

so you were like a Reky squad yes you were the LPO the RECC squad at first and then you became the RECO of everything yeah old task unit. And that was a good shift too. Did you guys go on deployment somewhere? Yeah, we went to Spain. And from Spain, we went to Kosovo, you know, for whatever it was, a couple of months, just doing reconnaissance.

But this is post-September 11th. Post-September 11th. So you're freaking chomping at the bed. Like, I went back to a team to, you know, go help out where help was needed. And that should have been where the war was. and it was not happening. It wasn't happening for the East Coast for a while. One's these twosies.

And then a buddy mine was running the sniper school, solid stone. And he said, yep, you come here and we will send you over as soon as an opportunity, you know. So I went to be the scout course manager and eventually the sniper course manager and manage the compound. And yeah, first opportunity, you know, deployed to Afghanistan, took my whole, you know, crazy sniper suit with me.

And 37 weapons. Hey, it's, you know, yeah, you're, you're Mark 11, you're Mark 12. You know, you're 10 inch upper, you're 16 inch upper, your 300 windbag, your 50-cals, sniper rifle, you know, yeah, you're freaking, you're Mark 23. Yeah, name something else. And who'd you attach to when you got over there? A SEAL Team 2 and the C.G. SOTIF, you know, and I would just try and get out on everything I could get out on. You know, I ended up doing a lot of briefing too.

You know, it wasn't as, you know, cool than what I was expecting. But you should have stayed in E5 is what you were thinking. Yeah. Yeah. It was, you know, but, you know, I learned a ton. And, you know, it was happy to get out. there in support and be part of it and uh it's it's a wildlife experience you know um but uh yeah came back from that and uh finished up at snipers i'll tell you what teaching folks and and you know

working with the cadre that that's a wild wild experience too because our sniper school is is legit our sniper school is awesome yeah uh and then our snipers are awesome oh yeah no uh you know Brian Sargent came on board, you know, shortly after I got back and took over the sniper school. And that was awesome. We just took it to crazy levels. We were getting some 100% graduation rates, which had never been done before. Usually, lose 10% per major graded evolutions. How did you guys get it to 100%?

We learned how to teach better. And we made sure the cadre was on the students, you know, but we, but we, you know, But we learn how to talk, you know, you know, don't think I'm being soft. I'm going to tell you right now, Brian Sargent's one of my, you know, longest friends in the teams. Yeah. And I know for a fact he was not being soft on show. He's not soft on anything. No.

He's not soft on himself and he's not soft on anybody else. So if he's saying somebody did it, they did it 100%. And, and yeah, learning how to talk to people right, you know, assigning the right instructor, the right students. I mean, we had the one-eyed sniper, you know. Oh, Adam Brown? Adam Brown got shot in his dominant eye. And what does this team guy decide to do when he gets shot in his dominant shooting eye? I'm going to go to sniper school.

Let's see if he was trying to get his eye healed, you know. And so we teach him how to shoot left-handed, hydro, who's a freak of a human fighting brain cancer right now. but a freak of a human and a crazy instructor and taught the dude to shoot iron sights left-handed and smoked it but he he cleaned the shooting test with the scoped rifles, both of them I believe.

That's awesome. You know, you're talking out to a thousand yards just pinging on steel. It's incredible. And, you know, snaps and movers out to 800 yards. with a 300 wind mag at the time. It was incredible, you know. But Patch, you know, Hydro found what he needed to say,

how he needed to say it to him, you know. And Hydro's always someone that's on top of the students too. You know, he's not going to leave him and go have a sidebar with a couple of the instructors figure out what they're going to do tonight. Yeah. You know, and the instructors, you know, a lot of them really wanted to, you know,

it's not as hard as it was when I was in. And I go, yeah, dude, it's hard. You're just instructing better. And so we made up this test that wasn't graded, but we were under the training command, you get three strikes. And we don't think that's right for sniper school because you can't have a third strike and a sniper shot.

And so we had a guy that made it, you know, a third time every time. we made up an exercise and basically brief the students in the morning, hey, pull your rifles out. This is what you're doing. We're going to put you in an urban hide and the base was awesome. The base worked with us so

incredible on everything. I had a 20-foot bullet trap made on a trailer, six and a half foot tall. I made two of them that you could back together, get a 40-foot runner. So I would drive around the base and made all the SDVs worked out. SDZZs worked out

where they would shoot a blank I would back the trailer up to where the blank was shot and I would go stand next to the target and load live round and I would stand there with my binos

three two one execute and so we had to have trust that student would not hit the windowsill not hit the fence of the tree that he was weak. It's short shots 100, 150 yards. I mean, sniper, easy shots.

But not when you're under pressure and not whatever you did the night before, the day before. But we wanted to be able to tell, you know, parent command and say, hey, yeah, he did. And he passed everything, but let's, you know, let's take a second look at it. He's not safe enough to do this evolution. And so I don't know where that went.

We did it when I was there. I don't know where it went to after that. So where are you standing with your binos? Is this shot going? Right next to the target. like two feet away from the target? Yeah. Yeah, that's a high level of trust right there.

Yeah, I did it all day. They're my students. Yeah, and our snipers are freaking awesome, man. Yeah, and you're not, I mean, so these guys are already qualified on the weapons at this point. They've got some stocks to do, you know, they've got like 50 Cal week to do. They're really qualified on the weapon.

It's just whether the question was, can that guy, when we want to do it, make the shot first time every time? you know, because that's what you want for our snipers. But they were my students. And so I had to have the confidence in them that they would do it. And I did. And it was, yeah, I don't know.

Snipers schools, you know, morphed throughout the years. It's all kind of just about the same. Everybody tries to take it up to another notch and make it better. You're always fighting with the parent command that wants more snipers through. And, you know, but we're always doing it without lowering the standard. Yeah. I mean, obviously, I had a, I had 13 snipers when I was at task unit commander. And like, what a blessing from God to have 13 snipers in the Battle of Armadi.

I mean, you just can't, you just can't ask for anything else. So, and the performance was epic, you know, the way the guy shot. I mean, I had guys take shots at, at enemy fighters holding children. Right. You know, like, and using children as human shields. Yeah. And those kind of shots, shots through windows, through vehicle windows, and just hitting the driver and no one else in the vehicle. Like just awesome, unbelievable professionalism from the snipers.

It was just outstanding. And, you know, I always say, when you start, when you look at the schools that we run, it's what you talked about earlier. You know, when you were run Mar-Ops, you're like, hey, how can I take this next level? How can we do it a little bit better? How can I get people more squared away? When you look at seal breaches, like the breaching school is just awesome. This miper school is awesome. Just anything that you take a seal and you put them, you let us run a course, it's just going to get good.

We're just going to get better. It's just constantly trying to improve. And that's such a benefit for our community. It's one of the best things about our community. Oh, yeah. The idea that the peer pressure that you're not going to let the standard drop and that you are going to provide. something that they've never had before. And it, I mean, your reputation in the teams is all you have.

I don't care what you did yesterday. You do something stupid a day. Everybody's going to remember you for that. Yeah. You know, and if you slack off and you get, you know, you make an easy training for, you know, jungle warfare, you're going to get called on it. I mean, those trainings that we got, all of them,

they've all been taken up another notch. And, you know, the biggest challenge is a leader is to make sure they don't, you know, get out of the lane too much. Yeah. Yeah. Making stuff a little bit too crazy. Kind of happen from time to time, you know. So you wrap up your time at sniper school. What's next?

Then I'm off to Maine. Ah, you finally get that goal. Well, I hadn't had short duty in, you know, what became. 21 years a little bit. And so, and I'm, I'm kind of broken at this point, too. You know, a ton of weight gain, you know, couldn't figure that out. Like how much weight gained? I was up to 275-ish.

Dang. Does that is that, ish, which, mean 283 or is that? Could be, you know. I just couldn't figure it out. My gut quit working, the anthrax vaccine, you know. That was a series of six shots. and all of a sudden, like, I can have one beer. And I really didn't figure it out.

We all went on the Atkin, the Fatkins diet, I call it, you know. And when we went to Kosovo on that deployment. So I wasn't having any gluten, you know. And when we got back, we went to... And what affected did the Atkins diet have on you? Did you shred off a bunch of fat? We got crazy strong. And I didn't know what was going on at the time.

So, and that was for several months. Did you lose fat, though? On the Atkins diet? Probably. I just noticed we got really strong. I mean, no real notice of losing crazy amounts of weight. Because that's the purpose of that. I mean, that guy Atkins made that diet for people to lose weight.

I lost fat. We're eating meat and fat. Not to say that we follow. that it very strictly as far as, I mean, the whole percentages and all that. Like I'm for the keto diet. I'm like a keto cook and I'm rigid. But definitely no bread, you know, no gluten, no beer, no nothing, no pasta. We go to Germany.

So you feel good too? Feel good. Okay. And then we go to Germany to, you know, decompressed debrief. And how comes the heffavisen? out for some pasta and beers and boobligan germany and uh i didn't even make another restaurant i just started going he even and uh um it basically shuts my gut down and it was years we didn't you know i wouldn't got my gut checked out yeah i had a little ulcer in there you know um yeah

still stress i don't know you know couldn't figure it out um and i just kept throwing up all the damn time and gaining weight. And I'm eating healthy, you know. I'm not drinking. I'm working out like a nut. And I'm just puffing up. The joints are getting, you know, heads getting foggy. But at this point, you're eating normal food.

Normal, regular, healthy American diet, you know, meat and potatoes, salad, you know, pasta, you know, and just good. But it's all healthy, a ton of fruit. And what are you walking around out right now, weight-wise? Right now, 205. So you were 70 pounds heavier than this. Oh, yeah, plus. Yeah. And this is when you get orders to go up to Maine.

Yeah. Yep, yep. I was going to stay warm. Yeah, yeah, you were. Those extra layers. Still, I mean, it's still strong. But the swelling started, you know, with the joints and everything like that. Yeah, I mean, I'm dumbbell pressing 145s.

I mean, I was still freaky strong. Then that's, that's picking up off. the ground sitting back and then sitting back up again and sitting it back in the racks legit you know press um that's funny because i always dropped those whatever if we're over 120 they're getting dropped i don't know that's just me can't do it respect to the dumbbells okay cool uh and no um it wasn't until i don't know maybe so so we're talking 99 we got the anthrax vaccines and they cut mine off at the fifth shot they never gave me the sixth um They just stopped doing it because it was causing a lot of problems for a lot of people.

Apparently it was a lawsuit too. A lot of aviators had to stop flying. But what it did to me. Yeah, I don't know. I got it. No factor. I never noticed it. Yeah, no.

So people are different, you know. And, yeah, it definitely something there that caused something different for me. I think I got it when I went into boot camp, though, in 1990. Is that possible? I don't think it was getting pushed then. Okay. It wasn't the same one that they were given the farmers, you know. Dairy farmers used to get or still get the anthrax vaccine, but not, apparently not this one.

Okay. And once I figured it out, Doc just said, hey, why don't you cut gluten out? And this is 2012 time frame. So I'm walking around gaining weight and getting sore, you know, crazy headaches. Cut gluten out, bam, instantly lose 25 pounds. No kidding. Yeah, and I kept on, you know, losing a little bit. Then I'm a keto kook.

I mean, I'm strict. Like, there's no pizza night. Nothing. I don't substitute. Not even just ordering an extra meat pizza and just scraping the cheese, pepperoni, and sausage off into a bowl and eating that. Because I'm known to do that right there. Hey, that's all keto, and that's good to go. I know it's good to go.

Yeah, I do the meat pizzas. Yeah. And, you know, with a side of. guac or something. Let's do this. Butter in my coffee when I'm traveling instead MCT oil. Figuring out your diet's huge.

You've got to figure out something. You know, I never stopped working out even though some things got, you know, caused me crazy headaches. I find something else to do. You know, the blood flow restriction stuff and some sort of suspension trainer, that will fire you up.

You know, you use less weight. The blood flow restriction training, that's the cat was a katsu, right? Katsu. K. A-T-S-U, right? Correct. It's like a little system.

You put it on. It's like a really strong, what is that called? Blood pressure. Right, right, right, right. Cough, but narrow. That squeezes hard and cuts the blood flow off to your limb. Right.

The idea is you cut it by 80%. And then you work it. Right. And then you work out with 20% of the weight. So you're taking a load off your body, but you're still getting a hard, a mentally hard, and physically hard workout.

So you're not causing all that stress and damage and you're getting a legit workout. I mean, the thing I do is 30 minutes. I'll do some other stuff too. Like with the Katsu bands, you know, you can do the rower for 20 minutes. Legit. You're hurting.

Yeah. You mentally have to fight to finish. Especially your arms because you can, arms you got to what, you can cut the blood flow off. You know, your brachial arteries are easier to get to then your formals. for more else you literally can't cut it off with a solid real tourniquet.

But, you know, there's some training to go along with that, of course, you know. I mean, just don't go ahead and start, you know, cut the blood flow off. You don't know what you're doing. And my workout partner's awesome, Pat. I mean, legit. I was his client first, you know, is, you know, taking care of my neck, taking care of my hip, and shoulder rehabs, hip and knee rehabs, and became a workout partner. and so I've got a pro

that brought me into it the blood flow restriction stuff and there's crazy Doppler systems that a lot of it was pre-amputee this one system can't remember the name of it right now but it's four grand you know but it actually has a Doppler tells you what your blood flow is

he was thinking of bringing something on board for clients but you have to you really have to know that it's okay Because the pain you're going to feel in your arms, legit. And you question it. But if you have this Doppler, it says, oh, it's okay.

You know, if you do your capillary refill, you get three seconds on, you know, then you're okay, you know. And you just got to know you're not, it hurts, but you're not harming yourself. Yeah. Any workouts that cause questioning are good, you know? Like that 20 rep squat workout, that causes questioning of life.

and like whether you want to be, you know, I've been doing that workout where I'm literally questioning if I even want to be strong. If I even want to be a man, I'm just like, well, maybe I could just hang up on everything. Just call it good. I'm just going to become a whatever, you know, take on a different course,

a different path in my life. Oh, yeah. So workouts like that are good. Yeah, no, no. I mean, you've got to do something. That's like the greatest thing about, you have to have some little piece of adversity, you know, and I don't care of in Maine,

you got to go get the mail and you get a you know and it's really cold outside yeah and you know we got chickens or we had chickens i'd like to get them again because kids got to get the eggs you can come into the house when you get off the bus or you can go get the eggs and come in the house but if you come in the house you're still going to get the eggs and you got to put your boots back on and in the morning before you get on the bus you got to go change out make sure the water's um you know not frozen or and replace it um but a little really you're a little responsibility for him. Yeah, yeah, but it's a piece of adversity that's, you know, easy, easy to overcome. You got to have something in your life that, that, you know, makes you make decisions.

Yeah. So going back, you get this billet up to Maine, which for people don't know, probably why would you know this? There's a Sears School, Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape School up in Maine, and it's where the whole Navy, is it just Navy? Is it just Navy? And Marine Corps, and then you get a couple, foreign nationals in there once in a while. But they come like, for instance, air crew. If you're a pilot or your air crew, you've got to go up to this school and learn how to survive, how to evade,

how to resist interrogation, and how to escape. I know I went, when I went to SEAL Team 1, when I was a new guy, the first thing they did was send you to Sierra School. Great. I went to the one that's out here on the West Coast. And very, very good training, very thorough training, very cool training but you ended up being

an instructor up there at that school and you show up there what's cool about this school kind of like being a Bud's instructor which I was never a Bud's instructor but you get a glimpse into human psychology that you know I was talking to Andy Stump the other day

he was like debriefing me on you know he was a second phase dive instructor at Buds and he could just know when he's doing pool comp on something He had all these different, you know, he could just watch the way a person's moving their body and know exactly what they're going to do. Oh, he's getting ready to bowl. Oh, he's going to pass out.

Oh, this guy's panicking. You just see it over and over again. And so same thing at Sears School. You're going to watch people from a detached perspective because you're an instructor. You're not all freaked out or engaged in it. And you get to see how they respond. And you get to learn how to, well, the interrogation piece is huge as far as human interaction. Oh, wow.

everything so we conduct training to 50 below zero and just the idea of that for some for and we we modify it you I mean you don't just do the same thing right the instructor's huge responsibility um and you've got folks that have been cubicle warriors their pilots they signed on to be a pilot or an air crew with a you know a coce you see it on an air oh they definitely like that and um you know you get some you got some marine recons to go through through you You know, used to get seals go through, still do. Although we, like you talked about, they got their own course now. And they're doing some things that are legit. You know, you're making a snow cave, and that's where you're staying tonight. And you watch people, and this one, he was, you know, going through to be a C-2 pilot. And he did not want to stay outside that night. And he was trying to sleep because you have.

have these Adirondack shelters, which is actually going to be colder and you're cramped in with all these other people, but it's off the ground and there's no insulation under the floor. So you're just going to freeze. You make a snow cave and you're going to be happy as happy. It'll be your body's going to warm it up. You just have to have the confidence to do that. And watching somebody try and slow roll it and I go, hey, tonight, you're sleeping here, whether you get this done in the daytime or you get it done at night.

you'll be happier I'm doing you a favor but watching their their minds work watching people try and attach themselves to people so they can get through you know like because there were still

still team guys going through and you know people want to attach themselves to that team guy because they're going to drag them through but if you can't do that team guy is going to do especially when you go on two brand of Asian you know it's

it's wild to see and when they are in the captivity portion you know watching what happens you know either diamond people out then you don't need people really get into the problem and they really I mean there's a little made-up language you know it's got like 150 words and they don't come out of character at all yeah the first time you see some of these people because they hide them they come into the back of the building that's still students never seeing them in the classroom portion. And the first time they see them, they're in character. And, yeah, it's...

Are you guys doing the Eastern Block thing still? Yeah, man, they couldn't get away from it. You know, it's a vehicle. But I was like, you know, that's what the war is going on right now. I was telling you, I mean, when I went to Sierra school and you get, you have to turn, if you don't get captured by a certain time, you've got to turn yourself in. They put me in the back of the truck. They pull us out.

They put me against the wall. And this guy's like, to ask me a question. and you know me I'm freaking 19 years old you know just got out of buds and I'm just like what's this dude's gonna do to me and I gave him some wise ass answer right he slapped me he slapped me as hard as hard as he could right I mean look I've been punched I've been slapped many times but I've been punched in the face this was as hard you know this was an open-handed slap right and he did it like three or four more times and I was like okay I guess I'm gonna have to freaking chill out a little bit because my bro right here is going to be ready to get

at all. Yeah. Basically, if you're getting some extra treatment, then you're not doing it right, something, you know, because it's not about being tough. Yeah, you're a punk as well. Well, from my case, what I was not doing right was I was not being humble and respectful and treating the thing as if it was real. I was just like, whatever.

Okay. Okay. Okay. 100%. I'm in. There's, you know, the tough marine mentality, you know, which is good to have, but you got to know when to say, hey, that's not going to work in this situation. And using those tools and techniques, you know, to be polite, you know, and...

Give me a rundown of interrogation techniques that you like. I like the nice guy interrogator. I said I wouldn't go do the hard side, you know. Basically, I taught the camping part first, you know, and then I went and did that deployment. We talked about, you know, I never been away from... We get in that later, but I like the simple soft-cell approach, just talking to folks. And it's really the way you order questions, you know, that read technique where you really give somebody a reason why they did something they did wrong, kind of give them a way out, but leading them to admit to something they did wrong. It's that soft cell is magic.

It's really just a conversation. because I'd be like the first person that they've seen that's nice to them after they've, you know. Been slapped around and all of a sudden you're doing cool. Like, hey, I understand. I understand. You understand why, you know, you've been isolated and kept away from everybody.

You heard probably the coughing, you know, so we have to keep you away from everybody and we had to take away all your stuff and, you know, make sure you're all clean and good. And, you know, and there's purposely a camera with a red light on it that they can see and they're admitting to different things. And it's really, it's wild to see.

It's way beyond what a lot of the instructors think it is. It's how to get through roadblocks, how to talk yourself out of a ticket. It's how to, you know, it's everyday instances. It's a job interview. It's really sitting across a table right now and thinking slowly, you know, sometimes if I ask a question,

I might swallow, take a drink of water, so I can think for a half a second and come up with that better, politer answer. It's keeping that military bearing and not, you know, being, starting a fight, you know, that helps you out a crazy amount. Yeah, we've had some POWs on here. Yeah.

Mainly from, actually, I think all of them, all the POWs have from the Vietnam War. And it's incredible to hear their stories and what they went through. Right. And they came back and put injected their lessons learned into the Sears schools. Sure. And so that was awesome to get those lessons learned and just different breaking points.

You know, how long someone can take it and, you know, everyone's going to eventually break. But, you know, how long are you going to go? And even when they break, they give bad information or useless information and pretty heroic stuff there. Did you say you went on a deployment while you were at Sears School? Yeah. So originally I was going to go out the door with SEAL Team too and do my reenlistment there with them and get it all happy and tax-free.

And that got denied because I needed there at the school. You know, there's only a couple of seals there. And really, you know, there's some Marines there too, but then the rest are all air crew and pilots. That's not what they do for a living. And then later on, you know, kind of made a little bit of better stink about it, a little better sales pitch to go.

And I was going to go on deployment with SEAL Team 8 to Iraq. And it was all worked out, and I was even going to stay there longer. I was going to really do some things C-related there, you know, maybe not, but I was going to be in a task unit, and I was ringing my snout. Well, I mean, we were capturing a lot of guys throughout the war

and having, you know, at a point, we kind of transferred to having R.C. our own, well, not our own seals, but other seals do interrogations and do intel gathering. They were freaking great, man. They were awesome. Yeah. So it was really good to have guys that were able to do that kind of stuff. Yeah.

And it's, uh, and I probably wouldn't have been doing that, but actually working it out, you know, um, the pitch from our side of recovery. Um, but really I was just going to be working with a task unit and I was going to be an extra gun and, uh, work whatever I, you know, um, worked it out with it with, with, um, the command match chief have gun will travel yep and uh all worked out ready to go so i'm on my way down to virginia beach and the civilian ops guy says hey we have this requirement in columbia you know the agency guys got wrapped up down there and they're trying to get them out um and we need a spanish speaker okay uh so i was on my way down there um

And they got released. But I was already on my way down. So I went to go work with the front Teresa and was attached to DetSouth and stayed down there for four months. And that was pretty wild because I had been to Panama since it closed. And went into the Darien, you know, just checking, you know, some things out. you see an entire boatload of gateway computers going making its way into the dairy and you can't miss those boxes you know the white and black boxes and then you see a whole

you know kayuka you know dug out canoe load come of empty el panama you know beer coming back out um a lot goes on the dairy and gap you know where it's really a national forest you can't go in there there's no vehicle traffic in there unless you're you know a narco terrorist and so yeah there's definitely a ton that goes down there a whole bunch of I'll leave it at different things to get funneled through and it was it was really neat to see and be part of that and try and get the front of the east online to you know help us out and keep things from coming north so and that ends up being your last deployment in the teams yeah and then back up to you know backup

to finish my time out at Sears school. A ton to learn though, watching the different interaction with the Chinese that were down there, you know, getting their fingers into everything. You know, yeah, I'll leave it at that. There's definitely some work that needs to be done there. You see then next up is retirement. And what do you plan to do when you retire?

So this is now 2009 you're gonna retire? Or you retire? Yeah, Chris, New Year's Year of 2009. Start the New Year unemployed was the plan. Got to go Whittlewood and Maine. And I had, you know, Nest Egg settled up. I didn't need work for a few years if I didn't want to, you know. And that never happened.

You know, the call started coming. And I started doing some training back with the teams. Just contracting? Yeah. Working the sit-exes, working some different training pieces. ended up doing some research, test development stuff. And then ended up going to Yemen, not with the teams, a contractor there and administrative security guy.

And that was pretty wild because that's the AQAP, Al-Qaeda and the Arabian Peninsula hot spot. We were right in the hot spot of the hot spot. So really learning how to use my words because we didn't have a gun and you've got your guy run around blowing up our wells And it's the stories are pretty weird because they're that dumb Everybody's got to understand they're all stoned Everybody in in Yemen choose cotton you know which is a hallucinogenic and phamidemphetamine and they're all you know in the city they start chewing it you know about four o'clock in the desert they chew it earlier in the desert it's got a whole bunch of

different fertilizers in it and it's it's it winds them up a little bit more and so you try you know we don't want to get a doing everything at the same time all the time you leave in the gate you know but you try and get things done in the morning because they're wound up in the afternoon and so that's different and we got three different facilities we're checking out trying to keep the oil flowing is the job. Your inner security is the tribe and the outer security and all the outposts are the Yemeni Army,

and they hate each other. The Yemeni Army has a drinking problem. They make their own hooch along with a cot. And the State Department contract for pilots, pilot training, you will not chew cotton while flying. So that kind of sets the basis of it that actually has to be written in a contract. And literally, we had millions of dollars of oil production slowed or stopped because they didn't get their tea and crackers.

And literally, because the driver guards want their tea and crackers. Well, their cousin hijacked the truck that has the tea and crackers in it and took it back to the town, Behan. and we'll tell your cousin to let it go. And eventually just let him and ha on it for a while because the sharing agreement gets pushed to the right and they're not really losing money. It's just delaying it.

And so you eventually resolve it, hey, we'll go ahead and give you money to buy your own tea and crackers and we'll get things going again. Eventually they say okay. And then eventually they come around to say, yep, we're happy getting the raise and now we want our tea and crackers again. But you get run down in the desert by a guy

who just got, his brother got drone in the desert because he's running around with Al Qaeda. And his brother wants payback, or his dad through his brother wants payback for his son. He wants his back pay because he used to work for the army. But now he worked for Al Qaeda when he got the drone.

strike and and he wants back pay and medical benefits from the company because he used to work for the company also but he was blowing up the pipeline and the wells you know one day he got it below the restrictor the cutoff and so it wouldn't stop you know normally it'll just cut itself off the fire so you got to bring wild oil in at like four or five million a day damn yeah There's a bill. And this guy runs you down in the desert. I know there were a couple of shots over your head to,

it's kind of chest bump, you know, not really intended to shoot at you, but shoot at you pretty close. And they outnumber us, and they've got better firepower. So you stop and you talk it out, you know. And, you know, hey, we'll work on this. And, you know, I make a fake glance in the air.

They look like I'm looking for the drug. drone. And my security guy is like their cousin. But he's sworn to take care of me. And it's legit. And there's two guys with belt fed, RPKs.

And yeah, you learn to use your words. It's serious school help with that. And I'm doing it through an interpreter too. You know, Helo Pilot has a stroke that works for the oil company because there's spilering up to 11,000 feet to get out of the range of the fire

because I'm there during the Arab Spring. And the guy has a stroke that later that day in the Chow Hall and they come finding me, you know, hey, Mr. Ed, you know, he just had a stroke. All right, let's load him up and, you know, get one of our vehicles. He doesn't work for us. He works for a separate company that's not taken care of. of them like I mean those people are taking care of me and we're taking care of everybody um and so load them up taking him to the hospital uh I didn't go um you know just provided

what he needed and then uh next day uh mr ed they're not letting us into the hospital you know it's for this free medical care but you got to bring your sheets and your food every day and go out in town and get the medicine that they're prescribed for you and bring it back well that day President Sala got blown up, you know, and one of the shakes got blown up in that mosque was in that same hospital. So that tribe took over the hospital. And they've got it sandbagged in. They've got, you know, literally RPGs walking through the hallways, you know, built times. Good times.

And, you know, I'm this 200 and probably 65-pound white guy. at the, you know, blonde-haired guy at this time, you know. And then, yeah, get me this interpreter. And we're going to the hospital. I said, hey, here's what you're going to say. You're going to say it how I say it. You got to tell them that you're very happy that they're there. You're very sorry about their shake, you know, getting blown up.

And we've got a guy in there too. You guys are taking care of your guy. We want to take care of our guy. please continue to make the hospital secure, but we'd like to go in there so we could take care of our guy also. Could you please let us in? And it worked. They were getting shut down,

you know, and would not be allowed in. So we go in there, and it's a train, there's got all these overpressure blast folks that are just smoked. And then this guy's in there with, you know, I had a stroke,

you know, grown man diaper and not getting taken care of. And so we get them all set. They run out in town to go get the medicine. And I stayed there with him. And they come back and they call me up and said, they're not letting us in again. Well, what would you do? Well, we just want in.

Start all over again. You're happy to there. They're making the hospital secure. You're not really happy, but you're telling them they're happy. You got your guy, we got our guy, we want to take care of our guy like you're taking care of your guy. And then they come back in. And it's, yeah, the ability to find something, the common piece, your guy's hurt and our guy's hurt. we're happier here you know you're going through a checkpoint you know man i'm happy you guys here

have you guys seen anything is everything good you know is anything we need to be aware of you know because you know uh uh you're not happy to there but you're you got to explain that you know get that find something that that's in common that may or may not be yeah build a little quick relationship with these people yeah a ton of that yeah so how many so how long did you do that contract stuff for? It's just kind of continual since I retired. You know, it really started working again for Brian, Sergeant, you know, and he'd get me set up on all kinds of, you know, name of companies, but it was fantastic, you know, everything from going to the Olympics to the World Cup, living out town with the athletes, and, you know, as team guys, you're just not a monkey. You're setting

everything up, squaring everything away, way beyond what security guy does. And make a sure everything flows smoothly, picking up, you know, gaps without dropping security. And security as a civilian, especially executive stuff, is you really have to have a really, you know, easy but hard mentality at the same time. I'm trying to look like somebody that you don't want to bother and you're going to go, you know, bother the other watch company, you know, because that one's not worth it. And at the same time, you know, they might want you sit. at the table with them when you'd rather not

because that's not your job. But it is to them. So you gotta make a bunch of assessments and, you know, yeah, do some stuff you wouldn't normally do, but you do the assessment. And, you know, it's really interesting, super, super flexible.

And you have to be super personable. Be able to talk with, you know, heads of state that these, you know, top. I mean, I've been to F1 races in the absolute most, without name of the company, as good as it gets. And you're talking to some wild people. And, you know, they want to talk to you because you're the seal, you know, and they're proud to have you with them and they're showing you off. I got a job to do still. But it's, so it's a wild mix. And if you are the, grunty guy because I was with

a rock band and who's really good people are super you know yeah just that was super enjoyable but we got some we're always augmented overseas by somebody else and the

folks that are augmenting us they just have this militant look about them you know including having sleeves rolled up and like like, you know, even, you know, cargo panties, you know, pants and stuff.

And that's not the look we want folks. In a lot of ways, to do overseas, you know, I'm making sure the law enforcement that's there is that they, and I don't know them very well. So it's, you know, because we're jumping into a lot of things. But I'm making sure they feel right, you know, that they're not nervous themselves. You know, if you're there a long time,

I'm making sure the driver is the same feel today as he had yesterday and the day before, you know, so that, you know, he wasn't threatened and told to make a left-hand turn, you know, when he's supposed to be going straightening. It's a ton of that. I've talked to the clients a lot, you know, they need to build rapport and be kind to their security personnel and their drivers and things so that, you know, they love them, you know, their family because you're asking, them to take, you know, when I'm, it's, the deal is, I'm going to stick my neck out for these people and risk, this father's going to risk his life for these folks. And so are those folks. So you better

treat them kind and like family, you know, and I know a lot of these folks, they use us as a, you know, a bit of a prop, you know, hey, let's get going, you know, or interject here and there. And it's, it's, there's some, you know, some of these guys are skilled sales folks and they're doing some act and you know you take it on it yeah yeah but he knows that i know also you know so okay it's uh again it's a wild ride and if you're not flexible uh and you don't have a mentality that can roll with it a little bit um yeah you're not going to be very successful at it and i've had some wild clients i really enjoyed that part i like taking care of folks uh and i'm yeah admittedly i'll say i'm pretty damn good at it uh because they keep calling me back you know and you know

And Bryant keeps feeding stuff. And I haven't done it in a while. I started doing a lot of RDT&E research testing development with the teams and some other foot things. So, yeah, you know, became a firefighter, a volunteer firefighter and all I was rather than Alma until we moved from there. And then I became a reserve deputy sheriff in Lincoln County. So you're doing some contracting, you're doing some firefighting, you're doing some reserve sheriff activity at what point? point do you get roped in to the political arena. Yeah, and I'm doing all that. I bought an excavator. I'm, you know, I'm grading driveways and digging foundations for folks. I'm doing some diving for folks.

I mean, I've got all these things going on. I'm getting my, I got my private pilot license. I'm about to start getting my commercial license. And yeah, it's, you know, 14-ish months ago. People have been asking a lot for us to get involved, for me to get involved in the politics, uh, and because things are going sideways. And I kept saying, nope, nope, nope, and things got to the head. Uh, and, uh, they asked again, again, I said no and, and, uh, tell the story over and over. My wife said, yes, you will. Uh, her, she's been from, and she was, yes, yes, yes, you will. We talked about it and her being from Venezuela and it's seeing that, you know, that, that leadership gap, uh, in Venezuela, you know, caused it to spiral down.

People don't realize it was Venezuela. We used to get 17% of our oil from Venezuela. Oh, yeah. More than any other country. I mean, they were a wealthy country. And now they are, you know, again, just like the hospital in Yemen, you had to go out in town and get medicine and provide your sheets and provide your food in a hospital. There's no medicine out in town now either.

You had to go to Columbia. Her family's a big part of it. It's originally from Columbia. Well, they escaped the narco state and went to Venezuela, and now they're fleeing back to the narco state. They had to go to Columbia to get medicine for her uncle who was in the hospital. And, yeah, hey, we've got kids, you know. We've got two in college and one in high school.

And there were doing it. We sat down as a family and we talked about it. We had to make sure everybody was good to go with it. And, you know, to varying degrees to, you know, what is my fifth? 15 year old know about it, you know. He gets a large degree, you know. He was, since he was, you know, that tall, you know, he was, dad, this is made in China in it. That's not right, you know. So he gets a lot of things, and he gets this to, to a degree. My older son's helped me write stuff. You know, he wrote that pledge, you know, may take an ownership for the condition of our country

because I have not participated, you know, in this. I've always served, but never this. He helped me write that. he wrote me write my first speech. No one can write for me. It all comes from the heart. I free flow just about everything. Because it's from the heart. It's legit. This is not what I would normally do, you know.

I say it over and over again too. You know, I grade my church driveway. You know, I show up there when nobody's there, you know, and I grade it. It's a steep dirt hill and make it all pretty again, load my tractor up, and I go away before anybody comes back, and now I'm doing a selfie while I'm doing it.

That is not who I am. It is now. Was there a straw that broke the camel's back as far as making you say, yeah, I'll do it? Or was the straw just your wife saying, you better do this? It's all the crazy divisiveness, you know? In Sears School, you know,

we actually taught how not to get indoctrinated and how not to allow these divisions happen while you're a captive. You know, in the Korean War, there were 14 Americans that were taught in captivity that America's bad. And they did not. These captors convinced them to stay in North Korea. That's insane. That's happening here in America.

How many ways are they trying to divide people? Whether you're vaccinated and unvaccinated, you're taught you're bad and evil if you're not vaccinated. And you're, you know, you are taught, you know, deny the election or you think we need an election integrity to take a look at that. the election, you know, then you're a traitor to the country. Hey, let's just take a look at it, make sure the other people that think it was stolen understand it. You know, I'll take that's, that's an okay stance to have. All this division in the country is insane. It's not comfortable. You know, I've complained about it. And it's the only thing I can do to make it right. So we're stepping up and we're definitely stepping up as a family. My wife is a huge part of the

campaign. I mean, driving force and couldn't do it, you know, wouldn't want to do it without family buy-in. But yeah, it's a legit push, you know, I was going to go get my commercial pilot's license. I was going to do one more thing that was going to be fun. I enjoy flying. It's on hold for a little bit. What's been the biggest surprise about entering the political arena? Confirming all that divisiveness. You know, because I walk up and I will talk to anybody. I go to these fairs, these, all the farm fairs and all that, agricultural fairs. And I walk, I give my spiel. You know, I always start with a, you know, a retired Navy SEAL because no one wants to talk to a politician, and I am definitely not that. So I said, hey, I'm at the

Atlanta, a retired Navy SEAL, runner for you as Congress. You have time for you to tell you about the campaign? Great. I did 21 years of the Navy, all of the SEAL teams, I'm volunteer, firefighter, I'm reserved deputy sheriff, and never wanted to run for office. I'm running because I was asked to. And the guy goes, oh, hey, that sounds great. Who's the president of the United States? You know, I have to like it,

but Joe Biden's the president of the United States. And, you know, he asked me, you know, was the election stolen again? And I go, hey, we need to work on election integrity so everybody's comfortable with the results of the election. You know, whatever happened, everybody denies that the election, you know, Hillary Clinton, you know, is still denying that her election was legitimate. You know, the hanging chads in Florida, all that stuff. We got to have something.

That man called me a traitor, volunteer, firefighter, reserve deputy sheriff, 21 years in the seal teams. I want to check the election integrity so everybody's comfortable and I'm a traitor. not cool. So a lot of that, you know, building the campaign is pretty wild. You know, we're definitely money visits Maine. It doesn't stay there so we don't get, you know, the donations are don't flow in. Although we're working our tail off. We're outraising, you know, somebody's been in D.C. for 14 years.

It's been in politics for 30 plus years. And we're outraising our three to one in human money. but she gets 91% from packs and, you know, so she's got smoking us and the coin. You know, and mostly out of state, that's a wild thing, you know, because you can look at all that stuff in the FEC website.

That was a second quarter file. That's got to be like just so crazy to think if you live in Maine, which obviously I got companies up in Maine. Yeah, yeah. But, and I don't live there, but if you live in Maine, you think that the people that are trying to get someone elected don't live in Maine and have no interest in Maine but they want to want to

change what people are going to vote for right right yeah and I don't know the right answer to fix that you know and that was actually started by a Republican you know the super PAC thing which is you know they can do unlimited expenditures in your name it's no definitely not right and I you know I'm definitely the weirdo I'm gonna probably go a lot of learning about who I am also because I've never put full thought into all these ideas that the conservatives have and now I have to because it comes out of my mouth and and it's on film or recorded forever and so you know and it's also you really have to think

about you know just like when I was in the platoon and I became the the Recky guy you know squad and now I'm the task unit you know with the whole task unit. Those are all my folks now, you know. So now I'm representing all of District 1 and I will represent District 1. So I've got to think about, you know, what's going to be right for everybody. And, you know, I'll admit to fault. I'm not, you know, that's how we fix things. That's how we fix things in the teams and military. If you can't say, hey, let's look at the result of that. And, and oh, that might have not been the right thing. You're going to keep going down there.

Politicians never do that. They never admit to wrong. I'm not that guy. I am not polished. I've never run for office. You know, notice I'm and, you know, and, hey, check, but I'm honest and I'll keep my integrity. You know, I'll keep what my, you know, my beliefs.

and learning a lot about, you know, me is part of it, because you really have to think your decisions are going to weigh and, you know, and make it affect lives. Yeah, it's crazy with the politicians. Number one, to come out and say, hey, this is the right answer. About whatever. You can say it about anything. Right, right.

Anything. Like, hey, this is the right answer. This is what we need to do. And then it doesn't work out. as good as they thought it would or maybe it's even bad or whatever but instead of saying hey you know what that is what I thought we should do it turns out there were some other factors that were involved and here's some adjustments we need to make instead they just ride that parachute into the ground right like hey this is the plan I came up with we're sticking with it and even when

you come up with something you know I've been in leadership positions for a long time now I mean I guess for at least 25 years or something like that I've been leadership positions and to say, hey, this is 100% right. Everyone else should be quiet is such a bad move. Yeah. Because the chances that you're so smart or that I'm so smart that I'm going to figure out the best way to conduct this operation. I'm going to figure out the best solution to this business problem or having or I'm

going to come up with the problem solving move over here. The chances that I am just so smart that I figured it all out. No one else can figure it out, but I figured all out. And by the way, when I figured out I calculate all the variables in the future, right? That's what I'm, I'm so smart that I figure out all the future variables. And I'm going to get all those right as well. That's how smart I am. So why would you make statements that you're 100% right about anything?

It's a dumb move. And then when you're not, which is okay, right? Why would you not say, hey, you know what? Here's where I thought was going to happen. Here's the plan we went with because of that's what I thought. And that was the consensus. and then it was wrong and here's the adjustments we're going to make. No big deal, right?

No big deal. I've worked for bosses and I know you've worked for bosses that pretended like or thought that they had the 100% solution. And then they won't back down from their decision even when it's wrong. And they think their respect is going to go down that people respect them less if they say, hey, I was wrong. But it's absolutely the opposite is true. When I say, hey, I screwed this up.

People go, oh, okay, Belize Jacques was humble enough to admit that he was wrong and he's going to make some adjustments now. Nothing wrong with that. We haven't, politicians have not learned that lesson yet. Right. It's the fear of the sound bite, the fear that, you know, well, you should step down because you made that bad decision. No, that was a wrong decision. I admit it's wrong. We're going to move forward.

And, you know, I'll make mistakes. and I'll admit it and we'll figure something out to find what's better but that's not happening right now. No. It's not happening and it's got to. If anybody thinks it was okay to mask kids up that are born when this thing started

and they've never seen a human face except their parents for two plus years, that's insane. Hey, you know, the development, you know, been slowed down in all our children. and was that really worth it? You know, was that worth shutting down businesses, you know? You know, we've got folks that their business were shut down and they sold out and they're never going to open them back up again.

And was that really worth it, you know, while saying that everybody can go to work in the big box stores and you're actually having more people in the big box stores? Is that right? You know, instead of spreading it out to all the other stores while keeping them because that's a human that's that's that individual's decision yeah and you go look sometimes you're in a you're in a situation you don't know what's going to happen like hey there's a bunch of people dying in italy well we're going to lock some stuff down here okay well okay got it

and then like a few weeks go by and then a month goes by and you say hey it seems like in other areas of the world this isn't that bad and and all of a sudden you can't you can't you No one says, hey, we need to adjust our thought process right now. Right. We made some rash decisions early on because we didn't know what's going on. And, you know, if you're my boss and you make a rash decision because you don't know what's going on and I don't know what's going on, I go, okay, well, hey, man, let's give it a try because no one knows what's happening. Let's air on the side of safety. But then when you start seeing, you know, other information come in and you say, wait a second, this doesn't seem like it's as bad.

And we had people just holding the line on stuff that didn't make any sense. I mean, there's some kind of a, there's something in California going on right now where the Indian casinos stayed open. And the other casinos are mad. I don't know if I know enough about it to talk about because I saw an advertisement or read an advertisement about it. But the other casinos are mad that they were open and that they were able to make money. They said they profited when the other casino shut down.

And I'm like, thinking myself, hey, if I was in charge of a casino and there was a bunch of casinos that were open and everything was okay, that seems like an indicator to me that maybe it's okay. Like when we had the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, California, and there was 90,000 people in the arena. And it was no super spreader. There wasn't a bunch of people. And yet they went back to masks again. It was like, it's like, you can't. make this up right uh the the roller coaster uh of you know this is you you must do this and then you see the politician doing that you know doing exactly what they said don't do yeah um it's like hey uh you know

it's it's very disturbing yeah it's very disturbing and and you know again i have the well i live in california echo charles lives in california where we were like ground zero for the politicians saying one thing and doing something completely different, which you can, you know, Americans will only stand for that stuff for so long. And it was actually longer than I thought, in many cases. It was like, it was something I was like, hey, man, like, you know,

we had a revolution against England. Right. Like, because they raised the taxes, two cents on our, bushels of tea. And we're like, all right, you know what, that's enough. We're done. You know? Yeah.

And so there's only so much Americans can take. I think they definitely got pushed to the limit of that. They took more than I thought, you know, especially as time dragged on. But what's really disturbing is just the decisiveness that you mentioned already, where it's like, well, it doesn't seem like in retrospect that putting masks on little kids. was a good idea for two years. Right. And inside of people going, yeah, that definitely seems like it was a bad idea

and we should try and learn from that in the future. Instead, they're like, no. Right. No. You're like, hey, man, what reality are you in? Right. What reality are you in? Well, watching them, you know, from afar dump sand in, you know, the skate parks

out of New California. You know, put two by fours across basketball hoops and I was up in Baxter State Park. You know, it's a 13-mile ski uphill to get where you can stay and sleep for, take a break. And then it's another three miles up, much steeper terrain to where you're going to start to do actual, you know, ice climbing and all that. So we made it 16 miles in uphill. There's nobody in the park. You know, it's, that's the cool thing about Baxter is in the winter is you cannot drive in there.

You've got, you've got very limited people and they only allow so many people in there. We're away from everybody. Park Ranger comes up, very sad. You have to go home now. We just made it here. There's nobody within, you know, 50 miles from us. I mean, you know, and so we had to, You know, ski out of, you know, back down the hill of the mountain.

And that was so insanely disturbing. And it came down from the Secretary of State, I believe, is what they said. And that was so, we were isolated. We were away from everybody. You know, a lot of this has to do with the ecosystem that, and really the digital ecosystem. that a human being lives within. Right. Because I know people that were in the ecosystem of, you know,

COVID was the most heinous disease that ever came to the world. And these are people that have friends that I know are normal, like logical people. But their digital ecosystem, the word inside there, the truth inside that digitally ecosystem was just, so closed loop, right, that there was no other perspectives coming in whatsoever. And it is it was very it was very disturbing to see to see people that their world was so closed loop that they couldn't comprehend another viewpoint at all. And part of that ecosystem was to protect itself from outside thought.

And so anybody that offered some other perspective was immediately attacked. Right. It wasn't a car. You couldn't have a conversation with someone in that other ecosystem. You couldn't have a conversation with them about it because they would, they would go on the attack. And they would utilize the truths in air quotes, the supposed truths from inside their ecosystem, which they truly believed. Right. that they were true and it was it was it was honestly it was it was very sad to see it was very

sad to see people going through that and you know I would try and address it a little bit with people you know maybe mentioned to them something from the from outside their closed loop and and they would go on the attack and and go super defensive and it wasn't worth it you know I want to maintain a relationship with a person that I've known for 10 years or 12 years or 20 years you know you they're your friend and I'm not going to I don't want to fight with them over this thing. It's like, okay, if you wanna continue to live, like literally quarantine yourself inside your house

and we, you know, we met at an outdoor place to say hi and just mentioning that, you know, well, hey, just so you know, like I'm training jiu-jitsu, right? And I've been training jiu-jitsu with my friends and all the time and like none of us are sick and everyone's okay and just to see the look of horror in their eyes almost as if, You know, I was one of the worst human beings ever.

It was really sad to, it was sad to see. But again, I think a lot of it has to do with, you know, you got to open up your perspective. You know, you got to open up your perspective and you got to get to listen to more than one, more than one ecosystem of information. Otherwise, you're not seeing everything. And look, you can go far to the other side of the spectrum as well. Right. And you can get just as wrapped up in that ecosystem where you don't. Listen to anybody else. So it's it's a very strange time and I think you know

I always find that people run into a problem with their ego right same thing that we just talked about if I'm a politician My ego won't allow me to say I was wrong my ego won't allow me to say hey, I don't know what to do But this is what I think we should do let's try this my ego says no you know everything I know everything I'm not gonna make any mistakes well the same thing happens when it comes to processing information you get your root idea that you believe. Right. And you don't want to admit, hey, you know what?

I was actually wrong about that. I was actually, that wasn't a good idea. Or, you know what? That's what I thought a month ago. And clearly, there's new information that I should process and pay attention to. And people just, unfortunately,

aren't thinking that way anymore. And it's like this weird tribalism that takes hold that's, it's crazy to see. It's going to be Rwanda, dude. You know, you have to know, somebody to actually know that they're different than you. Yeah. And that didn't go very well.

I mean, they had to know each other. What's going on with the lobstaman up in Maine? Dude, I'll tell you what. Just because I look, this is such a huge deal in Maine. What is this? A two billion dollar industry in Maine? Two billion dollars. Yeah. Two billion dollar industry. This is, you know, when you think of Maine, you think lobster, right? Of course. Hey, I hope you you think Origin USA. I hope you think about making jeans, right? 100%. I hope you're thinking about the best Jiu-Tugees in the world. You're going to think about that stuff too. But before that, I have to admit,

you're thinking about lobster because Maine is the, is the epicenter of lobster. It's life in Maine. Yeah. And so what is going on? Yeah, no one wants a Massachusetts or a Canadian lobster. Yeah, I've never seen an advertisement for fresh, fresh Massachusetts lobster, right?

Correct. They want Maine lobster. No offense to Massachusetts. No offense to Canada, but you want Maine lobster. So they're coming up with all these ideas, you know, the right whale up there, which is not even in the main waters. They haven't seen it. And it's, they had an entanglement.

Hold on. I'm just going to clarify this. So it's called the right whale. This is a breed of whale. Right. Called the right whale. It writes itself when it dies. it writes itself in the water and it floats.

So, you know, if there are a whole bunch of dead right whales, they're going to all be floating. You know, they actually, you know, history, they used to chunk it up, you know, and bring it on the ship in pieces because it would be just floating there. And that's the other part of the, one of the parts of, hey, it doesn't make sense

what you guys are talking about. They're coming up with all these ideas to, you know, save the right whale. but they're looking at the lobster men and a lobster men are not the problem. You know, everything from the size of the pectoral fin, and they don't have a notch in it where, you know, the humpback whale has a notch on a huge pectoral fin that would get caught in a horizontal rope.

All these things they want to do don't need to be done. It's ship strikes that kills them, and it's Canadian snow crab gear that does it. The main lobstermen have done all these things to take care of it and get it out of the way. And some of the things. What they do, for instance, is they put like breakaways in the lines, right? So if I was a right whale and I got caught up in a main lobstermen's line, it's designed to break.

Right. And I get out and I'm fine. You're good. And they've already done that. They've already done that. Well, all the ropes are all identified. So if it does get caught in a main lobsterman gear, it's identified as main lobster gear. And they put several breaks in it.

It's all been done and taken care of, and it really hasn't been a problem ever. But the National Marine Fisheries Services, they made a decision that if a whale dies in Canada, we take credit for it, or half credit for it. So one died there, and we're getting blamed, and we're going to shut down our industry. And no one made, they're under Noah. Right.

Explain what NOAA is? Yeah. NoAA. Yep. National Oceanographic Atmospheric Administration. And, you know, it's everything from mapping and weather in the ocean. And they have subcategories, and one is National Marine Fisheries Services. And they came up with this study, you know, and there's cryptic deaths.

So if they get one death, they assume there's three more. even though these things are going to float. And they stopped. They had crews that were detanglement crews, where they disband them all because they're now entanglements. They had, you know, observers out there, or they don't have any observers anymore because they're not there. Still, they're trying to get them to modify things

in a manner that will shut the industry down. So give me an example of what the NOAA, the NOAA, what do they want to modify for the lobstermen? They want to, they're really trying to get them to bite in and weigh in on the decisions that are going to harm them. So closures of, you know, the prime areas. So prime areas of where you drop lobster pots. Right. And catch lobsters, they want to shut them down.

They want to shut them down. They want to try ropless gear, which is, you know, in the short, remote control, buoy pops up from the trap and you've got 10 to 20 traps strung out and you're going to count that this you know you're dropping it in no one's going to know where the the traps are because they you know you might drop them in six knots of current uh in a string and they're going to drop 150 feet uh you know even even further and how much does a a lobster trap with some kind of a radio activated or so what must be sonar activated to get the buoy to pop up yeah Yep, it's going to be, you know, whatever they end up doing,

it's, they're about $4,000. A regular lobster buoy, 10 bucks. So who's going to be able to do that? You know, it's going to be big giant, you know, a big box store, Walmart, you know, China, taking over our lobster industry. Can't happen. Because regular mom and pop can't do that, you know,

absorb that cost. You know, it's, We were looking at getting another seafood processing plant built in Maine instead of shipping it up to Canada. And that's, you know, just like the oil industry, they're not going to build, you know, another refinery because they can't have a guarantee that, you know, the oil industry is going to be around, you know,

just so they're not building that seafood processing plant. There's a whole other, you know, slew of jobs in the construction and run into that that are gone. Uh, it's, uh, it's going to have a crazy ripple effect, uh, across Maine. When you, people come there, you know, uh, you know, to go to Reds Eats and, and to stand an hour and a half and a line, they'll go eat, you know, a lobster roll. Yeah. This is, like I said, I mean, when you think of Maine, you, you, you think of lobster, 100%.

Yeah. So to shut this down, it'll be insane. So what, what will you be able to do when you're elected? Well, one, you know, the voice. has to come out loud, you know. We're going to look at, you know, cutting funding, you know, for the piece that's causing the problem. They got a job to do.

I got it. But if they're looking at it, and if they're looking at the lobstermen and they're not looking at where they need to look, then they're killing right whales by, you know, accusing the lobsterman of being the culprit. You know, you've got to, once you focus in on one thing, you're not looking to take care of the problem.

You know, it's ship strikes and a lot of pleasure crafts and folks trying to get too close to the whales, but it's not the main lobstermen. It's snow crab traps way up in Canada. And, you know, we get accounted for, like I said earlier, a death there. That's insane. And that's America doing it.

That's NOAA, that's National Marine Fisheries Services doing that. Why is this happening? Okay, so if I'm, let's say, let's say I love animals, which I do. Let's say I love whales, which I guess I kind of love whales. I mean, whales are cool. They're cool. I mean, I can see them from my house and it's awesome. You know, I look out and we can see them spraying and we see, they come pretty close to the lineup sometimes surfing.

It's pretty awesome. Yeah. So let's say I do. Whales are awesome. I want to protect whales. And then I start going, oh, well, maybe these, Lobster traps could kill them and that seems bad. And then I start doing the research and I see that they can break out of the lines if they get tangled because we put this into place.

I see that they're counting, what did you say mystery deaths? Cryptic. They call it cryptic death. So if they find one dead, they say there's three more. Okay. So now I say I've got, I'm multiplying. When I start running the numbers on this, it doesn't make any sense to do that because this whale floats. So why would we say that it's dead?

So as I start looking at this, I start saying, oh, this doesn't seem like it's a problem. Let's focus on, you know, some other issue because apparently the, because it is apparent that the lobster traps and the lobster men are not the problem. So why are they not making this connection? Why are they continuing to go down this path, which there's evidence, clear evidence that this isn't a problem? Well, because you can't have windmills where you're lobster in. and they want to put windmills in those areas. And, hey, if they make sense, cool. Right now, they do not make sense.

And you don't make up a lie, you know, even if it's right to windmills, but you make it up a lie to make it happen, that's wrong. Wait, wait, wait. You're saying that the reason that they want to do this is to, because they can put windmills out there? Can I say that 100%? But that's where they want to put them, you know. Okay, so you're saying there is a plan to put windmills out in that,

section of the ocean and and uh um it's the uh they want to do it on the sea mounts the mountains in the sea because that's where all the sea life goes uh because you put the shortest chain uh on those these are three to one ratio chains um nine foot links you know and 50 fathoms you know uh i think it's 50 fathom you know 300 feet um and uh that's going to rake and destroy the bottom And then they're going to run horizontal lines. To get the power back? Yeah, to string these things together. And, you know, that'll catch a right whale because they get caught in their mouth.

And all the pictures that they keep showing of the right whale with entanglements, you know, it's never been our lobster gear. It's bigger braided line and not the problem. You know, it's, yeah, you got to really look at it. None of it makes sense, you know, none of it makes sense. And no one's going back and saying, hey, let's reassess this. You know, it should have never gotten to this point. They're looking to start to shut things down next month.

You know, hey, we're going to do a lawsuit. Yeah, well, it's getting shut down. Who's doing a lawsuit? They're saying that the state's going to. The lobsterman did one. and took it to court. And it's all the cryptic deaths and the, you know, we're us taking credit for half of theirs.

They want a 90% reduction in deaths. Yet windmills, you know, the new vineyard wind farm down in mass, they get to do 20 takes. It's level B harassment, which is. What's 20 takes? What does that mean? Taking by level B harassment. You can harass them and if it gets taken,

you had permission to harass it. So you can stop them from breathing, you know, by not allowing them to come to surface. You can stop them from mating. You can stop them from sheltering. You can disrupt their migratory path. So you can do all that to the whales?

The windmills can. because they're going to do some blasting. They've got to do some sonic testing. Just a vibration of the, you know, what is the windmill itself going to do? And if you multiply that times all the windmills up and down the coast, that's more right whales than are alive as they count them. You know, so again, it doesn't make sense. It's not about the lobstermen, you know, take a look at it.

And everybody jump on board. you know, because, you know, they're, you know, it's so frustrating. And you can look at me as crazy as you want because it's that crazy. It doesn't make sense and it's moving forward. Crazy. That's why we're running. Yeah. You know, because there's so much that, you know, we've just got to, and I don't know what

I'm going to do. You know, I know I'm going to butt heads my own party too because I'm that guy. If it doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense, you know, and it's about the country. You know, it's never about your platoon. You're going to fight for your platoon, your task unit, your team. But in the end, you don't do anything. That competitiveness in a platoon and task unit, it never supersedes your task in the country. You know, I love the competitiveness in a platoon.

You know, it's awesome because you're all fighting. You all want to be the one, you know, when the building's burning, you want to be, you want to be, you know, the squad that gets called go in. And you don't, you know, firemen don't want the fire, but all the men are competing so that they can be the guy on the team that goes in and helps, right? But you never let that competitiveness, you know, it's like taking, you know, politicians are like taking the firing pins out of, you know, the rifles so, so that they, they look better than the other guy, you know. You know, it's like a sales team, you know, cutting the cord to the copy machine before the other sales team gets to print out their briefs. You know, it's, that's the competitive that's going on in politics.

It's, I've got six years is what the, what the family agreed to, is to do this for six years. And I believe in term limits, you know, I will definitely self-imposed because I got an awesome life I want to get back to. and that's what you've got an objective and when you when you transfer to one command to the next you know you've got a limited time there and you're going to take that piece of string and you're going to pass it off as a repel line and then pass it off as the how is your line and uh you know you're going to have an objective at the end of that time that you're going to be successful you're going to have made america better and uh that's not happening that's a whole bunch of politic and a whole bunch of saber rattling to get the next, you know, election, you know, spun up, fund, you know, funded and

everything else. Yeah, finding that common ground and getting it done. If they weren't so worried about getting their next, you know, seat in Congress, the next term set up, they probably wouldn't be spending money and sprinkling it all over the place, you know, making people happy. It was a little bit of money here, a little bit of money there. Hey, you know, this party's trying to do that to you, that party's trying to do this to you, you know, when that's not true, you know, uh, you know, uh, you know, definitely, uh, these hot button topics. You, you look at the mailers that come in, you know, um, where, we're, they're, they're teaching hate, you know, uh, and these are like mailers for different candidates up in Maine. Yeah, uh, in Maine, everywhere, you know, we,

we, we, you know, the, uh, we even broach the subject because it's, it's, you get demonized, you know, abortion. You know, one side thinks it's a baby. The other side thinks it's a woman's right. And basically that topic is either side thinks the other person is completely evil. And that's not the case. Each side was taught something different. You know, Republican women don't want to take away women's rights.

They're strong Republican women. And they're strong. They believe in women's rights. But they also believe it's a bad. baby, you know, and on the other side, they were taught something different. And people are trying to make laws right now. They're saying they want to, but it's not legal to make a law federally about it because it just got with, he has to go back through the Supreme Court. And both sides are saying the other side's going to do something evil to your side. Well, no, you actually can't. So why

you campaigned on it? You know, and, I mean, that's, I get, you will, this conversation is older, over, done. When I say, you know, my stance on it, and I'm pro-life, but I will not legislate on it. I'll vote no, either way it comes to me. You know, it's, I mean, us saying this on air right now is crazy questionable because of some people that will just shut down, shut down, both sides. You know, because people think I should take my position and use it to what they want, you know, but it's not constitutional. So your statement pisses everyone off. Yeah.

So you got that going for you. I got that going for you. But you know what? I'm honest about it. And it's not constitutional. It belongs at the state. That's how the country gets along is we have all these little countries that unified and became a federal republic. And, you know, there's different laws in.

Massachusetts and California and Maine and the people vote on them, the representatives, you know, represent them. And that's how we get along. Otherwise, we would tear ourselves apart a long time ago. You know, and, you know, we're not going back to the 60s, you know, segregation. We're not. You know, so much gets thrown at me. And I'm just going to be honest, you know. it's uh that hate and i mean it's hate uh we're they're they're accusing um one side of the other of uh you know you know uh taking away women's rights that the other side just thinks it's a baby everybody knows it's life it's just when it's become human life and we go so far left and right of it you know um there's only three countries in the world that uh um that have late dorm or

portion, you know, China, North Korea, and America. And again, I don't care where anybody stands out. I don't hate anybody for their thought on it. I know that people have been taught different about it, you know, so I have no idea if we should be going down this route. Honestly, because it, it's crazy. I've been doing my lobster boat swims. Did I tell you about those?

No, tell me about your lobster boat swims. When lobster boat swims. So I'm swimming, you know, they have the lobst. They had a rally, a concert on the water. All the lobstermen's come around. And 60-degree water. And I got my campaign material in a dry bag. And I'm swimming boat to boat, skinning it.

And I'm, hey, I'm Ed Thielander, retired Navy Sealed, I'm running for U.S. Congress. You mind if I come on board, tell you about the campaign? I hit 50 boats one day, like three and a half, four hours in the water. I did it five times. Swimming with the sharks and Harpyswell, the Great Whites are out, tearing seals apart, not this one. And, you know, I'm campaigning boat to boat again.

And, you know, it's just neat, getting a lot of love. And, yeah, hit the news guy. He's on the float. And I won't see what channel. I really want to. But you go, hey, I'm Ed. You know, and yeah, I know who you are. Hey, great, I said, you know, it'd be great to get on camera.

No, I won't cover you. You know, that's a crazy wild thing too. You know, it never been done. Never has that been done before. And pretty disappointing. You know, that's, yeah, that's another crazy disappointing thing is that that slant on it is pretty tough. Well, that's a good way for people to keep their intellectual, media loop closed.

Yeah. I'm just not going to put you on. Right. That's that. I'm not going to let anyone form their opinions about you because they're not going to know who you are. Craziness. Oh, yeah. Craziness.

So, I mean, it seems like that gets us to present day. We caught up right now? Pretty caught up. Yeah. Yeah. We're running hard. You know, we're, it's, you know, I hit three, four events in a day, you know. I mean, I hit three, four events before I had my debate the other day.

you know just because I got to get the name out there and we're you know we're everywhere all the time you know wife included you know a kid or two once in a while and uh just driving hard you know and seeing uh what what comes up and you're down to the wire right now huh yeah we're down to the wire uh got another forum or debate on wednesday as a form i guess we haven't give it's the format yet uh so that's coming you know there's a uh a third party candidate that just you know that just jumped in September 9th. Kind of can't figure that out yet. He's a write-in candidate that activates rank choice voting.

So yeah, just vote Ed Thielander right across all three slots. He's the love party. Love over violent empire. Well, I did say I love whales. Maybe I'm part of his thing. Yeah, it's rank choice voting. It's another crazy thing. What's rank choice voting?

So you can put him in order of rank? Yeah. person gets three points or whatever. So if I don't win by 51%, you know, over 50%, then it goes by ranked choice. So, you know, you choose one, two, and three, or you can just do one across for one candidate and kind of your balance, you know, doesn't give any points to the other people. How are the polls right now? The polls, you know, the legit poll we have,

is that we're outraising her three to one in Maine individual people human donations. Okay. The other one is generic. And it doesn't really take an account me because I'm still very unknown, even though we've been doing it for 14 months. It's amazing. You know, there's, you know, a district's three quarters of a million people, Maine, smaller being there's 680 plus thousand. You know, can't reach all those folks. So we're out there.

We're in the places that Republicans don't dare to tread because, you know, they're coming on board. You know, our first max donor was a far-left Democrat, and Democrats signing up to help us out, to donate. Why do you think that is? Why do you think Democrats are signing up to help you out as a Republican? Because people are tired of what's going on. They want to see change. They're, you know, tired and scared for the winter. You know, Maine is, uh, uh, we heat.

fuel prices is going to be crazy. Yeah, 60% of people in Maine heat with oil. And it's over double, almost triple what it was last year and going up. You know, that's going to, people are really going to choose between heat and heat. And they were making that choice before, you know. It's going to be a very tough winter. People don't want to be dependent on the government, but it's kind of being forced on them right now. And that's wrong.

We want the Republicans, we want folks to be successful on the wrong. We help out. But man, it's opportunity and freedom, you know, and responsibility. And people want that. Maine is, you know, very independent. It's a ton of the voters, most in the state, are independent. And they just want to be left alone. And, you know, nobody wants to pay taxes, but they do.

and they want to work. I don't get people working again is what they want to. A lot of things have been shut down and yeah, it's hard to find workers. You were experiencing that, you know, working on that. Founding some folks that been signing up for some training by Eschelon Front

and a couple folks going to the musters as I'm going to these job fairs, you know, talking to not only the students that are going to some of these high school jobs, job fairs, but the employers too, you know. And I mentioned earlier, I don't know if the camper was enrolling, but yeah, the Republican National Committee, the executive director, issues, the field manual for discipline equals freedom to everybody that comes on board, pretty wild.

Yeah, it's, but yeah, people are tired, people are scared, and, you know, what's in power right now is influencing that. Whatever side you're on, it's time to make them change. If you want change, because you can't keep doing the same thing, if things aren't going right, you've got to vote it in.

And yeah, you know, I do reach across the aisle, you know, and, you know, you're typical Republican, conservative, you know, doesn't have purple hair. I talk to them,

get a ton of love off of everybody, you know, tattoos up to, the eyeballs, I don't, you know, I'm happy to talk to anybody, you know, um, you know, cannabis, you know, uh, folks, uh, medically, you know, so on board with it, recreationally is legal in Maine. Let's tax it and move forward and, uh, protect the, the end. It's, you know, those folks are still buying stuff. Uh, and, uh, you know, Republicans aren't normally about that. Now, I'm stepping on the over the line telling

everybody right now I am. Uh, and that's not, you know, the Republican standard. I'm willing to say, hey, you know, I wasn't, I've never tried it, you know, I'm, you know, I'm not a heavy drinker, never tried any of that. But medically, I know it's helped so many people. And, you know, prescribing an 11-year-old Adderall, not a good plan. You know, there's other alternatives out there are not addictive that they can keep them focusing straight. And we've got to be so much smarter about that.

So you have different viewpoints from the standard and you got an open mind thinking about what makes sense to you and not what the party line is? Yeah. That's very scary, Ed. It's the way I really live my life. That's how I got where I'm at, you know. It's how I've got along, you know, from childhood to now. And that's what America needs. They need somebody that's going to problem solve and get along and say, hey, you know, I made a mistake.

let's move forward, you know, and you can't, you can't not, you know, the Oudaloop, you know, for anybody want to explain that? Observe or orient yourself, decide and act, and then back to the beginning. Don't just keep moving forward, you know, small incremental decisions, you know, and, yeah, but if you don't admit you've, two to two percent or 100 percent got it wrong, you're never going to improve and, you know, do what we did in the SEAL teams and make such an awesome machine. Our debriefs in the SEAL teams are brutal, brutal. And they don't do that, you know.

Well, I'm going to do that, you know. I'm concerned to me, you know, my own party, you know, that I'm going to get along on a lot of things. We'll see, you know. you know and everything I say I'm willing to yeah check it out and see where it really is and I've toughed on subjects that in this podcast that me you know people are going to say you know crazy wackadoodle dude hey you know what I'm still willing to look at it and make a decision maybe say I was wrong you know and move forward can't do it otherwise well it's a refreshing attitude to hear. Where can people,

if people want to support you? Theelander for Congress.com. It's T-H-E-L-A-N-D-E-R-F-C-E-R-C-E-R-C-C-E-R-S-E-R-Selt-Out. And if people want to see you after you get done grading the church parking lot or driveway, that's on Instagram? Yep, Facebook. Yeah. Theelander for Congress at Instagram.

Twitter, you're Ed for Maine. Yeah. Facebook is Ed Theelander for Congress. and you have a YouTube channel as well. Yes, we do. Ed The Lander. Echo, what do you got for questions? I have none.

No questions. I mean, I had one about the, actually, you know, I'm not. Send it, dude. So you, uh... Come on, dude, he needs practice. He's got a debate coming up. So you're gluten-free then? Yeah, I'm a gluten-free keto cook.

Wait, do you have celiacs? Because you were having... No. So I got tested for celiacs? And no, um, not celiacs. Yeah. Just gluten intolerant? There's gluten intolerance and now I'm a keto kook and uh...

Where did you get on the keto program? Probably about four years ago now. And you love it. Love it. Feel great. Feeling great. I mean, everything's clear. Brain's clear.

joints are better. You know, how long did it take you to lose 70 pounds? Um, well, first 25 was, uh, when I went gluten free,

another 50-ish, um, was when I went keto and that was, yeah, within a year and a half. easy a year. I mean, it just came right off. And now you stay at 205.

I can go down if I want to. Easy. I just don't want to buy any more suits. Yes, sir. Right on. Yeah, I got a couple pictures in my suit. The white collared shirt I got. Yeah, that looks like your dad's shirt.

Right on. Ed, any closing thoughts before you shut it down? Now, hey, thanks for having me on. It's awesome. It's awesome to be able to get the word out, you know. And, hey, find that common ground. Let's move forward and let's make, you know, the best of our friendships. And, yeah, we will make things right.

Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate you coming on, obviously. Thanks for coming out. Thanks for your service to the country, to the teams. Thank you for jumping into this mayhem that you're jumping into now. And I wish you luck in the political arena. Just the fact that you can come on here and explain that you have different viewpoints than maybe one side or the other side and you agree with some and you disagree with others, that's an open mind. And for me, I think that's what it's going to take to get our country moving in the right direction.

So thanks for what you're doing, bro. And thanks for coming on. Hey, thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you. And with that, Ed Dielander has left the building. Echo Charles. Yes, sir.

Are you happy you're not running for political office right now? Yes. I am currently happy that I'm not currently running. You kind of had a look on your face during portions of that recording that you were kind of happy that you weren't running for. Yeah, we're talking beforehand. And, you know, when you get into that arena, this is what I gather. When you get into that arena, the curtain kind of gets pulled back and you see kind of how things work. And then you, so essentially you have a problem in there where it's like, hey, we need to change this.

How are we going to change that? Well, you know, this system is set up to allow this. Not necessarily for this, but it kind of allows for this. Well, okay. We'll change that then. Oh, whoa. But that system has to be voted on by the people who are benefiting from that system that allows this. And it's like, oh, man, so, okay, what do you got to do then?

Then you got to do this. And it's like this big, like, unraveling of a thing. Yeah. With, like, so many unintended consequences. And it's like, man, it goes deep. And then that's that's on top of like the obvious stuff. I was like, wow, man. I'm glad you're running and not me right now.

Well, good on him. I'm glad we could get him out here. Because, you know, he's making an effort. He's got a little, he's got like a pledge about taking ownership of what's going on, which is sort of, you know, taking ownership and actively participating in what's happening with the country. I can't make that claim I'm attacking it from a different angle which for me the angle is

trying to bring manufacturing back to America trying to grow businesses trying to improve our economy through that methodology but as far as jumping into the arena like him you know respect so good on him I wonder what because you know how like taking responsibility

for a mistake it kind of seems real obvious from the outside or maybe because just because you talk it all the time so now it's obvious to me but I wonder if there's like some weird mechanism in the political world behind the curtain that kind of like doesn't allow for that. You know, like the obvious, not an obvious one, but the one that just hit me like right away was let's say I say something dumb or I say something that or make a decision that's wrong or whatever and I say, oh, I'm not like I made a mistake, you know, or whatever.

Is it because everyone will attack them like in the media? You know how media outlets have different. where they'll attack them and then be like, hey, uh, freaking jaco finally, uh, admits he was wrong. No, no, no. They'll say it way worse than that. They'll say finally confirms he's inadequate for this decision making type or something like this, you know?

I think it may have something to do with, do you remember at the muster that we just went to? There was a woman that asked it basically, you know, uh, is it okay to say I'm sorry? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm from like, Of course, it's okay to say, you know, when you make a mistake, you say sorry, apologize for whatever mistake you made. But there's people, like there's a whole leadership theory that you never apologize. Right.

Yeah. I've heard that. And, you know, so I think the thing that we're talking about on the political side, I think there's something out there that's very similar. Never admit that you're wrong. Right. Never apologize to, you know, the opponent. And, you know, to me it's the same thing.

You're just, if you make a mistake, apologize. Hey, this is a mistake. Here's what I thought was going to happen. Here's what actually happened. I was wrong about this. Here's what I plan to adjust for next time. And I learned a good lesson that I can confirm will not happen again if I can prevent it at all. Yeah.

So, yeah, I think it's just that. I think it's just. And the other thing is nowadays, I mean, I guess it's not even just nowadays. What is it? Gerbell said that. if you repeat a lie enough, it becomes the truth. Yeah, yeah. And so I think a lot of people are just like, well, you know, I didn't say that.

Yeah. No, I did not say that. You know, oh, you know, Jocko, do you, do you still, do you still confirm the what you said last week about the blah, blah, blah, blah? And I go, I did not say that. It was taken out of context. Right, right. Even though I did say it. Yeah.

You know, but you said, no, I didn't say that. It was taken out of context. In fact, that reporter has been known to take things out. You know, you just go on the end. In fact, my opponent has worked with that reporter in the past, that that's why they asked that question because they're actually, you know, nefarious and their activities. So that's what everybody does.

Everyone just denies, makes counter accusations, tells the lie enough time that it becomes the truth. And I think that's the standard operating procedure. And I think most people don't have time to pull the thread on it. I mean, some of the presidential debates last year were just ridiculous. Like, they're just making

accusations and then not even defending, but just making a counter-accusation. And just, you know, you said that, blah, you said that the economy would do this. I never said that. You're like, what are you going to do? Go look up the quote. No.

So it just becomes two people just shouting at each other. It's horrible. The political thing is horrible right now. Props to these guys that are these guys that are stepping up and doing something about it good on you And that's where Ed's at so Good luck Ed I think he's gonna have a rough time He's got he's got he's he's the problem is not a conformist

Yeah, you know he's not conforming to one side or the other side Right, he's got one view over here, but he's got another view He's got one conservative view one liberal view Yeah, do you think because you know when you watch it on TV that's like so you know what happens? He gets shredded by both That's what happens. Sorry for cut you out. But only on, because I don't know.

I don't know everybody. Yeah. But it feels like, you know that I don't know. Yeah. Yes. But I feel like when you're kind of like an honest person who's like, oh, wait, like, I know I'm supposed to think this because I'm in this party, but like, man, I'm still,

I'm still kind of like pumping the brakes a little bit before I go hard on it because I want to find out more. And oh, I'm sorry. I made that mistake. And hey, this is what I'm going to do. Like, this is how we're going to fix this mistake. You know, like, you would think that your everyday American person would be like, hey, I think I like that guy. Yeah. I think I'd really, I don't know him that much, but.

You're probably correct. And that the extreme people on either side were attack. Right. But it's the normal people like, dude, cut him some slack. You know, he said something he didn't mean and he adjusted it. And then, but then they, at the same time, they watch the news who's like kind of like, like, if you use the cliche word fear mongering. but it's like they'll fear monger, you know, they'll be like, hey, wait, this guy freaking is already making mistakes or something like that.

You know, like they'll put it in your head that this guy is unreliable because he made a mistake and he even admitted the thing. Like it's like, he flagrantly made him. You know, it's like that kind of stuff when it's like, bro, you framed that as like this kind of scary bad thing one really most of us kind of think that's good. If you did, if this media, whoever, the news, whatever. If they didn't say shit, bro, we would have liked that guy. In fact, we would have need that.

We need that kind of attitude. actually, you know? Yeah. So it's like, man, we're all kind of getting washed up in the cyclone, you know? Yeah. At some point, someone's going to break through that has like a common sense attitude. That's what I felt too. That's like, hey, you know, that's actually not true.

No, you know, I said that, but I made a mistake. And here's a more, here's a more holistic look at that issue. Yeah. So, and boom. You know, but, but again, if that, if the out, if the media outlet is a, against that person, they're only going to sound bite the negative thing all day. That's not to mention, you know how they say, and I don't know, because obviously I'm not in politics at all. But they do say, I've heard, people are saying, that if you go, let's say, you know, like Tulsi, you know, had this happen to where she'll go in the, I don't know, Democratic Party, whatever.

She'll go in and she'll start doing stuff that's like against, quote unquote, against the party, then they'll get drummed out by the party itself. Yeah. And if they're playing that freaking, like, kill them. game or whatever like they'll draw a person out who's like being all honest and stuff. Yeah well Tulsi's a great example you know she got crucified

bro so it's like this hard ass game to like to improve genuinely you know holy cow freaking I don't know it feels like yeah I felt it though that I think you're right I think like slowly by slowly

people are going to be like wait how about let's actually like do the right thing yeah how about like let's just try Try it, you know, a little bit. You know, some people are crazy, too. There's like crazy people. There's people that their political beliefs are a religion

and they're fanatical religious people, fanatical political people. Which to me is if you're that focused, if you get emotionally upset about political things, then I think you should, you've got issues, right? You know, look, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, there's people that get emotionally, and look, I can understand. You know you get mad about something or there's something that bothers you.

That's, you know, that shouldn't do it like that, right? But if I'm going crazy about it. Yeah. Like even you heard me talking about California, right? California has done so much dumb stuff in the last two years. And I'd be like, are you kidding me right now? Yeah. But I didn't freak out.

I didn't get on. That's another thing. If you're on social media and that's like a place where you're spending your time, flipping out on. flipping out on people? What was it? I think I was on that podcast with Chris Williamson. And he asked me something about, what was it?

Like, how do you, you know, I think it was, it was basically how do you handle negative comments or something like this? And I was like, bro, my recommendation is you don't spend a bunch of time being concerned about bots. Bro, they're bots. Yeah, I remember that was good. So I think when you're politically outraged about something, Because here's the other thing you got to remember.

Okay, if you're a lobsterman and you're about to have your, you're about to have your entire ability to provide for your family, I can understand getting outraged about that. Yes, I can. I can understand being like, oh, you know what? I'm going to protest because they're about to take my livelihood away from me. But there's a lot of things that people get emotional about that actually really aren't going to have an impact on their life.

Yeah. Or it's like a hypothetical thing. or whatever. Yeah, also too, like, and then I don't necessarily see people getting outraged about it, but being like really concerned about it, you know, on a personal level is the one that does make sense to me is like the taxes and stuff where like when you know you're going to get less of your paycheck, that makes sense to me. Yeah.

You know, yeah. But, wait, if you want to get even more frustrated about that, once you realize that the government is taking a bunch of your money. And then you see what they're doing with it. And you say to yourself, wait a second, right? Like, hey, if you were building awesome bridges, you know, and the streets were clean, like, look at California. If you're like, hey, you know what, I pay a lot of tax in California,

but look, look at Main Street, you know, Los Angeles. This is a beautiful place. But you're not saying that. You're literally, it's disgusting, right? It's disgusting. And then they do other crazy things. So you could start to get a little spun up about that. But do you know what you do then?

You leave the state, which is what a lot of people have done. How many people are leaving California? Yeah. A lot. Yeah, that should be an indicator. And you could look at the federal taxes the same way. You're like, hey, look, I want to pay for the security. I'm going to pay for the military, right?

That's cool. To pay for some infrastructure. I'm good with that. But then when you start pulling the thread on those things, we should do a podcast where we just read through some of those expenditures. It's insane. It's totally insane what the government spends money on. You can't make it up.

If I tried to make up things right now for dumb stuff for the government to spend money on it. I couldn't come close to the dumb stuff that they actually spend money on. The government spends money on the dumbest things. And yet, what are you going to do? Well, you do your best to vote for people that want to tax less and that want to have a smaller government. because the bigger the government doesn't become more efficient, doesn't solve more problems. Like when you're doing an operation,

you're going to, I had this conversation with Laif. Laif was like kind of in the learning mode. And you're taking down buildings. And you think, hey, I'll just put everyone in the building. But you can put so many people in the building that they're kind of in the way. Now you've got to like hire someone, you've got to advance or promote someone to be in charge of the other group while they're in the building and that means those two people got to communicate so you got

to put someone in charge you see what I'm saying all of a sudden you got a bureaucracy in a in a kill house we don't want that that's like the big government problem you know a big assault force look you need an assault force you need to have enough people to handle the rooms and handle security cool I get it but you can't just double that and say okay now it's going to be more efficient it might not be more efficient and if you triple it you may have some real issues now you have a problem and now the problem is the assault force itself you have a chance of creating a blue on blue because there's so many freaking assaulters going in so the same thing happens with the government i mean here's they just what this bill coming where there's 87 000 more irs agents yeah

i think it doubles the size of the irs that's too many assaulters in the room you see what saying like there's too many how hey if the tax code they don't even know really what the tax code is you know I hire someone I can't figure out what my taxes are I can't even come close to figure out my taxes are I have to hire someone who's got multiple people working for him that goes through and figures all that out because that's how complicated it is yeah so I have to pay someone who also pays other people to figure out what I need to pay the government why it makes sense that if the government is gonna bill me for something they just give me a bill

and I pay it. You know, I don't go into a restaurant, order dinner, and I say, hey, you know, how much do I owe you? And they say, well, figure it out. Yeah, here's a scale. You better weigh that rice. Yeah. You know, here's the cost of rice right now. And by the way, if you don't, if you don't come up with the right number, we're going to have you arrested when you leave the restaurant because you didn't pay the money that you owed us.

Well, I don't know how much I owe you. Well, you better figure it out. Yeah. That's crazy. What if you overpay the government, like your taxes and you like, let's say you overpaid your taxes and it rolls forward. It rolls forward. Do they do that automatically though?

Or do you have to like say, hey, I overpaid and then they do it? I'm not sure, but I know that my accountant. Shout out, Brandon, good to go. Freaking awesome guy. Sometimes he tells, he sends me a list like this is what you overpaid and how this got rolled up. But I don't know if he didn't do that. Would they just be taking that much?

probably I wonder yeah so that would kind of make it like officially unfair bro it's officially unfair as it is right I think it's officially unfair as it is you are gonna charge me you want me to pay you money but you won't tell me how much because I got to figure that out and if I get it wrong you get it wrong you're in trouble yeah how's that work how did you know I was wrong well why don't you just tell me what that number was right I got to pay this other dude and his team to figure out how much money I owe you. And if I don't pay you the correct amount, you're going to arrest me, but you won't tell me what that number was.

That's some crazy talk. You wouldn't think that that made any sense whatsoever. And yet that's how it works. And now we got to hire 87,000 more people. 87,000. By the way, when you hire 87,000 people at the government, when you get government federal jobs like that, that's a lifetime of pay. That's, that's retirement pay. That's health insurance for the rest of all.

all these people's lives. It's health insurance for their families. It's a crazy deal. It's not like you hired a small number of people and they're gonna do some extra work and when they're done with that extra work, they're gonna move on and find another job. No, this is a, you're hiring someone for their life.

That's what a federal job is. So these aren't like small budgetary additions. These are a total change, a paradigm shift in the size of this tax, collecting organization. And that's the best you can do. Everything is digital now. And the best you can do is hire 87,000 more people

to help us figure this out. Are you kidding me right now? So you want to talk about stuff that can get you crazy? That's one of them. But nonetheless, I'm talking about it right now with you. I've never talked about this with you. And I know when I go home, I'm not going to be like fuming about it, right?

Yeah. There's issues that people get spun up about. And by the way, what I just talked about, that's a pretty serious issue. They're taking money that you worked for. They're taking it from you and they're spending on things that don't make any sense. That's, if there's one thing that could piss you off, that's definitely in the top seven. I agree.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, would you be mad if I got into your car, took your walled out, took your money and left? Would you be mad? What if I only took 50% of your money? Would you be mad? I would be mad.

Yes. But what if I bought you dinner with your money, but I also kind of bought me dinner too. So people taking your money is definitely one of the top things that can be annoying to you and can piss you off. The government does that all the time. So if there's, but that's the top seven, definitely in the top seven of things that can piss you off. People stealing from you. Hey, look, it's not stealing up to a certain point. Because when I, when the government takes money and they spend it on things that, you know, help,

Hey, okay, we're going to have a good military. We're going to have good infrastructure. We're going to have some reserve, you know, fuel in case something goes. Hey, I'm in support of those things. Cool. I got it. But that hits a limit. The government doesn't need 51% of my money to do that.

Doesn't. But they're taking it. They're spending on some other shit. Some shit that I don't, you know, that is not right. So that's where we end up. Proof of. Yeah, anyways You guys are talking about the O course

How you can't just go in there anymore You think you could do the O course Right now? Yeah, 100%. Would you get a good What do you guys time it or something like this? Yeah, no, it's definitely timed. No, I probably wouldn't get a great score

Because there's some technique That I'd be rusty on. Is there a minimum you got to make or something? Can you fail the O course? You can definitely fail the O course? Would you fail the O course? No, I would pass it. You'd pass it?

Would I pass it? I would need to teach it to you for two days And then you'd pass it. Oh, no shit. Yeah. If you're, if you're athletic, like, if you can do pull-ups, push-ups, dips, and you can run, you're going to be okay. It's, I'll tell you what, that O-course is awesome. When you get done with that thing, you're smoked.

Oh, it's hard. Oh, yeah. How long does it take, give it roughly? Seven minutes. Oh, damn. Seven minutes of putting out. Seven minutes of putting out hard. Like, you know, you know the taste in your mouth.

You know what I'm saying? like the I just put out real hard. What is it? Like a copper taste in your mouth, you know what I'm saying? Yes, sir. You get that 100%. Oh, for a. Even if you're kind of chilling,

like let's say you and I went out there weekend, you know, we're in teams and we just go out there. We're still going to feel it. A little bit. Yeah. But when you go hard because you're trying to pass because you're in buds, bro, you feel like shit. It's big time.

Big time. I always liked the expression, putting out. Yeah. I don't think I ever heard that telling you. Talking around you guys or whatever. Check. Cool. Well, speaking of putting out, you got it, you got a fuel.

Yes. The output. Yes. I'm not going to recommend you do that with some clean fuel. Yeah. The cleanest fuel. Jock fuel. It's true.

Physical, mental, integrity. Like, these are all important things. So when you fuel that. You fuel your integrity. How'd you throw that one in there? No, no, no, no. No, no. No, no.

I appreciate it. No, no, no. When I'm saying this. Like you got a kid and they're not, your kids lying in school. Give them some jaco fuel. Tighten up his integrity. Tells it truth.

It's true. No, when you're putting out is what I'm saying. I'm going to make a new supplement called integrity. Maybe you should. Let's do it. All right. There you go.

Book it. Put on the books or whatever the expression is you guys use. Anyway, yes. When you fuel that output, when you're putting out and all that stuff, you want the supplements with integrity. You want integrity to me. In supplements, that's something. Okay. Energy, for example, energy drink.

I'm explaining to you like you don't know. know even though I do know that you do know energy drink usually has sugar calf preservatives you know poison right jocco fuel does not have that clean only healthy stuff clean stuff yeah integrity that's what I mean exactly what I'm talking about same thing with the malt protein shakes protein mix and RTD no sugar sweeting with fruit not even like sucrose or fruit toast or actual monk fruit mom fruit so good Good. So good. Yeah. So check that. Actually, on the way down, you heard keto. What did, how did Ed describe himself? Keto. Keto Kook. Keto Kook. I said, hey, man, you want one of these drinks? He goes, oh, I can't. It's, it's, I'm a keto kook. And I was like, we're good. Yep, good to go. He said, there's no sugar in there. I said, no, there's no sugar. It's sweetened with monk fruit. And he's like, oh, cool, crack one open. Keto Kook getting after. Keto Kuk getting after. Keto Keto Kuk approved. Yep. Actually, he says, what is it said? It says something on the can about keto.

Keto friendly maybe. Anyways. So there you go. Get yourself some joccofuel. Joccofuel.com. Go to Wawa. Go clear the shelves at Wawa. That's what you got to do.

Clear the shelves at Wawa. Just go in there to buy them all. That will help the campaign to grow. Because people look at Wawa and they say, oh, it's doing really well in Wawa. Cool. So if you want to help the campaign of growth, go to Wawa, clear the shelves.

Vitamin Shop. Pink mist is at the vitamin shop Pink mist has kind of been a big hit You notice that across the board? I had one today and it's good It's one of those like if you go to like it's it's It's kind of what do you call it when it's safe You know?

So you can't go wrong you can't go wrong with that one Well that's how you feel a lot of feel people a lot of people feel that's the one Oh no that's the top of the list That's good you like that mango mango's the one by far my opinion But I'm with it I'm with the whole gig Jogglefield.com origin USA.com Okay so Ed from Maine

One of the problems up in Maine Is got to grow the economy So if you want to help grow the economy in Maine Go to origin USA.com And you're gonna find Blue jeans that were made in America That are made in America Boots that are made in America

Jiu Jitigis that are made in America We also have another factory Down in North Carolina as well So American made is what we're doing at origin USA.com. Go and get yourself some American made gear and help America. Help manufacturing in America.

That's what we're doing. We appreciate you helping us to do it and you doing it too. Boom. It's true. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko store. Where you can get your discipline equals freedom,

shirts and hats and hoodies and stuff. Also, we have the shirt locker, which is a subscription shirt. Every month. Cool designs. No more days where you don't know what shirt to wear. You got one. Don't you normally say it's a subscription situation?

It is a subscription situation. 100%. Whether I say it or not. It's true. Jocco.com. That's where you get the stuff. Check it out. If you want something, get something.

Jocco Underground.com. Go check that out. We're putting out podcasts on that. And it's also a little safe zone. Sure. What is? Safe space. Is what it is?

We're safe in there. They can't take it away from us. That's true. It's kind of not the typical term safe space. No. It's a typical term. But I know that freedom of speech is safe inside jockoldeground. Go check that out.

YouTube. Check out that. You want to see some awesome videos that I have assistantly directed. YouTube, psychological warfare, flipside canvas, a bunch of books. You know what they are. I've written a bunch of books. Front Leadership Consulting Company. We solve problems through leadership.

Go to Eschlamfront.com for details. Just got done with the muster down in Atlanta. This is an awesome event. And you know what? It was sold out and everything we do sells out. So if you want to come to one of our events live, go to ashlamfront.com and check out the events. We also have the online training academy. So if you want to learn these principles and you want to train these principles for your business and for your life,

Go to extreme ownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help Gold Star Families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org.

And also check out Micah Fink and Heroes and Horses taking vets into the field where they can get lost and there they will become found. Once again, thanks to Ed Thielander for coming on the show and to follow him or check out what he's got going on. Thielander for Congress.com. The Instagram is Theelander for Congress. The Twitter is Ed for Maine.

Facebook at Theelander for Congress and YouTube at Theelander. And if you want to hang out with me and echo online in the in the. zone right sure in the interwebs yeah we're on there too that goes outico charles i'm at jocco well just just be careful because the algorithm's there and it's not it's not for your friend no it's pretending to be your friend it's going hey look at this like it's saying that to you yes it is you're going to show you something and it's something you want to see yeah well it's something that your most base form wants to see yeah you don't want to see it you want to be disciplined you want to carry on with your life.

You want to go execute on awesomeness. But instead the algorithms got you like an octopus. I think we need an octopus algorithm t-shirt. A bunch of different things trying to tie you up. So there you go. Thanks once again to Ed for coming out. Sharing your lessons. And thanks for your service to the teams and your continued service to America.

And speaking of service, I want to say thanks to all of our military. active duty and retired every branch every rank out there thank you for protecting our freedom and our way of life and thanks to our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMTs dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service all first responders thank you for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there since we were talking about Maine I'm going to go ahead and close with some more of the great Joshua Chamberlain quote We can hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high. We may cherish such thoughts and such ideals and dreams such dreams to lofty purpose that we can determine and know what manner of men we will be.

And that's right. End quote. We can determine what manner of men we will be. and we become that man by taking action so in the parlance of our time get out there and get after it and until next time this is echo and jocco out