The Joe Rogan Experience - #977 - Jeff Evans & Bud Brutsman

Episode Date: June 21, 2017

Jeff B. Evans is an adventurer, expedition leader, high-altitude medic, physician assistant, speaker, facilitator and tv personality. Bud Brutsman is a television show creator, executive producer, known for shows such as Overhaulin', Rides, and King of the Cage.

You can go right out your door and be in the most awesome hiking spot ever. And we're live, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you. Thank you for joining NPR. Please, no, I don't want to do that. Bud Bretzman, Jeff Evans, Bud Bretzman, good friend of mine, next door neighbor, and Jeff Evans, his buddy, who apparently has lived a fucking crazy life rescuing people off of Everest, traveling up there, and bud told me we were at this

little carnival with our kids like gotta get this guy on gotta talk to him so no pressure yeah your arm got put behind your back no it didn't it sounded good i was interested in this asshole how did you get involved with first of all you when was the first time you summited everest 2001 god damn man how many times you done it just once just but i kind of get a 1.5 because i had a blind dude with me yeah so you took a blind dude all the way to the top why didn't you take him like halfway yeah blowing his face dude you made it you're one of the rare ones the funny part was we got to the top and we're like man we can see the curvature of the earth from here bro and he goes i don't give a shit like i want to get out of here i can't see anything i want to go um that's actually not true what he said is hey eric

take a look around take a look around take a look around was it instinctual or were you just fucking with him i mean i think it was a little bit of both i kind of instinctively fuck with him right um we've been bros for a long time i mean it's a very bit of both i kind of instinctively fuck with him right um we've been bros for a long time i mean it's a very fraternal relationship that we have so i by nature just sort of automatically fuck with this guy and i enjoy it and he enjoys it back because he is super blind dude right you know the whole world loves loves him samaric and i'm probably one of the few people that just kick him in the nuts, you know. Give him a little bit of a hard time.

Yeah. Yeah, if you're a blind dude that climbs Mount Everest, people just give you a free pass, a lot of stuff. It's not only that. He climbed. What else did he climb? Well, he's done a bunch of stuff. But he just kayaked the Grand Canyon two years ago in his own boat. The whole thing.

277 miles. What, did he have a guy behind him going left right left right front and back and they had you know these ear pieces and you know he asked me to go

but I'm like that's I'll climb Everest but I sure as fuck ain't gonna take you down the Grand Canyon there's something that people really love

about someone risking their life and then pulling it off right something assuming you pull it off assuming yeah if you don't

then you make one of those Instagram greatest fails pages they were telling us before we went up there like you know and you pull it off. Assuming, yeah. If you don't, then you make one of those Instagram greatest fails pages. They were telling us before we went up there, like, you know, blind dude's going to die

and when he dies, what'd you think was going to happen? They were telling that to you? Oh, yeah. We heard that. Who, the Sherpas or who? No, no, just the Everest experts.

You know, remember, this was back in 01. This was when Everest was super dangerous. It was a little bit more raw than it is now. How is that? What has happened?

Because on the outside, what I've seen is all the exposés that show all the human waste that they leave behind, including actual shit, right? And the tents, and people pay people to kind of do all the hard work, and then you just kind of show up, and still hard, right?

But not as hard. You've got to put in the steps., you got to put in the steps. You got to put in the work, but it's so commercialized that it's been, it's been diluted to a certain extent. And, you know, I'm, I am a Sherpa advocate to the core. You know, these guys do the work. I mean, they put it in every single day. They're humping the loads. They're cooking the food. They're setting the lines.

They're taking the biggest risk and then allowing, you know, other folks to move through a little bit more effectively and faster and, you know, not have to expend as much energy. So we kind of got in there in 01 towards, I think, on the head of the curve just a little bit as to when it started to sort of change. The face of it has changed a little bit. So how did they make it easier? Like what did they do that made it more commercial?

Yeah. Money, number one, gets in there and pays a lot more Sherpas to do a lot more work. So the lines are fixed. The weather forecasting models are more effective and more efficient. When you say the lines are fixed? The lines are fixed, meaning the ropes. The ropes on the mountain all get fixed in. You clip into ropes when you go up.

Okay, so the ropes are there before you get there. All you have to do is just kind of like hoof it. So it's not like before. Wow, that's weird. So it's almost like you're on like a theme park. You're still in Everest, and you still could get fucked up by an avalanche, right? There's no question. It's very dangerous.

There's no way to mitigate all of that. But, you know, it has been eased up a little bit. The edges have been taken off just a slight bit. But it also adds that they're dangerous because if I was looking at it, it's sometimes more dangerous now because there's lines. There's sometimes 300 people, 600 people in a line, and you're waiting for some asshole who didn't train, and you're watching him try to climb up this little 20-foot cliff,

and they don't know how to work a jumar. They can't climb. What's a jumar? It's a hand thing. It's an ascending device. It's like a one-way ascending device to go up a rope so you can slide it up and it catches on the way down and then you use a pole but there people go up there when we were up there they had people they literally without talking shit about trekking companies there are some companies like all right we're going to show you how to put your crampons um as you're going on the icefall jesus christ yeah they've they've

learned like we're going to learn we're going to they've never had crampons before we we had to jeff not me jeff had to rescue risk his life in helicopters going to high high altitude to pick up people who shouldn't no business on the mountain so they didn't manage to get their body acclimated is that what the issue is it's not that they just didn't they didn't put in the the the apprenticeship because you know nowadays the commercial component allows folks that have enough money to pay and then show up and get guided basically to the top so back in the day it was you know if you didn't have your teeth cut, it was on you. And nowadays you can just show up and generally someone will be taking care of you, whether it's a guide or whether it's a Sherpa.

And so it's changed. But I don't want to take anything from the folks who still go out there. It's a dream for so many people. It's still an aspiration and a life goal for a lot of folks. And it's a dream for so many people you know it's still an aspiration and a and a life goal for you know a lot of folks and it's still very difficult yeah and so for instance last year we just saw i mean we saw a really nice cross section of of skilled experienced climbers trying it but then we saw a shit show you know we saw a lot of folks who should have been on other peaks first and then they weren't. They skipped to the top.

Right. Anything in life. You bypass the work, and you get smoked. Yeah. Our rescue team, ARS, Rectus CMR 5 Sherpas, did the highest altitude rescue in history, 28,500 off the balcony. And a girl, husband and wife, I don't know if they did. Did she summit?

I don't think she summ did. Did she summit? I don't think she summited though. Um, I think she was coming down the summit. Summit's at 2935. She's at 28, 500 and she decides to sit down. Her husband left her. She's tapped out. Husband left her. People quit. Yeah. People quit. So she sat down, but she sat down and he left her. Yeah. Oh wait, there's more to that story. So he left her and then we go rescue her. What did he say? Did he say, sit right here, I'll be back in a couple days? This is up for questions.

It's like there's two ways to look at it. We were talking about this last night. She may have just been a tap-out bitch and just said, I quit. And he tried to, please, come on, come on, come on, and finally just left her. That's one scenario. The other scenario is, you know he just was like peace out good luck i'm out here's the problem i do it this way and i understand about diving so let's say you and i are diving we're 300 feet below the below the water right and my air goes

out and i know we can buddy breathe but let's pretend there's no buddy breathing and you're gonna stick around and watch me die and you're gonna end up dying or i'm gonna grab ahold of you and grab your regulator and you're we're both gonna die watch me die and you're going to end up dying or I'm going to grab a hold of you and grab your regulator and we're both going to die. You can't help anybody at that level. You can't. You're tired. It's tough.

Your body is eating itself. You're basically dying in the death zone. He can explain that. Basically, if your wife says, I'm sitting down. I'm going to get up in five minutes. You go ahead and she's got a Sherpa with her. And then you go, I go ahead. And then you get back to camp four, which is exactly what happened.

Get down to camp four and look around. Your wife's not there. Holy shit. And then they call us. And they wake Jeff and I up and we're like, you're going to what? So I was with her, right, at base camp when we delivered her to her husband. And I was trying to gauge, like, is he going to be one of these guys? It's like, oh, my God, I'm so glad you're alive.

Or, holy shit, she's alive. Oh, fuck. You know, like, I don't – and I think it was the former. I think he was really ecstatic. He was crying. Remember, he was really upset. But then – Hold on.

We got to go. You have to go back. No, no, no. It goes back. Because actually the first kick in the ball, so without taking the whole thing to this. So what had to happen is Jeff and I and our base camp manager, Anthony, had to take four Sherpas from camp two, or camp four,

took two Sherpas and then two more in the middle of the night. So 6 o'clock, 7 o'clock at night. The most dangerous start. Winds are blowing 30, 40 miles an hour. It's 20 degrees below zero. Nobody, nobody's ever done. You don't do it. And we sent them up there and we said, can you go get her?

Oh God. So, and you've got to find this person on the line. So they walked and they kept walking and they kept walking. And we have video. Remember Mingma's video? How long does it take to get up the line? Like how? Normal, normal human being. being you the three of us how long would it take the three of us to get from from the south call to where she was balcony probably three or four

hours if you're in shape so take me out of that because i'm not a runner yeah but i'm not doing any high altitude hiking all right me five hours. Okay. So it's like very dangerous. Extremely dangerous, especially at night. At the worst time. You're hanging it out. Yeah. At the worst time, no one knows where she is.

But the terrain dictates that she has to be, unless she's falling off the side, she's on a spine, basically. And if you go up the ridge you're either gonna find her if she's alive or she's tossed off the side so she and also she's dealing with super low air nowhere it's freezing extremely cold nowhere they bring tanks yeah but her air was gone so you're drinking you're you're she brought no air with her or the air she brought with her she's done she was abandoned basically so they left her. So, you know, generally you would have somebody with an extra tank to be able to help her out.

But I get the sense that she just said, I'm done. And she sat down and everybody tried to get, and then no one, you know, no one could get her to get up. And they didn't want to walk back with her? You can't carry her. You can't carry somebody at 29,000 feet, 28,000 feet. So keep going. So she would, the oxygen up there is 33% less than what's here at sea level. 33%. But you can't carry somebody at 29,000 feet, 28,000 feet. So keep going.

So the oxygen up there is 33% less than what's here at sea level. 33%. I mean, it's at 33%. So it's 67% less. A third, yeah. Yeah. Wow. Normal oxygen. She was no oxygen.

So she sat down. So the boys, we have GoPros on them. We had special cameras and pockets and all kinds of weird shit to film on the mountain. And the boys are walking. I have footage of Mingma. Mingma's walking up there. And he's going, going i swear to god i'll say this for you he speaks decent english the whole time and i'll send you the clip it's the funniest clip you've ever seen he's i'm like god damn motherfucking fucking fucking mother he's just cussing every step of the way he's it's a fucked up scenario man you know it's middle of the night he's looking

for some you know potentially dead person in the death zone. Yeah, in the death zone. Not a cool situation. Why is it the death zone? Because of the oxygen? Because of the lack of oxygen, yeah. Your body starts to conspire against you. I mean, you can't assimilate any nutrition.

The fluid in your body starts to go to places it's not supposed to go so it goes up in your brain and you get cerebral edema and you make bad decisions and you get a headache and you lose your vision and then you get pulmonary edema your lungs fill up with fluid and you're drowning in your own fluid you know it's it's a this is like stepping out of the spade capsule at mars and i wonder what this is going to do to my body and you step out and shit starts popping it's it's strange up there wow. They've done MRI studies actually so that's where it is right there This is the line that Jamie pulled over to the death zone lack of oxygen above 8,000 meters can be fatal to climbers So see that thousand feet is fucking high

8,000 meters that is that so see they see that last dot before the summit that's 26,000 feet, which is right there. Yep, exactly, Jamie. And is that where she was above that? That's where the camp was. Halfway up, and that's the balcony right in there. Oh, she was almost there. 500 feet.

She was 500 feet from the top? She may have. Who knows? I don't know if she made it. She was at 28,500, and we have a GPS coordinate on it. She was at 28,500 feet from the top. So she could almost say she summited Everest. She's like, she could see.

Like Everest was like where your car's parked. Yeah. Except there's a lot of crazy ass terrain between where she was and across. That's where the Hillary step is and that's where the ridge goes. It's no louder than your laptop in sections and it's a 10,000 foot drop into Tibet to the right

and a 6,000 foot drop into Nepal to the left. Either way, it would hurt pretty fucking bad. It's as wide,000-foot drop into Tibet to the right and a 6,000-foot drop into Nepal to the left. Either way, it would hurt pretty fucking bad. It's as wide as a laptop? In sections, it's pretty narrow. But then it opens up and it shrinks down. But, I mean, it's no place to screw the pooch. And she did. Oh, my God.

This is it right here? Well, that's the Hillaryary step right there which by the way is gone this is really interesting two years ago remember the earthquake two years ago in nepal so it knocked that whole boulder off that boulder that people are standing on that's the hillary stuff imagine if you're on that you're like i made it yeah you're going for the ride yeah that's that's the peak of everest maybe you bro i'll fucking hop off and grab a hold of the ride yeah that's that's the peak of everest maybe you bro i'll fucking hop off and grab a hold of your wingsuit yeah maybe you bro so that's uh look at that look at that clown show oh my god there's so many people so if someone falls onto you you got a real problem too yeah so the year

we were up there in 2000 the year before the fall before there was a british guy i can't remember his name but he got caught up in the ropes descending from the summit down the Hillary step and got caught. And there was nobody there with him. And he got caught, caught, and he got stuck in perpetuity. Yeah. So we thought that for sure the first people that were going up in 01, that were a few weeks before us um had to cut him free because we were you know we're speculating like if we're the first group that

gets up there we're gonna have to scoot around uh this fellow you know whoa so he's just stuck on this line well but he wasn't there when we got up there he wasn't somebody already come for yeah now what do they do push them off the side well here's something for jamie so there's 248 bodies on everest yeah right now still there and these climbers i didn't go up i was at base camp What do they do? Push them off the side? Well, here's something for Jamie. So there's 248 bodies on Everest. Yeah. Right now. Still there. And these climbers, I didn't go up.

I was at base camp. The climbers use them as markers. Right. You kind of go up here. Isn't the original climber the first guy to make it? Well, they found one. Yeah, but he's on the south summit. He's on the other side.

On the north side in Tibet. Mallory. Yeah. They found Mallory's body. They didn't find Irma's body. You see just his back right his back still there frozen skins there weird yeah it's like ivory skin yeah still still flesh like yeah still flesh there but the crow right it's cryogenically frozen the crows pick at them they eat them there's crows at that at that altitude yeah they pick at him yeah this guy yeah that's mallory jesus look at that that. They pick at him? This guy? Yeah, that's Mallory. Jesus, look at that.

That's so weird. But that dude's a bad dude, man. That is a very bad man right there because they went out with some hobnail boots and some marginal equipment and everybody was telling them that they were going to be dead for sure

and they said, we're going to charge ahead. And they did. I mean, this was back, way back, man. This was in the 20s, right? And there's the controversy that he— Look at that boot.

The controversy is that they summited first, but they can't prove it. So that's a big controversy. They thought Irvine and Mallory summited, and then they fell on their way down. So crows pick at him? Oh, yeah. But obviously he's still there. Yeah, I mean, I don't think they get at him as much. But there's a lot of stuff there.

You know, I ain't going to lie to you. There's a lot happening there. Look at that. That's sitting on the mountain. You have to walk past that. Yeah, I mean, I didn't see that guy. You've never seen that guy? I didn't see that guy.

How many of the 200 and plus bodies have you seen up there? You know, the conditions change so dramatically over each season, depending on snowfall. Whoa, look at that dude. Jesus. There's some creepy things up there. Zoom in on that dude's face. I mean, there's... He looks happy.

Ah, I made it. I don't think he... Nice jacket. That's pretty fresh. That's a nice-looking down seat. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. How many people die a year?

Well, I think the average is, you know, nowadays is usually, I think, somewhere under 10, you know, between 6 and 10 every season. How many people attempt it? I think the grade is increasing every year. I think this year was the most that summited, the most attempted and most summited was this year. And I think close to 300 people summited this year. Pull that picture up again, that image of deaths, Sherpas and regular folks. So a lot of the Sherpas died too, huh? Yeah, well, I mean, there they go.

They're higher in concentration. They do the majority of the work. Fuck, man. Well, and that's one of the reasons why we went out there. We saved more Sherpas, and we pulled a lot of Sherpas off because more often than not, they don't have helicopters, and don't have helicopter insurance. And so we would go and I would pay for it. They would go, there's a Sherpa who's really sick and he's going to die. And then Jeff and I would just decide to pull them off. The other thing they don't have is they don't have life insurance. And you can imagine. So a lot of these families, a lot of the Nepali and the high altitude workers families,

they lose their only source of income when these guys get killed. So actually a friend of mine, Melissa Arnott, who was the first American woman to summit Everest without oxygen just last year, she started a fund called the Juniper Fund. And it actually compensates the families when their loved ones are killed on the mountains. Oh, that's nice. And it's good. It keeps them straight. Because they don't have a choice.

This is the altitude. You live in that area, you're going to be a Sherpa or a porter. Yeah. The highest level you can be, you're a Sherpa. You're a guide. Wow. So what happened to this lady again? Oh, yeah.

Okay, all right. So Mingma goes up there. They're walking up there, and they need some help. And I have it all on video. And he's going, fuck, motherfucker. Oh, he's pissed. It's the funniest thing in the world. It's a comedy show.

So then they hear music. Not kidding. They hear music. So she has a phone on her. I don't know how the battery's lasting. And she's sitting at the balcony, butt on the ice, and just barely breathing and listening to music. And then so they go to her.

Like Rihanna or some shit. No, it was some kind of Indian music. Curry rock or whatever the hell it was. Was she Indian? Yeah, she was Indian. Her name was Chetna. You don't want to say her name, man. Well, no, she's beautiful.

You're going to disparage her. No, no. She's alive. She's good. She's alive. She's stoked. She sent me a Christmas card. Okay. That, man. Well, no, she's beautiful. You're going to disparage her. No, no. She's alive. She's good. She's alive. She's stoked. She sent me a Christmas card. Okay.

Yeah, no. That's nice. Yeah, very cool. Christmas card with her kid. So what happened? So then they get to her, and then they start calling her mama. They're like, mama, mama, you need to wake up. You need to wake up.

We need to go. And she's like, no, no. It's all in video. Like, leave me alone. Leave me alone. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it.

And then they put oxygen down her, crank up the bottle, try to get some blood flowing, get stuff going. They sit up there at 8,000 feet, 35 minutes, 45 minutes. Oh, Jesus. Trying to coax her. Yep. Trying to coax her to get her down. And now, is it because of her personality or is it because she's so like diminished? like diminished. Cognitively, things go south too, right? So she probably had pretty profound cerebral edema

so her decision making was in the toilet. So you become really apathetic. And it's impossible to carry someone down. You can't carry someone down. You can lower them down, which is what happened. You can tie a rope to their harness and short rope them down with two or three dudes working really, really

hard and sort of lowering her down. And that, that's how they got her down. You know, she, she quit and a lot of people quit. I worked search and rescue in Alaska on Denali for years. And, and you'd be amazed at how many people are just like done, you know, they just lay down and they're done because they're not rational enough to know. Like if I sit down and I just take just a little bitty nap you ain't getting back up you're taking a snow nap and you're done you know and that's no nap yeah don't snow now i don't like that sound that's a weird term but but with hypothermia the interesting thing that happens is you get euphoric right you go through this this stage of super cold super

cold and then your core temperature drops low enough to where euphoria comes in. So oftentimes those same people we would find are undressed. So you get hot. You get warm. So their gloves come off. The hats come off. The pants unzipped. And everybody's buck naked on the side of the mountain.

Right before they die. Right before they die. So, I mean, not that I want to go out that way, but, you know, I can think of worse ways. Like, it's euphoric, apparently. Wow. Because we've also pulled people back. I've seen multiple times when we've pulled people back and they discussed that. They described it.

And then we start rewarming their frostbite. And then shit's not right after that. That hurts. Turns out that hurts when you rethaw stuff frostbite is so horrible to look at too it's just see the stuff we had to see and her fingers are still half half fingers are off she got messed up yeah she sent me pictures she's missing fingers like missing tips tips yeah she's lucky some of the phalanges are gone chopped off so they got her down they ended up hours and hours and hours and we're tracking and

we're we're trying to talk to them they get her down to camp four which is that track that you saw then the trickiest part as he'll tell you because i can't tell you camp four to camp three yeah camp four to camp three and then camp three to camp two which they didn't even do they couldn't get they couldn't get to camp two which is straight on the low t face it's a it's about a 60 60 degree ice face well which is slick so when you're roping somebody down you know there it actually does provide you know less friction you can actually slide somebody down but you can't get going too fast because you know? So now you're 26, 27,000 feet. You're 130-pound, 125-pound Sherpa, and you've got to lower this 200-pound lady down. Hard oxygen.

These guys are working their asses off. Wait a minute. She's 200 pounds? Well, nah. She wasn't that big. But, you know, with all her gear and all her shit on her. Oh, yeah. I mean, she was 160, 170 pounds worth of weight.

You know, dead weight. Just getting lowered down. So we got her down. We got her down to where we could go in with the helicopter. And we picked her up and took her back down to base camp. And that was when the meeting took place between her and her husband, the tearful rejoicing. So the part you missed was the helicopter landed it. It couldn't land at camp two. We weren't supposed to go up to 23,500, which is the base of Lotey, Crampon Point.

Andrew got there and said, I can only pick one of you. And she looked at her husband and said, you stay. Wow. And so she made him stay and take the next helicopter out. So we got her down. She looked at her husband and said, you stay. He's like, bitch, you quit. Well, she was mad because she got left.

She was pissed off that she got left. She was pissed that she got left, but he couldn't have carried her. No, you're switching. It depends. There's ways of looking at it both ways. Somebody quit. Somebody gave up. Somebody said no.

I mean, who knows? But I'm sure they had to go through some deep ass therapy when they got home. Okay, so I'm going to fill in the gaps here. So fast forward nine or ten months and dude husband has a has a heart attack and dies so he died i'm sorry i'm not shouldn't be laughing at that that's kind of fucked up i mean it's it is kind of fucked up but man you made it to everest and then you fucking but what what's the karma, though? That he left her? I mean, maybe.

But what is he going to do? If he doesn't leave her, what does he do? He sits up there with her? He wouldn't have told people that she's up there and she's alive. And he panicked. He was panicking on the phone. He was there. I don't know.

We talked about it last night. It's the romantic story. You huddle up with your girl, and you're going to die together. Whoa. Right? And then, or you go down there and try to get her saved and you get ridiculed for leaving her. It's easy to Monday morning quarterback any of those situations because all bets off when you get above 26,000 feet.

I mean, it is. You're kind of hanging on a little bit, and that's why you get these big end-of-thin-air stories that happen, and no one really can remember exactly the details and you know it's it's a little bit sketchy like i i my intentions were and i did and you did and i mean summit nights on 26 000 26 000 foot peaks there's always it there's always variables that come into play and it turns into theater. I mean, it's a stage. People make choices.

People make mistakes. We had that one guy on Grace's team. He was a triathlete. He went up, broke a bunch of rules respectfully. Oh, with regards to climatization and stuff. Climatization, pushed himself too much, summited, got back down, and died in his tent. Oh. His fifth attempt up there. You can look it up. Pushed himself too much. Summited. Got back down and died in his tent. Oh. His fifth attempt up there. You can look it up.

It's on the internet. His fifth attempt up there. Pushed himself way too hard. The rules are, if you don't make it to a certain point by a certain time, you should turn around and save your life and come back another day. And he said no. He said no. I'm pushing through.

Got to the summit too late. Came back really exhausted. 16, 17 hour day. Died in a tent. He was 35 years old. What did he die from? Exposure, cerebral edema. He might have thrown a clot.

I don't know the autopsy, but it was something fairly acute. It wasn't just exhaustion. It wasn't just hypothermia. He made it back to the tent and then just expired in the tent. There's a lot of things that can go wrong. And you have a small window to get it right. hypothermia. He made it back to the tent and then just expired in the tent. So I'm not sure. I mean, there's a lot of things that can go wrong and you have a small window to get it right. What is good about it? Well, about what? Summoning a big ass mountain? Yeah. You know, I think that's a tough question. That's a pretty nebulous thing. It's very subjective. It's very

selfish. There's no, you know, there's no chance. I used to climb pretty hard and then I had a kid and my sense of objective risk changed significantly at that point because climbing by nature is a very selfish pursuit. You're going out there to do something that is bring, it brings me joy and it brings me fulfillment and it gives me a sense of connection to the people that i'm sharing a rope with because we're on a rope man i mean we're gonna win together lose together i mean it's but jeff doesn't do it selfishly and you give all these climbers shit like that's a very selfish thing to do for him but he did it because eric did it eric wanted to do it so he like oh you you're a selfish prick you summited everest he goes no i i've helped my blind friend go to

the everest it really wasn't his goal his goal was to help the first blind guy to summit and everybody on my team i wasn't just me i had an amazing team it was it was um you know with all our sherpas on summit day we were 19 of us and at that point i think this record still stands we're still the highest number from one team in one day to stand on top together and i attribute that to the fact that just as you said bud like that was just a bunch of bros who weren't commercially guided we were just friends and we were there for something that was bigger than us we were there for eric we wanted to get him as high up as we could and get him back down and if that meant the summit awesome If not

You know, we'll come back and we'll still be bros and maybe we'll go do some other cool shit You know, I mean that so what happens when you don't go up there for me to plant my flag is We got this summit. I got to stand on top, you know, it's pretty pretty cool. What is the feeling like when you get to that top and you realize that you have summited Mount Everest? You're up there and you're looking around and you're like, holy shit.

Top of the world, Ma. Well, just like so many other times with him and the stuff that I've done with Eric, I was worried about him getting down that's all i was i was obsessing on it because there was a storm coming in and we heard all the radio chatter how much time do you have for the storm i mean i don't know the shit is barreling i mean it is moving quick from the uh from tibet across i mean we could see it coming it was probably 9 10 in the morning.

And, you know, that's early. And when it comes that early, the monsoon, the edge of the monsoon, this is late May, so the monsoon starts to pick up in late May. You don't want to be anywhere near. But, Joe, you talk about all the time the adrenaline dump. So imagine adrenaline dump in a cage that you talk about all the time. Now you just summited Mount Everest, but you're only halfway done. 80% of all mountaineering accidents happen on the descent wow 80 why why is that because your decision making is compromised

and yep you um and you you did what you went to do you're done you know you're like oh you relax you just kind of take your adrenaline you're like i did it and all of a sudden i was like i'm gonna get down that's way more technical to be honest I did it. And all of a sudden, they're like, I'm going to get down. That's way more technical. To be honest with you, that's somewhat of a rookie move. And experienced climbers always know to have a little bit more in the tank. It's just like a fighter, right? You've got to save some for the fifth round. Right.

And you've got to know that it's coming, and it's going to hurt. Right. It's going to hurt bad. I remember my legs, i was they were jelly man i mean trying to come down from the hillary stuff and i was just jacked i was like the gumby man coming down and i actually fell i fell onto a fixed rope right right below the or right above the hillary stuff yeah and i got caught by a rope and it was one of the only times i clipped in that whole day oh jesus christ it. It was kooky shit.

Did you clip in because you felt like your body was getting a little wishy-washy? Once again, I knew. A little bit not right. I shot my wad coming up. I dug some ropes out with my buddy Brad Bull for the team earlier that morning that were buried. We were the first people up. We were the first people up, and all these ropes were buried and we were digging them out in the ice and they were buried under a foot to two foot of snow at 28 000 feet and i made brad and i made that decision to to dig those ropes out

because not to know which way to go up but to make sure they were there for the descent because that's when the weather comes in and that's when the blind lead the blind down, you know. So we dug the ropes up. And I knew when I did that that I was going to be out of gas. And sure enough, like coming down, I knew it. So that's when I was clipping in. I was a little bit more fastidious on, you know, making sure if I fell that I'd be caught. Sure enough, I fell. Wow. On the rope. And then got back caught. Sure enough, I fell. Wow.

On the rope. And then got back up and was like, good night. That woke me up. Did you get a jolt? Yeah, yeah. Shake it off or look around and go, God damn, I wonder if anybody saw that. And then, like, start heading back down.

So is it the appeal of, like, accomplishing something that very few people accomplish and joining, like, a very special club? Is that what motivates these people? Is it just a really difficult task and they want to see if they have it in them? I mean, obviously everybody's got a subjective answer to that. And mine is I like to be with my people in the hills.

That's my church. That's where I feel the most comfortable. It's where I feel safe, actually, in the hills, right? Because you know you're around other very rugged people. Well, just people who make good decisions, you know, and then, you know, the cathedral of the big mountains makes me happy and sort of rejuvenates my soul. And, but there's, there's something to be said for, for seeing what my body and my mind can do. Um, you know You know, I think that a lot of people would agree that that's probably one of the main reasons why we get out and do these things. But I mean, it's no joke. It's dangerous, man. I mean, you saw one of the most accomplished mountaineers, probably the best mountaineer in

the world just died, you know, under two months ago. Really? Ula Steck. Yeah. How did he die? He fell. He was getting ready to go do, he was training up in the valley in that Western Coombe from that Camp 2 on Everest that you saw that image. He was going up the west shoulder of Everest with one other Sherpa

who's a friend of his, not just a paid Sherpa, it was his climbing partner. And they were going to go up a route that has yet to be successfully seconded so these americans seconded it's like so it's been done once and people have died trying to do it again oh several parties and he was going to go do it these two americans willie unsold and tom hornbine did it um and it hadn't been repeated because it's straight up commitment, man, balls.

But his Sherpa was sick. His Sherpa was sick. So Ulay was out training one morning, and I think it was around 4 or 5 in the morning. He was on Noopsie, right? Yeah, so he was up in that sort of cirque, and he was over on a mountain called Noopsie, which is beside Everest, and he fell. Who knows why? Maybe he slipped or he got hit or something.

You have to see this guy. This guy, you can see the videos online. Yuri Steck is this guy. No ropes, no nothing. He's got two ice axes and he runs up the hill faster than you can run on pavement. For sure. They call him the Swiss machine.

Unbelievable. There's a video of him doing this? Hundreds of them. Lots of them. How do you spell his name? U-L-I, so it's U-L-I Ste-E-C. Now, when you see it, the incredible thing about it is you're at this six degree pitch, ice walls, he's at 26, 27, 23,000 feet, and he's just going bang, bang, bang, bang, bang,

bang, bang. It's like a video game. He's a ridiculously committed athlete. He's committed to his craft, being as strong as he could be, technically capable. But, you know, it's still a roll of the dice. How many people have died trying to do this summit? To do Everest? The seconded one. Oh, a good handful.

I don't know exact numbers, but several from different nationalities. So everybody has either failed or died, except one person. Who's the one person? Two. Two Americans. That was Willie Unsold and Tom Hornbine. And that's what they do. Once they summit, once the climbers are, and it's just, you know, humans in general, these climbers do it,

then they want to find a more difficult route, or they do it without oxygen. So Uli was going to go up and do that. Look at this fucking guy. He's going to go do that and then come around, summit Everest, and then go check that out. Dude, he's like a fucking goat. Oh, yeah. Look at this fucking guy he's gonna go do that and then come around summit everest and then go check that out dude he's like a fucking goat oh yeah look at this look at that that's incredible so his aerobic you know he's got that ability to kick out the lactic acid oh my god that is insane he's an absolute beast it's a shame it was a big loss is it just because he's been doing it for so long i mean it's like any other craft. Holy shit! No ropes.

Oh, my God. Okay, for people just listening, what is the name of this video, Jamie? So, Ueli Stek. Ueli Stek. U-E-L-I-S-T-E-C-K, new speed record, Eiger 2015. So, this is the north face of the Eiger. And so, he's a Swiss dude, and he grew up, sort of cut his teeth in the Alps. Fuck all this.

Now, I want to be clear, though. No ropes. This isn't like the first time he did this, right? This is probably the 50th time he climbed that route. He did it over and over and over, got it dialed, figured it out, and then went out and did these speed records and set these speed records. Very similar to what just happened on El Capitan last week. Did you hear about Alex Arnold and what Alex did?

Oh, yeah, I did. I watched the pictures and video of that. He's been on the podcast before. Alex has? Yeah, he's a freak. Yeah. What an odd dude he is. What he did, in my mind, Was like landing on the moon, dude.

Yeah. I mean, the ability to pocket fear and just focus on the three square feet in front of you is unparalleled. I mean, I've climbed El Cap, and I just can't imagine being up on those slabs. And how long did it take you when you climbed El Cap? Three days. Three days. So, Kim, four hours. And you free soloed it.

But the point was, like, Ulay, you know, people look at that, and they're like, whoa, dude. My hands just got super sweaty. No, mine are too, by the way. You know, and I think about it. So, you look at Ulay, and you see this video, and you're like, wow, he's crazy. He's crazy. No, he's calculated. And so is Alex.

Alex, super calculated. Like, he'd climbed Freerider, the route he's crazy, he's crazy. No, he's calculated. And so is Alex. Alex, super calculated. Like, he'd climbed Freerider, the route that he did a few weeks ago. He did it several dozen times and would fall on it and, you know, with a rope. And he just was in the right headspace that day and went up and did it without a whole lot of pomp and circumstance just went out and nailed it look at this there's going to be a crazy ass video that jimmy chin oh jimmy was shooting it and his yeah jimmy was near the top with no what did he did he shoot it like next to him with ropes is that what they do no so so jimmy was very respectful of not getting in his way because

this is a very obviously very intense thing oh yeah hey man how's it going yeah it's going good hey dude look down there. Fuck, what a crazy view. Yeah, I missed a shot. Can you go back up? Hey, man, can you give me a thumbs up? Selfie. Look over and smile.

But Jimmy's a very accomplished climber, and he's an amazing cinematographer. Yeah, there it is. Jimmy Chin, National Geographic. Shout out to Jimmy Chin. So Jimmy was at the top, and he was at the top, and him and his team, I think, lowered down. And, yeah, greatest athletic human feat. Jesus Christ.

I ain't going to lie. I have to agree. Because if you think about true athletic feats, it's not just, obviously, the corporal sort of event. temporal sort of you know event it's just the whole mixed bag of who you are as an athlete mentally emotionally behaviorally physically how you execute in the moment when shit is just on point like right in your face and he did it like to this level that i can't even it's unbelievable man ripping out of my hands I mean crazy right I mean once you get 30 feet off the deck it's game on

you know and then now put you know a power of 100 on that you know but there's very few sports

where one mess up you're dead that's right does he have any like guys that are trying to be the next Alex Honnold that are chasing him

well I just read something today this morning about that there could be some emulators you know that are chasing him? Well, I just read something today, this morning, about that there could be some emulators. Oh, Jesus. Who knows? There's other super tough, badass climbers that are out there that are also free-sail on and doing shit without ropes,

but he's at another level, and everyone knows that. How is he at this other level? Well, first of all like what is what separates him yeah well there's a lot of body chemistry that that is sort of a mystery like how does his pituitary how does his adrenal gland not just flame out right how does he control that in a way that i can't right i mean my yeah we're sitting here at the desk and my hands are sweaty just thinking about it. Right.

So there he is as calm and collected as he can be. They've done studies on, on Alex. They brought him in and like, you know, buzzed his brains. Like, where are you, you know, chemically, biochemically, when we introduce assaulting sort of variables on you and he's just flatline. produce assaulting sort of variables on you and he's just flatline so he's the perfect blend of biochemistry and physical capacity but also devotion and commitment to his craft i mean he's an artist right that's the way he got down from that from that climb that day just a couple weeks ago and they're like what are you gonna go do now you know this is not disneyland he was going

on his fingerboard and he was gonna go train train and do like, you know, fingerboard workout that afternoon. Because climbing El Cap for four hours was not enough workout for the day. It was like whatever he says. Put him in an MRI and showed him images and that's what his response was. Yeah. Brain, his brain's fear levels. After looking at gruesome and arousing images, he commented it was like whatever. That is that dude.

He's so mellow. Right. But that's how he described it. When I said to him, I said, like, what is it like? Are you freaking out? Are you trying to keep calm? He's like, you're really mellow. He goes, if there's anything wrong, it's so wrong.

Like, when it goes wrong cascade yeah like you're fucked like so you're always he's his the way of putting it was mellow yeah I think there's a video I believe and maybe Alex and maybe someone other climber but things are a video of him probably they'll cap when he was three solo and before this one where he says give me a minute it was Northwest direct face of a half dome and i've climbed that route too and i'll tell you the only time i've ever seen him flap that was the uh that was the iconic image on nat geo on national geographic magazine of him standing just in his

plaid short shirt like on the ledge you know leaning back and it was he reflected on that they asked him about it later and they said you know what was going on he says i just needed a minute and he got it and he calmed himself down whatever was happening in his head who knows and he recalibrated and went up you know no gear so it's just who knows there's there's uh that's him right there that's when he needed the minute no no no there's a there's another one of jamie it's it's it's he's in that green there he He is over there on the right. Yeah that one the green or the Right above it right there. It's the one where you stand in there sort of on the left Yeah, that's the one I think was the Nat Geo. Yeah, that's the one he says. I just need a minute

Just need a minute. That's um, that's a thousand feet off the deck But I mean imagine if that's your kid we all you know and you're like what are you doing today honey so yeah apparently he has a very very close relationship with his mama he did in Sacramento I guess and I'm guess his mind he just tells his mama what she needs to know yeah he doesn't tell her until after it's over mm-hmm yeah fucking Christ it's just like is a, that's a crazy thing to be awesome at. You know.

All right. All right, hold on. So we're talking a lot about climbing, but the other reason why I wanted to bring Jeff here. But hold on. We're not changing subjects. I don't know where the fuck you think you're going. This guy, like, so you said that there are a few people that are trying to emulate what

he's doing. Well, I think there's just a few guys doing their own thing, and it happens to be free soloing. And, you know, he's the pioneer. There were other guys before him. There was a guy named Peter Croft that was out there for many years, sort of. You know, he did a route called Astro Man in the Valley that was at the time. And I remember, you know, I was in my early 20s when Peter did that,

and I remember reading know I was in my I think my early 20s when when Peter did that and I remember reading about it and thinking no like what how how does one want to do and I was just really getting into climbing a lot I just couldn't it didn't compute but Peter Croft I think and guys like him and like Alex just have a wiring that's very very different than the rest of us and it seems reckless to many many people but what I do seems reckless to many people so it's so relative and there's a scale you know and and people that would look at Alex and be like you're crazy man that shit you're gonna get to and like he's like whatever man I'm sure yeah there is a scale there's like yeah well you what about physically like is there like an optimum building like for a basketball you really want to what about physically? Like, is there, like, an optimum build? Like, for basketball, you really want to be tall and thin, right? Yeah.

Is there an optimum build for what he does? I mean, I think, you know, sinewy and the strength-to-weight ratio is obviously, you know, the best climbers are usually pretty thin. Carry themselves well. And, you know, it's uh he's got big hands like not necessarily big like basketball player but like his fingers are sausages he's his fat fingers from constantly training them and almost calloused yeah well the just the amount of weight that he can carry on his hands has got to be pretty unusual yeah so this finger thing that he does like what is the thing that he did?

Well, the campus board or a finger, you know, or. Like one of those peg boards like from wrestling? Well, that's kind of like a campus board is like an inverted sort of board that you climb up just for strength and it works your core and your arms and your chest and your delts and stuff. But then the finger board allows you to get, you know, mono-doit, double-doit, you know, two-finger strength. So he can then slot and then pull on one of those.

So it strengthens all your tendons in your hands and your fingers particularly. Just little holes carved out of a – sometimes it's a – Oh, that's it right there? Yeah. So sometimes it's wood. Sometimes it's a composite. It's almost like a little cubby shelf. And so you stick your

hands in there yeah and then there's routines i use two finger pockets and three finger pockets oh wow you you use one too huh i do yeah wow he's one too and then i'll try and hang you know and then count to 30 hang and then go two finger and hang and he did this after he summited yeah so he went down and was like got interviewed and he goes, I got to go do a workout now. How's he not tired? Yeah. Well, that's why. That's why he's the best, right?

That's why he's where he is. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So did this exist 20 years ago? Was there a lot of people free soloing 20 years ago? Well, no. I mean, it's like, that's the Peter Croft of those guys.

There was a few. And back in the old Camp 4 Yosemite days, like in yosemite valley i mean it's this was the place this was the the birth of it and then there was some dudes that were not far from here um in joshua tree that were doing some pretty balls out soloing um in joshua tree yeah in j tree um and i lived in joshua tree for a while just living in my van down by the river there and climbing all the time and eating ramen noodles and growing my head a little bit, you know what I'm saying? Um, in the, in the tree, man. And, and cause you know, there's a lot of climbing there. That's, that's, uh, that's pretty, there's high ball stuff. I bet if you could look at like the amount of mushrooms that are done, like in a specific location and then look at Joshua tree,

look at like the amount of mushrooms that are done like in a specific location and then look at joshua tree like the high concentration i saw i know so many people go to joshua tree just just to shroom out yeah yeah i mean it's i'd like to look at that map there'd be a big target yeah seriously probably a big cluster right yeah i mean i've i've i've seen some good stuff there man i mean that was when i was sort of really, really diving in. I was diving into climbing. Those two things were conjoined, was psychotropics in a way and climbing. Yeah, they are with a lot of folks. Well, it's that extreme connection to nature, right, and to life. And like you were talking about a little bit ago before we came on air was, you know, when you're stoned, you see the ball track better when you're playing pool.

Oh, yeah. Well, you feel like the, you see the ball track better when you're playing pool. Oh, yeah. Well, you feel like the revolutions of the ball. You feel like how well you could touch the ball and get it to move. For me, at least. I play like 10% better when I'm high for whatever reason. I just feel more in touch with things. Yeah. That's why I like the social sliver. Social sliver?

Oh, yeah. What's that mean? Social sliver. Microdose. Oh, yeah, yeah. So's that mean? Social sliver. Microdose. Oh, yeah, yeah. So just the microdose of whatever it is. Mushrooms or acid? Mushrooms.

But I'm... Yeah. So the new medium for us, I don't know if you've heard of it, is goo. Do you know the goo? Goo. No. So it's super concentrated psilocybin. So they take mushrooms and they distill it down, concentrate it up, get this liquid,

turn it into a Tootsie Roll appearing consistency, color. Give it up at Halloween. You get a stick. Yeah. And you get a stick. And it's literally the size of a Tootsie Roll. And we just take like a little, just a little nip. And that's the social sliver. Oh, and then it makes you just a little more tuned in i mean a lot more tuned in i have a buddy who's a high level kickboxer world champion kickboxer

started microdosing a few months back does it every day every day microdoses and he competes on it fucks people up always microdosing so with what with l or with no mushrooms so the i think and you might know the fuckers locked in the zone more than me but if you if you take it serially it starts you lose it gets diluted over time yeah but when he takes when he stops taking it he feels that he misses it he does yeah every day like a vitamin yep i think that's called addiction maybe i don't think't think so, because it's not addictive. It's like, you get addicted to washing your hands. If you're one crazy OCD guy, like, I gotta wash my hands one more time.

Like, you can get a mental pathway that's very destructive, you know, and you can call it addictive, but it doesn't demonize washing your hands. You know, I think his issue is when he doesn't take it, he says, it just, things aren't as fun, doesn't feel as good, but I've been around him when he's taken it and he's a hundred percent there. Yeah. Like it's not, it's not, he's like, wow, man, I can like see your eyes and I'm thinking your eyes are looking at me. And what are your eyes seeing?

I assume they're seeing what I'm seeing. No, he's there. He's there. Like you're there, you know, but broad needs a little experience in his life. Don't you agree? I'm really quiet over here because I have no idea what the fuck you guys are talking about. I've threatened him with a social sliver before just to see what happens. It could go either way with him. We should hotbox

him right now. Let's fuck him up. No. Scared? He's got to do a pee test. Interesting. He owns his own company. Who's pee testing me? He tested himself. Joe's been trying to get me high. He just likes to piss his ass off. Joe's been trying to be high for about 18 years. years yeah I have

it's not exaggerated no so I'm the microdosing the goo man it is it is just how do you get well let's talk later about that

I know well there's people there's conversations that need to happen yeah absolutely so are a lot of these climbers doing that I don't

I don't think so I think you know I think that you know there's there's, uh, you know, there's, there's probably a handful of us that like to mess around with those things altogether. And not to say that I don't like to, you know, trip my balls off and go get on a rock. Of course. Right. Um, matter of fact, I've had a few sort of spooky times just being really stoned and being on a rock and not liking the situation I was in. Yeah.

Yeah. I've been that way. Just normal life. Like you get too stoned, especially like edibles. Chibichu, fuck me up. Oh, they'll fuck you up. Fuck me up. Oh, they'll fuck you. I had a bit off my last special that's based on the truth.

I ate a fucking gummy bear, a pot gummy bear. And the guy told me to just eat the leg. It really is a true thing. I'm like, why the fuck are you making a whole bear then if you want someone to eat a leg? It's this tiny little thing. And I ate the whole bear. And oh, my God. For a while, too.

It's a long time until it's metabolized, right? It takes hours, hours. You wanted it to be over. But you feel so good when it's over. You feel like, I needed that. I needed all that pain and fear. And I got through it. And it's like a near-death experience you know like something

something about it like it's cleansing I guess you're eating a gummy bear should have that kind of shouldn't but it does and when it comes through on the other side like it's beneficial as long as you could keep it together you know as a person who's that's why it bums me out that you don't smoke pot or do anything because I know you could keep it together Because you're a tough guy You keep life together It would just make you more aware of shit 19 years ago we started this conversation

But here's my take on it On the deathbed I'm going to get him high Smoke it! Bud likes to be in control And he's afraid that he might not be You ever look at Bud's closet? I did Does it shock you when everything's black?

It's a little confusing. So I had a 10-minute conversation with this dude last night. Like, dude, that kind of fucked me up looking at your closet. Stay the fuck out of my closet, man. He's like, I don't like other colors. Everything's black. It was 20 linear feet of one shade variation of the other black shirt of the other black shirt of the other black shirt. He's a fucking ninja.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. Oh. Yeah. No, no, no. It's efficient decision making, right? I don't have to make that decision. I have too many other shit to go in life, so I'm going to wear that.

I can feel that. I can feel that. I get it. I understand it. Guys, everybody develops a uniform in life, right? It doesn't matter if it's khaki shorts and a blue. Everybody, that's your uniform. Right. You develop it. I understand it. Guys, everybody develops a uniform in life, right? It doesn't matter if it's khaki shorts and a blue... Everybody, that's your uniform. That's true.

You develop it. You know what's interesting, though? If it was orange, it would be a big issue. If you were walking around with orange sneakers and orange pants and orange shirt, like this wacky motherfucker. But somehow or another, because it's black, you're like, oh, it's Bud. A friend of mine, Tom DuPont, he owns DuPont Registry Magazine. Green pants. Like, shitty looking green pants.

All the time. Like, what's with all the shitty green pants? He's like, I'm rich, bitch! I'll wear whatever the fuck I want. I'm with DuPont. We invented chemicals. Fuck off. Bitch, I got so much money! I like wearing green! His reality is probably so confusing.

Everybody remembers me in my green pants. Yeah, I was in Lanai recently, and Larry Ellison owns the whole fucking island. He owns the whole island. Yeah, he bought it and rebuilt it. Yeah. Well, was Dole Pineapple owned? First of all, Dole Pineapple bought it off of, I was there. I read the history of the island.

It's amazing. A Mormon owned it. Some crazy, but they don't of the island, it's amazing. A Mormon owned it. Some crazy, but they don't even think he was really a Mormon. They think he was just a con man who used being a Mormon to lock people up and fuck their wives. I'll make no comments on that though. There's probably a lot of stories of it like that.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. There's quite a few, especially with Mormons. That's right. Very, very interesting religion, right? When you know the guy who made the religion, like there's two religions that are pretty prominent, L. Ron Hubbard, of course, and then Joseph Smith, the Mormon. You know the guy. He's kind of a con man.

A hundred percent. He's a fucking con man. He broke out of jail, right? He invented it when he was 14. He found golden tablets that contained the lost work of Jesus, and only he could read them because he had a magic seer stone. He had a stone that he could look through to read these. Fucking Christ. He broke out of jail. He jumped out of the window. He was had a stone that he could look through to read these. Fucking Christ.

He broke out of jail. Yeah. He jumped out of the window. He was murdered. Yeah, he got murdered in jail. Yeah. He got killed in jail. I think the funny thing is, I think it didn't, if it was him or somebody else who invented

the polygamy part, they're like, wait a minute. I got another tablet. I can fuck all the bitches I want. Hold on. Yep. Everybody. I can have as many wives I want. Yeah.

It's, yeah. Good luck with all that. That never works. But the- Why would you want more than one? I know. I can wives I want. Yeah. It's, yeah, good luck with all that. That never works. But the- Why would you want more than one? I know. I can't handle one. Yeah.

Some people just like danger. Like Alex Honnold likes to solo climb. Yeah. You know? I mean, it's just people like it. They're like 19 chicks yelling at him. I don't know. Whatever.

Sounds like it. I'm not here to judge. Overload. I think it should be legal. I think if those 19 women are into it and you're into it, why is it even legal to get married at all? When you see 50% divorce and people get their lives devastated, when does a government step in and go, hey, you got to stop doing this? This is just ruining all these people. All these kids.

It ruins more people than anything. Just stop getting married. Keeps the lawyers afloat. Yeah. It does. That's who they should stop, the fucking lawyers. It's a big business and weddings and lawyers. Yeah, we can't stop that.

We won't make any money. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Fuck all that. But so this guy who's this crazy Mormon guy sold it to the Dole Company who used to run pineapples there. They used to have just massive pineapple plantation. And that was what it was forever.

And then some other dude, Murdoch, but not Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch, he owns half of Westlake. Yeah. Almost all of it. That dude bought it, and then he sold it to Larry Ellison, who just runs around in gold underwear and fucking has people carry him like he's an emperor. Colonel Kurtz. I don't know, just making that up. Colonel Kurtz, on the nigh.

Yeah, I don't even know where he is. He keeps a place out there, I guess. But he just wanted to own it. It's a fucking baller place to live, though. So there's not... How many people live there? 3,000. That's it.

There's 15,000 Axis deer, though. Oh. Yeah. So am I right in remembering that the concentration of people is not necessarily on the coastline of the Nye? It's in the middle. Yes. Right? It's in the middle. Smart people don't live on the coastline. No. It's in the middle. Yes. Right?

It's in the middle. Smart people don't live on the coast. Yeah, they're smart. They're like, this island's not that big, and sometimes shit goes bad. Yeah. Let's not be over where the water is. We can go to the fucking water. It's right there.

It's the asshole Americans. They're like, oh, I want to live there. Anywhere you are, you can take a hike to the water. Yeah. It'll take a few hours if you're in the middle, but you can get there like you don't have to live there jesus christ so tell me about the axis deer i want to hear like they're everywhere i mean was it not even sporting or oh it was definitely sporting because these animals they evolved to run from tigers they are the fastest fucking animals i have ever seen in my life like in terms of like their ability to react, like there would be a deer 60 yards away.

You draw back on it, launch the arrow and it would be nowhere near that arrow by the time the arrow got to it. So you lost a few sharp sticks while you were there. Oh yeah. Well, you'd go five lighted knocks. I can see them in the,

in the grass, but I lost two, but the arrows are going 275 feet a second. And the deer's like, bitch! No chance. So they're not indigenous to the island? No, there's no indigenous mammoths on that island. Everything is invasive and everything has no predators.

So they bring in these rangers and seals, these snipers. They bring them in, they set up on a bench, and they just start, ba-bing! Ba-bing! They start taking them out. With a.50 cal? Yeah, well, no, they don't on a bench, and they just start, ba-bing, ba-bing. They start taking them out. With a.50 cal? Yeah, well, no, they don't have to use a.50 cal. They probably use like, I don't know, a 7mm or something. But why do that when you want the meat?

The meat is outstanding. It is some of the most delicious meat in the world. But these animals are so on point. So for bow hunters, it is like one of the best places for spot and stalk. Like, if you could put the smack down on an axis deer like you either got lucky which is me or you got some skill you know like i've got a little bit of skill but the guys that i went with that are really good like remy warren i think he shot three or four while i was there my friend john dudley shot four world-class bow hunters like

as good as it gets those guys killed quite a few quite a few. But it's a great learning ground for stalking because you blow so many stalks. Screw them up. How long were you there? They smell you. I only hunted for three days because I had a problem with my bow that I had to fix once I got there. And it took a day to do that. But once you get there and you see how many deer you realize like oh okay this is like this place is overpopulated so but in those three days i saw thousands you saw a shit thousands yeah

i mean thousands and you took a few shots yes yeah i took a few shots yeah they're tough animals too so are you moving are you literally are you moving and stalking and pausing and holding yeah you're doing what you call still hunting. Yeah, still hunting. You're walking and then you're looking for an animal that you're constantly using your wind checker, which is like a Visine bottle with talcum powder in. Do you bow hunt at all? Yeah, well, I've just recently started, yeah. So you puff that in the air and you find out which way the wind is going.

My guide, though, he knew where the wind was going. He just knew from his face and his neck and skin like he can tell like where's the wind blowing and he's like like this and he just puffed that smoke in there and sure enough it was going exactly where it was shout out to roman uh but his uh his ability to sneak up on these animals is pretty fucking impressive too you know you do a lot of crawling like a lot of the grass is like waist high so you're doing like crawling where you're moving like literally like at a snail's pace. Try not to make too much noise. Because you know they're over there, right?

Oh, yeah. You sighted them already when you glassed them and you know they're there. And you're on an island, so they can't really go that far. There's plenty of room for them to go. I mean, this is not like you're hunting them in a 100-acre confined high fence place. It's all wild and free range, and there's mountain terrain, and there's plenty of places for them to get away from. But they're aware of one predator, humans.

So they're not scared of anything other than people. So when they see a person, like, fuck this. But are there a lot of bow hunters that go over there? There's plenty of bow hunters that go over there. Okay. Yeah. It's a pretty amazing place, man. But Maui's another really great place for bow hunting

too, apparently. And Maui also has pigs. Maui has axis deer. They have a deer, a ram called a mouflon that apparently is unbelievably delicious, but the locals think it tastes like shit. Some locals said it tastes like shit, and some locals said it's the most delicious meat ever. But the bow hunters that

I was there with, there's a mouflon. The bow hunters I was there with, see if it's on Remy Warren's page. Remy Warren's Instagram, I think, has a— It's like a ram. Because he shot one. He shot a beautiful one. You like that axe. It's better than venison?

It's not better than elk. It is delicious. It's different. I mean, it is delicious. I wouldn't say it's better than elk. Elk is my favorite meat, but it's right there. It's right there. It's right there. It's really good.

Yeah. Because, you know, I'm not trying to relate those, but antelopes are just super sagey. This is one that he shot in Lanai. So it's a really small animal, right? And they're on this really rugged mountain terrain. Lanai is so fascinating. It's such a fascinating place. And the people that live there could not be nicer, could not be cooler. mountain terrain. Lanai is so fascinating. It's such a fascinating place.

And the people that live there could not be nicer, could not be cooler. It's beautiful, gorgeous paradise. Yeah. But, yeah, it's weird because they've decided to introduce these animals. I think they did it way, way back, hundreds of years ago. And they have to keep those populations in check. And sometimes, again, they bring in snipers. And they put a bench down and they just set up shop and get those long-range skills going. So I was on Maui probably about, I guess, a month ago now.

And I went over to my buddy's house and he has a pretty sweet spread. It's at the top of this canyon and looking down up on the hill going towards Haleakala. And he's like, man man you can come on my property anytime and shoot these fucking deer wow because they come because he's like they're just they're a pain in the ass yeah they're everywhere like we need to get rid of them they come in and eat my oranges and this and that so but what's the tag situation like do you have to i mean is it private license you get a license there's public land you get we hunted public land and we hunted private land but you get a license yeah and then you shoot as many

as you want no limit no limit they want to they mean they have a problem yeah i mean it's not a problem it's not like they're not sick there's not there's plenty of food for these deer yeah that's so they're not getting chronic wasting no no it's beautiful lush and green yeah but they're just everywhere they're everywhere but they're not easy you know if No, no, no. It's beautiful, lush, and green. Yeah. But they're just everywhere. Yeah. They're everywhere. But they're not easy. You know?

If you had a rifle, it's pretty easy. Sure. But it's... You also have to pay and pack and get them back to the States as you go over there. Like, you want to shoot 10 of them? As long as you get them out of here. But it's fantastic meat. Pure, organic.

Couldn't be healthier. They even serve it at the restaurant at the Four Seasons in Lanai. You know? It's just... God damn, it's good. So good. Lean and good. Oh, so delicious.

Just, you feel the nutrition in it. It's just so fantastic, you know? And when it comes to, like, sustainability and ethics, it's, like, one of the best places. Like, that's the place where you actually should be hunting these animals, you know? Whenever I go to Hawaii, I always just feel like I should show my passport. Like, it's... This is not America. It ain't America, man. They stole that shit. That shit is straight up, like, just feel like I should show my passport. It's not America. It ain't America.

They stole that shit. That shit is straight up like it's a foreign country. It is. In a beautiful way. Yeah, in a beautiful way. It's its own thing. Yeah. I mean, I like the fact that you can go there without a passport, but I agree.

But I'm one of those weirdos who think there shouldn't be passports. You should be able to go anywhere. It's part of our problem that everybody's all locked into these land masses and these forbidden areas. Yeah, break those boundaries. Tear down that wall. It's part of our problem that everybody's all locked into these land masses and these forbidden areas. Yeah. Break those boundaries. Tear down that wall. I was just in Iraq and you're talking about some boundaries and sort of lines in the sand and so forth. Boy, you know.

I'm sure. What were you doing over there? So I went with. So back up two years ago, the earthquake in Nepal that killed nine, almost 10,000 people throughout the country. 19 on the mountain on Everest, right? Yeah. Wow. A lot of people got dead.

19 people died in that one, was it an avalanche that got them? Yeah. Well, so the earthquake triggered a lot of glaciers that are hanging up around in that cirque, and it released, and a lot of stuff just blew through base camp and killed folks. But throughout Nepal, throughout the countryside, I mean, we're talking villages that have stone huts and no mortar and no rebar and, you know, just shakes just a little bit and shit falls down. Ancient temples. I mean, the place was decimated. It's a house of cards.

Yeah. So lots of devastation, lots of people dead, and lots of injuries. So that day that happened, I knew I wanted to go to Nepal to help. I'm a PA. I'm a physician assistant, and I specialize in emergency medicine. So I knew I wanted to be there. And more than anything, like, focused on sort of austere medicine. You know, like, I want to go out there where shit's a little bit off

and try and help the best I can. So I went over there. I located an NGO called NYC Medics. What's NGO? A non-governmental organization. So not supplied or, you know, subsidized by the feds. This is just like sponsorship, basically donation money gets you over there and you do your work. So you're not under the auspices of the feds. So went over

there with these guys, NYC medics, which is a group of former New York city paramedics that realized they wanted to take their skills and go do some cool shit around the world. realized they wanted to take their skills and go do some cool shit around the world. So I found these guys. I went over with them. I was on the ground for a month way, way back, like in the way back. This place called Dading Besi, which is right at the base of the Ganesha Mall. So this is a place that we landed in some helicopters and set up shop. And there was a lot of these Nepalales that they're tamang nepali

they're that's their ethnic tribe not sherpa but tamang they see the helicopter come in and these white dudes get out of the helicopter like what the fuck we need help are you here to help yes we're here to help so we had three helicopters worth of gear downloaded it set up our clinic and we're there for a month we saw i don't know seven or eight hundred patients in the course of a month and what started as trauma from the earthquake sort of then segued into primary care like infections and yeah i mean injuries well and also believe it or not like a lot of of of you know psychological pain like they were. The earth was shaking still. I mean, there was tremor after tremor after tremor. I mean, every day the earth would shake.

I got home and for a month after I got back from there, I still felt the ground shaking in Boulder, Colorado. Cause it was just, my body was still sort of the equilibrium was weird. So tremors every single day. So these people needed, you know, anxiety medicines, you know, to be able to take the edge off. So I was over there for a month. We saw a bunch of people and it was very worthwhile. So got connected to this, this, this organization and, and became good friends with, with all the folks who run it and they do amazing work. And so I got a call, uh, in January from one of the heads of the organization says we got this kind of kooky thing that we've been asked to do by the World Health Organization

Would you be interested kooky kooky? That's the word he used kooky kooky Jesus so who the fuck uses kooky so it well I mean when it comes to going to Iraq 12 years in medical school, not understanding what sniper fire is. It was a little bit of a cookie. So he frames it up for me, and he's like, listen, here's what's going on. We've been asked by the World Health Organization to go in and be a trauma stabilization point in Mosul, which means you will be as close to the front line as possible, embedded with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces. to the front line as possible, embedded with the Iraqi Special Operations Forces.

And your job will be to lead a medical team of, we had nine of us, within 2,000 meters of the front line. That was the way it was framed up. And that's what we all sort of signed up for. And that was the agreement with the world health organization and so we would be the first point of contact as these iraqi special operations guys were going in and putting the fight to isis to liberate western mosul so you know eastern mosul been limited liberated you know months before and he volunteered for this by the way so that's all eastern mosul on the other east side of the Tigris. And then on the west side, you know, ISIS was still sort of dug in right there.

And they were there ready to put the fight down. They wanted to get after it and save. You know, that's where their caliphate supposedly started and was was settled. And so our job is the TSP, this trauma stabilization point, was to be as close to the front lines we could be. And this is this was a kicker, you know, within a a margin of safety but still be close enough to where we could receive the casualties as quickly as possible stabilize them and then get them to a forward operating operating suite which was typically um run by allied forces so our guys, so, um, I said yes, before I asked my wife, um, which now in retrospect, probably wasn't the best strategy. Um, cause she was not super stoked, but she, um, you know,

I pitched it to her and I've got an 11 year old kid and, and she gave me, I think the, the least amount of pushback as anybody around me in my close network. I mean, a lot of my boys were like the fuck dude, what are you thinking, man? Like what's, what are you getting? What's your point? What are you doing this for? intention to go over there to a war zone to a combat zone volunteering you know and and and and helping a group of people that you have no affinity for it made sense going to nepal because i love nepal i love i love everything about nepal i love the nepali people so that good everybody got that but that's the weird thing about jeff because he was on the phone

with me at the same time saying hey are we going back to everest to go rescue so he's gonna no matter what sometime in spring he's gonna put his ass on the line to me at the same time saying, hey, are we going back to Everest to go rescue? So he's going to, no matter what, sometime in spring he's going to put his ass on the line to help save people. He was calling me and going, are we going back? And I'm like, I don't know if we're going back. The network may order another season. We'd probably go back. And I started lining stuff up just in case the network screwed it up. Has any of this stuff aired yet?

Yeah, yeah. Everest aired. The name of the show is Everest aired November of last year. Everest aired? And what network did it air on? Travel Channel. Six episodes on Travel Channel. It's on iTunes and a couple other places, too. Okay, so people could get it right now. Yeah.

So you tell your wife. Yeah, and she knew what she signed up for when she married me, so she knew she was kind of getting a little bit of a you know a little bit of a of a wild buck in her hands but um this was different you know i can go climbing i can set my sights on this and that get out there in the mountains or do adventure races and stuff and all that's cool but then you know mad respect to the men and women that serve in our military man and put it out there every day but i've never been in a combat zone that shit is crazy man i mean it is it was real um and i have no uh you know predications that i had any experience close to what our men and women have experienced but from a medical perspective it was

intense to say the least i mean it was a mind bender at the first after after the first three days i remember texting my wife just saying like i don't know if this is sustainable like just this to say the least. I mean, it was a mind bender at the first, after, after the first three days, I remember texting my wife, just saying like, I don't know if this is sustainable, like just this, my emotional state. Cause every day was immense volume of profound penetrating trauma panic. I mean, never was there very, very rarely was there a guy who had one gunshot wound typically, you know, seven or eight or nine. They were leaking from lots of places, you know. These dudes were getting shot up.

And then the IEDs would blow these guys up, and we would get them. You know, they'd be – the ambulance would just scream in and drop these guys off. And then five minutes later, another ambulance would come in with two other dudes, and it was just constant, constant. minutes later another ambulance would come in with two other dudes and it was just constant constant and we would do the best we could to stabilize them or call it and the ones we could save we'd package them up and stabilize them try and control the bleeding we'd intubate them if we needed to and put chest tubes in and and crike them in some cases and stabilize their extremities

and patch their holes and and then send them in some cases and stabilize their extremities and patch their holes and, and then send them on. He would do these weekly daily blogs, right? So people who know him were over there. We're waiting, watching CNN, see if he's going to be on what she was. And he'd do these daily blogs, long, long diatribe, which is I think how he stays somewhat sane, but to get shot at there's mortars come in and their compound. saying, but to get shot at there's mortars come in and their compound. Where are these blogs? On my blog, um, which is, yeah, it's on my website, Jeff B. Evans. There's, I like to write jeffbevans.com. Yep. jeffbevans.com. So I like to write and bud, you're right. And I like to write the time. Well, so this is what I would do at night. Like if I would lay down and we were

sleeping on the floor on these, you know, these Iraqi blankets, you know, and we would just lay down on this. So we'd go into these abandoned homes and we'd set up these trauma bays and we'd sleep in a room off the trauma bay. And so I, you know, we, we do our day. I, I, I very rarely wasn't dressed and ready to get up and go. Cause at any time the head logistician would be like patients, you know, and everybody would pop up and, and get ready. Didn't go out. And the ambulance would throw people on mostly during the day, but fighting would generally subside at night and we'd get a little bit of rest and then I'd write and I'd write. And it was important, I think, to sort of,

you know, percolate that shit out a little bit and let it, let it sit. So we were, we were in this one place for a couple of weeks and then came the request from, uh, the head of ISOF special operations, general boss. And he's came to our head logistical gal. And he's like, listen, you know, as the frontline is moving forward, we would like for you guys, if you are up for it, to move forward as well. The only problem is it's not going to be within that 2,500-meter cushion from the front line. It's going to be more like 500 meters from the front line. 500 meters? Yeah, which, you know know that's really close that's really close especially since the front line's pretty fluid anyway right and this isn't

conventional warfare right these guys are you know their isis is was reinforcing these these vehicles and you know steel plating them up and then taking civilians and handcuffing them to the, you know, to these steering wheels and tell them you best drive. And they drive and they'd be packed full of explosives and C4 and they'd blow them up, you know. And, you know, these guys, you know, Iraqi dudes would be like trying to pelt him to take the dude out. I couldn't get, you know, like shit was was really archaic, but effective, you know. And so so they told us, you know, we'd like for you to move. And then our head logistical gal, Kathy, she's came to the whole team and she said, this

is our, this is our option. You don't have to do it. You know, no one's obligated to do it. Y'all are volunteers. And, and, and by the way, we were close to begin with, I mean, it was, it was constant every day, just mortars and small arms fire. And there was a bunch of of of of artillery that was set up all around us outgoing. So we got used to the sound of outgoing artillery. We didn't hear a lot of incoming because they just had pushed him back. So, okay, we all said, let's do it.

You know, if we can create positive impact and we can save more lives by being closer, let's do it. So we all gotten this big Oshkosh and Humvee convoy and drove down past the airport. And I think a lot of military folks that listen will know that airport in West Mosul very well, probably. We drove right through the old busted up, you know, you know, it was just rubble. The whole airport's rubble. It's just completely it looks like fucking, you know, bedrock, Flintstones, you know, it's just a mess. Drove all the way through there and then went to this house.

And we set up our clinic on a street corner covered by a corrugated metal roof and put all our trauma. We put six trauma beds and got our trauma sleeves up, and everything was ready to go. And then we set up our residence across the street at some other abandoned house, and we're down in this sort of concrete bunker, so to speak. And we started seeing patients, you know day one a ton of people and lots of lots of things happening i mean talking dozens and dozens of you know

multiple gunshot wound patients multiple careers that i experienced in that month of just the flow of volume of, of penetrating trauma. So then, then, uh, it was day two or three, all these displaced locals, um, basically got released. So they'd been holding them at a checkpoint, fingerprinting the fighting age males, making sure they're not on a record and, you know, making sure everybody's not, not strapped and letting them through. So on day three or four, they just let this flow of humanity started walking down the street about 60, 70 yards from us, from where we were set up, and they'd see the Americans and they'd see the stethoscopes and they'd just start running towards us

because these people had been captivated for uh in in you know and held captive and hiding out in their basements eating grass you know trying to find any fluids at all to drink there's no rain water you know this is fucking rain there and and uh just just eking by and little kids i mean these are civilians these are little bitty kids and they're hiding out in these in these homes and they would just run they would just take off by and little kids. I mean, these are civilians, these are little bitty kids and they're hiding out in these, in these homes and they would just run. They would just take off running and get to these checkpoints. So on day three or something, they, this flow of humanity comes by, these guys are starting to sort of bum rush our spot and everybody starts to get a little bit panic because we weren't quite sure what was, what, there's a lot it turns out a lot of bad things could happen you know in that situation so we sort of get our our security detail to

keep everybody away and we we treat a shit ton of people day four rolls around and we wake up that morning and the first patient i have is a five-year-old little girl that had been just absolutely like homicide, like killed, shot right in the head, assassinated. Back of the head. Back of the head. Yeah. And that was how our day started at like, you know, seven in the morning, that was it. And the day got worse. So the first incoming landed about, I'd say about 75 yards from us an rpg it landed in the neighbor in the neighbor's yard next to us and it just blew a bunch of debris up and it landed on our corrugated roof there and and we were all like damn but we kept working then 10 minutes later maybe another

one came in and it was 50 yards and just getting closer this second it's called a grid it's a clit it's a little click 75 50 25 so we didn't know it at the time though but yeah you're right that we did not know this at the time so uh that one obviously got everybody super tingly um but there was still a shit ton of people coming in. We had patients. I mean, we were working. And we had our Kevlar vests on, and we were trying to, you know. Then the third one hit, and it landed right outside the door.

And it blew a shit ton of debris. I mean, we felt the blast. And one of our medics got a big piece of debris in the back of his leg. It knocked him down. So we went into this bunker, basically, this staging bunker. And we sat down in there. And, you know, no matter what, we couldn't, we weren't going to go out into that. But then, 30 seconds later, one of our security detail dudes carried in our head of security and he was lifeless and dropped him on the table.

This is a dude we'd been, you know, eating cookies with and drinking tea with like a half hour, you know, an hour before, you know, standing at the door in between, you know, ambulances. This is our guy, you know, and he was dead. And so we all looked at each other. And I was the team lead. And I tell you, man, I wasn't about to ask anybody to go out into that. And no one even hesitated. We went out and started working on Hasib. And we got on him quick. And he was out. And I listened to his lungs. He didn't have any lung sounds on one side I saw some penetrating entry wound in his chest put a chest tube in his in his right in his right thorax and about a liter of blood poured out from his pleural space just like that and as soon as that happened he could inspire

again and so he started breathing and resuscitated him so he was dead and he came back to life he was he was he was unable to to inspire so you know his whole body had shut down from number one from the shock blast right and and being hit that hard by by a piece of shrapnel and just being that close to the impact but then also you know this penetrating uh piece of shrapnel went right through his chest and didn't hit any of his vital organs, just caused this hemothorax, this blood to fill up in his pleural space. So, you know, I evacuated all that blood and he started to be able to breathe again. So there he is. He's back. We get him out.

We go back inside the bunker there. And a couple hours later, we got out. inside the the uh the bunker there and a couple hours later we got out so we find out the next day that a dude not a fighting age a local guy was a sleeper cell and that he had come back in the neighborhood and was three or four houses down and was communicating with his operatives and his ISIS bros, you know, two, 300 meters away, and was releasing pigeons to identify our position. So the way they figured this out, one of our security guys would see a pigeon go up, and he didn't think much about it, and then a mortar hit. And then, you know, 10 minutes later, he's like, there's no pigeons around there, right?

Because, I mean, shit's crazy. It's a combat zone, and birds don't dig combat zones. So he kind of started to piece it together. And then he realized on the third one, he's like, he saw a pigeon go up and he goes, we're about to get hit. Sure enough. So we got out of there, saved Hasib's life. He got out and they went and found this dude and got his phone. And sure enough, he was doing all this and he admitted it. He's like, yep, that was me. I was doing, I was releasing pigeons to identify your spot. And I was told they took care of the situation. That was what I was told. To try to kill the Americans who were trying to help everybody. Well, yeah. So ISIS wanted us. I mean, they wanted to get us because we were there. We were helping

the enemy, right? Jesus. So that was a couple months ago. So they documented it on his website. CNN was interviewing him, and there's mortars dropping. It was crazy. Yeah, it was heavy. How long were you over there for? About a month.

How do you decide when you're leaving? Well, they knew, this NYC medics, they knew this NGO knows like it was hard to sustain that, you know, I mean, with the concentration. It can't help but affect you. I mean, that's why so many of our military folks have such profound PTSD, right? It's just from getting your ass kicked like that. I mean, these guys go through these deployments that are just months on end of that, right? Right. You just can't imagine how much, you know, how that hurts.

And then go back to Kansas and try to go to the grocery store. Yeah. It's hard to fathom, you know. Hence the black tar tootsie rolls. Well, right. So social. It's not black tar. It's mushroom.

I don't know what the fuck it is. I'm just, that's the only reference I know. Oh, those kids with their dope. These young kids. Wow. Yeah. So that was kind of, it took me a little bit to to uh to roll out of that and thank god for my wife man she i came back and we went on a run up in the hills like a few days later and we got up to the top of this hill and i just i just cried on her shoulder i just let it go and since then i'm fine but it gives me such a deep appreciation for how hard it must be for, you know, for these men and women who come back from these deployments.

And they've been a part of these things and and been affected so profoundly. It's it's it's got to hurt, you know, on a very deep emotional level. Oh, God, I can only imagine, man. God, I can only imagine, man What a crazy life you live Helping people that are involved In traumatic situations over and over again Various traumatic situations Whether it's getting stuck on K2

Or whether it's getting But he seeks it out, that's what he does I just wanted to bring him in, he's like What am I going to do this spring that's going to change 50 people's lives Where's K2? K2's in Pakistan Is that a more dangerous one than Everest? I think generally the consensus is 50 people's lives. Where's K2? K2's in Pakistan. Pakistan. Yeah. Is that a more dangerous one than Everest?

I think generally the consensus is it's more technical, it's more dangerous, and it's not as commercialized, right? When they say more technical, what do they mean by that? Well, there's just longer bits of terrain that require more high-level technical climbing skill. technical climbing skill. So more exposed, steeper, you know, more, you know, longer stretches of hanging it out there kind of terrain. You better have your shit dialed or you're going to get smoked. And you, and when they go on these like crazy hikes,

like you have to have very specific kind of gear too, right? Like they must have like the clothing pretty dialed in. Yeah. I mean, remember those pictures of Mallory, right? Look where it's come. Like this dude was in wool, which by the way, wool is pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah.

It's pretty good. A lot better than cotton. A lot better than cotton. But now, you know, it's a matter of getting the right gear that works and you can rely on it. You know, I mean, I don't want to be 20 miles back and you know in the backcountry hunting elk and have my thermo rest have a hole in it so i sleep in the dirt for five days which is what happened to me last fall i was by myself and

you know it's way way back in the first night you know my therm rest had a hole i didn't have a patch i just laid in the dirt for five nights. How was that? Picked my dick off. Yeah, you get cold from it, too. Fucking cold. If you're pad. I have to put my pack under. You just, you know, whatever. Yeah. Fat some nights like that.

So, yeah. Wait a minute. You were upset because you had a hole in your air mattress? It was flat, man. I had nothing. I had nothing. You bagged on the Japanese guy because he had a hole in his mattress. Well, which guy?

The guy that came down? Yeah. Well, he called a hole in his mattress. Well, which guy? The guy that came down? Yeah, well, he called a helicopter and I sucked it up. He called a helicopter because he had a hole in his mattress?

Yeah. This is a funny story. So I got a call and said there's a Japanese guy and he's dying at camp two. Dying? Dying. Yeah,

he's telling everybody he's fucking dying. He's dying. So we're like, holy shit, all right, so I got to get the helicopter, get the helicopter,

they risked their lives, they go up there, they get him, fly him down base camp, base camp to Lukla, where our air station was, get that helicopter, and I'll let Jeff take over. Well, yeah. And then, you know, I started, you know, asking him. He's as pleasant as he can be. And what's going on?

Do you hurt? Do you have pain? You know, he's very, very tired. Very, very tired. Hole in mattress. And I'm like, you have a what? He what? And he said, I have a hole in a mattress. And he was at camp too and was sleeping in the snow and had a hole in his mattress and didn't tell anybody. It just was basically he was done.

Like we were talking about earlier. He was done. And because he's got money, he calls in the cavalry and says, bring me a helicopter. Jeff was pissed. I was fucking pissed. Pissed. A lot of people risk their lives. I saw a dude on Denali do that mid-base camp in 1996 or 7.

This dude shows up with a Boy Scout, old school Boy Scout, like Weebelo looking fucking thing. You know, like made of cotton, I guess, you know, with, like, some weird synthetic shit. And he asked me for a knife to be able to cut the plastic off of it, you know, and I'm like, man, that's not a good idea. Where are you going? And I didn't want to, you know, I should have questioned him. Two weeks later, we get a call and have to go up to 17 000 feet for a guy who had broken his ankle so we land the helicopter down at 17 and he runs towards the helicopter which everybody knows is you don't run towards the helicopter it makes a little difficult he runs to the helicopter i'm

like he's got a so it turns out he was just cold i'm telling you man like a lot of people just tap out and because they know there's an infrastructure around that will pull them out. Instead of being accountable for themselves. That's where I get pissed. So we pulled this guy off and we interviewed him. And then Jeff goes, the nicest thing, he says, have a nice life. Walks up and just starts cussing and piss. He didn't want to do an interview.

This is a Japanese guy? Yeah, yeah. Didn't want to talk about him. It's very dangerous to fly a helicopter at that altitude, right? Selfish. Anything can go wrong. I mean, our helicopter pilots were, I mean, absolutely the, other than military pilots, got to be the best helicopter pilots in the world.

I mean, these guys are so skilled and understand what those conditions make you do as a pilot. It was phenomenal. But that being said machines break yeah i put him in a helicopter one time we put up a bunch of helicopters one time and that helicopter and that pilot are dead now yeah from that well no like a few months later i was in the bird with that guy i'm fine he crashed into a cliff yeah won't name won't name the company but yeah we there was that one little flight we put them in there yeah and then rack that was a rickety old helicopter when you do all these

really high stressful high danger sort of situations you're constantly around people that have this extremely high threshold for the extremely high tolerance to discomfort to uh you know pushing your endurance levels overcoming obstacles like be you you're around people that are like really solid human beings like they're very on like we're talking about people that are willing to summit everest people that'll rescue people that summit ever, people that are willing to do these medical stations 500 yards or 500 meters from the front line. I mean, you're talking about some really solid human beings, very, very unusually solid human beings. When you come back from that and deal with people like, oh, my fucking cell phone's such

a piece of shit. You know, like, oh my God cell phone's such a piece of shit you know like oh my god there's traffic oh my god like that is that one of the hardest transitions like the modern first world problems gripes the bullshit that people whine and bitch about yeah yeah that was part of the discomfort i had when i came back from iraq specifically um was you know the delay in flights and specifically, um, was, you know, the delay in flights and just how pissed businessman Bob gets, you know, like, come on, dude. I let like Louis CK, you know, bit about, you know, you're not fucking walking, you know, like 13 of you're dead when you get back, you know, like, no, I'm just, I've been on a gratitude tour since I got back. Like, I'm just grateful for everything.

I'm so grateful that I was born by a random stroke of luck, you know, in Roanoke, Virginia, with good parents and a good family structure and was given all the opportunities that I was given. And I wasn't born in Mosul and hiding in a, you know, a cellar from the most evil dudes on the planet. Yeah. I mean, it's just a, it's, it's great. So I've come back and instead of getting mad at those people or frustrated with those people, I just try and smile through it and just think, you know, to myself, like, man, I wish you could taste what I tasted just not that long ago. You know, like it really recalibrated me, um, where it just doesn't, you know, I just let it Teflon off, you know, to a certain extent.

And with regards to the people that I work with, I tend to, I think, gravitate towards people who, um, like these chaotic sort of environments. And I got turned on to this thing that was this concept, this acronym, that the American Military Academy kicked off a few decades ago, I think 30 years ago or something. And they started referring to working in these VUCA environments, right? Volatile, uncertain, chaotic, ambiguous environments, and how we operate in those environments and how true champions and leaders like Alex can operate in these places, in these atmospheres that are just absolutely shithouse sideways.

And when things go crazy, how do you handle, how do you manifest it? You know, what are you, do you handle how do you manifest it you know what do you what are you doing are you flipping the fuck out are you withdrawing you know and we all have different methods for dealing but I feel like I've kind of gravitated towards those kind of people yeah I just got done reading Sebastian Junger's book tribe I just read it too when I got back amazing it's amazing yeah it reminds you of of where we are and where we've been. Yeah. And also why people do gravitate towards those environments and like what they get out of

it and how this life in these intense environments sort of, it magnifies so much of what it means to be human. And to be a part of something that's bigger than you. Yes. That's the phenomenal thing. And I read, I read a younger, I read that book too, right when I got back. So just like last month I read it and it was a great tool for me. My, my SEAL team buddy told me to read it when I got back. And he says, all the team guys have read it because of that. It reminds them of why. Yeah.

Why, and then why things are a little bit, the threads come undone a little bit when you're not in that tribe, right? Yeah. Pretty remarkable. Yeah, and how many people live in environments where they don't know their neighbors, there's no danger, there's no excitement,

there's no nothing and they live this muted terrifying life in a lot of ways it's terrifying because there's nothing there it's empty it's there's a void and it's not how human beings are supposed to be we're supposed to be confronted by a certain amount of difficulty supposed to be challenged right and life's very insulated and uh and soft and as a result we insulate further, I think, from that. And then we medicate to deal with the hollow feeling that you get from being isolated and insulated. But I think that's the question for earlier, which is why people climb Everest, why you climb K2, why you go to the street. I did not climb K2.

I know, but you push yourself. Why anybody does that? Why do the people push themselves? Yeah. Yeah. Well, and why do we hunt push themselves yeah yeah yeah well and why do we why do we hunt yeah why do we run yeah why do we do the things that we do because it creates engagement for me and no i'm not running for my life but create struggle i did run for my

life just a few months ago you know and and i you know i look back now and that was that's the fucked up thing that i think so many military folks really struggle with. And that's what Younger talked about in that book was, how would you find the environment you were in was so precarious. And it was just so tenuous. It could be wiped out in any second. And yet you want to go back there. could be wiped out in any second and yet you want to go back there you know i got my i got an avalanche on that mountain almost dead turns out i want to go back why why like what why right what is that that that wiring that that makes you want to but you know why because they want to be with

their boys and their gals and like you know in it in it connected feeling like you know our shit is tied together. Why do I want to go back in the mountains? The same reason, because I want to go with the same boys and get the same sort of, you know, intense experience. And I think that we miss that. I miss that. I really do. Jeff's got this thing he wants to teach his son.

And when we were up there in Everest, he kept on talking about teaching his son to serve others, be positive role model and serve others. And I don't know where that comes from in him, but that's what he always talks about. Well, I think it started with Eric, right, because that was the foundation of my relationship with my blind buddy. I was a selfish dirtbag climber in JTRI, you know, in the mid-90s. And I met this blind dude who needed an ally. He needed a friend. he needed a guide he needed not just a guide but he needed his he needed a teammate and not somebody that would that he could trust but somebody that would eventually trust him and that's pretty that was

pretty wild for him to ask at some point for a sighted person to trust a blind person on the side of a rock face or the side of a mountain because you know it's hard enough with everything and you take away your your vision and you know shit just gets amplified and eric's pretty famous i mean he's he's summited what is he summited well he's done the seven summits so the highest point i used the seven continents i was on six of them with him and he went down to antarctica while i was in medical school uh but then you know he's gone on to do a lot of stuff he's a he's a bad dude man And so I was on six of them with him. And he went down to Antarctica while I was in medical school. But then, you know, he's gone on to do a lot of stuff.

He's a bad dude, man. He's a very bad man. Motivational speaker. I mean, he's a great dude. Yeah, Eric Weinmeier. So, I mean, but to be honest with you, he'll tell you. He'll be the first to tell you that kayaking in a boat by himself down the Grand Canyon was way scarier than anything he's ever done. Whatever. Yeah, because you don't know what's going on the

violence and talking about chaotic environment around you just you barely hear the dude in your ear and sometimes not at all all you can hear is his violence and somehow he just paddles through and then you know he'll get tossed and go under and have to roll back up and it was he tells me that you know he had his own little version of PTSD from that, from just being freaked the fuck out and having nightmares. How long was that travel? 200 and something miles. How long did that take? It was a couple of weeks. Yeah. 12 days, maybe something like that. I think it was. Yeah. Pretty remarkable, man. Pretty remarkable. Yeah. I can imagine. It's a, yeah, it's a bad dude, but it does it does um it is a reoccurring theme this uh this

thing where people are in these incredibly hostile dangerous scenarios and they want to go back they get over it and then they want to go back yeah yeah and i mean the challenge or whatever you get out of it is that him yeah that's him oh there's a video of him doing it oh yeah you bet was he born blind so he was born with a degenerative retina disease called retina. Look at that shit. Oh, my God. I mean, that'll swallow you, bro. How do you spell his last name, Jamie?

W-E-I-H-E-N-M-A-Y-E-R. So wine is what he does in the mountains sometimes. And then mayor of the city. Wow, that's an old image. He's got hair right there. Wow. But, yeah, that's him right there. That's on Everest. That's pulling up the city. Wow, that's an old image. He's got hair right there. Wow. But yeah, that's him right there. That's on Everest.

That's pulling up the top. But he's a bad man, dude. And, you know, everybody loves him some super blind dude, you know, and I think that's why our relationship is so strong

is because I'm not afraid to give him some shit and kind of keep him grounded. But behind the scenes, he blows me away. Wow. I ain't gonna lie to you. He's a very special human being. It's crazy that he can figure out how to balance that and figure out how to go left and go right. Well, he's an amazing athlete, first and foremost. I mean, if he was sighted, he could have been like a pro ball player. You know, he's just got that sort of

body awareness. And then, so he's born with a degenerative retina disease. So he was under, he was blind, legally blind, but then his retinas unraveled. And at the age of 13, it was totally lights out. And then his mama got killed in a car wreck two years later. Um, and so he, I mean, it was, it was step up. Fortunately for him, his dad, uh, his dad was a Marine fighter pilot, Ed, and Ed was not about to let his blind son sit back and let life go by. So he grabbed him by the scuff of the neck and took him on all these around the world

as he got stationed in different places. And Eric just realized, like, pony up. Ain't got time for sitting around, son. Wow. Get up. And he did. And he found rock climbing, and then rock climbing turned into mountaineering, and that's when we met, 23 years ago, 23, 24 years ago now.

I think this is all very hard for some people to process, especially people that haven't experienced very difficult things or very scary things or dangerous things, you know, that this, that people would long to do this, to be a blind guy who's going through 270 plus miles of water in a kayak, or to be someone who wants to summit Mount Everest, or to be someone who wants to be a medic in a war zone or to be Sebastian Younger who's out there, you know. Embedded. Embedded for years. Right.

Years. And I think that maybe the general population might look at that and feel like maybe it's reckless or some are super inspired and like, man, that's so great. And then others are like, yeah, I mean, I'm down, dude. I'm psyched that you're out there charging because then that's so great. And then others are like, yeah, I mean, I'm down, dude. I'm psyched that you're out there charging because then that sets the template. And what it does, I think, for a lot of people,

it just says, oh, that blind guy can do it. Well, then that means I should stop feeling sorry for myself because I'm feeling low today. Guarantee you, there's a lot of times when I don't feel like training. I don't really feel like going out and doing something hard. And then I'll think, I need to train harder to be strong enough that when shit goes sideways, I'll have his back. Yeah, and when you do train for something like Everest, how do you prepare for something like that?

Climb. Just climb. Up and down, up and down. Lots of weight. Like a place like you go you go to boulder or somewhere in the mountains above it or something like that yeah like way up in the hills and like big long days like long days like 10 12 hour days that's how you train yeah how many does he do a week i don't you know i mean two or three probably like big long days i try to you know get broke the

fuck off at least you know a couple times a week. Right. Where I'm like, oof, okay. And are you carrying weight on your pack and doing the whole deal? You know, those days of carrying big heavy weight, I've kind of stopped doing that. I just go because I like to feel a little bit more free. There was a time when I would put on a big pack, you know, and just to feel that weight on my traps. Joe's only asking if he's experiencing 45 pounds. He has a new vest he was testing out the other day.

Yeah, I think I saw him. Well, I'm asking because it's crazy how 45 pounds is just not much at all. No, but it's a lot, right? When you start walking up hills. It's a lot. Yeah. But, you know, some of these guys are probably carrying way more than that, right? Like 60, 70.

Oh, on Denali? Like a Denali pack's close to 100 as a guide the clients would typically have owns a hundred pound pack and a 20 or 30 pound sled that was with those were Denali days and that's a 12 13 14 thousand feet that's not Bell Canyon that's yeah what are these guys built like I mean the ones who are good are pretty pretty narrow how the fuck are they carrying that much weight i carried that much weight for years and years and i mean i was a buck 50 back then you know and and would carry 100 pounds and it hurt you know but you just i mean remember mountaineering is slog i mean when you're really moving like on that kind of mountain it's a slog

it's really slow and then you get on technical terrain you best lighten your load that when you're really moving, like on that kind of mountain, it's a slog. It's really slow. And then you get on technical terrain and you best lighten your load. You're not carrying 100 pounds then. You're carrying a light, light pack. Light is right. Ounces make pounds. Pounds make pain. Right. And you've got to feel like someone carrying 100 pounds, you have to build up to that, no?

Yeah, yeah, for sure. There's all these weird stabilizing muscles and your hip muscles and your lower back and oh man i just i couldn't do it now i mean i couldn't do it i'm just i get sore thinking about it but i mean this was back in my 20s when i was doing you know back-to-back denali trips and you didn't know any better i didn't know any better and it was like this is fun it was fun and it was cool i used to do a lot of expeditions because i was the quintessential dirtbag just so i could go eat you you know, so I could get fed. And I didn't even care.

I mean, I would have done it for free. You would go on expeditions just so you could get some food? Just to know I was going to eat some dehydrated food, yeah. I mean, I was living in my van, man. How did you start out being this guy? I grew up in – I was born in North Carolina in the Smokies, and I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia. And my parents are not adventurous at all. But, you know, my dad and mom were both just working, you know, middle class, you know, hard working middle class folks.

And I was just a restless punk, you know, I was just super restless, getting in trouble all the time. I got arrested several times before I was 18. Just bad. Just restless and dumb, like most of us, I think. Went to school at Tennessee for a year and got a 1.2 my first semester and a.6. It's possible to get a.6. Wow. I got a D in racquetball.

No. Yep. No. True story. You just weren't paying attention? No, I was drinking brown liquor and chasing women. Hmm. And I was good at it.

I was good at both those things. And so I failed out and then I moved to Colorado in 1989 and moved to Boulder and was just a bunch of hippies. And like I was into the Grateful Dead and I was, you know, tapping into some good fun things and growing my head. And I fell in with a group of climbers pretty quick off who were a couple years older than me. And they basically took me under their wing and sort of gave me this apprenticeship and taught me how to not get dead. Wow. Yeah. Boulder's a real weird spot, right? There's like fly fishing there and kayaking and hikers and everyone's riding mountain bikes and everyone's fit.

It's weird. Everybody's fit. Where's the fat people? There's no fat people in Boulder. It's so weird. No, no. You walk around, everybody's got like Solomon's on and shit. Everybody's coming in from a workout.

Yeah. Yeah. Whole foods, everybody's stinky and buying some granola. They're all sinewy and shit. Ranchers. There's a lot of people. So I just, I've lived in Boulder on and off for 28 years. I went to medical school in Philadelphia atiladelphia at drexel medical college pennsylvania other than that i've been in and out of boulder

for 28 years and i um we're moving to evergreen uh we're moving to evergreen colorado which is a super sweet spot but yeah the reason i'm leaving boulder is because it's just it's pretty congested man a lot of people live there that's hilarious a lot of people live there. That's hilarious. A lot of people live there. And now I'm riding on the 405 here. 200,000 people? I don't know how y'all do it, man. One of the people I was talking to, Lanai, she was saying that she's going to bring her nieces to California. They've never been outside of Maui. They've been to Lanai and Maui.

That's it. That's it. So they haven't even been to fucking Honolulu. And now she's going to fly them to Los Angeles. They're going gonna go to Disneyland oh universal like what in the fuck she give him some mushrooms see what happens you don't need to that would just be overlaid I remember when I was a kid and uh we went from uh New York to or from Boston rather than New York for uh some um I think it was for a karate

tournament or something like that but we were driving up the West Side Highway and you see the city looming in the distance like the Death Star. And I remember thinking, what in the fuck is this? How are there so many buildings? Boston's a city but it's not that kind of city. It's not Manhattan. Yeah, Manhattan is

something very unique and special. Death Star. Yeah, and you pull up to it and you're like, what is this? It was so intimidating. Well, that could go either way for those kids, right? very unique and special and you pull up to it and you're like what is this? It was so intimidating. Well that could go either way for those kids right? They could just be fascinated by the energy or bug the fuck out

and can't wait to get back to Lanai. The amount of stimuli that you get in an environment like that is just overwhelming but you're like boulders too much. It's too much. Too many people man. There's almost a hundred thousand yeah we can't do this anymore i don't like to sit in my truck i like to move you know if i'm gonna go drive somewhere i want to drive there and park and get out and go in and do my

deal and come back and then you know the trails are pretty pretty populated too you know yeah you go climb and you've got to wait in line sometimes. So if you go up like roped climbing, like when people are going up sides of mountains and stuff? You better get there at dawn. Really? Get up, yeah. It's a lot of people getting busy out in the woods, which is cool. But, you know, I'm just feeling like there's a lot of folks. Turns out the older I get.

The less people he wants to talk to. But do you think also that's you're involved in these intense situations like being in Iraq or like being on Everson. Sometimes you just want to sit back and process it all. Yeah and sit on the rocking chair. I like to you know I want to mow my yard on a tractor. I want to drive my tractor

around and you know sip on a beer. I'm a southern boy at heart and I like quiet things. I know a bunch of guys who have moved out there for that very reason. Yeah. It makes sense. And so we're moving there here in a couple weeks. That's awesome.

And the landscape couldn't be prettier. It's nice. Beautiful. It's real nice. How are the winters? Brutal. They ain't Gold Hill winters, though. No.

No, that's way worse. But it's brutal. You know. No, that's way worse. But it's brutal. No, it's real. You got to get ready. Yeah, we live on a dirt road. Holla. Yeah. You're out there, huh?

I pulled up to Joe's house. There's an old power wagon, his old house in Boulder, an old power wagon with a snow plow, and there's a couple snow machines out there, and I'm pulling my... Do you know why those things are there, Joe? Because you got to plow yourself out. I'm not scared of snow, man. When I lived in Boston, I drove a van. I delivered newspapers.

I drove 365 days a year. So I drove every fucking day. Every time a blizzard hit, every time snow hit. I'm not scared of snow. I know how to drive in snow. I mean, it's not fun to get stuck, and you will get stuck, but it doesn't bother me bother me it doesn't freak me out but to someone who's never been in snow yeah it ain't the place but if you had to choose between like it's you know it's it's a tough call because like would you rather live in like phoenix right now i heard it's 124 degrees that they're canceling flights

because it's so hot they're canceling flights yeah you know yeah i mean i don't because it's so hot they're canceling flights yeah you know yeah I mean I don't do something about that cold and snow too that's like really peaceful like there's something that people don't like I remember when I was a kid one of the things that I really liked about snow is especially when I had to deliver newspapers it's like I would have to be out there and you would hear nothing because the snow muffles all the sound. So it's like you get a kind of peace and quiet that you don't, no one's driving because it's, you know, there's two feet of snow. So you're out there and it's just nothing, nothing.

And everything's soft. And you hear that for your feet on the ground and that's it. You know, it's like you and then I think people that live in those environments like live in the cold you appreciate summer for real. Like you really appreciate summer out here every day is summer. Nobody gives a shit. It's 75 degrees and perfect in January. Yeah. You know, and you go into Boulder and on the CU campus, you know, like you get a 60 degree 50 degree day in the spring

and all the bitches just go down to their daisy dukes whoa you know like they're like put up those feathers yeah let that scent fly whoa yeah wow so what's next for you man what are you gonna do now i don't know we're gonna figure it out between now and next spring because spring's when i start get the itch you know to go do something and so how do you guys work it out do you like come to him with an idea or does he do you guys sit down and talk about it well we can't talk about our can't talk about potential well he just pitched something to me yesterday that's pretty interesting and adventurous and fun and curious and a mystery to a bit of a, Jeff's good TV.

I mean, he's a good person in general, but he's also really good TV. We have a mystery. Two guys have already died trying to do it. Oh Jesus. Um, check, check.

Yeah. And it's pretty dangerous. And I want to put a team together and Jeff leading the team and see if we can go pull it off. Oh my God, dude. Listen, don't die. And, uh, come back when you live and we'll talk about it come back when i live yeah yes i like that idea it's fun

living turns out oh yeah i enjoy life and do you enjoy it more when you come back yeah yeah once again like gratitude tour like you know like i love it all't, my kid's a total slob and like really just drop shit and makes mess everywhere. And I'm like, I love that boy. You know, like you're a little fuck up and I just love you. Well, just remember what you were like. Yeah, exactly. And boy, I mean, it's, it's, that's, that's the universe saying, what's up, bitch? Yeah. Here you go. What are you going to do with this kid? You going to take him to Everest? Yeah.

He's a little long-haired kid that's just trying to find his way, and I can relate. He's trying to figure it out. No one just knows their way. There is no everyone finds their way. No, you have to. I'm still looking, man. You always will be. Yeah, and that's the good thing.

I think that's part of why I'm doing it. I'm still looking. 100%. I'm still trying to figure it out, and I'm trying to do the best I can helping people where I can. I don't have a wide array of skills, but I know how to help people when they're having a hard go. That's a great path, though. I mean, the path of service, the path of helping people, and the and the experience that you get from that. It's, it's very positive. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I feel like if I can instill any of that into my boy, like I win, you know, it's be,

be grateful, like live, live a grateful life. And, and by living that, what does that mean? It's like, you know, pay it forward, show gratitude, show love, show compassion, um, and, and allow people to, to be the best version of them and do the best you can to make them better. You know, well said. And I didn't know, I didn't know that until I met Eric, to be honest with you. He was a catalyst for all that. Wow. That's amazing that one person can change the course of your life that much just by existing and being around them and experiencing how they navigate life. Yeah, that's what I learned.

Well, listen, man, thanks for doing this. Really appreciate it. I'm honored. Bud, thanks for bringing him on. We'll do it again back when you guys survived because you're going to survive, right? Yeah. Okay, we'll do it again.

Yeah, it's not that bad. We'll do it again and we'll talk about it. That was fun, brother. Thanks for having us. Thank you, Joe. See ya.