The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Learn What It's Like to Climb 400 Foot Towers and Battle Lyme's Disease with Eric Canfield | PPP #25

Episode Date: June 4, 2020

During our conversation, Eric and I discuss his journey in martial arts and MMA fighting, what it's like to climb 400' regularly, and his efforts with the non-profit Lyme Warrior to find a cure and better treatments for Lyme's disease.

All right, here we go. Three, two, one. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the People Process Progress Podcast. I'm your host, Kevin Pinnell. We have a great conversation lined up today. Thank you all very much before we get into that for subscribing, downloading, reaching out to me. It's pretty awesome, again, this medium of shooting your voice out and interviews out onto the webs and folks benefiting from it. And again, that's the whole focus of the show is to talk to interesting people, learn what their processes are that help all of us make progress. So today I'm joined by Eric Canfield, fellow jujitsu practitioner with myself here in Southwest

Virginia. Eric, thanks so much for coming on and having a good conversation and tell us a bit about you today. Hey, man. Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to, to talking with you. Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's, I'll say I'm more comfortable now than when you have me in a bow and arrow choke. So that's, that's good. Hey, we're still looking forward to getting back to the bow and arrow chokes. Oh man. Isn't that amazing? Like the, you know, and for folks listening, you know, we practice jujitsu together and it's just you miss, right, the pain and the stress and everything that it takes out of you.

Really, to me, I know at least has made a huge difference of not having that. Yeah, you miss you really miss it. It's a you know, it's a physical exercise. It is a mental exercise. It is a huge mental exercise. No, I mean, you wake up every day and you think, man, I still don't have jiu-jitsu. Right. Yeah. It's a lovely thing. So to that end, let's learn a little bit more about you, where you're from, your journey to kind of get to there, and plus more so, where you're from, where you grew up.

So I was actually born in New Hampshire in my grandparents' house. My dad was an executive chef, and his specialty was opening restaurants. So what he did was he was hired into places. He would open a restaurant, get rocking and rolling, and move on. So we just gradually over the years migrated south and settled in southwest Virginia. And we've been here, I think. in Southwest Virginia. We've been here, I think, my family has lived here since 98. I've moved around quite a bit, but I've made my way back here.

So you were in New Hampshire for my horrible impression. Exactly. Through like grade school years? Nope, nope, actually. And I was actually, I was homeschooled. Okay. But no, I was super young when we lived in New Hampshire, lived in Mass and we moved south. Grade school would have been Maryland and into high school was down here.

Gotcha. So for your entire, um, you know, grade school up through senior in high school was homeschool. Yep. I actually, I actually graduated early. Um, I just, yeah, I took the GED and wanted to get into a technical college. How old were you when you did that? I was 16 turning 17, I believe, or I was right on 17. Okay. Wow. So is that something with homeschooling? Because there's, there's still curriculum,

right? There's still guidelines. There's still education milestones, but do you have, you can kind of set your own pace or your, or your parent, was it your, your mom or your dad that, that taught you?

It was mom. A hundred percent all the way. I mean, she, she taught all of us. Uh, other than my older brother, all of my,

all my siblings were, um, homeschooled as well there i've got four younger siblings um and uh yeah no it was uh it was basically she set the curriculum uh she had tons of guidelines and um no i just i i knew what i wanted to do and And I, I realized early that if you, if you get your, uh, homework, well, when you're homeschooled every day is homework. So when you get your homework done, the faster you get it done, the sooner you can be doing things that you want to be doing. Ah, and the same logic applied to graduating. So that makes sense. So did you have to do some of the standardized tests that folks that go to public school do as far as milestones or not?

And then just the test that kind of said, hey, you met this requirement, was the GED that you took? Yep, I took the ged um basically again so with with the curriculums mom would select it basically had the milestones that you had to reach um and you know i just i you know i saw them as plateaus to climb to and i would get there and move on to the next one nice so what was your what was your vision and what what did you want to do that prompted you to work so hard and graduate early? What were you looking at at the technical school? I mean, so my running joke is my original idea was I was going to be an astronaut. And then when I found out that you have to have 20-20 vision to get up there, I was like, well, that's a botch uh so i was going for uh networking and

security management and uh i was like i said i was at a technical college and uh long story short um i i just it it was not for me it was it just it just wasn't. It was, I think if I'd gone to a traditional university, had a bigger college experience, I might have gone farther with it, for sure. But the technical college was just, you know, it was depressing, honestly. Well, what about it? Did you not like that you think you would have gotten out of a I guess more traditional school well possibly a better education I mean I was I was there for a year and I didn't learn anything I didn't already know and I I the people you're in the classes with, they, they didn't seem to be getting anything out of it.

They were doing it because they had to, or, you know, out of a sense of obligation. I don't know. It's just, it was not, it was not a good environment. It was not a learning environment. Uh, and you know, I also coming into it, I acknowledged that I had a, a environment bias you know I mean we were always both of my parents very much encouraged all of us to follow the things that we wanted to do the things that we were passionate about you know yeah that makes sense so did did um to that I'll ask because I think it's pertinent now with everybody working from home um or a lot of people not everybody obviously um so when you would have home school would you have to get up and get dressed as if you were going to a school each day yep yep we were we were up early um you get up around 6 30 or 7 and you know you the

the standard was you know you're ready for school at 8 30 you know you're ready for school at 830, you know, you're ready to go at 830. And, you know, it generally would run till about three unless you figured out that you could get it done earlier. Yeah. I think that's so huge now with I did earlier episode because I've been working from home since we moved here for a little bit over a year and so kind of used to it yeah which is a great benefit and a great thing for my my leadership to allow me to do that which was awesome but that's one thing uh both practically and which you know from from homeschooling school like that sets the tone like okay get up get ready get you know get yourself physically ready mentally ready and then report to if it's homeschool or if it's your home office or your kitchen table or whatever, but your minds already go in the direction of,

I'm not just going to get up in my PJs and kind of sit on the couch. And not that you can't do that every now and then, and it's a good break, but I think part of that routine seems to make a big difference. And it sounds like whether you're doing homeschool education or you're working from home these days

or whatever's happening. Oh, no, that's 100% the way it is. I mean, that's carried forward to now. You know, I mean, my alarm goes off at 4 in the morning every morning, you know, and I'm up and at it. I mean, there are some mornings, don't get me wrong, there are some mornings where I drag, but, but you know it's get up and go you know so that to your at the technical schools technical college not digging it and so what what was your thought was your process to get you aligned with you know doing what you actually wanted to do? I mean, honestly, so at that time I had kind of, uh, I had taken a step back from, or not taking a step back, but it had not been on the front

burner. I was not doing the, uh, the martial arts that I'd been doing all through my teens. Uh, and I, I knew that was very important to me. So I left the school and I actually started training a different martial art and started working in a restaurant because that's in my family training. Yeah. So let's touch on the martial arts again because I'm sure there's plenty of folks listening or I'm sure plenty of the new subscribers will get because of this episode. So Marshall, what did you start training and what did you train when you were younger coming up? So I started training in Taekwondo. And I'll tell you, my first episode, or first episode, first class my my mother came home and she was like your dad and i were out we found this taekwondo school we want you to go try it and i said no

and she said well i i think you should go try it i i used to play soccer and there was no soccer for me here so i was you know i was like soccer is my thing she was like i think you should go try this taekwondo school and i said absolutely not and she was like if you don't go to the taekwondo school you're not reading any more books or playing any more video games ever again so i went oh yeah that'll do it you know and uh i came home that night i came home that night and i went to mom and i was like thank you for making me go to that class. This is it. This is what I want to do. Nice. What, what did you think, if you remember, like, what, what did you love so much about it?

All of it. Um, it was, it was regimented. It was organized. It was, uh, it was the, the, the way of the warrior, you know, that I idealized in the books that I love to read. It was the first step on the warrior's path, as it were. Gotcha. Yeah. And it seems like a great one, whether it's a little local one or there's some Taekwondo schools in particular that are chains all over.

But as far as the structure you talk about, because I did that when I was younger, too. And then my oldest, who's some Taekwondo schools in particular that are, you know, chains all over, but, but as far as the structure you talk about, cause I, I did that when I was younger too. And then my oldest who's 13 now did that, um, did that through yellow belt of fruit stripes. And it's just a great, get the kids out there doing something, get them focused, you know what I mean? And, and, and those kinds of things. And, um, so yeah, I definitely saw, uh, with, with my kids, uh, for sure for sure that benefit. So it's interesting to hear your perspective on that too. And so how long did you do Taekwondo for? I did it until I was 19.

I got my first degree black belt. And I, as I said, you know, I went to the technical college and kind of stepped out of that school and uh when i when i dropped out of that school like there was a capoeira club at rona college and i was like well you know what i've seen that in some movies i'll try that and uh that was so far out of left field for me and and my my way of approaching uh martial movements would be a good way to put it um but it was a challenge so i jumped on it um and uh it was it was run guy who, uh, he had taken some classes up in Chicago and, and wanted to try to create a club down here. And, uh, actually through that, I actually ended up getting to fly out to California and train with, uh, his name was Mr. Pregisa. And, um, he, I'm probably mangling the pronunciation there but uh he was the at the time he was the last of his generation of instructors uh and he taught all around the

world twice a year you know he would he would disappear during the summer he would train people in France and Brazil and Japan. And, and I mean, his students, his students reflected that he had hit international students. One of my actual, one of my friends from that class, his name was the Toya. He specifically came to the States to train. Oh, wow. That says a lot. And it was, I mean, it was intense, man. It was, you know, he, he would run four hour classes and he would. Those were you know, those were like the Friday night class where he just he just murders everybody right before the weekend. And he would he would he would push everybody.

And if there were people just slacking off and pissed him off and he was i mean he was old he would he would he would start he would start yelling at you in english and wouldn't even realize that he deviated off into portuguese and yet and nobody had an idea what he was yelling about uh but it was i mean again it it falls into you know he wasn't doing the the breakdance fighting that you see in zoolander right he he grew up he learned capoeira as a as a martial art and his style was aggressive and was a fighting style he uh he had two mma fighters that he trained back then. Oh, wow. And so capoeira for folks, I've never done it. It's also Brazilian, like Brazilian jiu-jitsu, right? Yes. Is it dance-based or animalism-based?

It is dance-based. The origin for it came from the slaves in Brazil. And this is my studying of it. I'm sure there are better authorities on this. But the slaves in Brazil, their hands were bound. And so that explains the... The hands are in front of the face, so the hands move together. And the way they trained was to make it look like they were dancing around the fires at night.

But they were training in self-defense, and eventually there was an uprising. And lots of kind of kicks and flip kicks. And it's gotten now, so Mr. Fragisa, he did not highlight the flips and the tricking and stuff like that because it wasn't practical. He was like, you do that, I kick you. He was like, you do that, I kick you out of the air. That's stupid. He had no... Like I said, his

style was aggressive. It was fighting for him. There were... He had a tricking class that he taught on Thursdays or something like that, you know. But it was like 30 minutes, you know. He wasn't interested in it, but he knew that it attracted people. All right.

Kind of like flashy movement. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah. So how did your Taekwondo or did it prepare you for a cap or error? So Taekwondo, like I said, I mean, we trained, we competed. We were, I mean, we went to nationals, I think, four or five years in a row. You know, like we went through qualifiers. Yeah.

Gotcha. And we, on our own, you can't you can't watch a jackie chan movie and not try jump kicking something you know like it's just you you can't not do it so you know like i had some acrobatic movements uh but i was you know so i got i got out there i got done with my first class and we're all kind of circled up at the end and i but i was you know so i got i got out there i got done with my first class and we're all kind of circled up at the end and i was i was so gassed you know it might as well has been the equivalent of my first jiu-jitsu class and i'm standing there and and mr pagisa looked at me and he goes so you ready to go home and i was like i didn't fly all the way across

the country to go home after my first class and he goes okay well tonight i give you flowers and everybody kind of laughs and i was like i have no idea what that means so i i said to a toyah i was like what did he mean he's like you know when you you go out with a girl for the first time and you bring her flowers? I was like, yeah. He's like, and after that, it's work. I was like, ah. So tonight he gave me flowers. And no joke, man.

I remember there was one day where I was in there and I worked a spinning kick for 45 minutes. And that's all I did. He's like, you're not getting it. Just go over here and practice, and that's it. Repetition after repetition. Just reps, just reps. And, you know, again, the warrior path, it clicked for me. I was like, okay, I'm not doing this well enough. I'm not doing this right. I need to do it better. You know,

I didn't think of it as a punishment. I didn't think he didn't like me. It was, it was the training regimen. So think about that. You mentioned a couple of times. So the warrior path, is this something, did it run in your family? Did you have fighters or martial artists in your family? Is it something that you picked up on and said, you know what, I want to train myself and, you know, these two arts, and I know there's, there's some more arts that we'll get into, but what, what kind of planted that seed for you? So I grew up, uh, I, once I learned how to read, I was, I mean, I was off to the races, you know, I, I love to read, um, and the, the stories I grew up on were, you know, the, uh, The Hobbit, uh, King Arthur, um,

Star Wars, that's an easy one, you know, comic books, and, and so you see these heroes, and, and then from there, it, it gradually morphed into this idea as the, you know, I was the second oldest and I'm the biggest in the family. And I was the bodyguard for the younger siblings. You know, whether they needed me to be or not, I was. And, you know, I really, I looked after my younger siblings to a large extent. And so for me, being a warrior, being a protector, being a caretaker, that was important to me. It just made sense. It fit with this person that I created for myself.

If that makes sense. Yeah does totally i mean and that's the thing right is figure out what you want to do put yourself towards it you got to put the work in obviously and then you know staying on that path so and for you the path you know so you got taekwondo capoeira and um you also have a significant kung fu background, right? And you've done fights, right? Like MMA fights? Yep. So weave us to the Kung Fu, the MMA, and the Jiu-Jitsu. How did those come about?

And then, of course, we're going to have to talk about which one was the most effective. Yeah. Yeah. I can narrow that down. So Kung Fu, there's a Kung Fu school in Roanoke, and I started training there through a recommendation from Zach. I believe you know Zach from the Jiu-Jitsu school. And so I started training there um and again you know right back to right back to basics you

know you it's totally different set of movements set of stances set of forms you know the the fighting style is different um and so at this time i then there was the addition of weapons which you know until you crack until you've cracked yourself in the back of the head with a staff or a pair of nuns you don't know what you're missing um i remember i was doing a fighting set and there's a there's a weapon called a a poodle and it's it's supposed to be essentially a broadsword on the end of a staff, right? Oh, wow. And so I had just a staff. I was fighting somebody with a pudau.

And I forgot to jump, and I took it in the shin. And it wasn't combat steel, and it still cut right into the shin. And I was like, just don't tell Sifu. I don't want him to know that I forgot to jump. I was like, I'll just put a Band-Aid on it. I mean, and with that, it's such an ancient art. So when that was actually used, it would have been a blade that would have just sliced you right up. Yeah, yeah.

And I've been super fortunate. One thing I will say, I've been super fortunate in all of the arts that I've studied in having, you know, a fairly direct line of instructors. You know, we had a a Korean grandmaster in Taekwondo. Mr. Pergiso was one of the last of his generation. The kung fu instructor, he was in the Shaolin, you know, he trained in the Shaolin Temple, you know, and then, you know, Tim. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So, and then, all right, so I did kung fu again. I went to Commonwealth Games three years in a row. This all kind of ties together, so bear with me for a second. Is that the MMA fight?

No, this is here in the state of Virginia, Commonwealth Games. So I competed doing Kung Fu it's a mixed uh martial art tournament you know you've got karate guys taekwondo guys you know everybody's in there and i i won three years in a row and then uh and then my father passed away and i you know i was at a complete loss i had no direction you know i mean dad was who i leaned on and um from there i uh i kind of i took a nosedive for about a month and then i was like all right you know what this this does not fit with anything you're doing you know, clean up your act. And, uh, and so actually what I did was I, I ran a couple of Spartan races, um, cause, uh, I had always wanted to try one. And, uh, let me tell you, if you've never run a race and you think you're fit enough to go do a race, practice running. But, uh, so I

was like, you know, I've always, I've always talked about since I was like you know i've always i've always talked about since i was you know in my 20s i was like early 20s i should say i was like i want to do mma so i was like you know i'm gonna sign up i'm gonna do a fight i'm gonna do it uh and the whole basis was dad had always been like you know do what you want, you know, and don't let anybody get in the way. And I was like, I'm doing it. So I signed up for that first fight, got in the ring, and, I mean, we did end up going to the ground pretty quick. But I won with a guillotine, you know. I had no idea what I had.

I didn't know I had a name. I just knew how to choke the guy with this, you know, and I left that fight like that was awesome. I need to find a jujitsu school because I have no idea what I'm doing on my back. And I think I think I think it was a month and a half and I went and saw Tim. Gotcha. And you've been there a couple years now. I've been there I think since was a month and a half, and I went and saw Tim. Gotcha. And you've been there a couple years now? I've been there I think since 2017. Okay. Yeah. So do you find looking back on – or I guess the guillotine, did you pick that up from like watching UFC? Is it actual stuff you picked up on some groundwork from others,

one of the other three arts? It's kind of... I wouldn't even tie it to... We had a seminar way back in the Taekwondo days where some police came in from one of the

local prisons to teach a seminar, like a one-night thing or whatever. And they were like, if somebody tries to sack you you know like hit you around the waist whatever and they've got their head right there just cinch that guillotine and that just that was the one thing that stuck from that whole thing right was how to lock up a guillotine and you know i mean i've i've used it i used it in california i've i've used it in the ring.

I mean, it's effective. Not yet. I was going to say, so the other thing too, so it sounds like with Taekwondo, you did striking in tournaments. So you actually had, you were used to people trying to hit you or hitting you as opposed to just doing forms and never actually doing that, right? So was that helpful? Oh, yeah.

And I think that's huge. I mean, that is huge if you if you spend all day every day training to hit someone and never actually hit someone you have no concept of what it's like to throw a punch or throw a kick I mean you have you have the best way to put it is you have theory and practice you know there is there is, there is the, and I'm sure there are plenty of people that will disagree with me here, but there's the, the theory about the way to do something. And then there is,

this guy's kicking me at the same time I'm trying to punch him. This is not actually going to be as effective as I want it to be right now. What can I do to remedy the situation? Right. Yeah. It's like book verse real world. Yeah. I think, I think, uh, even if all you're doing is light sparring, that's better than no sparring, you know, just to get used to just the movement of a hand coming at you or a foot, you know, it's, it's, if nothing else, it's,

uh, it's, it's tactical, you know, I mean, you're, you can have the idea okay so i i move my left foot forward i block with my left hand i i punch with my right that's awesome that's a good form you know now do that when somebody's just pinwheeling their arms at you with he's in their fist you know i mean it's not gonna play out like that a different deal so with now that you know your blue belt you're doing jiu-jitsu regularly um have you thought about doing more fights or is that something i actually i did a few fights uh after i started training um i did i did three more fights um uh the the first one I did after I started training, I actually, I was on my way to the fight,

and they called me, and they were like, your opponent dropped out. I was on my way. It was a day off. I was weighing in the day off because I'd gotten tied up at work and hadn't been able to go down the night before. And I was on the way. I was halfway to Norfolk, and I was like,

I'm pulled over on the side of the interstate, and I'm like, this is ridiculous. I was like, do you have a heavyweight? And he was like, what? Because I was fighting at light heavyweight. I was like, do you have a heavyweight? He's like, well, I've got one guy who his opponent didn't show up.

I was going to call him after you. And I was like, if he'll fight me, I'll fight him. And he was like, he weighed fight me i'll fight him and he was like he weighed in last night at 247 and i was like i don't care will he fight me and i was like he's like i'll call him and find out and i was like okay i'm gonna stop get lunch because i was i was cutting weight you know right i was cutting to make sure i weighed in and uh i weighed in with my clothes on and my bag on my back so that I hit that 206 and uh and we went we went all three rounds I lost by a point dang something where you gotta it was a blast man I'll tell you what I was the happiest loser to walk out of that

ring that night because he was he was a big dude man and he threw i mean i tell everybody that that fight man he he hamburgered my whole left side did you see a big difference from before and after jujitsu yeah if nothing else you know i i think at that point i've been training for like six months um all i had was uh i had the guillotine i actually have a picture of me with the dude locked up in a guillotine uh he just he was so big he he rolled me right out of it uh but um and then uh and then surviving on the bottom that was it you know i we, you know, we got up against the cage. And I like to think of myself as a big dude. Right.

And so I'm with my back against the cage. I'm blocking. I'm trying to figure out how to pivot him. And then all of a sudden I was in the air, and I'm like, what's going on right now? And then the other part of my brain clicked, and I was like, he picked you up, and the mat's coming real quick. Oh, dang, yeah. And I'm like, I don't remember the last time I got picked up. Right. Yeah.

Since you were a kid. Yeah, for real, for real. Bear down. Yep. Here it comes. Yeah. You know, we were on one of the early episodes of this podcast, too. I had Andrew Smith, who's the head guy or one of the head guys with Revolution BJJ, where I started out of Richmond.

Yeah, yeah. who's the head guy or one of the head guys with revolution bj where i started out of richmond and at one point we were talking about you know just the immediacy there is with jujitsu because you're always applying it against someone else from you know whether you're gonna go through an intro or you just day one or whatever so it's interesting to hear you were six months in and it still made a difference with kind of survivability really. Oh, it definitely did. I mean, I, I'll tell you, man,

he, he probably would have pummeled, pummeled me in the first round if I didn't know how to survive on the bottom. Right. Yeah. It's, it's an amazing thing. Like we said,

like we started off with this, it'll be nice when we hit phase three, hopefully that says, all right, go try. I know. Yeah. Simulate murder. There's something it. I know. Yeah, simulate murder.

There's something. Well, nice. So you are training now, so you've got a martial arts background. So what about your professional career along the way? So as you're training and you did do the technical college, so what took you through your professional process to kind of get where you are now from the technical college to now? So I was, I was working as a sous chef and, uh, I, you know, basically it was what I needed to pay the bills and continue training. You know, that's, that's, that was my logic. And and then the the restaurant i was working at just went under overnight and i was out of work and a buddy of mine his parents had a high-rise window

washing company and uh they were like you know we could use an extra hand do you want to come try it and now i'll be the first to tell you that i don't like heights but wow you know you first of all it was a paycheck and i was like i can i can try to see if i can do this for a paycheck they were like we'll pay you for your first day even if you don't do it and i was like i'll take it dang um and uh and so i you know i repelled off of actually i think the first building i ever repelled off of actually, I think the first building I ever repelled off of was, uh, Lewis Gale over in Salem. And, uh, and I was like, this isn't so bad. And, and really the biggest thing with, with all of it, anything working at height and being in a harness and working ropes and, and, uh, that's, it's trusting and knowing your equipment, you right um and so i i got my start i got

my feet wet uh uh doing high-rise window washing and from there um and that i'll tell you that that job was not fun um it was you know you're you're sitting in the sun in the summer, and you're hanging in the ice in the winter. I remember we rappelled off this 10-story building in downtown Roanoke in January. Literally, you're hitting the ground and breaking ice off when you hit the ground. There's this dude standing there smoking a cigarette watching us and uh he's like you know what you guys need to do and generally as a window washer when somebody asks you that it's followed with you need to come wash my windows so i don't know we were like what and he was like you guys need to set up rock shows and and make some real money you're like yeah okay

and he's like no for, that's a real thing. You just need to go talk to this guy downtown and see about getting on. Because if you're dumb enough to do that, you're dumb enough to do this. So that job actually segued into rigging for concerts. And that's basically, if you've ever been to a concert, everything that hangs out of the ceiling riggers put it there oh wow and so again it fit

together it was you know it's rope work it's harness work it's not being afraid to go to uncomfortable places you know and I just kind of relied on my martial arts for that too you know like the mentality is you know you're in an uncomfortable place.

Figure it out. Yeah, that makes sense. It's interesting. That's where you started doing your rope work when I was much younger before I was in the Navy. I was still a teenager. I was a volunteer firefighter and I got into a rope one and two class. And the two class was here. It was in Roanoke.

And it was off of one of the parking decks one of the tall ones and I think it was to the the old hospital and um and and yeah I talk about trusting because one of our exercises was where you are just in the harness you got your plate you're hooked in but you have to keep your hands on your head and just walk down and let someone else lower you yeah and you're like you talk about a pucker and a walk down and let someone else lower you. And you're like, you're talking about a pucker and a trust factor. And so, you know, and, and there similarly, you got to know, you know, what your equipment do, you're going to burn through your, your plate, you know, ropes, this and that,

all the different tools you have to use pulley systems that I would imagine is particularly doing the window work and then going to rigging. I mean, that just set you up for so much success because you knew the equipment you knew. And that's a question. As soon as you said that when I think of concerts have been to on the rigging, I mean, that just set you up for so much success because you knew the equipment you knew. And that's a question. As soon as you said that, when I think of concerts have been to on the rigging kind of scaffolding stuff over the stage. So did you have to, do you like hoist those up with a pulley system and then someone up there like attaches them or how does that work? Like the speakers and the lights and all that? So basically, uh, it is pure brute strength. It's you're standing on a, you know, four to ten inch wide beam. You lower your rope in.

They tie the steel on and you pull it to the ceiling. Oh, wow. Hand over hand, you know, and getting heavier every handhold. I was going to say to you, I had to say, when I was older, I was a firefighter by where I used to live too and had a guy who was a rope guru so he told me about the mechanical advantage systems,

putting three or four pulleys in there. Did you guys ever use that to save a little bit of weight? Actually, the only time I've ever done that was from rigging. You can get work out of town and i went down to bobcats arena and uh down there it's 100 uh 125 feet to the low steel like 140 feet to the high steel and for that for the for the two-ton motors because what what all that hangs on is the uh like engine hoist motors um so the two-ton motors are super heavy to begin with and then at 125 feet you were setting for the for the loaded leg or a dead hang

i mean you're setting you're setting two shivs and eight guys are pulling it oh my gosh yeah i mean and it's and you're you're pulling in sync, getting it to the grid. Like it, everybody's pulling. Okay. And pull two, three.

Like throwing a Viking ship. Oh yeah, exactly. Holy smokes. So how did you like that? Did you get to see or meet some, some fans and stuff? It's been,

it's been a awesome job. I mean, I, I did it for two weeks and then I got, um, I got on a steel build, like just being dumb enough to say yes, which is, you know, that's an outdoor stage. Um, and that was like a week and a half down in, uh, South Carolina. Um, and you know, I've worked in New York state. I've made some great friends up there in Syracuse doing the New York state fair. Um, they used to, they used to build a huge stage at the grandstand. And that was, I mean, that was a good three weeks of just, you know, going up there and busting ass all day and hanging out with the guys at night. And

you know, I mean, I've got friends all over the country from this job. It's been an awesome job to have. And it's something you can do everywhere. Everywhere has concerts. Do you still go out and do that now? I don't get to go out on the road and do it, but I can pick up a local show here and there if it falls on the weekend that sort of

thing is there any kind of um like industry credential or standard for that like they do they do have those certifications um and i've actually looked into getting them i mean i have been doing this for years uh but honestly you know foot in the door you basically have to you know you got to be able to put on a harness grab a rope and and go stand on a beam and trust yourself and your balance you know gotcha um i mean that was that was me you know i just said yes you know i can right i'd say the the one of the biggest things for me is not finding problems with something I'm trying to do. I just say yes and figure it out on the fly. Right.

Yeah, I wonder because I'm in project management, and I have a project management professional certification. But I understand that certification doesn't make me a good project manager so it sounds similar like you can get this thing that may help on the resume right that says hey i took this test or qualification or something like that but it it sounds like i mean you've you've had plenty of success just because of being willing to put the work in and the connections you've made and stuff like that again it comes back to you know kind of like what I was saying before. It's theory versus application. I can go and sit and read a book, and it'll say X, Y, and Z is absolutely the best way to rig. And then I get into the room or into the ceiling or whatever, and I'm like, that's absolutely not going to work here. Right, yeah. And so then what you fall back on is the experiences you've had in the past you know yeah that makes sense and so we're connected on on the socials

and um so you're still climbing heights but in a different fashion i i am a uh communications tower climber now and that you know and that that segwayed from the concert rigging you know a guy I know I I raved with him and he started the the tower climbing job and actually you know in in retrospect I should have listened to him way earlier he was like man you gotta come do this job it's it's it is awesome and I was like you know I liked you know I was I was training a lot and I was, you know, I had the the illusion of freedom of, you know, I can go out and rig in New York for three weeks. I'm also kind of broke when I'm not rigging in New York for three weeks. Right. But when I did finally, you know, sign up to start climbing towers, I mean, it, it was the rigging world that put me there.

I made that contact, and he was like, look, man, I'd love to have you on my crew. Actually, he was my supervisor. From when you were doing rigging? Yeah. No, he was my supervisor that got me in. He brought me in. And I basically came in and ran with it. And it's different. It's very different. 125 foot concert tower leg is completely different from climbing a 400

foot Valmont tower. It's a totally different experience. That's all straight up a ladder? Like the built-in ladders you see on the towers? For the tower work? For the towers?

Some of them are ladders some of them you climb the tower leg It depends on the tower. They're different types of towers You know, there's the the monopole that you can see going down the highway and that's just a pole And then there's the guide towers that have all the wires that come down to the anchor points and then there are the self-supported towers that stand on their own legs so you don't have a an ascender like you get if you go up an elevator shaft in call of duty nope where you can actually we were just talking about that the other day and i was like uh i guess i guess if they're over000 feet, they sometimes will have a ladder.

Or an elevator, rather. But no, it's, again, you know, if there's a problem at 320 feet, you're climbing 320 feet. Dang. No kidding. Yeah, man. So you take extra stuff with you so you don't have to go back down or if you drop one thing yep we actually we call them our save a climb kits because we uh you know you put extra nuts and bolts and screws and you know you climb with extra electrical tape and weatherproofing and you uh basically if if you got to go to 400 feet and you drop the one nut that you needed to finish your job, man, ain't nobody going to be happy.

Oh, you're not kidding. Do you find you're that high up between, you know, what I was just thinking of, do you find much damage and stuff that's caused by birds? Yes. Actually, I was going to say our, you know, the one thing that we repair the most is weatherproofing because the crows and the ravens, for whatever reason, like to eat it. Wow. Yeah. No rhyme or reason other than they just like to eat it. Yeah.

I mean, I'm not a crow or raven, so I guess I'm of the same palate. Is that like it's chipping away or something like the coating on it yeah so it's it's a uh i don't know how to describe the mastic it's like a a black goo that you work into the you know components so that water can't get in there and then you basically wrap it to hell with the e-tape oh gotcha um and uh but they but they will eat all of it. And they target it. They don't target any transmission line or anything. They just eat the weatherproofing.

So they must have been doing that for a while, where it's now ingrained in their DNA that's passed along, like, hey, go get this stuff from the tower. Yeah. Or learn behavior or something. Let's just go see if they put more weatherproofing on. You know, so is that something that has to be biologically friendly?

Probably not. I haven't sampled it, so I don't know. It just made me think, too, like, okay, so wildlife's eating it, so someone's probably concerned about that. So I didn't know if they raised it this year or not. It probably isn't, but but it's you know i i don't think anybody ever thought that a bird would eat it so so are you uh and your co-workers the same crews that would have to change the light bulb on the very end of the red wow that's us so those have their own small like peg ladders or something on them or?

The what? The main tower? The very end. Yeah. Like where the light bulbs on the top. We don't have any of those. Ours have generally flat tops and the light, it looks like a pancake and it just sits on top. Oh, gotcha.

Oh, so way, way easier. Yeah, way easier. What is the tallest tower that you work on or that you've climbed tallest tower we have is 400 but i believe we used to have we used to have a 600 foot tower that was that was a little before me um what does it take to get the top of the 400 um best time when uh actually it was before my last fight so i was in much better shape than i am now uh me and and the the young dude on the crew we you know we wanted to see what our best time could be so we made it in 20 minutes wow and that's that was pushing you know you're i was sucking wind he's a he's a rock climber so for him it was you know, you're stuck. I was sucking wind. He's a, he's a rock climber. So for him it was, you know,

a walk in the park. Crazy strength. Yeah, man, for him it's nothing. And, uh, and now I think we just did, we did a 400 a couple of weeks ago.

And I mean, it was probably 35 minutes, 40 minutes, something like that. You know? Wow. And is that constant movement or kind of do a bunch, take a break for a second, then keep going?

I mean, honestly, right now I've been pushing a little bit, obviously, because gyms aren't open, so you're looking for alternative ways to hit the cardio button. But I did, you know, like I think I did 60 feet and took a break, you know, like because, you know, you're hauling your weight and then you're hauling your harness and your tools, which that can work. I mean, tools alone, you know, that can vary, you know, 20 pounds, you know. They in the in the hiring process, they say you got to be able to climb 400 feet with 70 pounds. Jeez Louise.

Yeah. Cause I mean, if you think about it, you know, if you're, if you're doing significant work, um, you're, you know, you've got to haul a rope up. Well, you know, every, every couple of feet that you climb, you're adding weight. So if you're hauling your tools and you're hauling a rope and you're hauling pulleys, it adds up. That's a great consideration, that picture you just planted of the rope as you go is more rope that you're carrying. Yeah, and you don't think about it i was you know i i climbed up i think i was at i was at like 380 feet i had 20 feet left to go and i was like i looked at my buddy and i was like man i am on gas i he's like well here i'll hold the let me hold the weight of the rope and you

you know take the last 20 feet he took that weight off of me you know he was in a position where he could stand and pull that weight up and hold it You know, he was in a position where he could stand and pull that weight up and hold it with his arms. I was like, man, that makes me feel so much better. Cause I was like, man, I am weak. I've lost all of my strength. I got nothing left. It's just the weight of that rope. That's awesome. So you're out, the tower's obviously out in the wilderness a lot, uh, which, you know, the connecting piece being you're also involved in a very great organization called Lime Warrior. Yeah. Right. So tell us about where that came from and kind of what that's all about.

So Lime Warrior is a nonprofit that is aimed at helping fund research for Lyme disease. It was founded by my spouse, who, she contracted Lyme, and it escalated very quickly. You know, I mean, she went from an active person that was doing CrossFit to somebody that was completely bed-bound and had no idea what was going on. She visited 50 different doctors over the span of 12 months, you know, and they were all like, well, you're depressed. Well, you don't, you know, we think it's mental. And finally, someone was like let's test for Lyme and they were like oh hey you've got Lyme so you know she

you know she she started Lyme warrior essentially you know under the premise of well I'll sell some t-shirts and I'll fund research and it went from selling a couple of t-shirts to a international non-profit um she does she has a fantastic fundraiser in February called ink to end lime that's a national uh fundraiser where tattoo shops from all over the U.S. contribute, you know, and raise money for Lyme research. She does another, actually, we literally just sent out in May the Kids Smile Box program where, you know, people donate and we compile these smile boxes for kids that have Lyme because kids are, you know, generally, again, like her, they're homebound, they're bedbound, you know, due to their the chronic state that Lyme can reach. And so we send, you know, toys and books and, you know, little things to let them know that there are other people out there that understand what they're going through and and Lyme tick-borne largely right and so

and a neurological disease caused by something in the tick it is uh Lyme disease is a bacteria it is um it's the I mean there are a couple of different co-infections that go along with it like Rocky Mountain Spy Fever is a co-infection. But yes, it is transmitted by ticks. Gotcha. What is the process? You mentioned going from CrossFit to kind of bed-bound. Do you just start to feel she you know weakness or first thing she she noticed was she had a uh she was she was

driving back from uh north carolina or something had just felt like she was going to collapse out of her and super freaked her out. She had no idea what was going on. Her biggest thing was the doctors aren't listening to me. They're essentially patting me on the head and telling me that I'm just depressed. Right. So now, is it a lifetime of medicine or is it antibiotics antibiotics they try and use a lot, right? Or what is her regimen now? So she tried antibiotics.

They made her condition worse. She tried a lot of different things. It depends on the person, honestly. You know, like I'm obviously like the last person to give medical advice. I'm like, you know, I'm stubborn as hell when it comes to medical advice for myself, much less others. But so she she came out of a doctor's office. He had been telling her to take this one thing. She went back to him was like, it's not working. It's making things worse. I feel terrible. He's like, we have to keep taking it. She's like, I don't want to. And she actually she was in like a Lyme support group online. And somebody was like, let me recommend you my, my herbalist. And so this woman she found is like a third generation master herbalist who also has a PhD.

Oh wow. Um, who also had Lyme and, you know, had treated herself into functionality, if that makes sense. Sure. Um, so she basically, you know had treated herself into functionality if that makes sense sure um so she basically you know over i mean it was over a few years you know got lauren back on her feet i mean when i when i met lauren she was still practically bedbound and now i mean you know

we we hit a we hit a big milestone. I think it was about a month ago now. We ran to town, and I let her drive back. I mean, she was neurologically compromised to the point that she didn't feel safe driving. And I was like, I think you're well enough. Jump behind the wheel. Take us home. That's great. That's really good.

It's been a crazy journey to watch because you know, the, the biggest thing as someone who, you know, doesn't experience what she's experiencing, you know, the, the biggest thing I've seen from the Lyme community, because I'm, you know, I'm fairly heavily involved with Lyme Warrior as it is. Sure. Um, the biggest thing I've seen from the Lyme community is, uh, well, you don't understand my symptoms, you know, and it's, you know, it can vary, you know, some people, I, one of the, I did an interview recently with, uh, someone whose mother has Lyme and she's she's on oxygen she's in chronic pain um she and you know he and the way the way he described it was you know every time they say

well let's try a new antibiotic it is a new wave of he's, it can last a week of her being down. It can be a month that she'll just crash and be under. Just from her body's reaction to this new thing and the system? Yep. Actually, I interviewed a professor at Virginia Tech who was working on it. He was working on isolating the Lyme uh i believe it's the borrelia and uh because he said doing blanket his his theory was doing blanket um antibiotics was not the solution he's like you know you can't just launch everything at it and hope it works and even he was saying it can

change and adapt it can target different places it can sit in different places so you say you've done interviews where do you put those out or what do you put those interviews in? so we're actually

in the process right now of reformatting the website to accommodate those. Um, because we actually just got ahold of the, the full URL. So, you know, you can check us out at lime warrior.com.

Shameless plug there. Yeah, do it. We're going to ask you that anyway. So do it. Yeah. Yeah. Check us out at lime warrior.

Um, check out the, the, the smile box program for sure. Inked on Lime, that's awesome. You know, depending on what your listener range is, next year in February, look for a shop doing Inked on Lime. You know, go get a tattoo or make a donation or something like that.

That's, you know, it's a little and often adds up, you know. Right. And, you know, also, ultimately, it comes adds up, you know? Right. And also ultimately it comes down to, you know, these people feel unheard. So, you know, the best you can do is be like,

I hear you, you know, tell me your story. Nice. That's yeah. Which is again, a great thing about this. I was wondering if,

if you were doing a line warrior podcast, uh, because we've talked about it, you know? Yep. Like I, cause again, it's, I think what what we're gonna be doing is we're doing a video segments with just just short video segments because you know everybody's got the attention span of 30 seconds or so these days so you know just just short videos that are very to

the point you know like honestly you know this this kid talking about his mom you know it was it was pretty intense man just to hear the the way his mom has to go through this and he's like you know she's she's a trooper she's she's still trying to do it but you know there's the there's the other psychological factor of you know well now the family members have to have to pick up the slack for the person that's down you know and so that you know imagine for yourself you know you go down and uh other people have to take care of you well that's that's going to take a toll over time that you can't help your family you can't care for your family you know and uh it was you know again i've, I've been pretty heavily involved with Lyme Warrior for about three years.

And I'm still hearing stories where I'm just like, I can't imagine what you're going through. So to that, is counseling and support and mental health something that you would recommend and that you've seen help with your spouse that goes hand in hand with the medical the kind of physical medical stuff to some extent yes and having a having a support system is huge actually that's that's part of what we're doing is we're trying to open up the dialogue with the people like me that are in the support position for the people that are dealing with chronic Lyme. And, you know, like, we're working on a blog on, you know, what advice, for example, what advice would I give to someone who's going to get into a relationship with someone who has Lyme? You know, we also want to do a variation of that. You know, what advice would you give to a parent who finds out their child has Lyme? You know, because there's no set way to approach it.

There's no, you know, you can only Google so much about how to be there for somebody with symptoms that vary from, you know, seizures to, you know, I've got a crippling headache and I can't get out of bed. What would, I mean, and that's, that's, again, that's, that is such a short list of the symptoms I've heard. What, you know, so sharing that, what would, what would one thing as someone who's the spouse of someone that has Lyme disease that you would, and I know there's a long list, but you know, what would kind of one of the things up front at the top of that list be that you would give to spouses that your advice that, that whose spouses have Lyme disease? I mean, the easiest one is is to listen and be and be patient.

You know, I mean, again, like I said, I I haven't experienced what she's experienced in any way, shape or form. And, um, you know, there's times where, you know, if she's, you know, if she was neurologically compromised, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to assume that I'm in the right, you know, so you have to kind of, you have to be willing to check yourself and, and listen and really listen to what the other person is saying about what they're going through. That makes a lot of sense, that communication piece and support. Because I would imagine even for you, hearing you don't understand and then trying to be there and listen to the –

it's hard and I don't have it from your perspective either, more as like an EMS kind of medic guy where you're, you can't, you can't actually kind of do something for the person beyond what you say, which is great advice to do is, you know, just be there. And, and, you know, I imagine ride the emotional rollercoaster with them. It is, you know, and there's, there's times, I mean, no joke. I mean, we were talking about it when we're talking about this support team thing, you know, it can be a, a minefield, you know, due to, you know, and there's times, I mean, no joke. I mean, we were talking about it when we were talking about this support team thing. You know, it can be a minefield, you know, due to old programming.

You know, she went through all that time of feeling like doctors weren't listening to her. Well, you know, if she thinks that I'm not listening to her along the same lines as that doctor, well, she's going to get mad about it, you know, which just compounds the issue. And that wasn't it, you know, necessarily at all. It might have been just been, you know, not paying attention, you know. Yep, absolutely. So you mentioned to the story of the child who, you know, you see them,

how they look at their parent and you actually created a book for that, right, to help address that? Yep. We actually got two books now. We've got one about a child who their friend gets Lyme, and then we wrote one about a possum who doesn't understand why the forest animals around him have gotten sick due to lyme disease what's what's the the what are the names of the books what's the one focused on the the child um give me just one second here because i'm not remembering it i remember the character's names i don't remember the name of the book, what title we ended up

sitting on. But no, and the idea, again, with writing these stories was that we were going to... You need to acknowledge the kids because they especially don't

have their own voice. And they're not necessarily going to be... Not that kids can't articulate that they don't feel good, but they can't specify to the same extent that you or I can specify how we don't

feel well. So, we've got Grayson Scout, which is the one about the children. Grace and Scout? Grace and Scout. A story of friendship through Lyme. And then we have

William and the Tick Invasion. Gotcha. And I saw actually William and the Tick Invasion is on Amazon, right? Is Graceson Scout also on there um I don't believe Grayson Scout is on there it it should be but there was it it's Amazon not yet yeah yeah cool are those available um if folks want them through the limewarrior.com yes they are through the they're through through our, our shop page as well.

And we've got the classic shop, you know, that, that would be the link that you'd find it under. Cause again, going back to the whole reformatting the website. Yeah. Yeah. I actually looked at it, um, today and it looks, I mean, even, even as it is now, it looks good. The, the shirts are there, you got merchandise, you have donations, kind of all sorts of ways

that, that folks can help with, you know that then helps both the patients or the folks that have Lyme disease and their families with all those packages. It's very impressive. I mean, again, you know, man, it started as a couple of T-shirts, and it's huge now. Right. Which seems to be, you know, keeping with, you know, you all as the people, the process of building that up based on an unfortunate, you know, getting Lyme disease and then wanting to help others. Um, and then the, you know, it sounds like making progress with folks. Um, did you do a lot of marketing? Did you get a lot of word of mouth in helping that grow? Honestly, it's, you know, again, I got to give like total props to Lauren for this whole thing. I mean, it's, you know, she's got her master's degree from VCU and she's got the business savvy and then all of her guerrilla marketing work, you know, just research for for how to market Lime Warrior.

I mean, she she researched it, researched it, researched it and just went to work. You know, she she she knows how to how to use Instagram. She understands how to, you know, utilize the algorithms to, you know, she's she's got the brain for it, you know? Yep. So, I mean, it is such a skill, you know, how do I effectively market something on social media when there's so much stuff out there? I mean, there's stuff everywhere. And then on top of it, you know, if it's something you're going through, you know, like I'm, I'm a stage or so removed and I'm, I'm very heavily involved. But when it's something you're going through every day, it's going to keep that fire lit. Every day you're hitting the ground going,

okay, how can I make Lion Warrior better today? What can I do to get more aggressive with Lion Warrior today? Right. And as you all do that, you're also doing farm work right you got animals out there you got some land yep um so the land is actually it's uh lauren's parents originally moved down here from philly um purchased i mean so total they purchased like 180 acres and uh built a giant house and uh decided that it was too big for them and they tried to sell it and it ended up not selling so they kept it and built themselves a smaller house farther up the mountain off the grid and when lauren and i came back here from

illinois um you know we were kind of we were trying to figure out what we were going to do, what our next move was going to be. And I was like, well, you know, what if we what if we open one of the rooms up and throw it up on Airbnb and, you know, just make some money to pay for the mortgage for our parents? So it's not like we're just, you mooching off of them uh from that it i mean it is segued into a a full airbnb operation and in that i was like you know i grew up as you know i grew up farming i have various iterations of farming in my childhood you know from cows to pigs to gardening and i was like well let's do chickens and you know from cows to pigs to gardening and I was like well let's do chickens and you know we can you know for guests that want them we can offer them eggs you know and that was my logic it was it was as simple as that and now you know we've got we've got pigs we've got chickens ducks goats we've got two

donkeys we've got a focus on um uh we're working with the livestock conservancy so we're working towards helping save breeds that are heritage breed that aren't necessarily doing so well i don't want to say endangered but you know threatened for sure so you said um ben brocker so is that something that folks can book yep yep jump on uh airbnb we're uh we're listed under the blue horn va nice and what uh what town is it located in we're so technically we are in craig county um but we're we're about 25 minutes outside of Blacksburg. So we see awesome traffic with, uh, Virginia tech, you know, we, we meet all kinds of people, you know, we've had everything from professors to actually, we actually had somebody from, uh, from NASA and was rolling around the U.S. on his motorcycle. And he rolled in 11 o'clock at night, jumped off his bike, and was like, hey, you guys want a beer and talk?

Like, that was crazy. That's wild. So do folks say they have access to go see the animals and pet them if they want? That's awesome. We'll do, you know, if it's the weekends, you know, I'll do little tours and stuff and kind of show people what we're doing. Because we're really, part of our focus is on regenerative agriculture. And if you're not familiar with that, it's a system of like farming principles and practices that increase biodiversity and help enrich the soil, improve watersheds, stuff like that. That's awesome. It started out as simply as let's give eggs to people and now it's let's see what we can do to heal the earth that's been used and abused like this, we, we started digging these garden beds and,

you know, the first, first shovel full, you flipped over. I mean, I'm not kidding when I say it was bright red clay. I mean, you could signal aircraft with the clay that we dug up and,

uh, and, you know, so again, our, our goal is to turn that into soil you can plant in. And that's, you know, so again, our goal is to turn that into soil you can plant in. And that's, you know, I mean, that's not going to be a fast process. You know, it's, you know, you're looking at a few years probably before, you know, you can stick that shovel in and turn it over a nice black loamy soil.

How do you do that? Do you have to till the land it's actually so what we're doing is um within the framework of gender net agriculture uh we're doing what's called rotational grazing um where you're instead of a lot of the fields you're going to pass you know with a local farm scene a lot of the fields you're going to pass just have cows in the fields you know they're just on the same pasture all day every day 365 um regenerative agriculture is based around some people call it savannah grazing you know in africa they just roam you know and the predators show up and they push the herd into a new location, you know, and predators show up. So we, the humans, are the predators.

So the idea is, you know, you've got, so right now we're preparing to actually six acre plot right now um with the goal to move this process to a 60 acre plot um and we're using six acres because it's way more manageable when you're learning what you're doing um but so the basic premise is you move cows into a section that is penned off, right? You let them eat their choice foods, and then you move them when they're done eating their choice foods. You don't want them tearing the roots out. They're lightly tilling the ground. They're pooping on it. They're urinating on it, and then they're moving. And then they're they're urinating on it and then they're

moving and then they're not going to come back to that piece of ground you know the goal is you know 60 days at a minimum right you know and that allows a lot of biodiversity to come back to that soil um and then within that you know that's just that's just one species so after you move the cows through you're going to move your sheep and your goats through. After the sheep and goats, you're moving your pigs through. After the pigs, you're moving your chickens through because the chickens are the final scratch and peck to clean things up. And so it's a giant moving system. Right.

So rotating different animals through that have different effects on the… On the biodiversity of what's in the soil, yeah. And that's, you know, that's just the foundation of it. You know, there's a great quote that I'm not going to remember off the top of my head, but it's basically, you know, it's based around an agroforestry principle, but it's, you know, we design an acre for a product, whereas nature designs an acre as a system, you know? And so what you're,

what we're trying our best to do with this farm is to emulate a system as opposed to a product. We're not looking at just one thing. We're looking at, we're trying to look at the whole system and put our best practices into making that system as not only efficient, but as healthy as it can be. Wow. That sounds like good work for you all for the generations that that'll

follow you all as well. We're a little bit over an hour. Oh, yeah. I thought I had an interesting background. Wow, man. That's pretty awesome. So like we like to do, focus on you, the person, a lot of processes you've gone through, and then for folks to make progress in a couple different areas if you if you can and then and then again i want to reshare all the the links and places people can go to um get to uh some of the causes we talked about for martial arts in particular because that's that's a big thing in your life and a lot of other folks too what what is some

you know or kind of what's advice you would give somebody for them to make progress and whatever chosen martial art they have or throughout their martial arts career? The biggest thing with martial arts, I believe, is the ability to put your ego aside and train. The component that I find to be one of the most important for martial arts is being willing to work. You know, there's a idea from a book called Classical Budo that nothing can be taught by the master or absorbed by the trainee unless the trainee applies himself with a desperate effort to the process of shishin tenren, which is spiritual forging.

And I'm probably mangling that pronunciation. But I've always loved that. Spiritual forging. You know, your martial arts is mind-body working together in harmony. And that's across all forms. You know, taekwondo capoeira kung fu tai chi jiu-jitsu you know your your mind and body are working together you know and it's it's your discipline it's your mental toughness that come into play there you know it's it's no

different from that alarm going off at four in the morning and you going, okay, let's go time. Right. Yeah, absolutely. Definitely. Uh, get up and get after it though. Lately, lately I've done some afternoon things going, maybe today I'll sleep in, but yeah, I'm also not getting ready to climb a 400 foot tower in the early days.

So that's, that's just a bonus workout right there. Yeah. I was going to say pull-ups must not be too bad and you know, not, you don't, you don't really have to do leg day cause you're doing it all the time. I was going to say pull-ups must not be too bad and you know, not, you don't, you don't really have to do leg day cause you're doing it all the time. I was going to say, actually you climb a lot with your legs. Yeah. I was, yeah. I imagine you'll, you really can't do it with just your upper body. I mean, not just, but, um, so that's super great advice.

The other, um, thing I think that is huge too. So starting up a nonprofit and making it successful sounds like, you know, one, you have to have the passion. It sounds like it's very helpful, obviously, and has a great impact on that passion. If it's, you know, affecting you, not just that you're like, hey, I want to help this other cause, but it's your cause because you're directly either afflicted with something or affected by it or something like that. Yeah. I mean, that's super important. You know, you've got to be, whatever it is, you gotta be, you gotta be super passionate about it. You know just a one, one more brief anecdote here, but like I,

when there was a period of time when I lived in San Francisco that I, I, I mean, I was living out of a tree. I was not eating well, you know, I understood hunger. So food for me is really big, and that's part of what has ushered in this wave of wanting to farm because it's good, clean, quality food, and that's just a start. I don't know where that desire to help feed people is going to go, but it's, it's very much prevalent in who I am. Is that where you can see something, um, you know, another nonprofit, uh, but focused possibly sustainable foods or something like that. Yeah, possibly we, I've talked about it a few times, but I don't have enough focus yet

to put pen to paper yet. When we get that, when you get that started up in its role, I will do a part two. Oh yeah. Something. Plus we got to paper yet. When you get that started up and it's rolling, we'll do a part two. Oh, yeah. Plus, we've got to figure out, how did you end up in a tree in San Francisco? Long story short, the student I was living with wasn't able to keep me on the... Basically, I was sleeping on her couch. Couldn't keep me there anymore uh due to her roommate situation didn't appreciate you know the random kid from the east coast living

on the couch so i i'd only just started a job and i didn't have any dough to get into a apartment or anything and so what does a kid that grew up living in the woods do? I went down into Golden Gate Park, climbed about 30 feet up into a tree and strapped all my stuff up there. Wow. I figured it was the safest place to live and I lived about, say, three weeks

up there. No kidding. Yeah. You have both literally and figuratively climbed up from like maybe not optimal to – It definitely wasn't always optimal. Another time I'll tell you about some of the not optimal stuff. Yeah, totally. But yeah, I mean great stuff definitely. Let's do this again. To your point, one thing we found to when I talked to James Gearing on behind the shield podcast of, you know, people aren't commuting. So your point about using short snippets with like your line to line warrior focused interviews is great now because it's hard to capture folks in that half an hour hour, even if it's 15 minutes in their car and traffic, you know, so it's like, okay,

how do we do this? That sounds like a great thing for those snippets. Uh, so remind us again of between, uh, the lime warrior work, uh, the book, the bed and breakfast, where can folks get ahold of you and the good causes and stuff that you're doing? All right. So, um, as far as Lime Warrior, that's super easy. It's limewarrior.com, L-Y-M-E, warrior. And then as far as the Airbnb, you know, to kind of kind of reassure? I imagine that's its own thing, too, is kind of reselling. We actually so during all of this, just to make sure we were, you know, complying and above board and all that, we actually shut down. But, you know, as soon as we hit phase one, we opened back up and started seeing guests again.

Oh, wow. So was it pretty quick when folks looked and booked and came out there? We were pretty surprised, honestly. We went from nothing to a full weekend, for sure, on Memorial Day weekend. And it's people from out of state that are traveling up and down the coast. Yeah, I was going to say, I imagine helpful that folks have been cooped up to then want to get out and especially get out there in the country.

Yeah, I'm fairly certain it's going to bounce back. And, you know, I mean, everybody's been cooped up and gas prices are still pretty decent. Yeah, yeah, no doubt. Definitely time to do it. So, Eric, thanks a lot, man. I appreciate it. Look forward to catching up either over beer or on the mats. Yep, yep.

That's a great. Definitely. And again, thanks for having me. You know, I really, I enjoy talking to you. Yeah, absolutely. It's always good to have a good conversation. It's amazing. I'm always, I don't know why I'm always surprised because it happens all the time.

But, you know, when you're just getting a good conversation, you can eat up time. Yeah, I know. In a good way. Wow. Yeah. We put some we put some time on the clock. Yeah. The funny thing is earlier, like, OK, it's only 15 minutes. Let's make sure this, you know, or 15 minutes in. Let's make sure. And then, boom, there you are, which is great. I think it's a great sign. And some feedback I've gotten from other folks, same kind of thing, right? It's just a good thing. So thank you again. Thanks to everybody that has listened, subscribed, reached out to me. The reach, we're creeping up on 5,000 downloads a couple of months, pretty good. Awesome. Yeah, it's pretty neat. I rebranded from a podcast I

did called Between the Slides before that was very public safety, incident management, project management focused. And we still do that here. I still do that. I don't know why I'm saying we. But well ahead of kind of what I did. But I'm also just like some of the stuff we talked about, putting more into it, you know, a little more of that kind of stuff. Um, but it is cool. Passions evolve, man. I get it. Yeah, totally. And, and, you know, to the point you brought up, which is a great one, um, or,

or brought up, you know, as far as reach, um, you know, the, uh, a big chunk of those are the downloads or listeners are in France,

or I've had people reach out from India or it's just, again, amazing. I can sit in my house talking to a microphone by myself or with somebody and then shoot it out there. And then you say, hey, I want to connect. It's pretty cool. So I enjoy it. I'm definitely going to keep doing it.

I hope to get more great people like you, hear their processes, help us all make progress. And I've always got to tie that into the show title, right? Yeah, it's the plug yeah it certainly is um so thanks again everybody thank you eric uh we will catch everybody on the next episode and godspeed