The Sevan Podcast - #675 - Patrick Clark

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Bam, good morning. Good morning. Jethro Cardona, Jeffrey David Spiegel, geez Louise, Michael Shanks,

Michael Shanks, Michelle Shanks. Hey, I'm reading this book. It's called The Longest Shot. I'm going to have the author on soon. This is a really good book. I highly recommend listening to the audiobook. It's called The Longest Shot.

The author's name is Craig Harrison. Harrison. shot uh the author's name is craig harrison harrison the audiobook's amazing i mean absolutely uh it's like i can't even believe it's real it's like an adventure book it's so cool and it's uh i uh i chatted with him this morning. He's having hip surgery. So that's what the delay is of getting him on the show. But it's called The Longest Shot by Craig Harrison. I am completely...

Yeah, this book. I am enjoying it so much. Definitely. I don't know if this was made into a movie, but if it's not, it should be. It is so fun. The beginning, the buildup to him even getting in the military, his childhood. It reminds me a lot of Roger Sparks' book. This guy has a pretty strong English accent. Is that the British guy?

Yeah, it is. It is. It is so cool. Brandon Waddell, Tess. Good morning, Kevin. Alan, Mr. Hartle. Spiegel, Sean m austin martin patrick anderson hello alan kesterbaum uh good morning wad zombie always uh appreciate your

support thank you for all the generosity and everything you've done for the show melissa obviously always smart and generous in the comments thank you guys for all checking in i heard this comedian the other day say something. I looked for the clip and I couldn't find it, but the comedian said something along the lines of, if you, well, all right, another show guest is here. Mr. Clark. Good morning, gentlemen. Hey, good morning. I'm loving the shirt. Thanks. Representing. What are you wearing? Is that a new shirt?

No plan B, no. But I always feel like it is when I put it on. I'm always like, damn, this is great. I love this shirt. Is that a new hoodie, Caleb? I got a... Did you say... Oh, a new hoodie, Caleb. Yeah, what is that?

What is that lid, Caleb? Only one hoodie out here. It's from Dave at CrossFit PSKC. Oh, nice. Have we had them on the show? No, I don't think so. It'd be really cool if we could, though. He's a pretty dope dude.

PSK? PSKC. PSKC, CrossFit PSKC. WhatC CrossFit P SKC what's that stand for I think it's like Portsmouth something I can't remember exactly it's Portsmouth Ohio

PSCK KC KC PSKC and the dyslexia kicks in Portsmouth Ohio Ohio, home of hardworking, fun-loving people rooted in community powered by CrossFit.

Might be a good affiliate show. Hey, I'd love to have you on my podcast. Sent. Good morning, Allison. Good morning, Elise, Cara, Dow,, Jeeze Louise, Jason from Kanata.

You're not Canadian, are you, Clark? No. Mr. Clark, no. No. And you served in the U.S. military. Still am. As a National Guard? Yeah.

Holy cow. Yep. 20, it'll be 29 years and this coming july wow yeah getting old are you addicted um like do you like do you love it is that why you keep doing it yeah yeah i definitely love it i mean you don't stick around that long especially something i mean it helps that's part-time for me. It's one week in a month, two weeks in the summer, you know, obviously like, like Caleb, you know, there, there are some deployments here and there I've deployed three times, but yeah, it's been good to me. I've taken,

I've taken more out of it than it's taken out of me. When you, well, that's good. I like that. I like that math. When you entered the U S military, did you enter as National Guard? Yeah. Yep. Used it to pay for school and yeah, paid for school and then was able to do a lot of other people, you know, was able to travel the Middle East, which was, you know, I guess that's never for most people that's on their bucket list. But I think I've been to every country in the Middle East in some form or capacity because of the military. Wow. Yeah. Is that the primary reason why you joined is to help pay for school?

Yeah, that was it. My parents could have they offered help pay for school. Yeah, that, that was it. Uh, my parents could have, they offered to pay for school. I come from a military family and, um, you know, they offered to pay for school, but the way I looked at it, if they were paying for school, then they had a say on what I wanted to be. Um, you know, my dad, you know, pay, you know, he, he wanted me to be a teacher and a high school coach, you know, a high school football coach, you know, which there's nothing wrong with that.

But I don't know. I wanted to do something different. And I figured National Guard was – they're offering 100% tuition in the state of Illinois for any state school. And, yeah, so did that and GI Bill and all the other extra stuff. I had a little bit more money in my pocket than most college students because of it. So it was kind of cool. That's kind of nice. How long were you in before you uh deployed my first appointment was 2006 so i was in almost 11 years so i went 11 years without actually any major conflicts or deployments, and 9-11 happened. I almost got out, but I don't know.

I felt compelled to stay in and continue to serve. Is the conventional wisdom when you join the National Guard is that you won't deploy? It used to be up until Iraq, Afghanistan. Then in some cases, you had a lot of National Guardsmen deploying more than some active duty units. Yeah, because I remember as a kid, those were the guys like, if I'm not mistaken, like if there's a hurricane or if there's a riot or like they basically take care of the homeland. Correct. And actually, that was a reason I was actually on my way out of getting out of the military. I'd served up to 10 years at that time. And that's usually like shit or get off the pot, you know, 10 years because everyone wants to hit that 20 year mark. And I actually got called up for my first major deployment.

It was right after Hurricane Katrina. And so we're sent down to New Orleans and we're at that time, we had a lot of units, National Guard, armed active duty military. They're deployed overseas. So it was kind of a ragtag bunch down in, down in New Orleans, National Guard, active duty military, they're deployed overseas. So it was kind of a ragtag bunch down in New Orleans, you know, just helping with the flood walls and all. It was just crazy. And I met some great people there, served with some great people. And then I found out that they were deploying as soon as we got back. And I said, if I was going to deploy, I was going to

play with them because it was just a great group. And, yeah, I finally did something. You know, a lot of National Guardsmen prior to that, they would go their whole military career without doing anything. Just a one week in a month, two weeks in the summer. And after 10 years, that was like my first major thing I did with National Guard where I felt like we're actually doing a job. Like you see in the commercials that where they're ziplining into the water and saving cats and dogs and school children and stuff like that so that that was the first time because we act you know it was it was just so surreal during katrina and you know just i remember we one day like us and a bunch of our team we saved probably about 35 people from a

retirement home that had been stranded there for over a week because of the flood walls just bursting. And it was just, I don't know, it was very rewarding. And I felt, I finally felt like I found my calling because I was in charge of that group and we did a great job and I felt a sense of accomplishment. And if they were going to go overseas, I didn't want them to go without me oh is it deployed is katrina considered a deployment uh it's more of like a i guess how would you call that kayla maybe just uh uh i guess i guess yeah so like it's like a it's almost like um it could be it would be considered a deployment because they're it's along the same line as when they were doing the COVID coverage. Like you had people deploying from our station to like Minnesota or Louisiana and stuff like that.

I think it depends on like the duration of your, of your stay. Do you consider that a deployment Patrick? Yeah, we're actually, actually we, what, what KO7 turns of the, um, how long, I think it's over 30 days. Um, then you're, you're put on federal orders and when you're put on federal orders, that means it's, it, it goes under, they call them like title nine, title 10 orders. Um, and, um, it, the funding's different. So a deployment is usually based on funding, how you define a deployment. So we were actually put on national funding and then that's considered a deployment after 30 days because we purposely spent another week there because I think at the time, Hurricane Rita came in right after Katrina and it hit Houston area very well uh very hard so they extended us and we stayed over 30 days and um when i was on covet orders um i think i was on covet orders at one point i was the longest

serving only national guardsman on covet orders i was on orders for 18 months during covet had a great gig though yeah i'm sure you got a lot of nurses that picked up orders like that and they're just basically travel nurses somewhere yeah they worked in basically did nothing for six plus months just overseeing people giving vaccines or taking or swabbing noses like yeah and they call that a deployment yep i got a lot of hotel points out of mine oh that's nice yeah i'm still using my hotel points from uh when i used to travel every weekend with crossfit i truly am it's kind of crazy yeah it is it's it's nice to have nice to have in your pocket that's actually what i used that's i actually used my points while i was in vegas for zealous games oh nice yeah what hotel

did you stay like at a hilton a residence i usually stay at a residence they're usually pretty nice they have full kitchens and stuff like that yeah dope yeah um so um going back to katrina so you're in charge of like 15 dudes and you get a call saying hey these are this is the address, and we got 30 people there, figure it out and go get them? Pretty much. We had a group. It was approximately 12 soldiers, male, female, and we were linked up with some type of government agency,

whether it be something from New Orleans, like whether it be their state highway, state highway patrol. I mean, we had so many different organizations there and we were attached to them. So we just provided them support. So we were a transportation company. So we had these giant, huge trucks. We call them five tons, deuce and halves. I mean, we had, we had both both and they're they're mainly used for troop carriers and because they're so high uh stand so high they were actually above they would drive above the water so that's what they kind of used us for so we would actually drive up to these flooded houses that were like you know four feet underwater and drive up to them and if there's someone in there

we we tell them hey come out we'll help you out. What a scene. Yeah, that's an old deuce and a half right there. I think back in the day, I don't know, in 2008 or 2009 when I visited Bill Henninger's gym, him and Katie's gym. That's all they had. I think this was way, way back in the day he had one of those broken down just sitting in the back yeah and i think eventually he got it repaired and up and running yeah they're really they're really actually pretty simple to repair not very cheap especially nowadays but those have been around since before world war ii and the army

was using those up and army actually the whole military was they were using those up to probably about probably right in the middle of the the war um they're just so dependable there's you know they're just an engine block and all you need to do is oil change in those things and that's it it kept in diesel and you loaded that thing with old people yeah that i mean we saved some animals some young people there were some people that that just stayed in place when they tried to evacuate new orleans they refused to leave their home and um i'd have to find some of these pictures i had because obviously you know i'm a photographer i was taking a bunch of pictures while all this

was going on i'd have to share those with you but it was some pretty cool stuff um yeah it was it's probably one of the, you know, one of those moments that I'm most proud of in terms of serving, because it was like, again, it was one of the first times where I felt like I was actually doing what I signed up for. Because as I told you, I've gotten more out of the military than it's gotten out of me. Up until then, I was just, all I did was go to school one week in a month, come to drill, which is one week in a month, hung over and hang out with our buddies, and then we'd leave on Sunday. That was it. I didn't really feel like I was accomplishing anything.

And then something like that happened, and you're like, okay, this is why I joined. This is the real purpose, I guess. Yeah, it sounds cool. It was probably one of the most picturesque, scenic like. Deployments, I'm guessing you've done, too, in terms of just seeing this, the stuff you saw would have made just endless great photographs. Yeah, it was just so surreal. I mean, I'd never been I'd never been in New Orleans. And, you know, we drove from Illinois down to New Orleans and on the way there, people are evacuating. And, you know, we drove from Illinois down to New Orleans and on the way there, people are evacuating. So it was kind of a very sad scene because all these people are leaving their home and they're staying at these rest areas in Alabama,

you know, Alabama, Georgia or wherever, you know, or living, literally living in rest homes because they're so displaced. And then we pulled into New Orleans and it was completely empty. And then we pulled into New Orleans and it was completely empty. It was like, there's an aircraft carrier right on the, on the dock, you know, that almost towered the whole city. And, and then you can see fires randomly everywhere. It was, it's very apocalyptic. And we're going through like downtown traffic, going through all these neighborhoods, going down Bourbon street. And there was like no one there except for there was one strip club that was still open serious yeah it was powered by generators and the hotel across

from it was a uh i forgot what type of hotel was but that's where a lot of the government agency people um like federal government agency people were staying at that hotel um but it was it was crazy with like the one strip club that was open. I want to say that the large – what is the biggest migration in the U.S.? I want to say that I heard Katrina was the second largest migration of Americans besides the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco and the history of the United States. Now our border with Mexico might be that. Correct. Yeah, I would imagine. But yeah, I wouldn't doubt that at all.

So have you ever been deployed to the border? No. I mean, they're trying to get me to. It's chaos down there. It is. It is. I follow this guy, Jorge Ventura, and it is chaos down there. I've heard.

That's what I've heard. But for the military, especially as a commander, that's the last thing you want to do is be in charge of like 150, like basically kids away from home for the first time on the border. And they're all staying in hotel rooms and they have money. That's the last I'm here. I hear horror stories. I was actually offered to take command of a unit that was deploying there and i said no thank you i'm fine because it's it's like it's like managing a frat house a little bit oh yeah yeah i mean i'm hearing

a good buddy of mine he he was command of a unit and he had like nine nine soldiers got pregnant you know a bunch you know dui charges and government vehicles so they were getting pulled you know they're getting pulled over in a government vehicle while intoxicated i mean just just just yeah it's just it's herding cats and it's again like a frat house and you get a bunch of young kids like 18 19 year old yeah it's crazy and you know i used to be one of those kids you know so i was like there's no way i couldn't i couldn't do that especially if you're partying you know three four five days a week and then you're doing the national guard thing on the

weekend and you're 20 years old and then you get deployed you just kind of maintain that lifestyle did um it's the same thing with when all those pictures came out from uh abu grave uh i was thinking to myself i've seen crazier shit in the front like those pyramids they were building with the prisoners and shit i'm like i mean i went to i went to uc santa barbara university of california santa barbara that was the exact same thing that was done there yeah and you know my friends were in the military i was like yeah but they can't do that they're supposed to have discipline and my pushback always was dude they're fucking 19 year old boys 19 year old boys get other 19 year old boys naked and build pyramids out of them that's what we do i don't know why but that's why you have to keep us very very busy yeah exactly and we'll build

naked pyramids everywhere we'll build all We'll do a lot of stuff naked. My sister was deployed in Iraq when that was happening in Abu Ghraib and she was actually a military police officer. So she went to that. She went to that prison many times to drop off people, drop off like, you know, or pick up people. And and that was ran by a bunch of National guardsmen and reserves as well. And perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Yeah. And, and she would,

she would tell me like, I mean, my sister, she had a lot more rough deployment in Iraq than I did, but, and that's one reason why she's like my hero. But she would tell me some of the stories and how I turned her kind of cold and callous.

And when I deployed, that was the last thing I wanted to happen myself. But then it actually did turn that way where I did become cold and callous. And, but, you know, through some help, I've been a lot more open about my experiences. Because of cold and callous to protect yourself emotionally, because what you're saying is, is, is saying is too much to process in the moment. Correct.

Exactly. Like you hit a squirrel and you have a couple – you're driving to work now and you hit a squirrel and it's like you think about it for like a week. Yeah. Like you're over there and you're seeing fucking all sorts of bad shit happen every 15 minutes and it's like, dude, it took me a week to process the squirrel I fucking hit the other day. Exactly. Exactly. Crazy. minutes and it's like dude it took me a week to process the squirrel i fucking hit the other day exactly exactly crazy um you have one one sibling your sister no i also have an older brother too did he go into national guard also yep holy cow all three of us holy cow and and all in uh you see older brother, younger sister. that my brother deployed in 2011 and his deployment was basically shutting down iraq at the time we thought was shutting down iraq and then my second deployment was actually my deployment was reopening back iraq so it was just kind of weird it's kind of weird how all

our deployments like they were different but they're so similar in terms of everything yeah it's my brother wow what what, what a trip that, uh, all three of you went. That's pretty cool. Um, uh, what, what ethnicity are you? I'm half Chinese, my mom's side. And then my dad's side is, uh, uh, Native American, French Canadian, African-American, and maybe Irish. Wow. Yeah. On your mom's, is your mom first generation? Yeah. Yeah.

She was actually born in Shanghai. And then during the whole communist rebellion, the whole family moved to Taiwan. Dude, crazy. crazy so crazy there's there's all these people in the united states that i don't think people realize that are so freaking lucky to be alive i'm armenian and my wife is jewish and my kid the fact that either one of us is here today living on planet earth is is absolutely nuts being in the last hundred years both our our, our groups of our tribes got, went through a mass genocide. Yeah. How did it crazy that your mom got out of China?

I mean, it's crazy that you're here and then, and then your dad does, um, what does he know about his, uh, you know, his generations, how he got to the United States? Um, it's, well, I think my grandfather is the native american side and then my grandmother is came from like you know from europe so and i think how they met in i don't know they're they're hoosiers my dad's a hoosier and they end up in southern indiana somewhere somehow um but because of their ethnic backgrounds or the diversity i mean obviously my grandma being you know of european descent and my grandfather being native american they were kind of i guess in the early 1900s or 20s 30s they were kind of they played

i think my my dad said my grandfather opened the first like i guess all races like hardware store so that he was oh blacks can use the same register as whites yeah yeah awesome yeah and my my my grandpa actually went to i believe my grandfather don't worry we're gonna fix that we're gonna get that we're gonna have a special line for blacks again here soon don't worry it's coming i don't doubt that at some point who knows um i'd like to get one for armenians too please and uh he actually went to i guess back then they called it the colored school um oh your grandfather did because he was native american he was yeah yeah and they they actually built their house my their house my the house my dad raised in actually in the, the, the colored portion of mountain Vernon, Indiana, which is a small town outside of Evansville. And it's still,

it's still there. Every time I go to Evansville, I drive by and, you know, I always pop my head through Mount Vernon, like, you know, look at the old house and the old segregated high school still there. It's crazy that it seems like so long ago, but yet a lot of those things are still standing. And it's just kind of, I guess, a reminder of our history or where we come from. What was the name of the town? Mount Vernon. Mount Vernon. Is that where the…

It's in Indiana. Vernon, is that where the – It's in Indiana. Is that where that jiu-jitsu school is where they have an abandoned – Caleb, we had the guy on. Daisy Fresh. Daisy Fresh. Do you know about Daisy Fresh, Patrick? I don't. So in Mount – we had this – there's this group of jiu-jitsu – there was an abandoned dry cleaning service. Like I don't even think it's a dry cleaning service

where they coin op laundry place okay and this and this guy bought uh rented the place and started letting and started teaching jiu-jitsu in there and started letting the boys stay overnight there oh wow the place was a dilapidated pile of shit you know like freezing in the mornings below 30 degrees and this i had this guy on the show that's that's in illinois mount vernon illinois yeah that's that's oh okay okay but yeah mount vernon illinois is actually i'm very familiar with mount vernon illinois that's only like an hour away from me and these guys ended up these guys are now like a force on the in the jiu-jitsu scene like hardcore and they're just they're basically they're

like the you know the um the peasant boys you know what i mean and they have a they have a series on youtube i highly recommend anyone see it it reminds me so much of the shit we used to do back in the um crossfit days where like the camera work and the audio none of that matters because the content is so rich and it's basically the journey of all of these boys who live together on mats. Yeah. And all they do is jujitsu, you know, day in and day, uh, day out. I could see that everybody watched that here. Yeah. Mount Vernon, Illinois, it's kind of like, it used to be like a coal mine city. Now it's basically like a highway city.

It's kind of like a highway stop. It's, it's one of those cities you go through and it's like nothing but truck stops and restaurants right off the highway. But, uh, it's a very, of those cities you go through and it's like nothing but truck stops and restaurants right off the highway but it's a very uh very um it's you know like i said it's kind of a poor city a lot of you know you know white medical middle america lower middle class so i could definitely see that uh heidi crumb daisy fresh team team is all on the box of fruit drinks. Careful, Heidi. Careful. How dare you? How dare you?

After I did the interview with that guy, I went to Trulia and I started looking up homes there. And the most expensive home I could find in the area was $500,000. And it was like 13 bedrooms on 40 acres with a pond. I was like, shit, I'm with like a 60 by 40 barn in the back that I could turn into a skate park, indoor skate park. I'm like, I'm moving. Yeah. My wife's like, no, we're not. You don't want that.

Illinois is not the greatest place in terms of taxes either. So it's one of those states where we we call in illinois because i was raised in illinois i live in i live in st louis now just across the river my parents still live in illinois you live in st louis yeah yeah wow yeah wow crazy um but it's it's a whole state go ahead i'll ask you i won't forget go ahead yeah it's a whole state ran by, you know, Chicago's in northern Illinois, but it's all ran, the rest of Illinois is ran by Chicago politics. It's crazy, you know, because the most of Illinois outside Chicago is all like farmland and small towns and stuff like that. But it's being ran by big city politics. And it's kind of crazy, especially in the southern Illinois part where i was pretty much central southern illinois where i was raised yeah i had this guy on the show

his name's tommy g i don't know if you saw that episode he's a he's he's a youtube guy and he's got i don't know two or three or hundred thousand youtube subscribers and he makes doc these weird documentaries uh about just rough neighborhoods and he's a white subscribers and he makes doc these weird documentaries uh about just rough neighborhoods and he's a white kid and he goes into these neighborhoods and it's like all black kids and well that's actually not true actually because of the strim tell and i can't remember where he went but he went to this town called kensington okay i think it might be in pennsylvania and it's a city in pennsy Pennsylvania and basically he gets out of the car and everywhere you look there's people shooting up like literally everywhere you look there's just

heroin and fentanyl everywhere the cops don't do anything uh he walks up on one guy while um two strangers are like um starting his heart up again what's that thing they give you no novak no no narcan they give you the yeah new new kensington it when i see shit like that and i and i i spent a lot of time in oakland as a kid but we still didn't have anything that crazy yeah so here it is so he just or he goes to he goes to these cities where he's just he'll be out the whole documentary will be him out in the middle of the street hanging out with 15 kids all under the age of 16, and every kid has two guns. Just brazen out in the open, an automatic machine gun and a pistol, and they're in their Gucci bags. And there's no cops, nothing.

You know what I mean? Or he did one on car thieves, and these people are just brazen. They just walk up to any car and just steal them. People are just brazen. They just walk up to any car and just steal them. When I think of St. Louis, I think of that as one of those cities, like these forgotten cities. Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, St. Louis. Is St. Louis like that?

Like, man, that shit is just so hardcore. It's like you can't even imagine. There's definitely a lot of parts like that, especially during covid it became a very lawless city it seemed like to me um yeah everywhere that's that happened in california too just completely lawless which is unfortunate because a lot of my good friends they just joined the city police department during covid and a lot of most of them have gotten out since then um because they joined to do you know they joined for noble reasons and when they finally got there they got caught up in the politics that they couldn't do their jobs it was the wave of

cop hating too that like all my cop friends said hey we've just completely we we actually my town the sheriff here was put i think on a six-month order to never engage yeah i mean just don't just don't engage yep i mean it's it's carried over today i mean just last night i was driving back from shooting an event and i'm at a stoplight and two cars just boom just fly out or just ran it like they didn't care it's like and there's a major intersection and it's just crazy because that didn't used to be like that um north st louis is very very very uh known for its violence um there's you know gang shootings you know you know you have the kia boys is that what they're called the kia boys yeah damn look at you up to your that is some hardcore pop culture shit i know they've been

running the only reason why is like with the neighborhood i live in it's like right i'm only a mile away from the arch um i'm two blocks away from the anheuser bush brewery it's a section called soulard it's a very historical area of st louis very trendy very nice um they hold the it's known for having the second largest mardi gras in the united states um but it's it's a really nice area to live at but um every night it seems like two or three cars are getting broken into my cars my car's been broken into probably like four times over the last six months. I've had to replace both Cadillac converters in my car because people are just going underneath and sawing it off. And I've had two gym bags stolen out of my car. Oh, dude.

I know. That's the worst. If you talk to anyone, it's like you have nothing in there worth of value. Like who wants my sweaty knee sleeves and my grips and my old ass shoes? These are, these are, I hate to be such a discriminatory prejudice person, but these are all young boys who don't have anything to do sure these are these are not these are not girls doing this these these are boys and the vast majority of them you have to know for every drug addict you're you see you're also looking at a criminal because they don't hold down jobs and so the only way that they can get their shit is to take your shit sell it to get the drugs and so it it's um it's so nuts that it's it's so nuts yeah it's so obvious

what the problem is it's boys who are addicted to something who don't have jobs but but they but they have a habit that's that's uh cost them a lot of money and these are boys who would rather do drugs than date girls it's it's a fucked up boy that's like the worst kind of boy yeah i agree um i mean i guess the argument could be made that if you follow either one of those paths it's going to lead to disaster, but I much rather deal with heartbreak than death. I love a little emotional pain. Yeah. I love a little emotional pain. Break my heart, girl.

Break my heart. Not you, Haley. We're too far in. We're too far in. You don't break. I'm done with those. You can't do that. Haley's my wife.

She broke my heart. I'd be turned into a fucking Buddhist monk. And when you were in the National Guard, is that how you found CrossFit? Yeah. It was my second deployment to Kuwait. Year? 2014.

Yeah, 2014. The affiliate there was called Camp Arifjan. Yeah. It was my second day. We got there. We're walking to the chow hall. Me and my, we call them battle buddies. It's another, he was a captain, a really good friend of mine. We're walking to the chow hall and we see this, we're in military uniforms.

We're actually in our physical, our PTs. We're told that we can wear civilians. And we're walking and we see this, this beautiful female walk by us and she's wearing, you know, you know, leggings and, you know, just a t-shirt. And we're like, what the hell? Who's she? And yeah. And, and. She is right there on the right people. No, that's actually not her, but those are all actually old people in the

service in that picture. But yeah, she ended up being the CrossFit coach. She was a civilian. She actually was a regional qualifier in the Asia regional back then. But yeah, it was crazy. And then we went there and my buddy's like, oh, he wanted to be a sapper, which is like special forces for engineers. And he like oh i need to do that crossfit stuff again shape for sapper school and i'm like and i'm one of those people hey if you wrote me into something i'm gonna do it um i usually don't say no and i did it and then i found this community that's how you ended up at barbend but we'll get to that yeah i found this community there and it was great. It was, it was a great opportunity for us to kind of decompress. We, one of our, one of our coaches, the morning coach, he was actually the, the, the Colonel that oversaw the whole base, you know? So he would go there, teach a class, do, do some, do his workout. And then he would go back and do like, just run the base, whether,

you know, and the base had close to 20,000 soldiers on it you know at any given time um and but when we're in the gym we would call each other by our there was no rank everyone called I mean Caleb would talk about it's just it's like a different community you know it felt like your home and we'd sit around and we all gathered around and we watched the CrossFit games and you know talk about crossfit and that's how i got to learn and got embedded in that culture and it was it was an escape what did you do for fitness before then um i just ran i was a runner and every now and then i'd you know do some benches and back squats you know uh oh you were squat so you had some how did you learn about squatting? Football. I play college football as well.

Oh, wow. So, you know, I had that basic strength and conditioning stuff, you know you know, some cleaning, some pressing, you know, some box jumps, but you know, it's funny because a lot of those stuff that you do you see in college is strength and conditioning where, you know, strength and conditioning coaches like, Oh, they're so anti-CrossFit, but everything they do is CrossFit. But they just refuse to say the name. My buddy, Travis Bajent, called me last night at 11 o'clock at night.

So that means it was like 2 in the morning his time. He lives in west virginia he's so excited he can't even sleep anymore because his son is the greatest quarterback currently in college football next weekend he's probably going to break the all-time college football passing record he's going to be number one draft pick out of a division two school and he told me last night he gets a knock on his door and he opens the door and it's dan marino and dan marino comes in and stays over for dinner uh he just wanted to talk to travis's son and travis and then that was two days ago and then yesterday he said barry sanders called him on

his cell phone oh wow barry sanders for those of you don't know i mean i mean i'm not up to date on football but barry sanders i think was the greatest running back who ever lived that never was it was really a bizarre fucking career but he was twice the uh running back that bo jackson was um and if he he got the ball like and you were at home you stood up yep he was like on the worst team ever but holy shit if he got the ball, like, and you were at home, you stood up. Yep. He was, like, on the worst team ever. But holy shit, if he got the ball, it was, like, on like Donkey Kong. Yeah, he would either score a touchdown or he would have probably the most exciting 10-yard loss ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No play was ever dead with him.

No one could tackle him. No, no. yeah yeah yeah no play was ever dead with him no one could tackle him no no yeah and that kid and that kid uh that kid uh tyson bajan who's this quarterback he is um he was he crossfitted since he's a little kid because travis is a crossfitter well i don't know if travis owned a crossfit gym i don't know if he's a crossfitter yeah uh he's too big. He's a big man. So you're at the base, and you get introduced to this. And why aren't there ranks in the gym? Why does that go away in the gym? I don't.

Is it official policy? No, it's not official policy. I think it's just the community. I mean, you know, I mean, you don't go to your regular box and you're calling people by their official title, like doctor or, you know, whatever. I mean, it's just either calling by nickname or their first name. And I think that, that that's just CrossFit. And I think because that's how crossfit is a regular box doesn't

matter where your box uh box is at in the world it's gonna still have that sense of community so even if you throw in the middle of a combat zone with all these you know different ranks and different services whether it be marines air force or whatever everyone's still the common bond is crossfit and i think and that community and you just you just fall into that you know like for me it was it literally felt like i i literally did not feel like i was in in the middle east or in the middle of kuwait um that box itself is is still to this day it's like i've never i'm outside of mayhem that's probably like the biggest box with the most equipment i've ever seen because it's all paid by the government. You know,

when they built that box there, you know, they gave, they gave him a shit ton of money and like, okay, what do you need? I mean, they have probably like 40 echo bikes at that gym. Wow. Is that gym still there? Yes. Yep. Still an affiliate still ran. They still do L that's where I got my L one at there. They still do L that's where i got my l1 at there they still do l1s l2s there did crossfit do who is your l1 instructor there who came kate gordon was one of them and then the other two i forgot their names but they're no longer with crossfit but that kate gordon's the

girl who hit her finger in the 2009 crossfit games with the sledgehammer no kate gordon is the one that she's the crossfitter with the sign oh yes okay she's been the one that used to come on my show all the time yeah yeah wow wow it was crazy because the next time i met her was at the 2019 games when she was on on one of the first time she made the games on a team and i went to introduce myself and she remembered who I was. And it's just like, it's been really cool just kind of like tracking her and you know, we're both, we're both in the industry in some way or some form, but it's, yeah, she was my, she was, she was part of my seminar staff. Uh, Tyler Watkins, uh, not a humble brag.

I was Bo Jackson's accountant when I lived in Alabama. No shit. Wow. Hey, two or three more comments like that. And I might invite you on the show. Uh, my 11 year old asked me if Barry Sanders was any good yesterday. Great question. Mark. I know. I, I know. I know. I tried to brush over it. Christine. I know. I tried to act like I was like, I know. I just, I just, that's just my brain. I just, I know, Matt, easy, everyone. Settle down, settle down. Savant, please don't pick your nose on camera. I got something dry. Someone wrote in the comments yesterday that with that, yesterday they stared at a booger on my nose the whole time. It's like, yeah, well, I'm going to start wiping my nose a little more regularly then. So that cocaine you're doing yeah right well with this new camera angle you're not looking into your nose as much oh good thank you is that that's a good thing right i guess i mean i mean

there's probably people out there that are into that but you know not me fair who am i to judge yeah oh well how i was barry sanders account oh shit oh the one upmanship is starting i was or i am oh uh remember your camera's on don't eat that fine fine you do what you want it's your show thank you patrick that's You're my favorite guest now of all time. Savan, your new camera making you look so sharp. Thank you. I always look sharp. I just didn't want to overwhelm you guys, and that's why I always use that ass camera. But I appreciate it, Katie.

You're not so bad yourself. You're 18, right? Okay. So you go in there, and there's a bond amongst the um the guys there obviously um when i think of a crossfit gym i think of it as a place like that's where i want i think of it kind of like a church if i find out someone's a crossfitter um and they're a plumber i want that plumber if they're electrician or if it's a teacher at the school, I would want my kid to be in that class or a doctor. God, man. Like, like it's almost a mandatory that my doctor be a CrossFitter because of the, because of what it says about someone that they participate in this lifestyle and the thing and we know that the wisdom and knowledge that you glean from being in that cohort of people was it like that also in the military like those quickly became your best friends or if you if you had to go out and do it uh you know around somewhere or do guard

duty or do some sort of shit you're like god i hope i get a crossfitter yeah yeah exactly i mean those were the best guys those are they, they really are, especially now, especially now because the army has adopted a lot of, you know, CrossFit type methodology. Our physical fitness test is basically a giant hero workout. So whenever I go to these like military courses or whatever in these schools and we have to, you know, you always have to introduce yourself and tell them about something about yourself. So usually when I go there, I'm like, hey, Patrick Clark from Illinois. I'm a writer, photographer for, you know, a CrossFit publication. And everyone's like, you know, you can tell there's like a couple of people that turn around and, you know, you get the people that actually pay attention. You know, they're CrossFitters. And then they then they start putting two to two together like oh you're patrick clark because they know they'll know of my they'll

know of my work or they've read my work or they you know at the or they've seen me on a youtube channel you know doing some analysis or something like that so it's just kind of cool um when that happens but then and then you build that bond and you got you know you kind of it just makes things easier you know it kind of gets away from being a new kid in school, that new, new kid in school syndrome where you don't know anybody. And, you know, at 46 years old, I still feel that whenever I go to some of these military courses. Yeah, that's cool.

And when, when did you start writing? Well, I've always written, um, when I was in college, after I quit playing football, I, I worked for basically the PR department for my university, Southern Illinois. And what they do is that they have their own media department. They call it sports information at the time. It's called like media services, media relations, wherever. So every university, especially the major one, has a department like that. So I started doing that. And at the time i was covering some of our olympic sports at southern illinois like swimming and diving track and field whereas the full-timers the directors they're they're covering football the major sports um so that's where i kind of started

writing um there what year was that 2000 all the way up until 2011 i was pretty much uh in in basically sports journalism were you insecure about that in the beginning with your writing no not really i've always been a writer like i would sit there and write short stories and you know stuff like that poetry you know really bad poetry um and uh yeah i was just learning AP style. Um, no, I wasn't really insecure about that because I, growing up. There's an AP style. There's an AP style. Yeah, there is. Oh, that scares the shit out of me.

Like you have to have at least one dissenting opinion, shit like that. No, no. Yeah. It seems like that. No, it just basically like just the format, a style guide. Uh, there's ap which is it's kind of yeah uh provides guidelines for grammar so i say okay okay like we had like a style guide okay we had that at the journal also okay yeah because i always trip on the fact that

every single article about crossfit when i was there that would come out you know in the world always had one descending opinion and since there were so few people that hated it was always the same couple guys no matter what the article was those guys got publicity because they were haters and i was like this is fucking bullshit yeah well now now you have tons of those type of people yeah good um but yeah i did that um i i developed. I was so big into sports growing up. Like my dad got me, one of the things he got me was a subscription to Sports Illustrated.

And, you know, back in the 90s. That was good. Yeah, back in the 90s, they had great articles and the photography. I had one room on my wall was just covered with my favorite photos from Sports Illustrated. I'd tear them out and I wallpapered

all my favorite photos you know the iconic sports photos and that was a whole wall and that's where kind of like my interest in photography came from too so writing photography I was kind of reading back a baseball cards you know that's where I became like a nerd a stat nerd you know trying to figure out how to figure out

trying to figure out an era or whatever you know batting average you know that's where average, you know, that's where my interest came. And so I kind of used a lot of that when I started writing myself, I would refer to that, that stuff. It was kind of built in and grained in me from my childhood. And yeah, you know, and it just seemed like I, I got burnt out at it,

burnt out at it from working so much in these small college towns and covering sports that weren't really going anywhere. And, you know, that I actually got out of writing altogether and refused to get out, you know, refused to go back to the business. And then, of course, CrossFit kind of dragged me back into it. So 2011 to 2014, there was a hiatus in the writing. Yeah. Yeah. And photography photography just creativity at all i mean those yeah those were kind of some dark times not the darkest times i've had but that was kind of like from a creative standpoint 2011 to 14 there was really no creativity coming from me uh it's it's interesting do you think that those i that those dark times have made you more creative now that i always think that all the bad shit that happens you know five years later makes for

a good joke i always think of is like dark times is kind of like being fertilizer right like a cow shits in your yard and it sucks for the first six months but eventually that shit breaks you. You know, I have to I spread chicken manure all over my property once a year. My wife hates that time of year. Yeah. But two months later, it's all the flies are gone. It's all into the soil. And then, you know, in nine months after that, you have the best fruit you could imagine from the trees. Yeah, I 100 percent agree with that, because the darkest time I had was after my first deployment when I was basically an alcoholic and tried to take my own life. And then I had that other time between 2011-14. And then just recently after a breakup, each time I was able to learn from one of those dark times and kind of cope, you know, use what my lessons learned and and cope with those those hard times as well. And it's it's made things a little bit easier and for me and just, you know, just living my life and helping out as well.

What year was your first deployment again? Oh, six or seven. Oh, six or seven. And that was to where? That was to Iraq. 06-07. 06-07. And that was to where? That was to Iraq. If I get this wrong, just please correct me. Patrick Clark works at the Bar Bend.

We know most of his work coming from the morning chalk up where he was for a long time. I know him as one of the best contributors here in the comments section, always course correcting us, giving us little tidbits and details that I 100% of the time have always found helpful and appreciative of. And he has also moved into the space of managing athletes. Is a manager and an agent the same thing? Essentially, yeah. I mean, agent is more the financials. Manager kind of handles like the logistics part. But most managers and agents are the same thing. So a manager might get together with the coach and make sure that the athlete gets from St. Louis to Carson so that they don't have to worry about their plane tickets.

They have their food organized, shit like that. Make sure they have transportation to and from the venue make sure they're happy manager's more like your best friend basically yeah and an agent is making sure you're getting not screwed over on deals correct and how long have you been doing that uh a year wow congratulations and um is devvin Kim one of your athletes? Correct. Yep. We'll come down to that. Congratulations, by the way. I dig her. Oh, she's awesome. She's great. Her parents should be proud. I would be so proud if my boys grew up to be like that.

Yeah, I've actually had a couple of conversations with Wayne. I haven't had the pleasure to meet her mother yet, but Wayne is just a salt of the earth Type of guy and just great When I had a call with her And Wayne it was just Really cool If they didn't want to go with me it was fine As an agent I would have just been happy Just knowing them

Absolutely I think her mom Might be on the affiliate team Or she was I think she still volunteers She helps out, she's no longer employed though Oh like me, I volunteer on the media team Yeah In 2006 when you deployed to Iraq

Were you drinking before you deployed? Oh yeah And you can still drink when you're there no i mean you're not supposed to okay and and how long were you there uh a little over i think 13 months i was deployed yeah it was during the surge you know do you recall what the surge is i remember it being all over the news yeah i was that it was during that time i think the highest amount of u.s casualties happened when i was there and in the area i was at so yeah uh ty tyler spilled sevan has the best stutter thought gathering pause can be from

a half second to five seconds a five second stutter well i'm glad i've cut back on the coffee and it's like a placeholder while he comes up with another analogy i think that i think what you get when you see this podcast is really truly me except for that stutter i don't think i do that in real life but i'll oh in real life but i'll ask my wife after the show. So, so one more time. How long were you there? Uh, 13 months, 13 months.

Yeah. And, um, what, what was that deployment? Like, what was that surge? Like,

what did you do there? So I was, uh, I was an E six, which is staff Sergeant, which is probably the best rank. If you're ever going to be in the military in terms of army, um're like you're oh i think kayla may have shook his head yeah yeah yeah but uh for deployment it's like you're in charge but you're not in charge like i was in

charge of a group of 12 12 soldiers um a bunch of kids male male, female, and we ran security escort teams. What it was, anything that went outside the base, especially of a civilian vehicle, they had to have armed security. So part of our job initially when we got there is we were attached to, we call them a recovery crew. The recovery crew, their job was whenever something got blown up, it was a bunch of DA civilians, Department of Army civilians or whatever contractors, us contractors, they would drive their, I don't know what everyone called tow trucks or whatever out to the site to recover

the vehicle that got blown up. But they, the, the civilians weren't allowed to have weapons. So they, we would provide the security for them. Um, we're a QRF, a quick reaction force. So whenever something bad happened, something got blown up, we would immediately, they would call us up at any time. We'd get in our vehicles, drive out there, provide security for the site while the civilians were loading up the vehicle and checking to make sure that there was no bodies in there or whatnot. And then we'd load it up and then we'd drive back to the base. So that was like the first half of

the deployment. Then a second half, when the surge was happening, they'd shut down a military base. It was called War Horse, which is like the coolest name ever. If you're going to have a military base, War Horse is what you would call it. But it was right on the outskirts of this place called, I'm trying to remember what it was called, but it was where the U.S. Army and the Marines was concentrating a lot of their efforts at, Bakuba. It was called Bakuba.

It was in the Triangle of Death, which is another cool name. But they- Kind of, kind of. Depend on what your relationship is. As long as you don you have to drive through it yeah so they're reopening up that base and to reopen up that base they needed a bunch of you know food ammo equipment stuff like that so what we're staying at was a place that was the largest

air force base in iraq um it was balad um air force joint base balad it was called camp anaconda at the time is that the one that we we evacuated and left our shit there i mean no i think that was afghanistan yeah but we um yeah our job was we had we'd have like 20 civilian tractor trailers you know like regular trucks brand but you know um and we would just provide security while we take while we resupply the base the smaller bases so during that time during the surge is when a lot of shit was going down um every time every time we left the wire or the base we were either we either got shot at or we got blown up. So, um, yeah, that was those two months because that happened right before we were

supposed to come home. Those two months were just, just constantly on. We're just, you know, just on alert. You were filling the new base up with supplies. Well, it was an old base, but we're resupplying it. Resupplying it. So that's what your crew would do. Those same guys that used to go out and protect basically the firemen and the ambulance drivers and the tow truck drivers. Now you would, you were basically a moving service to move supplies to the reopening of this base. And how far was it from the Air Force base you were at?

Not that far, maybe about 30 miles, but you know, we were going maybe 20 miles per hour. And how many times would you go every day? Every day, every day, unless we missed, we missed the window because we had these like windows to come back. If we missed the window coming back, we would have, we basically stuck there during the day because they wanted us to sleep. Where would you sleep? We'd find someplace either on our trucks or they had like a small gym there. We'd, we'd throw a cot down and sleep there

too you know or outside the coffee bean what's that the place the coffee hat they have a coffee shop there yeah caleb was familiar with coffee bean yeah yeah they still have those yeah sorry patrick i interrupted you you were gonna get say talk about being stuck there, a reason for it. Yeah, because they wanted us to move at night because they felt like it was safer to move at night. What? Yeah. So, which was just dumb because that's when they would, you know, the insurgents or whoever, the terrorists would always, that's where they would plant their bombs or IEDs or set up these things, you know, it's not like, it's not like we're really quiet because old, we're making all these movements on highways and on these, these roads that were well-known, well-traveled roads. So we, we hardly moved at all during the day. So if we, if we didn't

hit that window to leave the base, then we're stuck at that base, which wasn't bad because if we're stuck at a base, we just spend all sleeping catching up on sleep or you know sipping coffee at the coffee bean um so every time you leave is there is it is it crazy intense oh yeah yeah um like almost like do dudes have panic attacks and like i can't go i can't go like are people freaking out i didn't but since i was you know the convoy commander as we call it i would literally sit there because i was the oldest person we had. I was 30 years old at the time. Everyone else was like 18, 19, 20 years old and just kids. And, you know, I would sit there and I would replay in my head every possible scenario.

So I would get the briefings. I would get the mission. I would get, you know, all the intel. And it was my job to kind of disperse that to my soldiers. And I would hold some of that information or some information they just didn't know. Or it would be some information if I told them, they would freak out. Like you said, they would freak out. So two hours earlier on the road, we had an IED go off, and we also saw a group of tally band hanging hanging out yeah and they would still send you you'd still

go out yep yep at point seven there was danger yesterday they got shot at lookout for point seven so the whole time as you drive through point seven are you like what the fuck are you like you want to did you ever feel like you want to throw up oh yeah many times anytime anytime i got that feeling i felt that i wanted to throw it was kind of like my spider sense it's usually when we went through these small towns or these choke points or these they had traffic circles which are perfect ambush sites yeah um you know anytime we went through that it's like i just get this weird feeling in my stomach but that's usually when we got hit you know we you know we either have a

complex ied attack or a complex ambush of some sort what does that mean complex uh it would be multiple yeah multiple or it was just something that was well planned out like an ied goes off and they're shooting at you that which was most of the time or they would they set off a small id because they knew that whenever an id went off that we would have to stop and once we stop then we're kind of sitting ducks a complex ambush often involves a mixture of small arms and explosives to both maximize casualties and still chaos and confusion and cover the retreat of insurgent forces was your vehicle ever hit yeah yep you were in a vehicle that got shot at and bullets hit the vehicle oh bullets

were no problem that happened every time it was the ieds that got us so when you got to your location would you get out of the car and be like walk around and be like holy shit that one almost got us that one could have killed me yeah most of the time we joke about it because you know obviously humor and comedy is the best way to deal with stress and you know anxiety but yeah yep ed do you ever lose anybody no no that that that's the biggest thing i'm proud of that we've never well we haven't we've never lost anyone in combat i've lost some friends since then from those teams to from suicide from suicide correct so that because you hear that stat a lot that it's higher than ever that it's like you know one of the the running jokes in in my tinfoil

hack group is you know six military members died of covid 569 killed themselves like what's the problem here yeah yeah 22 22 per day veterans uh their lives. No shit. Yeah. What is that? That's over 7,000 a year. Mm-hmm. God, that's a lot of people killing themselves. Yeah.

And that's – is the connection there, that's the trauma that they experience while deployed that didn't get processed? That and the trauma of them trying to integrate back into society. Yeah. Yeah. That was – I had this guy on Roger Sparks, and he was talking about that, that basically like one minute he's loading 11 dead – He's getting shot at and seeing his friends get killed, loading 11 dead bodies into a helicopter. And then four days later, you're at a fucking base in Germany. Yeah. And it's like, yeah.

Or, you know, I think the hardest thing for me was like, I was constantly on 11. You know, like, you know, if 10 was your alertness, I was always on 11. And then you would get home and within two days you're in a Walmart. You know, and then like two days earlier, you're like, you know, you're scooped. Yeah, exactly. You're at an IED site, you know, watching this thing, watching a vehicle burn itself out. Because, you know, they, they hardly rarely, they rarely ever like showed up to a site if something got blown up with like

a fire department and hose it down, they would just let it, they would just let it burn out, you know, and it would take anywhere from eight to nine, you know, 10 hours for, you know, a vehicle to burn out, especially if you had ammo or anything in it. So you'd have to stand there for nine hours on fuckle on level 11 alert waiting for a second attack and then when this thing finally burns out you drag it away basically yeah and as this is happening to you day in and day out are you are you aware of the uh toll it's taking on you no no i did it i was more me personally i had a couple days where i was just like man this is this fucking hard. But most of the time I was more worried about the soldiers because, you know, I think this is where a lot of like my suicidal tendencies at the time came from, because like I always said to myself, like, if something would happen to us, I hope it happens to me and not to these kids.

to me and not to these kids because like i've you know at 30 years old i'm like oh i've lived a full life these guys haven't lived a life yet and then and then at the time i didn't i mean i i you know i hadn't even started living my life i mean i still haven't but that that's where like my thinking started so you know i how do so so you cut you come back from that and and that's all – was that in 2007? Yeah. And then we're right then – yeah, and then I got back and – I actually got back like the day before my birthday. And then my civilian job at the time at the university, they told me that I didn't have to start until the new year. So I had, what, three months to myself, to my own devices. Where did you do that um i basically spent my time between st louis and vegas oh shit wow yeah did you know anyone in vegas or were you

going there for extracurricular activities yes and no okay people there sometimes i meet up with them sometimes i didn't did you ever get into drugs? I dabbled. But alcohol was your... Alcohol was mainly it. Do you remember your first suicidal thoughts? Yeah. How it crept in? Could you tell me about that? I was literally... This was actually a week before I actually tried to take my life. I

was, um, I was sitting in my apartment. Wow. That escalated quick. You had your first thought. And then a week later you were taking action on it. Yeah. Wow. That is fast. Yeah. It was, it was, and it actually didn't happen until later. It was probably like, it was in January of 2008. And I just started working at my job again. And I looked around, I was sitting in my apartment in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. And I was looking around my apartment and all I had was I hadn't, I don't know, I felt I just felt broken. And I felt broke. Like all the money I made for my deployment was gone. All I had to show for it was a TV and an Xbox, you know, and I'd made, I'd made over like $80,000. Like when I came back from my deployment, I had $80,000 in my

checking account. And then here I was three months later, I had nothing, uh, besides a paycheck. I was getting, I mean, I was looking forward to going back to work because I needed, I needed money. What was your job at the time? I was working in university. Yeah. Back at the university working athletic department. Okay. And, um, they hold the job for you patrick yeah okay they have to they have to yeah no one has to do shit they will fuck you quick per the government for yeah per the government they have they have they have to hold a job for people who are in the guard or deployed or whatever. Yeah. But yeah, I just started,

I looked around and it was like, man, this is, this is sad. I had no, I had, you know, I had nothing at the,

I mean, I had obviously had my family, but it's like, I, where did they live? Did they live in that town? No, they were like an hour,

hour and a half away. I mean, Cape Girardeau is about an hour and a half away from St. Louis to St. Louis area where we're from. There's nothing. I had nothing. I didn't have a girl or someone I can convince.

I had friends, but I was sheltering them. I didn't have I felt like I hit the end of the road. Then I started drinking some more, and then I got numb to it. A week later, i just i guess i decided i was going to try to end it

um do you do you remember the thoughts that build up did you think of it as suicide what words did you use like were you just like hey i i there's nothing here for me? Were you depressed or was it kind of like, were you ambivalent to it or? I was tired. Tired. I was just tired. I just, you know, it's like.

Like exhausted. Exhausted. Kind of done with life. Yeah. I don't have any more in me. Yep. Exactly. Just like, I just want to close my eyes and just fall asleep like so so

were you depressed or is it more like i've just had enough both one led to the other like my depression led to that because um and maybe were you looking for something new also like hey like you didn't know you were looking for something new but this is this is this has become um tedious and a chore to live yeah the magic and the excitement is gone yeah of being alive yep i know that's i feel like my experiences with that that's what it was it wasn't so much depression was like i'm done yeah you're just tapping out i'm just tapping out i'm done yeah yeah no that's what it felt like i mean you know depression was a symptom of it but but the overall thing was like yeah i was just tired and just wanted it just wanted everything to end and just didn't want to deal with all the stuff didn't want to deal with just

simple tasks you know i didn't i mean that you know i still have anxieties when i go to like huge events you know stuff like that you know and i was like i would purposely avoid going to walmart if i went to walmart i'd go like late you know back when walmart's are 24 hours i would go to these super stores that were, I would go like at 2 AM because there was no one there. But the lights even bug you. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what kind of what it's like. I think also for people who like live in the country or people who get old, like as I get older, I cannot, like, I don't like even like the 20 parents who are like watching the kids do jujitsu in the class.

I have to go outside. I get overwhelmed. I get like sensory – over sensory stimulated. Yeah. of closed you off to the world that the world didn't seem magical anymore did you was there any moment in your experience over there that you think like cauterized you shut or it was just the totality of it of just a burnout i think the totality of that and then also also being around my team being around those group of people and them depending on me and me depending on them them depending on me and me depending on them, you know? You know, I just felt like I didn't have a purpose. Yeah.

And those guys, those, those, those, my team, I mean, all of us, we, that was, that was our purpose. That was our meaning. We were, we're doing something bigger, whether like, I didn't agree with why we were at war, but that's not why I went to war i went to war because of these these kids because i felt like if they didn't go if i didn't go with them they wouldn't come back a lot of pressure on me um it was never political for me i knew i mean i know that i'm a political pawn i know what the military is but it still doesn't stop me from serving because i because it's bigger than me so i have to concentrate with what i can't control. And that's what soldiers and that these young,

these young soldiers coming up, if I can help them out in any way and make their, their life easier than, than I felt like I've accomplished something. I wonder if that's why you've stepped into this role of agent manager. I think so. I really, I think so.

It's me wanting to help people and mentor. I feel like I'm good at doing that. And you have endless energy for it. Like when you have purpose in your life, it's like you could do it 24 hours a day. It's like, yes. Yeah. Yeah. So you, so you come back, the thoughts start popping in a week later, you take action. How, what was your method? What was the plan? Sleeping pills. i was too big of a pussy to shoot myself thank god um so i just took a bunch i mean did you have a gun

yeah i did um but the last thing i wanted to do was have an open uh uh closed casket i didn't want someone to find me you know you know with my face blown off or you know yeah I didn't want someone to find me, you know, you know, with my face blown off or, you know, yeah, I didn't want to put people through that pain. I mean, I understood that whatever I did, if I did, you know, if I was going to kill myself, that people were going to be in pain, you know, but I didn't want, I didn't want to make it any worse. Um, so I ingested a shit ton of sleeping pills and drank a shit ton of vodka and, you know, sat on my couch and then, and then just drifted off, drifted away. Um, were you crying at the time or, or no, no, no emotion, kind of emotionless. I cried. I cried a lot when I woke up in my own puke and realized that I didn't do it. Wow. Did someone find you?

No. No. Wow. Fascinating. Did you cry because you wish it had worked or because you realized it was a mistake? You realized you're so long. It was a little bit of both.

Initially it was because I, I think that I didn't, that I, that I'm, that I didn't do it. And then once I started thinking about it, I was like, you know,

I cried because that I actually thought about doing that. Are you, are you a religious man? You believe in God? No. Do you believe in God? No. Do you believe in God? I'm spiritual. It's weird.

It's like, I guess whatever. I mean, I do believe that you read your horoscope. No, I don't do that. Yeah. But I mean,

I find all that stuff interesting, but I'm not, I mean, I, I'd say I'm more spiritual than, but not to the point where I'm like praying to anything. And how did that – was that your only attempt? Yeah.

And how do you think that that – and that was in – that was – 2008. Okay. So 14 years ago. Yeah. Does it seem So 14 years ago. Yeah. Does it seem like 14 years? No. Like seems more recent.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially now because I've opened up and share my experiences now. So that's why it seems like it's just like yesterday. So that's why it seems like it's just like yesterday. Before, I was ashamed to even bring it up until I started becoming a proponent of it. Not of committing suicide, but just sharing my experiences in the hopes of helping other people. I have some pretty strong opinions on embracing death. I have some pretty strong opinions on embracing death and that there's a depth to life once you've embraced depth that I don't think it can be forced on you or practiced.

It's kind of weird. You kind of have to be called to it like you were. Yeah. Do you feel that? Do you feel like that it dug a hole in you that now you can fill with wisdom or it did something to you that there's no other way that anyone could have unless it's the cohort of those who have either experienced near death or who have attempted death? Yeah, I feel that way. Especially lately, you know, within the last like four years, especially once I, you know, yeah, now that I've become a little bit more open and shared my experiences. Yeah. I feel like I'm not scared of death anymore because, you know,

I don't know. I just, I'm not, I'm like, I've accepted that it's going to happen at some point at any point. I mean, I'm, I'm lucky to be here to begin with. I mean, I don't know how many times that I've, you know, I should have been, I should have been dead. Right. I mean, if you're in a car that someone shoots at on a regular basis, it's fucking crazy that you're alive.

Yeah. We, I i mean i've been hit by three ieds wow any that stopped your vehicle yeah all of them stopped the vehicle oh my god what a fucking crazy job i just want to be a national guard i just want to you know go to college and i just want to play soldier on the weekends. I didn't mean, I didn't mean to come over here. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, those aren't your words.

I'm just saying, no, no, no, no. But you know, it's, it's funny that you say that because I, even to this day,

when I go to, uh, when I go to, um, my one week in a month, I call it, I go play army. Uh,

Melissa, uh, Odie, uh, one of Seve's guests's guests said wanting to die and killing yourself are are different things yep um did you uh this is kind of just gross of me to ask but i gotta know uh why did you fail you didn't take enough pills or you didn't drink enough vodka like what could what should you have done differently you know i think i think it's i think it all came down to positioning i think what happened is uh i i fell on the couch and what i think what happened and this is talking to other experts and maybe cale you know might

might be able to correct me on some of the stuff i guess my body started convulsing and when it was convulsing i fell off the couch and i fell on my stomach. And when I fell off my stomach, my head turned and then I threw up. I think I was from the time I woke up to when I took the pills and blacked out to when I woke up, it was a matter of eight hours. So at some point in those eight hours, it hit me, I convulsed, fell off the couch and woke up in my own puke. But the good thing is I didn't land on my stomach, which is, it's crazy because my old roommate. Oh, cause you would have drowned in your puke. Correct.

Yeah. Your body won't digest all of those drugs and all of that alcohol. So it'll force itself to grow up even if you're unconscious. So it all depends on how you land essentially. Like if you're laying on your back and you've already ingested all of those things, like you're just going to drown in your own vomit. But if you're, that's why when you have like alcohol poisoning or stuff like that,

when with college kids, you just roll them on their side and they'll just start vomiting onto the ground instead of it just going back into their mouth and not being able to be evacuated properly. Fucking nuts. What were you? You were going to say something. Yeah, it's I think about it because I had it was was a fraternity brother of mine in college. He was an old roommate of mine. He passed away in 2019 from kind of the same way. He drank a lot, had a bunch of drugs, and passed out.

And he died from puking from, you know, from his, from, you know, choking himself and drowning sounds like the worst. Yeah. And you know, it, it actually just,

it actually just dawned upon me that he died the same way that I try to take my life. And I just, I didn't think about until just this moment. And it's just like, it's crazy. Cause I'm literally the place I'm living at right now. This, this is a spare bedroom.

This used to be his bedroom. Oh shit. Wow. And then it's like, it's like, it's crazy where life takes us because that's, that's just, yeah. Wild. You're not married. No. You have two dogs.

Yep. wild you're not married no you have two dogs yep um did your did you any of your siblings go through similar uh trauma that you went through um i don't think so um if anyone has probably been my sister more than anyone but she's so like yeah she's she's she's she's a hard ass um are you close with them i'm close with my sister my brother me and my brother are close too but me and my sister she is um me and her a lot closer i think a lot of it has to do because we're both still in the army as well my brother he he retired a couple years uh maybe four years ago are your parents still alive yeah do they know this do they know this story uh not not in details my dad knows you know that um you know just in me having conversations um

yeah he he knows but he's a vietnam veteran and he's gone through his own he's fighting his own demons even now he still fights his own demons wow the whole every like three minutes I think oh shit what's Caleb going through you recently you recently uh you recently went from

uh morning how long were you at the morning chaka almost three years wow and and how long has the morning chaka been around gosh maybe six years i don't i don't know if you know the story, but when it first came out, I think it was just an email. And I remember, oh, this is really cool. And then someone told me that the guy who was running it, who I believe was Justin LaFranco at the time, he had come from being a lobbyist or something. And he had done something similar on a daily basis in D.C. or something. And then he just took this know-how and knowledge and this presentation. I shouldn't say just because by no means do i mean to belittle it and he brought that to crossfit

and i remember subscribing to him be like this is fucking dope and then i contacted and then i was and at the time i was uh the executive media director at crossfit inc and i was like hey i'm gonna buy this i told greg i said hey i'm to buy this from this guy. Yeah. And so I invited him to the CrossFit games. I think that's how it happened. And then, um, he went to, uh, he got in, I was working, but I had him go to Greg's box and I think he met Greg and then Greg decided he didn't want to do it. And I think that they just, it just wasn't nothing in particular, but they just didn't hit it off. And so then that's when we started the email of the day at CrossFit. And similar to the Twitter account that I started at CrossFit that I was got in trouble for back before there was Instagram or any of that shit ended up

becoming a massive tool. And soon as the email of the day became successful, that was also taken from me and ruined very quickly. I don't know if you remember, but it used to be really cool email the day. And then all of a sudden they just started making an exact duplicate of the home page and so it was just it was the whole thing got fucked up but uh and then so so you're over at the morning uh chalk up and you're there for three years and without a doubt it it's the most notorious, infamous – I'll go as far as to say – it breaks my heart – the premier, no-peer, standalone in its class. Even though there were things like probably like Box Rocks and Bar Bend, they weren't, the community felt like they had ownership of morning chalk up.

Like it was part and parcel with it. It was an organization, but still within the community. Yes. Yeah. And, and, and I can't think of anything else like that. No, I mean, even now it still is. I mean, the, the joke is, it's not even a joke, but we, we would say when I was at the morning chalk up that we do, we cover CrossFit better than CrossFit does. Like we tell the stories that CrossFit should be telling. And we took ownership of that.

Like when we write all these pieces about, you know, someone like Amy Bream, who, you know, is an adaptive athlete who, you know, battled to become a CrossFit Games athlete. You know, we covered that before CrossFit did. You know, we're doing a lot more of these community pieces than CrossFit is. I mean, CrossFit should be doing the community pieces, not the morning chalk up. We should be covering just the sport. And so that was kind of like a badge of honor that, I mean, people at morning chalk up probably still feel that way,

that they do CrossFit better than CrossFit. And do you have any idea how many people work there in its prime at its peak i think at one point we might have had maybe including contributors like you know in terms of writers maybe 18 and and um it was considered a prestigious job in in the space people were proud to work there yeah yeah and um and you did everything there right you know i would see you in videos uh i would see you in um you written articles and you did photography yeah and then i helped out with the newsletter as well like i would have eyes on i'd help with like finding like everything from our speed reads to our highlights, you know, just anything, anything I thought that was newsworthy worth, I would, you know, contribute in that way.

And on the back end and before the newsletter would go out, I would have one of the final eyes on in terms of making sure the corrections, you know, were being done. So some editing too. Yeah. Yeah. And there's another word for it. I don't know what the word is, but make sure it's on point with something morning chocolate would want to put out. It's in CrossFit. We would call it just sort of like, make,

make sure it's on point with our brand for you on brand. Yeah. On brand. Yeah. Yeah. I would do that. And then, uh, one of the coolest, one of the things I was, I really got to enjoy was a YouTube channel and also, um, the, uh, assigning, coming up with story ideas and assigning them out. So at one point I was our, I guess when you want to call it news editor, you know, where, you know, I've come up with ideas and, you know, Hey, Emily beers, you're going to write this story or do you want to write the story or, you know, just assign them. with ideas and, you know, Hey, Emily beers, you're going to write this story or do you want to write the story or, you know, just assign them. So that was kind of cool assignment editor,

I guess you want to call it. Yeah. And I think in the, in the film space, we'd call it a producer. You'd be like some sort of an executive producer. Okay. We need these 10 things done. These are the teams or the people who are going to go out and do kind of the same thing. You didn't maybe a lot of what you did when you showed up on site in the military. Yeah, exactly. Kind of a bigger picture, making sure everything is getting done.

Yeah, that was kind of like – that was a role that I was kind of like – I kind of created for myself at the Morning Choco. And that's what kind of brought the resurgence of the YouTube channel back. Oh, and that's pretty recently, right? That's in the last year. Yeah, last year. So actually September – and I take extreme pride in this. I mean, that YouTube channel was, at one point, we brought on Clydesdale Scott on to kind of run the YouTube channel. Just for whatever reasons, it didn't work out. I think it was just more the styles didn't really fit each other. So after the games, we had no no one we had no youtube personality nothing like

that so you know i was games of 2022 or games of 2021 2021 okay that's what i thought okay yeah after 2021 and um i was going i think that that fall that was a labor day yeah labor day weekend i went i got invited to go down the train with rich and i took my camera with me and um i asked rich hey do you want to sit down do some interviews so we sat down and that's where he kind of broke kind of we kind of broke that he was it might possibly be his last year so i filmed it sit down interview with him and then um i asked justin if i could have the youtube's uh credentials so i can throw that interview up there. So I threw that interview up there and it got a lot of views.

And then I started shooting more interviews and started doing that. But the thing is, like, I wasn't very good at interviewing people. And we had someone on staff that had a background in that, but she wasn't being utilized in that. So I called Lauren. I'm like, Lauren, you know, you should be doing these i'm gonna let's bring the youtube channel back and she goes well is justin knowing we're doing this like no let's just do it i've been doing it anyways let's you let's me and you do this let's make this youtube channel a thing so you know you'll see from september to like december it was like it was

kind of like of 2021 yeah 2021 you 2021, you know, you can see the transition of me going to Lauren and then Lauren kind of making it her own, but at the, you know, I was kind of acting as her producer on the side, come helping her out with ideas, put her in touch with athletes, you know, and this was all being done without Justin's like approval. We're just doing it. And well, I don't want to take anything away from you, but it also shows that was the key to the success of CrossFit in the first five years also that we were allowed to be intrapreneurs. That was a term I learned from Patrick Bed-David, which is basically entrepreneurs within an entrepreneurial organization. So he – God knows I don't want to give him any credit but he he uh he found the right person in you who was a workhorse and an entrepreneur and who could be a self-starter and you fucking ran with

it yeah yeah and then lauren took because a lot of a lot of bosses might not have done what justin did and put in stepped on your dick and been like no correct correct yeah yeah but you ran with it you took and it's not like you were getting it's the same across it's not like anyone was getting paid extra for this shit it's just like hey i work here i take pride in it i'm doing it yeah and i i looked at how many people don't realize that's how shit gets off the ground i know exactly and what are you gonna pay me get the fuck out of here like like yeah i mean you think this is the fucking government you work for? Yeah, I didn't I didn't get paid for it.

Not a good analogy. Don't pay me either. Yeah. No, it was it was awesome. It was actually kind of cool. Just kind of like starting from from, you know, kind of rebranding it because we had I think we had like 25 000 followers on the youtube channel but that was all from the 2019 games when we were able to use the feed from the 2019 games and show it on the morning chocolate so people all those a lot of those subscribers were dead not dead literally but they were you know they weren't active accounts youtube accounts right so do you do you

YouTube accounts. Right. So do you, do you, um, and I have a huge bias. I appreciate Lauren's content. That's more raw than the edited pieces that feel like, so I, when I had her on the show, I watched like a hundred of her news stories when she was, you know, working on at all these, uh, news stations around the country. And it was, it's that typical format that's, you know, working on, at all these news stations around the country. And it was, it's that typical format that's, you know, like that you see in a Will Ferrell movie. You know what I mean? It's like, I haven't watched that kind of news in like, I don't know, 25 years. I'm even actually surprised people still watch that kind of news. But I appreciate her raw stuff more.

Like, I love the stuff that she's putting out like at rogue or yeah at zellos games i'm like oh this like i feel like i'm this is real yeah it is it's her that's that's lauren putting personality out there and that's that's why we love that you know whenever we had a show with that we get me tommy and brian on with her like anytime we had those little debate shows where you made pics those are the funnest and she'll tell you those are probably our favorite episodes because and she flourished there too because she drives forward yes yeah kind of like how you do yeah yeah and she and she would get involved as well she would and we would invite her in you know in kind of like the analyst world and uh she she liked that

and you know and she's you know she does really good in those situations where like you said it's raw and unscripted. She's so much better at that. And I think that has a lot to do with her background in TV when she would show up to a location of a fire. And then she has to interview some random guy in his underwear and ask him what's going on. He's like, oh. She did that stuff good too. Yeah, you're right.

I can remember this one piece she did where she was at a flood. And she randomly interviews this guy. He fucking where she was at a flood and she randomly interviews this guy. He's fucking doesn't want to talk, but she fucking gets it out of him. Yeah. I don't, I don't want to say that she's best there. I just don't like that other style. I agree.

I agree. I mean, I think that she does the cheese dick style great too. It's just not, I just think it's cheese dick. Sure. No, I agree. It's like, Hey, what's your favorite color? I mean, you brought that up, you know, stuff like that. And I think most people do agree. You don't learn anything. I mean, you brought that up, you know, stuff like that. And I think most people do agree.

You don't learn anything. I mean, and plus that story has already been told at some point. Right. I mean, you do a lot of great research. And I don't know how many times you can come across the same story that's been told, you know, get you something new. Or I think that's where your platform is really good as in terms of you can bring a lot of that information out. You know, when I was at the morning chalk up, I mean, I pride myself on soaking content. That's one reason why you see me in those chats, because I'm there listening.

I listen to you. I listen to Nate Edwards and I listen to Craig Rich. I listen to all of it because I want to hear what everyone in the space is seeing i want to hear those other opinions too um because that's how it makes that's what makes me a better journalist or a better a better analyst is knowing what everyone's opinions and thoughts are and then i can form my own you know based off of what you guys are doing and and compare the two or three i should be watching those um no i i don't i don't think so at this point i think that you've you've established i watch lauren pretty much and that's it yeah and then if i have to i'll go over to um if i have to i'll do invictus mindset if i have to i'll do um the brute guy yeah if i have and but basically my go-tos are lauren and uh and clydesdale yeah i think those are some scott the reason why i like scott so much is he asked i feel like he breaks the surface with

people yeah he does it's like very it's like the only one with like some depth to it i shouldn't say the only but but he he's he's very calm he's like the buddha sitting there and he'll ask some deeper questions and people will open up to him yeah i agree he's a very and obviously a very likable guy and to tell you the truth not a lot of people watch it so i could just steal his shit like he asked the question i'm like fuck this is fucking amazing i'll be like well i'll ask the same question and i'll get more eyeballs on it and people will pat me on the back yeah no i think you're fine with those two and then scattering the others especially with with lauren and Clydesdale it's i mean you're a busy guy it seems like you're a busy guy but it just you know you're you're doing no more than 30 minutes of listening or research where some of these podcasts can go longer than that and then um

yeah and most of these other ones like nate and craig a lot of them are repeating stories or news that's already they're just giving their opinion on it you know that's the that's the thing that's the thing where i struggle with those guys because i i would if nate could just title all my videos i'd be fucking gold he is the king of titling i i that is not easy people yeah that is not his titles are so fucking good but i've learned to like hey take his titles and then do my research somewhere else like okay he some some news is out about hayley adams but i then i just can't put myself through the 15 minutes yeah of um of way of of that nate's done a great job if you notice especially in the last month he's found he found

his yes like he needs to talk he knows that and he's real it's his voice he's real as fuck it's his voice he's found that hayley adams danielle brandon mal o'brien anything hwpo if he puts a thumbnail or talks anything about them he's going to get automatically 15 000 views right and and his videos are eight minutes so it's really short so he's figured out get automatically 15 000 views right and and his videos are eight minutes so it's really short so he's figured out this formula now because he for a while there he's kind of been back and forth with a lot of things and i think what he's found now it it it works for him you know and he's doing he seems genuine as fuck he's him and hillar kind of on the same page in in terms of but i just feel like killer i get more of his

opinion yeah and so like i feel like hillar's laying concrete blocks and and uh nate anderson's kind of like putting out clouds of smoke the second i think i'm going to get something i'm like wait what the fuck did where did that go yep you know what i mean and hillar was like whether i agree with him or not um i'm so stimulated by it i'm like okay there's the wall he built i can touch it i can decide whether i yeah that's a great analogy that's a good way to compare it to um no i mean i think nate's doing i mean he's found a formula and it's it's it's working for him and it's it's something that i wanted to kind of when i was at morning chalk and help with the youtube channel

that's something that i wanted to do more of to have some of those opinionated pieces where we're hitting on some of these so i'm ready to hear lauren's opinion by the way she's been in the space long enough yes she doesn't just have to push the story forward like i want to hear her chime in 100 like i don't know brian that's bullshit tommy what do you think yeah just start start like just start some fights yeah i want i wanted her to do that too when i she's ready yeah she knows she knows more than she knows as much as anyone else she might as well yeah i i 100 agree it was great because like her i was able to hang out with her as zealous and you know i didn't really have any immediate capacity at zealous this year i was i was just hanging out managing and shooting here and there but it was

for no one in particular but i was able to kind of hang out with lauren and you know it was it felt like old times like what we wanted to do before i wasn't it wasn't weird no no no not at all i mean it's not weird at all i mean there was a little bit of weirdness i think that when we're at rogue but once we realized like hey you know we're we're both in good places now and that we can we can live you know we're both doing two different things you know she's on she's on the youtube platform i'm more of a written you know but yeah everything's cool it's great to be around her and presley i know you haven't had a chance to meet presley yet but she she's a good one too but those two girls are doing great things i mean two women are doing great things at the morning

chalk up and and for the space and cross but you're going to see a lot more presley coming up here and and on different platforms you when i when i think of the morning chalk up in the past i the the people i would think of would be obviously Justin, but I would think of you, Emily Beers, Tommy, and Brian for whatever reason. I don't know if that's accurate, but those are like – In that order? In that order. No, no, no, no. No.

And Tommy – if I'm mischaracterizing this, let me know. Tommy left shortly after Brian left and shortly after you left. Correct. All three analysts yeah well is something going on there is it like why are you guys leaving is it because you're bigger and better things i mean obviously barbend is i mean it's a robust website there's a ton of shit going on there is it for independence is it just out of a press and and i think i don't know this for a fact and correct me if i'm wrong but tommy and sean's podcast has been absorbed into charlie doobie's company wild wild horses what's charlie's company's name uh hamilton road hamilton wild horses hamilton road and so so is there did you exhaust your time there or, or you didn't like it there?

Me, I exhausted my time there. Just need a change. You weren't like, you weren't pissed. They weren't like, Hey. I wouldn't say I wasn't pissed. There's some things that I was, I was unhappy with when I left, but I wasn't in a position to make any change. So that's one reason why I left. But I wasn't in a position to make any change, so that's one reason why I left.

And they brought in a new guy. They brought in that guy from Outside Magazine who I'm not a fan of absolutely at all. Let me be very clear. Okay. Patrick. Patrick. Hasenblad. Oh, yeah.

Blender has it? Yeah. Yeah. They brought him in to work under. Oh, that's a cool photo. Oh, if those were gold chains, I would be doubly as happy. That'd be gangster. That was a thousand Dubai last year.

So look how tan you are. I know. I was so tan back then. Did did his coming have anything to do with your guys? He's not in this photo, right? The guy. Yeah. Did his showing up anything to do with your guys? He's not in this photo, right? The Patrick guy. Did his showing up, did that change? Did they do a restructuring or a reorg or anything like that that made it so that you and Tommy and Brian?

No, I mean, obviously there were some changes in restructuring, but I don't think anything he did affected what we were doing. I mean, at least on the surface level. I mean, we were still able to analyst. I mean, we pitched stories. We were still, you know, able to do a lot of things, but it was a change in terms of the structure and what we used to do and how we would do things. It gave us another step. I mean, he's, he was brought in to be the senior managing editor and he was, and he's really good at doing that. We were not used to that because either it was, you know, Joe, Jen, Tim Palawa, who was our editor, but he, you know, he didn't have the background that Patrick did, or it was Justin LaFranco, who was our senior managing editor, you know? So, you know, the style was

different, but that, I don't think that had anything to do with us leaving. You know, Brian, Brian left for his reasons. i'm happy brian left because if what what him leaving gave other opportunities it showed other people in the space that there's other it's just not the morning chalk up in terms of if you want to be an analyst or a journalist or someone in the field because at the time is either you wrote for a crossfit which didn't have really any writers or the morning chalk up if you wanted to be a writer and analyst. And since the games barbell spins shown that they're, they're a contender now.

And then you showed up on the scene after the whole entire media department had been fired. Correct. If it actually, if I wouldn't be in this space, if it wasn't for Tommy and actually Rory, cause I used to be a judge. I used to judge competitions.

I mean, that was my thing. I had no desire to do anything, journalism or writing. But I ran into them, and it was right after they got fired, and they were kind of like free agents. They were in China. They got brought over to China, and, you know, we were sitting there sharing our stories, and I was sharing mine. And, yeah, I think that was my last games, 2019. china and you know we're sitting there sharing our stories and i was sharing mine and yeah that

was i think that was my last games 29 2019 games yeah my last year as a judge um and they kind of they they were like hey you should get into the uh journalism space yeah because they you know we're telling each other our story they're like how come you're not doing anything media really i'm like is there anything out there and and that was so weird because at the time i thought it was just crossfit media and they're like of course there's plenty of things because at the time both of those guys were trying to find their spot their place in right in the post you know firing or whatever um everyone's still trying to find their place exactly it still is you're right um you know so that was kind of tommy tomm Tommy got brought on by Morning Chalk Up.

I started volunteering as a photographer at Morning Chalk Up. And then Justin realized that I could write and I had a background in sports journalism. So he brought me on and and here I am. So, yeah. So so Tommy leaves and that kind of I'm trying to piggyback off of this idea that I may have gleaned from you. Tommy leaves and that sets precedent like, okay, there's life after morning chalk up. He took that step. Then Brian leaves and that's when it really comes to your mind. Okay, wow. He's finding another place to practice his craft.

And then the opportunity – it sounds like none of you were like fuck you i quit and slammed the door on the way out it sounds like other doors often opened and you guys went through them yeah like there was never a day you weren't working the day that you worked for morning chalk up in barb and they they butted up against each other. Yeah, I literally wrote a preview piece for Morning Chalk Up, and the next day I was writing a recap of day one at the Rogue. So I went...

Awesome. Yeah. So it was like, I put in my two weeks, told Justin, this is my last day. This is what I'm going to do up until that last day. I mean, I literally was working until the last hours of that, kind of trying to think, the 28th, I literally was working until that, the last hours of, of that kind of trying to think the 28th, 27th or something like that. And then next day was full blown, you know,

right in the barbend coverage, which was great. Um, that's how I prefer things like their onboarding. They, they said I had the people at barbends, like I had the most unique onboarding ever. You know, most people don't onboard with an event so i went right into it i i i really wanted there was a there was like a month where i really wanted lauren to come over oh yeah all the games interviews for me i was just fucking exhausted from i just not like physically or mentally or not physically or emotionally exhausted but it was just like like you know it's like you or emotionally exhausted, but it was just like, like, you know, it's like you just eat too much chocolate.

You're like, I shouldn't have eaten the whole bar. That's how I felt about the games. Like I just wanted to throw up. I was like, if I could get Lauren over here. And I was always admiring how much content she put out. And the fact that she could push the show forward. I was like, damn, this girl just pushes and pushes and could push the show forward. I was like, damn, this girl just pushes and pushes

and just pushing the team forward and the content. To see her, I didn't get to see her that much during the games because I was busy shooting. I was busy shooting, so I wasn't able to help her out as much as I wanted to. But then seeing her at Zealous Games was like, she she's freaking amazing you know she's on the grind yeah she constantly is and she's got so much better at turning that stuff around like she didn't know how to do a lot of this in design or you know premiere stuff you know like the editing and she's taught herself how to do that to a point where she can quickly turn around

something yeah she said she was up till 5 30 in the morning. When I hear that, I know someone's on premier. I'm like, yeah, you're on, but she, but that was that rogue. I think now she's better at it.

Like she was turning that stuff around pretty quick at, at zealous. Um, and, uh, yeah, I'm, I'm just,

I'm, I'm, I'm excited for her because I really think, you know, well, she's in a tough spot without you and Tommy and Brian though, to dip in the well. I,

yeah, it, it, the videos have gotten uh fuck it weird like the like like i can tell she's like these people and by weird i guess here's a here's a more friendly way to say it you can tell she's interviewing new people to replace you like she hasn't found the guys to replace you yet so she's she's rotating in people looking i think

the best person she's found so far is Jamie Higaya. Yeah. Oh, I love Jamie. Yeah. Yeah. She's dope. I'd love to work with her too.

She is dope. And it's, it's a, we're in a weird space right now, especially with her. It's like a lot of these people that she's bringing in, they work for Hamilton roads as well, which works for a lot of these,

a lot of these people probably, I don't know if there's going to be like an exclusivity where they were not going to be able to come on our show anymore. And that's what I, that's something I've always been fearful because I knew as soon as we did, we started coming out that YouTube channel, that some point someone's going to grab our idea, someone with more money probably cross or they're going to, they're going to grab our idea and throw more money at it and more resources at

it and make it their own. And I think through Hamilton roads, I think that's ultimately what they're going to do with talking to elite fitness. Well, Oh yeah. Well, I will tell you this. I, at the end of the day, I am very, very happy of how things turned out with mine and Lauren Cleo's relationship. I'm actually very happy. She stayed over there and, and, and, and the turn of events that happened for her, I think are great. I think finding people who know about games to come on your show and talk is fucking way harder than most people know. But I say this with all humility. Anyone out there who thinks you're going to take someone from my show and make them completely your own and not let them come on my show, you, you, you are out of,

you will only hurt yourself. Yeah. I say that with peace and love, you will only hurt yourself. That's not a threat. I'm just saying, I think that everyone, I think the people who come on my show, it, it brings so much value to the other places that they go. And I would never do that to one of my employees either. I don't think be like, Hey, you can't go. You are employees, volunteers. I think be like, Hey, you can't go. You are employees volunteers. Yeah. I would never say, Hey, you can't go somewhere else. Cause for me, that was the greatest thing about Brian.

He could be everywhere. And I want, I wanted people to see him on talking to elite fitness at the morning chalk up and then pop onto my show. Like, fuck. And Brian and Brian's the type of person that he doesn't want that. He doesn't want to be tied down to one thing. That was, that was important. When the Benjamins, Patrick, there's a number. And Brian's the type of person that he doesn't want that. He doesn't want to be tied down to one thing. That was important.

Oh, the Benjamins, Patrick. Exactly. There's a number. There is. There is. But if he was, I mean, he's the, Brian's a star. Obviously, we all know that. But it's only getting brighter. You saw what he did on the Zealous Games.

Yeah. As soon as, I mean, that's opening up so many so many i mean there's opportunities opening up right now for him he's going to be doing the same you know he's going to be broadcasting again at dubai you know i mean his his style is it's it's something fresh it's new and people respect them and they know that what they're getting they're not getting a cookie cutter you know color analyst they're getting someone that actually puts time and money and research it's 1950s i would even say it's not new it's 1950s yeah he's the fucking guy where you can close well he could close your eyes and remember like when you hear boxing matches on the radio yes and he would paint that whole picture

yep yeah i agree you know i i went back and re-watched the whole broadcast the last couple days and it's just like it's amazing what you know you guys showed back and re rewatched the whole broadcast the last couple of days. And it's just like, it's amazing what, you know, you guys showed that it's capable. So when, when someone says, Hey, we cannot,

we cannot live stream the semifinal from South Africa or Brazil, you know, it's bullshit. You know, you guys did that on a shoestring budget with some volunteers that, and, and, and with 5,000 more dollars,

if we could have got a fat pipe in there internet pipe yeah then it's then then we we ruled the roost yeah because those iphones shoot 4k and at that point we ruled the roost yeah no one the intimacy of the zealous games i'm so i'm so proud of what we did there it was amazing it's it's it's groundbreaking it's very it's very raw but at the same time very, it's very raw, but at the same time, very refined. And you got to see all the events. Exactly. You got to see the finish line.

You got to see all the athletes. Yeah. It's very raw. But, but that being said, it's, it's, it's, um, it was more, uh, you got everything. And I can't, I can't say the other events. I can't say that you even get half the shit, even 10% of the shit. Yep. I mean, Sousa was running around going behind the scenes. mean you don't get that you know right you have to wait i

mean you saw that you you've produced them you've directed a lot of these videos it's like you have to wait like six months to see the least yeah you know but he's you're seeing it right there you're seeing how these athletes interact so thank you scott it is all about the fact that is correct thank you but you got to see that right there and you got to see this how these athletes interacted with each other what they do it's like you don't see that you don't see that until the documentary comes out or the miles to madison or whatever even then it's a small snippet so and it's polished you know it's been edited exactly exactly and that's that's that's not. CrossFit isn't edited. CrossFit's raw. It's dirty, box, gym, chalk everywhere, bad lighting. That's CrossFit. But you guys captured that.

I appreciate you being on here, Patrick. Yeah. I was actually thinking at the 45-minute mark, I'm like, we're never going to finish this. I look forward to having you on again. I hope you will come on again. I hope you will. I hope you will come on again. I do not say that at the end of even 10% of my shows. I tell you, we have a lot more to talk about, brother. We definitely do. I appreciate it. Thanks again. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for being so open, intimate, letting us get to know you. It's it's, it's, it's refreshing. I appreciate it. No problem. Yeah. Caleb, stay safe over there.

Patrick, do I have your phone number? Can I have your phone number? I think in that email, is that your phone number? Yeah. I'll text you my number so that way you have it. Okay, thank you.

No problem. All right, guys. Have a great day. Peace and love. My kids have been in the car for 20 minutes oh no they i told my wife i'm gonna be late uh just loaded them up okay i am coming uh very open very candid very pleasant very smart very uh sincere uh but we have to get to the bottom of the morning chalk up thing there's no way yeah there's no way all three of those guys i wouldn't let i would i would have kept pushing digging a little bit more uh but i was like i got freaked out by the clock

i got freaked out by the clock he's great he's great yeah it's funny. I don't even know. I love you too, Bruce. You the man. Not that I had any concrete preconceived notions of him. It wasn't like swirling around in my head. Oh, he's going to be super charming or he's going to be a dickhead or he's, but I don't even know what my, I wasn't even conscious of my preconceived notions, but I obviously had them because I've seen them around in the space forever. uh it's always awesome when people like he didn't just double or 10x he just like went completely went off the chart of whatever i thought he was he like left it in the dust like i couldn't even yeah i was like wow this is i've forgotten anything i knew about him yeah i met him at semifinals and just even that

was like, oh, he's a really good dude. He came up to me right away and just said hello and introduced himself. He's a really nice guy. Yeah, good dude. All right, brother. Thank you. I'll see you in the text messages. Everyone,

have a good day. Tomorrow morning is Hiller Fit. Will you be here tomorrow caleb yeah it should be all right uh it's gonna be a fun one tomorrow it's gonna be could be even get crazy all right bye