Latest / Stories from the shore / Episode 1 Jeremiah's full story

Transcript

Episode 1 Jeremiah's full story · Stories from the shore

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, hello and welcome to the first episode of our podcast.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think we're calling it uh stories from the shore.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: We are not in the van by the river, but we are by the river and by the van.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: The van's in the driveway, we are inside our house.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um Kaylee requested that we start every episode by saying Whoop Yah.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um probably later we'll explain a little bit more why she likes that.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Jeremiah.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm here with my wife, Kaylee.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: Say hello, Kaylee.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, thank you for your yodel, Jeremiah.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so I think the goal of our podcast is just to share uh some river stories.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: So uh it seemed like a good place to start as I could just sort of give my background.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I've got some pictures pulled up here that can kind of help guide us a little bit, and then uh I'll have Kaylee help me like sort of ask questions and fill in the gaps today, and then uh next time we'll probably do something similar with her.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: But the goal in the future is to probably tell a little bit more specific stories.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think that today we're starting with sort of a unique episode, uh, and then hopefully in the future uh it'll it'll make a little bit more sense.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Does that sound good, Kaylee?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: Sounds great.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's learn about you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so you can um see this, right?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay, perfect.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: So uh I guess just kind of to start, I initially began kayaking when I was pretty young.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like before I could drive, I remember um like really wanting to get into paddling and trying to convince my parents to let me.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we had this kind of interesting uh dynamic where my dad had kayaked exclusively in Germany when he was in the military way before I was born.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then he you know talked about how fun it was and really talked it up, and I was like, well, I want to do that.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so you know, fast forward to when I was starting to get old enough where I could actually do it, uh, I was trying to find an opportunity to make that happen, and uh I got to paddle at Boy Scout camp.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I actually don't have any pictures of that.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I might be able to pull some up later.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: I I bet I bet I could find some on Facebook if I looked later.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but uh I went to the summer camp at Gardner Dam on the Wolf, and I was able to do like a week-long intro to kayaking course, and I took it like five times.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I took it two years in a row.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think I took it two years the first year and three years the second year.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And ironically, the instructors from that ended up being some of our friends that we still talk to today.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: I had uh Austin was my instructor kind of later, and Will was one of my instructors.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: I had Austin's brother, I think, the first time.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I came home from that really excited about paneling, just wanting to, you know, dive into it as much as I could.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we realized pretty quickly, or I say we, my parents realized pretty quickly that I was gonna need to be able to drive to make this a reality because they weren't kayaking and they didn't want to just like shuffle me all over the place.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: So uh fast forward after a couple years of doing summer camp, I got my first kayak uh kind of after I turned 16 when I had a car.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I have a couple pictures from pretty close to that time.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this might be the oldest.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Probably this is the oldest picture on here.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, I started just kind of paddling wherever I could.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: We knew the wolf.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_01: We had peddled that in wreck boats a bunch of times, or not a bunch, but a handful of times.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this was my this is my first kayak.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had a one of those old all-stars.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I uh um I I grew up in Sheboygan, which which has uh you know a big lake right next to it.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we can see here this is like the very first picture of me.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think I actually ripped this off of a YouTube video that uh McConville put online, but this was just like me playing around out in the lake.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I think the goal kind of for those really early years was as you can see, was to start to get into playboating.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was interested in running rivers, but I didn't really have a crew to paddle with at the time, and uh, you know, really solidify the skills and my role to kind of go ahead from there.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is sort of a picture of like the whole beach front there, just to give an idea of like what uh what I was looking at when I was trying to go paddling.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I spent a lot of time paddling right here.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: The lake was pretty low for a few years when I was in high school, so we had better than normal surf conditions.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I get to spend a lot of time there really honing my role and like getting my intro to intro to uh playboating on waves and stuff.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for sharing those photos, Jeremiah.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: I um have seen Lake Michigan firsthand going to visit your hometown, and I can definitely say it does not look like that every day.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Is that pretty much true?
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that the I forgot exactly what the temperature was that somebody told me, but they sort of decided that good surfing only existed when it's like below 40 or 50 degrees out.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: So a lot of the time spent paddling there, you know, starts kind of in October, actually this time of year, and kind of ends like as soon as it gets nice out.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a lot of people that do what you do out on Lake Michigan, or was it more of an isolated sport for you back then?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I can count the number of times that somebody else paddled with me on the lake on one hand.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um they almost all ended with the other person swimming.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm sure that those stories will come up later.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so most of the time this was sort of like, you know, paddling when there were surfers there, paddling like when my parents would come and watch.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um otherwise, I spent kind of a lot of time paddling just, you know, out alone out on the lake.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is it pretty safe to paddle alone on the lake like that?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that maybe one of the more hot takes I have is my stance on solo boating.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, not like a huge fan of it, if it's avoidable, but I also think that you can approach it from sort of a safe perspective, and I'm sure that a lot of people will disagree with with me on that, like full stop.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, somebody once told me sometimes you just got a solo boat, and the to be frank, the idea of me being able to boat existed because I could go by myself, you know, for at least a handful of this, a handful of times in this period of time in my life.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And do you think solo boating on a big open waterway like Lake Michigan is just generally safer because the risk of like rocks or other structures obscuring your uh path are a lot lower than on a river?
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Or like what's your thought on that?
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I guess I would have to say that uh in general, it doesn't really matter the body of water that you're paddling on.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: You really have to just look at the risks, figure out ways to mitigate them and uh try to make good choices.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was first starting and I didn't have a solid roll, that meant just like not being deeper than I could stand.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you'd like to roll over in the sand and be like sitting on the ground.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then you know, as you get more confident and as your skills get better, um, you I don't think you can see it in this picture, but there's a reef like way up to the left over here, or like being way out by the lighthouse.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'd be pretty comfortable doing that today for sure, um, even if I was by myself.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and I think that one important note is since you're normally paddling in the cold, uh, I was almost always in a wetsuit, uh, a PFD or a dry suit in a PFD.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: So you're pretty floaty.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if you did swim, first of all, you know, being dressed for the conditions is really important.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: But also, like you said, the idea that you're gonna just like go unconscious by a freak accident is really low.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's not rocks, it's sand.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, I wear a helmet um so I could have nose plugs in anyway.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, I think that the risk is pretty low.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: Worst case scenario, you're probably looking at losing gear more than it.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that was sort of the start.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh I think we fast forward a couple years, I sort of moved out of that all-star.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I sold it.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember to who.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then I bought the I think this was the first rock star.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and this picture's from the Whitewater Park.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: This is the old, uh, the old competition feature up at well, I guess I say the old.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: This is sort of the competition feature that existed when I was first getting into playboating at Little Drop, which is not even really surfable now.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you can kind of surf it, but not really.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is a really pretty dynamic, fun feature.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: It looped really, really big.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: There's a really big rock just downstream that people are kind of afraid of.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: So it made it really intimidating.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: And this whole time we would have to uh like hold beginner competitions in a different place than the advanced competitions or the intermediate competitions because people were too afraid of the rock.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's why we don't compete there anymore.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Also, that rock kind of twisted and turned into a little bit of a hazard.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, as you can see from here, clearly my skills were getting a little bit more uh a little bit more dialed.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And this was probably about the time when I got my first longer boat.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had like arguably the worst design ever made, the Wave Sport Mutant, for those that you know.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I was like paddling that sometimes on class three plus.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: I would be hard pressed to say that I paddled class four in that boat, uh, maybe.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but that boat was terrible.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I didn't know any better, so I just kind of like dealt with it.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I definitely paddled a little bit of class four in it, actually.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now that I think um I paddled Sheboygan Falls in it for sure a handful of times when there was pretty much water.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: That was definitely class four.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh I paddled the wolf section four in it.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um but eventually, you know, I I got out of that boat happily.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so uh so that's kind of where some of these other pictures start to come in.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: So before you go to those other ones, how old were you when you started like feeling confident?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, trying to do tricks in a either like a hole or a feature, or you know, like when did you start going to the Wausau Whitewater Park and like actually throwing down in a hole versus just playing in a wave?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so I mean, looking at being a 16-year-old, I would drive to the lake like every day to practice rolls.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I spent a lot of time in flatwater, you know, just bombing around like in the pond in Sheboygan Falls, um, trying to learn how to do like bow stalls and cartwheels.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think there's a pretty big distinction between saying that I was throwing down in a hole versus like surfing and trying to learn moves, but that came, you know, the next summer probably.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I can't remember.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was fall probably when I got my kayak.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say the next summer I was like play seriously playboating, but not I mean not scoring anything other than spins and loops.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I existed, did that answer your question?
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so like 17-ish is when you started going to the Whitewater Park and I'm going into a whole feature.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we might have gone once.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot if it was when I was 16 or 17.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: We went for the first time.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: We stayed at Uncle Jim's and we were just like really confused about the whole thing.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and it was Riverfest.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: So um there's always been a special place in my heart for Riverfest.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_01: I want to bring that back one of these.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what year, like what year was it um when you were 17?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Estimated.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this is like 2009 or 2010.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: We're in there somewhere.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: So that'd have been 18 and 2011 in the summer.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, so so that was kind of those couple years.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: So this would have been I think in the spring is when I got this remix.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the remix that's cut up at our house?
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: This would have been like 2011, 2012.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: So this would have been at least 2012, probably.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to remember.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, this would have been 2013 probably.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: 2011, yeah.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: No, this might have been 2012.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard, it's hard to remember.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really matter.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I basically picked up this remix.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to find the earliest picture I have.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: It's actually it's this one for sure.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh so that first year I got that remix, and I uh no, this was this was later.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: But it regardless, I I had met McConville at the Whitewater Park, and he was like, Yeah, you should come paddling.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Okay, sounds good.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: So in the spring, I took a trip to the southeast and we paddled the oh uh the um Baby Falls on the Telico.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: We paddled the Telico, the Nolichucky, the Okoe, uh, like not the Cascades, but the Nanta Hala.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I think we paddled one more thing, and that went pretty good.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: That was still with uh like Chris Austin.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well Austin was there, but we didn't paddle with him.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it was Chris, Will, Bethkey, and um one other person.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember his name off the top of my head.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um so we like played down there a little bit.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: That was like the first time I got to see, I think like the Jackson camper was there, they were playboating a little bit, but it was snowing, so they were not willing to go in the water, which was kind of funny.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: And we were like, it's great weather here.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: What are you talking about?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: You know, back home everything's frozen solid because it was spring break.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so then I came home from that pretty geared up and ready to paddle.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that was definitely my first year with a creek boat.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: So we we paddled that, and that was when the conveyor was like, You should come up.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I drove up to the Leicester race, and he was the only person I knew.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Yeah, I'll just help, whatever.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: We were like shuttling people back and forth, and Zimney was running it, and literally on the last shuttle up, because he he when he raced, he would race last.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he just was like, Aren't you gonna race?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, No.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, You should.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You did fine in the lap earlier.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: What's wrong with you?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I raced um and it went great.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh ironically, that first year on my very first time down the river, almost always was supposed to be the finish line that that big kind of waterfall at the end of the race.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they like nixed that because like four people in a row swam out of it, which is kind of funny.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but once he got that out, I was like, Yeah, I guess I can do it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: What the heck?
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's fine.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so then I raced the Leicester, that went fine.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: I probably placed last, I don't know, or you know, middle of the pack somewhere.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then the week, maybe the week after that, we went over and paddled the South Shore stuff, um, which was a really fun weekend.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: We got like the best possible day on the slate, super high water, like flooded while we were on it, and we got just totally destroyed at this waterfall at the end.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm sure I'll tell that story at some point.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: We paddled the falls a handful of times, which is a great run, super continuous.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would say that those are both like solidly class four.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that people would I wouldn't definitely wouldn't bring anybody on those that I didn't think could run class four.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh paddled the silver for the first time, the whole thing, the upper and the lower.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_01: Super, super fun.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: I've got like a pretty vivid memory of paddling that with Adrian and him just like he's one of the most stoked people I've ever met, and just like screaming.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: He was so excited the whole time.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think we probably just paddled those three runs that no black or presque?
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, definitely not.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're like pretty far apart, probably an hour, maybe an hour.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so then after that, I went back, had finals, because I was at point at the time, and uh McConville just invited me to paddle with him for a week.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so he like picked me up in his Jeep that it has its own list of stories, and we uh went up, and that's when we paddled the presque in the black.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh or that's when I paddled the presque for the first time.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty high, and I had my first like bad swim, I guess I would say, or swim that was scary to me.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm still like that the place that I swam at triple drop there is still like pretty intimidating.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think at high levels, especially with that memory of it.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's where Raya died.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you ever hear hear that story, uh so it's just like you know, that's kind of in the back of your head, like, oh, somebody died here once, and then you swim there and you're like, ah, it's me next.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it was fine.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but that was on the first day of the trip.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: This was like a you know 10-day trip, uh, me, McConville, and Kiffy.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh from there we just like took off and paddled everything.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we drove, we paddled the press.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: The black was at like 2k or 3,000 or something, which at the time seemed unthinkable.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so then we went and we paddled the West Fork of the Montreal, which was super, super fun.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_01: I remember paddling like in people's yards.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, you could paddle up to like people's doors.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was really fun.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: And then we bolted over to the North Shore from there, and we paddled like I I mean that spring I basically got to paddle almost all the classics, like one after another.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: We paddled the split rock right away, pretty good level, not low.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh paddled the cascade that spring, paddled the brule that spring, paddled the DT that spring.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, if we ever get a maybe like York or Tony on, um, they or Mc even McConville, they have some pretty good stories about the about that run.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was the day that like Holton smashed his head.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a video of it online actually of Joel swimming in triple drop.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so this is actually from that day.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a person swimming, like see that red kayak at the top?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's somebody swimming like right there in this picture.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there's this waterfall right after it, then I'm going down here, and then downstream, there's like a nasty pour over, and then like a I don't know, 60-footer that has a reconnect, like not a great spot to swim.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: But they like figured it out.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that was like the first time.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: I guess the second time, the the first river I paddled, uh, the slate, I kind of got scolded for not having a whistle, and then somebody gave me one.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: But this was the first time that I ever saw people, like at the end of this day, Yorg like yelled at a couple people to kind of tell them to get their shit together, uh, which is kind of fun.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we paddled that.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think of what else we got on that spring.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Just felt like everything.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the encampment.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that's this picture was on the encampment.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, really, really pretty run.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is like, you know, if you get there at just the right time, kind of where this picture is taken at this time, it's like just the most beautiful spot.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that this rock, this giant boulder, that was there, like this is the first time anybody saw it, if I remember right, which was kind of a wild experience for um for people to be like, oh, this rapid is just not the same as it used to be.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that that was a really, really fun spring.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that really like kicked things off to be like, okay, we're gonna like run stuff now.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think this picture is like from that same, this is McConville actually in this picture.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but like I ran this to um sort of just feeling things out, trying to figure out what I wanted to do.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's really like what kicked off Creek Boating for me was that that single trip for sure.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know that um even to this day, McConville's been kind of like one of your core people to paddle with.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's kind of fun just seeing that it started with him and kind of where that's led.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how did McConville know that like he could just pick you up and take you on some shit?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what did you do to show that you were kind of quote unquote worthy?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because I know over the years you've become kind of picky who you paddle bigger things with.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's funny that you say that I'm picky because I have like not one or two stories of people getting way over their heads for sure.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm very well aware.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: I can't wait for one of them to come out.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we'll have to be careful with some of them because I don't want to make people feel bad, but um I I think that it'll be interesting to ask other people how they choose to step up or like what their thought process is.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's interesting that um I don't think that there's a lot of other people that really took to the sport in the way that I did before him in the Midwest at the time.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um so like he jumped into it, he learned how to loop in like a month.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And like I think that you can see somebody for the first time in their playboat and they're like, what is this person doing?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then like a couple weeks later, if their role is just like it's like solid or they're hitting it, they're not swimming at all, and then like a couple weeks after that, you see them like starting to progress with playing features, and then you can like see their um their like style and how they're handling their boat.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: I think that that's like a pretty good tell, and you can sort of judge based on that.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think it's hard, I think that's a really hard thing to know, actually.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't know.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'll ask Johnny when the time comes.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it'll be really funny to hear what he says.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_00: How did you know though?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, I can do it.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was it do you think it's a little bit of like you didn't know what you were getting into and you're willing to try?
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or like did you hit a certain milestone for yourself that you're like, yeah, let's go.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: I definitely think for me, there was like s a case of you don't know what you don't know.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that in a lot of ways that first swim on the press really opened my eyes to be like, oh, there's like real consequences.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: I see what people are talking about, but also it was just so fun that you sort of had to manage that.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh so so when you say like how did you know, I I think that that's always a journey.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Like you never really know.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: You you always have to decide what rivers you want to want or don't want to paddle.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my experience thus far is the only reason I paddled the rivers I have is because you go, Yeah, you can handle this one.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'm pretty sure you won't get hurt.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, I just trust you, so like I just blindly have to put my trust in you.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I so I think that everybody kind of starts there, but once you progress past class three, um, honestly, I I don't think that there's anybody that would be willing to say that they would run a clas every class four every day.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: I just don't think that exists.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I do think that there are people that would never walk class three.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I I think that once you make that step, that's where you start to have to really make good choices.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so instead of saying like, well, you just know that you're gonna run everything this day or you're not gonna run everything this day, I think that that's kind of part of the the game.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so if we look forward a couple years, I think this is a really good example.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, these two pictures here, like I was the at the in this picture, I was the only person to, I think, to have ever paddled this.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um so this is a good example.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: This was, you know, kind of just a couple years after some of those other pictures.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, John Sisely, I was just paddling with him kind of regularly before he moved out west, and he was like, You should just come run this, like, there's this thing, we should go run it.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Maple Creek.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, he was like, we had never seen it.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: We don't know if anybody else had ever seen it.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: He just like found it on AW or something, and we just were like, This looks like it goes.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think he ran this first.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's how we he got this picture.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we just like hiked into this river, started running it, and then when we got to like this one, I was like, That looks fine, I'll I'll go.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we had to like clear some of that wood out at the top, and he didn't think it would go, so he was like, uh, he made us like ghost ride his boat down it.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I like carried it up, and he just like stood at the bottom here, and I just like threw his boat down on its own, and he just like caught it.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's Of the game, you know, you kind of you gotta figure out how to make how to you know decide if the rivers are runnable or not for you that day.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily whether they're runnable for anyone.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, another good example is here's a picture on the Baltimore.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this was probably after that last picture.
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, our levels were kind of weird.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_01: We were like, let's try something new.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: We showed up at this river, got to this waterfall, uh, handful of us young kids in Holton, and we s or no, Holton wasn't there that day.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: It would have been just like Tony, me, uh, Sicily, Ben Peters.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: We got here and we were like, that looks like it goes.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: People run this river, and we just ran it.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think that he I think that uh Ben ran it first and I ran it second.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that the the that was like the first D day.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we just showed up and ran it.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: We also did this crazy like later in this day, we did this crazy sea launch down like a huge bluff that was covered in snow, and it was like maybe the hardest it I've ever taken in a kayak.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: So like ironically, this thing that looks really intimidating was fine, even though it kind of lands on rocks, and the sea launch is like what really hurt.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that the same year was probably this picture on the pr on the presque.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: This is that waterfall at the end.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the presque is my favorite run for sure, anywhere, I think.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just love there's like this.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: It ends in the Lake Michigan or Lake Superior, you know, really beautiful.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a 22-mile day, depending on how much walking you have to do.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh really, really great run.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think um being a Midwest boater and like really having the North Shore, South Shore, those types of rivers being your learning playground has like set you up for anything kind of southeast and like throughout, honestly, the country, or like how does how do these Midwest rivers play?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think that some of the rivers up here would be world-class if they were somewhere else.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that um like after I've paddled the little white, I've paddled the old green, um, I've paddled, I uh I've paddled a handful of other stuff.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and and I just think that when you look at what people consider a great river in other places, uh like we have the quality white water here that they have in other places.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean you can just see from a lot of these pictures.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the weather is bad, the the water temperature's cold, and like the the it kind of sucks, right?
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the old green, for example, it was kind of hard to get to.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there was a road eventually, but it was like, you know, sometimes there were problems.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: But people lived close to it and they could look online to see how much water was in it most of the time.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: And uh most of the paddling that we do, especially on the North Shore, is like look at the river, decide if there's enough water.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: The gauge from last year is gone or it doesn't work anymore because the lake level changed.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's a lot more just like figuring it out, and I don't think that people enjoy that as much.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like they don't like the suffer part of paddling, they just like the paddling part.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're definitely a type two fun kind of guy, I've learned.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, I just think that like these rivers just present like such a unique challenge because you may be having like ice shelves on one end and then the other one floating logs and a trail that's completely washed out, like it's just a unique challenge, like on and off the water.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I definitely think that that's that's what holds the Midwest back for sure.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, ironically, I think that in my paddling career, like the the pro scene like has stopped coming here almost entirely.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: There's been a couple people here and there, um, but there used to be, you know, there's like full movie segments from people paddling just on the shore, and that just isn't a thing anymore.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And is it because the weather's just not predictable and the levels aren't predictable enough to come at the perfect time, or why?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's definitely a huge part of it.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think another big part is the Midwestern boaters in general, their stoke went down a little bit.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's as many people running like serious whitewater or like huge class five stuff anymore.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think that there's like kind of a big gap in like the community, kind of between like when I started, there's like a you know, everybody that started kind of alongside me or right after me sort of moved away.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's like the Brian Robin group, and then there's like another little gap, and like, you know, there's like these big gaps with no people anymore.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: And before I started, there was a a little bit stronger, more consistent scene.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: I and I mean by no by no means are we old, but we're definitely like, you know, getting up there in terms of boating.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we're entering mid-30s here for you, Jeremiah.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how does that feel as a boater and like where you see, you know, your career with boating going?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think that when I look around, I see a lot of people that have started in their 30s, so I'm not really concerned yet.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I saw uh you know, you see footage of um like what those guys are doing out in Washington.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, some of those guys are almost retired now.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: We see Steve Bletch running the uh the golly or the lower golly parts of it this year, and he's like what 70?
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I talked to Craig and Steve killed it this year.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like we talked through their whole trip, and I mean, like he really did amazing.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: So really age is but a number, but I mean it does come with a little bit more limitations, and I think especially like for me, what hits is off the water limitance, possibly, because it's not light carrying around those creek boats.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: No, yeah, I mean you're right, but also I could easily get into just as good a shape as I've probably ever been in still.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um I so I'm not I'm not really concerned physically yet.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, it's way more comfortable off the water now.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we have the van, not camping in a tent, setting up a bivy in the snow.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I think that that actually does a lot more for you than um than people might lead on, especially up north.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Has becoming bougie with a van like actually elevated your experience for someone who enjoys the suffering part?
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for sure.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it it it's hard to go.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, I mean it it definitely has because it's when the weather's bad, it it's nice to be comfortable when you sleep.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't think that there's many people that are setting up tents anymore.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Most people have minivans or like we've got the big van uh or a camper or something.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think the reality is people have like figured out a vehicle solution to stay out of the sleep.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the other huge advantage is you we I always have a dry dry suit in the morning.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that's just anybody that's paddled in sub-30 degrees just knows how great that is.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so that that's sort of like the middle era of paddling where I was still kind of feeling things out, getting more confident.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think just after that, it's probably when I was paddling my best.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a couple pictures of like throwing freewheels off of waterfalls.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is kind of I I showed those other pictures where we first did that, Maple Creek.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was kind of all in this same sort of era.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, same time where we were like really hitting Manitowk hard.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: Some of these pictures are from that same sort of era.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so we can kind of see like I was really starting to think like I could take paddling seriously.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that this picture is this would have been just before those other ones, but really, really similar era.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this was Surfing Big Bus up in Canada.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: I spent like almost a week just paddling or surfing there by myself all day.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: Really awesome experience.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this was like I dropped out of college, I was like, I'm gonna be a pro-kayaker.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh actually on this trip, like not in this picture, but probably this day, I was like just asking around, like, how are you guys gonna retire?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Or like what do you do for work?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I was getting a lot of like, oh, I don't really know.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, or I work in oil rigs over the winter, or like my parents are just kind of sponsoring me right now, and I was like, well, that's not me.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then I like went home, got a job, and like went back to college.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so then I like kind of dipped way down for a little while, uh, going to school and then um doing the like normal people stuff.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I think that pretty much covers all these like middle era pictures.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: This one's actually a lot later.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this is kind of that same time.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh where I was just playing around again.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is in the lake, um, just like surfing big waves.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's fun, but it's like kind of a bittersweet time there, I guess.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's the time where like, you know, you're like young, single, like you kind of have all these options in front of you, and it's really hard to determine like what your passions are versus reality, right?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Like if we all could just pursue our passions and not consider like we have to pay bills one day, or we want to retire or have other goals, like that's definitely a hard choice.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, kudos to you for full sending and you know, trying it out.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think a lot of people would take the risks that you did.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, it did set you back in school and your career and stuff a little bit, but probably worth it, would you say?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I mean, it's really easy to say that it's worth it when my parents were like letting me stay at their house for free when I you know when I wasn't working and stuff.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I I mean a lot of people just don't have that opportunity.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, luckily I did and I got to do a lot of really cool stuff at that time.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I think this so this picture's also from that from from kind of a similar time.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is another one of those runs where like I did it with Clint kind of on a whim.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: People don't paddle it that often, and only like a handful of people have paddled this drop for I mean, not really a good reason, to be honest.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of crunchy.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that was like, you know, super high confidence, super hard stoked, just willing to paddle whenever.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then I kind of went back to school and like I said, took a step way back.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then um, I think we fast forward like way forward.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: I kept like trying to paddle as much as I could and like really having limiting things, trying to split time with playing ultimate for a couple years, and then like just giving up on ultimate and then like you know, working at summer camps, having limited time, and then back to school, didn't have any time.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and then I kind of like met you, and I was like really starting to get back into paddling a little bit, and then I broke my wrist when we were in North Carolina, um, where I was like, I was like, oh, this is another great opportunity to get back into paddling.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Broke my wrist, didn't paddle at all for like a year.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then well, and even with your broken wrist, you um, which again we'll come up another full story, I'm sure, but you kind of had like your I'd say biggest scare in like a while then because you had to swim, didn't you?
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because you couldn't maneuver your paddle when you were out.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: What was it on the green?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I swam on the green.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think I just realized that my wrist was broken on the green.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like I tried to take a boofstroke and I like couldn't pull on the paddle.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, that's that's a problem.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um Yeah, you came home really discouraged and like quite frankly, pissed.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like you're like, you don't realize how scary today was.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think I've ever seen you come home from paddling with that type of attitude before.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's probably the only time where my body just like outright failed.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was like confident in pretty good spots, just like went to take a stroke and I just fit like literally couldn't.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: My my wrist was actually broken.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that sucked, yeah.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, led to surgery on your wrist, like literally out of commission for a year.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, for for sure a full year.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: And it would have been, like we say, a year.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably a year from the day that I went paddling until I could paddle again almost.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: But really, I broke it in February, January?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, January.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, January of COVID.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the problem was is he moved to North Carolina like a few weeks prior and hadn't found a job yet, like it was a brand new, and we didn't have health insurance.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we kind of did.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Really, the problem was COVID.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but I think we also didn't have health insurance yet.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: There was like a few factors where like if you were not actively dying, you could not be seen, and it turned into a um avascular necrosis for those who know what that is.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially his bone and his wrist died, and so he ended up having to have a procedure where they drill and revascularize, and it is not a fun surgery or recovery, but he decided to paddle when it was broken because I don't think we even knew for sure if it was or not.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: But we're not gonna even go down that route today.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: But regardless, that was definitely like 2020 in your career of paddling, like wow, big fail.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so then coming back after that was also a really big challenge.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so it had been like years really since I paddled Whitewater consistently hard whitewater.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so getting back into it that following year, which honestly, luckily, we had a pretty terrible snow year.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think I only paddled like three runs or something.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_01: Paddled the black a couple times, paddled the presque.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty sure that year, and I just remember like talking to everybody and being like, this sucks.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's really hard to get back to your confidence and like feeling your flow and really getting back into things, um, and everybody just being supportive, which was great.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that was that yeah, yeah.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been that year with like just just really trying to force my way back into it, and then actually that one of those trips on the presque where somebody was like not having a great day, and I just had like the best day ever.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I was super stoked at the end of it, and then I was like, we're back.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that again, just like sometimes just a special place just really can kind of set you on the right track.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I believe that this picture would have been from kind of that time period, probably.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we actually just broke that boat.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, on the on the DT.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that would have been that kind of in that time frame, was paddling that.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last few years have just been like getting out as much as I can, which is not a lot really.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh plenty of time in my playboat at the Whitewater Park, but really not much creaking the last couple years.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think three years ago I paddled pretty much.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's where like a handful of these pictures would have been from.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, some of these videos.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: This picture wasn't from that day, but kind of representative of like I went back and ran the black.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: Started to really like feel it again.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's kind of where these videos are from.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure, I'm not sure how the sound is set on here.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna just turn this.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that's so these videos are all on black, kind of getting back into it.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see if they even work here.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: I think this was like just paddling with Brian last year.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: I think I was at a bachelorette party and I'm sending, you know, classic bachelorette party picks, and this is what I get back.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is this when you messed up your finger?
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: No, that would have been the weekend after this, I think.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: But like, you know, just starting to really paddle Whitewater again.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and just feeling confident.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: These are all in the black.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see if this one works.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, this is Pottawatomy.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's like crazy stories of people running this, like, way over here, Corey running it backwards.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I had like pretty good lines that day.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was pretty stoked.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't even go backwards.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I don't think I didn't mention it in this picture, but like I don't think anybody's run this section in a f in a while.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, ironically, the hole was just gone that day.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_01: Things lined up kind of back to your question earlier about like how do you know when you're ready?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was ready that day and it looked good.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then like this is rainbow at the end.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I like walked up to it.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, ah, there's that log in it.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I'm gonna run it.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to Brian.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, eh, I don't know.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really afraid I'm gonna break my paddle.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Can't really afford to buy a new one today.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then and then I was like, you know what?
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: If the only reason I'm gonna not run this is because I'm gonna break my paddle, I'm gonna just run it.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it was good.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little far right, tucked on the right side, asked Brian to help me get out of the eddy because I was tired.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that kind of brings us up to today.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure what this this video is this from that year?
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, this would have been probably a long time.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, I got that video the same day, I think.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: I got like four videos from you that weekend.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, this is probably that same trip then.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we're starting to get our flow back a little bit, you know, starting to see how things are going.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um here's running Zoomplume Casey.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: I guess McConville like cut some of these logs out this year.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, this rapid looks horrible when you see it with no water.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's good.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: So now we're that kind of brings us almost to today, really.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um because this would have been last well, this would have been two years ago.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what was your year like this year, Jeremiah?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us kind of from start to finish.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this year we didn't really get a lot of paddling.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: I broke through four boats.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: Or I broke two boats.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I broke two boats creaking.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I broke that Narvana, unfortunately, on the Lester, and then I broke my 9R, my my backup boat a couple couple weeks later up on the DT.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it kind of limited my number of days paddling.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I got to paddle the DT, which was great.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think anybody's paddled that in years.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that some people were like probably bummed that they couldn't be there that day.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't forget you broke your gnar twice.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, kind of.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I guess it I did break it twice, but in two different spots.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: But after the like it broke bad the first time, and I and I tried to fix it, and I I really should have just assumed that uh that that the second time was kind of just it is is, but um I think actually they just said they were gonna ship a new one soon, so I'm gonna get that one, get that boat back, so be all geared up to paddle next year.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'm going back to a green boat.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um or a green kayak, not a green boat.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um me almost getting worked in a hole.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like the first class four plus thing I ran in two years.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, I had like a pretty good year, even though it was short.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: We've been playboating kind of a handful.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got to paddle the Grand Canyon this summer, which is awesome.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: We did an 11-day self-supported trip.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's what these pictures are from.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um I get to paddle that.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Had a really, really great time.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that Brian sort of describes it as the the once-in-a-lifetime trip that you take every year.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, I don't think that I've seen Keller a single time since then, or he hasn't asked if I applied for a permit again.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so that was a that was a really, really fun trip, really different experience um to what kind of what I'm normally used to, but just so fun.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh would definitely do that trip with the the same people or different people.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um the only thing that I think we would change is if we did it again, we'd do it shorter.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was a little bit long at 11 days in the kayaks.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think this year too, um because some of the uh water wasn't flowing right away, I mean maybe to you it wasn't a unique opportunity, but you spent a lot of time early in the season taking out beginners, aka myself, and Catherine.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: How was that experience compared to like normal creek seasons for you?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, so I sort of alluded to the different kind of eras of paddling.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um I didn't really talk about talk about them as much as I probably should have.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that I started um, and and we'll go back to your question in a second, but you know, I started at the very beginning really just eager to learn um and to get to improve.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: And then I sort of stepped into the creaking scene where my goal shifted to like I just want to paddle as many rivers as possible.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: That was sort of that second era where I was running this stuff, and we, you know, peddled a little white at that time and pedal the green and you know, paddle all these things.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then after that, you know, you sort of step into the era where you're like, well, I just want to be like I want to be better at paddling, like I want to style things instead of um, you know, instead of have have issues.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: And then now I'm sort of transitioning again into the like into the like I have to you know teach people and be the one to like lead trips phase, which has been kind of an interesting experience.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't I didn't have to lead the Grand Canyon trip.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think Brian took that on pretty solely, or well not solely, but um he was definitely the like one in charge.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but you know, like when we go creaking now, uh I think that I'm like kind of the one that people ask.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm the one like if we go run stuff, people are like, why didn't you invite me?
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that sort of leads into this spring.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I spent a lot of time showing people down, other than when it was just me and Brian.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I get the opportunity now to paddle, you know, like really random stuff.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because like if if you're gonna paddle with me or if uh Catherine's gonna paddle with us, or um I we didn't paddle with them this year, but like my croak and his wife, if they're gonna paddle with us, you know, we're gonna have a really different experience.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been really fun to go back and either paddle that stuff that I haven't done in forever, or just see some new scenic stuff that's kind of around.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Midwest is a a fairly pretty place, uh, so we get a pretty good opportunity to like really experience um some fun things.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not necessarily bad.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's a really different experience though.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think for myself, um, getting to be in the learner's shoes, especially when it comes to actually navigating rivers, I understand kind of your perspective a little bit more.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: I um I'll introduce kind of myself, my skill set and or lack thereof, you know, in the next episode, but I really do think that getting to go down rivers and see things I couldn't see otherwise is really inspiring to me.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: I like that much more than playboating at this point in my kayaking career.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it it's hard to disagree.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I definitely think that running rivers is my favorite part of Whitewater or paddling in general.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, although I will say I don't know if I've ever met anybody that's done a pan am and been like upset about playboating.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's that.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um so yeah, that's sort of my my background in Whitewater.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to get some pictures to kind of show people.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I'll upload the like the screen grab I have.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um at some point we'll figure out like we'll maybe make an Instagram account or something and try to upload all the pictures there.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because I'm sure that going forward there'll be like videos and clips and stuff that we can sort of include, and that's probably the easiest way to kind of show people.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I know it's probably easy to think that the people who are gonna listen to this are people that directly know us, but if you know these stories do expand out, um, you know, like where do you live?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like, where are you?
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, kind of like give us just like a 30-second like lowdown of like who you are, what you would do now, you know.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: We don't know who Jeremiah who he is.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, I just live in the middle of Wisconsin with my wife.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I think at this point we are trying to equally be focused on um our hobbies as well as like having a life and being able to retire someday.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we own a house now.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I think that really we're just kind of normal people that really enjoy this hobby.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm hoping that starting, I guess right now we'll be podcasters kind of going forward.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, anything else you want to say for your first one?
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: Give a little yodel to enter out.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so I think the goal of this is to tell a little bit more like specific stories, you know, like an event that happened.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that probably we'll try to ask people, you know, what did they learn from the experience or um, you know, how did that change you or something.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that although this one's different, you know, I definitely have taken a lot away from paddling.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_01: I think maybe one of the biggest things that I've learned is just to like manage uh risk and stress in a way that a lot of people aren't very good at.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I I don't mean like little bits of stress that sort of add up over time.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: I I think that everybody that gets to them eventually.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'm talking about like, oh my gosh, you know, something crazy happened.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: How are we gonna solve this problem right now?
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that kayaking has given me the opportunity to really learn how to manage that, those scenarios effectively.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and uh I think that in a lot of ways that kayaking has definitely changed me as a person.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that I was like pretty probably normal, I would say, maybe on the fringe of normal in high school.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then I sort of picked up kayaking and sort of really got into the like I'm gonna just be different mindset.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that came with some positives and some negatives for sure.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think that if I like went back and never paddled, I probably would be more successful in my career.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but also living like a way more boring life, I would imagine.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um maybe maybe not.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to tell.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh who knows what other hobbies I would have picked up along the way.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I definitely I definitely don't want to say that like paddling has just been a you know a perfect experience and he's given me everything I wanted for sure.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like like you said, set me back in my career and like you know, costed money and like you know, costed potential friends and relationships over time just because like I didn't want to be with somebody that was normal or boring.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um but yeah, it's been great and uh I look forward to talking with everybody again.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.