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Measuring Rocks - Brunton CEO Lauren Heerschap · PlanetGeo: The Geology Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to Planet Geo, the podcast where we talk about our amazing planet, how it works, and why it matters to you.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Chris, what have you invented lately, man?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um a new tractor maneuver?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_03: No, I've invented new ways to get along with you.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_03: That's about it.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_03: To put up with you, your shenanigans.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good one.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good one.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_01: Lauren Hearshap is uh had an impressive and very interesting and very inspiring career.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was a fun conversation.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: I got a lot to think about after this one.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_03: Jesse, um, you you talked about how so this Lauren Hearshap, she owns Brunton, and to any geologist that knows anything about geology, really, is probably really familiar with the Brunton Compass.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_03: It's so integral in structural geology and all that.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: You told a story in this interview about how you got yours.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_03: I got mine the same way.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: I want it.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, really?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_03: I want it in 1994, Jesse.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_03: I want a Brunton compass at field camp.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I still have it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: I love it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_03: And when I when I get like riled up in front of my class, I just start feeling my like inner geology groove.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_03: I'll walk over to my drawer and I'll put it on.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I'll put it on around my.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: I do.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I do.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_03: I'm like, you feel like where's my rock camera?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_03: You know, and I'll put my rock camera on too, and uh, and I'm just strutting around teaching about geology, and my students think I'm nasty.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: You feel like a real geologist when you got your brunten around.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_03: I need my bucket hat, and then I'm good to go.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, exactly.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, Lord Hirsch.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, trained as a geologist, has this very, very incredibly varied career, you know, has a bachelor's in geology, master's in geology, taught a bunch, worked for geological surveys, was a lab coordinator, invented a new version of the Brunton Compass, Chris.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like your one that you got in 1904, and the one I got in 2006 or whatever it was, are completely out of date because Lauren invented a new one in 2014.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_03: But I got hey, hold on.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_03: We got to give due credit though.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_03: Her husband, Dave, man, he did a massive amount of engineering on this.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, amazing, amazing.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so, amazing story.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: Now they own Brunton.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, what a cool story.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: This is just an exceptional interview, exceptional story.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I don't know what you say.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Should we just get to it, Chris?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: All right, here we go.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: Lauren Hirch, coming at Lauren, welcome to Planet Geo.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much for spending some time with us.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Chris and I are both very excited for this conversation.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you and welcome.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is gonna be great.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: So we have a couple traditional, well, we have a traditional opening and closing question.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And our last couple interviews, we've done some with non-geologists, so it's been harder to kind of come up with this.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: But for you, you're a geologist, so we're kindred spirits.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: What got you into geoscience?
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, Chris was really my inspiration, and Chris has a very, you know, he has one of those aha moments.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: And what was your path into the geosciences?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think it wasn't as much of an aha moment as just my upbringing.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: I grew up, my brother was in Boy Scouts, my dad was a scout troop leader, so I went on a lot of outdoor hiking, you know, and we lived in Texas hiking along with the Boy Scouts, and remember sitting in a big dinosaur footprint somewhere near Dallas when I was little, and then just started collecting rocks and finding interesting things when we would go camping.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: We camped a lot as a family.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_00: I guess one aha moment could be I remember camping in Oklahoma on the side of a lake, and some quartz crystals were sticking out of the sand, and we poured buckets and buckets of water to expose the quartz crystals and collected some.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think we were on a protected area.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And just I still have those quartz crystals to this day.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was going to be my question as whether you had those.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because my actually my PhD supervisor has a very similar origin story.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it was a quartz crystal that he stumbled across on a hike in New Jersey or something.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: He still has the crystal and he brings it out every metamorphic geology class that he teaches.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: You know, every I TA'd that class for many years, and I knew when Tom Chako was doing the origin story lecture because students would come in all fired up about the quartz crystal.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I have my my one rock that's the origin rocket.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's nice that you have it.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: But the dinosaur footprint, that's amazing.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: You were like sitting in the depression of a footprint.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I should dig out that photo.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure my parents have it somewhere, but yeah, I don't even remember the name of the track where way somewhere near Dallas.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: But then we moved to New Mexico, and really most of my from like age nine onward, I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, which is you know on the flanks of the Vallas Caldera, just amazing scenery.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: You're living on and around geology.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get around it.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, I started to go to gem and mineral shows and just really get into my surroundings.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad got me a hand lens and a rock hammer when I was by the time I was 10.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, I think just living in that terrain, that environment, having such colorful, beautiful volcanics all around kind of became part of my blood.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: So you grew up in Los Alamos, is that what you said?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, okay, so being a geochronologist, we all kind of like the Manhattan Project and all the origin stories of nuclear things.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: So was that part of your upbringing in some way or science in that capacity?
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, my first job as a teenager was working at the Historical Society in Los Alamos, like documenting photos of the ranch school.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's basically the ranch school got kicked out when the Manhattan Project moved in and said, we're gonna take over this entire town.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I've always enjoyed the history of the town too.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And my dad worked at the lab.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: You grew up around parents of your friends who you can't even ask what they do.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, and then my my college summers, I worked at the lab.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: Los Alamos in its history and its current, it's a very unique community.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: It always has been.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: Probably always will be.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_03: Lauren, did you have so you were a kind of a geology nerd at a very young age?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_03: So did you have anything in high school to scratch that itch?
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_03: Or did you just have to kind of just do your own thing until you got to college?
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_03: And then when you got to college, did you know that that's the direction I'm going and and nothing's gonna sway me on that?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sort of a funny story there.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: I did, or high school, it was a great high school, it was almost high school.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: There was a geology class.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I started the geology class my senior year, but I was so I had such a stacked schedule, being a super ambitious multiple AP classes or multiple AP science classes.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I just I couldn't swing it.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing too much that senior year because I was into music and sports too.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like I realized I had put too much on my plate in my senior year.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so I actually stopped the geology class.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the same teacher who was teaching my AP bio class.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: So he was like, you know, you should stick with AP bio because the AP credits will be more beneficial.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: I probably only had a month of geology education under my belt, but that's why when I started undergrad, the first science I took was geology because it was like, I didn't get to take that geology class in high school.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: I want to take it in college.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really where things started, you know, accelerating in the geology.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know if that class is still going on in Los Alamos?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: I actually don't know.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that teacher has retired by now, but I'm not sure if it's still going on.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: I should, I should check.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: And do you know, like, how many sections did this person have?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_03: Was it a popular class or was this a kind of a one and done thing?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was a popular class, like it was a pretty full class, but I think it was just it was not part of the core requirements.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: You could kind of tell people were taking it almost as a science elective, or some of them were taking it just because they didn't want to take a quote unquote harder science.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, it was taught by a teacher.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's quite a character, and again, he was my AP Bio teacher.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So got to experience him through that class that I do always regret, but perhaps not.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: Again, that's that's why I took it immediately in college.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then you were kind of hooked, and like that was the path, or did you kind of wander?
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, a lot of geologists, people who end up becoming geologists kind of wander a little bit, maybe uh historically have wandered amongst the sciences or engineering or pre-med or something like that before landing on it.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Was that your situation, or were you kind of kind of.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I my path was a little weird.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I went to Wheaton College, which is a Christian Yeah, I know Wheaton well.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_01: I um I went to Hope College and we would play Wheaton every year in basketball.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I played basketball and uh we'd make the trip over there every year.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I started Wheaton as pre-med and was interested in my freshman year.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: I just I kind of used it because I came in with a lot of AP credits.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use my freshman, at least my first semester, to take some things I've never gotten to take.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I took anthropology and I loved that.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: I almost majored in anthropology.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: I took theology because it was Wheaton and you had to take some kind of theology class.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: I loved that.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Then, you know, I took geology and I was pretty undecided actually until my sophomore year.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: And it was when I took historical geology, sort of that second geology class, really started to ingrain that.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad I did that.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I the professor of my freshman geology class, Jeff Greenberg at Wheaton.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still friends with him.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: He's one of those mentors that he reached out to me and said, You should major in geology.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Among this hundred student class.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It was one of Wheaton's bigger intro classes.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, wow, I wasn't even perhaps thinking about majoring.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: I just took it because it sounded like a fun class.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a small enough campus.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: You keep running into him.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, um, even after that first semester, you should take historical geology, you know, next semester.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, I took that second class, and that's really what started to like I really do enjoy this.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But funny enough, I did major in theology.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, really?
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, double major.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: I was a double major at Wheaton, kind of following those dual paths because I was interested in both.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_03: So, Lauren, can I ask Los Alamos and Wheaton are a long ways away?
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_03: How did you end up at Wheaton?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_03: And then I have a follow-up question to that I want to ask.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_00: So my brother went to Wheaton and he's three years older than me.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And just through visiting him and seeing the campus and liking the smaller nature of the school, I liked it, and my parents were very psyched, I think, you know, to not send their daughter to a party school.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: A big monster 40,000 person, you know, party school.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like a little bit of a pre protective parenting instinct there.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um at the time, I was choosing between Northwestern and Wheaton.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, oh, he's in Wheaton.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_03: And then can I ask, and this is something that Jesse and I have talked a lot about, because he went to Hope College.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's kind of a similar, you know, kind of vibe.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_03: How did Wheaton deal with the merging of, let's say, historical geology and theology?
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_03: That was that uh at all a conflict or with the college or with maybe with you?
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: It actually was the opposite.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I left high school.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: My AP bio paper or project, my senior year in high school, was my attempt to refute evolution.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so, you know, keep in mind it's the same high school teacher who taught the geology class.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave me a good grade on the on the paper, but he wrote, you know, this is the biggest load of baloney I've ever read.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, at least you have the smoke though to try it, you know, to like Yeah.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I like in high school, the high school mead thought that that was an inherent conflict and that I had to prove something or choose a side.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_00: But when I got to Wheaton, it was, you know, the anthropology professor, geology professor and programs within one semester helped me sort of unpack that or untangle that what I thought was an inherent conflict and just be okay with both.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's why I pursued theology and geology, because I was like, I enjoy walking what others might see as a conflict.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just so that Lauren, that's such an interesting point.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we've never really kind of broached this part, I suppose, Chris.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: And Chris and I grew up in the same town.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, Chris grew up in the town he now teaches in.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So it's you know, this is a a largely religious community.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it not everybody, certainly, but it it dominates.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh hope was the same experience.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: And and I had the same sort of mindset you did.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: I I felt that there was a conflict at starting at college.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And then then and then in graduate school, I have met I've met religious geologists, very, very devout religious geologists of all religions, and there's really no conflict, there's no internal conflict among anybody, and so it's just kind of one of these not, it's not a problem kind of things.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_01: So anyway, I had a I have a very similar experience with that.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: That's so interesting.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's cool.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think it helped me to study more theology and more sort of biblical history and interpretation to learn that Genesis, for example, is not was not intended to be a historical text.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: At least the first few chapters weren't meant to be a you know a scientific description of how the world was created.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Just learning the different genres, learning more about the Bible actually helped me be more comfortable with science and geology.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're right, just having mentors and and learning about the huge number of scientists that are also Christians or just religious in general helps.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Helps a lot.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, definitely.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And Chris, this is something Chris experiences every uh every year in class.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: He experiences, I think, probably, you know, young versions of Lauren writing, you know, are either just discussing it.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_03: For sure.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I know who you are, Lauren.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, you're you've seen, yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that was an uh that was that's very interesting.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I did not expect to get into this aspect during this conversation.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: But Lauren, leading up to where you are now, you've had a very varied career in geoscience from like lab manager to teacher, instructor, you worked for geological surveys, inventor, and now CEO of Brunton, a company that if you have a geology degree or you're anywhere if you know anybody with a geology degree, you've heard the word Brunton before.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Kleenex, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like the company brand is the item.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I have a Brunton, you know what I mean?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm so interested in how I'll try not to have a rambly question here, Chris, for you, but you're doing a really good job.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: So far, I haven't even tried asking a question.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the question What role did the geoscience, the field, which is kind of interdisciplinary and varied, and it's a very interesting field, different from many sciences.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: What role do you think that played?
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: Your geological background played in preparing you for having a really a bunch of different jobs and a very diverse career, if any.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Did it prepare you well, I guess?
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I hope so.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to think so.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that I, you know, just a nod to the liberal arts education that Wheaton was and that many, many schools are.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: I I appreciated the liberal arts undergrad experience and and what it motivated me to learn, not just in the classes that it made me take, but just the overall mindset of liberal arts education and lifelong learning.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I think I always approached my education not with a career in mind, but with just the joy of learning, as cliche as that might be.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Just really honestly like taking classes that I wanted to take and learning things I I knew I would enjoy and realizing that geology was a cool mix of things I enjoyed and also being outside, getting to be outside.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, I think that my undergrad education formed a good foundation.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: I did my master's at CU Boulder and studied tectonic geomorph.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: It started kind of as a more traditional structural geology project, but then the fact that I studied in Taiwan after the big 1999 earthquake, it became a tectonic geomorph project, which I love.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was also multidisciplinary.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: As I think I've always just been one who enjoys, you know, like the dual major of geology and theology, approaching a master's field project that became multidisciplinary.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've always enjoyed just crossovers and not just diving so deep into one subdiscipline, but finding places where they cross over because the master's project even expanded back out into bigger picture, like tectonics and climate interactions.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I think being one who I've always enjoyed seeing things in different lights and studying different disciplines at the same time has made me comfortable with this career path that's been pretty windy.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I didn't really have a career path in mind.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think for a while I thought, oh, I'll be a professor in academia, but I didn't pursue a PhD because at the time I was I was psyched on education.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when I taught for a while.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: I taught middle school, I taught at a high school program in Switzerland.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Then I just got involved in interesting directions.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: I worked for the Colorado Geological Survey and really enjoyed that aspect of serving a community, serving a state through hazards analysis and land use work.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Did a year of oil and gas because it was unconventional oil and gas that was trying to capture methane above coal mines.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think each step of the way, it's it's never been part of this, you know.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I hesitate to say this to those who are who are looking for advice, but it's never been like this distinct career goal, but more of just a knowing and trying to seek things that I enjoy and that I'm good at, and that's driven a lot of my class ideas.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just kind of wander down the path.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's interesting to bring up the liberal arts degree because I'll have to think about that a little bit because I had like you a very classic liberal arts education.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've always thought of geology as you know the field that kind of developed those skill sets, or the geology was the thing that developed those skill sets that you're describing in me myself.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, I'm tectonic geomorph, you could not get more of a three-dimensionally, four-dimensionally complicated visualization.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: Like you have to you have to do some serious mental gymnastics to do tectonic geomorphology and understand what your data is telling you in four dimensions, but the liberal arts education certainly probably plays a role too, at least for me internally.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: I'd have to think about that, but the two go well, the two go well hand in hand.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, Chris.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_03: No, I I love your I love your take on just the liberal arts education, your nod to that, and your just philosophy.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_03: Kind of like it seems to me you just want to learn for the sake of learning.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_03: You're curious, and you just get after it.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_03: And I I love that.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_03: I I feel like that's that's me.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh I find it like really, really refreshing.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So and go where the path path leads you.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that's amazing.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I think you know, I do have to admit that the geography has led me as well in terms of where opportunities are, as I'm pretty much from my choice of grad school on where I live has been really important.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: I I love being outside, big rock climber, which is probably also why I pursued geology.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, I was a climber before I was a geologist, actually, as a teenager.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_01: Why does this rock have so many great cracks in it to climb versus the other one?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, from grad school on, I've I've been very picky about where I live because I know it's really important for my mental state and just I want to live in places where I enjoy getting to recreate.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a big part of it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Lauren, you mentioned something that I want to real quick go back to.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_03: You taught high school in Switzerland.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_03: Can you tell just real quick about that?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_03: That's interesting.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was an opportunity I learned about, I think actually on a it was during grad school.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was during a Penrose conference in Taiwan.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, someone told me about this program in Switzerland.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I was about to get married.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so my husband and I, he was already a middle school teacher at the time.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we were looking for something cool to do during our first year of marriage.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so we we got accepted to teach for this program called Swiss Semester, and it was in Zermatt, Switzerland, like as beautiful as it gets.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it was a program that allowed us to teach high school sophomores, but also get outside a bunch.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: It was an outdoor-based program and and to travel quite a bit.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was in English.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: The program's still still going.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's that's very cool.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, so back to the varied career.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I have so many questions about the the origin story here because inventor, you you can put inventor at your tagline, but not just inventor.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want to set the backstory for the listener here, because uh we have a lot of people who who didn't go through a geology educate traditional education pathway for geology, so didn't take field camp or didn't take structural geology, so might not know what a Brunton is when we say the word Brunton.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I was first exposed to Brunton, which is what is the thing that I'm referring to that I would have gotten in 2009.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's not what you produce, the transit, but the Yeah, I mean it's just it's like the conventional or the international pens up the bottom.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: That would be the one just yeah, you can say the traditional Brunton Transit Compass, which measures so basically this measures strikes and dips of rocks that we're interested in.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: It makes a whole bunch of different navigational tools.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's a like an all-in-one sort of thing device for geologists and field people to use.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: I got given one of these by our department.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: We had like a it was a freshman, like whatever, best freshman in the grade or something like that.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it was the Ancient Mystic Order of the Trilobite Award, was the title of the award.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so I have this on my CV, and every time I send my CV somewhere, they're like, What the hell is the ancient mystic order of the trilobite award from you know 2006?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Oh, that's just a dumb departmental award.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: But I got a Brunton, I got a free Brunton out of it, which was you know, that was the gift for it, was a was a Brunton International.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that was my first real exposure because then and then we did, you know, field geology and and used it and made measurements and all this kind of stuff.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, literally every field geology class I've ever taught, either students buy their own or you have a whole bunch of bruntons that you bring along, and each student gets their own, they got to sign it out because they're making so many measurements in the field.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's a such a fundamental and really age-old tool in the geosciences.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: And and learn you invented a new one in what year?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: 2010?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: What was the original?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: The idea kind of the idea began in 2013.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Similar to you, I had I had learned how to use a Brun, the conventional model, as a field camp student, and actually even before field camp.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: So as an undergrad, taking structural geology, and our program did a field camp in the Black Hills.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: So I first really spent time with a Brun in my hand in the Black Hills.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: What a place to spend uh time with a Bruton in your hand.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_00: Nice.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I do like to tell this story, you know, kind of after the intro weeks of getting used to the methods when we were sent out on our first true mapping project in the Black Hills.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: I was in a group of three, our first outcrop we got to on our own sites to be independent and making our our first map.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: We got to like a near horizontal sandstone bed and got our bruttons out and like, okay, we're gonna take strike and dip off this bedding right here.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we argued there at that.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: First outcrop, probably for two hours about how to take that measurement because the old Bruttons had that ring on the bottom, and it was really hard to take a shallow dip, strike and dip.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so my first Bruton in memory is one of frustration and anger.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So interesting.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: So just for the listener, like strike and dip is if you just imagine a plane in space, like we're just measuring the orientation of a plane in space because that matters for geologists, for structural geologists, mappers, all sorts of different things.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, and you're saying one that's almost flat is really hard to measure with the traditional model.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: I agree completely with that.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like we would do this field exercise, very same thing when I was teeing field camp in Alberta, and it was the same thing.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was like, you know, in the foothills, very flat.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the students would be like, oh, what are we doing?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how do we do this?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, anyway, that's so funny.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so that's a frustration.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it was that was my first Bruton memory, but then we got through it and had a good summer in the Black Hills.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, I had used Bruntons for my master's work in Taiwan.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just borrowed them from schools.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: I never had my own Bruton.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, throughout my work, I did occasional field work and would use Bruttons here or there.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started teaching, I was the lab coordinator and then the lecturer at Fort Lewis College from about 2007 to 2016.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And so my role there developed into one where I started teaching a lot of the field methods and field methods for sophomores and then the field camps each summer, or at least a good portion of the field camp.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember it was 2013, it was the field methods class for sophomores.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember just it was really one particular day and one particular outcrop.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: It was the day where, again, I was kind of trying to let the students loose on measuring it independently, like taking their own striking dips and their own trend and plunge of lineations.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so there was this boulder, I had them gathered around before I let them loose, and it had fantastic slick and lines on the Dakota sandstone.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's this beautiful flat surface.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: We practiced measuring the plane, the strike and dip of the plane, and then we practiced measuring the trend and plunge of the lineations.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And at that moment, as soon as I let the students go, I stayed at that boulder because I had a spiral notebook in my hand.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I remember placing that on the rock, wishing that a Brun could take strike and dip, just like the spiral notebook configuration.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like when the spiral notebook top page was horizontal, the spine of the notebook was a long strike.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, like the hinge, like oh, open it partially, and then okay.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: Opened partially, and then the rest of it was resting against the plane, showing dip.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I hadn't seen, you know, there's some other transits in the world, some of the German transits, and then even the Brunton Geo have that capability, kind of, but they're measuring dip and dip direction, they're not measuring strike and dip.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought this was like the most novel idea ever.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so it started me down this like, oh my gosh, if a Brun could measure strike and dip like this, you could sight down the hollow hinge and take some cool measurements down a hinge.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: You wouldn't need a mirror.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then at that same boulder in that same session, I walked through, okay, what would a lineation measurement look like?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't do it the notebook anymore, but the idea popped into my head of a twisting around a secondary axis.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: If the transit could twist, it could take simultaneous measurements of trend and plunge and make everything I had just explained to the students a lot easier.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was having students even in field camp or at the end of field camp who couldn't explain to me what they were doing when they would take a measurement.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not super intuitive with the conventional Bruntons, and a lot of them would just be way off in what they were saying or what they were doing with the compass.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so this idea popped in my head that made those measurements more intuitive and more efficient, like it cut down on what the measurement would entail.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I let that idea kind of stew in my head as the semester got busier.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: It wouldn't leave me alone.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_00: It was like it's one of those ideas that just wouldn't leave me alone.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: So by Christmas break, I was trying to make little cardboard models.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like I finally just bothered my husband enough.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I said, look, you've got to help me make this.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see if we can actually make this idea happen.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so he used it as an excuse to, he's always been handy and has been a carpenter.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: So he tried making it out of wood.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little too clunky, literally.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: So he's like, okay, what I need is a mill.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: So he bought an excuse to buy tools.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: I'm familiar with this.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, excellent.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Move that into the garage that winter.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: Taught himself how to work aluminum.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: And he, you know, by the end of the winter, we had three functional prototypes of this idea that really did work.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: He helped me make the geometry actually work out.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And one of those prototypes, we had run out of the aluminum block, but being climbers and also seeing all these shavings of aluminum on the ground, we made a forge and we melted carabiners and formed another block we could mill out of.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And we anodized, we had these acidic acid baths, these electric acid baths in our garage.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um very strange winter, but yeah, this is amazing.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: I love this story.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: This is a great visual.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_03: Lauren, were you working for Brunton at the time?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: No, we were still, I was at Fort Lewis College and Dave was at a charter high school in Durango, Colorado.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we were still your full-time teaching at the time.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_03: At what point then did you work for them?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_03: And is that why you decided to do that?
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we still we taught for several years after that point.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: We had these prototypes, we knew we needed to patent it to protect the idea.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Then we we tested it out with some field camps the following summer, and it was it was a hit, especially with more complicated measurements like full geometries or like with students who weren't getting it with the other models.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that was black back in the Black Hills in particular.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_00: We kept our teaching jobs, we kept teaching, but we we contacted Brunton that fall.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: So now that was exactly almost to the day of today, exactly 10 years ago.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we got a hold of a human at Brunton and their headquarters at the time were down in Boulder.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um manufacturing has always been here for 50 years now, here in Wyoming.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the headquarters were down in Boulder, Colorado at the time.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we drove up and had this like shark tank session with management of Bruton at the time to see if they liked our idea.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_00: They kind of had indicated that they were waiting, been trying to find the next, the next good idea, and and we just walked in the door with it.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, amazing.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: So this was this was not like a confrontational meaning it was like uh, oh, mutual nice.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, okay.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Very good.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we realized like that it was a good idea.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: We liked our obviously we wanted our invention to succeed, but we couldn't just make it in our garage.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think we were faced with that decision of like, do we keep teaching and just try to maybe license this or sell this idea to Brutton, or do we completely uproot our lives and just try to compete against Bruton?
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: We decided choice A would be to see what Bruton thought of the idea.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we had signed NDAs and everything.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting side note though, Bruton didn't have a geologist on staff.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so we actually had to teach their leadership, the folks around that table.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: We had to teach them how to use the conventional model so we could show them the benefits of our model.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_03: That's so interesting.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_03: That's actually really cool.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_03: I bet I bet it was really eye-opening for them, right?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_03: Because they probably struggled with using the conventional one.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_03: Everybody does.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think I think maybe it was helpful because they could immediately see the benefits.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, everything kind of moved slow.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: It nothing was overnight.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it took about a year for that licensing.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: What we ended up doing is licensing the patent to Brunton.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they could manufacture it here in Riverton, but we owned the patent and we wanted to stay involved.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so we started coming up here to Riverton to work with the team here at the manufacturing facility.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where we actually kind of we started falling in love with Wyoming.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And as climbers, lander is a huge hub for rock climbing.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: And the Wind River Mountains are an incredibly awesome mountain range, still very wild and fantastic terrain.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: So we thought, okay, let's take sabbaticals.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: We'll spend a year up in Wyoming, really try to launch what then we had named the Axis Transit.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: At first it was the plain sight compass, but we needed to shorten it.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the axis is a good one.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: The Brown version became the Axis Transit.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we thought we would just be up here a year and just help launch the product from 2016 to 2017, but we were still here.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: We stayed in Lander.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Dave taught high school in Pavilion, which is a small town.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Oh wow.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh west of Riverton.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_03: It's a tiny town.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: Tiny towns.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we we kind of worked alongside Bretton, but we still weren't working for Brenton.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: We were just often volunteering our own time to like go to GSA, go to AGU, go to EGU in Vienna to launch the Axis and then really kind of represent all the geology products.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, they didn't have anyone on staff who really was a geologist.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, I have so many questions about this, but it's such an amazing story, first of all, to just like reinvent a base level thing.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I remember teaching field camp and both teaching this and being on the learning side of learning how to use a traditional, the international or whatever the old the old model is.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, often what would happen, certainly when we were TA ing, students would struggle with it, and it would be like, okay, yeah, but you're learning what you're measuring really well.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: When I was TAing, it was just on the early days of like iPads and stuff.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, an iPad can take a strike and dip measurement or an iPhone can, but you don't know, and students have no idea what they're measuring.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_01: So there's like this value in I wouldn't say value in struggling, but you know, you gotta understand the basics of what you're doing as opposed to just writing down numbers that are given to you by some computer or something.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's real value in that.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: Educationally was always treated, I'm sure you know the same, it was always treated as like, yeah, you've got to struggle through it because you're learning what these values mean, students, and then you come along and reinvent that in a way that does both better.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: Students still know, they still have to understand what a strike and dip is in a plung and trend.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like you don't walk away without that understanding.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's just easier to make those measurements.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's very cool.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: When we when the idea popped into my head, it was right when digital technologies were starting to pick up when people had actual phones on them in the field.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we get, you know, this this is probably going to take us on a little bit of a tangent, but you know, I I at first only had in mind the the spatial measurement itself and the geometries of the measurement and making it visualize when you're taking a measurement with the axis, you're literally looking at with strike and dip, you're looking at your horizontal plane, your line of strike, and your dip angle.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you move the transit away from the rock and it still has that geometry to it.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: Same with lineations, the lid becomes the vertical plane that that passes through the line on the on the rock, the lineation, and the compass face is remains horizontal, and there's a protractor on the lid where you see that plunge angle.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: At first it was mainly an intuition and an efficiency invention, but now I find myself on this soapbox.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: We don't feel super threatened by digital technologies, but I feel like geoscience education is threatened by it, in that if students are only being taught to walk up to an outcrop and slap their phone or iPad against a surface, because you don't have to think about how you place that.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, you do, because you can be 90 degrees off if you place an iPad or a phone incorrectly.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're just walking up to a surface and slapping your phone against it and hitting a button or looking at the strike and dip symbol that's on it, you're missing out on a lot.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: You're not having to think through what you're doing.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you can be wildly off, as can your digital device.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: They're not accurate and if you don't calibrate them and they degrade over time.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: You do you have to be very careful with digital stuff.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: Lauren, can I get a little bit more?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_03: And the same thing I find with Oh, yeah, yeah, go ahead.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_03: I just want clarification.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_03: I'm sorry to interrupt, but you you said that you're not threatened by the digital, but geoscience education might be.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_03: What do you mean?
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: If schools are taking the quote unquote easy way and thinking that technology is moving in a direction where geoscientists at the future only need to know how to use digital technologies, they're doing a huge disservice to the science because we're going to have a generation of geoscientists who don't understand what they're doing in the field.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not against technology, but I I fear for that generation, because I I I bet it'll circle back.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: Military has kind of done this too, where they've circled back to traditional land of recognizing how GPS-denied environments are real and that all soldiers need to know how to use a map and complex.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: GPS can be spoofed and like all these types of things.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I think I would agree with you.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: You you need not be worried by either the practitioners, but really or by education, either geoscience education.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you have a better view of this than I do, but I just think about stereo nets.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: And there was always a conversation of like, do students type in their measurements and then have it plotted for them in the stereo net, or do students have to manually plot in the stereo nets?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_01: And like every structural geology class I've seen recently still make students plot it in lab hand by hand because that's the way you understand what the heck you're plotting.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the only way to develop this very unique three-dimensional, four-dimensional skill set that geologists have.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so I I agree the pendulum's gonna come back.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_03: That's true, Jesse, but you know, we see this in math education right now, you know, with younger students coming up, with all the technology that they have available, they use that technology.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_03: They're not made to do it in the old school way, and so they don't understand how math works.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, interesting.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I fear that I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on AI and I don't want to overstep my knowledge, but I fear for a lot of disciplines in that you jump to conclusions that the digital technology or the the latest and greatest is more authoritative or better or more accurate.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it might be more quote unquote efficient, but the point of education is not just to do something the fastest, to learn what you're doing and to understand what you're doing.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not how fast you can write a paper, it's to learn something.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you're saying with field geology, like the broader concept or discussion here could be about field geology in general or field camps, the importance of field camps or core field skills still being taught.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like we all know, not you know, a very small percentage of students are gonna become field mappers as their careers, those who who, in my opinion, are lucky.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they're lucky ones I get to find those careers.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: But the point of field camp is to teach those three-dimensional and you know, the four-dimensional skills that you don't get in the classroom, and like the synthesis skills that you don't get studying one topic, you're bringing it all together in the field and thinking on your feet, taking measurements.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the last thing I would want to do is get outside and mess with an app and stare at a screen when I can be interacting with the actual media or in the actual that's true.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Put your put the put the thing away.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I I agree completely.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_03: Jesse, do you see this?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_03: Because you teach field camp right now.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Do you well?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, uh in fairness, I haven't taught much field camp.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was Chris, I was just in a conversation actually yesterday about maybe having developing a igneous and metamorphic field exercise in the Tetons.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: So um uh I I might be teaching it again this year, but um yeah, we just had a I wouldn't even say it was a vi I wouldn't even classify it as a vibrant discussion.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: We had a short discussion about the future of field camp and universally it was like, yeah, we gotta have it for geoscience majors, they gotta do some aspect of field camp.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now we need to make it accessible.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: People who physically can't do it can, you know, there's a there's optionality um for sure for you know open it up and make it more accessible to those with various disabilities, etc.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you gotta have that.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta go out in the field, you gotta think about data, you gotta put it in context, you just gotta be struck by the scale of geoscience and visualize mountains moving over hundreds of millions of years.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's a skill set you gotta have.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: And it was actually, I don't know if it was unanimous, but it was that was the majority view of amongst the faculty, and that was like a pretty easy decision.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: So that made me feel good about that, I guess.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_01: About that aspect.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it's it's still I I think it's the NAGT that does occasional, or perhaps it's AGI.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I don't want to misquote, but when employers are surveyed about the skills they want in the geoscience workforce, it's usually GIS and field skills.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that's exactly right.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: I agree completely.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I wrote a big grant that got funded in part because I wrote I was gonna do a bunch of field, like that field training is essential.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I I surveyed a ton of employers from environmental consultants down to exploration companies, and they're all like, yeah, field thinking.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Just being able to function in the field and think about that, that spatial, time-based reasoning that geologists who have a good field background come away with is really important.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, Lauren, at risk of running to this is such an interesting conversation.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: You like you have such a varied, you have such a depth of knowledge across the huge amount of fields that overlap perfectly with Chris and I's interests.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, like, we're going on all sorts of little tangents here.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_01: But you are now the owner and you and your husband, owner, you're the CEO of Brunton.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: What was the decision to buy Brunton?
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: When that was like offered, I'm guessing it was like, hey, we're gonna sell Brunton.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, how does that happen?
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_01: I need to know.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: Did you go home and like have a beer and we're like, oh my gosh, what are we doing?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Or are you like done?
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: We're doing this.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_01: I want to hear the I want to hear the long story about this.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, it's such a I mean, just this is a this is such a cool story.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is just an amazing, amazing story to now be owner and C of Brunton.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's totally cool.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is kind of a weird.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: I think if I were to jump out of my life and then like jump back in right now, it'd be like, whoa, what am I doing?
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_01: What would master students lauren be thinking when you're like using a measurement tool and you know doing your master's thesis?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they'd be like, You're gonna own the company that makes this thing one day, you know?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it it's it's been a weird journey.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: I so kind of picking up where I left off, we moved up to Wyoming in 2016.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And after a few years of teaching, the engineer here at Brunton, so we were still interacting with Brunton quite a bit, but we weren't employees of Brenton.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: The engineer, Hank Iden, his health was starting to fail and his eyesight was starting to fail.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we, as we worked on the launch of the Axis, we we got to know him really well and we realized, realized this.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And and so Dave actually was given the opportunity to overlap with Hank and move into the engineering position.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Again, even though my husband had never taken an engineering class, he was a self-taught, he knew CAD, he knew SolidWorks.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: He had treated a lot of his physics classes at the high school level as physics engineering classes, like big project-based.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: He had high school students designing all sorts of stuff in CAD before they actually made it physically and tested it.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so he he had the skill set and was able to overlap with Hank and get a lot of his knowledge.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, Hank passed away within about a year of that overlap.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: So Dave became the the engineer, like the main engineer here at Brunton.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: So he became an employee in 2018, right around the time where we had our daughter.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And so my maternity leave was also quite varied and not really a maternity leave.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_00: I was dabbling with things in lander because there really isn't a geoscience program at any of the community colleges or or local schools.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: So I was teaching a variety of things and doing a variety of things.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, we I was running the Climbers Festival and the Climbers Nonprofit largely during my maternity leave as just this additional set of experiences that actually really became valuable because I hadn't really been in the nonprofit world.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't been an executive director.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was a really valuable two years for me to get that experience.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_00: So, fast forward to 2021, we're in the midst of the pandemic.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: Dave is working from home.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_00: Riverton stayed open here because we're critical infrastructure, because we have government contracts.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so Bruton was still going strong here, but leadership was asked to work at home if you if you could.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I remember early 2021, at the time, the main ownership of Brunton was in Sweden.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so a lot of Was it Fiskers?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was it was Phoenix back then.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: Phoenix outdoor.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: And so Phoenix owned Bruton and Primus and still owns Fjall Raven clothing and Royal Robins clothing, and and mainly they're a soft goods company.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: But to have meetings with this the Swedish leadership, usually had to have these early morning meetings.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was super early on Monday morning.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: I'm dealing with our daughter, and I hear Dave and the Bruton CEO at the time calling in from Sweden.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I overhear, Dave, I have a question for you.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: What would you and Lauren think of buying bronchin?
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's like literally that.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my goodness.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Literally.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: Talk about your ears working off.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_03: Did you get excited or did you get scared?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I I eavesdropped.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_00: I like I wasn't invited to this meeting.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: I sat on the stairway and like listened to this meeting.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: And essentially, the CEO had been sent on a path of kind of doing his due diligence because the owner of Phoenix had said, I would sell Bruton if you find the right owners, the right buyers.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: And the CEO was concerned that if it fell into the wrong hands, it could be, you know, who knows what would happen to Bruton.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: It could be moved overseas to China, it could be altered, it could be just turned into something quite different, or it could just go under.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: And he really cared enough about the brand to actually broker this deal for the entire year with us.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: It took us the whole year of 2021.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: And in retrospect, really appreciate the time that he took to caretake the deal to make sure it happened.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, so so I overhear this whole conversation that basically sends us on this weird, surreal situation.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: We had almost in the back of our minds thought, oh, Bretton would operate so much more efficiently if it didn't have the structure that it does, like the Swedish ownership and the older Colorado North American headquarters and warehouse and the manufacturing in Riverton, Wyoming, like three different locations for what really is actually a small operation was just like so inefficient.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: So in the back of our minds, we were like, oh, someday, like wouldn't it be fun if we could like take over?
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you you had, I mean, what so you uh obviously the deal takes a long time, but like when the when the Zoom call hangs up, you and Dave, is it like this is a cool opportunity, we gotta go, we gotta like pursue it at all ends, kind of feeling, or was it like more It was a it was a quick pull out a big piece of paper.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And make a pros and cons list.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's how we've tended to make big life decisions.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: The pros definitely outweighed the cons.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, I mean, within the day, we were like, okay, we're gonna not do this.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's so cool.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now, you know, now Brunton's uh led by a female geologist for the first time, American-made manufacturing high-end manufacturing company.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: How many employees does Brenton have now?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have?
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: We have right now we have about 28.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_03: So how's it going?
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's good.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and we we jumped right in the and we knew we were doing this too, but Brenton had kind of been wanting to or needing to develop several big projects, big products that are for the most part military related, but we jumped in.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's one is a an illuminated version of the transit, which the transit, by the way, is also used by artillery teams.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_00: Like exactly the geologists are used to using.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: The green version of it with a slightly different dial is the most precise way to aim a mortar.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's far more precise than a digital device and and is used in all settings.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's we have government contracts for that and for other compasses, just baseline compasses.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: So to illuminate that was something Brunton had needed to do for a while.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_00: So we jumped straight into pouring all our innovation capital, which was just really time, into that.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then the last two years have been a huge endeavor in developing a new type of, well, for Brunton, it's not a new type of compass, but the main traditional soldier's compass is something we're working on.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Bruton had been working on for a long time.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so we jumped straight in.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so to answer your question, it's going well, it's really busy.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: We've we're we're not just like getting settled in.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: We we immediately jumped into these huge endeavors and things with contracts and things with tritium involving major certifications along the way.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: But sales have been good.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: We sell all around the world.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: We've been able to really improve a lot about how we sell and starting to really ramp up our marketing.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm it's it's all good.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_03: That's so cool.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_03: I so, Lauren, you might not know the answer to this.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_03: Do you know when Brunton stopped making binoculars?
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: It was around 2014.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: And how come?
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_03: Because I see now that you have a whole line of binoculars.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_03: And I want to ask you about those.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: So Yeah.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: Brunton has gone through a lot of different waves of like attaching the name to different products and or or developing new products internally.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: The binocular wave was under a certain generation of leadership, actually, several generations of leadership.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: When Phoenix took over and moved management down to Colorado, the binocular line sort of its fate was sealed because the leadership team that was the optics team stayed in Wyoming and they started several other companies, like Maven Outdoor, um, Maven Binoculars is inlander, run by good friends of ours.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: They broke off from Bruton.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so around 2014 was kind of when the sales of Bruton Binoculars were at an end.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was kind of a strange decision, but it also made the company small enough.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: We're always kind of thankful in a way.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: It made Brutton small enough that two educators could somehow finagle away to buy the company.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: That's amazing.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's that that's do you like the binoculars?
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: I do actually.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: The the minoculars are are still they're good sellers.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: They're light and they have good quality.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: They're the only things we don't make in-house, though.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's kind of this like starting next year by 2025, 100% of our compasses will be made right here in this building.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like right now in 2024, we still have one imported compass, but we're phasing that out.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge milestone, actually, to say that like 100% of our compasses are made right here in Wyoming.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we could say 100% of our products are.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the optics, those monoculars are st are imported, and we don't have the heart to cut them because they they still fit the brand and they still are a good little uh a good little item.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_00: It looks great for backpacking, right?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we're at risk of running too long here.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: I have one more question, then Chris, maybe you can wrap up the last question.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we talked about this before we hit record a little bit, but I'm um sort of starting up a geoscience entrepreneurship kind of minor program here at Penn State.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I just uh very simple question.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: Would you consider yourself entrepreneurial?
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: And if so, when did you start that?
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: When did you have that feeling?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, does it go back a long ways for you to your upbringing, or is it somewhere along your education or your experience that you kind of became more?
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: It really wasn't ingrained in you as a as a child, I don't think.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: But when Dave and I were both in Durango teaching a few years prior to the invention of the Axis, we had started a garage-based company where we were making science tools and teaching gadgets and field geology bundles in our garage.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: We were making groundwater models and water rocket launchers and selling things quite well at sort of the garage scale of a business.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I think that really kicked off this, the professional wave of entrepreneurial spirit.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_00: I do think that yeah, I would consider myself an entrepreneur.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: And also, I was about to say risk taker, but I don't want that to sound wrong.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think that being a climber and one that is not adverse to risk has made me, I guess, good at assessing situations and knowing when it's okay to go for it.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_01: Know how to analyze risk.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_01: And like there's a risk everywhere in life.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: And some people go through with blinders on not understanding risk, or people go through and are too risky all the time.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like an entrepreneurial, uh, you're obviously an entrepreneur.
• 49:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I kind of was more after like entrepreneurial, the mindset.
• 49:43
  SPEAKER_01: Like, uh, do you see the world and think it can be improved upon?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: Clearly, you do.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just it's so interesting to me when this happens.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because for me, it didn't happen until you know, even after graduate school.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_01: Even though I think research is fundamentally kind of an entrepreneurial activity in many ways, you're always evaluating risks and benefits and pros and cons and things like that.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, it's just so intriguing.
• 50:03
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that you answered my question.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that, Chris.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe uh maybe you could take us out here.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_03: All right, Lauren, we always ask this question.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_03: Um, and you can take this however you want, you can go wherever you want in direction, but what has been your best day as a geoscientist?
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it has to be the day we unveiled the Axis publicly, at least in person.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was GSA in Denver in 2016.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: And Denver GSAs tend to be big anyway because they're mid-continent.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_00: So it's 2016, that opening reception in the expo hall, the Brunton booth, and this is before we were Brenton employees, we were just there to launch the Axis.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: It was like five people deep for hours on end.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: And that was just the opening day.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then like each day, it was just it was the most exhausting, so cool, but thrilling experience.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_00: So, like that first unveiling of our invention, because until that point, there was still that inkling of are people gonna actually think this is a good idea or or like it or find a use for it?
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: And some of my geology heroes, like Eldridge Moores, like bowed and and like saw the idea and came back every day that GSA, but he kept you know, when he first got to use the axis, he he like bowed.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's amazing.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's so cool.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, but what a like uh what a way to you know experience people appreciating your all the hard work.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that must was years into that invention at that point.
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's so cool.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_03: That is because yeah, Jesse, there is there anything more quintessential to a geologist than a Bruton?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like maybe a right in the rain notebook, but uh probably not.
• 51:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like those that's the only thing in the category that I could that I can think of, really.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like you know, I mean we're a rock.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but those come in all different shades and colors, and like people have different varieties.
• 51:54
  SPEAKER_01: Like Swing is the dominant one, but it's not like the name, you don't call it you call it a rock, Everen, you don't call it an S Wing, right?
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you call it a Brunton, you call it a right in the rain notebook, or you're right in the rain.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think a Brunton's much more quintessential.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_03: Jesse, I went to this alumni picnic not too long ago, you know, this uh geology alumni picnic, and and nowhere else in the world would people be walking around in the middle of Michigan with Brunton compasses on their belt.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_03: Like, there's no reason for the big thing.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: There's no reason you gotta measure the glacial till direction, don't you?
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_03: It was just made me it was great.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_03: And there was actually two people that had Brunton compasses on their shirts, you know.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_03: It was just this is a nerd statement all the right ways.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Lauren, I mean, so well, thank you very much.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is your story and a congratulation.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: Hats off to you.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's just an amazing story and amazing path.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: And and thank you very much for the time.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a great pleasure talking to you about it.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate it.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're very welcome.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 52:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's been really good.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, all the best out there in Wyoming, and uh keep making those things for us.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: We we need it.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, thank you all.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.