Latest / Go Wildly Podcast / Ep. 18 | On The Water & In The Wild: Zac Kauffman’s Journey from Hippie Roots to Sawyer Paddles & Oars

Transcript

Ep. 18 | On The Water & In The Wild: Zac Kauffman’s Journey from Hippie Roots to Sawyer Paddles & Oars · Go Wildly Podcast

• 0:05
  Welcome Welcome Wildly Wonders to another episode of the Go
• 0:09
  Wildly podcast where we dive into the stories of people whose
• 0:13
  lives are rooted in the outdoors.
• 0:15
  I'm Heather and together with my Co host Emily, we talk to the
• 0:18
  guides, the dreamers and the dirt covered doers who've built
• 0:22
  their lives around the wild, whether they found it young or
• 0:25
  it found them later and never let go.
• 0:27
  Each episode uncovers the moment that changed everything, the
• 0:30
  spark that turned a simple love of nature into a calling, a
• 0:34
  career or a full blown obsession.
• 0:36
  From river Rapids to mountain ridgelines, we follow that
• 0:39
  thread that connects it's childhood wonder to adult
• 0:42
  purpose. If you're drawn to stories of
• 0:44
  adventure, resilience, and what it means to live life outside,
• 0:48
  you're in the right place. So grab your coffee, your
• 0:50
  paddle, or your hiking boots and let's go wildly together.
• 0:56
  Hi, everybody. Hi, welcome back to Go Wildly
• 0:59
  podcast. We are on the beautiful Rogue
• 1:02
  River today, just below the Stratton Bridge, and I'm doing
• 1:09
  just a really easy, mellow float with our friend Zach here.
• 1:12
  It's nice, cloudy, overcast October fall day on the Rogue.
• 1:17
  A little chilly, but pretty pretty reasonable, actually.
• 1:22
  Yeah, it's nice. I like.
• 1:24
  It it's perfect and we're joined today with our friend Zach
• 1:28
  Kaufman. He is the CEO of Sawyer Paddles
• 1:30
  and Oars. If you spent any time on a river
• 1:34
  anywhere in at least the United States, you're probably familiar
• 1:38
  with Sawyer Paddles and Oars. They are the premier wooden
• 1:42
  paddle and ore company in the country.
• 1:45
  They've been around for over 50 years and Zach is the the
• 1:49
  current co-owner and CEO. And not only that, but he hosts
• 1:55
  a podcast. He also.
• 1:56
  Hosts a podcast. Yes, Siri.
• 1:59
  The what is the What is the official title of your podcast?
• 2:03
  So the official title of our podcast is the Sawyer on Water
• 2:08
  podcast. Awesome.
• 2:10
  And Zach has been a rafter for over 30 years.
• 2:14
  He's been a ski instructor and now he's working ski controller.
• 2:19
  Excellent. Great clarification.
• 2:21
  There's a little difference. Yeah, yeah, big difference.
• 2:25
  And now he's working in selling paddles and oars and getting
• 2:29
  people connected to the river and connected to river community
• 2:33
  and is really aligned in the Go wildly mission and ethos of
• 2:39
  sharing stories, sharing the river stories and capturing
• 2:42
  these life changing experiences that people have outside and
• 2:49
  promoting more of those. So we're.
• 2:52
  Welcome. Yeah.
• 2:54
  Welcome is already dying. The battery's already dying.
• 2:58
  No, my arm. Oh, OK.
• 3:01
  That we can deal with. We can deal with both of them.
• 3:04
  But. I think you might want to go to
• 3:07
  the other side because we do have road right here above us,
• 3:11
  you know what I mean? Yeah, we'll paddle over to a
• 3:13
  nice little spot. Well, Zach, do you want to tell
• 3:16
  us a little bit about who you are, where you came from, and
• 3:19
  how you ended up here today? Absolutely.
• 3:23
  Thank you, Emily. Thank you, Heather, for having
• 3:25
  me here. As you said, my name is Zach
• 3:27
  Kaufman and I am the the CEO Sawyer Paddles and ours.
• 3:32
  But more importantly, I am my 50% partner owner of the company
• 3:37
  and our company is fairly unique in the sense that we are just
• 3:41
  just getting started on entering our 59th year of operations.
• 3:47
  So we're looking forward to year 60 and currently we have an
• 3:51
  equal partnership ownership. And so I am on the admin side.
• 3:57
  That means I work with the with the sales team, marketing team.
• 4:01
  And you know, my job is really to generate buzz and information
• 4:05
  about our product and help get those products sold.
• 4:08
  My partner works on the manufacturing side, so he runs
• 4:13
  the manufacturing crew that is right there based in town
• 4:16
  Oregon. And our inside line with each
• 4:20
  other is he builds it and I sell it and and that's kind of how we
• 4:25
  operate. And it's been working pretty
• 4:28
  good so far. And it's really, you know, it's
• 4:32
  unique when you have a business where you're 5050 partners
• 4:35
  because everything is equally split between the two of us.
• 4:41
  Relatable. Relatable.
• 4:43
  And how did you find yourself at Sawyer?
• 4:47
  Well, I was actually a Sawyer customer way before I was
• 4:52
  working at Sawyer. And as you mentioned, you know,
• 4:55
  I mean most folks that are on the river all the time do know
• 4:59
  of Sawyer. And, you know, I was an
• 5:02
  outfitter for many, many years. And of course, I used a lot of
• 5:06
  the Sawyer product. And we had the benefit of just
• 5:10
  going over to the Sawyer factory at that time and picking out,
• 5:14
  you know, what you needed to get from the Sawyer lineup.
• 5:17
  And I learned right away that, you know, when I went over
• 5:21
  there, the owner at the time, Bruce Bergstrom, liked to get a
• 5:25
  little Intel. He liked to chat with you.
• 5:27
  He liked to hear what was going on, how his product was
• 5:29
  performing and all that. And so I was kind of like, OK,
• 5:33
  this is kind of a thing that we should engage in.
• 5:36
  So I started making sure that whenever we were picking up
• 5:39
  Sawyer product for for our company, I would be the one to
• 5:44
  go over there. And I always cleared my
• 5:46
  afternoon. There was no, you could not have
• 5:49
  you if you're if you had a doctor's appointment at 3:00,
• 5:51
  you didn't go to Sawyer at 2. You know, you needed to have a
• 5:54
  clear open schedule because, you know, if Bruce wanted to chat
• 5:59
  and wanted you to tell him about about, you know, something on
• 6:03
  the river and give you some product feedback, it was in your
• 6:07
  best interest to just sit there and chat and tell him about it.
• 6:10
  And through doing that over the years of just being a Sawyer
• 6:14
  customer, I got to know Bruce and he would give us product
• 6:20
  some time to demo and be like, hey, take this out and try it
• 6:23
  because I made it. But nobody's trying it and I
• 6:25
  don't know really why. And then I would take it and try
• 6:28
  it and other people would see us.
• 6:29
  And then those products would kind of start to move along.
• 6:32
  And, and so kind of one thing led to another.
• 6:35
  And I, I moved away from from guiding based right in the, in
• 6:40
  the Rogue Valley. And I was moved down here to the
• 6:43
  lower Rogue. And so I wasn't, wasn't seeing
• 6:46
  Bruce as often, but he was kind of had been there for quite a
• 6:51
  few years and he was getting ready to sell the company and,
• 6:56
  and lo and behold, my name ended up on a short list.
• 7:01
  Of who he would be willing to sell it to.
• 7:03
  Well, no, no, actually, he didn't sell to me, He sold to
• 7:07
  somebody else. But they were looking for people
• 7:11
  to manage, and so that's kind of where I got started.
• 7:17
  Excuse me for a moment, everybody.
• 7:19
  I'm going to set us up on a little.
• 7:21
  Rock. Absolutely.
• 7:23
  So we can get full. Effect is this is the phone.
• 7:31
  Is our contraption in the way? Well, I'll figure it out here.
• 7:36
  We could turn sideways. Yeah, we could spin the boat
• 7:40
  here. Still got that little Rd. noise.
• 7:51
  Sund, you are my bitch lover. Oh, look at us.
• 8:03
  How's. That I like the OK Shall I mess
• 8:07
  with it? I'm just a little scared it
• 8:10
  might Tickle, tipple, topple, do.
• 8:13
  You want something at its foot. Yeah.
• 8:15
  So because it might stabilize it.
• 8:18
  Yeah, oops. Yeah, wonderful.
• 8:24
  Idea perfection. Oh yes.
• 8:39
  Cool. I'm happy.
• 8:41
  I'm happy with that. Awesome, so you've been working
• 8:45
  on rivers, working around rivers, working for rivers for
• 8:50
  over 30 years. How did you find the river?
• 8:55
  So basically I grew up on the Illinois River and never never
• 9:01
  actually did any rafting, never went on the river, never thought
• 9:05
  of rafting on the river. And then I went to went to
• 9:11
  Southern Oregon State College at that time in Ashland, OR when I
• 9:16
  graduated from high school and I was actually just.
• 9:19
  Since you're talking in. The talk talked into doing that
• 9:22
  by some some of friends of mine we were.
• 9:26
  Talked into going to college. I was talked into going to
• 9:28
  college. So I, I, I basically was working
• 9:32
  for my father back in the 80s. You could graduate early if you
• 9:36
  had fulfilled all your requirements.
• 9:38
  And so I had graduated early and I had a job, full time job
• 9:43
  working for my father in in pole barn construction and fence
• 9:47
  construction. And, and my friends were still
• 9:51
  in school and they were, you know, pretty good football
• 9:54
  players, big guys. And I was not a really good
• 9:57
  football player. I was not a big guy, but, you
• 10:00
  know, we were a really small school.
• 10:01
  And so everybody that wanted to play could play.
• 10:04
  And they got recruited to go to Southern Oregon State.
• 10:08
  So I went with them on one recruitment trip that they went
• 10:12
  on and came back and told my mom.
• 10:14
  I said, I think I might go to college.
• 10:17
  And so she put everything together and I headed off to
• 10:22
  school with with the guys on the football team, even though they
• 10:24
  thought that I could play on the football team too.
• 10:27
  I surely told them that that was not going to happen and they
• 10:31
  were actually recruiting you to play football.
• 10:33
  But I will go just because it sounds like it's something I
• 10:36
  should do. And so I, I went to school there
• 10:39
  and the second year in, I was of course trying to find ways to
• 10:46
  make ends meet and I had a work study job that I can get.
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  And so I looked through the work study jobs that were available
• 10:54
  and saw this one for the outdoor program.
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  And I was like, what's that? That sounds interesting.
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  I went down there and talked to him.
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  There's like, yeah, well, we have all this gear here and we
• 11:05
  basically rented out to college students and affiliates with,
• 11:10
  with the college. And, and then, you know, all
• 11:14
  throughout the various seasons we do outings for, for the
• 11:17
  college kids. I'm like, that sounds good.
• 11:20
  Interesting. So I started working there and,
• 11:22
  you know, I was just like, literally I'd work there from
• 11:25
  like 2:00 to 5:00 on a couple days a week and I just would
• 11:28
  rent gear to various people. And then spring came around and
• 11:33
  started noticing that there were like all these river trips that
• 11:36
  were organized and I was like, huh, OK.
• 11:40
  And the manager at the time, she's like, yeah, so I'm a big
• 11:44
  river runner. So we're going to do a lot of
• 11:46
  river trips in the spring and you should go on at least a few
• 11:51
  of them. And so that was kind of how I
• 11:54
  got it started. I I went on the very first river
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  trip that I ever did was a four day lower road trip with the
• 12:01
  College in May and I believe my total cost was $65.
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  Woohoo. Wow.
• 12:08
  And so you got a lot of college outdoor programs and that is
• 12:13
  pretty much what began everything for me.
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  I started doing, you know, there were river trips every every
• 12:21
  year and through my college years, I ended up being a
• 12:26
  manager at the outdoor rec program there at the outdoor
• 12:30
  program and found out that they actually operate as a river
• 12:33
  company in the summertime and they would take groups that
• 12:38
  would come to stay at the college.
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  So like they would take Elderhostel folks and take them
• 12:44
  on a raft trip. They would take foreign exchange
• 12:48
  groups that would come in and International Studies groups
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  that come in and you know, the cheerleading camp and the band
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  camp and all these places that would come to the college.
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  Part of the things that were offered through the stay at the
• 13:02
  college was a day river trip. So that's how I began.
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  And then of course, when I was managing it, we had access to
• 13:11
  all these boats. Very, they, they had their boat,
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  their boathouse probably had about 10 boats.
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  And so I had access to all these different rafts and anytime I
• 13:20
  wasn't working, I would just take them out and use them.
• 13:23
  And and we would just go go trial and error ourselves on
• 13:29
  Nugget and powerhouse and running inflatable kayaks
• 13:32
  through Nugget and swimming out the bottom, running inflatable
• 13:35
  kayaks through powerhouse and swimming the bottom drop
• 13:38
  multiple times. And we've kind of just learning
• 13:41
  through the the series of Hard Knocks, but but we learned the
• 13:46
  skills and then commercial companies would call us every
• 13:50
  once in a while when they got they had really big days and
• 13:53
  said, Hey, you know, can you come guide for us?
• 13:55
  And I was actually Noah Haig that told me one day he said,
• 14:00
  yeah, you, you outdoor program guys, you know, you're, you're
• 14:04
  willing, but we don't really know what your training level
• 14:06
  is. I was like, you hired me, so I'm
• 14:11
  ready to go. And that's how I got started.
• 14:13
  And then one thing led to another and one of the
• 14:17
  Outfitters called me one summer and said, hey, how would you
• 14:19
  like to come to work for me full time?
• 14:21
  And so I did. I.
• 14:24
  Love that that's. Awesome.
• 14:26
  I love it. Yeah.
• 14:28
  Were your parents outdoor inclined beyond building pole
• 14:33
  barns? So my parents were not outdoor
• 14:37
  inclined. There was no camping, there was
• 14:39
  no family river trips. There were no events like that
• 14:44
  when I was growing up as a child.
• 14:47
  I grew up in a, in a family of six kids and back in the 70s
• 14:54
  and, and late 60s, early 70s, we lived in a on a commune for a
• 15:00
  year. We, we lived in a circus tent
• 15:03
  for a couple years. And so we basically were living
• 15:08
  camping. And then, of course, I got, you
• 15:11
  know, thrusted into public school and, and we were kind of
• 15:17
  the kids that kind of came from the the Illinois Valley, Tacoma
• 15:21
  area. We were kind of known as the
• 15:23
  hippie kids. And growing up through that time
• 15:26
  period is just there was a lot of change going on.
• 15:30
  And, you know, I mean, like in high school, people were
• 15:33
  accepting and we all the kids from Tacoma, we played on the
• 15:36
  football team with everybody. And you know, we built a lot of
• 15:39
  friends, alliances and never really did any, any camping,
• 15:43
  skiing, rafting, none of that. That wasn't, that wasn't part of
• 15:47
  our lifestyle, not as recreation, not as any we were
• 15:51
  just basically, I mean, my, my parents actually built A5
• 15:55
  bedroom log cabin that they live in right now.
• 15:58
  And I helped with that when I was growing up.
• 16:01
  And so I've I've lived on the Illinois River for a good
• 16:06
  portion of my life, but there wasn't any rafting or recreation
• 16:11
  that came about until I moved away to Ashland, OR.
• 16:16
  Growing up in that like lifestyle, would you say that it
• 16:18
  was definitely like a hippie lifestyle?
• 16:21
  Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, 100%.
• 16:24
  It was, you know, that I was really little with the communal
• 16:28
  living, so I don't really remember much about that.
• 16:30
  But but yeah, I mean, we were, we were pretty much, we were a
• 16:35
  little hippie kids, you know. I mean, I had long hair down to
• 16:38
  the middle of my back. I remember that when we started
• 16:41
  playing on the football team, the football coach told us all
• 16:45
  the kids that had long hair is like part of the rule is you
• 16:48
  have to get your hair cut to where it doesn't hang out of the
• 16:51
  helmet. I look at, I look at college and
• 16:53
  professional athletes now and they got these big old grads
• 16:56
  hanging out there and just this flowing locks of hair and I'm
• 16:58
  just like, wow, things have really changed.
• 17:03
  The risk though, like they're choosing to do that, they're
• 17:06
  accepting the risk. You're a child.
• 17:08
  Exactly. Exactly.
• 17:09
  Coach is a little more responsible for.
• 17:13
  Playing sports in the early 80s in the Illinois Valley, you
• 17:18
  know, the equipment is not really what it is today.
• 17:20
  And, and, and yeah, you know, it was just kind of one of those
• 17:24
  things. It was just, it was like I
• 17:26
  played football. I played baseball.
• 17:28
  I was not good at either one, but I was loud.
• 17:32
  So I was literally, I was the captain of the football team,
• 17:34
  but I was not a great player just because I was loud.
• 17:38
  You know, I could, I could get the guys to listen, but you
• 17:43
  know, I was not a big guy and then, but it was more of a
• 17:47
  social thing and, and I'm just being part of, of, you know,
• 17:52
  what was going on in school. Did you know the Krausses?
• 17:55
  Absolutely. Yeah, we grew up with Jennifer
• 17:58
  Krauss. Well, Philippi, now her daughter
• 18:00
  Anna, was our best friends growing up.
• 18:03
  Yeah, everybody together, everybody.
• 18:06
  Everybody in the Illinois Valley knows the Kauffman's and knows
• 18:10
  the Krauss. Yeah, Yeah.
• 18:11
  Just one of those things. Totally.
• 18:13
  That's cool they got streets named after, right?
• 18:15
  Right. They do.
• 18:17
  My, my father is the unofficial mayor of Takoma.
• 18:21
  And and because Takoma is not an actual city, so it doesn't have
• 18:26
  a mayor. But if you ask anybody in Takoma
• 18:28
  who's the mayor, that's that's Delbert.
• 18:31
  Wow. Delbert Coughlin, the mayor of
• 18:33
  Tacoma. Awesome.
• 18:34
  Does he go by Dale or Delbert? He goes by Delbert Cool.
• 18:38
  I love. That that's cool.
• 18:40
  Well, but. Yeah.
• 18:42
  What does river time look like for you these days?
• 18:46
  So these days I, you know, I'm still a river rat at heart.
• 18:50
  I, I do get invited on a lot of trips.
• 18:54
  I try and take as many as possible, but you know, running
• 18:58
  a company does get in the way at times.
• 19:00
  But yeah, I mean, I try and do at least at least a couple lower
• 19:05
  Rd. trips every year. I try and get on the Illinois.
• 19:09
  I was fortunate enough to get on the on the news new stretch of
• 19:14
  the Klamath River through Ward Canyon.
• 19:16
  Just a gem. Such a treat to have that water
• 19:20
  back up and and available. And, you know, and of course,
• 19:24
  we, we provide ores to a lot of the outfitting community.
• 19:29
  So I continue to keep those, those relationships and bonds
• 19:33
  with the Outfitters that we provide too.
• 19:35
  And, and if I have time, I reach out to them like, hey, you know,
• 19:39
  if you got a trip going, I'd like to tag along.
• 19:41
  And, and I've boated with enough of them that, you know, they
• 19:43
  know that, that I can get the boat down the road.
• 19:46
  And that's that's the. Biggest thing?
• 19:48
  You know, I mean, I, I taught people how to run the river for
• 19:51
  many, many years. And the first time I started
• 19:53
  going down the river with some of the Outfitters as the owner
• 19:55
  of Sawyer and I just noticed I'd look downriver and see that
• 19:59
  every time And they get through a big rapid, they're looking
• 20:00
  over their shoulder at me and I'm like, oh, they're checking
• 20:04
  me out and see if I know what I'm doing.
• 20:06
  But just test to me. But if you, you know, if you
• 20:09
  keep, you know you're in the right spot all the time, they
• 20:11
  they stop looking and after a while they're like, all right,
• 20:14
  you got it. Then they're looking back to
• 20:17
  see, oh, did he do it any different than right?
• 20:20
  What route did he choose? Where did he go?
• 20:23
  But yeah, and you host a podcast like we mentioned before.
• 20:27
  Can you give us a little like your, you know, we talked
• 20:29
  briefly, but mission and the kind of people you interview and
• 20:34
  that seems to be a really big passion as we just went through
• 20:39
  an interview where we got interviewed on his podcast.
• 20:41
  We're kind of doing this day thing, which was really cool.
• 20:45
  So hopefully they'll come out maybe hopefully In Sync, but
• 20:49
  maybe. We'll see.
• 20:51
  So anyways, tell us a little bit more about.
• 20:52
  That yeah. So, so basically the, the whole,
• 20:56
  the whole bit was that we, we have a lot of, you know, boat
• 21:03
  builders and, and kind of niche industries that we provide to.
• 21:10
  And where the whole origination of it was is that we needed our
• 21:15
  boat builders, which are mainly builders of, of hard boats,
• 21:18
  various versions of a drift boat, either by fiberglass or by
• 21:23
  wood and, and polymer or by aluminum.
• 21:27
  Like we need them to kind of give their, their story and
• 21:30
  their recommendation. And so we had a, a person that
• 21:33
  we were working closely with and he was a content creator on his
• 21:37
  own realm and he was traveling around the country.
• 21:41
  And I was like, what if we put together a series of questions
• 21:44
  and had you interview these boat builders on just what their
• 21:48
  operation is and why, why they build the boats they do and what
• 21:51
  oars would they recommend? Because that's one of the
• 21:53
  challenges that we always get is people call us up because we
• 21:56
  make the oars. They're like, I have a boat,
• 21:58
  blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What size oars should I get?
• 22:00
  And it's like, well, you bought the boat from these guys and you
• 22:02
  paid them tons of money. Maybe ask them what oars you
• 22:06
  should get. But so we, we kind of started
• 22:08
  with that premise and, and then one of the interviews that we
• 22:12
  did was with Jim Biddle, who is the owner of Willie Boats at the
• 22:17
  time. And I went over and participated
• 22:20
  in that interview. And that interview took on a
• 22:23
  real historic perspective because as many of the folks
• 22:27
  that watch our podcast know is that the reason that Sawyer
• 22:31
  makes boars is because of Billy Illingsworth, the founder of
• 22:35
  Willie Drift Boats. And the way that story goes is
• 22:39
  literally Ralph Sawyer started building paddles in 1967 not
• 22:43
  very far from here in the little town of Rogue River.
• 22:46
  And he was building paddles. He was a canoe racer, a marathon
• 22:50
  canoe racer, which is not even something that many people here
• 22:52
  in the West even know exists. But that was Ralph's passion.
• 22:56
  And he was part of a canoe company.
• 22:58
  He was partners in Sawyer Canoes and he thought he was just going
• 23:02
  to branch out on his own and build paddles for Sawyer Canoes
• 23:05
  and that would be his thing. Well, he got out here to the
• 23:07
  West and realized that rivers like the Rogue are quite a bit
• 23:11
  steeper than the lakes that he was used to paddling back east.
• 23:15
  And so he was like, OK, well, I'm not going to build canoes.
• 23:18
  I'm not going to, I'm not going to stay involved in the canoe
• 23:20
  partnership. I'm just going to go ahead and
• 23:22
  focus on building paddles. So he started building wooden
• 23:25
  paddles and shortly after that, Billy Ellingsworth starts
• 23:31
  building drift boats. And Billy Ellingsworth was very
• 23:37
  persistent and pesky, I would say.
• 23:40
  And he knew that Ralph was building paddles and he knew
• 23:44
  that he needed oars if he was going to get this drift boat
• 23:47
  concept off the ground. And so he started going out and
• 23:51
  just spending some time with Ralph and be like, hey Ralph,
• 23:53
  you know, you think you could build some paddles.
• 23:55
  You think you can build ores for me?
• 23:56
  You're just this paddle you make is 60 inches long.
• 23:59
  Maybe if you just make it 9 feet, it'll be just right for me
• 24:03
  and I can use it as an ore. Well, Ralph, Ralph said no a
• 24:07
  couple times, but I have continually been fact checking
• 24:12
  this folklore and literally the peskiness and persistence of
• 24:20
  Billy Ellingsworth is the sole reason that Sawyer builds oars.
• 24:25
  Because finally, Ralph is just like, all right, stop coming
• 24:29
  here and visiting me every month and bugging me about Bill
• 24:33
  Norris. I'll build you some oars.
• 24:35
  And so he started building oars. We built an oar.
• 24:38
  It's called the Sawyer Light. People can still find it today
• 24:42
  in our lineup. And that was, that was the
• 24:45
  original, that was your father's ore.
• 24:47
  And that was the original ore that basically Sawyer started
• 24:50
  making back in kind of probably late 60s, early 70s.
• 24:54
  I think the first production run was probably 1970, and that's
• 24:58
  where it all began. So when we were doing all these
• 25:00
  interviews, I was like, oh, this is really fitting.
• 25:03
  We need to do an interview with Jim Biddle, who is basically the
• 25:07
  owner of Willie Drift Boats because Billy Illingsworth had
• 25:10
  already passed. So we do this long interview
• 25:13
  with Jim and not. Knowing that you're going to
• 25:16
  start a. Podcast not knowing we're going
• 25:17
  to start a podcast. Our whole intent was that we
• 25:19
  were going to basically make these documentary things
• 25:23
  available and, and make a boat builder page so that that there
• 25:27
  would be this historic element and more content about these
• 25:31
  boat builders. And so we kind of do that.
• 25:34
  We roll through COVID and several things go on.
• 25:37
  And then about two years later, I'm kind of like looking through
• 25:40
  all of our media and I'm like, we have like 10 interviews
• 25:46
  already here sitting in a file and we haven't done anything
• 25:49
  with them. And I'm like, maybe we don't
• 25:52
  need to make a boat builder page, maybe we need to make a
• 25:54
  podcast. And the thing that kind of
• 25:57
  triggered it on a little further is that this is not out yet
• 26:02
  either. But we got approached by the
• 26:06
  team from public television, national Public Television.
• 26:11
  And there is a documentary series that is hosted by Andy
• 26:15
  Garcia and it's called All Access.
• 26:17
  And right before last Christmas, we get a random call to our
• 26:25
  retail store and the retail person reaches out to me and
• 26:30
  like, I don't know what this is, but you might want to follow up
• 26:34
  on it. This lady says she's with All
• 26:36
  Access hosted by Andy Garcia. She wants to talk to you.
• 26:39
  I don't know what it's about. And I'm like, oh, OK, whatever.
• 26:43
  So I, I called the lady back and she's like, oh, hi, this is so
• 26:48
  and so with All Access. And I'm, this is what we do and
• 26:52
  we have this project and we think you guys would be a great
• 26:55
  candidate for it. And so I'm like, oh, well, tell
• 26:58
  me more. So she kind of runs through
• 26:59
  their whole spiel and I answer all these questions.
• 27:04
  I have this hour and a half interview with her and she says,
• 27:08
  OK, well, I have all the information I need.
• 27:10
  We basically are vetting you and two other groups.
• 27:13
  And we will submit our findings to to the leadership team.
• 27:18
  And there's another group that's out there vetting three other
• 27:21
  companies and they're going to submit their their findings.
• 27:24
  And I'm like, oh, OK, fine. I don't think much of it.
• 27:26
  The next day she's like, well, Zach, I just want to let you
• 27:29
  know our team is met and out of the three people, the three
• 27:33
  companies that we have interviewed and vetted, you're
• 27:36
  our choice. So we're going to submit you as
• 27:39
  our choice to the Vice president.
• 27:41
  And I'm like, OK, great. So at that point, like we're
• 27:44
  going into the, the holidays like this is, this is like the
• 27:49
  Friday before Christmas and we are having like our company
• 27:54
  holiday party and real, the guys are only working till like noon
• 27:59
  and then we're going to shut down.
• 28:00
  And we're having this big party. And I'm like in the office
• 28:04
  talking with my partner. I'm like, we should probably
• 28:08
  talk a little bit about this because this kind of came about
• 28:11
  and it might be real. And we talked a little bit and
• 28:13
  I'm like kind of like if it comes about and if we get
• 28:16
  chosen, my thought is that we have to do it like and, and, and
• 28:22
  so and it was there, you know, there was a monetary
• 28:25
  consideration that we had to do. And.
• 28:26
  And he's kind of like he's like, yeah, I mean, that's your realm,
• 28:31
  you know? But yeah, it sounds like if we.
• 28:34
  Had to pay to be part of it. You have to pay a a small fee.
• 28:38
  I mean, you literally get you get about a quarter million
• 28:41
  dollar production, but you have to pay a little something to
• 28:43
  that they so they know you're. Invested.
• 28:46
  You're invested in it, OK. And so you know, it's.
• 28:48
  There's, you know, it'll be the other way around.
• 28:50
  Yeah, it's, it's a marketing, it's a marketing piece.
• 28:52
  But so I'm like, OK, we're going to do it.
• 28:55
  And she's like, OK, well, you know, sign this letter of intent
• 28:58
  that you would you're up for moving forward if you get
• 29:00
  chosen. And, and, and I might don't
• 29:03
  think any of it. And, and the very next day, I
• 29:07
  think, or that night, later on, on Friday, I get an e-mail back
• 29:10
  from Stephanie and she's like, you were pitched to the VP.
• 29:15
  The VP has decided that he wants you guys.
• 29:18
  And he's like, he's like, can you meet with us on the Monday
• 29:22
  before Christmas? And I'm like, yeah, OK.
• 29:25
  And so I'm like, I do this interview with the VP of the
• 29:28
  company and he's kind of like, well, I just have a few
• 29:31
  questions that I need to ask you because I want to clear up some
• 29:33
  things and see if this is really something.
• 29:36
  But I'm, we're very excited about, you know, having you part
• 29:38
  of this this whole episode. And, and so I like he's one of
• 29:42
  the main questions he wanted to ask is like, is Ralph Sawyer
• 29:45
  still alive? And I'm like, yeah, Ralph Sawyer
• 29:47
  still alive. And he's like, will he
• 29:49
  participate? And I'm like, absolutely not.
• 29:52
  Ralph Sawyer has made it very clear that he will not do any
• 29:55
  audio, no video, He will not talk to anybody.
• 29:59
  He I told him, I said, he answers questions for me via
• 30:03
  e-mail through his wife and that's it.
• 30:05
  And, and I'm then that's where Bruce Bergstrom came in.
• 30:08
  And I said, but I do think I have the next best thing.
• 30:12
  And it's like, Bruce Bergstrom is the guy who bought the
• 30:15
  company from Ralph. And I think he would
• 30:17
  participate. And so that whole thing kind of
• 30:20
  comes about. We go through all of the
• 30:22
  rigmarole and it was like crazy, Like we, we literally agreed to
• 30:25
  make it happen right before Christmas, the first week of the
• 30:29
  year. We're getting all these
• 30:31
  documents, all these legal documents.
• 30:32
  I'm like wading through all these, all these shoot
• 30:35
  documents. I'm just like, oh, what have we
• 30:37
  got? Our interview agreement was much
• 30:39
  more. Major like, oh wow.
• 30:42
  And then I'm like, I sign all these legal documents and I send
• 30:45
  it back and then I get like this 12 page questionnaire on the
• 30:48
  company and it's just like, oh, just question after question.
• 30:51
  I was like, I'm like, Oh my gosh.
• 30:53
  And I just weed through all this and get it all submitted.
• 30:56
  And and then that wasn't even, that wasn't the, the
• 31:00
  exploration, that was like another team that was like the,
• 31:02
  the vetting, the actual vetting team.
• 31:05
  And then she's like, OK, well, that's my part.
• 31:07
  It's all complete now. And now I'm going to turn you
• 31:08
  over to this person. And so then I get turned over to
• 31:11
  this other person and they're like, they're like, OK, we just
• 31:14
  need to load up whatever raw videos you have and send us all
• 31:17
  the stuff you have and all the files like, like I'm the
• 31:20
  preliminary producer and they like look at everything.
• 31:23
  And then they're like, OK, then the, the the vice president of
• 31:27
  production will get a hold of you next.
• 31:29
  And that's will be in a couple months.
• 31:30
  And I'm like, all right, whatever.
• 31:32
  And so and then at one point I think the vice president of
• 31:35
  production gets a hold of me and she's like, so what's the
• 31:37
  timeline like? Like you, you want to let's see
• 31:40
  if we can get this out, you know, in the summertime.
• 31:42
  Hold on a minute guys, this is kind of a fun little.
• 31:45
  Oh, we've got to. Put a pin.
• 31:47
  Fire helicopter flying over us. I wonder where they I?
• 31:54
  Wonder where they're going to dip?
• 31:55
  Yeah. Where they're coming from, where
• 31:57
  they're going, there's. Well, there is an active fire,
• 32:00
  but like. 50 miles downstream. Well, kind of crazy that they
• 32:07
  fly so for so long with the bucket hanging that they don't
• 32:11
  like scoop it up into the hell your belly until they're going
• 32:15
  to drop it that it's just this like.
• 32:18
  It's just it's the easier way to carry it.
• 32:20
  Yeah, the easiest way to transfer and it is coming from,
• 32:24
  it's coming from Ericsson sky crane.
• 32:26
  So it's probably just flying from central point straight to
• 32:29
  the fire and this is just happens to be the flight path.
• 32:32
  Yeah, yeah. The path of least resistance
• 32:35
  coming from service or cool. Wow, I like to put those little
• 32:40
  snippets in there. I'll pick it back up where we
• 32:43
  were. And so I get moved on to the
• 32:45
  next the next phase and I'm finally the the VP of production
• 32:50
  reaches out. She kind of goes through all the
• 32:52
  bit and she's like, OK, you know, pick the pick out of your
• 32:55
  calendar when you want to shoot. I'm like, well, we want it.
• 32:57
  We need to shoot out on the river.
• 32:58
  So, you know, I don't want it to be too early.
• 33:01
  Like we kind of, you know, we're going to make a date.
• 33:04
  So we settle on June 3rd and I'm like June 3rd.
• 33:08
  That'll work, you know? So I rally up all the community.
• 33:11
  I get a bunch of people participated.
• 33:13
  We had like 9 boats on the river.
• 33:15
  We do. And then I basically set the
• 33:17
  storyline with them and I get Bruce Bergstrom to come give the
• 33:21
  historic piece. I get Will Volper from Indigo to
• 33:25
  come give the the outfitter piece.
• 33:28
  I get Link Jackson from the he was a previous owner of Stream
• 33:32
  Tech Boats and he's the one of the founding partners of the
• 33:35
  artisan series that we do, which is a custom artwork that goes
• 33:38
  into oars and then a percentage of those oars go into river
• 33:42
  conservation. And I'm so we have this lineup
• 33:45
  of all of our interviews. It's me, it's Link Bruce.
• 33:49
  And Will we set up two different studios at at Sawyer Station?
• 33:54
  We shoot half of the interviews, one view, then we switch and
• 33:57
  shoot half the interviews, the other view.
• 33:59
  And then the afternoon we basically go on the river and
• 34:02
  shoot. And I'm so I'm asking the the
• 34:05
  vice president of production, like, you know, this is shot
• 34:08
  outside. Like what is what's the normal
• 34:11
  procedure? And she's like, no matter what,
• 34:15
  June 3rd is the shoot date, no matter what.
• 34:18
  And I'm just kind of like, wow, OK, so this could be a total
• 34:22
  rainstorm. Yeah.
• 34:23
  And so the day comes, we have everything orchestrated.
• 34:27
  It's gorgeous weather, beautiful sunny June day.
• 34:31
  Just this last year. Just just this last year and and
• 34:34
  so now we have gone through our first edit, we're in the final
• 34:38
  edit and I don't know when it's going to come out, but at some
• 34:42
  point in the near future, we will, we will be featured on all
• 34:47
  Access as this company here in Southern Oregon and just doing
• 34:51
  that little bit and having Bruce participate in it and link and
• 34:59
  will I was kind of like, there's a lot of important people that
• 35:04
  we have a con contact with and we just like I started realizing
• 35:08
  like, wait a minute, maybe we're the continuity to all of this.
• 35:14
  And, and that's what I was telling you at the put in is
• 35:17
  like literally, we have folks that will will grant us an
• 35:22
  interview and talk about a lot of concepts where they don't
• 35:27
  necessarily talk to somebody else who granted us an
• 35:30
  interview, but trying to just bring their stories to to our
• 35:34
  audience into a greater audience.
• 35:36
  And and we kind of settled on the podcast bit because we kind
• 35:42
  of figured that, you know, we live in this 32nd snippet land
• 35:47
  and like we can do 32nd snippets all day long.
• 35:50
  And yes, we'll get a lot of people to view them and like
• 35:52
  them, but will they really learn more about the company or will
• 35:55
  they really get, you know, interested in, in buying our
• 35:59
  product or not? And so we thought about the
• 36:01
  podcast ideas like, yeah, they may not watch the 30 minute to
• 36:06
  40 minute video, but if they're driving somewhere, they'll
• 36:10
  listen to the whole thing. And so that's what we did.
• 36:14
  And we, so we put it together, launched on Spotify, Apple and
• 36:19
  YouTube and in turn in turn even on Apple where our ratings and
• 36:25
  rankings are going up. And we know Apples all audio.
• 36:29
  Spotify is video as well as audio, and YouTube of course is
• 36:33
  video as well. What was your launch date?
• 36:36
  We launched. I don't even know exactly when
• 36:40
  the first one is. I'm sure we could look it up,
• 36:41
  but I think we started in April. Us too.
• 36:45
  We did too. Yeah, Yeah.
• 36:47
  So we started in April and we had literally the first one we
• 36:50
  started in April. We had, like I said, this whole
• 36:52
  backlog of them. So all I had to do is we had the
• 36:54
  backlog. I just had to do.
• 36:56
  We came, we set up, we had to do outros and intros for all of
• 37:00
  them because basically I had them all sit there.
• 37:02
  So I have literally all this audio stuff in, in my house and
• 37:06
  I, I sit down and do outro intros for various podcasts when
• 37:10
  I have the time. And I still, I am the, I am the
• 37:13
  backlog right now on, on several episodes because I still have to
• 37:17
  do an outro and an intro for them.
• 37:19
  So they could actually get cut and be ready to go.
• 37:22
  So, but but yeah, that's kind of how it all happened.
• 37:26
  Just checking in, checking everything in.
• 37:31
  Battery's doing good, good, good.
• 37:35
  That's the with this, we've got a really monitor.
• 37:39
  Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, that's so cool.
• 37:41
  I love that very, very intentional, but also very
• 37:44
  organic, circumstantial creation of, of this podcast effort and,
• 37:50
  and how really aligned it is with, with our ethos and our
• 37:54
  story of wanting to, to capture these stories of people who
• 37:58
  spend time outside and who are passionate about their craft and
• 38:02
  about the outdoors. And we like to bring in guests
• 38:07
  who aren't just outdoor professionals, but are outdoor
• 38:10
  enthusiasts that this is this is how they choose and prefer to
• 38:15
  spend their time, whether they're getting paid to do it or
• 38:18
  not. This is the place that they feel
• 38:21
  most alive, most at home, most connected, most themself.
• 38:24
  Absolutely. Yeah, anywhere from the, you
• 38:28
  know, mushroom, mushroom foraging.
• 38:30
  Yeah. To wildland firefighters and.
• 38:34
  Yeah, yeah. And that's that's been so cool
• 38:37
  about doing this work is the expanse of ways that people
• 38:42
  commune with the outdoors. And even one of our most recent
• 38:46
  episodes, he's a baseball coach and doing baseball.
• 38:52
  And I had this like, Oh yeah, baseball's an outdoor.
• 38:56
  Sport it. Is and.
• 38:57
  You're out indoor baseball. Yeah, you could, you know, be in
• 39:00
  a batting cage kind of indoors. But if you're a baseball player,
• 39:03
  you're outside all the time. And it's a different, It's
• 39:08
  different from being on the river, but it's still breathing
• 39:11
  fresh air and being in the elements on their baseball.
• 39:16
  Right. Yeah.
• 39:16
  Baseball, baseball and softball is huge.
• 39:19
  I mean, it's amazing, like America sport.
• 39:22
  I drive by, I drive by the like the the fields right there
• 39:26
  outside of Medford all the time. And it's like at all hours.
• 39:29
  I mean, it's just like all. Hours.
• 39:31
  All when they're actually out there in the snow.
• 39:33
  Yeah, there's just, there's people there constantly and it's
• 39:35
  funny on on my street, one of my neighbors down the street from
• 39:39
  me is, is a softball coach and one of the neighbors up the
• 39:43
  street from me is a, is a softball coach.
• 39:47
  And they play on different for different teams.
• 39:49
  It's just kind of like, Oh yeah, like that's their thing.
• 39:51
  And then they they know me as the paddle guy because I drive
• 39:53
  the I drive the logoed van and they just see me running boats
• 39:58
  in and out of my garage all the time.
• 40:00
  Do you live in talent? I actually don't live in talent,
• 40:03
  I live in Phoenix so I'm about 7 miles away from.
• 40:06
  The next best city that's. Right.
• 40:07
  That's right, one of one of the two cities that saw severe
• 40:11
  devastation in the Alameda were. You.
• 40:13
  Were you in that at all? Did you lose anything?
• 40:16
  So we didn't. We didn't lose a factory and we
• 40:19
  didn't lose our own home, but it was a pretty, pretty wild time
• 40:25
  we did have we had. A lot of your staff.
• 40:27
  We had, we had some of our some of our key staff, we had one of
• 40:31
  our our key glasser and paddle builders lost his home.
• 40:37
  We we raised money for the community through just through
• 40:40
  our network. We raised about about $60,000
• 40:44
  through just our connections in the industry and, and ran
• 40:49
  various like we ran 2 active Go Fund Me campaigns, one for just
• 40:54
  the home that was lost and one for the community in general.
• 40:58
  And we had we had all kinds of folks from the community, from
• 41:02
  our network just donating products and stuff like donating
• 41:07
  rain jackets and donating. All.
• 41:11
  Kinds of stuff and just basically anything and
• 41:14
  everything you could do to just support that recovery effort.
• 41:17
  And it's coming back. I mean, it's been under
• 41:21
  construction for quite a few years, but it's coming back.
• 41:26
  People are often so terrified of fire and fire is is devastating
• 41:30
  and impactful. Whether it's a like a rural
• 41:36
  wildfire, like wildland fire or it's an urban wildfire, it's
• 41:43
  absolutely devastating. And at the same time, it gives
• 41:45
  an opportunity for things to come back and in the urban
• 41:50
  sense, to be rebuilt in a, a smarter, potentially better,
• 41:55
  more intentional way that fits the way that the times are going
• 42:00
  now. Oh, yeah.
• 42:02
  And that was, I was on the City Council in talent at the time of
• 42:05
  the fire. And prior to the fire, we had
• 42:09
  been doing a lot of climate resilience work and thinking
• 42:13
  about if a fire happens. And there was absolutely no
• 42:17
  connection, Completely circumstantial.
• 42:19
  But if a fire happens, how do we want to rebuild?
• 42:24
  What are going to be the building standards that we have
• 42:26
  that move us towards a future of better fire resilience, better
• 42:30
  climate resilience, more energy efficient, more energy
• 42:34
  conservation. And we adjust, adopted a plan
• 42:39
  for the city for that kind of new development.
• 42:43
  And then and then a fire came and burned down a third of the
• 42:46
  town, a new. Yeah, you're.
• 42:47
  Like OK. Terrible and devastating and
• 42:51
  watching my friends homes and lives burn away was
• 42:57
  heartbreaking and also wow, now they can build their dream home.
• 43:03
  Now we can. The visions that we've had for
• 43:06
  how we want these towns to come to life can be met because it's
• 43:12
  a blank slate and we can do anything.
• 43:14
  A lot, a lot of challenges along the way, though.
• 43:17
  A lot of challenges, yeah. The ultimate teacher like that
• 43:19
  like fires the ultimate teacher of like.
• 43:22
  What is that like? You're burning it down and build
• 43:25
  it back. Yeah, like I don't know, I
• 43:28
  always used to say like non attachment.
• 43:31
  Yeah, yeah, like it's all time. Fire, it's kind of it's kind of
• 43:34
  cleansing, it's kind of cleansing in the forest, but
• 43:37
  when it happens in the in the urban setting and it's just like
• 43:41
  it's so we're like where the, where wildland fires are
• 43:46
  colliding with residential properties, that is that's the
• 43:50
  real devastation. It's just like how, you know, we
• 43:53
  have just grown these towns, towns have grown out into the
• 43:57
  wild land area. And it's just so that's, that's
• 44:00
  kind of one of those things. But you know, it's like fire is
• 44:02
  kind of one of those things that yes, we can prepare for, but you
• 44:05
  cannot, you cannot predict. And it's just like it's, it's,
• 44:09
  it's not something you have control over.
• 44:10
  And, and the stuff that happened here on the lower Canyon, the
• 44:13
  fire that's active right now, you know, I was like the fish,
• 44:16
  the river guide that came by us earlier today that, you know,
• 44:19
  they're like, yeah, the river opened back up.
• 44:21
  And it's like, yeah, the rivers opened back up.
• 44:23
  And it's, it's a great experience for for folks that
• 44:27
  are able to go. But also it's like the river
• 44:30
  opened back up. And if you read through that,
• 44:32
  it's like there is no stopping or camping from Mule Creek all
• 44:37
  the way to Foster Bar. So like you need to take your
• 44:39
  time and enjoy the river because as soon as you get to Mule Creek
• 44:43
  it is wheels up and take out. You better be camping at the
• 44:48
  ranch. Yeah, no dilly dallying around
• 44:51
  as they say, you know, and that's kind of crazy because,
• 44:55
  you know, a lot of people they don't really think about, oh,
• 44:59
  can I do that? You know, I camp that way.
• 45:02
  And it's like, actually, you know, I mean, if you have a lot
• 45:05
  of years on the river, you can realize that like, yeah, I mean,
• 45:07
  you can easily roll out of Muriel Lodge and be to the take
• 45:10
  out no problem. And it's just like changing that
• 45:13
  mindset of like, OK, no, we need to push out the bottom.
• 45:16
  Yeah. And being prepared for, I mean,
• 45:18
  the river is opened back up, but don't know how the if there's
• 45:23
  logs in the river, if there's been landslides, if there's new
• 45:27
  Rapids or changed Rapids or the route in a rapid is going to be
• 45:30
  different and how that can change every single day.
• 45:33
  Yeah. And one of the things on this
• 45:35
  statement is that you may, you may need to be prepared to be
• 45:40
  evacuated or forced to take out at the Rogue River Ranch.
• 45:44
  Yeah, yeah, it's like, okay. So the trip may change right
• 45:48
  there. If the fire changes his mind,
• 45:50
  then you are not going past that point.
• 45:52
  And that's such a lesson of just being in the outdoors, being in
• 45:56
  the wild is that one of my favorite quotes of my dad is
• 46:01
  that's the thing about plans. They don't take into account
• 46:03
  reality. Yep, Things are changing all the
• 46:06
  time, and you have to be prepared and able to pivot for
• 46:10
  whatever the new circumstance and situation is.
• 46:14
  Don't be too rooted and embedded in how something is going to go,
• 46:18
  because there's no guarantee that it's going to go that.
• 46:21
  Way I like to just live my whole life, but yeah, life, career
• 46:25
  like how we've, you know. One trip really long ago, I was,
• 46:30
  I was on, I was on the Illinois with a, with a group of friends.
• 46:35
  And this was before a lot of the entrance to the green wall had
• 46:38
  changed. And it used to be that you would
• 46:40
  get down, come down through that rapid entrance and then you'd
• 46:43
  get into the Eddy before you can enter into the into the green
• 46:46
  wall. And so we hiked down there and
• 46:49
  we're scouting it and there's a few kayakers with us and, and
• 46:54
  we're like, and this buddy of mine is like, well, you know,
• 46:57
  what's the, what's the move here?
• 46:58
  I'm like, just come down the entrance rapid, but just get
• 47:01
  into that Eddie. And I said, you know, the
• 47:03
  kayakers are going to be in there first.
• 47:05
  Just get into the Eddie at the top.
• 47:07
  And he's like, OK, what if I don't make the Eddie?
• 47:10
  I was like, no, that's not an option.
• 47:12
  Just get into the Eddie. And so we come down and he's
• 47:17
  like the third boat back and a couple of us are in the Eddie.
• 47:21
  All the kayakers are in the Eddie and he's coming down the
• 47:24
  rapid and he's just a little further over to the right than
• 47:28
  than anybody else was. And it's kind of like, oh, you
• 47:30
  need to kind of move this way and he's coming down and we're
• 47:33
  all in the Eddy kind of going, come on, come on, come on
• 47:36
  working. Get over here.
• 47:37
  And kind of almost like at a synchronized moment, we all just
• 47:42
  kind of went, you're going, you're going, you're going.
• 47:47
  It was like, stop trying to come over here because you are way
• 47:51
  over there. And so he he got to run point.
• 47:56
  And he had a clean ride. And he had a clean ride,
• 47:58
  everything worked out. And of course, you know, as soon
• 48:00
  as he shot past us, it was like, OK, he's going 3 kayakers, boom,
• 48:04
  boom, boom. They all wheeled out.
• 48:06
  It's like all right, we're going no, don't wait for another boats
• 48:08
  coming. We'll just pull out in front.
• 48:10
  We all just truck and trailer. Let's chase them down, whatever
• 48:12
  happens. But it was so funny, and I just
• 48:15
  still, even today, I did this this spring, I was on the river
• 48:20
  with that same guy, and I just told him about that.
• 48:22
  It's like, Oh yeah, I remember you were trying to get over
• 48:25
  there. Did he say why he couldn't make
• 48:27
  it? Was his angle off or he just
• 48:29
  wasn't? He wasn't, didn't make the,
• 48:32
  didn't make the move early enough.
• 48:34
  You know, I mean, it's just one of those things sometimes you,
• 48:36
  you know, you misread the current.
• 48:38
  And that's The thing is like typically when you're running,
• 48:40
  the bigger, the bigger the whitewater, there's like there's
• 48:43
  plan a Plan B and then there's just whatever happens, we're
• 48:46
  going to react to it. Yep.
• 48:48
  And and then also the, the beautiful thing about that is
• 48:51
  that the more intense the whitewater, the more compassion
• 48:59
  and camaraderie there is where even commercially, I remember
• 49:03
  when I was a younger river guide when we were running really big
• 49:07
  whitewater. And I had mentioned this earlier
• 49:10
  to another person on a different podcast, but it was like, really
• 49:14
  one of those things is that in the river community, the
• 49:17
  gnarlier the whitewater, the more that group sticks together
• 49:20
  no matter what. Like, like I was just
• 49:22
  referencing the point that we compete for their their booking
• 49:26
  and their attention in town. But once we're out here on the
• 49:29
  river, we're all together. And, and the old timer that kind
• 49:34
  of cleared up for me, he's just kind of like, yeah, out here,
• 49:38
  it's either I'm pulling you out of the water one day, or you're
• 49:42
  pulling my guests out of the water the next.
• 49:44
  But it's all about just going down the river, right?
• 49:47
  And that's the thing. It's like, Yep, the river is the
• 49:49
  equalizer and just get out there and enjoy it.
• 49:53
  I love that. Yeah.
• 49:54
  And that's really how people should be on the river.
• 49:56
  I always, I feel so like put off when people are very like in it
• 50:01
  for themselves. And you can see that somebody
• 50:05
  needs some kind of assistance and they're just like, Nope, not
• 50:08
  going to put myself at risk to. Yeah.
• 50:10
  The camping dynamics are, are something that is like now that
• 50:14
  I now that I don't commercially guide and I pretty much I try
• 50:20
  and find little nooks and crannies to camp in that that
• 50:24
  I'd never would have stopped at. And of course the river is ever
• 50:26
  changing, so there's always new beaches that farm and it's like,
• 50:30
  hey, we've never stopped here. But this looks like we could put
• 50:33
  a couple tents in a kitchen here.
• 50:34
  Let's just stop here. Yeah, that's.
• 50:36
  Cool. And, you know, and it's just
• 50:37
  kind of like people get so set on the fact that like I do the
• 50:41
  lower rogue and I camp here and I camp there and I camp there
• 50:44
  and it's like, well, no, you're, you're not you're.
• 50:47
  Missing out on so much you're. Not be able to camp there, there
• 50:49
  or there, you know, and, and that's what I've noticed kind of
• 50:53
  through the through the years, that area from blossom down has
• 50:58
  gotten so much more congested on camping because down there
• 51:04
  you're catching everybody that's on a three day, four day or five
• 51:07
  day or jet mode at access. So now you just have you have
• 51:11
  way more competition for the same number of camps and now
• 51:16
  almost it doesn't even matter when you get downriver.
• 51:19
  It's like you may get a spot or you may just have to push
• 51:22
  another 7 miles. You may end up somewhere in
• 51:25
  Floridel Canyon on on a rock. Yep, I actually, I retell this
• 51:31
  story quite often that we literally we came through
• 51:34
  Blossom. We were through Blossom at I
• 51:38
  checked my checked my watch and it was 1130.
• 51:42
  We came out of blossom at 11:30 and I was like, all right.
• 51:46
  So the only, the only beach that we passed, the only campsite
• 51:51
  that we passed was the little, the little scree slope over on
• 51:56
  the on the right side, just below staircase stair.
• 51:59
  And that was it. And then we passed up Paradise,
• 52:02
  and then we floated down past paradise.
• 52:04
  And then we were like, like, all right, well, you know, maybe
• 52:06
  we'll float a little further. We'll start looking.
• 52:08
  So from paradise down everything, every little nook
• 52:15
  and cranny, it was flat enough. Yeah, for four people to lay
• 52:19
  down. It had people in it.
• 52:21
  So do you ever just be like, all right, move over, there's
• 52:23
  nowhere else can we camp with you?
• 52:27
  If you're getting late enough in the day.
• 52:29
  Maybe, but I'm, I'm typically like I'll I'll find a a flat
• 52:33
  spot, a nook or something to to to camp in.
• 52:37
  But that was the thing we we ended up, we camped at Floridel
• 52:42
  Creek. It was.
• 52:44
  Beautiful, It's an awesome camp. I pulled in there and my wife
• 52:47
  and and a friend of ours looked at me like, what are you
• 52:50
  thinking about? No, don't worry.
• 52:51
  It might be a little hard to tie up here, but the the camp is
• 52:54
  great. And then we were there really
• 52:56
  early. We went up and hiked up to the,
• 52:57
  to the falls and just sat at the falls and had like a 2 hour
• 53:00
  lunch before we even set anything up, you know.
• 53:04
  And it was just like one of those things where like you just
• 53:07
  got a, you got a deal. You know you're going to camp
• 53:09
  somewhere, you know, hopefully it's not at the take out, but
• 53:12
  you know that has happened too sometimes.
• 53:16
  You just you got to do what you got.
• 53:17
  To do stay flexible, yeah. I camped.
• 53:19
  I camped probably, oh, about about two miles from the take
• 53:25
  out before we had a trip with my brothers who was just like, we
• 53:29
  were going downriver and we passed a couple places and
• 53:31
  they're like, oh, are we camping?
• 53:33
  I'm like, yeah, well, we need to find some place.
• 53:36
  He was like just kept. Up battery died, because of
• 53:39
  course it did out here trying to be all professional in the wild
• 53:42
  and the universe said Nah brah, take 5.
• 53:45
  Anyway, fresh battery in, still yapping.
• 53:47
  Now let's see if you can switch gears and pick up on our next
• 53:50
  tangent. All the whole time they were
• 53:53
  there, it was just like entertainment because the crews
• 53:56
  were coming up and stuff. And not only that, but he also
• 54:00
  told me this story about how it he's like, it was really cool
• 54:04
  because I bought gas. I didn't have to go into powers.
• 54:07
  I just bought gas from the tankers.
• 54:09
  And I'm like, of course you did. You would just stop and be like,
• 54:14
  hey, you selling to anybody? Yeah, they're like anybody.
• 54:17
  Yeah, he's all yeah. I was like 529 a gallon, little
• 54:19
  high, but saved me a bunch of money than 35 miles down the
• 54:22
  road. Exactly.
• 54:24
  Yeah, gas is right here. We'll take.
• 54:26
  It I'm out, are we on? Are we recording?
• 54:28
  Yep, we're on. Cool, let.
• 54:29
  Me double check. Double check.
• 54:32
  Don't, don't send us away. I know, I know.
• 54:37
  Cool. Do you have, I mean you've told
• 54:39
  lots of stories of being outside and and amazing changing
• 54:45
  experiences. Do you have like 1 pivotal
• 54:49
  outdoor experience that changed the trajectory of your life or
• 54:53
  is like the most memorable time that you?
• 54:59
  Well, I mean. I think I think as as any any
• 55:04
  river runner, you know, you have some of those trips that really
• 55:08
  stand out. And I would have to say that
• 55:12
  doing the trip on the Colorado down through the grand is just,
• 55:15
  you know, it's a must do. It's a must do for any of us
• 55:18
  that have this passion and, you know, Middle Fork of the Salmon,
• 55:23
  you know, just some of those trips where like the doing the
• 55:28
  trip on the ground and spending 18 to 24 days is something that
• 55:33
  I reference as it's floating communal living.
• 55:38
  And, and that was something that literally like, well, on that
• 55:42
  trip, I had talked to some of the folks on the group that were
• 55:46
  on the ground with us. And, and they were just kind of
• 55:49
  like I, I told them about, you know, that we're an actual
• 55:53
  commune now. And, and they were like towards
• 55:57
  the end of the trip, they were like when you first told me
• 56:00
  that, I didn't really understand what you're saying.
• 56:02
  Did they have like a diverse reaction?
• 56:04
  Now they're kind of like, I get it, you know, and the fact that
• 56:08
  you literally have to just share everything with somebody for,
• 56:13
  you know, you're sharing everything with those 16 people
• 56:15
  for 18 days, you know, and it's just like.
• 56:18
  You better like them. So, yeah, and it's like one of
• 56:20
  those things is like, I realized that, you know, now it's just
• 56:24
  kind of like, I want to I want to be able to go back there with
• 56:27
  with my kids that are, you know, these young adults that still
• 56:31
  love to do river rafting. You know, I mean it, it just, it
• 56:34
  just makes me, makes me so entertained where my children
• 56:39
  fight over who runs what raft, you know, where it's like I'm
• 56:42
  going to run a raft and you guys can decide who's going to run
• 56:45
  the other one. But you know, it's like one of
• 56:47
  those things where like I never pushed them into being river
• 56:50
  runners, but of course, we took them on the river all the time
• 56:54
  and now they both, you know, basically can run their rafts
• 56:58
  themselves. And my oldest is a is a
• 57:01
  whitewater sub paddler. I mean, he's probably he's
• 57:04
  probably run top to bottom on the lower rogue, you know, at
• 57:08
  least 6-8 times cool on a stand up paddle board and.
• 57:11
  We need to get him on. Yeah, and, and, you know, and
• 57:15
  then my, my, my youngest, he went down the Illinois when my
• 57:21
  wife was pregnant with him. Wow.
• 57:23
  And here, 26 years later, he finally got to actually graft
• 57:28
  it. Yeah.
• 57:29
  Was he like I, I feel like I feel this, yeah.
• 57:32
  Yeah, when you asked my first. Daughter, I had told him, I told
• 57:36
  him I, you know, the last time you were here, you were in your
• 57:39
  mom's stomach. Yeah.
• 57:41
  But now he, he, he just was, he was super stoked.
• 57:45
  Or he he's kind of moved back to the Valley.
• 57:48
  He was living in LA and just kind of, you know, he loves the
• 57:51
  river and he loves doing the things that he's able to do
• 57:53
  here. And so it was kind of like it
• 57:56
  was great to kind of have a spring with him because he got
• 57:59
  to see a lot of rivers that they didn't ever get a chance to do.
• 58:03
  And, you know, running bigger water with your dad is kind of
• 58:06
  one of those things. And, and actually, you know,
• 58:08
  making an error in sub hole and putting your dad in the river is
• 58:12
  like, you know, that's just part of it.
• 58:14
  Were you so proud of them? It's.
• 58:15
  Just like the buddy that was on the trip, he was laughing
• 58:20
  hysterically. And I was like, I was like, I
• 58:23
  wasn't actually a swimmer, but we hit the wall on the right
• 58:27
  side so hard that my entire body was in the water, even though my
• 58:31
  legs were still in the boat. And I was like, I need to let go
• 58:35
  because that's going to hurt my knees.
• 58:36
  And I was like, so I never was fully detached, but had to roll
• 58:42
  into the boat, into the river. And I was like, hey, come grab
• 58:45
  me, pull me back up. But but yeah, you know, I mean,
• 58:49
  I think that's those are some of those things is like now just
• 58:52
  sharing the river with, you know, with with my kids and, you
• 58:57
  know, kind of getting out there and enjoying as much of it as I
• 59:01
  can. You know, the biggest challenge
• 59:03
  as as a business owner is being able to say, yeah, I think it'll
• 59:07
  be OK. I'm going to go away for six
• 59:09
  days. You know, that's that's tough
• 59:12
  that you. Have a team that you trust, that
• 59:13
  you. Yeah, exactly.
• 59:14
  And my, my dad actually, you know, shared something with me
• 59:17
  that I don't even think he remembers telling me.
• 59:20
  But it really kind of stuck with me is that at one point he told
• 59:24
  me he said there's two things in this world you can't explain to
• 59:27
  somebody that isn't experiencing them.
• 59:29
  And he said one is being a parent and the other is being a
• 59:34
  business owner. And if someone has not been in
• 59:37
  those shoes or is not in those shoes, they don't really know
• 59:41
  what you're going through. And I'm like I can.
• 59:44
  Fully concur with that. Oh my God, I think I understand.
• 59:48
  You know, and it's like, and my dad was one of these people that
• 59:51
  like, you know, I mean, he, he never took vacations because he
• 59:54
  was a small business owner. Like he was literally like there
• 59:57
  was no days off. I mean, it was on all the time
• 1:00:00
  and you know. What did he, what did he have?
• 1:00:02
  Did you mention that pole? Pole so he he built pole barns
• 1:00:05
  and pole fences and and actually ended up building pole
• 1:00:09
  furniture. You know, to a lot of the
• 1:00:11
  furniture, if you go into Taylor's sausage and King
• 1:00:13
  Junction, like all that furniture is, is Kaufman's
• 1:00:16
  furniture. Like that was he built all that?
• 1:00:19
  And, and, and then, you know, I mean, just some of the all
• 1:00:23
  around kind of the Illinois Valley and around the grass pass
• 1:00:26
  area. He built furniture but and and
• 1:00:30
  pole barns and that kind of thing.
• 1:00:31
  But it's awesome. But yeah, you know, it's just
• 1:00:33
  kind of one of those things. And so like in the later years,
• 1:00:36
  while they while they were still in business, like that was kind
• 1:00:39
  of the little vacation getaway for my parents is that they
• 1:00:42
  would just go, they just go deliver furniture, you know,
• 1:00:46
  they drive to Tahoe, you know, and I, I would get calls from my
• 1:00:49
  parents and it's like, it's the middle of the winter and you're
• 1:00:52
  in Tahoe with the furniture truck.
• 1:00:53
  What they're like yeah, we're going to stay over because
• 1:00:58
  because we're. Snowed in the pass is closed
• 1:01:02
  circumstantial vacations where? You're like, all right, OK, I
• 1:01:06
  guess so. But but yeah, you know, I mean,
• 1:01:10
  it's one of those things it's like, you know, just the way I
• 1:01:13
  was grown up has kind of shaped the way that my life has been.
• 1:01:17
  And, and I'm just trying to, you know, do the best for my kids
• 1:01:21
  and dealing with aging parents. You know, I mean, I, we have my
• 1:01:25
  wife and I have parents that are in their in their late 80s,
• 1:01:29
  early 90s, both of them. And so it's just kind of like
• 1:01:31
  it's this this trifecta piece of just, you know, getting old is
• 1:01:37
  not easy. You know, it's tough.
• 1:01:40
  It's tough for folks, you know, and it's just like, you know,
• 1:01:43
  technology is not easy for old folks.
• 1:01:46
  It's just, it's not. I mean, it's not.
• 1:01:48
  Easy for young folks, Yeah, it's just.
• 1:01:50
  It's just like, it's like, it's like that's it's such a big
• 1:01:53
  demographic. It just blows my mind that
• 1:01:55
  nobody has really capitalized on making a cell phone that is
• 1:02:00
  easy. Yeah, simple as simple could be
• 1:02:03
  for people to use because elder people struggle with that and
• 1:02:07
  it's a huge market if they if somebody can really figure it
• 1:02:10
  out where it was actually something that was easy.
• 1:02:12
  But everything is like moved into this tech and and app thing
• 1:02:15
  where it's like. Well, nobody wants to do it
• 1:02:17
  because there's no growth in it. Yeah, right.
• 1:02:20
  All the other than that, everybody ages, yeah.
• 1:02:23
  Everybody will. Add everybody want as they age.
• 1:02:26
  Everybody wants things to be simplified because we realize
• 1:02:30
  that all the technology technicalities are not actually
• 1:02:36
  making in our lives any easier. And part of the joy of aging is
• 1:02:41
  moving towards simplicity easier, less, just being more
• 1:02:46
  and doing less analog and returning to that.
• 1:02:50
  But sometimes I'm surprised when like older folks are having a
• 1:02:54
  hard time with technology because they've been around the
• 1:02:58
  whole time that technology has existed.
• 1:03:01
  So in some, sometimes in my mind, I'm like, but they've seen
• 1:03:04
  it from inception and wouldn't they be able to?
• 1:03:08
  To. Go with the transitions, but
• 1:03:10
  also once you find something that you're able to use, you get
• 1:03:15
  hooked into that. And even just like an iPhone
• 1:03:19
  from one generation to the next is.
• 1:03:22
  Different yeah, I I try to coach my mom and dad when they got
• 1:03:25
  their smartphones, like, you know, 10 years ago.
• 1:03:27
  I'm like, buy an iPhone because that's what I use and I can show
• 1:03:30
  you how to use it, what they do. They went and got a Samsung, of
• 1:03:33
  course. And then I had to teach my mom
• 1:03:34
  how to send an e-mail literally last week.
• 1:03:37
  Yeah. And I was like, she was having a
• 1:03:39
  mental breakdown about it, like. My my wife does a lot of
• 1:03:43
  FaceTime. FaceTime share your screen.
• 1:03:45
  Yeah. FaceTime, share your screen.
• 1:03:47
  Show me. Let me.
• 1:03:48
  No, don't point the phone at your ear.
• 1:03:50
  Yeah, I need you to point the phone what we're talking about.
• 1:03:53
  My dad was an anomaly because he, I don't know, he loved it.
• 1:03:57
  He was like new iPhone would come out and he'd go into all
• 1:04:01
  the all the updates and all the details and he'd teach me how to
• 1:04:04
  use the new phone. But then my mom on the other
• 1:04:07
  hand, she'll, I'll go to visit her and she'll have a list of
• 1:04:10
  OK, I need you to show me how to do these 10 things on my phone
• 1:04:13
  and. Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:15
  Well, I mean, one of the one of the episodes that just dropped
• 1:04:17
  with us is we interviewed this this company called on water
• 1:04:24
  apps and they make a river runner app for NRS called
• 1:04:30
  paddleways. And then they also make on water
• 1:04:33
  fish and they have mapped every waterway in the US.
• 1:04:37
  Cool. And it's all in an app.
• 1:04:38
  Wow. And it's like, you know, so you
• 1:04:40
  can go in there and start basically putting in start
• 1:04:43
  points, end points, You know, I mean, it's just like, it's like,
• 1:04:46
  wow, like, that is probably a piece of technology that could
• 1:04:49
  be quite useful. And then while I'm doing this
• 1:04:52
  interview with him, this fire has blown up on the road, right?
• 1:04:55
  And he's like, yeah. Actually, ironically, last week,
• 1:04:58
  we just got it updated. So now it actually tells you all
• 1:05:01
  of the wildfire activity on a river that you're planning to go
• 1:05:06
  on as well. And I love that because this is
• 1:05:09
  the thing like, right, all that all.
• 1:05:10
  That data is just out there. And, and so it's just like it's
• 1:05:13
  ever changing. And, and so like one of the
• 1:05:16
  things I actually, I was trying to, and I was trying to actually
• 1:05:19
  e-mail him or call him while I was driving out here.
• 1:05:22
  Just, you know, dictating to my phone to call while I'm driving
• 1:05:26
  because you're a safe driver, because I'm a safe driver, of
• 1:05:28
  course. And and.
• 1:05:29
  And it wouldn't pick him up because.
• 1:05:30
  It couldn't find him in my contacts, but one of the things
• 1:05:33
  I want to connect up with him is that when I did the interview
• 1:05:36
  with the state Marine board or all of these life jacket
• 1:05:40
  locations that are voluntarily life jacket locations on all
• 1:05:44
  these river ways. And I'm kind of like just going,
• 1:05:45
  I want at least ask him. Like, if you don't have that
• 1:05:48
  pinged yet in your app, you should definitely put that in
• 1:05:52
  there. Because we went paddling on the
• 1:05:54
  Willamette a couple weeks ago and I brought life jackets for
• 1:05:57
  everybody. And I have brought plenty of
• 1:05:59
  life jackets for every single craft that we had.
• 1:06:01
  So anybody could have a life jacket for us.
• 1:06:02
  And one of the one of the gals that came to paddle with us, she
• 1:06:06
  showed up a life jacket on and I was like, oh, cool, wow.
• 1:06:08
  She already brought she brought a life jacket.
• 1:06:10
  She was planning on this, but she didn't bring her life
• 1:06:12
  jacket. She just grabbed one off the
• 1:06:14
  from the loner station. From the loner station and she's
• 1:06:17
  like, so? After we get done.
• 1:06:19
  I give it to him like, hey, here's your life jackets back.
• 1:06:21
  She's like, Oh yeah, I'll get that.
• 1:06:22
  Returned this afternoon. It it came off that rack when we
• 1:06:25
  started. I was like, wow, that's cool.
• 1:06:28
  Little life jacket library. Yeah, exactly in.
• 1:06:32
  Use. So yeah, it's just.
• 1:06:33
  Amazing. But I think that's something.
• 1:06:34
  Where like if that? App isn't isn't listing that
• 1:06:37
  stuff already. It should definitely list that
• 1:06:38
  stuff. Like that's the thing, yeah.
• 1:06:40
  If you knew there was a life jacket there, then you wouldn't
• 1:06:42
  second guess taking, you know, your family there if you needed
• 1:06:46
  a life jacket. And I mean this one in, in
• 1:06:49
  Independence OR on the Willamette, I mean, it had kid
• 1:06:52
  jackets. It had like tiny kid jackets.
• 1:06:54
  And we're like, we were telling some of the gal that one of our
• 1:06:57
  one of the kids cousins and like you live on the river, there's a
• 1:07:01
  life jacket for your kid right here.
• 1:07:02
  And you have to and it's unmonitored, right?
• 1:07:04
  It's unmonitored. It's like loyal.
• 1:07:06
  Whatever the like trust system. Trust system totally.
• 1:07:09
  The state. Marine Board is the ones that
• 1:07:11
  know where they all are. So I think the program is
• 1:07:13
  through the state Marine Board. Yeah, but it's run by some local
• 1:07:17
  entity in that town. So you a lot of times it's a lot
• 1:07:20
  of times it's fire departments that put them in or, or Park
• 1:07:23
  Service that puts them in or county park that puts them in.
• 1:07:27
  And yeah, you know, it's like great thing.
• 1:07:29
  I mean, you might as well. It kind of leads me into our one
• 1:07:33
  question that we ask. People and it's.
• 1:07:35
  The. Gear question we always ask like
• 1:07:37
  what is your most used favorite piece of gear that you always
• 1:07:41
  have with you? Well, at this point.
• 1:07:45
  In my adventure life, the most used, trusted piece of equipment
• 1:07:50
  that I always have with me is that thing right there.
• 1:07:53
  Your cell phone. I always have a phone.
• 1:07:55
  I thought you were going to say your.
• 1:07:56
  Reader glasses well. I have to.
• 1:07:59
  Have I have to have these to see that so I.
• 1:08:01
  Have this for sure. So I can see that, but you know,
• 1:08:05
  now that you know, like the iPhone has the SOS texting, you
• 1:08:09
  know, and but it's also it's my Media Center.
• 1:08:12
  Yeah, right. So I don't, if I go on an
• 1:08:13
  adventure, I'm going to document it, you know, I mean, I, I post
• 1:08:17
  socially, I post professionally, I generate content for my
• 1:08:22
  company, myself, my family, you know, I mean, it's like that's
• 1:08:26
  how my mom knows what I'm doing. Yeah.
• 1:08:27
  She follows everything I need the algorithms.
• 1:08:30
  The algorithms send my mom like competitors paddle information
• 1:08:34
  and stuff because they think, man, this lady must be quite a
• 1:08:37
  paddler because she's all over that Sawyer paddle and or page.
• 1:08:41
  And so that's the thing. I mean, I think as far as you
• 1:08:43
  get, you get the competitors updates from your mom, Right,
• 1:08:46
  Right, right. But that's it, you know, I mean
• 1:08:48
  technology, it's. Like kind of like, yeah, I try
• 1:08:51
  and keep on on top of the phone. Hell said that this is there and
• 1:08:54
  it's just like, it's one of those things, it's like.
• 1:08:56
  I don't. I don't.
• 1:08:58
  Do a trip without taking it. And I like, I take it because I
• 1:09:00
  use it for camera if nothing else in.
• 1:09:03
  And usually I'm just like, you know, but but like I, I admit
• 1:09:07
  it, I set alarm clocks on the river sometimes because I just
• 1:09:11
  like I have to like because I sleep very peaceful on the
• 1:09:14
  river. And it's like sometimes I have
• 1:09:16
  to just set an alarm so that I do get up.
• 1:09:18
  Like especially if we want to get up and move somewhere early,
• 1:09:21
  Like I'm not just going to wake up and be ready to go at 6:30.
• 1:09:25
  And when I'm on a river trip, yeah.
• 1:09:27
  So it's just like, you know, I'll just set an alarm.
• 1:09:29
  And I don't mind. It, you know, but also like, I
• 1:09:31
  like to be able to wake up and kind of say, oh, OK, wow.
• 1:09:35
  It is, you know, it's 7:30 and nobody else is up in camp and
• 1:09:38
  get up and wander around, take some morning pictures, you know,
• 1:09:42
  and just kind of like, you know, the river, river morning
• 1:09:45
  pictures are kind of nice to get, you know, so, so yeah, it's
• 1:09:48
  kind of like it's all there, you know, you keep like maps
• 1:09:51
  downloaded on it. So it's like river maps?
• 1:09:54
  Not like, you know, I don't keep a lot of river maps.
• 1:09:57
  Because I find that really it, it hasn't quite got to the point
• 1:10:02
  where it replaces having the river book, the river map book
• 1:10:05
  of if you're going to go do a river that you haven't ever been
• 1:10:08
  on, I mean, there's just nothing that replaces that.
• 1:10:10
  Just having the the the waterproof page books and just
• 1:10:13
  stick together. Roll through it all like, you
• 1:10:16
  know, try to follow. It backwards and like OK.
• 1:10:19
  We're going up the page and we got to be kind of right here,
• 1:10:23
  you know, so there's something like about that.
• 1:10:25
  And also, you know, I mean, it's like if you're going to go run a
• 1:10:27
  river that you've never done and it's a multi day river, you
• 1:10:30
  should buy a, a river map of it. You know, I mean, you know, but
• 1:10:33
  I mean the on water app thing, I think if you actually get the,
• 1:10:37
  the paid subscription, which is I think like 499 a month, I
• 1:10:41
  think all that stuff is in there.
• 1:10:43
  And you know, that that's pretty interesting because I don't, I
• 1:10:46
  don't, I don't really think that that was going to be something
• 1:10:49
  that I would really find because of the the fishing element.
• 1:10:51
  One has been around for a while because I used to when I was
• 1:10:54
  guiding, I used to submit fishing reports to an app
• 1:10:58
  similar to that, which would basically just give you would
• 1:11:01
  give you kind of reports on every river system you were
• 1:11:04
  going to go fish or every waterway that you're going to go
• 1:11:07
  fish. And if you fished a certain
• 1:11:09
  stretch of river, this was our stretch of river that we fished
• 1:11:11
  all the time as we would give our weekly report of this river
• 1:11:15
  way for, you know, for the steelhead season.
• 1:11:18
  And you know, I mean, it's definitely there's, there's a
• 1:11:22
  lot of information in there. So cool and.
• 1:11:30
  If people want to find you and learn more about you, Zach or
• 1:11:35
  Sawyer or the Sawyer on Water podcast, where could they do
• 1:11:39
  that? Pretty much you can find
• 1:11:42
  everything related to us. At paddlesandoars.com or
• 1:11:48
  sawyerstation.com. paddlesandoars.com is pretty
• 1:11:52
  much our main parent company. andsawyerstation.com is our
• 1:11:58
  flagship store in Gold Hill, OR. And you know, if you follow the
• 1:12:03
  lead of the folks from public television that wanted to find
• 1:12:07
  us, just do a search. And if you Google Sawyer.
• 1:12:13
  But if you Google paddles and oars.
• 1:12:16
  We pop up pretty, pretty close to the top.
• 1:12:18
  Got that SEO dialed in. Yeah, yeah, so, but.
• 1:12:22
  But yeah. You know, and, and you can
• 1:12:25
  easily find me through that, you know, I mean, I'm tied to every,
• 1:12:30
  every posting and everything really.
• 1:12:32
  Do you have a personal Instagram page or anything?
• 1:12:36
  I do on water Zack, on water Zack.
• 1:12:39
  Is that also the? Podcast Instagram or is that
• 1:12:43
  just your person? The podcast does not have its
• 1:12:46
  own Instagram, OK? So the podcast is basically just
• 1:12:50
  posted on Apple and Spotify and YouTube.
• 1:12:54
  So if folks want to find the podcast, they just go to
• 1:12:57
  paddlesandoars.com. It's it's listed right there.
• 1:13:01
  There's actually right now there's there's a banner at the
• 1:13:03
  top of the page. So you can just click on the
• 1:13:05
  banner and it'll take you to the latest version of the podcast.
• 1:13:10
  And I think we just released episode 16.
• 1:13:13
  Cool. So, so yeah.
• 1:13:16
  And, you know, we're just trying to key up plenty more to have
• 1:13:19
  them in there. You know.
• 1:13:21
  I mean, I think we're dealing with the same stuff.
• 1:13:22
  It's just trying to get as much content and keyed up as we can
• 1:13:26
  so we can work on it as we go. And you can take some breaks.
• 1:13:30
  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's just like.
• 1:13:32
  Try and get as much in as you. Can because it is its own little
• 1:13:35
  it's still work yeah, I think I. Did I think my?
• 1:13:39
  My. My record is 3 in one week.
• 1:13:42
  That's cool. I just did three interviews in
• 1:13:44
  one week cuz they were. Basically all lined.
• 1:13:45
  Up they were all around they were all around the filming of
• 1:13:48
  the of the all access because I had I had basically I had I had
• 1:13:53
  link coming to town just through that.
• 1:13:54
  I was like, hey, before I before you leave, can we go first thing
• 1:13:57
  in the morning, go out and we'll just jam jam out one of the
• 1:14:00
  episodes. He's like, what is this all
• 1:14:01
  about? Don't you worry you'll find out.
• 1:14:03
  You're going to love it. You're fine, you and I.
• 1:14:06
  We bullshit just fine, don't worry about.
• 1:14:07
  It you just all answer questions.
• 1:14:10
  The biggest thing I notice is not everybody is used to R2
• 1:14:15
  paddling. Yeah, I've used R2 paddling
• 1:14:17
  because it's such the greatest cinematography setup.
• 1:14:21
  Like I've even taken fishing guys.
• 1:14:23
  And I'm like, I know this is not your Forte.
• 1:14:25
  Yeah, but this is what frames us both in the frame equally.
• 1:14:29
  And so, so I I'm working with working with the folks at Willie
• 1:14:33
  Boats because they're they have some bracketings that mount on
• 1:14:36
  the edge of the drift boat. Cool.
• 1:14:38
  And I'm also kind of hoping that they will let me have a boat
• 1:14:43
  just to use for podcasts and then I give it back to them.
• 1:14:45
  Cool. Yeah, my drift boat is in 1990,
• 1:14:49
  so it's looking a little beat up.
• 1:14:51
  Well, we do have one last question and.
• 1:14:54
  That is. When you leave this earth and
• 1:14:57
  expire, what do you want to be remembered for?
• 1:15:02
  I want to be. Remembered, as you know, a good
• 1:15:08
  father, a good husband, a good friend, and the adventure guy.
• 1:15:13
  The adventure guy. I love that, you know, my kid
• 1:15:17
  told. Me the other day that.
• 1:15:19
  I mean, I told him that I had, I lost some weight recently and I
• 1:15:24
  was in much better health now than I was when I was 20 years
• 1:15:28
  younger. Congratulations.
• 1:15:29
  And he's like, he's like. No, I don't think so, Dad.
• 1:15:33
  Because when I was growing up, you were Superman.
• 1:15:36
  And I'm like, yeah, well, you're the kid.
• 1:15:38
  So of course we would expect that, I guess, as your father.
• 1:15:43
  But yeah. But yeah, you know, I mean, try
• 1:15:47
  and try and make life as fun as possible for as long as
• 1:15:51
  possible. Absolutely.
• 1:15:52
  Well, thank you. So.
• 1:15:53
  Much for being on our podcast. Absolutely.
• 1:15:56
  Check out their podcast. So you're on.
• 1:15:59
  Water and then check us out. On.
• 1:16:02
  Everywhere you listen to the podcast, your favorite podcast,
• 1:16:06
  we're there just got to look up go wildly podcast yeah yeah,
• 1:16:10
  give us a like and comment and share it with a.
• 1:16:12
  Friend and. Do all the things, please.
• 1:16:14
  We appreciate you. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:16:16
  For us and for for Sawyer. Yes, we're cross.
• 1:16:19
  Pollinating. That's right, that's right.
• 1:16:21
  It's all about get the cross pollination.
• 1:16:23
  Flowing. Yeah, once.
• 1:16:24
  You watch this. If you haven't seen it yet, go
• 1:16:26
  on over to Sawyer and watch the other episode with them.
• 1:16:30
  Yeah, nice little convergence of two independent.
• 1:16:33
  Streams and now, absolutely. Amazing, amazing.
• 1:16:39
  How many people we. Have.
• 1:16:41
  We have in common, Yeah, we know.
• 1:16:43
  You know, that is why we'll have to schedule like a year of.
• 1:16:48
  Right, there you go. There you go.
• 1:16:50
  We'll do a follow up in a year. Maybe we can coordinate like OK,
• 1:16:54
  you're going to. Interview.
• 1:16:55
  Will. This day you'll have them in the
• 1:16:58
  morning, we'll take them in the afternoon.
• 1:16:59
  There you go. We can do so like collab.
• 1:17:02
  On the same. People in the same.
• 1:17:04
  Place perfect. Perfect.
• 1:17:05
  Yeah, so much, really cool because that's the thing like,
• 1:17:08
  you know. It's like.
• 1:17:09
  When you start. Trying to to book people for for
• 1:17:14
  venues like that stuff, All right.
• 1:17:17
  Wildly wonders. That's a wrap.
• 1:17:19
  Thank you. Thank.
• 1:17:19
  You thank you for hanging out with us on the Go Wildly
• 1:17:22
  podcast. Seriously, your ears, your
• 1:17:24
  energy, your vibe. They mean the world.
• 1:17:27
  And hey, the pod is usually going to drop on Mondays, but
• 1:17:30
  let's be real, sometimes it's Tuesday and sometimes laugh.
• 1:17:33
  We live in and the river calls louder than our calendar, baby.
• 1:17:36
  We out there adventuring either way.
• 1:17:39
  Will show up in your feed with. Stories that make you want to
• 1:17:42
  lace up your boots or paddle out.
• 1:17:44
  So please go ahead and do all the things like share, comment,
• 1:17:47
  subscribe, smash the buttons, click all the bells, throw us a
• 1:17:50
  bone on YouTube, and come play with us on socials.
• 1:17:54
  That's how our little adventure family grows.
• 1:17:57
  Now quit staring at your phone or whatever you're doing and go
• 1:18:00
  jump in a river, a touch a tree, climb a tree, howl at the moon,
• 1:18:03
  or whatever gets you out there. Until next time, stay feral.
• 1:18:06
  Stay curious and for the love of dirt, go wildly.
• 1:18:11
  We're going to meet you out there.