Latest / The MeatEater Podcast / Ep. 327: A Gold Medal Podcast

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Ep. 327: A Gold Medal Podcast · The MeatEater Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This is Me Eat podcast coming at you shirtless, severely
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening to hunt podcast,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: you can't predict anything presented by First like creating proven
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: versatile hunting apparel from Marino bass layers to technical outerwear
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: for every hunt, first Light, Go Farther, stay longer, everybody.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: You've heard us talking about it for months now. My
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: new book coming out, my third Outdoor Kids in an
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Inside World. Getting your family out of the house and
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: radically engaged with nature. This book covers it all man
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: many of the questions that I've gotten over the years
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: of people, such as like how old should my kid
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: be before allow them to start shooting? Twenty two's getting
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: them started on a b begun? Um? Do I think
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: it's damaging if a kid sees a deer die when
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: they're really young? How do you get your kids interested
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: in eating game meat? Um? How do you get kids
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: engaged around gardens? Right? Like? How to? In my view,
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: it's how to get your kids radically engaged with nature
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: because a couple of reasons. If you're listening to this,
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: you probably like to hang out outside. You're probably into
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: hunting and fishing, and you want to have that be
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: a family thing, and you want to introduce your kids
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: to it in a way that it becomes a family
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: thing that your kids like to because that's what you
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: like doing. And there's nothing selfish about that. Man. If
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: you're a parent, um, you play your best game when
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: you're engaged too. You want to demonstrate authentic enthusiasm to
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: your kids. You want to show your kids what it's
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: like to be excited about something. You're excited about nature.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: This is just some insights and help about how to
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: make sure that you can pass that along to your kids.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing. If they grow up and they
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: never touch it again, that's fine. I still love them.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: But you know that they go into life armed with
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that toolkit that you demonstrated to them by living a
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: life outside. It's a good book, if I say so myself. Anyhow,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you have until May second to pre order and then
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: be eligible to receive an additional fifty page free resource guide.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: So when we were doing the book, me and and
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Brodie Henderson, who you here on the podcast here all
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the time, we put together a fifty page the resource
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: guide full of all kinds of extra advice and insights
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: and gear tips and everything for keeping your kids squared
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: away right, feeding them, dressing them, everything, safety information, resources
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: about how to find stuff you might want to find.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: We didn't put in the book. It's a fifty page
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: resource guide that we will email straight to you free
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: once you share your pre order information for outdoor kids
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: in an inside world. It's a crazy as you r l.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: I'm not eve gonna give you right now because it's
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: of like weird. But here's a couple ways to find it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: No matter where you buy the book. Are you buy
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: it on Barnes Noble, you buy it on Amazon, we
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: don't care where you buy it. Take that order information
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: and go to this page to redeem the thing. The
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: page will be in the show notes to this podcast episode.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: If you go to Instagram and go to at Steven
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Ronnella and my bio will just leave it. It will
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: live there for a while, and my bio will be
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: a link that takes you to where you put in
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: your order information, regardless of where you bought it. Where
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: you put in your order information in order to redeem
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: and get the fifty page free resource guide. Thanks guys,
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed the book. I know you'll enjoy it.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: I have been thinking about writing this thing since the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: minute my wife was pregnant with our first child twelve
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: pretty much twelve years and nine months ago. So thanks everybody,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: turning machine on phill. Uh Sam bates you. So you're
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: better at both skiing and shooting than you? Honest I here, Um, yes,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: like you whooped him? I absolutely did, but I think
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: we maybe had different strategies. She already had her like
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: her post race big puffy jacket to stay warm on.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: By the time I finished the course, I was so
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: far behind. I don't really understand what happened. You guys
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: went down with an Olympic who's here with us right now?
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: You went down with an Olympic by athlete by what
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: do you call him? By athlete? By athlete? You doroduce yourself.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: I'm Paul Schumer. I'm on the US bathlon team and
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: fresh from Beijing. Yeah a few a few weeks out,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: but uh yeah, So at this point, are you guys
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: able to speak freely without getting new being worried about
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: like retribution? Yea, it is still like you guys are
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: still a little buttoned up. No, not really, I mean
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: you gotta be like this snow is amazing. No, no,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: I mean you could speak freely. We're in like free speeches.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: We're back in going to say whatever you want, So
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: hold on. This is something I don't know about. He
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: told me all about all this, and he's a skier.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: So when all the skiers they were there, you guys
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: weren't allowed to talk freely, and truly it was strongly discouraged.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: Like someone said, like, how is the snow? You had
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: to be like, it is the best snow I've ever
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: seen my life. The thing is, we're Americans and we
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: take our American nous with us over there. So they
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: there was it was kind of a caveat there, like
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: we know you're probably gonna say whatever you want, but
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: we strongly discourage you guys from saying anything negative politically
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: about the conditions, about the venues, etcetera, etcetera. David introduced yourself.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: I'm David Wise, three time Olympic medal US in half
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: pipe skiing. Did uh was that a nuclear reactor in
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the background? What is that? What was what was that
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: in the back? That's a great question, uh, which I
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: don't have the answer. Were they like flexing? Were they
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: like just in case people forget nuclear superpower, I think so.
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: I thought it was odd too with the Olympics sign
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: on it, and it was like a big green space
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: as well, so it was like both of them. It's like, hey,
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: we have nuclear power, but we're also concerned about the environment.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: But was that an active cooling tower. No, it's like
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: they decorate with cooling towers. I think they put that up.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I think they intentionally built that in the background, but
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Hey, just so you know, you know,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: we're cooking down some uranium. Blew my mind that that
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: was there. Yeah, I don't compete in big air, and
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: that venue was very far from I feel like every
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: time I walked by a TV, I was looking at
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: that cooling tower. Yeah, because especially the early events were
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: all you know, snowboard, big air, ski, big air, women's,
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: men's like that was a very well featured you know
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: in Hanoi, Um, at least when I was there, not
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: terribly long ago. All the parks are still decorated with
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: down to American aircraft, like a wing out of the ground,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: a tailfin out of the ground, and it will be
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: like the date they shot it down. Yeah, that's a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: little flexing and military power. Man. Now that we're above that,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: I mean we got general flex, We've got generals all
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: over the place, not fake cooling towers. But I don't
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I don't want I don't want to say I don't
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: want to do this because I don't want to detract
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: from the experience. But I would need to go to
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: our colleague Anny to interpret the Olympics for me. She's
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: never been, but she like follows skiing. I guess I'm
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: looking at Yah who sports. Right now to the title
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: the articles reason trying built an Olympic ski jump next
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to a giant factory In the first sentences, No, they're
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: not nuclear plant towers tower. I'll have to read a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: little bit more though, tell you what they are, all right,
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: So I wanna get back to I want to get
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: back to hell. Sam's better than you at skiing and shooting.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: You guys, tell me what you guys did yesterday. We
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: did not ski. We were just like um walking very
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: fast snow melt as if as if you had skis,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: as if we had Yeah, and you shot, and then
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: we shot, and we shot prone twice and then standing twice,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: and then they had us do penalty runs. If we missed.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: So basically the way bathon works is you shoot. Every shooting,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: you have five shots. Any shot that you miss you
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: get penalized with a penalty loop or time penalty. And
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: so yesterday we had them doing penalty loops. But um,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: we took it easy on them in some respects and
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: not in others because there's different sized targets as well.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: But yeah, they did well for the most part. We
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: actually had to walk the course. The course is basically
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: like maybe forty yards down and around a truck that
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: was parked, and the penalty loop was maybe a five
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: yard loop around two tripods with spotting scope set up
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: on him. Got it? And what were you shooting? What
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: are you were shooting the actual We'll get into that.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: We're shooting the actual buyathlon gun at actual byathlon targets.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: And Yanni had one on one training up to that race,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: So I don't know how his excuses are getting removed.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: So I just want to I'm not I'm just I'm
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: honestly asking you guys were toe to toe and you
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: out shot. I don't think out shot would be the worst.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, actually, like, do you guys know what you shot? Like,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: how many you missed each time, because that would be
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: something you could think about. I think was we shot
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: I shot dirty? As I learned was the phrase which
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: means that the first round of prone, I missed all five.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: He did me too, You did too? How the first round?
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: So that was on prone targets, So is the smaller targets,
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: which you always get people like when they first start
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: bath on. You kind of get their confidence up by
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: having them just shoot standing targets in prone. But then
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: we switched the targets to the smaller ones, and then
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: it was a little bit of maybe maybe explain how
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: like the race biathlon race actually works, because well, I
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: want to say that for in a minute. Okay, we
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: got some stuff we got to take care of. Okay,
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: we're gonna getting all this. Do you want I mean,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: do you want to we can talk about sam strategy
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: right now? That might That might be if someone could like,
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: like imagine that I'm five years old, tell me really quickly,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: how said what Sam beat you at? Okay, so I
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: would say my strategy that I didn't realize I had
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: was to be accurate with the prone shooting as best
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: as I could, which I don't know. I think the
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: second round I got all five, but the first round
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: I didn't. And then to just be fast with the
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: standing because I knew I wasn't gonna be able to
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: hit them anyways, and then I could just run my
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: penalty laps really fast. And then oh so you just
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: basically built the strategy where you're planning on missing. So
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: just get it over with and then do the penalty
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: ship because I can't hold that the gun up for
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: that long. You know, It's like I knew I wasn't
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: like without time, I wasn't going to be able to
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: shoot accurately. Not that I was shooting accurately with time,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: But in my sport we call that skiing your strengths.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: They I just think the biggest send it the Yeah,
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: I think the biggest thing just remember with blathon is
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: that it's a race. It's not a shooting competition only.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: So as Sam demonstrated that, to get done with shooting quicker,
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: you can get to your penalty loops faster, and then
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: therefore you just kind of keep it moving where I
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: don't know other people, sometimes you camp out on the range.
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, if you're camped out there for a minute
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and a half and somebody else shot in thirty seconds,
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: you can think they have a one more minute ahead
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: of you on the course already. So it's kind of
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: that fine line. And uh yeah, like there, you definitely
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: see that on windy days when it's like super windy
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: out people are kind of like, well, I'm not gonna
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: hit all five anyway. I might as well just kind
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: of pill some shots down range and get out here
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: as fast as I can. But you know, it's a
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: very fine line in any any competition where it's like, Okay,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: I want to shoot fast, but you know, if I'm
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: going five seconds faster but I miss an extra shot,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: it's really not worth it. So you gotta it's a
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: game of trying to play to your strengths. As if
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: you imagine like an axis and on one is uh
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: on one is fast skiing, and then the other is
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: is being a dead eyed dick. Where is your strength? Um?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: I would say this year I was better relative to
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: like the World Cup field. I was probably a little
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: bit above average on shooting and right around average with skiing.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Got it? So that's good to hear. Yeah, uh, okay,
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: we got a cover cup. Things rint one thing that
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: you misrepresent I'm not anti skiing. I'm anti my family skiing.
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: If I could have my way, everybody in the whole
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: world would ski. That's all they would ever do, and
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: then anything I wanted to do they wouldn't be there.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: So like spring break, I had to take my kids
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: to six Flags, I'd be like, no one's at six Flags,
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: they're all skiing. I'm just at six Flags in my family.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: If I go ice fishing, no one's ice fishing, they're
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: all skiing. But I'm with my family ice fishing. It's
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: not I am not. I am pro skiing except for
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: five individuals on planet Earth. But you don't feel like
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: I want of an hundred seven hundred billion, nine hundred million.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: And you know what I'm trying to say, people ski.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: That many people ski, and then there's five that don't,
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: but then don't. It's my family. Don't you knock your
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: honest for not being a cheer outdoors in because he
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: I want. I'm glad that he does it, but I
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: look down on him for doing it, but I support
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: support him doing it. I think just look down, I
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: looked out. It just surprises me. It surprises me that
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: he's not a true outdoorsman. I just want to say, Steve,
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: that you might need to rethink how you're kind of
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: framing this whole skiing thing. I know you're trying to
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: do that actively right now, and I'm proud of you,
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: but I'm trying to clarify. I'm trying to the public
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: reaction to you. Do you are in brodies. I don't
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: even know what to call it. Grievances. The other day
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: I to them it up. I'd say they thought you
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: were selfish and insane, kind of how I felt as well.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Now my daughter, Now, my daughter was like, I'm gonna
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: be a ski racer. Okay, what what about by athlon?
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: What about by athlon? Do they do it on weekends?
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: I'm sure if they do it on weekends, I don't
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: like it week days, weekends, you know, every day every day? Now, Listen,
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: my kids skied nine saturdays in the roll this winter.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: The Ronella household was dead. The Ronella Household shut down,
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: nothing like ground to a halt. The minute that ship ended,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: we went to Texas hunting. We went out fishing. Here
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: this weekend, we're going beaver trapping. We're back on. Why
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: are we back on? Because ski and ended? But here
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: don't you there's two days every weekend. You know that,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't work that way. No, because I like
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: to leave. I like to go Friday night out gone.
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: Don't don't you feel like you're stance on this might
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: actually be hurting you in the long Yes, because my
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: wife doubles. My wife's like, my wife has taken now
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: like a sort of screw you, I'm gonna make it worse. Yeah,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: she's she's digging her feet in. She's like, you ain't
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: pulling me away from the now. She's like, yeah, you
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: know so now listen, I got to be on at
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: the ski hill when his kids are they're skiing. They're
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: skiing right next to my kids, and the smiles on
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: all three of Steve's children as they enjoy gravity pulling
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: them down there. I love it, like like you wouldn't
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: even believe it. It's just like pure joy and so
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: much fun. And probably because partly the enjoyment there is
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: because they're like dead like us doing this. Oh yeah,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: it's like the night right. Okay, But what if they
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: did buy athlon and they're shooting, Uh, practice was increasing
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: their their accuracy and their hunting prowess. If my kids
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden said, Hey, you know what I'm
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: gonna I like to do. We like to go up
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: the mountains on our skis and ski around hunting snowshoe hairs.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: I'd be like, I think we should do that every weekend,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: and then would you take till we die? Yeah? Okay,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: if that's what the no, I'll be like, that sounds
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: right up my alley. That sounds right at my Listen.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: If we get this trip to Sweden dialed in, where
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: are we at with that? Sam, I'm waiting for someone
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: to approve it? Okay for our capra Kelli's yeah, we're
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: gonna be here. I hereby approve it. Do tell Ann
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and Tracy we're gonna be skiing on. I don't know.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: It was like held up on me and foot skis eleven.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: He probably bring some short right, they have to be
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: they have to be long for flotation. So the one
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: thing that I would say about I was like when
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I was ice fishing as a kid, I was definitely
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: wishing I was out skiing. So I mean, but I
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: was also in Appleton, Wisconsin, which is just like there's
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: no skin around there anyway, So it just this fantasy
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: thing you ever go to like sunburst, which is right.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I didn't ski when I was growing up, so I
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: just didn't. I was just like I wish. So when
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: did you actually start? Um? When I was like sixteen,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: I started skiing before that was a wrestler. Okay, hold
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: tit a minute. Yeah, I'm gonna reintroduce our guests. Let're
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: gonna get serious about this show here. David watse Reno
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Nevadam first Light Ambassador. If you have to watched the
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: Olympics and see a Feller run around and first light
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: hunting clothes, probably you. It's probably me. I would have
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: sup unless they're picking up ambassador's left, left and right.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: But I think I'm the only one. Two times Olympic
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: old medalists and four times X Games gold medalists. So
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: the Olympic gold medalist two thousand, two thou eighteen, four
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: time X Games gold medalists twelve thirteen, fourteen eighteen, he
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: took silver for half pipe and this year's Beijing Winter Olympics,
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: that's not the one I'm wearing. I'm wearing his medal.
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: I almost like three just one step shot at three
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: for three? There? Really? What are these way like five
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: grams and just over a pound. One that's old. I
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: didn't know. I didn't know what this sill I read
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: it today, you're like Tom Brady. Yeah, I've been getting
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: some Tom Brady references. Plenty plenty of yeah, plenty of
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: old old. Well, if you think about it, it's all.
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: It all comes in, Like the comes down to the
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: age range of the sport. And there's no collegiate competition
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: for half pipe skiing, so for too much, you either
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: drop out of high school and start as a professional
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: at fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, or you complete high school and
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: then you have you have to launch your professional career
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: fairly early. It's a young sport, Like I turned pro
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: when I was eighteen, but some of my peers like
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: started signing contracts and traveling the world at fifteen sixteen
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: years old. So even though I feel like I'm young
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: as a human in the sport, I'm old because I've
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: been doing it for you know, old skier, yeah, old
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: half pipe skier. Because because then you went back and
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: if you went back and tell U isn't four years
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: uh fo years, you'd be the oldest dude. Yeah in
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: your competition, I would assume. So I was the second
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: oldest in finals this time around by one year. And
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: if I go again, I'll be the oldest. I'm sure
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: in in in half not not not on the Olympic
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: team and half. But there can't be many other athletes
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: much older of the American Olympic team, right. Yeah. There
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: was a snowboard cross guy in his early forties this year.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: He was the oldest guy. And Jacob ellis that one
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: gold She was like thirty six or seven, right, yeah. Um,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: So this is what troubles me about this whole thing.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: You can be the best of the best and have
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: like a whole career and then you're like thirty two
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: or whatever and you gotta go do like a whole
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: other one. Yeah, that's real pain in the app I
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: guess you become a commentator. Yeah. Oh, there's so many
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: different things you can do, Yeah, commentator, coach, whatever. Do
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: you think you're going to the commentating business? Yeah, I
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: enjoy that. I'll do a little bit of that. I've
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: the last couple of years, I've gotten really into doing
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: mental strength training. So just kind of taking this twelve
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: year cycle of going to the Olympics and trying to
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: perform at your best under pressure has taught me a
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: lot of things. I feel like I've learned a lot
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: of things the hard way, kind of like you do
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: when you're hunting and you're like, well, I'm never to
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: make that mistake again because they winded me and they're
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: all gone. So that's kind of how my experience has
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: been as a professional skier. So lately, I've just been
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: picking young. I essentially look for athletes who are like
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: I was when I was young, because I had all
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: the talent and a little bit. But but I look
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: more for people who are getting in their own way mentally,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: because when I was young, I was I could do
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: all the same tricks as everybody else, but I could
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: not land a contest run to save my life. I
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: didn't win my first X Games gold medals. I was
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: twenty one, which was already old for a for a
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: first time X Games gold medalist. Target panic, major target panic.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: I would get there and I would just stress out
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: of me, like I have to land this run right now,
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: I gotta do it, and of course crash. So all
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: those mental like strongholds that I built over the years,
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I mean, I could just use these
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: for myself for the rest of my life, or I could,
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: you know, help out some young athletes who are like
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: I was. So it's been pretty fun. Let's let's test
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: your commentator skills. I want you to give a formal
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: introduction to Paul. It's highlighted there like this young man otto.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: You know, I like going to baseball when they like
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: do all their talking between swings. Oh there you go,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: apt Wisconsin swinging to miss alright, grew up joining us
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: here on the Meteor podcast. Today we have Paul Schomer
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: from Appleton, Wisconsin. He's a Wisconsin I like Cheddar nickname,
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah Chester, the tester sometimes goes by Cheddar because of Wisconsin.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: He's a Wisconsin at like. Chester is a biathlete who
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: represented the United States at the Olympic Winner Games. His
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: first World Cup podium finished was a silver medal in
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: twenty nineteen for the men's ten k sprint competition. And
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: if you're gonna be a real commentator, you have to
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: get good at stating very obvious ship. So you'd say, um, today,
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: he's gonna need to ski fast and shoot straight and
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: not lose his skis. I need my thing back. Job.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: You got a bright future I don't care. If you're
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: into consulting, commentating, you get time to figure it out.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: Appreciate that, all right. Uh, the auction House of Bodities
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: is back on. The auction house is open. It's live now.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: So it closes on four. You got another week to
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: go bid on some of the following items. So five
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: day Alaska king Salmon fishing trip dates. That's awesome, go
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: bid on that. Go to Alaska fish king Salmon five days.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I got for two people I don't know who donated that.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: The guide, the officer. We've got a custom silver smith belt,
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: buckle and grave with the meat Eater logo. Listen, we
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: have one of the streams. You know, does everybody know
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: those things? I feel like they sell them in like
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: what's that place where they sell those things? And airports
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: and whatnot. The head scratchers, little k those little tingly
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: head scratchers. Crean made one of those out of pheasant feet.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: They're cow's business. We got a raccoon hide, so one
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: of Clay's raccoons, signed by Clay. We have my left
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: handed mark weatherb Mark five and first, like Camo, we
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: have my complete archery set up from so if you
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: watched the season ten episode of Me Either where me
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and Phelps are hunting elk and I shot a bowl
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: that bow like ready to go? I actually like had
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I had. I haven't really shot that bow since then
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: because I had a shoulder injury and I'm just now
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: trying to get back to be able to pull my
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: ball back. Um Cal's pruning shears. That'll fetch a pretty penny.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: Lots of good stuff in the auction House of bodities,
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: So go check out the auction House of bodities. Now,
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: can I tell you one thing that's not on that list?
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: It's going to be a bad stuff on the on
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: the list. Yeah, James Miller, who you know. We had
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: dinner at his house down there in Colorado Crafty Fellows.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: In my repertoire of stories, there's a James like I
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: only have like a certain stories, Like I have like
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: five or six stories I tell him, and one of
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: them is about him. Do you can't render tell it now?
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: I just probably told it last podcast. It wasn't. Do
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you try to beat him up? That's right? And uh,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: he is building a or has already built a quiver
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: that goes on your back that is leather lined and
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: then finished on the outside with a coyote pelt. And
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: with that he makes custom wood arrows footed shafts, and
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: usually he just sells the shafts themselves. So footage means
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: you take another piece of wood that's heavier and with like,
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: what do you call that connection? Is it just a
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: dovetail chester? There's there's different there's a few different ones
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: that you can use for He also tapers these wooden shafts,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: which doesn't happen. Often makes them tighter, stronger, and straighter.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: Usually he doesn't finish them, but for this he's gonna
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: finish a dozen arrows. So if you if you bid
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: on it, you're gonna just call him up and say, hey,
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: I shoot seventy pounds draw length. Is this da da
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: da dada? I need this spine of arrow, and he'll
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: build you exactly what you want. Is one crafty craft.
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: They're so beautiful that when you get them, you're gonna say,
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I should put him on the
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: wall and just look at him, or if I should
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: go and shoot him. He would rather have you shooting him,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: but maybe you'll take two or three and just keep
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: him as art and he's sending them in that kyote
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: for a quiver, no ship. M Oh, you'll appreciate this
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: as a as an archer bow hunter. Yanni and I
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: were doing a little research on something the other day.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: UM three arrows recovered at the Battle of the Little
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Big Horn site sold at auction d dollars beautiful though
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: steel steel aide points on them. Wood shafts, feather veins
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: from a Little Big Horn. That's wild. Just picture one
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: of them sticking right out of Custer's forehead. That what auction?
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: We didn't get that far museum or something custards. How
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: much did that chunk of Oh? I can't never mind,
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: I almost just ruined something that. Oh, check this out.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: They were you know, uh, there's a thing called a
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: copper light. You bloys know what a copper light is.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: They teach you that at the Olympics, no fossilized human
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: or fossilized poop is a copper light. Okay, some guy
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: drops a deuce in the thou years ago by becomes
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: a copper light. They were analyzing the copper light in Texas.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: Was this near um bonfire shelter? Buffalo jump Ah, I
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: do not know, Oh, did you see those pictures that
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: me of me and cal posing with those dinosaur tracks
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: down in Texas. I took them. Okay, well, no, here's
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: the problem I have. Like I used to always because
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah and I traveled so much together. Any time something happened,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: I assumed Yohni was there. And it's not always be
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: like hey, yeah, do you remember when he's like no,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: because that wasn't there, Like, how would you not have
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: been there? You're everywhere? Yeah, sorry, cran I thought that
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: I was honest. Took those pictures. Uh. So they were
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: examining a copper light and this feller, this fella that
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: it took a growler years ago, had eaten an entire
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: whole rattlesnake and past like the scientific term is shot.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I out, Uh even one of the fangs a hungry
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: dude vertib or the more because because well it was
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: probably in the next right, in the next one the
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: next day, or he had his coffee smoked cigarette so
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: vertebra ribs, fang fortysome scales and as happens in this
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: discipline in archaeology, and we've joked about this in the past.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: We've had archaeologists joke about it anytime you find something weird,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: you say it may have been some kind of a ritual.
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: So of course there's the this may have been ritualistic.
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: I'm picturing this being some kind of poetic justice. So
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: I have chickens at my house, and we had a
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: we raised a pig, and the pig was very kind
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: and it's super lovable, and then at one stage it
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: just kind of went feral and started eating the chickens.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: So when we butchered the pig and turned it into bacon,
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I took some of the got some stuff like that
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: and fed it back to the chickens. Felt like it
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: was poetic justice. So I think maybe this feller had
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: a pet rat that was like his, you know, his homie,
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: and he watched this rattlesnake swallowed the rat hole and
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: he was like, I'm gonna kill you, and I'm gonna
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: do the same thing to you. That's probably you should
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: publish that. I just wrote it right now. Alternate an
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: alternate explanation. Really interesting now, halfle Finger, I can't tell
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: how serious was halfle Finger when he was suggesting that. Yeah,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: never mind, I don't because he kind of made a
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: flipping off the cough comment. I don't want to hold
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: him to it. Um, Yanni, this is this is like
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: a hard to explain thing. This is between me and honest.
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: But I sent Karrent a screenshot of my text message
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: exchange from Yanni, So yeah, I gotta gonna I haven't
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: asked Yanni about this yet. Yanni shares with me how yeah, yeah,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: one day shares me how he and Mingus operatings together
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: as a soul unit, caught a mountain lion. And this
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: is like a threshold. This is a this is this
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: is almost like a religious experience for Yanni because this
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: is like, like the archaeologists always say, Yanni knew he
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: would arrive, like him and his dog as a hunting
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: unit would arrive once Mingus just caught a lion, because
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: then it's like it wasn't that he was following one
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: of his buddies dogs, He wasn't just along for the ride.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: He wasn't barking but didn't really know what he was
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: barking about. He caught his own line irrefutable proof, which
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: last time unless he just had me walking through the
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: woods and noticed the lion in a tree, which doesn't happen.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: And last time we were talking about this on this
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: year podcast. I was saying that that's you're asking me, like,
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: what's next. I said, that's next. We gotta go out
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: and hunt and do it on our own. And since
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: caught three, Yeah, so that was number one. And then
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: we got lucky and uh caught a trail of two
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: lions together and Mangus treat them both. Really, yeah he did.
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: He thought treat two separately that day. Well, did they
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: go up the same tree? No, so it was he
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: kind of we were in a creek bottom. He cut
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: the trail and took off up the hill. And I've
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: realized now this is one of the cool things about
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: like getting to know what your dog does, is that
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: if he opens up, meaning that he starts to like
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: bark on trail, if he is not moving very quickly,
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: he's on a bobcat because there just must be just
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: less scent. The bobcat weaves and bobs through the woods more.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: That's where they got their name from, bob and weave.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: And uh. So he doesn't move very fast. I can
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: usually catch up to him if he just lines out
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, the GPS shews a straight
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: line of like a hundred yards like it's a mountain
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: lion track, so this is what's going on. And so
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: I just started bogging up the hill, and uh, I
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: imagine that he had those lions caught in thirty minutes.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: But I had steep deep snow, like probably crash deep
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: snow going to get to the ridge. When I got
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: to the ridge, I thought, oh, yeah, easy going now,
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: But it turns out the south face and slope was
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: covered in like screen and loose rock with like two
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: to six inches of fresh snow. So even it looked
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: like it was gonna be breezy, I'm just gonna grease
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: right across it and not being so. And it was
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: kind of treacherous, like slipping a slide and feet poking
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: through into holes, smashing my shins on the rocks. So
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I had to slow it down. I haven't busted out
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: my trek and poll, it's how bad it was bad.
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: So he was there for a solid hour. I finally
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: get there, making noise the whole time. I don't know,
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: hopefully that's what he's supposed to be doing, right. All
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: I know is that I get there. Right as I
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: get there, he maybe quits barking like five or ten
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: seconds earlier, and it wasn't until I was under two
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: yards I could even hear him barking, just because of
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the curvature of the hill, you know. I get to
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: kind of a rock out cropping and he's quit barking
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: for maybe ten fifteen seconds, and I looked down below
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: me and I see a mountain line on the ground
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: slinking away to go in the direction I came from,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: but eighty yards below me, and Mingus is not barking,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh, I did it like your dog killed? Yeah,
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: I got my dog killed because he's by himself. Bad news,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: you know, it was just in the back of my head.
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: Even the daughters would have been pi. Yeah, but I
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: could have fixed that problem with another puppy, but good news.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: I would have had a very heavy heart. So I'm like, Mangus, Mangus,
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: talk to him, talk to him, like just like trying
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to just to get something out of him. And he
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: immediately just comes kind of out of the woods and
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I can see him and he runs up to the
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: base of this tree that I was not looking at.
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: I was looking at the mountain walking away, and he starts,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: you know, treeing on that tree, and I look up
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: the tree and about eye level with me, actually a
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: little bit below me, there's a cat. And so, like
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: I said, I knew I was following two because I
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: was following two different sized tracks. Every now and then
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: they would split, and I could see at the base
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: of the tree that he had worn it all out.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: You know, there's no snow left, and he's a tree biter,
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: so at about when he's on his hind legs and
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: about head height for him, there's usually like an eighteen
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: inch oval circle of where he's worn the bark off
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: the tree. So he does that for a minute or so.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I'm like, okay, Like, I don't know what the other cat.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Had he been going back and forth
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: between two trees where the other cat was, I don't
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: think the cat would have just been on the ground
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: watch him treat the other one. That doesn't make sense.
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: So I don't know what happened there for an hour,
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: but he only trees there for a minute, and then
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden he stops and you can see
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: his nose kind of points the direction where that line was,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: and I think it was about ten ten thirty. I'm
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: guessing that he caught like an uphill thermal. It must
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: have caught the center of that other line that left
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: and boogies down to that track takes off in two
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: or three minutes later. I can hear embarking treed like
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: yards away. So he went and caught that one. Was
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: it a female and like a semimature kit exactly female
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: and a subadult man. We gotta set some time. We
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: gotta set like some time to hunt. But I'm telling you,
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I'm getting the lion yes over Mingus. So that's how
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: we get back to this text chain. Oh so oh,
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: but one quick thing U Yanni informed me before we started.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: Yanni has now secured permission with his spouse to get
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: a second lion hound. Mingus needs a buddy. Are you
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: gonna like a high test, like a you know, like
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: a high test pedigreed. I've already had some offers for
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: free to just take dogs. I think that there's plenty
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: of hound trainers, handlers whatever. They might not even necessarily
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: be breeders, but they like to see lineages keep going,
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: and they're not in it to like make money. They don't.
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: They're like, hey, I have great dogs, this other person
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: has great dogs. We're gonna make some great dogs. We
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: would like them to go to people that hunt and
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: keep those dogs hunting. And then that line hunting. Yeah,
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: and you like obviously takes super good care of it
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: and hunt it. Yeah, you won't be like some guy
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: who you know just watching TV. But it was going
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: to be a lion hunter. Yeah. Uh so. And Paul,
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a picture of Mingus change Textas texts
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: me that Mingus caught his first line, and I texted
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: him like, I don't remember the hell. I said, great.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Then I text you on a photo of a fox
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: squirrel eating a shad in a tree. Hold On, let's
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: get exactly right, because I feel like I'm about to
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: get thrown under the bus here, you said, just you
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and Mingus? I said, yep, I did get a tip
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: from my body about two spots to check um and
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: the cat was in the second spot. You said, that's
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: gotta feel good, and right below that's gotta feel good,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: there's a picture of a fox squirrel in a tree
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: eating a shad, all coated in blood. Yeah, and to
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: which she has zero reply. I just sent him the
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: most interesting photo in the history of photography. No, I said,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: I said, I'm on cloud nine, I said, coincidentally, I
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: got to watch him find the tree she was in
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: the first time she jumped twice. This is while sitting
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: on the most groundbreaking photograph known to man. I said,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: it was beautiful, the fish eating a shad in a tree.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: This is like I think of photos that could compared,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: oh like Neil Armstrong, like on the Moon with that flag.
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: I basically sent that to Yanni, but it's nineteen seventy
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: or whatever the hell that was, right, Yeah, so I'm
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: in like a very different headspace, Cloud nine. My dog's
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: just treat its first mountainlin on its own, and you said,
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: that's gotta feel good, and then just slip in this
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: picture and I look at it like, oh, well, that
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: must be one of those memes. But that's like Steven
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Ronella's style, like that's gotta feel good, just like this
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: fox squirrel has to feel good munching on this chat
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: because most fox squirrels don't get to comment on the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: squirrel eating the fish. There's a picture of the squirrel
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: eating the fish. If you guys, I figured it was
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: a meme, Jana says, is that real? I figured it
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: was a meme, went with that's got to feel good.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: I want to clarify something for you and everybody. I
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: have never, in my life, nor will I ever in
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: my life, ever traffic in a meme. I'm right there
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: with you. I'm on team no meme. I won't text
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a meme. I won't put a meme on social media.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: I will not. I do not traffic in memes or emojis,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: just like all of it. No, I don't traffic in emojis.
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: I will never traffic in a meme. You guys, big
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: meme guys. I mean I appreciate a good meme. I'm not.
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: I'm not a trafficker of memes either, and I don't.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: I don't create them or you know, I to do
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: that and then I share him. Quick note, this is
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: the opposite of an apology to the falconer community. We
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: need to get a falconer on it. I pointed out,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: they're not even taking on what I said, they're not
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: even tagging what I said. I pointed out that I
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: believe that I made an estimate. I believe half of
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: all Falconers got into Falconry through a D and D
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: took a path that went through D and D to
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: get into falconry. That's all I said. This guy's like,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: we spend a hundred and fifty days in there. That's
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: not what I said. His was not the only comment.
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: He's representative of an upset. Yeah, but like some other thing.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: What is a LARPer? He said? Players. I had looked
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: that up too, because alert there's alert, which was long
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: range reconnaissance patrol in Vietnam. A LARP is not nearly
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: as cool. It could be a LARPer about alert. You
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: could large alert, you can LARPer liver um team. No.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: So just a clarification to the falconer community. I didn't
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: say they don't go out a lot. I said, I
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: believe that of all people that self identify as a falconer,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: came through a D and D took a D and
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: D path, came through D and D rather than coming
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: through relationship with the outdoors. I think you're wrong. We'll
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: never know. Oh no, I think, well, what if we
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: just pulled ten falconers? Do I need to pull more
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: to find out? Because how are you gonna find them?
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: I don't know through Instagram? Okay, that's fine, but you're
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: actually gonna do that? Yeah, I'll pull ten? About it?
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Are you gonna be happy if I pull ten and
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: zero of them say I've or of all of them
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: say I've never played D and D. I will be
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: happy with it once I see your methods. If your
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: methods is going through your network of people who are
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: big time hunters, I won't trust the data. I'll get
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: with Chester the test are on it to make sure
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: that how to test that that I'm doing the right
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: All the falconers I know are pretty serious. I questioning
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: whether they're serious. Marping festival and see if there's any
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: falconers there and ask them if they got into it
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: from D and D. If I said, if, I said
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: after the movie Top Gun came out, um inductees into
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: the Air Force skyrocketed, and then some guy said, but
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: I wound up being in the Air Force for twelve years.
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: You'd be like, but once they have to do with
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about, Yeah, you're not. They're not talking
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: about what I'm talking about, and and you're not. I
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: get it now. Is it a video game? Dungeons and Dragons?
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: There was a class. There's there's a class and a
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: lot of fantasy role playing called a druid that has
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: that can like communicate with animals, and they're like theirs,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: their spirit familiars. It's sort of like like a ghost
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: or or like an animal that they sort of have,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: like not like a spirit animal, but not too far
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: off from that concept. And falcons are very common familiar
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: that druids used to like, you know, they wear that
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: little s and m hood the birds do. It's like leather. Yeah,
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: that's like it's very like medieval. There's a lot of
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: medieval symbolism, like like they're like blinders. Yeah, it's all
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: there's all very medieval. So I get it. I get it.
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: Did you guys know that, um m hmm. It's estimated
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: that the ski was I'm just looking at some stuff
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: Curt shared with me. The ski was perhaps invented before
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the wheel. Yeah, of course, Oh that's obvious to you.
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: I mean it seems obvious to me. Maybe that's my
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: ski background. But it's also much easier to construct a
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: ski than it would be a wheel. That's kind of
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: what I was thinking. It's a big flat thing. The
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: first the first were glorified snowshoes, you think, so absolutely
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: saying that there's I don't, I gotta, I don't, I
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: gotta get this evidenced years worth of evidence of skiing.
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: Cave drawings suggests man use skis during the Last Ice Age.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: The oldest ski artifacts come from the Mesolithic period. Fragments
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: of ski like objects discovering the nineteen sixties date back
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: to six thousand BC in northern Russia. You buy that, yeah,
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: I mean you got much winters out there. You have
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: to get around in the winter, so I mean otherwise
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: you're gonna just be post holing around all the time.
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: There are from four thousand BC rock carvings of a
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: skier in Norway. There's skis, actual skis discovered in Finland
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: that were three from three thousand, three hundred BC. In
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Sweden to skis and a ski pole emerged from a
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: bog in Sweden dated to two thousand seven BC. From
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: two thousand five b C, there are rock drawings that
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: depict a man on skis holding a stick on a
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: Norwegian island two b C. They got into skiing in
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: China and check us out. The word ski comes from
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: the old Norse word. I don't know what's that word.
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not not quite sure, but it sounds it's probably
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: like chia or something like that. My coach is Norwegian,
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: so here we always butchered Norwegian words and it drives
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: him nuts because he's like, no, it's not that. It's
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: oh yeah, so the words derivation is a split piece
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: of firewood. That's pretty damn interesting. Oh do you guys
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: know what the alimal means? I don't know that. It
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: meant cotton wood. Did not? I know that? Now? All right,
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: do you explain to me because because as a bio like,
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: let me ask this as a biathlete, Um, how much
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: is like how much is the history of skiing and hunting?
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: Like how much is it interwoven as sort of like
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: a genesis myth? And how much is it that people
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: are like, yeah, who cares? Um? Like how many by athletes? Yeah?
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Like is it like are you harkening back to the
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: olden times? Or there are a lot of people who
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: are like, I don't give a ship where it came from. Um,
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I would say a lot of people probably like I
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: don't really care, but I mean it really depends what
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: nation you come from to like, I mean, if you're
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: coming from Germany, the sports just so big, you're like,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: I don't care. I just am like out here to compete. Um.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: But I think there are definitely other people who have
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: like more of those those roots, like if you're up
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: in Norway, Sweden, Finland. Um, but I mean it kind
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: of went from like hunting also to the military side.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: So I mean I would say the military roots are
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: still pretty strong because they still have like military world
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: championships every year and stuff like that. Um. But yeah,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: because that one that one of the Finns we're whooping
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: on the Russians prior to World War Two, Yeah, I
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: mean they used to they kind of dominated them in
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: winter combat, right, Yeah. I mean that's how like I
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: mean in World War Two as well, like Norway the
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Germany they just like really couldn't hold Norway because they
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: were just so one they knew the land so well,
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: but too they could get around really really well. Um.
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: But I mean they had trained their military um in
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: their like border patrol uh, pretty heavily on skis for
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: the longest time. Um. And that's when like those training
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: exercises really started to morph into competitions and people are like, hey,
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: this is pretty kind of this is pretty fun to
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: watch and like do and um continue. It more came
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: out of of of military units trained to travel by
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: ski yeah, I think but that but like because it
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: originally had come from hunting, because you know, back in
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: the day and you're in the middle of winter up
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: in Sweden, Norway, Finland, uh, Russia, I mean you just can't.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: It's so much more effective to get around on skis
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: and so, um, I think the military adopted that, and
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: I'm sure that back then that's where, um they kind
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: of saw the success of it and we're like, hey,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: we're gonna we're gonna adopt what these people have been
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: doing on on snow and um train our military because
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: it was just like very effective. What what countries kicked
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: the most? Asked them by athlon? Like who has the
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: most gold h Norway for sure right now, um, And
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I mean it's it's pretty big. It's the most watched
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: winter sport in Europe. So um it's really yeah. Yeah,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: Like the average World Cup has about thirty six million
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: UH viewers on television. Um. He has some like huge
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: market chairs in in Norway, Germany, Sweden's growing, Russia, France,
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: but um, for the most part, I would say Norway
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: has like a really uh strong development of younger athletes
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: as well. So it's they just mean they have the
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: numbers as well. I mean here in the US you
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: kind of struggle to get more than like a hundred
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: people at a race to to go where uh in
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: Norway you show up and you may have like twelve
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: hundred kids just like racing on a weekend. So you're
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: you're sort of like testing. They're testing a much higher
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: percentage of youths for talent, yep, and they have a
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: lot of talent that we don't know about. But also,
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: like in the US, you have a lot of talent
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: going elsewhere. I mean in the U s it's like, hey,
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: you could be really good at bathlon or you could
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: be like really good at another sport that's going to
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: have a lot more support. Um. Not to say that
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: there's not talent in biathlon, but it's a lot harder
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: to find as well. I mean most people don't even
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: know what the sport of bathlon is. I mean back home,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: I say it and they're like, like, oh, what do
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: you do? And I'm like, I'm on the Bathlon team
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: that oh, so you're like running bike or swimming do
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: something else and you're just like close, but it's skiing
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: and shooting. And then they get even more confused. So
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: it's I mean, it's just so David here, if he
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: lived in Norway, he might be uh, it's more likely
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: he might be a biathlon might be a biathlete. I mean,
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: but Norway in general, they just have like a killer
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: winter sports, uh, like across the board. Yeah, I mean
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: they won the medal count in the last two Olympics.
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: And they're a country of five and a half million people.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: So it's it's like basically Minnesota dominating the Olympics just
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: as one stay. But they're an entire country and part
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: of that is because they care a lot about it, um,
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: and they have training centers and um, everything else set
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: in place to develop all the sports across the board. Um.
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: So I mean, I don't know who. I mean. I
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: think the US is still like the powerhouse of freestyle skiing,
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: but it's the example would be then, uh, like snowboarding.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: The US has always been really good at snowboarding. Why
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: because we like kind of invented the sport, and Norway
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: is kind of the same way. I mean, they they
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: it's like their sport. Um, they've always been doing it,
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: but like there's always there's also a huge following in
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: Germany and Germany, uh have really good by athletes as well,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: but it's because it's it's really popular there as well.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Do you have this experience where you go to Europe
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: Scandinavia especially, where like you get off a plane and
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: you're you're like almost an A list celebrity because you're
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: an Olympic biathlete. Um, I wouldn't quite say like getting
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: off the plane. Yeah yeah, yeah, but no, like if
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: you if you go to these races, um, like my
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: first World Cup and told Italy, uh, there was about
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: like sixty sixty five thousand people at the race, and
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: it's like yeah, it's it's like people I are just like, oh,
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: can I get your autograph and stuff? And You're like yeah, sure,
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, You're just kind of like confused
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: by it all, but yeah, no, people are definitely into
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: it um over there for sure. And then you come
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: home and people are like you do what? Yeah? Well
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: why I mean I landed in so I live in
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: Fargo right now, and I landed there right like, flew
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: from Beijing home for a week before I had to
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: go back for the last World Cups. I land and
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: I'm wearing like my team USA sweatshirt and this woman
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: comes up to me. It is like, I hate to
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: be weird and stuff, but like I was looking for
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: him and you kind of look like him. But did
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: you just come back from the Olympics. And I'm like, yeah, yeah,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: I did actually, and she's like, oh, what's your sport?
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: And I'm like, blath line. She's like, oh, so you're
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: You're a summer athlete, so you're not actually competing right now.
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: And I'm just like, well, no, I just said I
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: flew home from the Olympics. And it was just like
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: people just don't get it. And I mean it's like, okay,
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: well whatever U as the U has any US team
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: member ever placed the medal in biathlon, not the Olympics.
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: We're the only US sport to not have meddled at
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: the Olympics. Oh yeah, how how does that hurt? Or
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: is that like a challenge? How many? How many more
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: do you got any more? How many more Olympics you get?
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: Any old? Are you? I'm twenty nine, I'm I'm like middle,
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: I'm not old. But what's the old? What's an old?
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: What's the oldest person to compete? Like nine? I think
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: I guess you guys can squeeze more years out of it. Yeah,
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: yeah for sure. I mean and during sports you're gonna
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: have a little bit a little bit more time. Um,
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: so you'll go back potentially. It's something I'm definitely thinking about.
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: But I mean, twenty nine, like, I got all the
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: things I want to do in life too, So I
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: don't know, but you'll live to be like in your
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: early eighties, Yeah for sure. So, but it's a lot
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: of time on the road too. There's just a lot
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: of different things to kind of balance. But do you
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: think about wrapping it up? Um, I've at least two
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: more years. It's a matter if I want to go
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: two or four more years. Where's the next one going
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: to be in Cortina, Italy? So it would be pretty
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: sweet actually, And that's something I've definitely thought about because
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I've had my best races in on Told Italy, which
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: is the venue that those Olympics will be yet and
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: so it's kind of like, man like go back and
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: um have a good thing going with the team and stuff.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it's definitely something I'm still thinking about. But um,
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: going back to the question of like does it hurt,
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: and I mean it's something that's always talked about any
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: Olympic cycle. It's like, oh man, the last sport to
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: not have won a medal and um, I mean there's
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: definitely a lot of media hype and stuff around it,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: but um, it's not an easy sport to win, and
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: that's for sure. I mean it's it's kind of crazy
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: to think about how many nations are also represented in biathlon,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: um in the depth and I think you just look statistically,
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: it's one of the most competitive sports at the Winter Olympics,
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: which you think, like maybe cross country skiing or something
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: like that would be easier, but um, blathlon is actually
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: harder to get into UM for the Olympics in some
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: sense than cross country skiing as even though there's uh
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: the rifle shooting component because because you're shooting iron real quick. Yeah,
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: for sure, Yanni said, Uh. Janie said the not you
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: particularly necessarily, but he said the biathlon community is pretty
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: loosey goosey about gun safety. Any comment, Well that I
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: would say, in some ways we are, um, but like
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: growing up hunting, Uh, the biggest thing on the rifle
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: that you'd like talked about is like the safety. She'd
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: be like, you always gotta have your safety on. And
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: I was taught growing up. You know, when you're walking in,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: you put that live round in. You gotta be ready
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: to shoot whenever. But um, my biathlon rifle does not
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: have a safety on it. And the biggest reason for
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: that is is I never have a live round in
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: the chamber and tell him like ready to shoot, tell
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: me what I'm looking at here. So it's a on
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: Shoots Fortner Uh, slide action rifle. It's a twenty two
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: long rifle. So yeah, it's a slide action. It's like
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: a yeah, it's like a bolt, but you don't close
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: the boat describe it. You don't need to go like
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: when you think of working a boat. This is Yeah,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: there's no handle that moves up and down across the action.
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: It's just a handle that just pushes that slides slides
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: over a slight little ledge. Yep, damn. So it's it's
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: basically it works with ball bearings, um, and that's how
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: it locks into place. And then when you pull it
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: back those ball bearings and then come out Yep, I'm
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: trying to This is a complicated ass grip. So that's
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: like the pistol grip there and then the ahead of yep.
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: So so basically when you reload it, you pull it
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: back with your index finger and then you close the
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: action with your um with your thumb. I gotta do
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: it left you just to get a sense for the trigger.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: It's really lights about five grams, so you'll feel the
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: first stage if you pull it in super super light
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: and then you hold it and then you can feel
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: it get the last part. Oh so that's yeah? So
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: uh that I mean there's a lot of big differences
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: between like just a bosling rifle and a normal hunting
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: rifle and what what what explained the site to me?
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: They're all open sites. You have a rear aperture and
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: then the front site. Um, basically it's just a circle
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: that you line up around it. You have to put
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: down out the snow. There's two on each site. There's
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: snow um snowguards. Well. I mean, if it's like nuke
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: and snow out there, you don't want to get all
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: up in your sites and you can't see anything. So
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: even by athletes used the term nu king. I mean,
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: I don't know, do you guys use No, not really,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: We're actually not that like cool in a lot of ways.
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: Do you ever say stoked. Yeah, for sure. I mean
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: as I mean, I got a point, Stoked has gone
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: very mainstream. That's been stolen away from the skiers no
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: longer ours you guys lost that you guys lost from
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: skateboarders in the first place. But I mean it's kind
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: of cool. Like here the lingo too, because I was
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: like in Beijing walking through the the village and i
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: saw this Japanese snowboarder and I'm like, oh, how's the
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: how's the courses here? She's like, oh man, they're like
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: super sick, but like the weather is also really sick.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: And so it was like you're using like all this
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: lingo and you're just like, oh, it's kind of funny.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: How like the rest of the world has adopted some
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: of that that culture. What's that little burr on the
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: trigger to help you with finger placement? Yeah, exactly, and
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: just like being able to feel it, so I shoot
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: with my gloves on, UM, so I'm not like messing
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: around taking gloves off or anything else like that. So
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: it just gives you a little bit better triggered. Funny
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: little sweet spot. Yeah, So it's basically just like a
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: little little pin to um. So that one, you're putting
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: your your finger on the trigger the exact same spot
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: every time. But then also you can get a good
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: feeling for it and tell me what, um, how far
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: are you shooting and how big you're trying to hit.
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: The targets are all at fifty meters, so about fifty
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: six yards um. Yeah, I pull up my notes, so
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: I got everything right. But there's two different sized targets. Um,
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have the prone target, which you would shoot
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: when you're lying down, and that's about one in diameter
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: and it's yep, yep, it's all hit or miss um
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: and there's uh let's see here. Yeah, if you it's
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: like it's all or nothing. So you're prone, you're hitting
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: a target that's what size about the size of golf
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: ball one eight inches in diameter. Open sites, open sites,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: just I'm not yeah, I'm not diminished because like most
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: people think of open size or think of like a
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: buckhorn site, right yeah. And I mean there's no magnification
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: a lot, so it's all just like open peep, there's
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: no nope, nope um. And then yeah, so it's at
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: fifty about fifty four yards um or hut. And because
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: it's so because it's fixed. That's why you have such
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: an elevated you don't need to worry about well, what
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: of the shots at forty yards? What are the shots that? Yeah,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: it's all the same. And every day every yerio very
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: specifically for fifty yea and every day before we shoot zero,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: so zero every single day. You're not like showing up
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 1: and um, you know like pulling it out and going.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Part of that is one if you're going from range
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: to range, you don't know like what the and there's
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: just like airs moving and because we shoot standard velocity, Uh,
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: you're gonna have wind affecting where where your bullet goes.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: Um depends on elevation as well, when you might push
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: more at elevation or um if you're at sea level,
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: that all changes. And then also lighting can change things.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: But then lastly, um, you take your part, your rifle apart,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: you travel with it, you put it back together. Um.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: How the rifle reacts in the cold. So like on
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: race day, once our rifle goes outside, like before zero
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: and stuff, we leave it outside because you know, if
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: you bring it in and then it's getting warm and
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: then you go back outside and it's getting cold. UM. So,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I mean it says little things like that. And at
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: the end of the day, we're accuracy shooters, not precision shooters.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: So I'm sure like precision would basically be like how
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: close to the center can you get? So like precision
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: shooters UM in the Olympics, they'd be looking to get
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: tens every single time. For me, it's like I just
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: gotta hit that prone dark down. That's about it. And
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: we we also have the race aspect where it's like
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: you want to do it pretty quick, Like I don't
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: want to be sitting there trying to shoot tens every
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: single time. I just to like make sure I'm hitting
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: prone targets or standing targets. And how big is a
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: standing targeting targets? About four and a half inches in diameter?
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: So at what range? Still fifty same thing if you
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 1: when you go squirrel hunt and do you do you
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: bring this? Do you got do you to use a
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: different thing? Um? I have, But it's like it's a
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: little different because I mean this is just so dialed
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: in at fifty meters. UM. I mean I've shot a
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: grouse with my rifle before, UM, just like I was out.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: But I mean it's just like so specific for for byathlon,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: it's like, man, yeah that if that whatever is at
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: fifty meters, sweet, I'll get it. But like it's but
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: you don't know where it's at at forty you know,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: I haven't really done a whole lot of um, a
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: whole lot of shooting at other distances. But also because
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: it's a standard velocity, amm oh, it's going to have
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: a little bit of an arc on it. So it's
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: still all your magazines. So I mean so for during uh,
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: during races, you got it. So if it's a two
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: or four shooting race, you gotta reload each time. So
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: each magazine holds five hounds, and um, you get up
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: to five five shootings. So that that's the prone sling.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: So that prone slang uh goes into my cuff which
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: is on my arm, which the guys were doing yesterday.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: They were looking pretty good with the with the cuff on. Yeah,
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: it's pretty slick. It's like just basically an arm band
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: on your bicep, and when you get into prone, you
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: take that little hook and lock it in, and you
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: lock it in you can just basically just go all
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: skeletal and relax that front hand and it's you know,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: like a nice platform. Do you guys all use the
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: same gun smith? Um, pretty much everybody used the same
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: action and barrel, so the on shoots Fortner and then
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: but there are like other guys that are like renowned
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: for ranching on these biathlon guns. Partner just as like
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: small little basically a farm in Germany. Um, if you
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: go there, it's just like this rinky dink shop. But um,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: they basically manufacture and work on all the the rifles.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: There's there's a few other guys that do, but they're
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: pretty much all based in Europe, like not a lot
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: of guys in in the US. But um, yeah, is
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: your community under a lot of pressure to get rid
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: of lead? Not not yet, it's coming for um, yeah,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: for sure. It's something we've thought about where we're like
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: because there are the Paralympians sometimes use laser rifles, but
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: like laser laser rifles would kind of ruin the essence
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: of blathlon. I think that's something that a lot of
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: people people recognize. But I mean, the big thing that
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: affected us this last year was the banning of floor carbons,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: and so we can't wax with foil carbons anymore. So
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: the waxing industry has kind of been making a big change.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I think lead might be that that next
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: one and just trying to find something that can still
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: be still be accurate and work well in blathlon. I
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: gotta buy athlon question for you. Yeah, Um, in order
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: to meddle, so we talked about, hasn't findled it yet?
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: You should put it on with those straps. We might
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: have to build another sling. I'm gonna fall in love
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: with that. I wish we had more time because I
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: want to shoot that thing for sure. That looks I
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: think I question ahead. Uh So, I'm just curious in
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: terms of meddling, because I'll be honest with you, I
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: watched your event every four years, similar to how you
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: probably watched my event every four years. Uh. If in
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: terms of being able to be on the podium in biathlon,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: do you have to shoot perfect? That really depends. Um,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: that's a good question you I would say to be successful,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: and I would say I'll take that one. I'll feel
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: that one. Let me answer this way. If I would
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 1: want to me all as like this year, yes, I
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: would have had to shoot perfect. Um. Other people maybe not,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: because they're really good on skis, you generally have to
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: shoot or better. The chances of someone winning a race
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: having shot under happens maybe when there's really crazy wind
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: conditions and everybody's missing and then just kind of turns
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: um in like sometimes the fast gears can kind of
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: ski ski off the penalties. But um, yeah, generally it's
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: about I would say, yeah, uh, walk through how you
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: how your sport came onto your radar being not from
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: a country that yeah, a country that doesn't delve. Yeah.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: Uh so, I mean, like I had said a little
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: bit earlier, I actually grew up wrestling in Wisconsin. I
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: had no idea what was what Bathlon even was growing up. Um, really,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: like you wouldn't have known, No, I mean I maybe
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: would have seen a picture of me like yeah, that's
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: something that's like in the Olympics. But um, but yeah,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: I had not done done. I had not skied or
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: anything like that. Um. In high school is when I
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: started getting into cross country skiing and then went to college,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: and it was at it was in college where my
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: my coach used to be a bathlete himself, and he
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: knew like the opportunities and how big Bathlon was and
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: my talents and He's the one who kind of started
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: putting Bathlon in my head. What I was reading about you,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: um about this deal like with the weight cutting and
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: wrestling that that got dangerous. It's funny because I've talked
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: about on the show. I've talked about like buddies of
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: mine in high school doing the you know, run around
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: with garbage bags on and spitting into mountain dew bottles
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: all day and sucking on marbles or whatever the hell
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: they're doing all the time to try to like work
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: it up. You went down that. You went down that
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: rabbit hole pretty good. Um. In some ways, Yeah, it
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: was kind of weird because like when I was in
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: middle school, I was always like super against it, um,
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: like the cutting weight culture. But it was mostly because
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't really have a reason to at that time.
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: I didn't have a specific uh weight classes I was
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: trying to make. I was just like wrestling other guys
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: around my same weight, and most of the time my
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: dad was in in the rooms trying to put me
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: in heavier weight classes anyways, just to like get me
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: to so some like heavier guys. Um. But in middle school,
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: I mean I never really felt like much of an athlete.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: Growing up, UM, I was really good at the sports
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: that were big in my hometown football, baseball, basketball, and
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: so in eighth grade, actually saw an opportunity for myself
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: to like maybe be distinguished against amongst my peers by
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: getting my name on a weightlifting board. And so that's
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: when I had like my first reason to really um
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: cut weight. And so I did and got my name
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: on the board and stuff. But then I thought, oh,
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: maybe I'll be be careful and like I can keep
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: my weight down for the upcoming season. I can try
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: and uh be prepared for the fall. I don't want
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: to like getin extra weight and stuff like that. And
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: it just kind of turned into this uh being disorder.
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah that I was just thought I was being healthy
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: to try and make right decisions. But you know, I
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: was a young kid. I didn't know what I was doing,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: and eventually I just kind of developed this addiction UM
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: and struggled with that for for a while heading into
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: my freshman based around competing UM. I mean at the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: beginning maybe, but not really towards the end. UM. At
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: that point it just became like I thought I was
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: like being healthy, but really I was just like I
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: was being super unhealthy. Um. I took a lot of
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: things and that I learned from like health class and
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: you know media that was telling me. Um. But I
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: was like thirteen fourteen at the time, I couldn't really know.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: I didn't really know much of the difference. Um. Now,
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: when you look at now that you're you know that
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: you train at such a high level and obviously have
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: access to legitimate professionals, do you look back and be
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 1: like what in the world? Oh yeah, for sure, Like
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: I look back, I'm like, man, why was I doing that?
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: And like it's really hard to think about because like
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: at that time, you're, um, you're not thinking straight. I mean,
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: like with most addictions, you're just really struggling through something.
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: It was a new teens. Yeah, when I was like
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: uh so, I mean it was between my eighth grade
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: and freshman year of high school. Um, and I mean
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: I struggled with it for um about a year year
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: and a half and so um yeah, during that time,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: it was it was it was definitely difficult time because,
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: um my my dad really struggled to understand it. Um.
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: I mean he was just like, why is my kids
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: so much different than like every other guy? Um, just
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: not eating food and stuff, and my dad ended up
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: dying in a car accident that that winter that I
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: was struggling with it as well. On what age were
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: you then? I was fourteen at that time, so um
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: and then so how so all of a sudden, like
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: someone just called me on the phone or whatever there, Um,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: I was actually at school and my brother and I
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: got called down to the uh to the office and
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: we're just like, oh, what's going on? Like why is
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: my brother here? And then um, they ended up taking
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: us over to the middle school because that's where my
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: sister was and my mom told us and I didn't
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: tell you why you're going to the middle school? No,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: not not at first, and they just like my mom
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: wanted us to wanted to tell us at school because
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: she's like I don't want them to associate that sort
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: of news like in our house. But how what did
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: they Why did they tell you're going to the middle school?
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: They didn't. They were just like your mom's over there,
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: and you know, at that point, we're just like, what's
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: going on? This is kind of weird, And UM, I
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: don't think that they it was mean, Yeah, it's a
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: hard situation. You know, you don't want to tell your kids, like, hey,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: you gotta go over to the middle school because your
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: mom has some hard news for you. It's like, um,
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: but yeah it was. It was a tough time, but um,
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: thankfully I that uh that summer, I still was like struggling,
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: and um finally went to treatment at Rogers Memore Hospital
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: in Wisconsin and um got my got my life back there.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: And UM when I when I first went in, I
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: like never thought I was going to compete again as
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: an athlete one because I thought high school sports was
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: kind of like the end all be all of sports.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: You know, only if you were like really good would
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: you go to college and profession For both people, it's
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: the like exactly, And like my relationship with high school
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: sports at that point was like not good. I was
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: just miserable. I wasn't really good. I was, um just
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: doing it for the wrong reasons. Um. And it was
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: after that that I actually got introduced to cross country
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: skiing and just was like on the weekends going out
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: and to be honest, like getting out of a gym
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: full of yelling parents and being out in the woods
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: by myself was was a great change. And just like
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: I got really passionate about the sport, and people like, hey,
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 1: pretty good, you should try some races. And by the
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: time I was a senior in high school, I was
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: like racing, um, traveling around the Midwest. Uh, qualified for
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: junior nationals and then I was like, I'm gonna go
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: to college and give this thing a go. But no
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: guns yet. No, that wasn't until about my junior year
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: of college. Um, someone's like, hey you should I mean
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: with you yeah, And so I graduate high school in
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: two thousand and ten, and that's when the Vancouver Olympics
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 1: were going on, and so I like I saw some blathlon.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, man, that looks like super cool, but like,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: I don't even know where to start to get into
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: that because it's like I didn't even know where the
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: nearest like blathlon range was. I didn't know anything about
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: the sport. Did you go up to like Hayward, Um?
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 1: So I yeah, I actually lived in Hayward for a
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: couple of years. Um when I first started blathlon. Um,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 1: I had some friends who who had a cabin and like,
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: I was just broke at that time, living on my car,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: and so for like two three years of my black
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 1: line career, I didn't pay any rent, but was just
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: like living in where I could and I was kind
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: of doing some rocky train at one point, just like
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: living in this cabin and Hayward and um, well you
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: mean like when he has to fight the Russian guy. Yeah,
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: kind of where I'm just like I had like my
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: own blathlon target that I bought from and yeah, in
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: some ways, I set up my my target on the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: side of the ode and that was just like roller
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: skiing and shooting off the road and it was a
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: good time. I love Hayward. It's it's a great spot roll. Yeah,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: that's basically just skiing on roads. But it's it's like
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: skis are they're a little longer than rollerblades and the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: wheels are a lot slower too. Um because if I
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: saw a guy coming down the road with roller blades
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: in the gun, I get a way different idea in
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: my head. Yeah, the skis with the gun they perfectly
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 1: make those wheels slow so that there's more friction and
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: more because if you think about how fast cross country
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: skiing is, like you don't want to be out there
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: just like going. I mean, inline blades are fast, so
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: are our wheels are a lot softer? Rubber um and
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: we use the same same boots that we use on
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: skis um in the winter and stuff. And then yeah,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: so it's it's to simulate skiing. Oh you know, speaking
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: of the wrestling, you know you might want to fight
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: his chester here. Yeah, he wrestled. I don't want to fight. Yeah,
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: that's kind of behind me now. Uh, it takes a
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: it takes a lot to piss me off. So what
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: age was it that you first, like, uh like actually
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: did a buyath lot event. I mean that it doesn't
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: need to be the high level, but you went to
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: an event and competed. So my first bath On race
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: was actually over in Minnesota and Elk River, and there
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: was this guy gave me this like old Bathlon rifle
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: day before it like basically this is how you are
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: position before, yeah, day before, and he's like, all right,
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: go out and send it. And then that's what I did.
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: And that was when I was probably looked through this hole.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Yes you put that on that little thing, and shoot,
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: did you do well that first? Um? I can't even remember. Honestly,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: I know I didn't hit a lot of targets, but uh,
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: I don't think I ever dirty. So that was like
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: a success for me at that point. The dirty dirty
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: in is when you miss all five targets. And so
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: when you when you hit all five targets, that's when
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: it's that we would call that a clean So dirty
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: is not good in high in are you you're holding
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: off target? It depends depends how what your strategy is. So, uh,
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: if you adjust your sites, we call that like clicking,
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 1: so you'll do that. Yeah, So it's like the there's
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: wind flags on the range and so um, depending upon
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: what the wind flags are doing, you might click. Do
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: you guys use the m A or do you use
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: or Emerald? Like what system do you use? Uh? Just
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: looking at the wind flags and you don't know what
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like when you click, I think, yeah, it's
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: just like I mean, so all I know is like
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: on my rifle the site when I So if I
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: come in and the wind flags are like straight out,
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: I may have to go four clicks, which is about
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: four bullet holes um of adjustment. So if I'm shooting
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: center and I take four clicks, I'm like on the
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: edge or just outside of the prone ring. So it
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: can't be make a difference, similar to making adjustments on
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: your archery set up. Yeah, yeah, you're not thinking. Yeah,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: you're just I mean you have the little lines on
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: your site that you're like, okay, I've moved it that far.
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: Each click is a certain amount. Yeah. Uh and that
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: was what age again when you first did your first
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: But at what a what age were you a headed
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: for the Olympics? Like I'm trying to figure out, like
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: how many years? Yeah, is when I graduated college and
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: went full time blathlon um and unfortunately, like just missed
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: out in pyong Chang Olympic trials. I got sick and
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: was like the first alternate, so um didn't go there.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: But I would say those three years were pretty tough.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: But um, the biggest thing with that is like the
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: skiing aspect of the sport, like you have to be
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: a fast gear and thankfully, um, like through college I
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: really worked on all my skiing development and stuff, and
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: so at that point it was really just about learning
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: how to shoot um, which to learn how to shoot
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: a blathlon rifle well probably takes about one and a
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: half years to two years of like failing pretty miserably
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: at times, and then you're like, oh, I think I
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: got this, and then the next day, it's like, man,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: I can't hit anything, and so there's a lot of
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: ups and downs. But it's just it takes a lot
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: of persistence and you have to be willing to to
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: not do well for a little while if you right
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: now went in, Like what event in the Olympics most
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: closely mirrors the actual skiing part of what you do
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: in terms of equipment and course and all that. A
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: cross country skiing is like basically the same. So the
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: skis aren't any difference. I mean, like, yeah, but athletes
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: are about as close to a cross country skiers you
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: can probably get like any other sport. I don't know
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 1: if you guys had if your gear was more tweaked out,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: for certain, So how would you do? Would you just
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: get smoked in a cross country skiing event? Um, depends
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: your definition of smoked, like what you can hold your own? Yeah,
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: for sure. I mean talking about like how competitive bathon
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: is in the Olympics. There was actually a few guys
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: from some nations, um, including one guy from Latvia that
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: I know. Um, he actually went to cross country skiing
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 1: because he it was easier for him to qualify for
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: the Olympics. Across country skiing than bath So you guys
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: are high test skiers. Yeah for sure. Well I'm trying
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: to sort out the like the and the things and
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: the ski and things, but the skiing is it's top
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: not skiers, Yeah for sure. Is there any crossover? Is there?
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: Are there any athletes to do both? Yeah? I mean
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: you definitely can have the Olympics, like at the Olympics,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: not anymore because it's just like really specialized. Bathron does
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: have a little bit different type of skiing. So like
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: our longest race is gonna be twenty k, which is
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: like thirteen miles or something like that, Whereas when you
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: have if you're a cross country skier, your longest race
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: gonna be fift k, so you're gonna change train a
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: little bit different. But we also have like seven eight
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: pound rifle on our back, so um, and we're doing loops,
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: so there are a little bit of differences. Um. But
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: like it isn't unheard of for for us to like
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: jump into a cross country ski race at times, um,
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: like in the off season and stuff like that. So
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: how if if it's the twenty k race, how long
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: would it take you if someone just said, like, uh,
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: put your gun on your back and just go ski though, uh,
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: depenning ponds, snow conditions, I'd say round forty five minutes
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: and then and then on average in that twenty k event,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 1: how many shots I know it's between one and five
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: for every target, depending on how let's say, like perfect
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: conditions you're shooting great, how many shots you gonna touch off? Um? Ideally,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: so in a twenty k race, you're gonna have four shootings,
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: so you're gonna have twenty shots. Um. The best I've
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: gotten his nineteen so nineteen twenty. And I understand you hit,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: you hit one target, you hit, you hit targets of
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: one bullet, no leased one shooting steel, but you didn't
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: keeping to hit it. Noo. There's five targets. There's you
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: have five shots and you shoot each one one time.
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: So I'll explain it. So you had five shots, you
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: had five chances to hit it. You should just break
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: it down from start. Yeah. So so so with the range,
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: So the range is set up with the targets are
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: a fifty meters and each point, which would be like
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: each shooting lane has five targets, and so every time
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 1: you come in, you're taking five shots at those targets.
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: If you hit the target, it goes from black and
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: turns to white, so you know you hit it, and
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: if you miss it, it just stays black. So you
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 1: could get up there and with all five your shots
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: on one target. Yep. But okay, I see, and that's
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: what we call dirty. So it's like the way you're
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: you're dumping when you stop, you're dumping five rounds, yep, exactly.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: And so so say I come in and I hit
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: four of those five shots, that one shot that I missed,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: I get penalized. And so in the twenty k race,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: which is the individual, you get one minute added onto
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: your time. So say I finished the race in forty
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: four minutes, I'm gonna there's one minute added on, so
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: my race time is then forty five minutes. So so say,
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: and then with a twenty k race, there's two prone
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: shootings and two standing shootings, so you have twenty shots
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: total and five shots at each shooting. Man, I really
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: feel like you should commit yourself to try to do
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: one more Olympics. Man, that's what I was gonna say. This.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: This story has got so much grit. Yeah, because then
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: when they make a movie about it, like you'd be
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: like one of the Jamaican dudes won the or didn't
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: win a cool runnings. Yeah, they didn't win the Olympics.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: They just went to it. Maybe be more like a
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: miracle one. Yeah, but yeah, because you could beat the
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: Russians yea, and everybody doesn't like them again. Yeah, if
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: they're still in the Olympics, we'll see. So, uh, I
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: think you should go one more time. Like I said,
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: it's not entirely up to what you decide the right,
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: like you gotta like earn your spot again. Oh for sure.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: I mean it's like I mean, that's the reason why
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: I'm giving it some serious thought right now, because if
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: I'm going another four years, I'm all in. I gotta
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: be prepared and like, uh, I mean, these things don't
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: happen overnight, and so you gotta gotta be committed to
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 1: that long term vision. And like, so you're here in deciding.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: It's not like do I want to go to the
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 1: Olympics again, it's do I want to spend the next
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: four years entirely committed to this one thing? Yeah. So
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: like for me, um, since like April thirty of last year,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: I've been home for like less than thirty days because
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: I'm on the road all the time training and racing.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 1: So like, yep, your kids. Now, I've long been married
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: about three and a half years. Now, what a story
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: with that? How did you meet her? I met her
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: at the bike shop that I worked at in Duluth,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: Minnesota during college, and she was working there before she
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: went to med school, and meet just hit it off. Yeah,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: that's good. But like I left November ten of this
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: last year, and I was in Europe until I went
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: to Beijing, so through Christmas, and then I came home
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: for one week and then after that week, I've been
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: now back on the road since um for about four
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: or five weeks. And so I mean, just all in all,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: it's a lot of time on the road. Any endorsement
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: deals in your world, yep, yeah for sure. So I
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: worked with Rainbody Fuel Errands out of Wisconsin, J. J.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Keller Foundation and Rogers Moore Hospitals. Yeah. So you don't
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: have you don't need to have a day job. This
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: is my day job. If I had another day job,
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: I would You can't make it work with Blathlon. It's
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: just I mean, it's it's full time training. Because as
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: we said, you have to be at a super high
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: level ski ski wise, and in order to do that,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: you have to train on skis probably seven or fifty
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: hours to a year, and then you have to add
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: in the shooting component. But then I mean in order
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: to train well, you have to also recover well. And
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: so I mean if I'm like at a job trying
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: to figure it out, also, I'm just down the road
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 1: all the time, and I mean, this is this is
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: my job. But people in curling they have to have
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: day jobs. Yeah, yeah, that's a different thing. Yeah, and
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 1: I could. Yeah, but that's what makes blathlon so difficult
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: is it's like such a demanding sport and the level
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: of the sport has only gotten higher. I mean, the
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: field itself is just getting closer and closer, and then
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: uh like the ski ski times are just getting faster
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: and faster. Um. And part of that really came from
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: ole ear Bjorne Dollin out of Norway. He just took
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: it to a whole another level. And I think we
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: see this with a lot of sports, where like one
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: guy takes things super super seriously, and when he does that,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: everyone else is like, man, I have to also just
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: like commit my life to this. If I want to
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: have any sort of success um, And I mean it's
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: probably the same with hunting. In the hunting world, you know,
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: one guy is like super dialed in and everyone else
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: is like, man if I want to like compete on
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: in some ways, like on that, like you gotta you
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: gotta be dialed in? David? Uh? Do you go by
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: David Weisser? Wise? It happens a lot to the point
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: where I've just given up on correcting it. I'm like,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 1: if you want to call me wise, call me wise.
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: Did you guys bump into each other the Olympics? No,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: not this time around. No, but you're in Jean Jaco, right, Yeah,
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 1: so we were in the same village, but there's a
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: lot of people there. Did you know each other before today?
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: Now we just met. Oh so you might have bumped
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 1: into each other not knowing it. Yeah, we might have
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: walked past each other in the village and not even
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: know possible. Huh uh? Do you do you are you?
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: Do you like hang out with other disciplines? Are you
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: like so into the moment that you just focus on
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: what you're doing? Oh? No, That's one of my favorite
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: parts about the Olympics is going and hanging out with
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: people who do other crazy things, So there's like a
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: social component to be in there totally. I mean you
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: try to find the balance for sure, because I've seen
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: some folks go over to the Olympics and fall a
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: little too heavily into the social component, seriously, and then
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: they get to their event and they're like, oh crap,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: I haven't actually prepared for this at all, really like
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: oh hung over. And it depends what sport you're in. Now,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: you grew up in the outdoors, Yeah, did you feel that,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm talking about, the tension right, the
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: tension that I'm having to my family between between traditional
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: hook and bullet activities in in ski? Did you feel
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: that there was a compromise you had to make a
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: little bit? Yeah, I would say, did your old man
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: fall on this whole thing? Well? I think for the
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: most part they complimented each other because tell me more
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: being well, I guess the best, simplest, shortest way I
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: can describe it to you is that really good strong
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: skiers can carry a really heavy pack. So if you're
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 1: trying to rig your your children up to be good
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 1: packout buddies, keep them on the skiing program because the
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: training that I did, they wouldn't be able to go
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: help well. They would in the archery season because I
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: heard when you get real serious, you start spending a
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: half of your year in New Zealand. Yeah, did you
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 1: ever do that? I did one that in one season,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: and I just realized. I mean, for me, it's all
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: about balance. And part of why skiing complimented why hunting
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: complimented skiing so well, is that I could kind of
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: put the skis on the shelf for a while and
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: really focus on something else. I was passionate, and then
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 1: I would hang the bow up on the wall and
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 1: and really be passionate about skiing again. But I wasn't
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 1: all one thing all the time, because I think, you know,
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: talking about how I over pressured myself as a young athlete,
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: that was a huge part of it. Was like I
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 1: was waking up every single morning and just dedicating my
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 1: entire day to being the greatest skier I could possibly be,
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: and to the point where I became too focused and
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: I was over pressuring myself. And so having those alternate
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 1: passions has always been really good for me competitively. I
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: don't know if it's good for everybody there. There are
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: certainly some athletes that I know who live their sport
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: every day, day in, day out, and they do it well.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: But for me, having those balancing passions was always good.
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: So it's even and like, um, like you view it
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: as strategy. Oh absolutely, like actually been not just like, hey,
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: I it would be better if I just did this
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: one thing, but I can't. You're like, it's it's good
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: to have a split. It's great to have a split
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: because I mean think about for me, I think about
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: all the mistakes that I've made in bow hunting and
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: how much that's translated to making mistakes at skiing. Because
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: if you if you really beat yourself up about missing
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: a stock bow hunting, you're gonna be miserable because you know,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: five minutes later you're gonna make another mistake and learn
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: another lesson. Five minutes later, gonna make another mistake and
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 1: learn another lesson. And like life is like that, we're
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 1: constantly it's trial and error. You're constantly trying to do
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: new things, you're trying to do something innovative, and you're
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: not always going to succeed. So the bow hunting crossover
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: has been very mentally like just beneficial for me, and
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: I mean just in my soul too. I need that
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: time in the wilderness. I'm I'm naturally an introvert, like
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: I really like to read a lot, I like to
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: just be I like to be alone quite a bit.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: And so I mean there's two to three weeks in
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: the fall where I just turned my phone off and
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: go off with my bow on my backpack and hike
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 1: into the wilderness and and just completely detached. And that
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: sets me up well for traveling all around all around
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: the world, competing every other weekend all this other stuff,
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: because I can get to like a spiritual medium. Is
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: it like a little is there like a little ritual
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: when you like go and hang up your your bow
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: and pick up your skis is it like today is
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: the day? Yeah? I always kind of laugh because I
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 1: I know for a fact, I always have these high goals.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna shoot my bow in the off season more
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: than I did last year. But pretty much every time,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 1: it's like it's like mid to late November, I hang
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 1: the bow up on the rack and I'm like, that's
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 1: probably the last time I don't touch that thing until spring. Yeah.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: Then you just started on it. Yeah Yeah, what uh?
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: Walk through how you like sort of your you know,
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 1: at at whatever point, like how you progress up to
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: the point where you're in the Olympics. Yeah. Well, like
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: I said, it's a it's a young sport. I started
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: competing really young. I transitioned over from alpine racing. My
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 1: dad was he raised in college and um wanted me
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: to be a racer. My older sisters, who are twins
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: four years older than me. You did what your dad
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: said you should do at the beginning. Yeah, it's good.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: And then but I always wanted to jump even when
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: I was even when I was like neck deep in racing,
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: I would skip race practice and go ski the train park.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: So I think that everybody kind of knew at an
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: early age this kid's gonna transition to free skiing at
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: some point. Um. So I switched over and competed in
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: moguls and aerials and all the traditional uh freestyle events
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: early on, But that was when terrain park skiing, so
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 1: half pipe, slope style and big air we're kind of
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: coming into the scene because you know, most people don't
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: even know even to this day, a lot of people
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 1: don't even know that we have skiing half pipe in
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: the Olympics and I'm like, dude, we've done it three
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 1: times now. But um, it started with snowboarding. Snowboarders created
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: the train parks, like they took things from skateboarding and
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 1: they're like, oh, half pipe would be cool snow and
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: so when I was eleven, twelve, thirteen, that's when free
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: skiing was becoming big and growing up, I was always
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: wanted to be a snowboarder because those are the guys
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: I saw it doing flips and spins because they were yeah,
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: they were the rebels. I wanted to be a rebel.
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 1: I always was, so uh yeah. I just at the
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: point where I probably would have transitioned to snowboarding was
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 1: when free skiing was getting cool and I was like,
• 1:32:36
  Speaker 1: I already know how to ski. I'm just gonna do this,
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 1: and started traveling and just chipping away at it. I
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 1: went to my first Junior Olympics when which was would
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: be Junior Nationals the College Junior Olympics back then Junior
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: Nationals when I was thirteen and won an event that
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: I just was surprised I even won, and um kind
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: of just chipped away at it from there. Like I said,
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: in the early years, I was really bad at competing,
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: but I would always get one or two wins per
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 1: season to kind of keep me in it. I never
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 1: had like a full season of failure. I always won
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: the last couple events of the year because I finally
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: just found my zone or found the swing of things.
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: It wasn't actually until uh twenty eleven. Uh So in eleven,
• 1:33:22
  Speaker 1: I got married, had a little girl, and all of
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 1: a sudden my world changed, and it was that it
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: was actually that detached, super young. Yeah, my daughter was
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: one of one. Yeah wild times so but how so,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 1: how did your daughter know she's ten? Okay, yeah, I
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 1: had Seriously, it feels that way sometimes when she's getting
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 1: salty with me. But I just so, what was cool
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: about parenthood for me is everybody thought my career was over.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: They're like, oh, Dave went different route. He got married young,
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: he had kids young. It depends on who you're talking to.
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: Phenomenal look with Dave's okay, that's good. Yeah, Dave's good
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: for me. Whenever people get uh whatever, one of my
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: buddies is going to have a kid, I always say, dude,
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: name him Dave. I really appreciate that. The odds are
• 1:34:22
  Speaker 1: they're gonna be all right, all right. I went from
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 1: over focusing, over pressuring myself, wanted to be the greatest
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: skier of all time and never performing well in competitions,
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 1: to this whole new aspect of life where I kind
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 1: of realized, this whole game I play on a pair
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: of skeys doesn't really matter. It doesn't matter as much
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: as I thought it did. And what really matters mean
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: matters like in a in a sort of global existential way,
• 1:34:49
  Speaker 1: like like in a in a an eternal way, you know,
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: like what really matters. And I've realized what really matters
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: is how I treat my wife, how I love my
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: daughter and now son, And all of a sudden, the
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: pressure was off for skiing, and I started seeing it
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: as an opportunity rather than a necessity. Before my daughter
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: was born, skiing was something I had to be good
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: at because that was what my identity was. I wanted
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: to identify as a great skier. And then when I
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: just decided to identify as Dave, the human whose husband
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 1: and father, skiing became like something I did more nonchalant, nonchalantly,
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 1: and uh, that's when my string of success started. I
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: just started cruising. I was enjoying it. You know, I
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: got a friend of ours Mo. He expressed something similar
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 1: to me that once his once he had his, all
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: he ever did is work right, and then once he
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: had he got married and had a kid, he felt
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: more like um, like when he went to work, he
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: stepped into a role and it just changed changed for him.
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: I got better, But he said, he started thinking of
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: like putting on the hat, like put in your top
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: hat and grabbing your briefcase and like going and doing
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: that thing. And then at a point in the day
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: you stopped doing that thing, and it gave him like
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: clarity into what it was like, into what his job was.
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just that that was Mo, right, It was like,
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: well there's Mo, but he does this thing, yeah, you know,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 1: and and it was helpful to him. I think for
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: me it comes down to quality over quantity, because uh,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 1: before NAILI, my daughter was born, Um, it was all
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 1: qual quantity of skiing, like quantity in the gym, quantity
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 1: just thinking about skiing all the time, and there wasn't
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: a whole lot of quality there. I wasn't as I
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't as focused training for skiing as I had to be.
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: When I had to wear the two different hats. I
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: would come home from training at the gym or whatever,
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: and I would take the skier hat off and put
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: on the husband and father hat. And actually being able
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: to focus on those two different things was really good
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 1: for me, because, Yeah, my quality went way up even
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 1: though the quantity went down. Do you uh what about uh?
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 1: If you like, if you're introvert, you like things to
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 1: be quiet and like to be by yourself, but you
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 1: gotta have also like an obligation to be out there
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: right in the public eye, Like you can't just be
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 1: that no one ever hears a peep out of you,
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: and then all of a sudden you turn up at
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: the Olympics. Right, you need to be like a yeah,
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: especially like a personality, right, especially around the Olympics, because
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: if you're in a niche sport like Paul and I
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: are we we you don't get a lot of attention
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: except in Olympic years. So it's kind of daunting how
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 1: much attention you do get in those years because you're like, Wow,
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 1: I have twelve interviews scheduled this week. Last year I
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: had zero. And because they want you to market, they
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 1: want you to market the competition. Yeah, they want you
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: to market the Olympics, and you want to market your sponsors.
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: Your sponsors want you to market them, you want to
• 1:37:51
  Speaker 1: market yourself. There's so much that goes on. It's it's
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 1: a very focused time of doing a lot of media
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: and stuff like that. And actually that's where my like
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: deep addiction with hunting kind of came into the picture.
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: Was after I won gold in I was stressed out
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: and overwhelmed by all the attention the introvert and me
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 1: was just like, dude, you gotta stop. In what form
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: did the attention come? Interviews going to like going to
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: weird stuff like doing a lot of interviews, like I
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: got to go on Ellen, the Ellen Degenerous show, like
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: things that are totally outside of a professional Yeah, did
• 1:38:28
  Speaker 1: you guys get into that? Now? We didn't. They very
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: very staunch, like, hey, I got a question for you.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: I would have loved to have had the time. Those
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: those shows are produced down to the second. It's crazy.
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: So yeah, I was just overwhelmed, Like I went to
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: Oscar parties, like they treat you for a couple of weeks,
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 1: especially when you win gold, they treat you for a
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks, like an A list celebrity, the Hollywood
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: or the media or the people of the United States
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: from you. And so you got a manager comes in
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: and they like, are you fielding the inquiries? Hopefully your
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: agent or somebody else's because if you were feeling all
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: the inquiries, that would just drive you into the ground.
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 1: So you're like, no, no, no, yeah, I'll do that.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 1: And there's and I guess, especially because I was young,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, I'm gonna do it all. I'm
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: gonna do everything because my I know, my windows is
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: tight here, so I have to do all these things.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: They all seem like great opportunities. And I just wore
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: myself out. What do your wife think about all that?
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: She you don't have to ask her, but I think
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: she was pretty worn out too. She didn't like all that.
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, she she was riding the wave along with me.
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 1: She went to the Oscar parties with me. She went
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: to do this stuff Oscar parties. Yeah, it was, it
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: was wild. It was a wild time. I said note
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: to all those things the second time because I I
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: felt like I just played, just played my last interview.
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: When you come back, you remember hell, I mean, yeah,
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: I guess, but I totally simplized with him where it's
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: like people come out of the woodwork and they're like, man,
• 1:40:07
  Speaker 1: you haven't cared about me for like the last two years.
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: They come up, they care about you for about three
• 1:40:12
  Speaker 1: or four weeks around the Olympics, and then they just
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: like drop off faces and they do a good They
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: do a really good job speaking to my old young
• 1:40:18
  Speaker 1: self after I won Golden They do a really good
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: job of making you feel like they actually care about you.
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: And so it's really hard to say no to a
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 1: lot of things because you're like, oh, no, this person
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: really cares. They did their research, they know all about
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: my back story. And the reality is, yeah, you kind
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: of have to go in knowing this person doesn't really
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 1: care about me. They only care about what they can
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: get from me in this moment. So anyways, back to
• 1:40:42
  Speaker 1: my long winded story telling, we care about you, guys.
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: We appreciate that. Yeah, you know what I want you
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: to come. We need to do the math and find
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: out what day is the most far away from the
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: Olympics and you guys come back that day. Okay, So
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: back to the bow hunting thing. Uh Remy saw who's
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: a lifelong friends saw that I you guys are both
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: from the same state, and uh, he saw that I
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 1: was stressed out and he's like, here's a bow. Just
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: just I think this will be good for you. And
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 1: like the meditative aspect of shooting I really fell in
• 1:41:18
  Speaker 1: love with because I was just a recreational hunter. I
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: would hunt, especially living in Nevada. Basically I would just
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 1: hunt when I drew tags on the rifle side of things.
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: And then I got I just fell in love with
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: the sport of archery and it was it was really
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: grounding for me during that crazy time. And then I
• 1:41:33
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, well, now I could shoot, I might
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: as well hunt. And the seasons fit better, everything fits better.
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, because archery season in Nevada arts
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: eight August first, like nine degrees. It's so it fits perfectly.
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: So that's why you know, skiing doesn't really detract from hunting,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: and hunting doesn't really detract from skiing for me. There
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: are certain tags that I can't put in for yet
• 1:41:56
  Speaker 1: because I'm still competing, but they definitely compliment. Yeah, the
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: mule deer ruts out. Yeah, I've never shot a running
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: running butt with my belt. Maybe you'll have to get
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 1: it in you got to get it in wh it
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 1: get is good? Yeah? Uh so you put in for
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: tags the over the place. Now, yeah, each year I
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: put in for a new state along with all the
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: other ones. I'm sure you guys have have experienced that progression.
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 1: So you call it hunting fool and be like, listen, man,
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: I can only hunt in August, September, early October. Yeah,
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: where can I go? And what do they? Yeah? Where
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: do you live now? Still in in Reno, just outside
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: Reno and Verde. How far from where you grew up?
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: Twenty minutes? Huh m? Your folks still there? Are they
• 1:42:41
  Speaker 1: all proud of you? National National state? David? There's yeah,
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: the community, the Reno Tahoe community is very proud of
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: me after I won. Uh. The governor at the time
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: declared David Wise Day. Soy February just remember that it's
• 1:43:02
  Speaker 1: David Wisday. Do something cool? Is it hard for you
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: to go out around town? No? No, it's I mean, yeah,
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 1: there are people come up for autographs and photos, but
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: it's not like that doesn't hurt my feelings? Did you
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: like because you have the mask on? I mean, let
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: me be honest. The level of fame that we're talking
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: about for me versus the level of fame for somebody
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: very famous is in your town? Yeah, well in my
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: Even in my town, it's like it's like once a week.
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: It's not like every single meal I go out for
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: And we kind of live off in the woods, like
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: we eat. We eat at home most of the time,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 1: mostly cooking wild games, so it's we don't we don't
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: eat out very much. So maybe every time I go
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 1: and eat out, somebody comes up to me. You do
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: all your best work with the helmet and goggles. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: It's not like I'm recognizable. I have. The funniest experience
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 1: that I have is usually when getting my oil changed
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: or you know, at the sandwich shop. People will just
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 1: stare at me with that like where do I know
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 1: you know? They don't even know that, they're like, I
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 1: know you and they'll say that though they're like did
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: we grow up together? Did we go to school together
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: in elementary school? Where do I know you from? And
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: that's just kind of funny for me. Uh, do you
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: cook in your house? Yeah? Did your wife cook? She
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: cooks mostly she does. Yeah, there's kind of a running
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: she'll cook with wild game. She she will, She'll tolerate hunting.
• 1:44:32
  Speaker 1: She like I put her in for tags, for rifle tags.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, baby, drew this tag, let's go.
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 1: But but it's not her passion. But she loves cooking.
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: She's a great cook, and she prefers that you guys
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: eat game meat. Oh. Absolutely, when you went over to
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: the Olympics, did you did you bring some game meat?
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: I thought about it. I mean, I do it everywhere else,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: but I was like, I probably don't want to get
• 1:44:51
  Speaker 1: caught with wild game meat. And there's this whole thing
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: with moving animals across the board exactly. So no. But
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: the funny thing is when we travel in this amongst
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 1: my peers and skiing, I'm kind of the cook because
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: I'm the oldest guy. I have kids, And so if
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 1: we're all staying in one like if there's four or
• 1:45:10
  Speaker 1: five guys staying in one condo, I'll cook the meals
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: and I usually bring wild game and they're all excited
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: about it. And so I have this like reputation amongst
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: my peers and coaches and support staff that I'm this
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: amazing cook. So every time anyway of them talks to
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: my wife, they're like, wow, it must be so great
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: having Dave around to cook all the meals. And she's like, yeah,
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: that'd be nice if you ever actually cooked, because I
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: don't cook when I'm home. But my daughter, my daughter
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: stayed over at Yanni's house. I'm still pissed at her
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: about this. My daughter stays over yet, she's nine years old,
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: stays over at Yannie's house and tells him, Oh yeah,
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 1: my dad, he has a cook breakfast at all. I
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: told him that he just looks at his phone, which
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: is her bold faced. I think she got caught up
• 1:45:59
  Speaker 1: and just like, guy, do you go to someone else's place,
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: they could cook the exact same thing you cook all
• 1:46:04
  Speaker 1: the time. Because someone else cooked it, it's gonna taste
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: be different, you know. And she got caught up in that.
• 1:46:10
  Speaker 1: I happen to make some like lemon ricotta pancakes. My
• 1:46:13
  Speaker 1: kids are like, and Rosie's like, oh my gosh, the
• 1:46:17
  Speaker 1: best pancakes ever. My dad never makes pancakes, you know.
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 1: And uh, I forgot what else there was whatever we
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: had for dinner. She was a real big fan of two.
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Yanni made us a wild turkey. And she
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: gets to telling Joannie, I've never had this before. I'm like,
• 1:46:37
  Speaker 1: I'm like a staple. Yeah, I'm like, I think most
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: of American things that your dad invented. This DIY so funny. Man. So, uh,
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: when you at what point you gotta decide if you're
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: gonna go to the Olympics again? You know, I don't
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: mean go would try to go you already you already
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 1: got invited. No, I didn't already get invited. You could
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: like go to ship make it. Oh absolutely, yeah, I
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: mean at least for I mean, I was thinking about
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: hanging it up after the last Olympics and just kind
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: of moving you Like, what's his name? You are like
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: Tom braid him and Han every year? Well, no, I wasn't. Never.
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: I'm an introvert. So all this is going on in
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: my head. I wasn't saying it out loud, like thinking,
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: but but I was considering. I just had kind of
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 1: lost my love for the sport. I had a couple
• 1:47:29
  Speaker 1: of seasons agrow where I was injured a lot of
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: the time, and it was just it just got to
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: the point where I was like, man, do I really
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: love this anymore? So I got out of that place
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: and decided to do another one here and now I'm
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: kind of like, man, I'm pretty motivated. I think I
• 1:47:47
  Speaker 1: want to do one more. Have you touched pair of
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: skei since you got off the off the podium there? Yeah.
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: I I bruised my heel pretty good this year and
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: it was just causing me great pain while I was skiing.
• 1:47:58
  Speaker 1: So it's hard to be motivated to go out and
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: creationally ski when you're dealing with injury like that. But
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: I skied last weekend. It was fine, So I'll probably
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 1: be back out cruising now. If you decide when you
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 1: need to decide by and when you need to start
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: acting on that decision, oh, it all comes down to
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 1: your talent level, uh or in some in some ways, um,
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: because I know for a fact that I'm not talented
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: enough to not stay in it for the next four
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 1: years and try to make it for four years from
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: now or three and three quarters of years from now.
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: So if I'm gonna go for another Olympics, I kind
• 1:48:30
  Speaker 1: of got to stay in it, stay competitive, be training,
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: be doing all the same stuff that I've been doing
• 1:48:36
  Speaker 1: right now starting now. Yeah, with that ski And it's
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: just so crazy how progressive it is though, and how
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: you have to stay on top of it and just
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: watch some guy probably on Instagram do something crazy and
• 1:48:50
  Speaker 1: be like, I don't know, it's just it's just so progressive.
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: It seems like, yeah, just with the tricks, you know,
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: or do you not feel like that, you know what
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: I'm saying. Yeah. Part of my early success was because
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: I was was that guy. I was the pioneer. I
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: was the one who was like just looking at the
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: sport and picking off things that nobody else was doing
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 1: and saying, I'm gonna do this. And that's why I
• 1:49:14
  Speaker 1: was able to win so many contests in a row
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: is because I was just like I had this on paper,
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 1: I had on a demandage at the start of the day,
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: so all I had to do is land it in
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: order to win. And so now I'm not in that
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: position anymore. I'm I'm kind of like looking at the
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: younger guys and watching I'm just all washed up. But like,
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: what's a trick? Like, what's what's the one of the
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 1: best halfpipe tricks? So right now, all the tricks with
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 1: you are are counted in degrees of rotation, So three
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: sixty degrees is one spin. And uh. In the last Olympics,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: I won because I did double corks, which means you're
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: flipping twice and spinning in four are different directions. So
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: I took off backwards to the right, did a double cork,
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 1: took off backwards to the left and did a double cork.
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 1: And those were ten eighties and twelve sixties. This time
• 1:50:10
  Speaker 1: around at the Olympics it was all fourties and sixteen twelve.
• 1:50:13
  Speaker 1: So it's like really like, yeah, people are now like
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 1: spinning stopping themselves right in some stuff and like landing
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: the opposite. Yeah, you call that a pretzel when you
• 1:50:26
  Speaker 1: when you spin one direction and then almost hold it
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: and bring it back the other directions. So that's in.
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: That's not in half five yet, but but it may.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: We may get to that point. But Paul's all kinds
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: of Paul is gonna be like shooting over his back
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: and ship, you know, I mean pretzel shooting. Uh, that's yeah.
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: I hadn't really thought of that part of it. It's
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 1: like it's not like this like thing that's always existed
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: and you just do it faster, right, And that's what
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: That's what it's like. In most of the traditional freestyle
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 1: events like aerials and moguls, for the most part, they're
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: doing the same tricks and just trying to do them better.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: But my sport is all about innovating and doing something
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: new that nobody else is doing and differentiating ourselves that way. Well,
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: man will be watching. I appreciate it. I'll be rooting
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 1: for you. Thanks you Now. I feel invested. I always
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 1: get interested. I can't get interested in sports. I know
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: someone that does it. Yeah, both of you, guys, I
• 1:51:24
  Speaker 1: feel like we're invested. Well, you guys gotta send me
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: a text when you decide or not. Paul, How does
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 1: the average Joe American UH get to watch like your
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: next big race or just biathon in general because there's
• 1:51:39
  Speaker 1: a streaming service or website that you recommend. Yeah, Um,
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: I think the easiest way is Peacock. Peacock generally has
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 1: all of the races live. If you have a VPN,
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: you can watch it on your euro Sport or if
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 1: you go to Bathlon World dot com they have live
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: broadcasting on there as well. Um. NBC Sports at times
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: does have it, um, but Peacock is generally the easiest,
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: or Eurovision as well, and that's the same for my sport.
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: To Peacock is a really good way. I think everybody
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: has peacock now because of the Olympics. Once the next
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: big showdown our first World Cup this next season. So
• 1:52:16
  Speaker 1: we just wrapped up. Um. I was in Norway a
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: week ago and that was our last World Cup of
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: the season and our next World Cup for to kick
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 1: off the three season will be in Sweden on November.
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: You've got a long break right now. I have. I
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: have about a month break and then I gotta get
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: back to training. You guys call it a shootout showdown?
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: What do you call it? World Cup? Okay, yeah, I
• 1:52:42
  Speaker 1: was gonna say, I think like a biathlon shootout or
• 1:52:45
  Speaker 1: showdown even like yeah, yeah, But in general, is the
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: like worldwide biathlne um trending up boards, like more people
• 1:52:54
  Speaker 1: getting involved in Yeah, for sure, it's a it's a
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: huge market. Um. I mean they signed some the IBU,
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: which is the International Bathlon Union, they signed some like
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: pretty hefty uh TV deals and they're broadcasting has all
• 1:53:07
  Speaker 1: been um with with Eurovision and euro Sport, which makes
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 1: it a lot more accessible for people to watch worldwide.
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: And as a result of that, it's been a growing,
• 1:53:18
  Speaker 1: a growing sport. What's the trend in the US, um
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: that I don't know, statistically, it's definitely growing, probably not
• 1:53:25
  Speaker 1: as much as other other countries like um, but the
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: IBU is definitely trying to target those, uh different markets
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: that aren't quite as big yet, like including Finland, which
• 1:53:36
  Speaker 1: is more historically across country nation. But yeah, they're definitely growing.
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: It seems as if just in Bozeman here I hear
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: more chat about the sport because that place up there's
• 1:53:47
  Speaker 1: that place up the road that does all the cross
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: got like cross cut, they got all the you go
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 1: down and people shooting away. Yeah, so cross Cut Mountain
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: Sports here in town. They just put in a brand
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: new thirty point range which is like a regulation size
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: range to hold international competitions in there. Currently starting a
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: fundraising campaign to build a full training center and lodging
• 1:54:10
  Speaker 1: everything else like that, which is super exciting. UM. So
• 1:54:13
  Speaker 1: it's gonna be a really sweet facility once once they
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: get that put in and so yeah, it's fear in Bozeman,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: shoul definitely definitely go check it out. Uh how do
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: people find you? Are you active on social media? I am?
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: I'm on Instagram, Paul Ti Schomer Um that's my main
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: my main one. Otherwise c h O M M E
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: er that's correct. And then I also have a website,
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 1: Paul Schomer dot com. I don't I don't update it
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: a whole lot, but they can drop your note. Yeah,
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 1: I think I mispronounced your name when I was introducing
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: you at the start show. Yeah, okay, what's what what's
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 1: the best way for people to find you? David? Same thing? Instagram? Uh,
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 1: my skiing page, just my personal skiing pages. Mr David Wise,
• 1:54:59
  Speaker 1: m R David Eyes. And then if you're interested in
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: the hunting aspect of things, I post that all on
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: wise o t G, which is short for Wise off
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: the Grid. And I'm on YouTube too. I vlogged here
• 1:55:09
  Speaker 1: and there. I'm not super consistent about it, but I
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: I do hunting an skiing stuff on the block. And
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 1: how did they find that? That's at Mr David Wise
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: as well? Mr David m R David Wise. Alright, well guys,
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 1: thanks for coming on, man, thanks for having us. I'm
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: pulling for your asses. Don't let me down. You thought
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 1: you felt pressure before. I can't wait to look back
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 1: on this and be like, you know, when Paul decided
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: was when he's sitting there and meat eater Bozeman, But
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: then he went on yeah, I think. I think. I mean, honestly,
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: even if we did it without the skis, we should
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: maybe try to do another little meat eater get together
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: so you could just like shoot that rifle. It's a
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: real joy. I'd like to shoot the rifle. Yeah, your kids,
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: I want I'm bummed I missed out. I don't want
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: to bring my kids because then what if they get
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: into it? It sounds more weekends away. Did they get
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: into it and it's a weekend thing. I mean it
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: could be a weekday thing too. It's here Bozeman. You know,
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 1: it's not like you gonna be traveling places. I guess
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: you could do that or something. They got weekend programs,
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: get programs and stuff, so you're super close. Tuesday's Wednesday's
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: about it? All right, guys, thanks for coming off