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Episode 3 Austin Down Yonder · Stories from the shore

0:06
SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back to uh stories from the shore.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: We are finally in a van down by the river, sort of.
0:13
SPEAKER_00: River adjacent.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: We're pretty close to the river.
0:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh once again, I'm Jeremiah.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: This week I have Austin Strayer with me.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: Feel free to say hi, Austin.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: Hi, Jeremiah.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: Um so we recorded the last couple from the house, which is over there.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then Austin is here.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: He's our first guest.
0:32
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna uh like give some stories and give kind of his background.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: But this seemed like a great opportunity to test everything in the van.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: So fingers crossed, this all works.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: It seems like it's working.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: Uh if you see me staring at this thing, it's because this is the thing that says it's working.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: Kind of.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm like 80% confident on how all this works, so we'll see.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Um but I guess to start, uh Austin, I guess technically he didn't teach me to kayak to start.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: His brother did.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, my brother taught a lot of us.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: So we kind of all started at the Boy Scout camp.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I don't want to get too in deep into it, but I think from just a general perspective, Austin is sort of an integral part of the Midwest paddling scene, both through the scout camp, which I'm sure he'll touch on, and then his uh, I guess we'll call them antics after that.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, antics is a good way to put it.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, do you want to do you want to sort of give a feel free to give a brief background and then we can sort of go into story time after that if you'd like.
1:34
SPEAKER_01: So my my background, it's the same thing.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: I I learned from my brother at the Boy Scout camp, and I I grew up watching like my brother and his friends be these be these cool whitewater cockers that were older than me, and I you know, it was all about playboating back then.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: So that's that's what kind of sucked me in.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: And I wanted to be cool, like Brandon.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, I okay, before we get too far beyond this, I have two questions.
1:58
SPEAKER_00: First of all, do you know how your brother decided to do this?
2:02
SPEAKER_01: One of one of the older kids in our Boy Scout troop did it and was an instructor at Boy Scout Camp who Chad got Scott Lardnoise in it, and then Scott got Brandon into it, and Brandon got Scott's younger brother Mike into it, and they kind of snowballed from there.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: But really, he got hooked from the from camp.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, 100%.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: Well, and Scott Lardnoyes used to be a he was a junior Olympic slalom paddler.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: So like he was the coolest kid in school, basically, for from the Whitewater world, and then he got into playboating, and like then everybody wanted a playboat.
2:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that it felt like kind of the heyday of what I think many people consider playboating now.
2:43
SPEAKER_00: It's mostly we're talking about like whole boating pretty much at the time.
2:46
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: Also taking your playboat down everything.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: Everything.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: They my brother never has never owned a creek boat or anything but a playboat.
2:56
SPEAKER_01: Actually, his Monstar, actually, I sold his Monstar and bought a better one, is still in my garage.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: That was the last boat he ever bought.
3:04
SPEAKER_01: The first boat I got from Brandon, I got a Wave Sport X.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Like, and that's what I learned in.
3:11
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, not a good boat to learn in.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: A lot of my early failures was because friends, like, well, that's your boat now, so you should paddle it.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: My first time taking Whitewater Merit Badge.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: So many swims.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
3:23
SPEAKER_00: I mentioned that uh when I was talking to Kaylee on the first podcast, that one of my first creek boats was the mutant.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I remember that mutant.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: Equally terrible, also terrible, but like Brandon used to tell me, like, Brandon went to Michigan Tech, so he was up by all that big water in UP, and he somehow got in with this group of like old, old boaters up there that paddled like responses and shit on all the hard whitewater in the UP and boated with them a few times.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: And this he had like a dry top and neoprene pants.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: He didn't have a dry suit.
3:54
SPEAKER_01: None of these, most of these guys just paddled neoprene.
3:56
SPEAKER_01: And Brennan's like, yeah, I went to run the silver and I showed up in the project.
4:02
SPEAKER_01: He said, The the project is not a chose choice boat to run the silver in.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: The silver is like class four, I would say it's solidly class four, probably.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: And there's you know, class five kind of in the middle of it, but the nature of the run is like I don't know, 200 CFS.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: I mean it's it's it's rocks, yeah.
4:23
SPEAKER_00: We're on rocks, and and when it gets too high, like the good rapids go out.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: It's a really fun run.
4:28
SPEAKER_00: It's great, it's too, it's pretty steep, really, really, really, really fun, great in a creek boat.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: But in a flat bottomed playboat, I think I would just be mad.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Brandon said it was, I believe his words were he's like, I don't know what I was thinking.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: That is not the choice boat for that run.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: It's also like pretty narrow.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: But there's a lot of times when you hit those like pocket holes.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: I just I don't think the project would have been fun on it.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: He he said there was a couple beat downs.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't it also only runs in the snow, basically.
4:58
SPEAKER_01: So yeah, he said he hiked in in Neoprene Booties, and it was he hit.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: I think that was kind of the end of Brandon's like creek intro into creek boating.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: Apparently he ran some stuff, he borrowed a habitat from a guy up there and ran some stuff, but never heard the full story on that.
5:14
SPEAKER_01: But that Scott Lardnoise, it was the same thing.
5:17
SPEAKER_01: That's that's all they did.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's all they had, so that's what they ran.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: No, that that totally checks out.
5:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, actually, I forgot one more thing before we get too far ahead of ourselves.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: You gotta give us your best whoop yeah.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Whoop-yah.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's pretty weak, but I guess we'll take it.
5:32
SPEAKER_01: I I'm sticking with that one.
5:34
SPEAKER_01: I feel like if I try harder, it's gonna be worse.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I I sort of sidetracked you.
5:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh got into it because of your brother at the Boy Scout camp.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
5:42
SPEAKER_00: And then learned from him.
5:43
SPEAKER_00: Got the you said a Z, E, Y?
5:46
SPEAKER_01: He I had an X, X, which is just a triple X, but not as slicey.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: But like my first time taking whitewater in that, I swam so many times, and then on the third day, we were paddling from Herbs down to camp.
6:01
SPEAKER_01: We were dog walk on the wolf, and I flipped over there trying to ferry, and I smoked my face on a rock.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: And like pulled out, pulled my skirt, like stood up, and my brother said I stood up and my face was covered in blood.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: Luckily, Brandon had paddled a canoe that day, and he paddled me out, and I didn't do whitewater anymore that week.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: Paddled you out in the canoe?
6:24
SPEAKER_01: In the front of the canoe down to camp.
6:26
SPEAKER_01: Luckily, we were we were pulling out at camp.
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you were you put in above, yeah, yeah.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: So I came back a few weeks later and ended up doing whitewater again in a dagger response, which is it's a sus.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: But I had some fun, but I kept somehow I kept wanting to come back, and which is amazing to me, because then I came back for like Whitewater weekends.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: The first Whitewater peeking in X.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: X also had no friend bulkhead because Brandon's legs were long, my legs are not, so there was nothing in the front of it, so I just jammed my knees up in the fibers.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: I got pinned like right below lower bridge because I leaned the wrong way into a rock, and like Brad Shankey came and saved me, but I was like, what the fuck am I doing?
7:04
SPEAKER_01: That's the same weekend I got I uh got a concussion at Gilmore's and they had to walk me out.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: So like the fact that I keep kept coming back, like I think about this now and I was like, what the fuck was I doing?
7:16
SPEAKER_00: And this is what got you hooked.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, apparently.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: I just want to be cool, like Brandon, and I just So that was I I mean that was kind of like you starting.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: What what was your did you have to like transition into going from I'm paddling because of my brother to I'm paddling because of me?
7:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I started I started making some friends in friends in in sport.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: It helped being at Boy Scout camps, like I already knew Whitewater when I started working there, so I started running doing all the tube test safety boating, and that's what spending all the time on the flatwater and stuff and like having some of my 16-year-old friends who weren't into whitewater drag them in with me.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: So I got Chris O'Brien into it.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: Collins Collins came up at the same time as me.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: Um once we started playboating like without my brother and thinking we were cool, we were all about it.
8:04
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: And we just so fun.
8:07
SPEAKER_01: We just got dumber from there.
8:08
SPEAKER_00: How long did your brother teach for?
8:11
SPEAKER_01: So I know, let's see.
8:12
SPEAKER_01: I think he started teaching in like 2003 and he taught through must have been like 2008, 2009.
8:20
SPEAKER_01: No, couldn't have been 2000, it had to be 2007 because 2008 I took over Whitewater.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: And how long did you teach for?
8:28
SPEAKER_01: Oh 12 summers probably.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh my might more or less than that.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean I'm still teaching at the Boy Scout camp, I think I had 10 summers there.
8:38
SPEAKER_00: So how many I guess I'm just trying to picture how many people do you think that you have first of all introduced into Whitewater, but also how many people do you think that you were able to like make latch on?
8:50
SPEAKER_01: Get to stick.
8:51
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'd I'd have to say quite a few.
8:53
SPEAKER_01: Like pretty much any kid that worked on aquatics at Gardner Dam bought their own whitewater boat that like the first summer they worked on aquatics, and a lot of them still paddle.
9:06
SPEAKER_01: Like Chris Collins.
9:09
SPEAKER_01: Will actually bought his boat before.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: He has kind of the same story as you, but then I just kind of latched onto Will at a Whitewater weekend and he just never left.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: But um, like Drake is the same way too, yeah.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: And a bunch of those kids.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: So I guess it kind of an interesting follow-up question, and this sort of stems from some talks that EJ used to give on Whitewater.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: I I'm not I'm sure he still does, knowing him.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh where how do you distinguish people between just a kayaker and a whitewater kayaker?
9:42
SPEAKER_01: You know, and I've talked about this at length with other people.
9:45
SPEAKER_01: It is whitewater kayakers are really their own breed, and usually once you get into it, like normal kayaking, you're just like, yeah, okay.
9:57
SPEAKER_01: It's it just seems mundane to you.
9:59
SPEAKER_01: Like we all still do it, but like I think there's that sense of adrenaline with a whitewater boater that we're we're always chasing and enjoying it.
10:07
SPEAKER_01: It's just it's less of a leisure sport.
10:11
SPEAKER_00: So that's interesting.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: So you think you think of whitewater boaters as a different thing than just a kayaker.
10:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yes and no.
10:18
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's definitely some that cross into both realms, but like we're we are such a niche sport already.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: That's really funny.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: I I sort of so I I heard EJ say this a long time ago, and he said that there isn't like anybody that's paddling a kayak is a kayaker.
10:36
SPEAKER_00: There's not a such thing as a whitewater kayaker, right?
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Everybody's got this limit to what they feel comfortable on.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that doesn't matter how good anybody ever gets, we all have this same limit.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: And he sort of blamed the industry's idea of kayaking's decline, or whitewater specifically's decline, on the fact that we try to categorize people into whitewater boaters and non-whitewater boaters.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And I sort of like his take on that.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: I I think that uh I think that if everybody just considered themselves a kayaker, uh, we could see people uh able to experience a lot more things, and I think that we could see the industry maybe be able to branch out a little bit.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: I mean think about how many people you've seen that own uh like a crossover, like a katana or whatever, and they're just you know ripping around on lakes mostly, but like here we have so many small, small uh like trout streams just because of the nature of the area we're in.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: That boat makes way more sense than like 90% of kayaks made.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, those like and like the group of paddlers down by Madison that run those crossovers, like they do, they have like a handful of whitewater runs they do down there.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: But we see them come up in boat here like a couple times a year, and it's it's really fun to see them, but it's also the more they come up here, I have seen them transition from that crossover to Oh, I think I'm gonna buy a half slice when we're just like, yeah, you should buy a half slice, that's what you want.
12:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does feel a little bit like being a dealer sometimes, I guess.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, especially me who owns 25-ish boats right now, give or take, and marketplace doesn't help that because I'll see an I'll see like a Liquid Logic CR and they have it listed for like 200 bucks, and I'm like, I should offer that guy a hundred bucks for that.
12:23
SPEAKER_01: Then I'm like, what do I need a CR for?
12:25
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, CR was pretty fun.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: That's funny.
12:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, so you you taught a Boy Scout Camp for a long time, sort of transition.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: Anything else from your paddling history that you think is super relevant?
12:37
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I've done honestly, what really, really transitioned me, especially towards instructing, was when I was 15 turning 16, I went with Dave Benton and a bunch of his his crew to do ACA training at NOC for a week.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: It was over my spring break in school, and like be able to experience a river that's not the wolf in other kayakers, like that was a that was a changing moment for me.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Um going to the southeast for the first time.
13:10
SPEAKER_01: It was first big trip, like without my anybody from my family with me.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Do you guys just do NOC?
13:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we did the classes through NOC, but they they take you on a bunch of rivers.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, what did I do the first time?
13:24
SPEAKER_01: I know there's Takasiji, part of the Chituga, the Nanta Hala, obviously.
13:28
SPEAKER_01: Some of those, a lot of those, you know, entry-level rivers in the southeast.
13:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, that was my first experience down there.
13:36
SPEAKER_01: That's first time I ever paddled the Jackson, and I re- I was looking for a new boat at the time to get out of the X.
13:43
SPEAKER_01: And like everybody wanted a fun back then.
13:45
SPEAKER_01: It was a pretty popular boat.
13:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I remember.
13:48
SPEAKER_01: And I got into a forfun and I was like, yep, this is the boat I'm gonna buy.
13:51
SPEAKER_01: That's funny.
13:52
SPEAKER_01: Uh I think did EJ design the X?
13:54
SPEAKER_01: Do you know?
13:55
SPEAKER_01: EJ did design the X.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna say you just went from EJ to EJ.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: That's fun.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, pretty much.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: Um actually that blue Jackson Fourfun is still in front of the cabin with a big crack down the bottom.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you got some of those.
14:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we get I got a few of those.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: Um cool.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Anything else about your uh leg paddling history that you think is relevant?
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, we had a little bit of technical difficulty, but we're back.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Um so you where were we?
14:20
SPEAKER_00: We're talking about the easy whitewater weekends.
14:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh, whitewater weekends.
14:26
SPEAKER_01: Those are always a trip.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, okay.
14:29
SPEAKER_00: So I think that that kind of gives a pretty good background.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Where how would you describe yourself as a whitewater paddler today?
14:34
SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know, I kind of I instruct a lot, it which I really, really I do enjoy teaching.
14:43
SPEAKER_01: Um it's something that keeps bringing me back, but also teaching makes me try to be better because I can't suck showing people like if I suck and show people, and then I'm like, oh, I can't be teaching them that.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: That's not good.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: It it promotes me to be better.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Usually some of the best peddling I do, it's showing somebody else down.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: So because it forces me to try hard.
15:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean I I enjoy playboating, but I think like river running is probably one of my favorite things.
15:17
SPEAKER_01: But the last last couple of years since I've gotten back into it after having kids and stuff like that.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: Um playboarding has become more more fun again.
15:26
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm getting full slice curious, which which is a whole another problem.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Full slice curious.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: That's one thing to call yourself.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Um cool.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Any favorite rivers that you want to mention?
15:41
SPEAKER_01: I mean, the wolf is always gonna be one of my favorites.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: That's that's my home river.
15:45
SPEAKER_01: The river a lot of us grew up on such a good river to learn on, is rocky and boat destroying as it is.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Um I the Akoe has to be has to be still one of my favorites.
15:56
SPEAKER_01: That has one of my best memories of a trip.
16:00
SPEAKER_00: Um might be a hot take, but I think that the wolf far less likely to break boats than like giant stuff with less water.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: The reason you're breaking bolts on the wolf is because you've run short three at low water so many times.
16:15
SPEAKER_01: The your boat has just been eroded away.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
16:18
SPEAKER_01: Because there's so much granite, especially low water.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: Like you are scraping everywhere.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and even the gravel like just feels abrasive sometimes.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah, 100%.
16:27
SPEAKER_00: Or like the sand.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: Um so you mentioned the Ekoe.
16:33
SPEAKER_00: This is stories from the shore, so we do have to kind of tell a story.
16:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, do you want to tell a story from the Ekoe?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Do you have a better um story in mind?
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Like, like we were talking about early.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: I think one of my that whole South, like, I had two big southeast trips when I was in college.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, both with some of the same people and some different people.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: Actually, Anthony and Chris were at both of them.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: Actually, so is Jeremiah.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: Um, there's kind of two stories within those two, but well, so you gotta set the stage.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: Where were we?
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Or where were you?
17:06
SPEAKER_01: So the second time we went down to southeast, we were staying at we had stayed at Airbnb's, and this was early in Airbnb time for both of them.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: But it was me and Chris has gotten an Airbnb.
17:18
SPEAKER_01: We're in my shitty Volvo driving to Southeast.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: We were just gonna try to catch some boaters down there.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: Um, it's when me and Chris had spring break.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, well then we found out Anthony and Jeremiah were coming a like a day after us, and we're like, oh yeah, let's hit some stuff.
17:32
SPEAKER_00: So also other Jeremiah, right?
17:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, Jeremiah Euclide.
17:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, who no longer boats, actually bought all of his gear this summer.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: Um so we go down southeast, we're gonna try to hit some stuff.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: Um it was kind of the low at that time of year.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, but we got on the Nantela first thing, and then we'd wanted to do two section four.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: Well classic.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: Classic.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Awesome run.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: We had done section three.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: I'd actually hurt two years before that hurt my back on section three.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I'm like, I was like landed on rock or something.
18:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I ran like five foot and landed like ass first on a rock and like impacted my um that's actually not related to this story.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: So we go to run the chituga and we get we get going late, get to the chugo late.
18:16
SPEAKER_01: We don't get on the chituga till like one o'clock.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: And we had a guide run us.
18:21
SPEAKER_01: Or no, we didn't have a guide that time.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: So we got started late, whatever, right out of the gate.
18:27
SPEAKER_01: We go into bull sluice, I hit first rap.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: First rabbit.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: That's a put in, right?
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Is that we put in?
18:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, put in right there, go to run the top of bull sluice.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: I come into that, I should have teed up to it, but I kind of came into it at angle sideways and dropped into that hole.
18:42
SPEAKER_01: And I this is my first time like boating all year.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Hadn't really boated much the year before.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: I swim.
18:50
SPEAKER_01: I try to roll up, I swim, and I'm like, oh, what a great start to the day to have a swim.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: Chris O'Brien comes right behind me, also swims.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Oh, two in a row.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: And I was like, oh, this is draping up to be a great day.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Apparently, I used to I used to have the same problem when I was younger.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: I would not paddle good until I swam once.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: And there is boaters that can attest to this.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that's gonna be relatable for some people.
19:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I got the swim out of the way.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Um, I actually had a dry suit at that point, thank god.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: Um, so we start going.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, come to find out later.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: The Chituo is we didn't know this.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: Anthony Collins, God bless his heart, was guiding us.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: Not always the most reliable guide.
19:33
SPEAKER_01: Um, but we had one of those like waterproof like river maps kind of telling us where to go.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Collins, me, I had one, Collins had one.
19:41
SPEAKER_01: Collins kind of knew where to go.
19:44
SPEAKER_01: But we were having a great day after our swims.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Like we styled pretty much everything, and then we're coming up to crack in a rock, and I'm just at this point trusting Anthony to tell us where not I stopped looking at the the map quite a ways in, and well, we all run cracking the rock, goes fine.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: If memory serves, this is like a it's kind of an S turn, and then there's uh like kind of a little pocket on the left, and then the there's like kind of a pocket and like a pile of rocks on the right.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, something like that.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: So the you can either run it left or right.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: You are not supposed to run middle, middle's a sieve.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: Like, and from what I'm told, like Ken is a pretty nasty sieve, too.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: So we run it, seems to go fine.
20:30
SPEAKER_01: I don't think we scouted that either.
20:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, we only scouted two rapids on that whole thing.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: Probably the last one and the first one.
20:37
SPEAKER_01: Uh only only scouted Bullsloice because it was that to put in.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: We did scout the last one, and then there was one in between there we scouted.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: So we all run crack in the rock, we run fine, and we all get to the bottom of it and kind of beat back up.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: And Anthony's like, he's like, Yeah, so I'm I fucked up.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: We're like, what happened?
20:58
SPEAKER_01: He's like, so you look back up there, you see how there's left line, right line, middle line.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: We're like, yeah, middle line looks fine.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: He's like, middle line's a sieve, like a bad one.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I look at the map and it says, like, on the map, do not go this way.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: Danger, sieve, you possibly can die.
21:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm like, how did we run that fine?
21:22
SPEAKER_01: He's like, gives me the gives me the shrug.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, whatever, we keep motoring.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: We have an awesome day that day, until we're scouting the last rapid, and I bought one allergene full of water, and I'm so dehydrated, like I can't unclamp my hands from my paddle.
21:38
SPEAKER_01: And like, so we actually end up the last one was so big, it was a big hole, and we walked around it.
21:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when it's high, it's like kind of a nasty hole, too.
21:47
SPEAKER_00: It's like kind of a boof, and then the hole is sort of yeah, sockum dog gets mean.
21:51
SPEAKER_00: They like kind of land in it.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: Um, a lot of times people just like so we get to the end, and Chituga section four has just the best paddle out.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Because it's a two and a half mile lake paddle.
22:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's fully reservoir.
22:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's it's the worst.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And my hands are just locked around my paddle.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: I am dead and dehydrated.
22:09
SPEAKER_01: The sun is going down.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: Like by the time we got to the top of that boat ramp, like we didn't have any more light.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: And we're like, ooh, maybe cut that one a little bit close.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, luckily, I don't know.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: I I feel like luckily reservoir paddling in the dark would have been fine.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that one we probably would have been fine.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: It didn't help that we paddled into a headway the whole way either.
22:29
SPEAKER_00: I feel like everyone's story involves ending paddling into a headwind the whole way.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: Every time.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: But we we get out, and that's when I had that uh the shit box blah blah blah, which was the finest of cars, and we're like, I had a roof box, and I just had J Stackers, and we couldn't get the fourth boat on the J Stacker, and I'm like, well, we're just gonna strap it to the roof box.
22:58
SPEAKER_01: So we just we just strapped Jeremiah's burn, he had a burn to directly on top of that roof box.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I can picture it.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: There's a picture of that.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: I will submit that picture.
23:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, but it cracks me up every time I see it.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: And then we throw all our we had thrown all our gear in the roof box and we drive out, and the road out of to section four is a a shitty gravel road, and I decide that I am now a rally driver and I drive the Volvo hard out of this.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, the next day we go to do the green, and we are gonna do the upper green, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to do the narrows yet, and I'm honestly glad I didn't.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: But I feel like there's a lot of people that are like class three boaters that got down the this would have been the old green.
23:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't the new green, I don't know.
23:43
SPEAKER_01: It was the old green.
23:44
SPEAKER_01: I was kind of on the fence about doing the narrows, so we did the upper, and those roads are also so also kind of shitty.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
23:53
SPEAKER_01: About a hundred switchbacks to the bottom of the green.
23:56
SPEAKER_01: But we had an additional boater with us by the name of Shredder.
24:01
SPEAKER_01: Shredder was with us, Aaron.
24:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: When in a in a single raft.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm surprised he let you get off.
24:07
SPEAKER_00: He usually is like, you got this, and like just talk people into everything.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: 100%.
24:11
SPEAKER_01: He he kind of gave us you guys could handle it.
24:14
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't think after, and I had made the mistake of reading like the river guidebook to the green narrows, which makes it sound terrifying.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: He's an awesome dude.
24:23
SPEAKER_00: This is uh Aaron Erdrich.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Um we sort of jokingly called him Shredder, I guess still to this day.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: People that's how I knew him.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know his real name for a long time.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Everybody's like, yo, yeah, go boat with Shredder.
24:35
SPEAKER_01: And Shredder was Shredder was he's awesome.
24:38
SPEAKER_01: He's awesome to boat with.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: Not a great person to guide you down things if you're a kayaker.
24:44
SPEAKER_01: My favorite beta was he's like, yeah, you just do some weird leaning shit.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I could see him saying that, but I also feel like uh when he said I I haven't paddled with him in a while, but I I feel like whenever he told me stuff, I would believe him.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: You know, if he'd be like, you should really look at this, or like you'll be fine.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: I've I've I don't know if it was just his confidence or his aura or the fact that he was like hiking through slush with his raft behind him in the river.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:11
SPEAKER_00: But just I it was always very believable and I always felt like uh safe, yeah.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: Where it was kind of an underhut and you just kind of lean into it and then it shoots you out.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And his advice of just do some weird leaning shit, it was not wrong.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: It it was right.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: You do some weird leaning shit and it shoots you out.
25:29
SPEAKER_00: And it's funny from a raft perspective, it's like not something that he has to do at all.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: No.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: So I can I can totally get why he would say it that way too, which is funny.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: But I decided to hike out of the put in for the green narrows, and let me tell you, I would have rather Wait like all the way up the road?
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, I would have rather ran the green narrows and just got my ass whipped than ever hike that out again.
25:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh, and guess what boat I had?
25:56
SPEAKER_01: Large Karma.
25:57
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's a heavy boat, dude.
25:59
SPEAKER_00: It's tough because I feel like on the green, that's such a like so many people have gotten down the green that you would have been like, oh, they got down, I'll be fine.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you just needed like a couple people to like to be there, you know, or to to just say like, oh, you can hike everything, you know.
26:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if we would have had a different different crew besides me, Jeremiah, youclide, Chris, who like Chris had Chris usually both very well, but like we were both not in our prime for this this season, so maybe hike out too.
26:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, me and Chris hiked out.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Also, you guys both swam the day before.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was I was not ready to run run the green at that point, but that hike out was the was the absolute worst.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: So then we picked those guys up at the bottom, paved, yeah, paved.
26:47
SPEAKER_01: It was not paved, it had just it had just rained the day before.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: It was a muddy hill climb out.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: So we picked the boys up, and it's kind of unlucky that nobody was it a weekend?
26:59
SPEAKER_01: No, it was during the week.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: But it was it was an awesome trip.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: We tried to hit the teleco the next day, and the teleco was like the lowest I'd ever seen it to the point where it was like almost unrunnable.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: I've only run the teleco, I think a couple times.
27:15
SPEAKER_01: See, we ran the teleco the trip before the year before, and that's when we were down there.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: Were you down were you with you weren't with our group?
27:22
SPEAKER_00: That was when No, we were I was with the other group, but we ran it like that day.
27:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Or the next day or whatever.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was when we had me, Willie, Jeremiah, Uclide, Chris, and Collins, and Angela.
27:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Alex May is with us, and then Angela came with us.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Como?
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: She came.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what her last name is now.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, uh, I can't remember off hand either.
27:42
SPEAKER_01: But she came with this group of rowdy idiot boys.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: God, I think I ran the do you remember Jeff Barden?
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: He like knew some people, uh, he was guiding or something, and uh I just ran the um the West Fork of the Talk with him, and I think she just like joined our group, if I remember right.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: So that was the s that was the spring before she went to work with girls at play.
28:07
SPEAKER_01: And like Angela that when we ran the Akoi that trip, Angela was a trooper.
28:13
SPEAKER_01: I had never seen anybody do more roles than Angela.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: And she just powered through it.
28:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, she's gonna swim this time after roll like number 15.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Nope.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: Came up every time.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: That's so it's so cool to see people that latch on like that too.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: And she said if she she I know she appreciates that that trip as much as we should hang out with us idiots.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: Um like then she rolled right into girls that play and then then she came back, she's better than all of us.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was that that uh that trip that I saw her on the I guess it wasn't really a trip, but the on the West Fork that talk, she was killing it.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: That was a lot of fun.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: I remember I think that she ended up I don't think that sh we put on at the same time.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: I think that we ran into her like in the middle somewhere because somebody got out the scout and it was taking forever.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: And then at some point we were like, let's go, and this weird thing has happened to me a handful of times where you put on a river, and like the group that you end up with just changes really dramatically for some reason.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of hard to explain.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: I think that a lot of people that have done the golly can relate to this.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: But it's happened to me in a few places where you like put on with your crew, and then all of a sudden, like three of your guys end up paddling with people that you don't know, and then like a handful of people join you, and then you know, by the time you get to the bottom, uh, you end up with a whole group of friends that you never expected.
29:37
SPEAKER_01: I've had that with a couple of different rivers with groups where there's a lot of people that put on at one time or put around around the same time, and also no, you're all back at the put in together.
29:46
SPEAKER_00: Right.
29:47
SPEAKER_00: So you paddled you said you didn't paddle the teleco.
29:50
SPEAKER_00: What else did you guys look at on that trip?
29:52
SPEAKER_01: We were supposed to paddle the Nola Chucky and some.
29:55
SPEAKER_01: I don't remember what happened with the Nola Chucky we padded.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: That might have been low too.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what the problem was.
30:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, and then when you I feel like those are similar drainage.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: When you went down with Will and Chris, and me and Collins and Derek were headed back.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: Isn't that the time you guys ran the Nola Chucky in the snow?
30:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was like a blizzard.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: That was kind of a wild experience.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: I think it was Will's car that we just had like handed the keys over to the guy, and we're like, please don't crash.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: That was uh that was definitely an experience as a whatever so when me and Collins and Derek went down there, we didn't have a second vehicle, and we looked at like renting a car and stuff, and I'm like, nah, we're just gonna get down there and we'll find someone to shuttle us.
30:36
SPEAKER_01: It was fine.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: And everywhere we went on that trip, we found someone to run shuttle for us.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that kind of works out as a classic.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I wonder if we did the pigeon on that trip.
30:43
SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the same place.
30:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that's what it was.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: I've done the pigeon a couple times.
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, actually, me and my now wife, Kayla, were at we stayed in Pigeon Forge with her family, who not whitewater kayakers, but we had driven my truck down there, and I said, Well, Kayla, we're we're going to southeast.
31:04
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, I'll I'll just I'll just put the creek boat on top, just in case.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: And we went rafting on the pigeon with her family.
31:13
SPEAKER_01: And the raft guide we had was also a kayaker, and we were talking kayak.
31:17
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Do I have to wear all this dumb rafting shit?
31:20
SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Wait, are you the guy with the karma in the parking lot?
31:24
SPEAKER_01: I was like, Yeah, he's like, No, you don't need to worry about it.
31:26
SPEAKER_01: And so we got to talking, and then he's like, Hey, that's my last trip for today.
31:31
SPEAKER_01: Do you want to come boat the pigeon with us again?
31:33
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's cool.
31:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I went out with them guy.
31:36
SPEAKER_01: Kill wasn't happy that I like sent her with her family to go do touristy shit, and I just bailed and went and boated, but it was worth every penny.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: They were that was a fun crew to go with.
31:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, that was that was the first time I'd ever gotten on the pigeon, and it was a riot.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Southeast is a cool place.
31:53
SPEAKER_00: Uh I guess a couple follow-up questions to your trip to the Southeast.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Did you do you feel like you learned anything from the trip?
32:01
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was probably my fifth time down there, and I learned something new every time I'm down there.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: What do you think you learned from from the like the experience you had with Chris and the and um and that specific crew?
32:15
SPEAKER_00: I was gonna go through all the names, but he was the one that I can remember that was on that one specifically.
32:19
SPEAKER_01: Chris and Anthony have been at almost every South Trip out.
32:23
SPEAKER_01: Anthony has been on the last three Southeast trips, he's been there, and Chris was for there for two.
32:27
SPEAKER_01: So is Jeremiah actually.
32:29
SPEAKER_01: Um like I rely that I can rely on the people I boat with, and there's always you're always able to find voters down there.
32:37
SPEAKER_01: So no matter when or who you be down there with, you can always there's always something to paddle when you're down there.
32:42
SPEAKER_01: Such an such an inclusive community down there too.
32:45
SPEAKER_01: If you really don't know what to do.
32:46
SPEAKER_01: You definitely can feel like it, yeah.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: If you don't know what to do, if you stop at at NOC, like you will find someone that's gonna boat somewhere.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, or you send a couple texts out to people and all of a sudden you're like, oh, I'm meeting four people that I never met before.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: Or if you go like your you just show up at a at like a class five run and just talk to somebody and they end up being like, no, we should go upstream, you're gonna run this whole run with us.
33:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, that's typical.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: And I it it's funny how connected I feel in the paddling community.
33:16
SPEAKER_01: Like, I a lot of people come for come to me for things like even at Wa.
33:22
SPEAKER_01: Like, but like heck, I tried to buy a small Zen a couple weeks ago, and you know, I look at the marketplace listing, then I look at the lady, oh 49 friends in common, and I said, Oh, it's weird we haven't we haven't met before.
33:39
SPEAKER_01: Or I bought that dagger C1.
33:42
SPEAKER_01: I have met that guy that I bought it from before and voted with him, yeah.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: And he's I noticed that he had a Volkswagen van.
33:50
SPEAKER_01: That was the first thing I noticed.
33:51
SPEAKER_01: And I asked Chris Larson was friends with him, so I asked Chris, I'm like, hey, do you know this guy?
33:55
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Yeah, he's the old town rep for up there, and uh got there and I'm like, hey, we've boated together before.
34:03
SPEAKER_01: He's like, you know, I thought so, but I wasn't sure.
34:06
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, seems like I know everybody in this in this industry and community.
34:10
SPEAKER_00: It's funny how that can that can definitely go that way.
34:13
SPEAKER_00: I think it helps that the community is pretty small, yeah.
34:15
SPEAKER_00: And you kind of have to rely on each other so the people who are are reliable end up kind of like jumping their way to the top and their name gets out kind of fast.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
34:25
SPEAKER_00: I was uh I it's kind of relatable.
34:27
SPEAKER_00: I was in my in episode one we were kind of talking about how over time my role on trips and stuff has kind of changed.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: And uh I think I'm curious to see if that part sort of changes for me.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: Cause I feel like I've been on a lot of trips where I just like showed up and like ten people that I didn't know were there, yeah, or you know, somebody was like, hey, we're gonna meet this person that I just like randomly found online or something, or like this friend of a friend said something, and I'm curious to see how much that transitions from like other people doing that to sort of people specifically um talking to me.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And I can I can already feel it to some extent.
35:07
SPEAKER_00: We've done a couple trips now where we left with you know just one car or whatever, and we just showed up and uh I like happen to know somebody who knew somebody.
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh so that's that's kind of an exciting step for me too.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's funny, I I get that a lot, especially with because I am in charge of all the safety boaters for Wolfman.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: And every year that I officially take over the safety boat coordinator, they get mad because they don't like the way I do it.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: And it's because most of the kayakers don't know until the last minute whether they're gonna show up or not.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: Don't like the way you do it, don't like the way that Whitewater boaters do it, is literally what they're upset about.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: That is the problem.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: They're like, well, we need a list of names and how many people are coming.
35:43
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you'll get it on Friday.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: Um probably maybe, and more people will show up after that, but like it's always really funny to me because I I hit up pretty much every boater I know for safety boaters for the Wolfman, and how the groups like it's a different group every every year, and how it always intermingles a lot of like kayaking groups, and it's really funny to see those groups interact sometime because they all come up and hang out at the cabin on Friday night, and you know, Lemke's there and we shoot flare guns and can launchers and stuff.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: Cannons canon was broken this year because I haven't fixed it yet.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: Um but like it like Ben WK came to Wolfman this year, and that was his first time ever really like hanging out with our group overnight, and he he was he was having a riot, you know, and then we have my mom there who is somehow just supports our shenanigans, which is which is amazing.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, in the best way, yeah, in the best way.
36:44
SPEAKER_01: Last year when she said, Hey, it's 10 30 guys, you can't be shooting flares off at 10 30 at night.
36:50
SPEAKER_01: There's somebody up in the campground, and uh the person on the campground is one of my buddies from camp.
36:55
SPEAKER_01: And I asked them later, I'm like, Did you hear the flares we were shooting off last night?
36:59
SPEAKER_01: You guys were shooting off flares and you didn't come get me?
37:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:03
SPEAKER_00: That's awesome.
37:04
SPEAKER_00: What uh what other things do you think that kayaking sort of given back to you?
37:09
SPEAKER_01: Um I mean we talked a lot about how much you've given to the I mean it it's given me like probably the most solid friend group I've ever ever had over the years.
37:20
SPEAKER_01: Um a lot of these guys I hang out with and spend out with outside of kayaking.
37:25
SPEAKER_01: Like you know most of them, Chris O'Brien.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: Which for a long time they thought me and Chris were packaged a package deal.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: Whenever I showed up without Chris or Chris showed up, well, me, the first question is where's Austin?
37:37
SPEAKER_01: Where's Chris?
37:38
SPEAKER_01: We don't want to Chris okay?
37:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, is Chris okay?
37:41
SPEAKER_01: No, he has four kids.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: Um it it's really given me a a solid friend group and people I a lot of people I rely on, even outside of kayaking.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: Um it's also given me a hobby I spend way too much money on.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
37:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:59
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think that uh it's I think a lot of people will be able to relate to the um to just like the close-knit relationships you build.
38:07
SPEAKER_00: I always kind of wonder if it's just like trauma bonding that sort of like blinds our ability to like see flaws in people, or if it's genuinely that the people that like to be kayakers are just better people than on average.
38:24
SPEAKER_01: We're usually it it's kayaking's a pretty good group of people, and it's funny my mom has talked about this for a lot of years because she sees like my brother and his friends from camp and from kayaking are still a close-knit group of friends, they don't really boat anymore.
38:39
SPEAKER_01: Though me and Chris will never give up on that dream of getting them all and to do one last short three lap.
38:45
SPEAKER_00: Um you gotta say your site's bigger.
38:48
SPEAKER_00: I want to see your brother swim.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, dude, I'd pay good money to see that, dude.
38:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so last time this leads me into a pretty funny story, actually.
38:56
SPEAKER_01: Last time I saw my brother boat, um, I invited him to come boat with me and Chris and Collins and Will at Wassau.
39:03
SPEAKER_00: Um at the Whitewater Park.
39:05
SPEAKER_01: At the Whitewater Park.
39:06
SPEAKER_01: Um, and him and Scott Larnoise were gonna come.
39:09
SPEAKER_01: Um, I had gotten a second monster for Monstar for Scott, Scott's big dude.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: But Scott also brought his ex, which is even funnier.
39:17
SPEAKER_01: Um I think I got this.
39:20
SPEAKER_01: Brandon was gonna meet me at like 9 30, 10 o'clock, and he overshoots that date.
39:25
SPEAKER_01: It gets to be like 11, 11 30.
39:27
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, where are you?
39:28
SPEAKER_01: He's like, rough morning, we'll be there soon.
39:31
SPEAKER_01: And I I oh no he gets there, and I'm like, you can tell they had had a rough night.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, what happened to showing up at like 10, 10 30?
39:44
SPEAKER_01: He's like, uh, we were in no condition to be here at 10 or 10 30.
39:48
SPEAKER_01: I said, What happened?
39:49
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Well, we went to the hotel Seymour and we were overserved.
39:55
SPEAKER_01: I said, Is that what you're calling it?
39:57
SPEAKER_01: He's like, Well, I definitely puked after bar close.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
40:01
SPEAKER_01: And so they had a rough start, but they came out and they were glad they did it.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: They got about two and a half full laps in, and they were they were cashed, but Bran, where were you?
40:12
SPEAKER_01: I was overserved, and I said, Yeah, we've all been there.
40:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's not like a unique experience at Wasa.
40:19
SPEAKER_00: Although I I will say that it slowed down a lot.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: I think that one of my one of the most interesting trends in boating in general has been seeing the prevalence of I'm gonna just call it binging.
40:32
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: Sort of decline and change in a way that I would not have expected.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we all kind of we all had our our party years, and we kind of grown up and grown out of that.
40:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't know if grown up's the right word, but we've kind of grown out of and moved on to our years, and now a bunch of have kids and stuff, and like for me it's really fun to see the people like in our group right now, I have the older kids.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: And I remember seeing my brother, he had he was in the same position, he had the older kids compared to everybody else.
41:04
SPEAKER_01: So, like I went through like I took all that uh probably five years basically off of boating where I'd only boat a couple times a year, and then a few years ago, my kids were finally like old enough and life settled down.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: I don't remember what weekend it was, but I told Kayla, I'm like, hey, I'm gonna go to Chris is going to Wallace this weekend, I'm gonna go boat.
41:20
SPEAKER_01: And that was three years ago, and it it's been a whirlwind of change since then.
41:26
SPEAKER_01: Um, getting back into boating, and it's it's been a riot, but now I see some of my friends who I started showing back up and they didn't have kids yet, and now they're starting to have kids, but like they've kind of seen what I've done and been like, oh, this can still work when your kids are tiny.
41:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it definitely for some people it seems like it changes when they have a kid, it changes their availability a lot, and other people seem to be able to manage it a lot better.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and that that also comes down on what kind of support system you have at home.
41:57
SPEAKER_01: Like me and Kayla are lucky enough that we like I can go out and boat on a Saturday because Kayla has a lot of family in town to help watch the kids and stuff like that.
42:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, if we go run, if I go run short three with Chris and the rest of the guys, I bring the kids in.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: My mom's usually there pretty much all summer.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: I can just leave them with grandma or Kayla and the kids hang out with the cabin all the time.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: Like, not even at the butt in, they don't even make it down that far.
42:22
SPEAKER_01: They're right they're riding the side by side with grandma.
42:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which is seems practically a community cabin.
42:29
SPEAKER_01: Like pretty much every boater knows they're welcome to stay with her whenever they need.
42:32
SPEAKER_01: It's really funny when I go to boat and I get there and there's people I know already there that were gonna boat that I didn't know were gonna boat that weekend.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is kind of cool.
42:40
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things that I I've mentioned it a couple times that I kind of miss about uh I feel like Bear Paw used to be like that and that it kind of changed over the years a little bit.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, kind of a bummer, but I mean it's cool to still have a place like that.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's it's definitely it's definitely cool.
42:55
SPEAKER_01: It it also helps that my mom bought all the all the property all the way around the boys call camp.
43:00
SPEAKER_01: And so like we never we never had a shortage of space at the cabin, but the amount of space we have now only grows.
43:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, plus with like the campground right there, and then I don't know how many beds are in the There's six beds up in the top of the shed, plus the campers parked in the shed with like four more beds, plus the cabin has like eight.
43:18
SPEAKER_01: Then there's the playhouse, which has like four, and then like the Airbnb at the end of the road.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: If there's no one in there, there's another eight.
43:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's definitely an awesome asset to have.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and even even if we like even if all those beds are full, like you can just come camp anywhere on the property pretty much.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's it's cool to have places like that.
43:37
SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that that's one of the reasons I really like the Whitewater Park in in town here.
43:42
SPEAKER_00: There's not in the southeast, there's a little bit more of availability basically all summer long for people to paddle something.
43:52
SPEAKER_00: Whereas here, there's really a lot of the runs that are a lot of the good runs at least, or a lot of the runs that are popular.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: sort of die out in the summer because they just get way too low.
44:02
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
44:03
SPEAKER_00: So there's not a lot of places where you can just run into people like that, but the White Water Park is always like that.
44:07
SPEAKER_00: And like you said, your mom's or your cabin is always kind of like that too, which is awesome.
44:11
SPEAKER_01: Every once in a while we'll have a summer where there's actually water on the wolf where we have like a 700 CFS around in July.
44:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it takes like a storm though.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, la uh two summers ago we had it like we had water like all summer.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: It was weird.
44:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
44:25
SPEAKER_01: Because we it was 700 when we paddled at 4th of July that one year.
44:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah I was just thinking how uh with the how we just lost all the leaves so I should probably start looking at levels again.
44:35
SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
44:35
SPEAKER_00: See.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah it's on the it's on the tail end of it.
44:38
SPEAKER_01: Wolf River cleanup section four cleanups this weekend and I looked at the level and it's like 250 and I'm like eh.
44:46
SPEAKER_00: You can get down it at least.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah that's section four is better than section three at 250.
44:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh Kaylee and my parents were up and they looked at like the black and the presque last weekend and they're like you couldn't you could like walk across the river with non-waterproof shoes and not have wet feet.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah but it it's pretty bony right now.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: So I I can only imagine but well cool anything else you want to you want to bring up on the on the show?
45:11
SPEAKER_01: No not that I can think of now.
45:14
SPEAKER_01: I mean it I it's definitely gonna I'm excited to see how the show grows.
45:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah I feel like we tried to start a podcast a long time ago and I feel like I had a bunch of things that I was trying to be consistent about and I'm trying to be a lot more relaxed on this one.
45:25
SPEAKER_01: So yeah I feel like some especially when wasaw season rolls back around doing some summer like with a few of us on a podcast would be would be really fun.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah we'll see how it goes.
45:39
SPEAKER_00: I I didn't want to push super hard this year.
45:41
SPEAKER_00: I I wanted to start it but I didn't want to push people super hard and I think that if we can be at least relatively consistent going into next year I think that I'll be able to get people to tell stories.
45:52
SPEAKER_00: It seems like a pretty accessible thing.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: Well and if you especially when you get a get a group of us together and we start telling stories it there's stuff one of us forgets that the other one remembers and it's always we're just always dying by the end of it.
46:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah the only hard part is at this point all of the equipment I have for this we're looking at right now so so we'll have to figure out how to record more than two people when when we get to do that but you know who would be a good one to ask that is Willie because I'm sure he hit oh he would be a good one.
46:20
SPEAKER_01: Probably Chris too I would imagine yeah if Chris doesn't he probably has access to it.
46:25
SPEAKER_00: Well I guess that kind of rolls into my next point is if anybody wants to tell any stories feel free to reach out.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh I guess on a point that Austin sort of reminded me of also if people want to paddle in the Midwest and they're curious about it I think that I could at least get you in contact with somebody to help out.
46:42
SPEAKER_01: I know that there's you can always send them to me.
46:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah there's you and then if they want classes there's the um classes through Whitecap or there's like the classes with Sandra classes with the new and then uh there's also like the hot eggs and a couple other opportunities like that.
46:58
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah and it and I'm actually a certified instructor as well so if people are ever interested and want to do that I have computer mine did lapse.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: I just I just re-upped mine and mine is technically through Sandra but I got it through Dave and Dave Oh Sandra's an instructor instructor?
47:13
SPEAKER_01: Yeah Sandra's an IT talk to Sandra or actually talk to Dave Benton and then it's still a week long yes and no um when did yours lapse?
47:22
SPEAKER_01: Forever like a decade at least oh yeah um mine was a year two expired in me and I basically helped Dave for a few weekends instruct and teach and Dave re upped me.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: Well cool I'll have to keep that in mind.
47:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah talk to Dave but if anybody else will they can always reach out to me.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
47:42
SPEAKER_00: Thanks yeah thanks awesome