The Wild Chaos Podcast
Father. Husband. Marine. Host.
Everyone has a story and I want to hear it. The first thing people say to me is, "I'm not cool enough", "I haven't done anything cool in life", etc.
I have heard it all but I know there is more. More of you with incredible stories.
From drug addict to author, professional athlete to military hero, immigrant to special forces... I dive into the stories that shape lives.
I am here to share the extraordinary stories of remarkable people, because I believe that in the midst of your chaos, these stories can inspire, empower, and resonate with us all.
Thanks for listening.
-Bam
The Wild Chaos Podcast
#39 - From Combat to Cowboy: James Phillips on Family Legacy, & Life as a Girl Dad after the Corps
Join us as James Phillips, also known as JW or Phil, shares his incredible journey from growing up on a farm near Stonehenge to serving in the Marine Corps and navigating life beyond the military. From childhood adventures and cultural shifts to building a life as a proud girl dad, homesteader, and family man, James reflects on the pivotal moments that shaped him. He opens up about his dedication to leaving a legacy, being a better husband and father, and raising his daughters with the values of respect, self-worth, and how a man should treat them through his own example. With gripping tales of military operations, survival training, and personal transformation, this episode offers a compelling look at resilience, identity, and living beyond past roles.
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you ready to rock and roll? Well, cool james. You go by, james, or what do you?
Speaker 2:go by. Oh, man, that's the whole predicament right now too. So james phillips is my birth name, um, james henry william phillips, um. But then I went to the teams, I became, became Phil, and now I got out and now I'm becoming JW, jw. So I don't know Whatever you want, man.
Speaker 1:Well, james JW Phil, welcome to the show. I appreciate you. We got some shirts, some swag. I can't have any guests going home without a shirt and a hat Awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much I don't know if you're into cigars, platoon cigars he's actually he's a marine and um, served, did his time, got out, became a cop in, I believe, michigan, got shot the line of duty. I'm actually going to have him on the podcast. Got a crazy story. But, yeah, he sends us boxes of cigars. He started platoon cigars with a war machine and, um, yeah, so all the guests get cigars built by and made you know veteran-owned company.
Speaker 1:And then, obviously, you get to go home and you got about a four-hour drive with some the girls make every guest a fresh loaf of sourdough. So you got the chocolate lover one. So it's you already know me chocolate dough, chocolate chips. You got toffee. They melt the toffee on the top it's, and so it's not in the bag right now because they literally just pulled it out. So it's, it's steaming hot. So thank you so much. Yeah, man, I appreciate the drive down and, um, this is going to be fun. So, for anybody that doesn't know you, fuck dude, you got water on your side right there too, if you want some water bottles sweet okay, um, let's dive into it.
Speaker 1:Who? The hell, are you, bro, after? Reading. After reading the bio and getting your request, I was like, oh, this is a no-brainer, it is just. I mean, get the little intro we're going to start right in childhood and then growing up in the UK and then the transition here to the States.
Speaker 2:I'm kind of I've kind of been all over. I guess you know I was born in the UK. We actually grew up on like a little farm right near Stonehenge, you know all the rock stuff, so that was cool Obviously, grew up in the countryside and I've kind of come all the way back to that now. But full circle, yeah, full circle. That's kind of where I wanted to raise kids. But yeah, it wasn't a military kid or anything like that. We just happened to happen to be over there for a kid or anything like that. We just happened to happen to be over there. So. But it was cool because, uh, as a kid we used to go drive the land rover discovery up on the army base. It was near us and so I'd go find old camo stuff and things like that, which I really didn't know was probably planting seeds at the time, but obviously I joined the marine corps at some point, so yeah but yeah so stonehenge?
Speaker 1:what are your, what's your take on Stonehenge? Oh gosh, I don't know. Dude, I'm a conspiracy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I've got my thoughts. How could you?
Speaker 1:not be now.
Speaker 2:I mean, everything is going on. It's nuts, it's not even conspiracies anymore.
Speaker 1:No, it's not. It's true, we'll go Stonehenge, but real quick. Have you started your flat earth chapter of life yet? No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna convince you. Okay, I'm a flat earther, bro. 100 dude I am. I am open, open mind. Um, I'm gonna lose so many friends over that, but yeah, dude, it's just, there's so many things right now that growing up and now that you're an adult and you have the internet and everybody's like, oh, this is this way, just because and I'm one of those like, make it make sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I, I am too.
Speaker 1:If you're not doing your own uh research these days, you're, you're flawed 100 on everything, yeah, all the way down the education system, medicines, oh my goodness. Science to the history, I mean it's. It's crazy how people just go. And I get it. We've gone through life so blind and we just trust everything. But now that the government's being outed on every level, now it's like head on a swivel for everything.
Speaker 2:It's like oh, this is this way. I think the UK is probably way worse, though. Really. I mean, I moved here. I think I moved here like sixth grade, so I was pretty young Ten, I was pretty young 10. But I think they got like one camera to every four citizens or whatever. So I mean they could big brother the heck out of you.
Speaker 1:I actually just saw a video of people who are now wearing these crazy masks Not a COVID mask, but like these actual plastic, and they cover the whole face and I was like what the fuck is this? And it was like now because they're all being tracked and they're anti face tracking masks now, okay, I could get behind that, so I dug into it.
Speaker 1:Exactly, and they're like they're sick of being watched everywhere you go there. And now, with the way that those cameras can pick up, and I mean they could follow you through a whole city block In.
Speaker 2:China. They just send you a ticket if you jaywalk and they got the video evidence. Can you imagine living like that Dude nuts? When I moved here, I fully believed in the American dream and freedoms and all that kind of stuff you know, and I think that's naturalized citizen. I'm on the winning team. What?
Speaker 1:brought you here? Why did your parents, around 10, 11 years old, decide to up and move to the US? Divorce, divorce, yeah, how was that, um, it was pretty.
Speaker 2:It was pretty, uh. I mean, now I'm 37, now you know, and I think during your thirties you start to come full circle of where you're at, because your brain doesn't develop until you're 25.
Speaker 1:25.
Speaker 2:That is your brain doesn't develop until you're 25. 25, that is a fact. And then I think you start to figure it out a little bit from there, you know. But yeah, it definitely influenced my marriage and all those kinds of things. But my parents split and then my mom remarried and then came to the States with AOL. Remember AOL back in the day, dial-up, yeah so she was a guide for AOL chat rooms back in the day.
Speaker 1:Oh, really, really. Yeah, that's what she's like. How did you guys used to talk back in the day? I'm like well, first letters and then AOL came around the whole message. Tell people to get off the phone. Exactly.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, they came over with AOL and we moved to Virginia. Did your dad follow? No, my real dad's actually still in the UK.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:He was kind of a mountain man. He owned his own construction company and all that kind of stuff. But yeah, I still talk to him every now and then on WhatsApp and things. Okay, yeah, I think probably a combo of a good high school coach and the Marine Corps helped me figure out the masculine side of things, you know.
Speaker 1:So you got fortunate there. So your mom's new husband wasn't so much, or what.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I think stepdads are stepdads, you know.
Speaker 2:For sure, I don't really claim you all the way or not? And I think he had his own things that he was going through and still goes through and stuff like that. So, um, you know how it is when you, when you become a parent, you start to really see your parents as humans. You know what I'm saying. I know you get that. So, um, so yeah, but I think everything that's happened to me up until this point in time I see it as fortunate circumstances. You have to, you got to, and I've got two beautiful girls, I've got an incredible wife, just absolute alpha, and that's the best team I can be a part of. You know what?
Speaker 1:I mean that's good, it helps a lot, especially guys, military time, law enforcement times. I mean, I think one of the biggest struggles for us is and I almost die on this hill hill, and I can say this because working with vets over the last 11 years and being embedded in the disabled veteran community, their body or mind yeah, the biggest struggle it's not the drugs and alcohol, which is number one or two and three, it's right there but I think the number one struggle for these guys is is having a weak foundation when it comes to their wives or girlfriends or fiances the only team you got once you get out it's it, man.
Speaker 1:And then these women, are they? Just? They either don't know how to learn and adjust after war or dealing with somebody after a traumatic experience, and they'll, they just start chipping away and they become cancer. And we're not easy no, we are not easy to deal with veterans and just in general.
Speaker 1:I thank my wife very often Hunter you have to man and we're going to go through our phases where we don't appreciate them and we step on them, we shit, we just treat them like shit, it's just and that's kind of our healing process in a way. But a lot of women and wives can't make it through that period, which obviously everybody has their own, you know, unless it's physical, mental abuse, you know. But it's tough, you know, for some of these women to do it. But I mean these guys that are triggered, taking their lives, getting deep, deep dark holes. I would say the majority of it comes from having not having that strong rock and just having a wife to be able to lean on and pick you up, and you know it's very important for us to have.
Speaker 2:When I got out, we moved to Salt Lake yeah, marisako, ate, my first marriage, but wife, I always joke because I say wife 2.0 is you know? She's my soulmate.
Speaker 1:You're not ready to be married until you've been divorced. Yes, that's what I say.
Speaker 2:So I'm her husband 2.0, so she can joke back, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:She's an alpha female savage, so you know she can give it back. But yeah, we moved to Salt Lake and completely isolated. You know, transition for me was especially going from MARSOC, where that's all you consume, right? And I was in the conventional marine corps too before that, obviously, but yeah, it was. Um, she was very tolerant, for sure. When she and I actually started dating her, because she didn't even know we were still at war I was like you're perfect, you don't, you've never did it, dated anybody in the military and you don't know anything like great you know that's, that's the key never dated a prior service member, brit, she, my wife, she, she swore, because she grew up in socal and she's like I, would never date a marina in a million years, which rightfully so.
Speaker 2:You know how it is, you know how do you grow up in hawaii and I was like you never did a ceo and she's like, nope. I was like, okay, all right, this might work exactly.
Speaker 1:So you transition here. I don't want to get ahead of ourselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sorry I'm going to jump around, no you're good, we'll jump all over the place.
Speaker 1:So your parents split, you, move here to the US. How is that? Because I have a 10-year-old and this is a very crucial, important time we're developing friends finding themselves.
Speaker 2:They're becoming their own little person. And then you're ripped out of that. Now you're thrown in an american school. How was that? Yeah, honestly, um gosh, it's so wild how things influence like your entire life. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But I wasn't doing well at school in the uk. I think at that age, you know, beginning of sixth grade in the us, I was doing latin, french. Like the curriculum was out the ass, you know, and they thought I was dyslexic and all these things. But I think probably, looking back, like I was just a boy, energetic boy, you know what I mean. I didn't want to be sitting in that classroom, but it's funny, I wasn't great at sports back then, like I had allergies and stuff like, um, my mom was always super artistic, so I was like into that whole thing, like creative mind space, like building things and um, and so I wasn't really big, big into the sports thing, went to a private school, so I was actually pretty stoked to leave, really, you know, which is funny kind of looking back. But there's a lot of like oh dope, I'm gonna go to america. Like everybody's happy and hot there, you know, like what the rest of the world thinks about america, yeah, it's the perfect place and we have vacationed to, like, michigan a couple of times.
Speaker 2:My mom had some family there and things. So I've been to the states before, um, but then moving to the states, to the suburbs, you know, you're riding a school bus, like all these things that just were so new to me, um, and then I had to fight kids on the playground because I was british, you know, oh really, which. Now I'm american, I'm like respect, I get it, you know you gotta do your time. Yeah, all the limey jokes and stuff, you know.
Speaker 1:But you were getting it pretty, did you have a pretty thick accent when you came over?
Speaker 2:yeah, okay, I, yeah, I couldn't hide it, but I've always weirdly been like very adaptable, and so, like I will never forget, the teacher was asking me like the answer to some math problem or whatever, and it was, the answer was 40, right, and I didn't know that you say 40. In America, I said 40. Okay, yeah, yeah, you know, very pronounced.
Speaker 2:So, she kept thinking I was saying 14, and I was like, no, you know, and I remember all the kids were like, ah, you know. I was like, oh shit, I need to learn how to speak properly, even though I made this language, you know. But um, so, yeah, it was just all the all the girls love my accent, all. So, yeah, it was just all the girls loved my accent, all the boys hated it, you know. And so it was definitely an adapt or die kind of deal, but I mean, I figured it out. I obviously graduated elementary school pretty quick, went to middle school and that's where I went through like the skater thing.
Speaker 1:Remember Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 on.
Speaker 2:N64?. Oh yeah. You know, went through the skater thing. I think everybody listened to Green Day back then and spiked our hair and all that stuff. Oh God.
Speaker 1:Wow, looking back at you, hilarious.
Speaker 2:But you've talked about it before. I heard your podcast. We were the kids that went to the cul-de-sac and beat each other up and lit fires and stupid stuff, right?
Speaker 1:You know your parents would drive around and look for all the bikes in the front yard. Exactly dude, that was it every time. Where were all the bikes? And I remember that.
Speaker 2:I remember getting back from school you do your homework on the bus so you can go play with your friends and then you just go do hood rat stuff. You know what I mean. And we got in stupid trouble like all kinds of dumb stuff. It's funny though there, and it's funny though there was actually a homeschool kid on the street and everybody made fun of him and things like that, and now full circle. I'm like things are different now Times have changed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but middle school was obviously an interesting thing. But the biggest influence in middle school was do you remember the pacer? It was like the fitness test where you had to run from one side of the gym to the other before it beeped. No, so I guess that's the thing of virginia. Never had that, I know. Beep faster and faster and faster, and all the kids have to make it to the other line before it beeped. Oh so you're racing, okay. So it's like a trician thing, okay. And I ended up like setting some middle school record in that and and they were like you should go try out for the track team and I was like okay, I guess you know I've been asthmatic my whole life.
Speaker 2:Like not really like a runner, you're like what the hell is a track team. So we showed up for like the eighth grade one time, like he didn't practice at all, like he just showed up for the meet and did a race, right I think. I ran like the 400 meters and they were like, oh good job, kids, you know, and. And then he went to high school. Right.
Speaker 2:And so, um, and middle school, for me, we're still doing a divorce and all those things, and I was obviously a pretty angry kid and looking back on all that. But freshman year of high school, my mom dropped me a track practice and it was probably best thing she ever did for me, cause I think I was definitely starting to get to that point of like a boy without a dad and all those kinds of things and starting to set in, yeah, and trying to just figure it out, especially now as a parent, looking at my girls and like where they're going to be. You know, there's definitely some major landmarkers there, you know. And, um, so freshman high school, I went to track practice, hated it, like, bro, why are we running around everywhere? You know, like this made no sense to me, right, and I hadn't really done athletics leading up to that point.
Speaker 1:Um, so it has got you just running all over, Dude, you can't figure out why but the crazy thing is divine intervention.
Speaker 2:The the coach was English. He was really okay, so Okay. So he coached Tiller and his name was Phil, which is funny too. He was a younger guy, in his mid-twenties, and he really took me under his wing, yeah, and he knew that stuff was going on at home and looking back, it's like man, you were like 24, 25 and you were letting me live with you and your girlfriend in your house Like pretty wild, you know, really.
Speaker 2:What a cool human being. Your parents were cool with this. Well, they just dumped me off when they had to go do custody trials and all those kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Oh, because were they still traveling back? Yeah, they were still doing a lot of court stuff.
Speaker 2:Did they just?
Speaker 1:leave you with your coach. Yeah, tell me that shit would fly these days.
Speaker 2:No, You'd have to be fucking vetted. You know what I mean Even then. Yeah, I'm going to probably install some stuff. Yeah, but man, rad human being and really helped shape me through high school and I lived, breathed and died track and field. Really, we won states. My senior year I was the captain, that's fun, isn't it?
Speaker 2:I got a scholarship to college like all that stuff. But I mean no, dating nothing. I was, I was. I used to walk around with a camelback Birkenstocks I like, took ice baths every night. Right, that wasn't even a thing back then. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I was reading articles Summer going into my senior year. I was doing a 100 mile weeks like a lot of it on your own in the summer. So just fully dedicated, focus, committed. That sounds miserable, yeah, but for me, I think, as a as a young kid, or especially a young boy- that was your outlet dude, that was my mental yeah I funneled all anger and I didn't drink in high school, you know, I funneled everything into that, into that sport.
Speaker 2:And it's funny, one of the dudes I raced a lot um in high school and senior year, matthew Senshewitz. He actually has won olympic medals. Now, you know, like, oh really, which is cool, because I mean, and I'm sure it's the same, but even still, with your girls now it's definitely something I'll instill with mine is like, hey, nothing, nothing is impossible. If you want it bad enough, you can make it happen. You know what I mean. Like nothing is out of your reach. The only thing is, how hungry are you? How bad do you want it? And that was me. I didn't come from an athletic family, I didn't do it before, you know, and I just read books, I had posters, I just obsessed, you know, and really I think that that mental fortitude, that track and field instilled in me at an early age with that coaching, was not only the unconquerable, especially when you watch kids in split homes.
Speaker 1:I'd say the majority of them take the anger route, don't know how to process what's going on, how to express what's going on. And that's when these kids start getting in trouble, boys and girls. They start drug sex, rebelling, all that stuff. Drug sex, rebelling all that stuff. And then the very there's a few that take that athletic route, or you know the creative side of the mind, and they focus and put all that energy into that. I mean, who knows if your mom wouldn't have dropped you off? Oh, I know, I don't know where I would have gone. I mean, and that's all it takes, is this, you know some divine intervention moment or parents watching? I mean like, hey, we need to get this kid in something now. In that I mean that and that set the path, because middle school was rough, you know for sure.
Speaker 2:School was a lot of like you got to pick and all these kinds of things, and I'm the only boy middle child you know, so like really didn't have male role models right with two older and younger sister.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, that's, that's miserable.
Speaker 2:So like. I feel, that you got to watch Boy Meets World and like Notebook and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:It doesn't change. Now you're a girl dad, I got a girl dog.
Speaker 2:At least I'm secure.
Speaker 1:For sure. But God, you saw my dog when it came in. I'm wearing a stupid ass sweater and. I'm just surrounded yeah it gets pretty out of hand.
Speaker 2:I haven't had to paint my nails yet, but we're only one and three, so it's coming.
Speaker 1:I used to be that guy, like look at this fucking guy with his painted nails. And now it's like you know, when they're that I don't know how old your kids are, I might have grown out of that stage.
Speaker 2:They got or they want to fill in tattoos and you're just like laying are MVP because I'm a child. That's cool you know sports rosters but Margo's three and a half and Maisie just turned one.
Speaker 1:Those are funny, we are in it right now You're in it, but man, it's the whole reason we're here. You know what I mean. That's incredible. So high school you find this passion of track and field that you probably had no idea even existed. I can feel that you probably had no idea even existed, no clue. You ended up winning a state championship in high school and that helped you get a scholarship in the college.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so actually we won states in the fall of my senior year and that was obviously a huge thing for us too, because I don't think a school would have won states in a long time. Okay, so it was a big deal. So it was a big deal. So it was a big deal, we kept coming pretty close and, um, a lot of strategy went into it and all these things. And for me I didn't understand that there was a lot of leadership for me that senior year. You know, that was probably my first real taste of leadership before going to the military.
Speaker 2:Um, but yeah, guys, guys that you didn't really want on a team but would perform, you know, and you had to keep the whole thing together to make sure that everybody was putting out and they were all trying to put towards the same thing. And one of the guys, his dad, passed away that year and it was this huge loss. You know, we were able to dedicate the season to him and all this stuff. But, yeah, on a personal level, uh, that was all about team, you know. And then I, I was pretty hungry for a state champ, a state individual title and all those kinds of things and nationals and stuff, and so I was hammering out miles, even after a cross country, uh, getting ready for outdoor track. So we did indoor track in virginia, okay, um, which is probably night and day, huh, yeah, it's uh. Indoor track is the cross country is a 5k, so 3.1 miles indoor track. The furthest you're doing is you do 3200 meters still, but it's on a 200 meter track, so you're just doing laps. You know which?
Speaker 1:I hate it because cross country was my thing, because the scenery changes. You know it's. I feel like it's like running on a treadmill. You're just doing laps. You know which I hated, because cross-country was my thing, because the scenery changes. You know, I feel like it's like running on a treadmill. You're just staring at the same shit in a.
Speaker 2:The only time I've ever ran like 12 miles on a treadmill, is watching Shark Week, you know. So I'm not one of those dudes, but yeah. So then going to senior year outdoors First meet, I think I set I qualified for states in the mile, two mile as a distance runner. I was actually. I used to be 132 pounds back then, yeah, which is hard to believe. Now I think I'm probably 200 or something. Um, and I got a stress fracture and that was the first time. Like that was the first big sports related thing I had to overcome. How did?
Speaker 2:that set you back. Huge mental thing that.
Speaker 2:I'd never been trained for Right and I didn't really have a lot of mentorship there either. Right Like me. As a dad, now I would be like yo, this is going to be harder than the training you've done until now. Like yo, this is going to be harder than the training you've done until now. For sure, Like you got to. And so I literally ran every single day of high school, except for two weeks every summer. Really Every single day of the year you were committed Outside two weeks, you know. So then going to get a stress fracture and having to take six weeks off of nothing, I lost my mind. You know I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 2:I was supposed to go to the pool. I got a girlfriend like start a spiral.
Speaker 1:Yeah rough, but thank goodness I already signed a a uh scholarship with a d1 school for track girls. Man, they wrenched everything at that.
Speaker 2:That was my rule as a captain was like, uh, don't be late and no girlfriends for the whole boys team. You know, I mean I used to get trashed for that, but I mean we won the state championship, yeah, you know. So, yeah, I ended up picking this. I had a couple offers from schools. I ended up picking George Mason University based off of a girl, which was probably stupid. Always George Mason University based off of a girl, which is probably stupid, but man, it was. That was right.
Speaker 2:Before I joined the Marine Corps, I had a pretty big scholarship. People don't really. I just talked about this with a buddy whose kid just went to school for soccer, I think. For me, going from high school athletics to where that was an outlet for me, to go into D1 athletics, where it's a job. I just I could. I didn't have a good.
Speaker 2:What was the difference swap? Just absolute on spot demand of performance every time, every time. And I think there was even more, probably because I was on money. And I look back at it now and I, 37-year-old man, looking at that coach and granted, that coach came from Stanford. He just won the NCAA championship. They wanted to do that again at George Mason.
Speaker 2:That used to be a legendary track school back in the day. So there's a lot of pressure. Julie Henner was the assistant's coach at the time and she coached Alan Webb, who was like world record or whatever in the mile and all these things and at the forefront you know what I mean. And so I ended up redshirting, going into that freshman year and just trying to train, but man, this was not in it, you know, and I was just like before I was running for my coach, I was running for the team and it was just like. It was kind of like a screw this guy kind of thing, you know. And so obviously college athletic parties are pretty nuts, you know. Like we literally made our own fraternity.
Speaker 1:How does that happen?
Speaker 2:We got a house off I wanted to say base, but off campus.
Speaker 1:Same thing, bro, same shit.
Speaker 2:Same same. Yeah, wanted to say base, but off campus. Same thing, bro. Same shit, same thing. Yeah, uh, we stole all these giant billboards from the football stadium and so we had had a basement. It was all black lighted with this giant beer bong table, beer pong table, made out of all these bottle caps and epoxied like black lights, everything. And we made tau beta zeta for track boys.
Speaker 1:You were you were destined for to be a marine Black lights, everything. And we made Tao Beta Zeta for track boys. Tao Beta Zeta, you were destined for being a Marine. Oh my God, yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:You look back at it and you're like it was just training, so we'd have mixers of all the sororities and all this stupid stuff, and the fraternities tried to get us kicked off and illegitimized because we weren't a real fraternity.
Speaker 2:And we're like here's Mags. We really or like here's mags. We're throwing these boss ass parties haters. Man, that's all it was. But yeah, I mean it was fun. But yeah, school, school is slipping, you know, like stupid stuff. I gotta, I gotta arson charge for no shit. Yeah, I ended up. Uh, fourth story of this concrete staircase outside arson charges are pretty serious outside the uh dorms. I drew I was going to be a Marine bro I drew a dick out of hand sanitizer and lit it on fire, lit it on fire.
Speaker 2:You were destined. And the RA walked out the door right when that happened and was like what are you doing? And stomped on it. And it's liquid fire, it goes all over the walls and I was like, oh no.
Speaker 1:You're standing there with a lighter yeah walls and I was like oh, no, you're standing there with a light.
Speaker 2:Yeah and uh. So then the other person behind her grabbed the fire extinguisher off the wall and put it all out, and I was just like, oh my gosh did you have to go to any classes for your rs to charge? No, the coach negotiated for me. Okay, and it's probably why I ended up. You know not being his favorite too. The coach negotiated for me and I had to do study hall I had a buddy in high school.
Speaker 1:We were showing off up the is up. We had this long creek and had all these pull-offs and stuff. You can go down and we're all partying and hanging out. And my buddy had his dad was a caretaker on an island, so we'd have like we all had cases of flares. You used to have flare wars on four-wheelers.
Speaker 1:You'd have a driver, then you'd have where did you grow up up, grow up Upstate New York on the Canadian border, and you'd have all your car hearts on. You'd stuff every pocket full of flares and you'd have that gun and we'd all start in corners of the field and somebody would launch a flare. Then all the four-wheelers would take off.
Speaker 1:So you're driving and just smoking people with flares, you know, and you catch one in the neck, well it helmets on. But you know we're shooting each other flares. Well, one night we're down with all the you know a little party going on and we're like, dude, go get the flares, let's shoot some off, and loads one and cocks that thing and it goes right across the creek. It didn't go anywhere, just you just see the glowing, you know know, it's all marsh.
Speaker 1:You see the glowing, and then the glowing turns to like smoke, and then the smoke's the flame, and then it's windy and it just, it takes off. And we all took off and nobody said a word. He and the girls ended up ratting him out like, as we're driving in town, the fire department, all the volunteer firefighters are blowing out there it burnt down quite a few acres, just marsh and you know some woods and yeah.
Speaker 1:But he ended up having to go to an arson class and for he's in there with dudes that are like legit he's, we're kids oh yeah, I didn't even think about that.
Speaker 2:He's like straight criminals.
Speaker 1:I think we were maybe 17, 60, 17. He had to go and every weekend for like it was a couple of months, he's in there with dudes that are literally like getting off the burning things and like lighting her girlfriend's cars on fire and shit, he's just some some kid that shot a flare. And yeah, I guess, I guess I uh got away with murder that's why I was asking if you had to go to some classes. Yeah, I did I did.
Speaker 2:Um, do you remember when the dc sniper thing was happening? Oh, yeah, um, my butt. My college roommate bailey and I um, I don't think I've ever told a story on a podcast, but a buddy Bailey and I were in the woods behind our house my parents' house hunting squirrels with pellet guns. Bailey grew up in Weir's Cave, Virginia. He was a country boy, you know, and I think my kid roots were starting to come back you know, so we were running around, just stupid shit.
Speaker 2:He's the one I was stealing all his billboards with Okay, all that stuff, everybody around, just stupid shit. He's the one I was stealing all his billboards with okay, all that stuff. And so everybody needs a friend, like right. And uh he's, he's now a very model citizen, uh. But um, we, uh, we're running around the woods shooting squirrels with pellet guns. And, um, we decided to cross over this road because the elementary school woods back there and they're public woods and they're huge, right.
Speaker 2:So we run across the road, go into the woods, start start hunting squirrels again and all of a sudden, like my phone starts blowing up and I'm just like what the fuck? So I look at my phone and it's my stepdad. He's calling me and I was like, ah, whatever, bro, you know, like I don't live at home anymore, I'm hunting. And so, yeah and uh, so 30 minutes goes by and this helicopter brushes, uh, the top of the, the woods, canopy, really. It's like, oh, weird, phone's still going off. Finally pull my phone out and there's voicemails. So I'm like I'll just listen to voicemail. So I stepped down. He's like dude, where the f are you? There's cops in my driveway. They're looking for you saying that you're running around the elementary school with a sniper rifle and I'm like, oh shit so bailey and I are on the track team right.
Speaker 2:So underneath all every this track kid thing I'm sure it still is we just wear running shorts all the time even under your clothes because, just because they are what we were used to wearing, and then run issues right, just Just total nerds. So what do we do? We just strip pants, strip shirts and pretend we were on a training run.
Speaker 1:You just come jogging up to the house.
Speaker 2:Yes, we just go running and we ran like 40 minutes.
Speaker 1:Did you leave your BB guns out there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we hid them under the leaves and shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, and so I cacheted them. 100% Same thing. My parents didn't want me to have a gun. I had to cache it.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, like I got it from Galison's back in the day or Galigan's or whatever, whatever dicks we used to be, but anyway. So we went for a run and we ran all the way out there and I was just like, do you think we should run back now? And he's like, yeah, it's been like an hour, let's run back. Started coming kind of close to where I parked my car, which is like in between I think it was in between elementary school and maybe it was like a backpack parking lot, yeah, anyway. So we got to the car, nobody was there and I was like, okay, sick, let's just get.
Speaker 2:Let's just get in the car you know, get in the car, like drove away, and then I was like bailey's, like dude, what are you gonna do? I was like, fuck, I don't know, I guess I I'll call 911. So I called 911. And we're driving back to campus now. I called 911. And they're like 911, what's your emergency? I was like hey, my name's James. I think you guys are looking for me.
Speaker 2:And she was like where are you right now? I was like I think it's a big misunderstanding. She's like do not hang up the phone, I'm going hang up the phone, I'm gonna hand you over the detective on your case or whatever. It was like you know. And so he's like hello. And I was like hello, sir, I think there's. He's like where are you? I was like I think it's a big misunderstanding. I'm not, I don't have a gun. He's like what do you mean? You don't have a gun. Like you were sighted, like your car was there, blah, blah. I was like we had guns, but they're like they shoot the little green balls, remember, cause? Remember, airsoft started to be a thing back then. He was like, oh, like the little green BBs. I was like, yeah, he's like do you think that was smart?
Speaker 1:And just starts giving me a life coach down the phone and you're in college at this point, or high school.
Speaker 2:Uh, it had to be college. I was with Bailey, so it must have been freshman year or something like that. And so he starts lifing me out on the phone, you know, and I was like sorry, I'm so sorry It'll never happen again. Like well, nothing happened, just went back to school.
Speaker 1:Just rolled right back into it.
Speaker 2:So that was like my first major, like run in doing stupid shit, oh God, you know, I started out at a pretty early age, but about after that I joined the Marine Corps, yeah, you know. So Why'd you leave school? I think just the track thing. It wasn't feeding me anymore. I was just starting to become self-destructive. My grades were sucking. Just wasn't fun for you, dude, just wasn't fun, you know, and I was just wasting money and I wonder how these college kids are now.
Speaker 1:You know, with this I, iblw or whatever, these kids are getting paid, whatever the hell that's called now.
Speaker 1:it's like I mean, you see, some of the worth of these college kids and how much they're making is like is they're starting their career so early it's. And then you almost wonder like how long in the pros you know when they go that route, is that going to last? Because that was a. I'm such a college sports over pros. Yeah, because you know those kids are still applying it's still their resume to make it to the pros, so they're giving it all they have. And now it's fuck, these kids are getting $50 million scholarships and shit. It's like God bless.
Speaker 2:I was just talking about this with a buddy too. It's interesting too, though, the kids that go into sports. Yeah, they're learning mental fortitude and all these kinds of things, but they always get sucked out of society, just like we got sucked out for the military, and we were talking about this in comparison to like cowboy life too right, like you usually go start day working on a ranch like right out of high school, um, and I think you don't, you don't continue to develop those, those life skills no, you're isolated.
Speaker 2:So then, when you, when you dump a professional sport or sport or let's call it function, you don't know where you're supposed to lay back in society. You know what I mean. That's a huge.
Speaker 1:That's a huge problem, I think, with veterans. Yeah, especially you know our era guys, the early 2000s to the mids. You know you join. I joined straight out of high school, straight to boot camp, straight into a unit. We had some downtime and then straight to deployment and it's you, you're stuck one in that mental age range. Yeah, your emotional development. Your mental development comes to a complete halt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're developing other you know your leadership skills and how to become kind of a man. I guess the reason dudes fall in love with strippers, you know.
Speaker 1:A hundred percent Multiple times in a row. You're just like bro, you not learn. You thought you were special yeah, yeah, she loved you, buddy. Okay, but you know, and then that becomes our identity, and then they develop this persona. That's who we are, we're disabled veteran, we're grumpy, we're yeah you know angry vets, disgruntled veteran, and then they get out of the military, especially the guys that do you know eight plus years and they, they have that in them and they don't know how to like. Okay, buddy, it's okay to just turn it off.
Speaker 1:Let's figure out our new chapter yeah be proud of your service, be proud of what you've accomplished, like, I'll do your marine. We'll always, we'll be marines our last fucking breath, right, but it's let's figure out our new chapter. Be proud of your service, be proud of what you've accomplished, like, dude, you're a Marine, we'll be Marines until our last fucking breath. But it's that you have to find that chapter in life where you're like, okay, I'm a Marine, but like now, I want to be a father.
Speaker 2:I want to be an entrepreneur. I was going to talk about that on the way here. It's just. I think that was probably the hardest thing for me was the identity crisis. Yeah, I used to be able to walk into a bar with my girl and any cool, go ahead, buddy. Like my wife's a hottie, right, like, go ahead, hit on her. I'm going to go to the bathroom, I'll be right back. One, I know she can hold her own. And two, there's no way whatever you do trumps what I do right now. You know what I mean what I do right now.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean and you you live with. I mean, bro, when I was in I was in my last couple years I was 290 pounds, just giant, fought the world like, yeah, I was, I would go look down savage.
Speaker 1:And then, but that's who I was and I built. It took me a long time to realize like, okay, like this is not me anymore. This sucks like getting in a fist fight isn't fun anymore, yeah, you know. And but a lot of guys get stuck in that era yeah, and that's who they, that's who they're always. You run into them. I'll deal with them on some trips and it's like, man, how long you been out? I've been out 15 years and it's like, bro, you're still yeah this angry and you're still like it's.
Speaker 2:It's hard for me to grasp. You know, when I first got out I worked for-owned company I don't think we need to talk about who but I realized it wasn't serving me. When I first got out, I was a pretty hot mess. I wanted to go back and go do some contracting for selection because I was grasping for straws again when school didn't work out.
Speaker 2:My wife was like do you see how stressed out you are right now with this? Like, even thinking about going back to that, do you think it's a good idea? Because I was pretty burnt out when I left, you know, and I was like you're right, shouldn't do this. So I got to go into a veteran-owned company and I thought it was like perfect dude People just like no bro. I had the same experience and I try to give critical feedback to make the company better and I was fully bought off on it and just like got lifed out by a dude that hasn't been able to figure it out yet all the way Right Like still holds on to that and still I equivalent it to the high school quarterback that still wears his letterman jacket at 40 something.
Speaker 3:That's it, bro. It's like, bro, you got so much more untapped potential.
Speaker 1:Yeah, life's not over, dude put that chapter on a shelf, yeah wherever it is on your book, everything it gave you it's an amazing I I have. I'm sitting here today because of my military experience. Yeah, you're sitting here today because you're a military specialist, but there's a whole new world to be able to learn and I feel that hinders we're the lucky ones.
Speaker 2:We get to chapter two.
Speaker 1:But it hinders a lot of guys because they're so stuck on it and I don't know how to express it and be like you know time to let go, because it's like leading a horse to water. You could tell them this all day long, but until they sit and really look at themselves, and you see these guys, man, I go to a therapist every week and talk to a counselor. I do this, I do that. It's like how long have you been doing this for? Like, close that chapter. You're constantly talking about these horrible times or all the struggles or how shitty this was, and it's dude, relive them all day long.
Speaker 1:I love reliving military experiences. It's what keeps us, you know, young at mind and that chapter of our life. But it's like man, okay, like you have three or four kids, let's be proud of that. Yeah, you, you, you have all this potential and you're an amazing welder or um carpenter. Like, let's, let's focus on that, focus on that, like let's be known for that. And but these guys it's so hard because they're that letterman jacket, they're the varsity blues. Yeah, sit at the bar, I'm gonna play, I want to stay, you know, and it's just like cool dude, I literally try to leave that company.
Speaker 2:I was like, look, I really very humble, right, like, yeah, I've always tried to like, not have a giant ego. But I was like, look, thank you so much for everything you've done for me. Like all this and like it actually, it's actually what got me back into horses. You know, I used to ride when I was in the uk as a kid, um so like, and that's changed my whole trajectory, you know what I mean. So I was very like, hey, thank you so much for this opportunity. And it was just like in your face, straight to the anger thing which we we've all dealt with. I get it, you know, I understand now. And it was like you didn't serve in the same space that I did all this stuff right, like I was just like good to go, bro.
Speaker 2:You know, it took me a while to get past that, right, Because I was still in my transition. You know, and I think I've shared a little bit about like the Moose story thing, and I think I've shared a little bit about like the moose story thing, but I never quit anything in my life, right, like the pipeline was rough, but like I was never even going to thought, right, running 20 miles on a Sunday as a high school kid, like I'm not going to stop. This is what I've got to do today. You know what I mean. I remember in the pipeline from Arsoc, one guy was sitting on the side of the woods. It was in the seer portion. We were evading. This car kept coming around, checking for us with a flashlight. We haven't slept in a couple of days. We haven't eaten in a couple of days. We're watching. So these guys can try to sleep for a second before we've got to keep running.
Speaker 2:And he turns to me with his nods on. I'll never forget it. I won't drop his name on here because I don't want him to be upset, because it's not for everybody, you know, but he looked at me with his nods. He goes phil, what are we doing? And I was like what do you mean? What are we doing, bro? He's like what are we? Why are we even here? And I was like I like flipped my nod up and you know, like tbs 14, yeah, and I was like if you gotta ask that question, you probably should be an operator. And I like flipped it back down, like look back out, you know, and like we need some sleep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't question it, you know. No, no, you start questioning it. That's when. That's where the demon sets in and the seeds planted, and you just struggle from there so I mean I um, we, we all, we all got our things.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Like, yeah, I told maddie all like dude, thank you so much for putting up with me. Cool, like we talked about, and I know I'm a psychopath, that's just how we are, you know. But when I left I was just like man. I had a lot, of, a lot of bridges were burned for me after that, because he was heavily connected in the veteran space. People that didn't even know me are like, oh, that dude's a turd, you know. Like bro, talk to me and I will work harder than anybody, you know. You know what I mean. Like I like to think I'll outperform.
Speaker 1:I fucked with that dude because I know who you're talking about. I fucked with him so bad I don't want to say I humbled him, but we're at this big event. He comes pulling up in his stupid van and stupid fucking logos all over, all obnoxious and shit, and I had to go to my truck. So the guy drives me down to my truck in this atv and he happened to pull in. He's getting a ride and you know this hell he is, and so he gets in the back of the atv and the the driver of the atv is a fan boy. You know he's, of course. He's a pretty famous vet yeah, oh man the driver and he's in the back.
Speaker 1:You know, I'm just so cool and and I'm sitting there and I haven't even turned around or anything, and I'm letting him just like tell how cool he is. And then I turn around, I go, who are you? And he's like, oh, I'm you. Know, I won't mention his name, I own so. And so I'm like well, what the hell is that? And I I acted like this dude didn't even exist in my world. And he got so offended and I didn't know who he was. And he's like you've never heard of this of my company. And I was like no, you, you're on social media. Like what do you do? And he's not just. And the driver next to me was like you don't know who he is. And I'm like.
Speaker 1:I've never heard of you in my life, man, and so, yeah, he got a little pissy over that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you could just tell his personality right away. But, bro, I'm at the point now in my life where I'm like I pray for people like that. For sure you know what I mean. Like dude, I hope you do the salt, because it was in the news, like a couple of months ago, for more stupid stuff, right, like that. And when I see that now I know who that is because I was there right. And so when I quit school which is what I think I was going to say I was struggling at school. I went to school every day.
Speaker 2:I was having anxiety attacks of all the people and like I don't know why, right, like I think just probably sensory overload, and it's a new place, I don't have my homies with me, yeah, you know. And like I was working my ass off trying to pass these classes and I was like school is not this hard. The first time around I was getting better grades, partying my ass off, and I'm not, you know. And so I end up quitting human anatomy and that's the first thing I've ever quit. Right, like I I about broke my ankle in the pipeline. I taped it because we had a. We had a fin that next day, you know, you know what I mean. Like that's the first thing I've ever quit.
Speaker 2:Was that was that class, but maddie and I went on a hike up in the canyons that day and ended up shooting a moose in self-defense. How did this go down? So there was this place up in I think it's called Mill Creek, up behind a zoo in Salt Lake, and you can go up there and you go hike this on the edge of this kind of canyon deal, and it goes up, and it was wintertime, there was a ton of snow, but it was cold enough that the top layer was solid right now. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're walking. I have my camera, because camera is the only transferable skill for special operations For sure.
Speaker 2:Unless you want to try to take people's money for outdated tactics. Yeah, so we're walking, I'm taking pictures and there's a cow moose and a calf moose in the hiking trail, and I was like yo, let's just hang back, see what happens.
Speaker 2:They end up walking off the trail up higher up on this mountainside and then it kind of curves around and goes back and so we kept walking. I got my dog Porter, with me. It was a service dog, I got from Labs of Liberty and he was pretty big in my Transition Tube. Anyway, we were walking back in this canyon and there was a bull moose on the trail and I was like, hey, we had a good hike, like let's just call it and go back, because I know I'm smart enough that I know, hey, this dog could trigger this moose. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And the moose will stomp you out. And the mo have a 1911 with me because I'd seen cat tracks and my lab looked like a deer. You know, that's just how our brains are wired, you know like. And so we're walking along and now that cow and calf moose has come over that face and come down the trails.
Speaker 1:Now we're stuck between a bull and a cow and a calf.
Speaker 2:Both combos suck.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, we got some shit choices.
Speaker 2:And you've seen cow moose just stomp out a team of dogs or like a guy on a snowmobile 100%.
Speaker 1:They pin those ears back here. Oh yeah, dude.
Speaker 2:So I was like, hey, mads, just stay back here at Porter, my dog and I'm going to walk down a trail and we'll see if they kind of clear off.
Speaker 2:And so I walk down a trail. They're about 200 yards down the trail and the way this canyon goes is the trail gradually goes down and it goes around a hill and starts cutting a different direction. Right, so those two would come over the top of that hill and drop down onto the trail, right, so I'm walking down this bend to go towards them and the cow sees me and she, she takes off with her calf and that calf's probably like a yearling calf, okay, and um. So I'm like, okay, dope, so I literally they go around that bend, so they run down the trail, go around the bed. I look back to maddie and I'm like I go, I was gonna give her the old, you know hand arm signal and she, and all of a sudden I just hear this noise and I look and the cow moose is running full speed around the corner back at me, really, and on one side is a drop-off and this is all ice. Yeah, I can't get up it and I probably got maybe this much room on the trail and there's a sagebrush right here, and so I had already swapped my camera over to my left hand, just in case. Right, I was pretty fresh out of the Marine Corps at this point and picked up my pistol, and you know you're not supposed to fire a warning shot, but I was cool enough in the moment that I just popped one right in the ground. Yeah, nothing.
Speaker 2:So by this point she's closing 10 yards and I, one-handed because I had the camera, that 1911, I dumped everything else in seven rounds in her chest and then I fell over the sagebrush and I pulled my backpack off because I had a spare magnet top pouch and I stowed my camera and I was like I was fucking retarded. And then I grabbed my speed reload and speed reload and a top pouch and I stowed, I stowed my camera and I was like I was fucking retarded. And then I grabbed my speed reload and speed reload and, like, presented back and by this point she's walking past me and I didn't have to, I didn't have to re-engage, but like it's funny because I didn't muscle memory for a camera, right, yeah, because we're so used to doing this thing, like what, if you got some shit in your hand. Uh-huh, you know, like we didn't train for that, so you know ready to drop more into her.
Speaker 2:She's piss and blood and she probably walks 10 yards past, lays down and she starts like kind of curling up. You know, and I'm shouting at Maddie like get off the trail, get off the trail. And I can hear Porter barking because he's I've done bird hunting with him before.
Speaker 2:So he knew the gunshots meant something, and so I am zinging you know what I mean like and I mean a moose, and you only get that from deployment. You know what I mean like, and I'm zinging, I'm like god, I still got it, bro. You know, like that was the first thing in my brain I I like my foot started, you know, post, post, shit show, and when your foot starts to tremble a little bit, I was like, ooh, I still got it, dude.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And so I, I, I step up, you know, I reholster. I start walking past to give her time, cause I don't want to bumper towards Maddie, and so walked down the trail probably 20 yards, and these two old ladies come walking around the corner with these two little yappy dogs, oh, they bumped them to you.
Speaker 2:So I was like, hey guys, I don't think you can go any further. I said to shoot a moose, and one old lady was like, oh, no, uh, they were coming down and we, the dog, scared him back up and so obviously she was stuck between people, right, poor thing. But um, when I shot that one in the ground she swung her head with her ears back and I knew because I was, I was trying to move at the same time I knew she was coming at me you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like, it wasn't like, I wasn't like where she's just looking straight past for the trail, like we were target fixated. So that's that's why, in that moment, I dumped him.
Speaker 2:That's wild bro. So that was really epiphany for me, being like, hey, I'm still that dude, you know what I mean. And that really helped me, I think, with my transition, identity crisis, purpose thing, where I was like I'm still deadly, I'm still that guy, I'm still capable of protecting my family, I'm still formidable guy, I'm still capable of protecting my family, I'm still formidable. Now what? And that really came into where we're all at now and what we're trying to work towards and finding that new purpose and being okay with not being that anymore, because it's still a part of us.
Speaker 1:It'll never go away. But my wife says it all the time. She's like you're one of the scariest human beings beings, I know but you're one of the most gentle, loving human beings, I know. Yeah, and it's good. I mean it's, I think for guys like us, it's it, you, we will never let go of it, but it's being able to put it away. Yeah, no, it's still there. We have it'll always.
Speaker 2:We're ready, yeah, but it's yeah I mean it's the past you know we live kind of out in boonies now and if I know if my border collies that live outside because they're working dogs, if they start barking and I knock on the window once and they don't stop because that's all it takes is me knock, knock and they stop yeah, if I knock on the window they don't stop. There's something out there, yeah, and I'm halfway stoked. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, for sure I'll take, sure I'll take that pistol with a light on it and I'll go throw muck boots on in my underwear with a big coat and I'll go out there and clear the farmyard. You know what I mean. Like I'm good with it, yeah, but but for me, I think you know it's a good skill to have.
Speaker 1:It is, and to, to be able to, especially as a father.
Speaker 2:You know these days, especially today scary, scary man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's scary, but I think that's the difference, right?
Speaker 2:Some dudes just can't turn it off, yep, and I think there's also a bad model of guys that get out and over-glorify it to this thing of then trying to make money. You know what.
Speaker 1:I mean.
Speaker 2:And it really turns into like hey, but what work are you actually doing on yourself to be a better husband and father? Because that's who you're supposed to be now Exactly. You know what I mean. It's like these become an alpha. What's your new sense of service?
Speaker 1:Become this alpha, become the pack wool or the leader of the pack and all this bullshit. Yeah, and I look at those things and I'm like I don't want to be any of that. Yeah, I want to lay on the couch with my daughters. I want to take them on their little daddy daughter dance. Yeah, I want to take them out on a date like that's who. That's who we need to be teaching these fathers to be and, with their sons, teach your son life skills, teach them how to respect a woman instead of. But, like these guys, they're going to a class and getting beat up by a navy seal and paying 15 grand for it.
Speaker 2:It's like or still beating their wife and all this other stuff, and then they go home and I know some of these dudes and they're they're, they're drunk, they're fucking snorting cokes, a line of coke and yeah, being a piece of shit and it's like cool dude.
Speaker 1:You just paid to go talk to this motivational speaker. Yeah, and because he's a hoax. Yeah, and he's a cool dude why? Because he's got a social media following and he brags about how he's an alpha. And I'm like man, the most alpha motherfuckers I've ever met in my life, you would never know yeah, I've talked to delta force dudes.
Speaker 2:That um, just total savages. You know what I mean. And the stories they tell aren't the cool ones. No, stories they tell is pissing themselves and passing out. When they jumped into a wadi because there's three guys right there, vacays, yeah. And then they came to and shot them right, like, but like, those are stories they tell and you wouldn't you sit in a room with those guys and they're not running their mouth.
Speaker 1:They don't need to justify their existence. If you have to learn how to be an alpha from an alpha, they're not an alpha, and that's how I look at it. I guess I am not going to fuck all those classics. I think they're just the biggest crock of shit. No, some of these guys are putting classes on like, hey, this is how you build relationships with your children, this is how you get past those times of struggling and being able to focus and not take it out and point that energy of stress, anxiety, the weight of the world on your shoulder as a man and not deflecting it onto your family or your children for no reason. Those are, those are what we need to be teaching these dudes, instead of sitting in a fucking ice bath, doing burpees all day and getting screamed at in a classroom and then you get some stupid tomahawk given to you at the end of the class because you're a man, but you know like it all comes down to ego.
Speaker 2:It's all ego, bro, if you can just have enough humility to real and I use this quite a lot, you know, I don't. I don't care who you are, I don't care who you are, I don't care who you think I am at the. At the end of the day, we all get buried in the same wooden box. Fucking a doesn't fucking matter how much money you made, doesn't matter what your job was, doesn't matter if you're a piece of shit or a good boy we all get buried in the same wooden box.
Speaker 1:So just dump the ego bro I was. I was that guy for a long time. You know. I mean you get out. You have that like we talked about earlier. You have that image. You talked about going from you know james to phil to philly, what you know. It's like I'm in that spot now where it's like dude, I'm ready to let go of bam. You know, it's like it's been my persona, the ego, everything that was built off in the military I mean, that was phil for me exactly dude, it's like now.
Speaker 2:It's like dude, like I'm ready to go back and just blend in yeah spend time with my family, but I think it's it's different, though, yeah, it's, it's. It's different if, dude, I love this stuff because this is what I'm doing right now. That's what I'm passionate about. I'm passionate about being a dope ass dad and a gangster ass husband, you know what I mean, that's what I give a about, and and, and that takes work.
Speaker 2:It takes more work than anything, dude, and there's plenty of work to do, you know. And the more you just waste time being like it's not me, it's you and all this shit and not you know, like that's a hard thing for an alpha. You know an alpha is a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because you have the strength, you can. You know you are confident and not confident, you can be observant and all these things that you can bring to the table. But to really become a switchblade, if you start to control that self and be introspective and realize your weaknesses and when they're getting a hold of you and all these kinds of things, bro, it just makes you more lethal. It really does, because and then you're raising savages, exactly.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean Exactly. And then, when you see the, the anger start to build. Why, why, what? What brought me to this point? What, yeah, what is so important for me right now to be feeling like this yeah, it's what's worth it. What's worth it, yeah, why do I need to act like an asshole in front of my kids right now?
Speaker 2:right. Why do I need to be right right now?
Speaker 1:what, yeah, you want to talk about? When you start yep roger that, but you know I um that's a big one, dude, why? Do I need. Why do I have to be right? And that's a big thing that I've been working on is because, like there's certain things like I have to like when I'm like, okay, this it's because of this, and my wife's like is it, is it worth it?
Speaker 2:But that's also as as part of our personality, but it's also what's been brought out in training isms. For sure, you know what I mean. That's how we've been programmed.
Speaker 1:And then when you talk about programming, I mean it's putting that chapter away, yeah, but you then now we get to pick those life skills that are going to help us develop as a husband, as a father, what's not functional in business. Okay, do I need to explode on this? Do I have to go off the hinge on this shit? Yeah, and then, once you can really start dialing all that in and like really looking at yourself as a true man, yeah, with your emotions, with your anger, with life, with stress, with your faults.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All of it, all of it, bro, and once you're able to do that, that's when things really start coming together and life becomes really enjoyable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's freeing, for sure, but it also takes. What it takes a lot of and I think a lot of dudes can't well, not so much can't probably, maybe won't or aren't prepared to is bringing that understanding into your marriage. And you know like when I first got out, I quit school, that moose thing happened. Fuel craft didn't work out all this crap right, and I felt like that's when I felt most isolated, you know, and I was just like fuck, what now? You know like I have to have a plan, because you know how it goes If I don't have a plan, like how am I supposed to act?
Speaker 2:You know, like that's a conventionalism and a sophism, you know. And so I remember I drove out to the dry lake bed west of Salt Lake with my dirt bike, had a Husqvarna, and I was like, yeah, I'm just going to go rip some single track, you know. And I got out there and I like that was my rock bottom. I was out there for probably six hours I didn't touch my bike, right Like that's, when contemplation started to occur for me, right, a contemplation of doing the stupid thing, right, and that's the first time in my life where I've ever thought of suicide. And now, looking back at that, I can see how a dude can get to that point.
Speaker 2:Really I can sympathize with it, okay, because for a long time I was like yo, you're a bitch, you're just weak, you're selfish. I still agree with some of those things, right To a degree that I can get to a place where I can understand that and how it creeps up on you. It does, and it was never. I'd never had that thought for a second before, you know, but I think for me that was a. I was an angry individual, I had no idea what I wanted to do. You know, I didn't realize the absolute, incredible human being that God gave me that I get to work with. You know what I mean my wife, and not honoring her or giving her what she should be getting out of a marriage. And I just it was hopelessness, right, yeah, in that moment, and I think and that's where I think the easy thing for a lot of dudes that they come to and like, oh, to be better without me. You know which? Yeah, now I've been through the whole thing I'm like, dude, you're high, you know what I mean. Like it doesn't work, like that.
Speaker 2:No, so I, I got back that day and I went and got a blood panel done because a buddy that was a police officer in salt lake told me he did, and so when I got blood panel done I found out all my hormones were jacked up, like my testosterone level was a 290-something Really Out of 1,000. So I technically had the testosterone levels of like a 90-something-year-old, and so that was obviously causing a lot of things. Well, it's a chemical imbalance, man. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so I was like dude and in my head I was like man. I was hand selected for stress tolerance and now my ability to handle stress is zero, like what the fuck you know. And so I went and got on TRT and it helped a ton. But right after that we had my daughter and that was just like that was God's way of just smashing me into a wall. You know what I mean? And and um, I was never that guy that, like, was good with kids. Yeah, I would be the one of three single guys that go to the team barbecue and I give all the kids googly eyes so they can stick them all to family portraits, right?
Speaker 2:and then we go to the bar, yeah, right, like I was not, that I didn't have a good example of how to be a dad. I had no clue, right, and even if you do, you have no clue when it comes, you know. And so, really, for me, I had a pretty pinnacle moment trying to work through being a new parent and I had a list above the changing station of like, burp them, change them, burp them, feed them, burp them like. I had my checklist, bro, right, and I was there just like, yep, did it, did it, did it. It didn't work. It's still screaming what do I do? What do I start again, did it, you know, and I just lose in my mind, you know, lose in my mind and, um, it got pretty bad, you know, I won't, I won't sugarcoat it like it got pretty bad.
Speaker 2:The stuff that had messed me up most from the military was funnily enough, it was more so footage from devices that we got from dudes on target and the disturbing things you see on those right, like, like, what, like women, children fucked up stuff, right, sure, and so I think for me, that was a thing that has haunted me the most. And then, obviously, like, there's got to be some kind of mental thing there, for like sitting on the cinder block listening to screaming for days on end in serious school, right, like those things add up to screaming, right, like screaming on Target, screaming in videos, all these things. So screaming for me was just this thing, and I just went black, right, and I'm just in a complete reactive state. And so that was really when Maddie was like you need to go get help, you know. And so I called the VA and the VA said he couldn't get me in for six months Hilarious, isn't it Right? And got it dope. But now, what Cause? I'm actually desperate. Yeah, you know, I don't. I remember like it was yesterday I was sitting in the subway parking lot in Morgan, utah, trying to get help, you know. And so I called the vet center and they couldn't get me in either, and they're like three weeks. I just hung up the phone and they called me back and they're like we'll get you in today.
Speaker 2:And some dude pulled a string and did a human thing. Right, did a human thing. You weren't just a number for once. Yeah, imagine that. So that probably saved my life, really, you know, the first time.
Speaker 2:And so I got to talk to this dude, aaron. He was a reservist officer which I used to bust his balls about, obviously, but really we just got to unpack some things that I didn't think were normal but were normal for me, like what you know what I mean? Just the hypervigilance stuff, the fact that when I am under an immense amount of stress, I will default to muscle memory. Right, I'll default to hitting that black and being in a reactive state For sure, right, and so and he said, all the times that you've had that kind of a stimulus, you have been able to extinguish it right. So if there's a threat, you put down the threat, right. If, if there's a problem, you figure out a set of steps to get to a solution, right, like for first time in my life with a kid didn't know. Now I think it's hilarious there is no solution.
Speaker 3:You are doing sleep deprivation training. It is a game of attrition, you know what.
Speaker 1:I mean, but you can't quit.
Speaker 2:That's what separates the good ones. That helped me really mentally understand because I have a critical brain, right. It helped me really mentally understand what, what was occurring, why it was occurring and what I can do to kind of work on it. But what it really taught me was in the moment. It allowed me to recognize when I started to do things. Yeah, it let me recognize when I was starting to get pissed for no reason. It made me recognize why I needed to be right in that moment. It made me recognize, you know, when I was starting to get to this level.
Speaker 2:And this is why the second thing I owe my life to is my wife, because she's able to recognize when I'm going through that, right. And I'd say to her like, hey, look, you have green, yellow, red, black, right, those are my colors, right, right, cooper's color code, whatever you want to call it. I was like, if I don't sleep well at night, I'm probably gonna wake up in the yellow. And if I wake up in the yellow and we go straight to this, this and this, that don't go right, I'm probably gonna be in the red, and going to town in the afternoon is not a good idea. Yeah, right, like so we started to try to stack things selfishly in my favor so that I could bring functionality back into my day to day. For sure and that's really what probably saved our marriage is her understanding that us being able to have that communication and us really trying on both ends Communication is everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everything. Well, I don't have colors. But my wife's like you're peaking yeah. She tells me I'm peaking yeah. Then I'm like okay, that means you're being an absolute fucking asshole for no reason.
Speaker 2:And it's the most beautiful way that she could possibly say that, so I don't get mad. Yeah, she's like you're being an asshole you're fucking peaking.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, am I? And she's like, yeah, I'm like, okay, you know that's how. But I had to take that getting to know and her knowing my language, my body reaction, language, everything where I'm at, why I'm here. It showed out, but now it's, it's been a thing for a while.
Speaker 2:So now, right as I even like start, and you start to recognize yeah, yeah, and that dude, and then that's taking the power back. Exactly. You know what I mean and and that's really that's where I'm at now and I think that's probably why I got called to move more remote and start doing the ranching thing and everything else like that's pretty multifaceted, but it gave me the quiet that I needed. There's no, I couldn't do all the noise living in a condo right near salt downtown, salt lake, you know.
Speaker 1:So I was just like constantly spun up well, you're never, you can never turn it off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even here I nearly shot three homeless dudes like.
Speaker 1:I can imagine, yeah, downtown Salt Lake is wild, yeah, and like I got a buddy that was down there for a while and I'd go visit him and he's like, oh, just park. And I'm like I'm not fucking leaving my truck down. But then you go to the Hunt Expo and it's like you go two blocks over and it's perfect little Mormonville. And then you drive right outside the what's that big park? It's like Skid Row right down there. Liberty Park You're just like what this is downtown. Salt Lake used to be the shit.
Speaker 2:I used to go visit there when I was in because my buddy, jake, who got me involved in Labs of Liberty, gave me my service.
Speaker 1:I know him. I met him years ago.
Speaker 2:We did, I think we helped out a couple of vets. Jake Nold's mom runs Labs of Liberty.
Speaker 1:He lived up in Morgan or Hennifer at the time. I don't know if he's still up there or not.
Speaker 2:They still have a place up there. Yeah, okay, but oh yeah, oh yeah. So I used to always go. No, they had a tbi moment. I used to always go to salt lake and we go mountain bike and rock climb and like all the fun outdoor shit and it was like we used to joke and say, like salt lake's real granola, you know, like it was kind of like hippie chill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude during the pandemic went nuts we were just down there for the what? The hundred days of rodeo, 100 nights of rode, whatever that. There's a big yeah that they call it. I don't Do you remember what it's called, kid? No, 100 Nights of 100 Stars of, I believe you, some shit.
Speaker 2:Anyways, it's a big rodeo that goes on for like it's like one of those rainbow events that you go to.
Speaker 1:Yeah right, we're walking out. Oh yeah, you didn't even go, did you? No, it was a little one. You would park in this parking lot and then security would have to escort you out of this lot to cross this little wooden bridge into the arena, into the parking lot. Then you go through the gates and that's when you were like safe, we're walking. This is just the summer. We're walking out and I see this person all slumped over. I look at my youngest, kind of fucked up. But I was like, hey, don't do drugs like that's what. That's what, that's what a dead body looks like.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the motherfucker was dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we come, we show back up later and they're have it all roped off. The person had od. If they were dead when we were walking, they're not. But I'm like this is why you don't do drugs. There are people sitting there and there's rats running all over them as we're walking into this arena to go and have this festival and great time, and you're just like what the hell?
Speaker 2:happened, I couldn't be there anymore. No, dude, it was nuts. No. And then I found out they literally give homeless camps clean needles, but if you don't spread HIV, then keep doing drugs. It's just nuts.
Speaker 1:So we've been out of there pretty hard. I want to rewind a little bit. I'm having a guy come up that left the church, oh yeah, and talk, just because I had. It's big where we're at. Is it big out here? They're everywhere. But yeah, I mean we don't really deal with them. But I had a guy do a podcast. He actually pulled the podcast because he was worried about the backlash, his family still being in the church. Because he he outs like the whole his whole experience growing up, mormon, going on a mission, all just the yeah, fucked up shit the mormon church has done and did and all is doing. It's kind of like the military, very culty and uh yeah. So he, um, we did a whole, it was an incredible episode. And he ends up. He ended up saying he didn't want to air because, yeah, he was worried that his family would get backlash and I'm like it's it's.
Speaker 2:It's pretty gnarly.
Speaker 1:We live more rural, so it's big time there, you know but I should just tell you something right there, like if you're worried about the backlash of you talking about your religion.
Speaker 2:That's just between religion and faith. I think 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's what people are like oh, you're religious. I'm like I'm not religious, but I have a relationship with God 100%. I'm a baby Christian. I grew up my dad's a pastor, so I'm with Pastor Kids. It explains everything Brain core, tattoos my lifestyle, getting back into it and everything, relearning it all jumping back in. It's completely different now, looking at it from that point of view, I look at it like if I was a Christian. But if I was leaving the Christian faith and I wasn't allowed to talk about it because I was worried about the backlash my siblings or parents were going to get, yeah, that would tell me right there, that's not for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. I feel like it should probably be opposite. There should be like communion and support and all this stuff, because you're lost, not like.
Speaker 1:Not. Oh, the church is going to shun you. You can't come to, you're not going to be allowed to the temple anymore, and I'm like, I'm like, and you still sit here and say this isn't a cold ends, we won't feed you.
Speaker 1:Exactly. So, dude, let's jump. I want to know your military experience, because we fucking breezed by all of that. For sure, we're going to rewind and we'll jump back into the transition and all that good stuff, but I think, for people to understand the struggles of what goes on with veterans, I obviously want to be able to hear your story and that these guys, yeah, absolutely could be able to relate to it too. So college, you're done with running, yeah, why the? Why did you join the marine corps? I love asking people why the marine corps? Yeah, or just any branch in general, but why did you decide the Marine Corps? What was your reason for?
Speaker 2:It has to be a reason, there was always a reason. I um, I actually walked into the Air Force recruiter first. Womp, womp.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:We'll edit that part out. So I was at a pretty good crossroads. I was either actually going to go be a ranch hand, which is pretty funny Okay. Coming full circle, and then or I was going to go be a ranch hand which is pretty funny, okay, coming full circle and then or I was going to go join the military and so went to like the recruiter, like depot thing there in virginia.
Speaker 1:so like you get to have your pick, they're all next week they're all in one building, kind of deal, or like a little plaza.
Speaker 2:Like a little plaza okay yep, and I walked into the air force one first. I don't think it was like a, I think it was just the first door, you know, it was like your doors are lined up. So I walked into the Air Force One first, like flying has never been a thing for me, like I just happened to go in there and I will never forget it. It was this dude eating a McDonald's cheeseburger. He was a skinny guy. He was eating a McDonald's cheeseburger, leaning on his desk on the phone and he gave me one of these and he was like like hold on a minute. And I was like hold on a minute, I'm your customer, mofo, you know. So I walked out the door and I went next door as marine corps really they're.
Speaker 1:They were happy to have come on in, son.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, so I so I saw it's a Marine. Corps 2008. Okay, and so I could barely do three pull-ups, really, because I was all. You're just runner, I was just long-distance runner dude.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you ran the three-mile. What was your three-mile?
Speaker 2:I think I did a 1450-something in cross-country, so that's like hills and everything like that.
Speaker 1:So in the Marine Corps you're just breezing.
Speaker 2:Well, and so I've been drinking a lot of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're prepping for the Marine Corps.
Speaker 2:I hadn't ran for six months, I think, I still ran like a 17. Which is flying, which is flying. They were like, we'll give you some money, We'll give you a bonus. And We'll give you some money, We'll give you a bonus. And I was like, oh dope, you were getting bonuses in 2008? Oh yeah, okay, okay, yeah. So I was like sweet $10,000? I've never had 10 grand in my life. You know what I mean. Like I barely have anything in my pocket right now. So, yeah, I did three pull-ups. I ran a 17-something. My recruiter let me drive his Chevy Tahoe around while he was off at recruiting duties other places. We'd go to Hooters together.
Speaker 1:You're recruiters.
Speaker 2:No offense to recruiters.
Speaker 1:They're some of the grimiest human beings on the planet, that dude got me, good Got me good bro.
Speaker 2:And so I went in there and I wasn't a citizen, yet I still had a green card.
Speaker 1:No shit, you've been on a school visa. No, I just had a green card. Okay.
Speaker 2:I don't even know how that whole thing works. I did it legally, okay. So I really wanted to sign up. My mom was like you can't go infantry, like a good mom, right. And so I was like, all right, whatever, dude. So I went in there and I was like I'd like to go recon. They're like can't do it, you have to be a citizen. I was like okay, and they're like I was like I'd like to be a dog handler and they're like can't do it, you'd have to be a citizen. But we do have this contract open. It has a $10,000 bonus and we'll give it to you, which was Motor T, because the IEDs are so and it said 35, 31. I didn't know what mos numbers were and I thought, oh, it's got three in it, it's got to be something good, right, because I knew infantry is 03 11 and so went to boot camp paris island was paris island.
Speaker 1:How was that? What time of year did you go? Where did you go?
Speaker 2:paris island. Yeah, bro rough, I don't give a shit about your hills bros. Yeah, try getting eaten by sand fleas all the time understand man they warn you about it. My friend is disciplined people don't understand. When a sand flea bites you it, it hits a nerve it's the reason why I live in idaho now and I left the east coast because I can't do book. What time of year did you go through? Um uh, beginning of the year, in the wintertime see, we went.
Speaker 1:I went, I think, yeah, january, yeah, I think it's january, february. J I went january, february and march, but they weren't bad in january they started coming out.
Speaker 2:February and march we started really dealing I literally remember staying in field just so they could eat you know they made us do the runways, sand flea runways where you stand with your arms out.
Speaker 1:Make a runway for the sand flea and you stand there and you see kids, just the boot camp was ridiculous.
Speaker 2:I so I was a little older, right, because I did a little college first. Oh, you were the old timer and so I wasn't quite that bad, but I was.
Speaker 2:I was old enough to know that, bro, I'm not gonna stand on this line and pee my pants right now, you know, and while everybody's getting hazed online, I literally sneak back and run, run down the banks and back of the bunks and I go to the bathroom. So I'm like I'm not going to pee myself, like it's ridiculous. And now I get lifed out in there and everything else. My real, my one, our drone sergeants did a good job. They effed us up right Like when I left that place. I remember walking around a strip mall with a drink. I was thinking I can't walk and drink. I just need to put this down Like they got me good. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean, but I remember we were drilling to chow one morning and you know, by that point you're like. I was like mouthing the words to whatever we were singing, you know, while we were marching.
Speaker 1:Is this like third phase?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was just like pretty over it, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And one of the drill instructors saw I wasn't actually sounding off. He's like no, you're just lipping it, run that way. And I was like fuck, so I just start running. But I liked running, right, I did college track, you know. So I just went for a run around Parris Island. You just kept going, I just not going to go back. He told me to run that way Until when. So I literally went for a run, dude.
Speaker 2:Really, I ran around the base and everything else and I was like dude, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, and I was like there's a lot more to this place than I thought there was, you know, right, yeah, so at some point I was like I got to run back. How long has it been at? I had to have been gone for a couple of hours, shut the fuck up Not joking Really.
Speaker 2:So I come back, I go into the squad bay. I kicked it and they're all getting hazed. So I open the door up and I go into the squad bay and Charles Trucker sees me. It was like the movie where it zooms all the way to his face down the other end of the freaking squad bay and he was like you and I was like you and I was like, oh, fuck, you know I thought this was over.
Speaker 2:He's like where the fuck have you been? And I was like this recruit was running. He's like you could tell like he probably fucked up. You know. He was like get online. You know that's the best when you know the drill instructors realize they screwed up and then you're like, oh shit, that was the only time. Paris Island's a fascinating place. Bro Makes Marines. You know what I'm saying? Does its job that it does. So, yeah, did that. Went to combat training at Lejeune and then went to Fort Leonard, Missouri.
Speaker 1:I still don't know what my job was, yet really so you don't even know what Motor T is at this point.
Speaker 2:All I've really seen up to that point is 3531. Okay, I don't even know what motor t is at this point. I all I've really seen up to that point is 35, 31 and I don't even know. Okay, and so all I know is I got 10 grand. You know you're stoked, yeah. So, um, and by this point, like I'm like okay, I want to do something cool, you know what I mean. Like I'm in the military now, like I want to do something you don't realize you're about to be a truck driver, right and everybody starts thinking like cool, we jump out planes, we shoot guns and we're doing some dope dope stuff, you know.
Speaker 2:And so shut fort, lena wood, missouri. And they're like this is a school of motor transportation and you're gonna learn how to drive a humvee. And I was like it's a car, bro, like what are we learning?
Speaker 1:yeah, how long is the school?
Speaker 2:period, um, I don't know Long enough for me to get in trouble. You know, yeah, stupid stuff.
Speaker 2:But that all cleared up and then at the end of it they assigned you your units and mine said 3-1-1. So I went to 3-11. But I thought it was 0-3-11. I was like, sweet, I'm going to the infantry. No, I went to artillery. So I was like, sweet, I'm going to the infantry. No, I went to artillery. So I was with 311 and 29 Palms. Oh God, okay, but it was good because I wasn't at a truck company. I found out after I got to the fleet. I could have just driven trucks and that would have sucked. You know, like at least I'm driving 777s and I get to huck ammo and I get to dig holes and like we're in the field most of the year.
Speaker 1:But you're in 29 Palms, but I was in 29 Palms. How was that arriving out to 29 Palms? I mean, you hear you're going to California, you're probably excited and then you end up in the stumps.
Speaker 2:Oh man, there's a reason. They say if you were in 29 Palms you'd either become a 300-PF tier or alcoholic become a 300 pft or alcoholic. Yeah, that is accurate. Most of us were both, you know. Yeah, but it's a training center, so I mean it was cool. We did a lot of stupid crap, obviously, like last corporal, underground, all that stuff, you know, um, but yeah, we were in the field every steel night. We'd shoot already for all the training exercises, all that stuff oh, are you guys in support of um two seven?
Speaker 1:oh, okay, so you?
Speaker 2:I mean we do all the blt stuff on, all the muse and no shit.
Speaker 1:So are you guys like support for all that? So every, every, what was it? Cax and mojave viper, what were they calling it?
Speaker 2:every single one of those a mojave viper, every single one of those.
Speaker 3:We were shooting artillery for it so we're out there the whole time.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know, and I mean there was some good that came of it. Um, obviously got hazed all those things. We went on two muse.
Speaker 1:Um, we're supposed to go to afghanistan what muse did you go on 31st out of okinawa 30 worst. Yeah, so we did okay. So how? So you flew to okinawa, yep flew to flew to okinawa so chris, that was just previously on. He did uh his mu at okinawa. How was that horrible? Why is that?
Speaker 2:well, I, I think just being on the boat for that whole time. We we were supposed to do a workup for afghan. They decided at that point that afghan was too steep for artillery to replace for the reservist unit really. So it was like, oh dope, now we're gonna go on a mew, you know so morale was pretty crap, and the first mew I was junior.
Speaker 1:It just got hazed the whole time did you guys cross the equator or anything? Did you get your shell back? God bro, that's shit me that I had the greatest experiences. I did two muse, we, we did, we did the show back when you cross the equator. Nope, didn't do any of that.
Speaker 2:The navy hated us oh 100 and we were just in general quarters all the time and we just got hazed in a well deck all the time did you have amtrak's in the well? Deck. Yeah, but all of our trucks and cannons were in there. So you're like cleaning the cannons in there. You're like unraveling cami net all the way down, all the way back up.
Speaker 1:Up the ramp Just getting hazed. You know what type of ship were you on? Were you on like an LP? Did the back of the ship go down? Yeah, Was it like an LPD or LSD or some shit like that?
Speaker 3:I think they're called LSD no with the whole back of the ship opened up right, it flooded and the tracks could go out.
Speaker 2:Okay, yep, and so first MEU I mean it's cool, first deployment, right Like I didn't know any different. I thought it was cool, just strictly a MEU, just strictly a MEU. Went to Philippines, thailand, singapore.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're a young Marine, so yeah, what we could talk about in front of my 16-year-old daughter, 16 year old daughter did all those. How was the philippines bro that?
Speaker 2:was, the philippines was nuts, because, um, all the reasons, right? My second view I did not go out on port calls because I was, I was seasoned, you know, like I just saved my money.
Speaker 1:What are some of the things that you guys are doing in the philippines?
Speaker 2:because we hit all like we did, uh, we did the whole. I can't even remember what it's called, is it walking street? I never hit the field. Um, and we had a mechanic named walker. He was like a wisconsin bred little, short, stout bulldog guy, you know. And this, uh, this chick, who's probably like six three in a leopard dress, comes out of the bar, you know, because they're trying to coax you into their bar to spend your money, picks up Walker over his shoulder and runs, and as that chick's running by, she's got an Adam's apple bigger than any of us. No, yeah, so Walker got stole by a tranny. But that is the Philippines in a nutshell. Yeah, you know, I think we're all sitting at a table one time too, drinking, and you know, waiting, do we got to be back for curfew or whatever? And a monkey came up and smacked the crap out of this dude in his face. You know, like just only things in the Philippines, people.
Speaker 1:I don't think you know. You watch like the Hangover, you number you know the hangover too. It's just like that, but worse. Yes, but amplified. Yeah, and I don't think like normal civilians could ever comprehend that no, we don't get we don't ever go to the nice places no, dude, we went to singapore. I mean I had three dudes, there was four of us that were at boot camp together. Yeah, we went for boot camp together, mct together, schools together, the fleet together.
Speaker 1:So we were we get to Singapore and we're like, fuck, who wants to get caned? All of us were like, listen, we got to experience this, bro.
Speaker 2:we had a dude like that. His name was Jeremy Putnam Dude. He got in trouble because he got in a fist fight in Singapore and you know they're pretty straight edge there, singapore doesn't play Dude. He got put in a jail cell at the bottom of the ship. Did you do that.
Speaker 1:No, we were just trying to get Kane. Bro bread and water.
Speaker 2:He got put on bread and water rations water in a cell at the bottom of the ship and it's funny, he's missing his two front teeth. So we'd go down there like try to visit him and he wasn't allowed to see anybody and he'd always be smiling with missing his two front teeth, he said. He said every day this guy would come to switch out for fire watch because he was guarded and if you fell asleep they'd rattle on the cage like to make him wake up. Like prisoner do. Uh, he got in a fist fight drunk with a local. That's it. That was it fuck.
Speaker 2:That was a daily thing for us. Yeah, so um I I don't know, maybe he did worse. That's all that we were privy to. That's all last corporate underground bro, singapore, we were.
Speaker 1:We were in singapore and I had one of my best. He lives in cordell lane now. He's, this dude's hilarious. He's with me for this night. Reber was, there was a few other dudes. Anyways, she knows a couple of these guys. I've met them, buddies of mine. We're at this bar and it's like 11, you know curfew, yeah. So for anybody listening, a MEU is a Marine Corps Expeditionary Unit. There's three ships and a submarine. To this mu you have the battleship, which is the flag deck. That's where the, the carrier, um, all the jets are on and off of. Then you have like a medium-sized ship, which was whatever, and then you have like the lpd ships, which was recon am trackers, grunts, artillery, yeah, all the delinquent Main package of idiots. You're absolute idiots of what make the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps stuck on one ship? Yeah, with like four women in the Navy. That was all we had. So we pull into these ports and you got to imagine, like just the most testosterone You've been on boat forever going months on end.
Speaker 1:So we're in this bar and you know when, the when the ships pull in, they just you know, besides hong kong, the normal, most of the ships just pull up to a pier and they're like hey, see you at midnight. For junior enlisted marines, you have to be back by midnight. Certain ranks, overnight libo and all that shit, whatever. And if you're late, you're done. And then what happens is you're not going anywhere. Rest of me, yeah, you're gonna become a libo risk, yeah. And then you're hitting. You still have all these other countries you're about to experience, and if you become a liberal risk, you're not allowed to get off, yeah. So it's very important that you get back in time. We're all at this bar and I look at my watch and it's like 11 40 and we're in, we're on, we're in singapore, and I start grabbing my buddy.
Speaker 1:I'm like get the fuck out, we gotta go we gotta go and I'm throwing everybody out and we there was like five of us, five or six of us, so no cabs or anybody would stop. I jump in the road and almost get hit by this van and this dude like like, slams his brakes on it. We don't even say that. I'm like get in, and we just pile in his guys piling in this van, and this guy's like no, no, no, no. And I'm like listen, I'll give you a 50 tip if you make it before midnight. And god is my witness and I'll have my one of my boys sit right here and he'll vouch for this. This dude looks at me, he goes. If I don't make it, I give you $50. Wham, it just floors it. And we got dudes laying across at the guy's laps in the back, like there's a guy on my lap. This guy, this is a story.
Speaker 2:This guy tells his kids 100%.
Speaker 1:We're all like, oh shit, like shit, like we're in it, you know, and everyone's hanging on, I think, galvan on our buddies, just puking out the window like it was just a shit show this dude, would we come flying up to a red light? He would just whomp on the curb I'm talking on the sidewalk, people diving out of the ways he's plowing through trash cans, hitting shit. You just hear all kinds of hitting. This van swerves and then at that time I don't know if it's still the same when you would pull into the singapore naval port, there was those two like jeep trucks and they had like 240 golfs like mounted right there, dude, these dudes are waving at us this dude didn't even touch the brakes, blows through the military checkpoint onto the naval base.
Speaker 1:Everybody in the van ducks thinking like these, we're just about to start getting sprayed by 240. Everyone lays down, pulls the fucking brake, pull dude, open the door. We all come rolling out right in the ships. Right there, 11, 59. We made it where the people sit a little shore patrol that's amazing. The shore patrol is like 50 bucks and I was like, motherfucker, okay, 50 bucks. I'm like, good, dude, that's the best 50 bucks. And I was like motherfucker gave 50 bucks.
Speaker 2:I'm like good dude, that's the best 50 bucks you've probably ever spent 100%.
Speaker 1:Singapore was the first time I ever saw somebody get hit by a car Like plowed. It was a Marine, so do you remember it was an Irish pub You'd go down.
Speaker 2:I didn't get off in Singapore.
Speaker 1:You didn't get off in Singapore. No, I think I had watch or something. Oh god, you missed out. It was the orchard towers. I got a silk pinstripe suit made. All of our buddies went there. We all went. The owner of this place just starts pulling out tiger beer. We got completely. Got the justin bieber treatment annihilated. No, no, we didn't go that bad. We got completely wasted getting fitted for these silk pinstripe suits. I got pinstriped. This dude got all of our sizes, took all our measurements. He's like I'll mail it to you. I'll mail it to you, Dude. It was like $150. I was home on leave and my mom gets a package and my suit showed up like four months later he actually got it.
Speaker 2:Oh man, he probably got you yeah dude, we were at this.
Speaker 1:I want to say it was Muddy Murphy's or something. Any Marines watching this will know it's an Irish pub. I think I've heard of that. You go down these stairs. I have a shirt in my closet from it. Still, it's like a large. It's this tiny little thing. We're standing there because they drive the opposite way.
Speaker 2:This Marine is grunt, comes out drunk as shit, like yelling and we all look and he looks the wrong way and gets pulled out. I'm talking like up the hood roof decked out. He got messed up. Man. Singapore was because they can't drive, they people don't deploy. Those deployments gave me true perspective like racism. Racism was nuts, but like the driving thing was nuts hong kong, I watch people get. I watch people on donkeys get smoked while we're convoying and stuff you know like there's no rules.
Speaker 1:There's no rules anywhere like we're, so we're so taken care of here in the us. Yeah, I mean, there's you getting a car in a cab and it just looks like it went through a war zone.
Speaker 2:You're yeah that's why, when I get pulled over for rolling a stop sign when nobody else is around, I'm like bro, calm down, yeah. And then you got people who are like I'm going to merge here.
Speaker 1:It's like they're bumper cars and you're just like God, please don't kill me. Singapore was one of my favorite places. We had the wildest. There was this guy on our platoon. His name was Zuma. He was a liberal risk. Before we even left one of those guys. Right, I remember this guy. I remember going to a bar. This was the my first experience, actually, with, like you know those buy me drinky bars. Oh, yeah, yeah, you know, my buddies, you're rolling to this bar and we're I mean, dude, you're boo ass marines yeah, babies 19 year old kid from upstate new york never, experienced shit in my life.
Speaker 1:We walk into this bar and just do just women. And I'm like, damn the odds. There's great odds in this bar. There's marines, sailors and shit and we're all partying. The women are just flocking to. You like, oh hey, you don't do that whole typical bullshit. And I'm sitting there with my buddies, we're drinking and I'm looking, I'm like why do all these?
Speaker 1:women have numbers on them because they all have these like round number tags. He's like I don't know, and we're just sitting there drinking and it is a women, and one after another, one after another, hey, and finally I'm like I think we could buy these women. And then it dawns on us. We're like in this buy me drinky bar and oh my god, but anyways, zuma the kid he was in there, 100% liberal, rest this. This guy would get so drunk in the barracks he would like jump off the third deck into a tree and like in like crash to the ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah he, he was wild. He had trapped these rabbits and like skin them out in his barracks room. There'd be just blood, everything all over his scene. He was 100% of liberal risk. Good thing he joined the marine corps. What are we doing, dexter? I would like to know where he was at. He's at in this day, because you like, if you ever like, thought of like a Marine in a movie, this was him Like you just need to give him a belt fed and like in the jungle. Oh yeah, that has a pitcher, like a beer pitcher. I'm like Zuma, what the fuck are you drinking? He's like I just ordered a Jack and Coke and they gave me this. They gave this guy a pitcher of a Jack and Coke. Sure as shit.
Speaker 3:Got in a fight, tried to burn half the town down.
Speaker 1:It was seeing those, the fact that you just pull up into a foreign country.
Speaker 2:It just shouldn't be a thing I don't know why it's a thing you know what I mean Like it's bad enough when you go on deployment and you're not getting employed properly. At least you're in a place where you're supposed to be killing people.
Speaker 1:And then you go to an ATM and then you look and you're like I got a million whatever the exchange rate is. You're like fucking poor. Then you feel, feel like a rock star. Yeah, dude, we were in this country with one of my boys. We're at this bar, it goes downstairs and it's just, we're all just party because you know all those asian countries, every bar is a buy me drinky bar, like there's women that are just, you know whatever how much money you?
Speaker 1:have exactly. Well, our buddy I don't know if I should name him whatever Travis, old Travis had the signature move when he would dance. He was just six, four shredded. Lord, she a man, god right, he'd pick women up and like dance with them, but like they'd wrap their legs so he'd pick like he could just snatch women up. This dude was massive. We're down in this basement bar partying having a great time. We're all on the dance floor, everyone's dancing, you know, doing our thing. And we look over and travis has got this little asian girl. He picks her up and he's like like bouncing her, yeah, and he doesn't see this beam because it's in the basement, so it's like the ceiling's kind of low. He goes, goes boom and like just spears this little Asian girl off this beam in this bar and just drops her and she just blah, like hits the floor and the whole place stops. We're like oh shit.
Speaker 1:And she like sits up. She's like me dizzy, me dizzy. We're like oh fuck, we got to go, so all of us peel out.
Speaker 1:Right. We run out of there, run down a couple blocks, end up all pouring in this other bar. Our whole platoon, our gunning, everybody's in this other bar. We all start partying when none of us say shit. The next night we go out and we're at this completely different bar and this chick comes walking up with this bandaged wrap around her head. She's like hey boys, like wanting to party the next night after just getting your, I thought she was coming for a bill, you know, dude, wanting to party.
Speaker 1:It was wild. Those women are wild, dude. Those countries, I mean. Gosh, where else did you hit?
Speaker 2:Just Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. We were supposed to go to Australia, Australia is dope. It's probably good that we didn't australia.
Speaker 1:Australia is probably good that we didn't. So we, I, we hit dude in one in one mew. We hit brisbane perth, brisbane perth, darwin, and then I ended up going back to sydney. I ended up, I dude.
Speaker 2:I've been to australia like three times in the marine corps and it is the yeah so I'm glad I didn't know darwin is like take a different path if there's any country I can go back to, it'd be australia.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but like when we were pulling the darwin dude it, imagine a rowdier version of oceanside, okay just yeah.
Speaker 2:My wife maddie lived near Bondi Beach for a long time it was wild, surfed there and stuff like that I love Australia.
Speaker 1:The people there were fun. Yeah, the dudes were doing a great time. We partied with a bunch of Aussie rugby players. We actually had jerseys that we bought one night. We were all just tore up young Marines being stupid.
Speaker 2:Dude. Their cowboy deal in Australia is no joke.
Speaker 1:They don't play bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, tore up young marines being stupid their cowboy deal in australia is no joke. They don't play bro. Yeah, it's pretty legit. I mean the other way.
Speaker 1:They're running those cows down like, yeah, maybe jeeps with tires on them, freaking jurassic park car comes out just like grabs them and yeah, it's wild australia's a good time.
Speaker 2:So okay, you just do two muse yeah, this um by the second one, I was like motor t chief right, like I was running everything for the battalion and I think I was a corporal and I was just like bro, there's got to be, I can train my kids to do this job.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And I was starting to get pretty bitter and I was like man, all I got to do is muse, like I'm doing the job of a gunny or a master sergeant as a corporal and they're not doing anything. And I was just, I was just like this, ain't it, you know? And so without any actual like deployment, deployments, nothing kinetic, you know what I mean. So I think the closest we got was like we got loaded out to go do an op kind of deal, right like, and so where that was in, that was in thailand, okay, but nothing happened. You know, there was potential for it but hadn't seen anything yet.
Speaker 2:So I was just kind of I was kind of pretty bitter and I was like I'm as high up as I can go in this right, as a corporal, I'm running an entire motor t lot, all this stuff, and I had good mentorship, but it was very it was marine corps mentorship like ha, brainwashing, more right, not like true leadership in what I consider leadership now. So I was going to get out and there was a captain His name's David Timanjian and just in case he ever hears but he basically changed my entire direction. You know whether he knew it or not and probably looking back. Now I'm like, damn, you know, I'm 37, now'm 37, now I look a lot at like man. This is where this guy was at this point in his life. For sure he's touching people at that age, right like so he scooped me up, um which is very rare, which is rare right a corporal getting scooped up by a captain and I was briefing battalion briefs.
Speaker 2:I was doing all this stuff at this point. I was doing maintenance cycles, like running everything out in the field, and we were out in the field a lot. And so he pulls me in his office. He goes I'm david and you're james. We're gonna have a conversation really the first time in marine corps has ever after me right rest of his parade rest like all that kind of stuff you know.
Speaker 2:And so I was like, oh shit, you know like, and I didn't quite click for me he's like I know you're looking at getting out, just entertain me, put in a package for morsock, or put in a package for ocs and I had no idea what morsock was yeah, you, I think that was probably in 11.
Speaker 2:And so I was like okay, well, I don't want to go back to college, I'll do this Morsock thing. You know, and up until that point I was kind of, I was the guy that could run a 300 PFT, yeah, you know. And so they would put me on every meritorious board against all the other companies and whatever, and I'd go smash everybody into PFT and then wash out a drill in knowledge. You know what I mean. I was just not that guy. I didn't want to study for it. I thought it was a joke anyway, because I was already doing the job.
Speaker 2:Rank was just like and so I put in a package for Marsock and at that point there's no recruiting effort. If you go to the airport now, there's like posters and there's like a prep program, yeah, and there's none of that. So I end up trying to call a recruiter and the guy was off at like some rugby championships and I was just like dude, what the hell is going on? Like, how do I decide to figure it all out? Right, and it's funny because at the end of ITC, at the end of the pipeline, when I became an operator, marsauk Recruiting came and pulled a bunch of random dudes out and asked us how they can improve recruiting and I literally stood up and said you shouldn't change anything because you don't want the guy that gets spoon-fed to be here, you want the guy that wants to be here, you know. And so obviously numbers and all that shit, they can't do that, but so put in a package for marsock, did no prep training, had no idea what it really was. What is marsock for everybody listening? Um, a bunch of idiots. No, it's, uh, it's basically marine corps version of the seals. So the marine corps special operations apparatus before that, really the only thing. The marine corps special operations apparatus. Before that, really the only thing existed in the special operations capability was force recon, you know, um, but they were mostly tied to the mu. So they actually folded up a bunch of force recon, uh, to make the beginning of marsock and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:But so I show up at selection and I don't really know what I got gotten into. You know I I've watched enough videos at this point that I know it's this is probably what I signed up to do to start with, right. So I show up, um, I crush the pft, and then we go to swim, right and and, and I didn't know, like you had time swim and the time's in camis, which just drag, you know. So no boots, just camis, no boots at that point, just camis, and so. But like you know how it is, they're all medium reg, baggy-ass things and it sucks, you know. So go through all the selection and well, after so we did PFT, I think we did swim. Then we had our ruck, the first ruck. There's a bunch of rucks. You had to do a selection, but the first ruck, I remember, like you had your packing list, you had everything you were supposed to have.
Speaker 2:We go outside, we're on the start line and we're like ready, and everybody's got their watches, they're like go, and everybody starts running and I'm like the fuck like, why are we running right now? Because I I haven't done ruck runs yet, you know like. Because I was with artillery, you know. So everybody starts running. Well, thank goodness, I did college track, you know. So I just start running, I start running with this rucksack and I think I ended up 14th or 16th or something. Oh, a couple hundred.
Speaker 1:Really, is this the in-doc or is this? This is.
Speaker 2:ANS, so assessment selection. Okay, so this is to even get approved To go to the pipeline. Okay, so afterwards they had just started letting instructors do some counselings with some of the guys. The instructor was like, hey, what was your tactic? I was like, what do you mean tactic? I just ran and he's like, no, like usually you do like minutes on, minutes off, like so that you can get through whatever distance it is. I was like, oh shit, I had no idea.
Speaker 2:so it's good, because then I then I started strategizing for my other rucks so these dudes are coming in with strategy and you're just running dude, I had no clue, you know, but thank god, like I tell a lot of people now, well, I'll get messages on Instagram and stuff like, hey, I want to go try out for special operations. And the number one thing I ask somebody that asks me that is why, yeah, why, why do you want to go do this? And I think most people are probably pretty surprised by that, but it's the why is the only thing that survives when shit sucks, you know the cool guy factor the money, the tattoo, none of that shit fucking matters when it sucks.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean, so it'll. If you can't define a why, good luck. What are you even doing? Trying?
Speaker 1:You probably don't last very long no, and I think that goes for most things in life.
Speaker 2:But I read a book going into so I went to selection. I ended up getting selected.
Speaker 1:How many guys made it through that? Out of a couple hundred, I think we selected.
Speaker 2:I want to say like 47. Really yeah. So the attrition was high, very so that all happened. Then I went back to 311, back to my own palms, because you had to go back to your parent unit until a class picked up that you got put into, if you so desire to go right. So I went back, I wanted to go, and this was I'm sure you can relate to some of this. So I had gunnies and all kinds of stuff pull me into their office telling me like hey, don't you want to be the motor t chief? Like you're gonna get promoted rapidly, all this stuff like the grass isn't green or marsh dogs are not cool, and I was just like shut up, you know. And I was just like fuck this, you know. And so, um, I told him I was going, yeah, and then they basically banished me to the field don't you love that about the marine corps?
Speaker 1:man you could be the most stellar Marine, most squared away person, the second. You want to better yourself. I had no pool time.
Speaker 2:Couldn't go to the pool to train. They just stuck you in the field, stuck me in the field. So I snuck because you weren't allowed to wear non-issued boots back then, right, so I snuck these Fobbit boots. In these Batess boots I saw that guys are training with on the compound and stuff, stuck those in, put extra shirts in for the field op and all this other stuff. And me and my buddy murphy, murphy just got out. He would end up going special operations too. Me, my buddy murphy. When I graduate ans, I was like it's your turn. Murph is like my little brother, you know, and it's funny because I hazed the shit out of him on our first Mew and he hated me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's how it works, man so.
Speaker 2:I was like it's your turn. So he started training for A&S and I was training for ITC, and so we would get up at 4.30 in the morning before the rest of the battery woke up, right, and we'd go run and we'd put rucksacks on, we'd go run down these dirt roads and then we'd come back and then they'd sound Reveille and the battalion would wake up and they had no idea, right.
Speaker 1:Really, that's how bad you wanted it.
Speaker 2:That's how bad I wanted it.
Speaker 1:Good for you.
Speaker 2:And so got back, went to ITC, and ITC again was a game of attrition, like you guys show up every single day, you know, and um really jacked up my ankle in that. What's itc stand for individual training course. That's basically your pipeline to become an operator. So what's?
Speaker 1:going on there.
Speaker 2:so when you graduate it, you have different phases that you have to complete and it's um, obviously physical and it's also written. So you have written tests and all these other things for proficiency. So you, you get out of ITC with CQB level one, amphib, all the boats. You basically learn everything you need to do to become an entry-level operator. Okay, and then every phase is you do your RUC, you do your PFT, you do your double obstacle course, which is timed, you do all your events every time. You can also get peer evaled out, so you have to do peer evals the whole time. So it's a pretty gnarly thing.
Speaker 2:And you run everywhere, you carry your buddy back and forth to chow Really, yeah. So it's funny. One of my best friends, dom Rickert, he was my rackmate at Selection and he ended up being my rackmate at ITC and then we were on teams together, at first, cool, and he was a recon Marine, I remember ITC walked in, he's all loud, he's got his Ray-Bans on. You know, typical recon kid. And I was like, oh, man, man, this dude's a douche, you know. But I made it. You know, I made it through selection. But the.
Speaker 2:But the cool thing of note is, um, our second mew, um, our, our boat broke and all the sewers start backing up and of course they're like mop it up, you know, and you're like picking up these things and throwing them into. It's disgusting, right. So they flew us to the aircraft carrier and force recon. Us to the aircraft carrier, and force recon was at the aircraft carrier and we had to share a birthing with them. Oh, okay, and so first sergeant was like he brought us all in. He's like you guys can't go over there because if anything happens to you I can't protect you. And I was like what the fuck? You know, like we're Marines, bro, you know what I mean and you're scared of these dudes. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And these guys walk around with black silkies. They got headlamps on. They're jacking. You know four plates at the gym.
Speaker 1:You know.
Speaker 2:Obviously now I know they're probably juicing.
Speaker 1:They're all juiced out of their mind, yeah.
Speaker 2:And so the biggest dude from that force recon platoon on that Mew was in the class ahead of me in ITC. Oh okay, so I was like I'm where I'm supposed to be. You know what I mean. So ITC, I went into it not in great shape because I couldn't really perform, but I couldn't really prepare. And I got in better and better shape through ITC and so by the end of it I could win the runs and all those things you know. So I ended up graduating ITC and I was just like there's been a couple of times in my life where there's like that weird feeling where you know you're exactly where you're supposed to be. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:And it feels incredible.
Speaker 2:And so I graduated ITC and became an operator and went to battalion. I was like, this is where I'm supposed to be, this is what I signed up to do, this is what I want to be doing. So so, yeah, I ended up at morsock at third it's now third rated battalion, used to be third, msob, but um, and that was in north carolina. So at stone bay, north carolina, um, I did two deployments from morsock one to africa and then one to iraq. What was africa like?
Speaker 1:dude. Africa was dope. Where were you in africa?
Speaker 2:um.
Speaker 2:We were in somalia oh god but we were one of the first teams to really go okay. Um, so we did uh, it kind of sucks, I should. I should have done an extra deployment with marsauk, but we did a whole workup for somalia and they decided it was too risky to insert a White Sox team, really. So we started our work up over and I was just like dude, this sucks, you know, but it was okay, it was kind of divine because we had some squad leaders, that kind of sucked and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:What's going on at Somalia, why they need a Marsoc team there.
Speaker 2:So a lot of people don't know but all the insurgencies that basically we see overtly in the Middle East typically will start in Africa. So there's a lot of insurgencies in Africa that stand up and gain strength and then they go and start to do these proxy type things.
Speaker 1:How are they gaining strength, like that's where they're getting the funding from, or bodies Bodies, mostly Okay.
Speaker 2:So the government is so corrupted down there that they basically skim all the money.
Speaker 1:So then they become oppressive and the local population is able to be molded.
Speaker 2:Got it. So we were one of the first. We sent one MSOT there to prep the space and then we went in and we were co-located with Task Force. So we're co-located with a SEAL Team 6 team. Yeah, and that was a fun deployment because we didn't really have a lot of like command and control type stuff.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. So we got to do our own intel, we got to develop out our own packages and we got to go execute those things. That deployment was dope just because it was all the guys I kind of went through the pipeline with and then Are you doing any like actual combat shit, or is it just so at? That point one. We were waiting to get overrun because we had no perimeter fence.
Speaker 1:Really, where were you guys living, guys living like out in town, are you?
Speaker 2:no, we, we had we're on a, we're on a little fob with hesco and alaska tents and all that stuff and like the inflatable shower. You know, I mean it was dope. I got to order all of our food and they would fly it in at night and we were like crushing lobster and steak and stuff you know, like gains train shit, I was like. I was like 236 at the point.
Speaker 1:But I mean, what's a day in, day out over in somalia for a marsauk team? So you.
Speaker 2:So really, uh, a marsauk operator is a glorified trainer, right? So we go over there and we embed with a force and we train that force um so we each were responsible for platoons of Somali special forces.
Speaker 2:How was that? Do you trust them? I think more than we did at times in Iraq, you know what I mean. For sure there hadn't been green on blue yet, but one of my buddies, charles Strong, got killed on. We were in the pipeline together. He went to the fleet, went straight on deployment, got killed in green on blue. So it was definitely something. We were pretty Blue, considering who you consider A partner nation dude turning on you and killing you, you know. So Strong got killed right when he went to the teams. So that was something that we were all pretty spun up on, you know. But the guys there you could tell with the vibe that they weren't sold on Al Shabaab and going over to that side yet, right. So what would happen would be the US would put a stipend in, the government would receive it, they'd pay it to the generals and the generals would divvy it up and then they'd never pay the dudes that you're working with.
Speaker 1:So by the time it got to the guys that you're actually supposed to be training to help take on, they literally were eating tuna and beans was it right, Like every day with their hands. And how much. I mean, dude. I couldn't even imagine how much money we're paying them.
Speaker 2:Oh, I have no idea.
Speaker 1:And once it hits the generals, they're just pocking it all.
Speaker 2:So the dudes didn't have nods so we had to do full moon ops or day ops Every day. This stuff would get brought in the port and it's called cot and they could chew it and it would make them high. So it would come in at the beginning of every week and guys would start running out of it so they'd become more easy to work with. The rest of the time they're just like high out of their minds.
Speaker 1:What type of high? What would you compare?
Speaker 2:it to. I think it's probably like a really strong marijuana, okay you know, but they chew it so it's in their cheek. So I remember one night showing up and we were supposed to go out and do. We'd just gotten MBGs for them. Finally, I was supposed to go out and do a mission and I'd go up to the lead vehicle. These guys have like old-school diesel Land Cruisers, like $150,000 cars over here, right, like you show up to the Overland Expo, one of these things, like you're at a bee's knees, you know like they would pull them out of these containers, mint zero kilometers on these things Really, and then they crash them into a wall because they're high.
Speaker 1:You're just sitting there like oh my God Bro.
Speaker 2:So show up, and we're doing MVG no, it wasn't an op, we're doing MVG training with them. And so we show up. So let me back up. So I was in charge of ordering all the gear from the State Department money that came in. So I had to go through it all with these guys.
Speaker 2:I've told this story a couple times. But they were on this concrete pad. They came out of all their little tents and things. They're all late. I had them all laying and sitting cross-legged in formation, you know, and I was like.
Speaker 2:I was like, dump everything out of your bags. And they're all like, you know, interpreters interpreting. And um, I was like, go through, find this one, hold it up, you know. So you're doing it by the numbers. Yeah, we're doing it by the numbers. And so, hold it up, they got it. I was like put it in a backpack. They're like, hmm, backpack. Next thing hold it up, good, everybody. Good, cool, put it in a backpack. They're like, hmm, backpack. By the end of it, they are so into this that they are like screaming and cheering. They're like, yeah, backpack, and they're stuffing it in their backpacks. So the next day I show up at camp and I'm like, bro, I'm ripping some weights. You know like I feel pretty eccentric about myself. I show up at camp like fill at 236, you know like probably rocking a tank top with my plate carrier or whatever, and they're like hey, backpack. And now every single dude was calling me backpack for the rest of the trip.
Speaker 2:I'm like, bro, you could give me a cool name, like dragon, like I gotta be backpack.
Speaker 2:Come on, you know, and uh it's funny because we're trying to teach them like, uh, fire maneuver, and they're running around, these giant shrubs on their head playing his day. You're not going to see it Like. That doesn't work, and they're like backpack, they're just running around. Oh my God, bro, what a shit show. So I walk up to the first vehicle and I flick my nods up. I'm like okay, do you know where we're going? And he turns to me and his whole cheek is like extended with this cock, what's?
Speaker 2:it called Cock, cock, cock. How do you spell it? I have no idea. I'd have to look it up. Okay, we'll get a computer at one of these points.
Speaker 2:But he turns to me, his whole cheek's full and he's like drooling on himself. He's like, ah, backpack, I was like bro, spit that out. You know like we're about to go drive around with nods and you're high out of your mind. He's like, oh good, and he literally put it in to drive and it was actually reversed. He slams into the vehicle behind him. I'm just like great night, we're going to have Great night. You're supposed to be training these dudes, dude. So we pile in, we're driving around and outside of it's an old runway where Russia used to land spacecraft and stuff. So we go out of the runway and then you go into the bush and you can't see anything once you hit the bush, and so we're going down all these rows and stuff and the hardballs are no-go because of IEDs, but the sand we didn't. Really, it was kind of one of those times where you're just like, if it happens, it happens. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean. So we come around a corner and there's a vehicle checkpoint and I think our PNF only got rounds if we were going to go out in the ops, so they weren't armed, just the three operators were armed who were doing the training with these guys. So coming to a checkpoint is definitely not friendlies, you know what I mean. So really we ended up having like put it in reverse and like get out of there like e and e back back to base. So we're like okay, we can't do it that way anymore and we definitely can't do it while these dudes are high. You know.
Speaker 1:So this is the environment they're throwing you guys into. So you're, oh yeah, so you, you're doing these training missions and you have enemy out there. That you can get in a firefight with. Yeah, and you're not even rolling around with rounds, no.
Speaker 2:Because you could only give it to them because they weren't getting paid. So they would take their rounds and they'd give it to Al-Shabaab. Oh my God, so they'd take their gear and they'd go cash it in because they didn't have any money for anything, you know so al-shabaab was what your guys' enemy?
Speaker 1:in a way, yes, they were a terrorist network.
Speaker 2:So the dudes that you're training would go take the shit that we gave them and give it to al-shabaab to the terrorists that you're training them to fight and they're. She's all messed up. The regular army would set up checkpoints and charge citizens and stuff to go cross them. So there's no trust in the government either. From citizens.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, what a shit show.
Speaker 2:It was like a rich environment for you to create a insurgency. You know what I mean. So we had no perimeter. So we'd rip around in razors with machine guns all hours of day and night to try to keep our bubble out so that they weren't coming in and like getting coordinates to like mortar us and shit. So did that ever happen? No, it happened right when we left to my, to murphy's team. So they all got mortared. Luckily they were all in a brief, but we were waiting the whole time for that to happen.
Speaker 2:It's supposed to be three v bids and then mortars, but anyway, so we're, we're, we're ripping around razors and um, and I I don't know how I got lucky with this because I don't know Charles and Dom and stuff probably call me on it if they listen to this, but I always got to lead the convoys and the razors. So I'd have a terp in with me. We'd have a dude on a saw out the side and another shooter in the back and I made like these little tarps on top of them and stuff like some over t stuff carried over right. So like we had shade and like I actually tuned all the fox shocks on them for our weights, they weren't bottoming out like fucking dialed, you know. So we'll rip out of the compound and I'll just drift that thing all the way across the tarmac and then into the bush. You know, know, like, and the interpreter like was like you're like Ricky Bobby.
Speaker 2:I was like fuck, yeah, you know, like everybody else getting dusted out, you know and I'm just ripping it and and we're going like you're getting air going through these things and like, um, it'll be wildlife running off the road and like all this shit. We're just trying to keep the button and you come across nomads that have all the charcoal and all this other stuff and we're just trying to keep a presence, you know. And so we came in one night. So everybody knows you were there, Everybody knows we're there, Okay. And so we were actually being guarded by the UN, and so they had Ugandans there guarding us.
Speaker 1:Jumbo Ugandans there guarding us. I worked with them in Iraq.
Speaker 2:Probably the first week we were there, we already had all the intel dumps this was coming, this thing was coming right, what's coming Like an attack, we're going to get hit, okay. And so we're all pretty on edge. And it was middle of the night, the alarm goes off, right, and so dudes just grabbing all their shit, getting on, we're running to the ready room. I see the dude, will, who I was partnered with up on the HESCO, and he's running straight there. I was like did you get any of this shit? And he's like no. I was like god, motherfucker bro, all he's got is M4. So I had to go get the sniper rifle, two laws and all my stuff and carry it all the way over, you know, like all the way over to our freaking pesco, and I'm like trying to hand it up to him. I was like god, you dickhead, like you're supposed to grab this stuff you know yeah what a shit show the
Speaker 2:first time, you know. And so we get up on the wall and like the rtl is just going nuts and he's on the radio and um, he's like I need a direction, distance. What's going on out there, you know? Because he's in the in the um team room and um, guys start firing and like there's all these tracers everywhere and everything's going off. I'm like I was like cease fire, cease fire, that's outgoing fire, because you can see the tracers hit off of the runway and just bounce out into the bush. So everybody stops and the TL's still going nuts over the radio and they're like the Ugandans have gotten drunk and they're just shooting their guns off. No, that happened the whole deployment. So we didn't know if we were getting hit or if the Ugandans were just drunk.
Speaker 2:No, so now you have that stress on top of everything else, so I didn't sleep a lot that deployment.
Speaker 1:So they're just getting drunk and just shooting machine guns off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, are they running.
Speaker 1:AKs, or what are they running over there? Yeah, aks.
Speaker 2:And all like the old machine guns and shit. Yeah, so we're doing a night rip one night with the ATVs, with the UTVs, and we come around and they've just started to put up the beginnings of a perimeter fence at this point, okay, and so we're going to have some standoff, right, and so we had to come in through a Ugandan gate to get back into our compound. So we're ripping around, we're all blacked out, we're on nods. We come rolling up to the gate and they put this floodlight on, they're ripping, they're loading their machine guns, they're about to open up on us because they didn't know who we were and they're probably high and drunk and whatever else. And so Dom, bff, dom, I think I'm driving for him, Uh-huh, and he ends up getting up out of the Razor and I remember looking and it was a ditch. I'm like yo, I'm just going to fucking floor this bitch into this fucking ditch if they start shooting.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure.
Speaker 2:And so Dom ends up like walking up there and Dom's a pretty tall dude, you know, like every shirt's a belly shirt and he's got like his like FIFA, soccer, like hairband thing going on. It was his like prepubescent, like beard and he's like yo, america friendly, whatever you know like, and they stood down, you know, thank God, just like that kind of shit, you know.
Speaker 1:You imagine doing all this and going through all this training and you get taken out by some fucking. Yeah, you've gone in.
Speaker 2:That's just drunk or high, just all kinds of silly things. Dom and we had like four Pumas, like the little UAV things, yeah, but they were all broken. So Dom, dom went in there and like start piecing together one that worked. So he pieced together one that worked. I'm up on the hesco looking out, like so I kind of track which way it goes. And he's standing back here in the compound and I'm on the wall. He's like ready, I'm like ready, and he runs and he goes to throw it and it just explodes into the hesco right next to me. I'm like a little higher, you know, a little higher, bro, come on another two weeks fixing that thing, finally get it back up.
Speaker 2:And we're all sunbathing on top of the Connexes because that's what you do, you know. And Dom's on the UAV controller and he's flying around trying to get like assay of the surrounding area because there's no real big intel yet. Yeah, because we're like first ones kind of do All the task force is helo assault, okay, we're all ground assault, okay. Helo assault, okay, we're all ground assault, okay. So, um, so he's flying it around. And then also he's like oh no, oh no. And we're all like what's up, bro? He's like I just crashed it. I'm like, oh god, dude, you're worse than if you have to go get this thing now.
Speaker 2:So we have to go get it, you know. So what? So we jock up, we load up all the map v's, get everything. This is our first time really going out with the wire. Load everything up and this big hoopla right, and we start driving out in the bush and we've already been ripping razors out there and we know some of the yellow jugs probably might have IEDs in them and stuff like that. But, like dude, you're going so fast around, like it happens it's going to be. And we look over and there's these fields and this dude stands up in the middle of the field, or like the fuck, and he runs and there's one hut one hut in the whole field runs straight to the hut shuts the door.
Speaker 2:We're like he's got it it.
Speaker 1:It's that guy obviously there's only one building here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we drive over there, we try to do a call out and all this shit, and our medic's like getting he's getting like fidgety, you know, and he's like trying to like interrogate this dude with his gun.
Speaker 1:And we're like oh, you, dickhead, you know, that's all it took.
Speaker 2:It was just that kind of stuff. Yeah, um, but we most of that deployment we would get there because we had to do gaffes and we didn't do a lot of night ops. Okay, so a lot of times we rolled up to the village and they knew the early warning network was too good because the local population was sided with them, so hardcore that they would drop their guns and boogie Got it.
Speaker 2:So you literally have a dude with an AK in a field. You listen to him on his phone, he throws his gun down and runs and you can't do shit about it. You can't do shit.
Speaker 2:So we did one of our last ops. We got there, it was going to be this big ordeal. We thought there was an IED on the road going in and our driver just starts driving over trees. Bro, we're just driving over these giant trees with this map fee and we're like yo, pj, chill out, there's no rush, just drive on something that's not a tree, you know what I mean like. And so, uh, blows a tire. Who's the only guy that knows how to change a fucking map? This dude, right, so get out, set up a 360. We know we're like right next to this village. That is not permissive.
Speaker 2:Um, dudes are wigging out and, um, I go to crack the first lug nut off and my legs give out. I feel a pop at the same time because I dropped to my knees. I was like that's not good really, I mean. And so, um, back's gone. So what are we gonna do? Like there's a high potential, we're about to get a tick. I gotta change this um tire. So I just finish it right, like, get all down on my knees. I kind of can get myself up. Like thank goodness I've been lifting that whole deployment, put it on, it's not a full-size spare, no. So they're like we got it, we gotta bounce. We're like the dude's right there, let's just go. You know what I mean. And he's like no, we gotta bounce. We can't maneuver this gun around with a not full-size spare tire, so we're all like fuck dude. Four and a half hours four and a half hours such a marine corps story.
Speaker 2:Four and a half hours. We're going back. I'm sitting on the crew on the gun the whole time. And we get there and I and I fall out on the map, feel my legs don't work, no shit. So I didn't know at the time. When are we going to bas and our, our uh eod techs trying to shoot this x-ray machine for ieds through my back like fucking terrible, I'm probably gonna get cancer for sure. You know. If it wasn't for the bottle of water, you know, yeah, right, so do all that. They're like we need to send you back to your booty. I'm like dude, I'm not going. You know like I'll do whatever we need to do. So danny gives me oxy and that's the first time I've ever had oxycodone and I'm like dude, this is why people get hooked. And I'm floating around that fob and so if I don't wear plates and I don't lift heavy, I don't feel it. As soon as I put weight on or plates on, I can't feel my legs Really. So I notice something going on in my back.
Speaker 2:So finish the deployment up, we get back from that deployment, um, and we go to do our. Like you have to do a so-called physical fitness screener before you leave and when you get back. So we're doing dead lifts. It's like 225 like by that. Like that was cake for me. Back then, you know, I think I want like rep nine and it goes out and I'm on the floor, I can't move. So I'm like, oh, this is dope, you know, like there's actually something fucked up. Yeah, so I go to medical, we do all this stuff. They can't figure out what it is. At this point I'm like yo, I'm a risk to force. You know what I mean? Yeah, like I can't participate in a sex workup, so I'm looking at getting moved over to the schoolhouse and stuff like that. And finally they find massive herniation and like a fractured vertebrae. So I literally fractured my vertebrae when I was trying to lift a truck like an idiot. So, um, figure all that out. But now I'm at now I'm at the um third marine raider support battalion, so I'm the training chief for all the guys that get attached to the teams. Yeah, and I it was.
Speaker 2:It wasn't a bad place to be. I could directly affect guys. When we got to somalia, ourint guys didn't know how to do MARCH right, like bro, you're embedding with a MARSOC team and you don't know how to do basic first aid, combat medicine. Really Like there's a problem, like not even combat lifesaver shit. No, like they don't know, you know, massive hemorrhaging airway respiration. They don't know the MARCH acronym and how to save a dude. Worst case right, stop the bleeding, start the breathing. They're just like. So like that was actually the first point I've ever passed out from needles because they were blowing my arms out so bad practicing, you know, like all that kind of stuff. Anyway, so I go over to the training cell. I'm like dope, I can actually influence something that needs needs influencing, you know. So, um, so stand up, stand up, all this new training, uh, to get guys actually properly spun up and like a training exercise and all these things, and it's, it's uh, it was good.
Speaker 2:But that was when divorce one happened, you know, and, um, I think I was just like I want to just be back on a team, you know what I mean. But I still hadn't figured out this back deal. I was going to do physical therapy all the time and I just, every time I put weight on or squatted or put a plate carrier on, like I couldn't feel my legs, you know. And so I'm not going to go tell people this, so I stay there and I'm getting pretty disgruntled at this point. So I stay there and I'm getting pretty disgruntled at this point. Like I just went straight back to cardio, right, and I'm in pretty good shape. I'm thinking about maybe going to go do long walks, stuff like that, if I can get this back thing figured out. So opportunity to go to Iraq comes up, I'm like screw it, I'm going, yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm going to extend Before you're healed, I'm going to go to iraq comes up. I'm like, screw it up going. Yeah, I'm gonna extend before you're healed, I'm gonna go to iraq. So I go to iraq with the sodif um, and it was. It was kind of lame, but it was also what you make it right. And we have to go plus up teams for op windows. So we basically got to pick you go plus up the seal team, go plus up the msat, like okay, so you, you get you go lead all the convoys, um, so you get to go out quite a lot but still be like at the c2 in urbeel, you know um.
Speaker 2:So that deployment was that deployment started to shape up to be really good. Um, regardless of the fact that we're on the SOTIF, I was in best shape. I'd been in a long time. I was just crushing it and if I didn't have plates on for more than 48 hours I'd be okay, you know. So I'd been doing it's called ROM WOD, so it's like prolonged stretching and all this shit. I was religious about it. So I got some functionality back.
Speaker 2:We went and did a pretty good op with the seals. We got a tick there. What was that like? Um, good. I had a lot of first sergeants when I was at motorstock that told me I should have gone to nsw because I called them bro too much, you know, and so, and so I enjoyed spending time with the SEALs, but that op was we were trying to basically catch ISIS with the pants down, you know, and because they didn't want to engage us anymore. So we ended up going in during a rainstorm, got all the trucks stuck again. Who's the guy that's out there getting the trucks unstuck? I am with this SEAL. Got all the trucks stuck, got there, walk around the compound. They were just there, right?
Speaker 1:So you guys roll into their compound right after the just-.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just roll up in this village in the mountains and they were just there, right. Those fires aren't out all that stuff. Oh, really, they were just there, right, like there's fires that aren't out, like all that stuff, oh really. So we start walking across this river area up onto some high ground and we think we see a dude running on the side of the hill and so, without anything, the seals just start lighting them up. Right, and I didn't even have my belt tours down right. Really I'm like blowing my ear out.
Speaker 2:I'm just like fuck, dude start lighting them up Right, and I didn't even have my belt tours down right. Really, I'm like blowing my ear out. I'm just like fuck dude. So I put it on like everybody's shooting. I don't see anything over there. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Is this during the day or in the evening? Super early morning, okay.
Speaker 2:So we get there, so that happens. And then I go to split off with a couple of dudes. We're going to set up a sniper position for Overwatch and as we're going up there I start seeing all these painted arrows for instructions of where to go, like rat routes, so they can run through the side of the mountain as fast as they can. They know where they're going Really. So they painted on markers, paint it on markers.
Speaker 2:Really Different colors and all these things. So we get up there and of course I got to go to the bathroom because I ate four MREs on the way in, because I'm an idiot, okay. So I'm like, yeah, I can't hold this, I've got to go, you know. So I'm like, yeah, I can't hold this, got to go, you know. And so I'm taking a dump, rip my sleeve off of my cries, you know. And then the SEAL team gets in contact and so that all went pretty nuts, ended up finally calling it air like watch it come out of the sky, like um, we end up engaging a bunch of uh, fortified positions on the side of the hill how far are you guys away from each other, from this engagement?
Speaker 1:are you in a valley it was.
Speaker 2:We were kind of on like the side hill and it dropped down. There was what it was, like a river, and then dropped up and then there's a cave system. Okay, so they're on the cave system and we were kind of overwatched from that so we could kind of id targets for them, um, and engage close stuff that we thought they uh, like qrf type stuff would come from right, so, um, so all that happened, they they only took PNF casualties. We got back and it was a pretty big ordeal Because they had C2 back at interview. I had no idea what was going on.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Because there was nobody at the gun truck to relay casualties and all this other shit.
Speaker 1:Okay, how long was this firefight?
Speaker 2:uh I don't, I, I have no idea. Okay, it's one of those ones where it could have been an hour. It could have been 20 minutes, for sure. You know what I mean. Um, uh, so, yeah, so we reconsolidate, get back in trucks, drive all the way back um, and then then all the operators get pulled in a room, you know, and it was, uh, I was still, I still would consider myself as junior, you know, like, even though that's like would have been actually my third deployment cycle. Um, the mass sergeant in the room was like phil. What the fuck happened? You know what I mean? Um, we, we had no idea what was going on. Then you guys called air support. You're getting troops in contact. Some dudes got hit, some dudes got killed. Um, what happened, you know? And there's supposed to be certain dudes that were seen here, that were supposed to stay with the truck. It didn't happen. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Were the SEALs new to this area and they were just looking for it, or I think everybody was still right At this point. This is 2018-ish I feel like this is shit. That happens in the beginning of a deployment, when everybody's eager and wants that trigger time.
Speaker 2:So at this at this point um, it's hard to get them to fight us yeah and we are those pit bulls and the cages getting beat all the time.
Speaker 2:We had to comment on the marine corps, show up and be like you guys aren't special, like the ega is what matters, not your operator device, like a lot of bastardization of the MARSOC dudes, you know. So we were just like man. We spent all year gone from our families training to come do that, like let us do our job. You know what I mean. Like we'd watch dudes on ISR that we knew had killed a ton of our guys and let them walk Because they didn't want to just put us in. You know what I mean. That and let him walk because they didn't want to put us in. You know that's frustrating. So a lot of that. On that deployment, um, and then shortly after that, um, shortly after that that whole I don't know if you heard about or not there was a, a fight at a bar in erbil and a contractor gets killed. So, um. So the three other dudes that were with me on that deployment, uh, one was a sark, two were operators.
Speaker 2:Um, went out on town for new years at that point, like you could kind of go out in town where where's out in erbil because they had the kurdish uh line around erbil, okay, um, so you could, because they have the Kurdish line around Erbil, okay, so you could go out through the Kurdish line, go to Mosul and all that stuff. So you could kind of go out just outside base and like get dinner and a drink if you wanted to. Wasn't really permissive, that's a little sketch, yeah. So, and we did some ops out there too, know, like more intel based snatch and grab type stuff. But so anyway, it got to the point where maddie because we're dating at the time we met right before that deployment um was like hey, I don't really know what you do, but I know it's probably not safe, so maybe you going out in town to go get dinner isn't a great idea.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was the first time in my life where I was kind of like you know how it is when you're young in the Marine Corps or in the military, you're only living for you Facts Whipping it on. And I had already made peace with, like I was good, being a name on the wall outside the headquarters building with my homies Like glorious death. You know what I mean. Like I was good with it. So this was the first time in my life, really, where I met somebody who I really cared about other than my bros, more than myself, right, and so I was like, okay, I won't go out. So they're all banging on my door, they want me to go out.
Speaker 2:That night I just pretend I'm asleep, right. So I go to sleep, wake up the next morning, shit show. So, uh, I run into two of my boys. They look like they've probably done something they shouldn't have done. You know, and I'm like yo, you need to go to bed, you need to go clean up, um, and I go to assume watch and and when you become, when you're the battle captain, you go in into the team room with all computers. You gotta assume command of all the isr, you gotta the chat, all this stuff, right, um, you're who the teams check into, like you're getting debriefed on what happened everything.
Speaker 2:Yep. So I get in there. I finally get that all sorted out of. I'm like, all right, I can just chill the fuck out. You and I'm going to have my coffee and it's frantic banging on the door and I'm just like great, rip open the door and it's a contractor. One of the other contractors is like there's a dude in his room and he's not breathing. And I'm like sweet. And I'm like where, don't like where. He's like down the other end of compound.
Speaker 2:So I run down the hallway. They're having a convoy brief. I yell for the medic, the lead medical officer. I'm like, ashley, it's medical mercy, get the fuck down there. And then there's this other kid, a log kid. I was like get a high lux, drive down there. I ran the bas, grab the big medical bag and sprinted all the way down there and they're carrying this dude out and he's he's blue, right, yeah, like. And so, um, cpr is going on. I look at, I get in the front of the vehicle. I look at the medical officer. I'm like where do we go? And she, and she has no idea.
Speaker 2:She has no idea what we're supposed to do next so I make the call and we I'm like we're going to Cansoff because they have a World 2 clinic, so I floor it, we get over to Cansoff, we unload them. How long does this take? I don't know. Seven minutes maybe Pretty quick. We just got to go out ours around the strip and we hit a pretty bumpy road and then we're there okay, because that's where they fly all the birds into. So got over there, unloaded them, took it in and now we're like outside of wire I don't not outside of wire, outside our compound.
Speaker 2:I don't have a cell phone, like nothing else. So like run over the courage coordination center, like call back, give an update, all this stuff. If it didn't go away it was like I probably would have gotten an award. You know like not that I ever won any of that, but tried to do all the right things in a moment. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Got him there, everything else. Eric did the best he could with CPR on the way there. He did, you know, tried his best to revive this dude. Everything we could have possibly done, dude, doesn't make it. So there's this giant investigation, ncis shows up. There's cameras in the chow hall, there's cameras everywhere. Like I can't lie, you know what I mean, yeah, and so, um, there starts being a lot of like command influence, all this weird stuff. And they're like if you don't say, if you, if you positively contribute, like you you're looking at not getting promoted, like all these things, right, so it sucks, because you're not allowed to talk to your boys, they get sent out. You're not even done with deployment yet All this shabbos, everything shuts down, everything's shut down. You're not allowed to go anywhere.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, isn't that the whole OPSEC sets in and they shut down everything not allowed to go anywhere? Oh yeah, isn't that? The whole opsec sets in and nobody shut down everything?
Speaker 2:so they get flown off for an investigation like we're still there and cis is interviewing us all this stuff, man and I'm so I end up being like one of the only active operator dudes left there and I'm just, like you know, like dope um got to go on a couple more missions with like agency dudes and stuff like that and those are.
Speaker 2:Those are dope, like we had to fly around and um bags of money and all those kinds of things that were sketchy and fun, you know who are you delivering bags of money to?
Speaker 1:uh?
Speaker 2:people on the border, really, yeah. So, um, yeah, I don't, I don't know the classification of it or whatever but uh, um, yeah, I don't, I don't know the classification of it or whatever but uh, we basically took land cruisers broke down who had to fix them? This guy, yeah, then they flew a helicopter in because they couldn't fix the land cruiser and then all these lights start lighting up on the south side of the mountain. I'm like, oh good, now everybody knows we're here, you know all those kind of things. Um, but basically it went to this.
Speaker 2:I didn't really know what we were doing because I wasn't read in. So I was like, basically, just security, yep, so we get up to this place. My buddy Nate he's one of the spook types you know goes into this hut with this guy to talk with a security guy from the State Department and all these other things. And I'm outside with the vehicles and all their dudes are facing inboard and I'm like, if this was a good thing, you'd be facing outboard with me, not facing inboard, right, so I'm literally standing there with my m4. I'm like, all right, bro, like this is just a failure drill right. Like beep, boom, boom, boom. Like I was planning what was going to happen. You know, and it's raining and it like literally surreal right, like I thought it was, like I was literally about to have to drop five dudes.
Speaker 2:So you guys were just having a stare down. I had no idea what was going on. We were just having a stare down. They're all facing in boy, there's one dude up there, there's one dude by the vehicle. They're spread out right and I'm trying to plan my drill right and fingers on like everything. I'm ready to go. And Nate pokes his head out of Kwanzaa. He's like hey, everything's good, just come inside. I was like, oh, thank God, you know, just like that, huh Went inside. I'm like what are we doing again? He's like oh, everything's good, don't worry, I've got to go take a tour of them tomorrow. You're just going to stay here. I'm like great, so all that happened Went back.
Speaker 1:All those things Is there a mission that stands out above them all, like sketch-wise, where you're just like holy shit, how did we make it out of that one?
Speaker 2:I think probably the two sketchiest things that you just didn't know what was going to happen was definitely that Ugandan gate in Somalia, and then because you didn't know if they were high or whatnot either, and then that one right, Because I didn't really know why we were there.
Speaker 1:Whatever happened to the contractor? Did they ever find out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we died. And then I got home from that deployment right Like I think we had two months left Finished that deployment up after that happened, did some of those agency-type ops, and then came home and I'm like dude, I'm getting out. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm over this, you know, and I'm like, dude, I'm getting out. Yeah, I'm over this, you know. I even had a senior guy who I really respected pulled me off of the bird right when I was about to leave country. He was like look, you got a lot of potential, you're really good at your job, you're really motivated, you do all the right things. You just need to rein it in a little bit, because I was getting pretty over it you know there was.
Speaker 2:They were trying to do these op forward things to get officers medals and all interfere with the team. And I was the guy that was like this is absolute waste of waste of money, man resources and you're interfering with the team's ability to their op cycle like this.
Speaker 1:You're putting dudes lives at danger because some officer wants a medal. Yeah, it was absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2:So like I got pretty belligerent and vocal towards the end of it and I didn't have my boys anymore, like all that stuff. So he pulled me off the plane. I was like like roger, that I get it, you know, and if I could go back I'll be like, look dude, like man, like this is where I'm at mentally right, and I think that that's the thing the military doesn't do a great job of. I think if I saw a dude with a lot of potential like that, I would have done the David Tomajan thing, where I would have been like, hey bro, dude to dude, where are you at what?
Speaker 1:are you thinking?
Speaker 2:You know what I mean. Like how can we work on this? Because you have potential right Like how can we make this better? So I didn't really get that conversation and it took me, so I got back stateside. All these investigations are happening now. Over the contractor.
Speaker 2:Over the contractor thing. There's adultery cases that popped up, all kinds of crap from that point Really, and it had already been a thing where I just I had enough and that was just like nail in the coffin, you're done. And so I was always that guy in the pipeline, even that when shit sucked, I just laughed. You know like got to do it anyway, might as well have fun. You know what I mean. Could be raining. I remember it was pissing rain.
Speaker 2:We're on Greenside during the pipeline and the instructor's like get out on the road in boots and utes, like because they're gonna haze us, right, yeah, it's like day eight out there and um, like great, we just get hazed in between doing greenside. You know like this is dope and like rip the poncho liner off, take my, take my shirt off, like let's go. You know what I mean. Like I was that. I was that guy. You know like just gotta suck. Might as well be happy about it. But it took a dude that I really respected, that I worked at that training cell with, to be like dude, you're one of those negative people I know and I was like damn, bro, like that hits you know what I mean like then this isn't for me anymore, you know.
Speaker 2:So you knew it was time, yeah. So maddie and I made a decision that was it was just time, it was my time and I was good with it, you know. And so so I ended up getting out and my plan was to go back to school for um to be a pa. So I got to go to some pretty advanced medical courses. I like the medical stuff. Yeah, I was like dude, it's all dope, shooting holes in guys, but if you can't plug them, pretty worthless, you know. So, um, so yeah, I uh. So I got out with plans to go pa school and then, obviously, like we talked about earlier, school wasn't, school was not dope. That's when you were in salt lake, that's where I was in salt lake so maddie was actually a flight attendant for delta.
Speaker 2:how'd you two meet? Um, mutual friends. Okay, it's all that salt lake crew that used to go visit all the time. She was just too busy hustling to be worried about dudes and stuff For sure. She actually became a flight attendant because she was scared to fly. Really, that's pretty dope. She became a certified flight instructor and pilot. I was already like well, that's winning. We met through mutual friends. So when we got out we moved to Salt Lake, we got a condo together and then kind of started all that. But yeah, that's kind of the military deal, I guess.
Speaker 1:How was okay? Can we talk about Sears School a little? Yeah, of course. Okay, I just it's one of those things that I never got to experience, but I have some buddies that have some pretty wild stories from Sears school.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got some stories from Sears school.
Speaker 1:So Sears break down, Sears school.
Speaker 2:So it's like your survival evasion school. So if you think about, probably for young people, the newest Top Gun when they crash behind enemy lines, it's kind of like if you get captured or if you how to not get captured how to evade and resist right or if you're getting torture, but we do level three, so that's for the torture stuff okay, can you talk about any of this?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think okay cool, um okay, seer school, so you show up.
Speaker 2:so seer school is part of our pipeline, um, and so you do some front end training and then you kind of go into the prac app phase where you get captured and all this stuff, um, and that's when I, when we were evading, and I talked to that dude on the side of the field and he was like why are we doing this?
Speaker 1:So they just drop you guys off and you have to get it to a checkpoint?
Speaker 2:No, yes, so we had some checkpoints that we were loosely following, but really we knew that we were evading until we got captured. So you're going to get caught and so you're getting rained on all the time and it sucks, you're not getting any food and you're not really sleeping and you know, serious school for me sucked. People talk about like, oh man, we caught a fish. I didn't catch anything.
Speaker 1:So you're out there. How many days were you out there before?
Speaker 2:you guys got caught. I don't, I can't remember. It might have been a week enough and long enough. Long enough that I remember sitting in the in the brush and it just stopped raining and we're like in the swamps too, okay, you know. So you gotta purify your water and like it's so everything's wet, your boots wet, like you don't have anything dry, and a cricket lands on my knee and I grabbed it and I put it in my mouth and I could feel the energy release really, really. That's how starved I was.
Speaker 2:You know, like I think, I got back and I weighed myself I'd lost 22 pounds. I was like dude if you want to lose weight, just don't eat. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:You know you're hungry when a cricket is yeah.
Speaker 2:So there's this dude with us, kevin, and Kevin was super funny and he's still in. He's at a higher level now, but he uh, he'd been saving his boots, his dry boots, the second pair of boots until we got rolled up, because he's like I'm gonna put them on so that I don't have wet feet when we're in our cells. You know, like we knew it was gonna happen, okay, I was like, oh yeah, all right. So it was like it had been going on and on and on and we're like, dude, when's this going to happen? Like when?
Speaker 1:you're going to get caught.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when are we going to get caught?
Speaker 1:so is it a benefit to get caught right away, or are you? I think it's?
Speaker 2:kind of planned. I think if you get caught early, I think they probably beat you and then send you back out there. You know, oh okay. So we didn't. We weren't like trying to get caught. We also weren't not trying to get caught. So, like I remember it being, kevin was like we're definitely getting rolled up this morning. It's going to happen. I'm going to put my boots on. I was like dope dude, yeah, put your boots on. How is he planning getting caught? So he puts his boots on. I don't know, you start losing your mind out there, just guys that walk up to trees and think it's a vending machine.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know like you're hallucinating. Okay, so he puts his boots on and we're running down this road because we're trying to make up time without being in the swamp, and we're just booking an answer and these headlights shine onto the road. A car is coming, so we're like bail. So we all bail on the left and Kevin goes right and it's been raining the whole week, so the kevin goes right and it's been raining the whole week, so the whole drainage ditch is filled with water.
Speaker 2:He dives into all you hear is this giant splash and my fucking boots and we're all like giggling in the bushes, you know. And so then the whole rest of the time we're running that night, all you can hear is kevin's boots squirching you know like, so now he's the wettest one oh gosh, and we didn't get rolled up for two more days.
Speaker 2:No, oh, he's pissed, yeah, but Sears is an interesting one. It's definitely there's some guys that can go through it and just be like, oh, whatever, I've always gone pretty full on in training, right, like parasailing worked on me, sears school worked on me and you get put in a cell. How big is the cell? It's like a closet and you're sitting on a cinder block, you know, and you're not allowed to sleep, and they'll, like, randomly open a door and if you're asleep they'll spray you or beat you.
Speaker 2:You know like you have a. You have a can in a corner that you can pee in, and I learned pretty quick that if you ask for water and they gave you water you just keep filling up the can. And so then why? Because then they let you go outside. So they put a hood on you and you go outside and you can. All you can see is your feet, and I could tell what time of day it was. You know what I mean. You dump your can out and oh, so every time they you get to dump your can every time you go back in.
Speaker 2:Oh, so every time you get to dump your can, every time you fill it with this, yeah, okay. So and you don't need to go number two because you have no food in your system.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask how you take care of your food. At least I didn't you know.
Speaker 2:So that goes on. You don't know At this point, you don't know what day it is, you don't know what time it are they playing like loud music, like doing a bunch of that was like the screaming babies for days, like all that stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and definitely for me it took. It took a toll, right like I I wasn't ever that guy for the most part in training I took it. I took it pretty seriously, you know. I mean like I was trying to get out of it was supposed to put in. So I stick you in boxes that were super small and like lock them how big?
Speaker 1:how big of a box?
Speaker 2:like your knees are up to your chest, like you're shoved into a box. Your head's in there and your knees are up to your chest, you're shoved in a box and then they'll beat you.
Speaker 1:How, no question um, I mean, how physical are they getting with you guys like most?
Speaker 2:it's mostly open hand okay slaps, right, I think some instructors got some in, you know, but it's supposed to be open hand slaps. But when, when you're there and you're starting to go through it, like, you start looking at dudes hands and you're like I don't want to get slapped by that guy, okay, and most of the time you get slapped by that guy so you're looking at the dudes that have giant mitts on them?
Speaker 1:yeah, so you get like smacked.
Speaker 2:You get smacked pretty good in the stomach. You get like smacked around the face. Like are they? Doing joint manipulation on you guys um I don't think I had a lot of that, but I do know that if you did the wrong things it could get a lot worse. How so like they if, if you didn't kind of play the game right, or or you try to fight back, or it would get a lot more physical what was the game?
Speaker 1:I mean, are they trying to get you to give intel and then you just gotta shut the fuck up, or what?
Speaker 2:You either stonewall it or you try to sell them something, and if you do a good job, if they think you did a good job, they'll give you a little ball of rice.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:And then when everybody's gone, you'd all lay down and you'd see all your buddies underneath their little wood doors and you'd roll dudes' pieces of rice across these gross-ass floors with like pee and stuff you know and like you're like, oh, this is the best still to this day White rice, best thing I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 1:That's how you know you're hungry, so you guys were all looking out for each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you like hook up your homies with Rice, but you could only see like three dudes across from you and you knew who was on each side you know, would you guys like bullshit at night, or were there guards there? You could whisper, but dudes would come along and like rip you out of there, you know what I mean Like. So you had like a code word if you started losing it. You know some dudes lost it and what happens at that point?
Speaker 1:are you done just?
Speaker 2:um, I think you, probably, I think you get recycled maybe to another class.
Speaker 2:Right, this was like the worst thing that happened in the pipeline. Nine month pipeline. You get recycled, you know, and our class, our itc class, I think started two something and great, graduated 40 something again, maybe it's 60 something, pretty, over 50 attrition, you know, wow. So you got to show up every day with a game, you know. So, um, yes, seer school was not fun, we did.
Speaker 2:We did like a ranger type interval too, which is all food depth, sleep depth, long, long movements. And that was like I remember sitting in a foxhole at night with nods on, looking out and you got like five minutes of sleep, like it was calculated, five minutes of sleep Like it was calculated, like they've done the studies, to know how much sleep you need to not die, but how much sleep you don't get, so that you get sleep inoculation so that you can function under no sleep, or things start moving. And I remember looking through my nods and all these cartoons coming out from behind the trees. I was like dude, why do people do drugs? Just don't sleep for seven days. You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:Like dogs just don't sleep for seven days. You know what I mean. Like I was tripping balls and I looked down at dom again, look down dom. It looked like the cheshire cat really and I I think I don't think we're supposed to have dip, or maybe we're supposed to have dip and I had a can with me and I remember I kept forgetting I had dip in my mouth. So I kept putting more dip in my mouth to try to stay awake and I put the whole can in my mouth and and then I started like gagging and then I was like spitting it all out and Dom was doing his Cheshire Cat thing and I like slapped him in the face. He's like, bro, what are you doing? And then my buddy Harrington, who was playing the team chief at the time, grabbed me on the shoulder and I came out of it. He's like you.
Speaker 2:Good, I was like oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm good. Oh my God, bro, like bro, why do you hardcore drugs? Like dude, just don't sleep. So there was a lot of stuff like that in the pipeline During Amphib Week. We were doing all of our. We were one of the last classes to do fins at Onslow in North Carolina Okay. The rest of the classes started going down to key west in florida okay. But we were tracking like a 18 and a half foot great white shark that week on the shark tracker app. That was off the coast and the last ping was like within a nautical mile of where you guys are where we were at and it's.
Speaker 2:You get in the water at like 5.30 am and you're finning 2K down the beach Like 150 yards out, like you can't be, it can't be just in the tidal, like you got to be in the deep water.
Speaker 1:This is my thing, right, like I don't care how tough, how operator a motherfucker is.
Speaker 2:No, I don't either.
Speaker 1:That was my worst thing. If you know there's a great white out there, I mean that's got to be in the back of your head the whole time.
Speaker 2:His name was Lydia.
Speaker 1:They named the great white.
Speaker 2:I think it's still alive. Look it up, its name is Lydia. And what are you doing out there? You are finning, you're kicking on the surface of the water with a buddy, just splashing, and you're to each other, and there's one instructor that may be out there with a with a jet ski, but sometimes there wasn't. What are you guys wearing? Uh, camis with a with a like a wetsuit type thing underneath, so you look like a seal.
Speaker 2:Just yeah perfect dude and you're just pushing. You're pushing your fucking rucksack. Sometimes you know like it's just stupid stuff. I was like man, this would be a feeding frenzy and I, I, there's no money, there's no job there's no title in the world that was worth. And the funny thing is you go out and you would take terms. You a whole pipeline that you would take terms, pretending to be a team leader or team chief right.
Speaker 2:So there's different iterations. So somebody would have to assess the water to try to figure out which way it was drifting, and so you either run first or you swim first, so you're running down. So you're running down 2K and then fin back 2K right, so most of the time they were wrong.
Speaker 1:So you're fighting the current the whole time.
Speaker 2:So you're fighting the current the whole time. So you're out there for way longer, you know, and so I will never forget it. There was one time my fin buddy's name was Sam and we were finning, and you're just in the suck right like I had sprayed my ankle. I had duct tape, like in the fin position. Yeah, and it was, you know, and you're just like in. You're just putting the pain in the orb. You know what I mean. And um, we're finning, we're finning. It's pitch black. All I can see is like dudes, you put a chem stick in the back of your boonie cover. All I can see is these chem sticks everywhere right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I get smoked in the rib cage on one side and I think I've drunkenly kind of swum into my fin buddy Sam. I'm like yo bro watch out, and he goes what? And he's on my other side. So I got and after after that I went back and read sharks when they don't know what something is, they bump it. So I'm 99 sure I got bumped by a shark finning.
Speaker 3:No dude, no, no, no yeah, no, I don't, I don't do sharks, that's the ocean.
Speaker 2:Maddie grew up in hawaii like she surfed all that she's like do you want to go surfing?
Speaker 1:I'm like, no, I'm good. If I and I've said this a million times I feel like a rhino Cape Buffalo give me a gun or a knife, I'll try, at least I can. Yeah, like in my mind. I feel like I can juke something on land. Just enough to dude. We are so insignificant in the water.
Speaker 2:You're done. It's ridiculous. You're done, bro.
Speaker 1:You're done. And then what? You're out there like Nemo swimming around missing a layer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you just eat all your friends while you're watching. No way, dude.
Speaker 1:No, dude. That's why these people they're like, oh, shark attack. I'm like no shit.
Speaker 2:So they do it in Key West now. At the very last uh day of amphib, there was a tropical storm coming and we have all of our boats at this point and we're all sitting on the on the on the beach waiting and it's a mock mission, right like so. You got to go in, you got to find your target, you got to navigate, you got to fin in, hit it, come back, exfil. So we're all sitting on the on on the beach, gnarly winds as giant waves, as lightning there's supposed to be this tropical storm and this guy next I can't remember who it was, guy next to me, he's like they're not gonna send us. They're not gonna send us.
Speaker 2:I'm like, bro, you made this far, we're totally going tonight. And they're like enter the water. I was like see, you know what? They went out there and guys boats are getting flipped. They're like enter the water. I was like see, you know what? They went out there and guys' bones were getting flipped, they're breaking their noses on the gullets and it's just an absolute crap show I will never forget.
Speaker 1:So you had to go out through the surf and swim back in it.
Speaker 2:No, no, you had to go out through the surf, navigate all the way up all these intercoastals, fin in, hit a house, then come back back, and so all in the dark, and I remember going out there and we finally got through the surf zone and, um, all you could see is, like every time lightning goes, you can see all the all the whitewash coming over and I'm peeing myself, trying to stay warm you know, that's just what you did you know.
Speaker 2:But, um, we did that entire night and everybody was smoked and like all this stuff we get back. We're sitting on the bus, dude's like starting to pass out and I'm like I'm having a goo, you know, and chugging water, and I think I was sitting next to Dom, like we were pretty thick as thieves. I was like it's not over, bro, it's not over. Something else is going to happen right now. Like you better hydrate, you know. And sure enough, the instructor walks on the bus, like everybody get off the bus and we had to go do an unknown distance spin and that was just like a straight haze fast.
Speaker 2:Like you couldn't go fast enough if you wanted to.
Speaker 1:I'm sure being an instructor there is glorious.
Speaker 2:I think. So I did get to go be an instructor at assessment selection and it was cool going on the other side of the curve. Oh, 100%. So back when I got to go do that, it was cool because the team actually got a say in who goes through, who makes it right. Yeah, you feel like your words have weight but they're like everything right, like it was definitely my time to get out of Marsauk, like I'm sure we, I'm sure you've talked about before, like it's so hard to like fill those numbers now Right, like, especially with, like the way the demographics going and everything else.
Speaker 1:But, um, when we were sure they're struggling these days when we were there.
Speaker 2:Um, there was one dude and you get they dime each other out. So we're reading everybody's peer evals, like all this stuff as an instructor or as an instructor, okay. And so all all his peers are like, hey, this dude went out drinking the night before the pft and that's what, and he was throwing up and that's why he sucked and like he's not committed to this.
Speaker 1:They're just straight ratting each other out and because I think there's.
Speaker 2:When I went through the pipeline I was like bro, an operator is freaking Spartan dude.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean.
Speaker 2:And I like to think that physical fitness, all those things, like I had a dude I really respected told me like every single day you sharpen that blade you know what I mean and like I took that dead ass you know, and so I like that They'll dime each other out and stuff, and so that guy had duis. He had gotten in altercations with his uh staff ncos, like all the on past page 11s and things like that.
Speaker 2:Like we had his whole book and I was like we should not select this kid. He's a libo risk or operational risk waiting to happen. Yeah, they end up pushing him through. That dude died on a motorcycle accident like as soon as he got to the team.
Speaker 2:All that training, all that for nothing, right so my buddy instead of figuring that out and helping that dude right like but there's another kid that went through and, um, he knew he was a stud. You know what I mean? The kid was talented, he ran everywhere on the land nav, he got all his, his points, he had his time. We were out there to this crazy apparatus this one time and it's like you had to make a contraption to carry this super heavy drum or bags or whatever it was, I can't remember. And so it's like team building right Under stress and sleep deprivation and everything else and leadership, and the guy next to him on this apparatus which is like you also have a 45-pound minus water and everything rucksack and you're carrying like a 500-pound apparatus amongst you.
Speaker 2:You know, like it sucks, yeah. And so some of them will be like the rest plan is to stand there, don't put the apparatus down, and you're like it's a terrible idea, but now we've got to do it because it's just a leadership thing. So you'll walk however far you can walk and stop and you've got to rest holding it. Why? Because this dude they're trying to put in a stressful leadership position made that call under stress. Terrible call right. Oh my God, probably didn't get selected. Yeah, he's getting notes written. So this kid was in the back and I'm an instructor watching everybody, you know. And the reason they do this is because your true colors come out right For sure.
Speaker 1:Under that amount of duress and sleep debt you know who a person's going to be.
Speaker 2:Yes, so you can really get a good idea of how committed they are to the team, how committed they are to self, everything else which is important in your guys' world. Huge, because there's 10 to 12 of you.
Speaker 1:That's it.
Speaker 2:You are depending on every person on your team and so um. So the guy next to him so there's two in each corner the guy next to him gives out, falls down, he's like can't do it anymore. You know, like cool, you're not black, black line, you know. And and he's just standing there smiling, you know, he knows he's like god, that guy's a pussy, you know. And he's just holding that and it's pissing rain. And I know, because I was there, I was that God, that guy's a pussy, you know. And he's just holding it and it's pissing rain. And I know, because I was there, I was that guy, I was that guy laughing, and the instructor's like what's so funny? I'm like nothing, nothing, instructor, you know, but that's how I suffered right.
Speaker 2:I suffered in a pipeline, for sure. That's not accurate, but running taught me to manage suffering, you know. And so I watched this kid just crush it the whole time. He made it, um, and he was gonna go get on the bus with the selectees because they just put the dues that made it on the bus to go back to north carolina, separate from everybody else. So he's about to get on the bus.
Speaker 2:I was like, hey, you come here, you know. And I was like, hey, you're, you're to be. You might be a big fish in a small pond right now, but you're about to be nobody in a fucking ocean. You know, stay humble, you know. And um, pretty cool, being able to be an instructor and really influence that that. That dude came back to me in the gym at Marsoc right before I got out. He was like, hey, you probably don't remember me, but you said something that stuck with me, um, in selection, you know, and I'm about to go to first rate of Italian, and I was. I knew who he was, but I was an idiot, you know. I was like I don't remember you, you know, like stay humble.
Speaker 2:But, no, but if he's out there, man, that's. That's that's kind of guy you want. That's the kind of guy you hope comes through. That's the kind of guy that will save your life For sure you know what I mean. But it was cool to see on the other side of the curtain how effective it is if you allow it to be. For sure you know. But yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 2:The best parts of the pipeline were probably the pool was a great equalizer. I've never seen more grown men cry than at the pool. Water will break you real quick. So we're in a dive tank. You can't touch the bottom. You've got to do three of these to get to the bottom and touch it when you're supposed to touch it. Right, and it was really where you weeded guys out. So they make the honeycomb, they shove you all tight so you can't use your arms. So you gotta like buddy yourselves up and down. You know, um, we had a. We had a black, a dark green marine. Uh, wes, what nicest dude ever. And he drowned the crap out of me in the pool one day and he's like I'm sorry, man, I'm black.
Speaker 2:I'm like it's all right, we all are, you know, like I didn't grow up swimming, you know I didn't know that was a thing I did not know I got crucified.
Speaker 1:I made a comment not too long ago on social and I got completely crucified for being a racist about this.
Speaker 2:But it was a but people don't know that all marines are black. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1:yeah, right and so. But like we got to boot camp and I'll never forget, our drill instructor was like giving a speech, like okay, dark marines. And I was like what the fuck?
Speaker 3:dark marines, yeah, dark green marines, and I'm like what is a dark green marine?
Speaker 1:I didn't even know what they were referring to at this time. He's like we got the pool tomorrow I know a lot of you and he's black himself. He's like I know a lot of you can't swim iron ducks and he's like don't try to prove nothing, yeah, and I was like what is this dude talk?
Speaker 1:because I grew up on the st lawrence river, which is one of the most amazing freshwater rivers I think this country has to offer. So whatever right. So we show up, and you know, when our platoon got to the pool there were already kid recruit, you know recruits in the pool and the whole shallow end and all the black kids, all the dark green marines are now I know. And then I was like holy shit, they can't swim. I'm like why can't they swim? It didn't. I didn't know, I did. I made some guy was like, oh, stereotypes and black people can't swim. And I was like, yeah, this is a thing like and oh my god, but I wasn't trying to like jab it, but it was west is a hell of an operator, though.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah, but it's hilarious because then I after I'm like why can't black people swim? It was just a thing I didn't know. And they're like, oh dude, we grew up with Swiss cities and all these kids, so these, these dark green Marines were explaining to me that they just never grew up with a pool drill instructor briefing the dark green recruits you're not going to be able, I know y'all. He's like I know you motherfuckers can't swim. But I was like what is he talking?
Speaker 2:about like I yeah, back back then it wasn't, it wasn't as big of a deal.
Speaker 1:But yeah, now it's like jesus, I'll probably get flagged on this.
Speaker 2:I'll say this so I'll redeem myself. So we were all in the pool one time and we were all we're all treading water in dive tank and and teams right, so we had team one through four. Yeah, I was team one and um, you're all in a line and you have to pass a rubber rifle in cammy's treading water.
Speaker 2:Oh god, pass a rubber rifle back to the guy behind you till it gets the end and the guy in the very back has to swim 25 meters underwater to the front with the rifle and then pass it back, or what is this like a, and then start over yep, yep, and so like it's pretty, it's pretty rough swimming 25 yards underwater, 25 meters underwater in camis, doing it with a rubber rifle in your hand, one-handed way worse, yeah, your only hope is you go deep, because it constricts your lungs and if you have more ability to go further, right got it.
Speaker 2:So you only you got to commit to going deep and there's a high chance you're going to black out, coming up all right, like so. We're in the water and every time if anybody drops a rubber rifle, the entire team has to do a bottom sample. So you have to go all the way down to bottom dive tank, touch the bottom, come back up and try water. Are they watching? Yes, there's instructors, literally instructors sitting on the bottom with their arms crossed watching and they'll switch off and they'll go down there and do another breath. Hold watch, so like if you don't touch the bottom of the pool.
Speaker 2:You're getting sharked. Instructors are going to jump off and drown you. Yeah, right. So it gets all the way back to this dude named Toby and his last name was Waters Ironic right, and Toby was a wrestler.
Speaker 2:Ironic right, and toby was a wrestler. He's just a total ball. So he swam like a rock. Just sink. So it get. And he's got these giant ass club hands. You know, nicest dude in the world.
Speaker 2:And, uh, the rubber rifle gets to him and he gets it, and as soon as he can't use his arms to tread water anymore, he sinks and drops the rifle and so they're like down. So we go down, touch the bottom of the pool, come back up and he's trying to get the rifle, can't get down there to get it. So now we're doing bottom samples continuously and so every time we come up, they go down and go back down, you know. And so he's trying to get smoked.
Speaker 2:At this point we've been in the pool for probably the entire thing, this entire duration, duration by the time we got out of the pool some dude said it had been over four hours. What? We've been in a pool for four hours and not touching the side of the pool, no dude. So we um so so he can't get it right. And every time I go down a bottom, you're allowed to have goggles. Every time I go down a bottom sample, you're allowed to have goggles. Every time I go down a bottom sample, I can see the instructors just sharking this guy and grabbing his feet and pulling him down and all this and you can't go help him with his rifle?
Speaker 2:Nope, can't. And so at this point, like there's a couple of hard gates in the pipeline where they'll drop guys that just won't quit. Yeah, you know, and I think that they that's what they were trying to do at that point did you see how strong he was? So just turned into a feeding frenzy and um, finally, um, finally, he hits the side, he grabs side of the pool and it, you know it's done like you're probably in a slash on your record or whatever. He ended up, I think, getting dropped in a shoot house, but um, but yeah, that was like one of the most. I was like man, if I, if I can do that, then I'll be okay. If I'm ever in some water situation, you know, like that long in the pool getting smoked, that bad.
Speaker 1:You can be the toughest human being in the world until you get in the water. Because I was. I thought I was a phenomenal swimmer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I definitely wasn't bad.
Speaker 1:I mean, you remember McQuiz right. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. So I got nothing compared to you guys. But I mean, fuck dude the bricks and just.
Speaker 2:But. But in the pipeline you don't have time to like get into. You know how it is in the best shape of my life and on the teams I could run the. I could run the 225 30 times and I could swim a 75 meter underwater. That's a distance that was probably the best shape of my life. If I went up in lifting something else suffered.
Speaker 1:I was never a 300 pft big dude. I could do max pull ups but I would sprint. The only thing that would save me was when I could get my run time up. My weight would be down. So then I would always have to, but I would just. I knew I was one of those like this is just three miles, I'm gonna sprint this whole fuck because I was giant so I had to. You know, like I couldn't. There was no pacing. Yeah, that was. That was Somalia, phil. Yeah, I would just.
Speaker 1:Then when they would say go, I was the first like and I would try to keep that pace. I was due cross to the finish line, throwing up because I wanted. I can never hit the p, the 300, because I just my weight was so much I could never get I would. I would get like a 298. I was like that guy, like 297, 298, but I can never break that 300 because I was just so big or when I wasn't being able to do the, I couldn't do the 20 pull-ups and then my run would be good. Yeah, I was like the most frustrating shit.
Speaker 2:But but to do that far of a swim underwater on one breath is it's a lot of chill and glide yeah, you know where you're just then.
Speaker 1:Then it's all technique too, yeah, so when you're getting hazed like you don't have any of that and when you're in cam like, you don't have any of that. And when you're in a camisole, you don't have any of that.
Speaker 2:You're just trying to stay alive. Yeah, it's just straight fear, you know.
Speaker 1:You figure out who you are real quick in the water yeah.
Speaker 2:But I'll say all this so you know my new thing since I've gotten out. That's really so. When I first got out I got involved with Noda's Outdoors, that kind of fed the warrior piece right.
Speaker 1:What is that?
Speaker 2:So Noda's Outdoors is a 501c3 nonprofit that gets soft veterans into bow hunting. So never bow hunted before they get the zero to hero Cool. We monitor everything with an aura ring so we help them improve on baseline vitals so they're getting better sleep at night. We have SMEs come in to help with TRT, counseling all these things Nice Okay.
Speaker 2:I try to bring functionality back to the home place and I give them a new core group of dudes. So when I got out I got a bow and it fed that need for lethality you know what I mean that need to still be that hunter and that kind of dangerous dude, you know. And then since then I've really come full circle to a lifestyle shift and that really was promoted because of our kids, right, so like I wanted to raise them somewhere where I didn't have to question what daddy did for work and what my friends died for and all those things. Right, it's okay to be a patriotic American, right For sure, it's also okay to be able to kick dudes' butts. As a girl, right For sure, I want to raise some savages.
Speaker 2:But you know, all the that became, that started to become my new purpose and really getting into the cowboy type stuff that I do now, a lot of that mental resiliency through, you know, new and novice and challenging tasks, you know I've been able to identify those things, like we were talking about earlier, that really have been able to transfer over to what I do now.
Speaker 2:Right, it's like starting a horse that's never been touched before has been huge for me because not only has it been able to like help me with my demons, but also it's something I've never done right.
Speaker 2:So like to be able to harness that anger and frustration but be critically thinking about how it works. You know a lot of people just get on a horse and pull to stop, kick to go. But once, if you can actually start thinking about things in a more critical way you know the way that I've been trained to assess missions and all these other things like you just get to a whole nother level. So, um, that's kind of become like a new training purpose for me, that's, I've been able to apply the ways that I was trained as an operator into these kind of new capacities you know, like roping and all those kinds of things. So it's it's kind of weird how it's come full circle. But, like you said earlier, I get to kind of pick and choose from what you know I did do and have done and apply it appropriately to what I'm doing now.
Speaker 1:I think when you do that and you figure it out, it makes us the best versions of who we can at least start to be, instead of living that hateful, angry person and it's like, okay, well, I'm this rate reason because but now these were, there are some still good traits and there's a lot of things that I've learned over those years. Yeah, but now that you put that away and you start picking those little pieces out, it's like okay, like this horse is going to test the living shit out of me and instead of me irritable snapping going straight to a whip, whatever. Now it's like okay.
Speaker 2:The cool thing, too, is I know, no matter how bad things are now like, if I've got to sit in a set. The first time, when I did roundups, I had to sit on a horse for like a 20-mile day by the time I got back.
Speaker 2:I had no skin left on the inside of my legs and what did I do? I put petroleum jelly on and I went back for more. Right, like cool, this sucks, but I'm, I'm here for it. Right, but I think being able to like know how to compartmentalize the suck and like embrace it, not only in track and the marine corps and special operations, like it's, it's really, I think, what pushes me through, you know, difficulties.
Speaker 2:So, instead of instead of looking at it as something I just suck at and looking at it through a lens of ego, I think I look at it as an opportunity to better myself in a new chapter. For sure you know what I mean. But I also know that nothing will ever suck as bad as all those things that I had to go through, right, you know, nothing will ever suck as bad as that one time in the pool, or I'll never be as cold as that one time in the ocean, or I'll never be as hungry as that one time in Sear, you know, yep, all those things. So I think that's for me, the resilience that it's brought and the perspective that it's brought is one, how privileged we are to live where we live. You know all those people that I've seen on deployment and everything else. And two you know, nothing will ever be as bad as whatever I've had to experience in the past. You know.
Speaker 1:So I don't know how is you take a guy like yourself that's special ops. You know, mars done some cool shit around the world. How has having daughters changed you, oh man?
Speaker 2:Having girls. Well, first off, I've always thought this, but I did see Tim Kennedy talking about it the other day. But I think most dudes, like us, have girls. My wife is convinced, yeah and I'm kind of good with it. We're going to have one more. Maddie already knows it's a girl. I'm still holding out for a dude, my wife says all Marines.
Speaker 1:She's like you're all dirtbags, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think God has a sense of humor.
Speaker 1:We're done with this. She's like it's all you same, marines, all my buddies, daughters.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're done with this. Ask rich like it's all you same, marines, everyone, all my buddies, daughters yeah, god has a humor, daddy does, but um, but you know I. I also think, though, that if, if god had given me a son first, I would have been a much different father? For sure not violent.
Speaker 2:But I I would have. I think I would have held him subconsciously to a higher standard. You know what I mean. That wasn't fair for where he was at, you know, and and and really having daughters now there's still a standard for sure. But I am, I'm a much softer version of myself and like yo call my number Don't ever my biggest thing. I walk around telling people is don't, I will, I will bend over backwards for you, I'll do whatever I can for you, but don't ever mistake my kindness for weakness. You know what I mean. But I have definitely become a softer version of myself, you know.
Speaker 2:And Matt, you can say this man, it's not without practice. You know what I mean. It's not without humility. It's not without days of failure, you know. But man, my two little girls savages, you know. Marga's running around backyard butt ass naked catching grasshoppers. She's got her bug box filled at the end of the day. You know. She's out there wrestling them with dogs growling at them. You know people are probably like what the hell? No, we're, we're growing up. She's being a little girl. She's been a kid. She's growing up a little feral. But man, she's a scrappy fighting and I haven't ever had to be like, hey, you need to toughen up. She's exploring her world, it's beautiful to see. I mean, she flipped over. We got a bench next to our wood farm table. She flipped off, that thing hit her head and my buddy cope was here and he was like, oh you, okay, she's like I'm fine. And he knew it hurt. He knew she was being tough, you know, but she's being tough, not ever because I've ever told her that you know, but well girl tough.
Speaker 2:This is just so much different man. But but I, I told a lot of I. I told a lot, I know you'll get this. I've told a lot of people. My job now is to show my girls what a man is supposed to be for sure you know what I mean. So that one day, you know, I already told maddie like hey, I don't want him to go into barrel racing, okay. Like can we just not do that? No. Or rodeo, like let's get a flat brim hat and do some punchy roping and be a little dirty and questionable. No barrel racing now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, but I tell Maddie this all the time. You know, god gave me daughters because it makes me be the man that I, an example of the man that I hope that they end up with, so that when boys come along saying that they are men, they can laugh and tell them that they're not. You know what I mean, and that takes a lot of checking the ego, you know, and it takes a lot, and I didn't necessarily have a great example of what to be, but a lot of examples of what not to be. For sure. You know what I mean and I'm sure you can attest to this too. For me, the most savage team on the planet is a husband and wife. Yep, you know what I mean. Like I know Maddie would kill somebody with bare hands to protect her girls. You know what?
Speaker 2:I mean, oh, 100%. And she grew up white in Hawaii so she's pretty scrappy, but you know what I mean Like we are fearlessly in the pursuit of something greater than ourselves and that's our kids. You know, and if you can show up every day and just try, you're doing better than 50%, you know. You know I'm super fortunate in the fact that you know Maddie has a remote job now. She she put the flying stuff on hold for the family has a remote job. I do some day work things while I'm trying to work on the next step, which we can chat about after this and then we can talk about it more, hopefully in the spring, but maybe a sponsorship for your podcast. But we're hustling. You know what I mean and I really think if you commit yourself to being parents right and you can say this because I know you're a great dad being a good parent is a pursuit of being selfless your life is not about you anymore.
Speaker 1:Can't be.
Speaker 2:It has to be about them.
Speaker 1:And I think that's where a lot of parents that's a huge mess, yeah, a mist.
Speaker 2:And you can sit there and be like I. Just I got to go blow off steam, I got to go do this, I got to go dude, I have you know it. It's not. It's not an ego thing for me. I I have fomo for my own life when I go, and every fall I gotta go cowboy for a week straight. I'll still drive home every other night. I might get three hours of sleep that night, but like I get fomo for my life, I love my girls and it's.
Speaker 1:And I know people are probably like, oh, it must be nice. But it's I guarantee you just sitting here and you know getting it wasn't always like that and that's a hard choice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, showing up every day to be a parent is is the hard choice. You know what I?
Speaker 1:mean it's easy to.
Speaker 2:It's easy to leave every morning at 9 am and come home every night at bedtime and kiss them good night and and live for the weekend. But I think that really, that really deteriorates. I at the framework of one, what we're supposed to be as a human being and what you're supposed to be bringing to that family unit. That's what society's messed up right.
Speaker 1:It's where we lost big time, because you're choosing careers. And then what do you do if somebody else is raising?
Speaker 2:your kid A teacher.
Speaker 1:Or TV, some iPad, some electronic is raising your child. You're not home with them. You're choosing work and I get, everybody has their deals, but you can't bitch about it. I mean, we've made the sacrifices, the sacrifices, and I have these buddies, man, and they got the toys and they got the boats throughout every weekend and the big dually trucks and towing their brand-new wakeboarding boat. They got their ATVs boat, they got their atvs and I look at it and I've never been the one I'm like, oh, you know, like, yeah, I look at it. I'm like you don't have these two fucking kids sitting at home. Yeah, because you're, you're and you have all these toys and your kids aren't even with you.
Speaker 2:It's real easy to be like oh gosh, yeah, it must be nice, you know. But no dude, I wouldn't trade for the world, I wouldn, I wouldn't trade nothing.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't trade nothing.
Speaker 2:And I'll say this dude, credit where credit's due. You're an inspiration to me. Well, thank you, dude. Watching what these girls do and how they handle themselves, and what they compete in and the discipline that they've already applied to their life, you're setting them up for success. You know what I mean. So you just need manage your money.
Speaker 2:Not like just put it in a piggy bank with no explanation, Like let me teach you, hey, how are you feeling? Well, you might be feeling this way because of this. I actually have a conversation right Like and, and, and, I think also being able to say like, hey, I'm flawed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm fucked up, right, like you know, know what's a big one on this. I'm sorry you'll probably cross these paths as, as a father, what's really checked me and you know, with her sitting here she knows this there's gonna be times where you know you lose your cool or something happens, but it's being able to to check yourself and check your pride and sit down and have that conversation, oh yeah, but it can't be. You know, I'm not saying it's every single, you know it's a weekly thing. Well, yeah, there's times you know you just lose pressure, whatever happened. But to be able to, as a man, to sit down with your daughters and be like, hey, this is not right, this is a mistake that I made, for whatever reason it is, and that's when you really I think showing them that it's not okay, yeah, isn't normal. I should not have said this.
Speaker 1:That shouldn't have that tone with this absolutely and that's where he really is a dad, where it starts to set in. It's like okay, like that. Why, if not, why are we doing this like everything's just a waste? If you're gonna do, we're none of us are perfect.
Speaker 2:You know, and I think just pretending everything is okay when it's not it's so it creates such messed up dynamics but it does perfect example. You know, like I'm not perfect, I'll figure it out. You know I I'm, the longer I've been out, the more I think I I have some really healthy outlets. Now the horse thing yeah, I'm actually gonna get into competitive roping this next year, um, to feed that whole piece with a bunch of prior veteran dudes, you know. And so you know I definitely have my things that help me calm down and funnel some of that energy into and everything else. But I still have my shit days and I'll sit down. I'll pull Margo aside three and a half. I'll pull Margo aside and be like aside, like hey, I'm sorry for getting angry, you know, and I'm doing better than I ever witnessed as a kid, right, like I've never put holes in walls or nothing like that right.
Speaker 2:Like thank goodness I have, I've, I've learned that control to that level. But like I'll still lose my shit, right, I'll get'll get pissed at something, never her right. But like, so I'll say, hey look, I'm sorry for getting angry, it's not okay. You know, you're a good girl, you did nothing wrong. It wasn't you, it was an out Three and a half. I don't care, I'm going to try to explain it. You know what I mean. So you're doing it right, go ahead, sir. But we went to go get feed the other day. We have to go get feed for our pigs and stuff an hour away because it's from a mill and doesn't have a bunch of junk in it. So we stopped at the gas station, like one exit down. Like five minutes into the drive, stop at the one exit down and Margo's got a water bottle. She dumps it all over herself.
Speaker 2:She's got a little ranch hat on you know, it changes dumps all over herself and I was just like, oh gosh, I did wonder. You know, I tried to give you a cap and I thought through this, but I guess I guess that's not okay either, you know. So go in there. She's crying. I'm like what are you crying for? You did that and you know, like what are you mad about, you know? So I took her from her, like cleaned her up a little bit and then she she's like I need a drink. I was like okay, so I handed her my spin drift, right, and I go to pull the diesel pump out and put it back and I go back, dumps it all over herself again. I was just like it's a good day, we're going to have Good day, we're going to have, you know, but a past me would have gotten mad about that. Yeah, oh for sure. Not that she's wrong, not that the it's just an inconvenience, just a stressful and a time thing and like ah you know irritation
Speaker 2:short circuit moment, you know. And so I went and got a bunch of the things to the windshield. I went back there I cleaned it all up. I was like you're okay, you know this happens. And um, and so we went all the I'll come back to this happens. But we went all the way to the feed shop picked up, drove an hour to the feed shop picked up feed she had a lollipop, we had a great time Got back in the truck and then we're about to drive home. So she's been sitting in the truck now for an hour, went to feed sitting in the truck for another 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:So that little girl's been sitting there since that incident for an hour and a half Out of nowhere. She says to me hey, daddy, I'm sorry for spilling water and getting mad. A three and a half year old came to that conclusion an hour and a half after it happened. They're watching, you know, and I stopped the truck and I got teared up, you know. And I said they're watching, you know, and I stopped the truck and I got teared up, you know, and I said hey, it's okay, you don't need to be sorry because it's an accident. It's an accident, you know. And I told her. You know how much I love you. You are my best friend. You know what I mean. You're a good girl, you know. And then we went to the feed shop and you know I got her a toy. I didn't need to do that, I just wanted to do that, you know right. But, um, but, man, they own you. Three and a half years old bro. Three and a half years old, she's starting to articulate, being sorry and being responsible for something and and communicating feelings and emotions.
Speaker 2:You know I took her on her first pheasant hunt a couple of months before that I took porter, my, my service dog. Porter's, about to be eight, changed my life when I went to school, really looked out for me there, but we haven't gone hunting in a long time. We're a little fat. So I took Margo. She's got a little orange hat on.
Speaker 2:I just got my 12-gauge back from my parents that I had from when I used to run around Bailey in college and we're walking up the mountain behind our house to go look for some pheasants and Porter's like peeing on a bush, sniffing over here eating some deer shit, not hunting. Yeah, yeah, just beat a dog and I'm like Porter, hunt it up Like we used to do this. You know we used to go hunt woodcock and pheasant and quail and all that stuff. And I'm getting pretty pissed, you know, like I'm just shouting at the dog. Margo pulls on my sleeve. She goes Daddy, it's okay. This happens sometimes and I was just like when did you get so wise? She's like it's okay, and then she goes Porter, hunt it up.
Speaker 1:You know, goodness me, the kids, are amazing man and they're watching Beautiful. They're watching everything. They watch how your relationship is with your wife. They watch how you're communicating. I mean, that's been a big thing that my wife has pushed on us. She's like these girls are watching. Yeah, they're watching everything.
Speaker 3:It's like you know one of the things I'm very affectionate.
Speaker 1:That's my love language to my wife. I'll never not slap her ass. I'm never grabbing her giving her. You know, I don't care if the kids are watching or whatever.
Speaker 1:I'm going to love my wife, you know Absolutely. But I want my daughters to see that where it's, I mean, they'll come home and I don't even see these people. It's been the night somewhere. They haven't touched her. We just spent the night somewhere. They haven't touched. I don't even notice, and you guys are. So if I want my daughters to know that your wife's your best friend, that it's okay to be affectionate, you show that love toward each other and to not like be so standoffish I mean they're watching every single thing you do and so, as us, as dads, man we got to set especially for daughters I mean, yeah, we have to let them know what a true man is, how to be treated. That's why we had that video that went crazy recently of me talking about how, if you're going to date my daughter, you're going to date me.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, man Dude that resonated with me big time.
Speaker 2:Well it resonated I got two options. I either have to teach my girls what a man is. That's my responsibility. Or I got to lock them in, I got to lock him in, I got to start building a tower because my girls are pretty. You know what I mean. God got me twice. He got you twice.
Speaker 1:I feel you, but I got a lot of hate from it because like, oh, this is a way to drive your daughters away. Oh, they're going to be sneaking out and I don't think a lot of, especially these, I don't want to say like simp men, but there are man, they're pathetic dudes that they can't understand in in the amount of comments that we got on it, but it's what it. What I mean by is like, if you're going to spend that time, if I'm going to turn the keys of the castle over one day, yeah to the man that's going to step into that position. I want to know who he truly is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's a scary world out, there you're holding you're also holding a standard and and these you know, and everybody's obviously has their opinion and they can say whatever they want, but it's you know. I want my daughter to at least have a guidelines of. If this dude pulls up and doesn't get out to open your door, why are we wasting our time with this? If he's expecting you to split a bill, if he's expecting you to do the things that I have raised you, that a man does, yeah, if this dude is pursuing and courting you and he wants you to be in a relationship with him, he's not showing you the most basic shit. Yeah, why are we? Why are we Right? And so that's where it's like in these oh, it's a little weird. You're going to date some teenage kid. Say what you want, I'm not going to have some kid just coming up showing up.
Speaker 2:That's the thing too, though, is your girls either know now for sure, or they will know that that, for you, comes from a place of love. Yes, a lot of dudes, I think, see love and affection as a weakness, and it's as completely opposite for sure. You know what I mean, and, um, so I think you know. Just to explain and I'm gonna do the same thing for my daughters you know, like, hey, you will know how to apply a tourniquet, you know how to employ a pistol weapon system, you know how to do all these things right. You will be a force multiplier and you'll be able to look after yourself, but at the same time, you need to know that me teaching you all these things is important because it comes from a place of love. Me having a standard for you is important because it comes from a place of love. It's not because.
Speaker 2:I say so. I'm not being and I'm not a hypocrite about it. You know, I expected myself to be at that standard too. Right Like um.
Speaker 1:but but, yeah, I think You'll have people arguing oh, you can't set the standards for your daughter, the fuck, I can't. Yeah, they're going to pick who they want. They're going to be attracted to who they are Right, we can, right, we can't. We can't change this as a dad. Right, that's one thing we have to accept. Our daughters are going to fall in love with whoever they choose to fall in love. Yeah, but I am going to do everything I can to set the standards for that man when he steps into my shoes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cool I, but that's the difference, you, you. There's a difference, though, between being personally invested in raising your kids yep then just having you raising your kids and you being present for your kids and you showing up for your kids and you explaining shit to your kids and you loving your kids and you just walking around being a hard ass dad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's how it comes off on on, you know, cause they don't know me personally which I get it and they see just some clip of whatever it is.
Speaker 2:I can definitely see like a kid going to school. Right, you got a stereotypical kid right that goes to school. Their dad was in the military. Their dad's a stickler about timelines. They'll yell at him all the time Like my way or the highway. That's not a dad I am Nope.
Speaker 1:I said I'd never want to be that dad be able to go and meet and explore and live their lives. But while they're, while they're discovering themselves and they move out of the home, which I hope never happens I want there to be one day where she's at a gas station and a guy approaches her and he has the respect and he meets, he does checks. So when she's sitting there processing wherever this is church, whatever- Recognizes a man, not a boy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he shook my hand, looked me in my eyes, walked me to my car, made sure I left before he did. I'm checked, I'm going to be checked, checked, checked. I want my daughters going through the same checklist that I'm going to go through for that dude. I want him coming to my house, especially in the teenage years. If you're going to come and approach me, yeah, yeah, you don't criteria.
Speaker 2:This is, that's exactly that's all it comes down to, it's not? Oh, I'm gonna be also, and that's that's a lot of, I think, a lot of dude. A lot of guys make excuses for being absentee fathers, especially in daughter's life. Yes, because they're like, oh, that's the wife's role, no, no it's not bro it is I feel that you're not teaching you as a dude. Teaching your daughter self-value, bro, that's way more impactful than your wife trying to explain to them.
Speaker 1:And I'm not just thinking, oh, I'm just pretty no no, no, no, we're talking about your full potential here that's where the biggest learning lesson that I had if my kids take anything from me is learning their value. Yeah, because if a, if a, if a woman, young woman, knows her true value, she's not. There's going to be those where does that?
Speaker 1:come from fathers. Fathers, that comes from us, dude, it's us sitting them down. Hey, you see how this is. Yeah, do you see how that guy's treating that? I, we were walking in the village here. This woman's walking with this I don't know if it was like a xbox box, you know it was a big box and her man's walking next to her and my 10 year old daughter goes dad, why would he not carry that for her? And I and I look at her and I go if your man never offers to carry anything for you, find a new one. And this dude he and grabs it. It took me and my 10 year old daughter hit our 10 year old little girl to call it the fact that this man is letting his chick hold this and it's, it's a big box for her. She wasn't a bigger one. You could tell her she's like kind of like waddling with it. He's just strutting along in this little 10 year old girl and that's when I'm like okay, it's working.
Speaker 2:But that's the other piece to it too is how, okay, I can sit here all day and say, hey, you're valuable, you're smart, you're pretty, you're driven, you're all these things, you're self-responsible All these great attributes, right. Why all these great attributes, right? Why does that hold any weight with you? It holds weight with you because they trust you and because you demonstrate that it's possible.
Speaker 1:Yep Right. So that's what it comes down to.
Speaker 2:So you are demonstrating that that behavior exists? Yes, and it's not.
Speaker 1:It's not some fairy tale and it's not the world we live in now that it's cool for boys to be feminine and wear and put all this product and all this bullshit, for boys to be feminine and and wear and put all this product and all this bullshit like. No, that's absolutely not. That is the agenda that these, this world and this country is turning to. Yeah, there's still good old boys out there. There's still men that are raising good sons out there. Yeah, may take a bit. Hey, if you're gonna go and date some guys and you're gonna go, you're gonna go through the douchebags. We were those kids once, we were those boys and I understand that as, oh, you're gonna be this guy.
Speaker 1:Just, I was that little motherfucker oh yeah it took me a long time to grow up even in the marine corps out. I was a turd in marine corps I was piece of shit even at long afterward, in the early days of our marriage. I was piece of shit for a long time. Took growing up, maturing, but I can wing that shit out in a fucking heartbeat.
Speaker 2:But I'll also say this too. You know, like my wife 1.0 was a great girl. You know, we just we weren't too much had to change from each one of us to accommodate the other. For sure, you know what I mean. I can say without a shadow of doubt that Maddie is my soulmate. That's good. You know what I mean. So I can look at my girls and say, hey, there's something that is meant exactly for you out there, Yep, and they're going to watch that.
Speaker 2:And you can sit here and you can settle, you can try to make it fit in a box, but what are you doing? You're going to build resentment. You never going to be lifted to the height that you're supposed to. Be no, right, like there's a lot of a type dudes that can't handle a strong woman no, I'll say it, I worry about that with them because I mean, but that's another piece of the lesson that we have to teach, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:But there's a lot of, a lot of a type dudes that don't appreciate a strong woman. They're threatened.
Speaker 1:I yeah, which boggles my mind my wife will outperform me on everything. Yeah, and I'm cool with it.
Speaker 2:I joke about it all the time. I'm like oh, I used to be the badass one, but my wife is now.
Speaker 1:I'm one of those dudes. My wife's like don't say that, I'm like honey Dude.
Speaker 2:Maddie's at home right now, starting her own company.
Speaker 1:She's a freaking gangster, bro.
Speaker 2:You know, we work together and I'm like I think I might go compete in these big loop ropings that, like some of the biggest dudes in the country compete in. I've never done it. She's like yeah, why are you even questioning that? She supports me in everything, I support her in everything and we both are aligned on the bigger picture. I think the only thing that Maddie and I don't agree about is she likes Brussels sprouts, like that's it, bro, she, but she's an absolute savage good. I'll add this one.
Speaker 2:One last thing about the kid thing but when, when I, when I was previously married and you know, through my 20s and everything, I thought for a long time kids was just the next thing to do, right, society is like, hey, get a job, you get married, you have kids and raise them and die. Right, keep working, please, and then and then die. But now I'm, I met, I met that woman and I was like yo, the world needs more of this. Yeah, you know what I mean and that's why I wanted to have kids. I want to make more of her. You know, I want to make more badass alpha females that don't, that will never let a man make them smaller than they are. You know what I mean. That will only make them grow. You know, and goodness me, I mean that. That's what I said earlier. I was like yo, people think special operations teams are badass. You know who I trust? In a foxhole with me, mom, I'd trust my fucking wife, bro.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a mom that has dealt with our shit and raised two badass girls, she could do a nice iconic ass and kids and a farm and a milk cow.
Speaker 2:Bro, I'll take Maddie any day, dude.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you this man, it seems like you're on the right path and, from my hard lessons, shut the fuck up and listen to them when they get older, especially when those hard times and those hard conversations come into it, just just just listen to them, man. It is especially us being that protector. You know, and I said it in that one podcast like my job is to be their personal security guard forever.
Speaker 2:I take that dead ass serious.
Speaker 1:And you know, and you know they're going to have a man one day. That's great. I'm still watching. That's just who I am. I can't like my wife and I were talking about last night.
Speaker 2:That's a fire watch that never stops.
Speaker 1:My wife and I were talking about last night. I was like I feel that we're going to be the most amazing grandparents Because I feel we're doing a decent job as parents. Yeah, when it comes to the grandparents, I I can't wait for it. I can wait, yeah, but like then that day comes like I'm gonna be so stoked for it because I hope that they we instilled those values on them to be able to, when they have that family, it's a prideful thing, it's something that is it. It was the right time and everything's going and obviously you're never ready for kids, but I want them to have that core family values when they bring the next generation in.
Speaker 2:That's the word, bro. Generational trauma is a real thing For sure, and I think this goes for everything. I learned this in the pipeline you can either be a victim of your circumstance or you can use that thing to propel you to another level. You can sit around, victim of your circumstance, or you can use that thing to propel you to another level. You can sit around, you can wallow about the fact you have a TBI. You can identify as a TBI survivor. You can make excuses for your behavior because of a TBI, or you can say, hey, I got this thing about me. I need to fucking work on it so I can be better because of this.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean and I think that's the difference in being, you know, especially a parent in today's age. You know what I mean. Like we came from, you know kind of emotionally unavailable parents, right, Like hey, you need to go work, you need to do this job, blah, blah, blah, Because their parents were like that, right. And so to really break that mold, we have the space and time, if you just put your phone down to be able to really raise your kids. It comes down.
Speaker 2:And make an example of what they should then do. So they do have a roadmap? Yes, because we didn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think if parents really just stuck it in their heads. I want to raise children, that I want to be around yeah, but here's an iPad, here's a tv, here's the remote, here's here here. Go to school. Oh, I get to see you for 30 minutes a day and then they're like god, I can't. I, I mean, I used to work with a dude that had a counter on his phone or on his computer. Every day when he would log in, it would tell him how many days, until his youngest kid was 18 and he was kid free and I, I remember I came home, told my wife I will break down.
Speaker 2:A piece of me would die that day.
Speaker 1:You know I'm saying, I am dreading the day when she or my youngest have to leave my wife is going to be an absolute train wreck. I am going to too. I just I'm not admitting it yet. There's no prepare. But that's who you want as children I. I want my kids to. I don't want my kids to leave, like where you're at right now. We're burning the bridges, we're working on maybe heading back east so I can get closer to my parents, but I want that enough where, hey, you have all the property in the world. Enough, build your, I'll build it for you. Dude, that's my goal.
Speaker 2:Don't leave.
Speaker 1:You have a home here.
Speaker 2:I, you, that's my goal. Don't leave. You have a home here. I don't ever want you to leave. Our goal as a family is to create a dynasty and a legacy that we can just not hand right, because that's the other piece that we have to run into as parents is hey, how do we teach you the hard lessons to appreciate the complexities of situations and how good you do have it and how hard you do need to work, without just giving it to you Right, and without you having to go through them all the way, right? And so that's the hard thing for me now is like hey, I know what I'm going to build. You know I will have a generational ranch that isn't just cows and everything, because it's not a sustainable model. I will have some place that helps people and has a sense of service and all these things. That is kind of my legacy and Maddie and I's legacy.
Speaker 1:I will have something that is sustainable for you to pass to your kids and you'll be involved in it enough that you'll have buy-off in it right For sure, and I think people, when they start talking about legacies and passing on, they need this huge amount of wealth. Yeah, man, it's just, it's time. Love and just caring and that compassion toward a family, that's the legacy, right.
Speaker 2:You see it all the time. What does that kid say to the wealthy dad when he says hey, if you could have anything in the world, what would it be? Your time, bro? They don't, they. It blows my mind how people can just hey, it's that it's saturday, we're gonna, you're gonna, go to the babysitter, bro. You worked all week. You weren't around your kid. You put your kid at a babysitter today. You'll never so as mine as it's difficult.
Speaker 2:There's a big piece in the cowboy ag space right now is like hey, the entire reason you're building what you built is for your kids. If you can't slow down and take your kid to go do chores, what are you doing it for? You know what I mean. If you don't slow down and take your kid to go do what you're doing, if you don't involve them in all aspects of your life, you're missing Right now. Right, I tell Maddie all the time like yo gosh, today was hard, today was rough, today was a marathon. You know, today was not graceful, but we have to remember that right now is their childhood. Right now is their childhood. How are they going to remember you? They can remember you at all. Have you been around? How are they going to remember you? Are they going to remember you at all? Have you been around? Who were you? What were you doing? What decisions were you making? How were you acting? How were you treating people? All for money? For what?
Speaker 1:For what? Yeah, and it's sad because a lot of it's money.
Speaker 2:Yeah and you can't take in this place is your kids. If you're not putting everything into them, what on earth is your purpose here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and my wife and I all the time I'm like you'll see especially. I mean you kind of live on the boonies, but us being here. One of our biggest problems why I have a hard time associating with people is because they're kids, yeah, and I'm just like, oh, that kid sucks, yeah, interrupt. They're loud, they're throwing shit. They don't listen. It's so hard though, because it's not their fault. It's not, it's the parent's fault. Shitty kids come from shitty parents. Absolutely I don't care what anybody says, I don't care any disorders.
Speaker 1:I've been that kid that's angry and hurting, that had nobody to talk to you know what it's amazing of what you can figure out, what you can learn by just sitting down with your kids and have a conversation with them. But building that trust, yeah, and then you know, because there's going to be a time, especially as a dad and those dude, it's like full rut, man, it's like one day.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I feel like I'm going to have to install, deep install. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:She doesn't know what I'm saying, but you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, 100 dude. You just I mean, but you just, by that time, you know, you I'll be 100 on the right track truck I'll, we'll keep blackouts black.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I got you. Yeah, you know so it's.
Speaker 1:It's just, dude, just take the time. As a dad that has fucked up a lot, but I, you know I've learned a lot and I have to swallow that pride and become who I am now as a man. Just listen to them and it's going to be hard and you're going to have some really uncomfortable conversations, especially as a girl dad. Yeah, they start developing, becoming young women. It's fucking awkward, yeah, but you just got to be there you know, it's human dude, it's human and they and you got to make them feel human, that it's not weird.
Speaker 1:And and then when that freaking rut switch is on and the boy dude, it's just like overnight they'll leave the house. They come back one day and there's a trail of them and they're all lip curled and and you're just like, god damn, here we go. Oh, man, my wife's like it's this letter, dude, you, you've built, you've created this, so how many years do I? Have bro. When was it for you like that?
Speaker 3:15, 15, it's, that's full blown, bro, full blown. There's just get ready just get ready.
Speaker 1:It comes quick too, man, but it's fun though.
Speaker 2:It's fun, and then when you enjoy being around your kids and you can take them everywhere with you, it doesn't like life is great yeah, life is great, but but we're always going to fall short and this is and this is, I think, what probably brings it all all together is if you are stuck somewhere in your life idolizing the person that you used to be, you're not only doing a disservice to yourself, you're doing a disservice to your family Because you're not growing. You know what I mean. If you're not exploring things that make you tick and getting control of them, if you're not figuring out how to openly love more, if you're not figuring out how to communicate better, if you're not being an example of what it is to be a husband, a wife, to be a dad, to be a son, even to be a friend. No, dude you're. You're not only failing you, you're failing all. The people look up to you, and especially your kids. You know what I mean. It's because they're watching and and what's, bro?
Speaker 2:goodness me, it's like what is the point of having a kid if you're not going to raise it? You're gonna pay somebody else raise your kid and then you're gonna get pissed when your kid does act out and fuck everything up because you weren't there we're not listening to you example.
Speaker 1:We're rebelling and you're like I don't know why my kids like this.
Speaker 2:Because you don't know we directly influence the next generation 100% man you know it's up to us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll leave it on this man. I just don't want, and kids will make mistakes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's part of growing up. We all will.
Speaker 1:That's part of growing up Once you realize, okay, cool, you're going to make mistakes. Overcoming those mistakes, not making the mistake again that's what we need to learn. I want not making a mistake again, that's what we need to learn. Like, I want to be able to send my kids off anywhere sleepovers, events, sporting. I want them to be able to represent us, yeah, and not have to worry about hey, how was it, how were they? Were they okay? Yeah, I want every parent coming back. God, dude, your kids, your kids, spot on every time.
Speaker 2:I can relate a lot to a horse. You know, a young horse doesn't know a lot of things and you actually get to a point when you work to a horse A young horse doesn't know a lot of things. And you actually get to a point when you work with a horse that you look for mistakes and you don't look for wins, because mistakes are teaching opportunities. And if you can start to flip the narrative and be like, hey, this mistake is actually an opportunity for us to communicate, for us to grow, for us to learn Yep, so that then, when they see it being done wrong, they now know what right looks like.
Speaker 2:You know what I mean If you walk around and expect perfection all the time, which is very militaristic and it's not, it doesn't exist. No, it does not.
Speaker 1:It doesn't even exist in the military.
Speaker 2:Yeah you miss the opportunity to really create individuals that can think for themselves but also look after themselves, and that's I mean, that's what, and that's what we're doing, you know, and it's fun. Yeah, I enjoy this.
Speaker 1:What's most important I'm excited for you because you're just, you know, being a young dad.
Speaker 2:Yeah we'll talk again in five years journey. Yeah, I'll let we'll talk.
Speaker 1:I'll let you know if it worked out or not, if you should shift gears, yeah I'm lucky you go first, you give me your notes. Yeah, hey shift fire bro it didn't work, but, man, I really appreciate it. I appreciate I know you had a quite a drive and probably get you back on the road. But, dude, thank you for your time. This is a good one. I love, I love watching and I'm gonna be watching, and you know where I'm at.
Speaker 1:Dude, you got my number if you ever, if you ever need anything or got any questions or just need to shoot the shit over having being a girl dad, because we're the best dude dying breed.
Speaker 2:We're the best man we're.
Speaker 1:We're gonna change that we were hand-picked for a reason, but uh, yeah, man, yeah, I'm excited. Thanks, dude, I appreciate you. Thanks, oh, that was good, man cool yeah too easy yeah, I uh.