But, Cody Aljets. Yes, sir. Love the last name. Thanks for coming in to Irregardless, our podcast, to talk about various things. You are a metal sculptor, and you're in from Gunnison, Colorado, which we just looked at a map or some images. It's absolutely a beautiful place. To the extent that makes me be like, why am I where I live? Well, come out and see the studio in person. Yeah. So, you know, I may take you up on that. Tell us. There's a lot to cover here today because, as you know, this show is about, you know, metals industry. And that can range anywhere from, you know, someone sitting here from a mill to distribution to metal sculptors or whatever. And that's the idea of all walks of life. within this industry. So you represent the metal sculptor sort of part of the industry. So tell me about your metal sculpting and what you do. Well, first, thanks for having me. I appreciate you letting me come into here. It's kind of my hometown area. I grew up across the river, which is nice to get back. I do high detail metal art, typically in the western realm of things, being in Colorado. A lot of animals, wildlife, skulls, or guitars. I showed you some pictures of the guitars. And really just exploring at this point. I've hit benchmarks. of like whoa you were able to do that and wasn't sure how i did it and then that opens up a whole nother can of worms of uh creativity and like well might as well try try the next level right you know yeah and so you've are you trained in metal school is this just something you have stuck maybe you probably have an aptitude for it but is this something that you've just sort of sense you're good at or do you pick it up one day or you like what's what's the scoop how do you get there if you really want to know like the whole i grew up in a mechanic shop body shop okay but my family was i always was drawn to the body shop the shaping the fixing the painting but the money was in like the repair side right so we were always drawn to that and never really had that outlet uh as a child growing up and um but i did a lot of stuff at school i always remember you know some of the schools kept some of my clay stuff in grade school and some of that and then and uh buddy was turning 30 and at that time uh it was like when cake boss was like on and we'd be sitting around and and having a good time watching these shows and i'd always oh i can make that i can make that and and it started with cakes to be honest with you i i used to make like a three-dimensional like crazy kids cakes um you know for him i did like a dirty 30 birthday cake type thing and uh that kind of opened my eyes to like i had the eye for um proportion and detail and i could uh even now i can almost see the stuff building in my head uh you know i kind of tell people it's almost like a transformer you know okay i can literally kind of see the parts and pieces in my mind and and the layers and um that's just kind of helped uh i did go to siu across the river for art and But I never finished because it was like, well, what am I going to do with this? Okay, yeah. But it does help with, like, the line and thinking about lighting and pre-thinking all that stuff. And it's really just been a trial and error since, you know, my first sculptures were. They weren't even sculptures. I inherited a couple hand saws from my grandfather, and I took a plasma and cut them into like a pine tree, which you've kind of seen it out there, something more craft fairy type stuff. And I've just constantly kept trying to push. And I've even taken classes. I've gone around the country to a couple different states to take classes to broaden those skills. And it's just been like off to the races ever since I, you know, I committed full time. And that's been really neat to see and expand. We'll jump into that. That's a whole nother part of the story of how you really got to the full time piece as far as I understand. So you're from Dorsey, Illinois. Correct. And so that's that you said 150 people. large. And so what was going on in Dorsey in 19, you know, 85 86 87 when you're A youngster. You know, playing in creeks, strapping your gun to your bike and go shoot squirrels and rabbits. And, you know, I kind of grew up that country life, you know, like you said, booming metropolis of 150. And it's still the same. Is it really? Yeah. You know, there's my family had the mechanic shop. There was a lawnmower repair shop and a post office. So beyond that, we just like. We'd ride to other towns on our bikes. You know, you had the freedom in the 80s to be able to do that. You did. It was just be home by dinner. Yeah. And you'd call on the payphone like, oh, I'm in Bethalto, which was like, you know, 10 miles away. And then, all right, I'm in Warden, you know, 20 miles away. And kind of do those loops with friends. And, you know, at that time, you could just go into a house and get a snack. You know, even if you didn't know them well or, you know, somebody would stop you. Here, I got some lemonade for you kids or, you know. God, that was good stuff, wasn't it? A lot different than the kids, you know, are able to do now. Even living in a small Colorado town, there's a lot of tourists and a lot of traffic going through. And, you know, you can't just let your kids run like we were able to. Feral. It's so true. My parents said, no, I do a St. Louis city. Parents had no clue where I was during the day. I was like 10, 15 miles from the house. Yeah. You know. And now kids don't want to walk 200 feet. Oh, that's so far. And I'm like, well, you know, we used to ride our bikes for 10 hours a day. Back in my day? It was uphill both ways. It's true. It is true. And on a single speed BMX. Yeah, that's true. Not the e-bikes. Yeah, no, we had like the single speed. You had like the mongoose. BMX, Schwinn, you know, always still around. And what was the other one? Was it a Huffy? Yeah, or GT got popular right then. If you had a GT, you were like swanky. I know, you had like the pegs and like mag wheels and stuff. Totally. And it was always like some kid, you saw that, you're like, he is a week or two from hurting himself in a way that. He'll probably get rid of that bike when he's finished. Totally. And I'll buy it off at the yard sale. Yeah. I mean, I'll take that from when he's done. So you grew up at Dorsey. And so you just told me your family had a mechanic shop. Tell me what I guess where I'm going is, is that sort of what touched off the metals world for you? Or was that? Today, you don't sort of consider them linked. It just happens to both be in your history. I think it's a lot of things that I did. I was kind of that guy that jumped through a bunch of different jobs or worked a bunch of jobs, three or four jobs in high school. But I do think that it gave me the dexterity. If you were a male in my family at eight years old, you went to work and you started sweeping the floor. then he worked into oil changes, break jobs, you know. And I spent a lot of my summers were in after school where they're working and seeing my friends riding around, you know, and then I'd get off. Yeah, you know, they'd come be doing. You know, power slides in the gravel. In the gravel. Come on, come on. What are you doing, Cody? Come on. Sweeping, you know. Sweeping that dirt you just blew in here with that back tire. Yeah, you know. So I do think it gave me the dexterity and really the, like, being a home. shop uh you know we had like an oil burner furnace so you know we were always repairing our own things having to think outside the box uh being a small town and and that time frame there wasn't you know repair folks or park stores like we talked and yeah and you kind of had to do it all on your own so i do think that it gave me the mindset of thinking differently and thinking how things are put together which in a lot of my art now I have to really pre-think the layers and how it's going to work together. Can I get to that spot when I weld it? How am I going to... keep it clean, you know, like the red rocks in the guitar. I had to have having to do like an access door in the back of that because I knew once I welded the body up, I'd never be able to fix the LED or access some of that stuff. So I think that's really where Ð Sort of the mechanical components. 100%. And like the Ð it has to be engineered like the right way. To an extent. For you to get done what you're trying to get done. totally and you know the nice thing with welding and anybody in the welding industry you can always cut it back apart and re-weld it uh true but time's money even in the art world like you got to consider how much time you have in the stuff and um so a lot of pre-thought into that and i think that's where my initial upbringing in the shop came from and And I always said I'd never be like my grandfather, and I'm kind of like a spitting image of him. Well, tell me about that. What do you mean? My family wasn't like a loving family. It was a work family. Right. And I was a, you know. I was a shit little kid. Right. So getting in trouble and my father wasn't around. So it was like my uncles and grandfathers that cracked the whip. And most of that was like, all right, if you're not going to be good out there, you're going to be in here working. Yeah. You don't know it, but you just made a choice. This is true. So I think that's where, you know, the same, like nobody forces me to go to my studio at night or every morning. I could sit around all I want, but just kind of having that upbringing and that work old school mentality really helps me be successful now and not, even if I have a failure or what I perceive is not what I want, then I know like, all right, well, you know, sometimes you fix a car and it. wasn't the part that needed to be changed right so you move on to the next step and you re-diagnose and you know i kind of use that same same thought process you think about art i mean the the there's the art itself but the the way you think about you said even in art you know time is money not all artists think that way you know and it has nothing to do with the art but You have this compliment to your art, which as you understand, it sounds like art doesn't mean you get sort of this free pass on, you know, I got to go out and sell this stuff. And, you know, I got to have people, you know, wanting me to build things for them. Like, this is what I do. And I think that there is a, you know, phenomenon out there, you know, creator's curse, which is they're really good at. building things and dreaming things up and doing it. But when it comes to sort of the self -promotion side and standing behind their art and knowing that it's good, those things don't always go hand in hand. No. I mean, that's been a learning process. I'm in my, I guess I started into 21. So I'm in my fifth year now. And I honestly just thought like I could, all right, you make the coolest art, the business will come. And that's not how it works. How did it work? Well, I mean, you made something awesome and nobody came. Yeah, well, you know, and I just thought, like, you know, cool, it'll go viral or this or that. But watch this. Yeah. You know, and it's kind of that wah, wah, you know. I know that feeling. So I've had to step back and, like, if you're going to do this full time, it's got to be ran like a business. And I can't say I'm always great at that. You know, we've talked about, like, just, you know, wearing the six different hats that you've got to wear and have the shameless self -promoting and take opportunities like this. take a risk. And it's really weird with art, you know, putting if especially like a commission or an idea I have of myself, putting yourself out there and putting it especially on like a social platform is very, you're very vulnerable. It's like, here we go. Yeah. You don't know if people are if you're doing a piece that has like a lot of feeling behind it. I know it. the feeling i know what i'm trying to create but is anybody else going to feel that uh and that's been a really a really interesting challenge to to do it and do be able to do that um authentically right you know not not i want to be authentic i want to be real and i don't want to be putting out a meeting that just it seems fake for a sale right right uh you know and and in the end that's like one of the coolest things is when when people can relate to it or tell you it might even be the meaning i had behind it but or if somebody sees a piece and they tell you what they see in it uh it all it opens my mind up to more possibilities plus it's very fulfilling when you can have you ever had a moment where somebody is like i see what you did and they like explain to you their interpretation most times to be like, yeah, I mean, I can see it. Have you ever been like, that's literally not at all. But I was trying to like, yeah, it's nothing at all. It's not even in there. Yeah. I just sold a piece like that and I had a big story behind it and the, the buyer had actually hadn't heard the story behind it. And I told him the story and they're like, no, that's not what it is. And I was like, well, can you tell me what you see? And it was definitely like a darker meeting, but they felt it, and they felt it the way they felt it. And that's where I said it's kind of an eye-opener or mind-opener for me of like, okay, like it's still cool because they still got a meeting for them. And really that's the journey I've taken is if you could get people to feel the art, then they're willing to pay for it and keep that feeling. And that's something I was saying. I've had to learn that through a couple different situations that I've put myself out there on and been really challenging to do it. But those have been like my level up moments of either. cool, here's a big showcase, and I got to make a really killer piece because it's like an A audience that you want for your clientele. And then I get to speak about them in certain situations. And the same, you can see in the audience people that feel it, and you're trying to resonate to those folks. And then you can see people that are just kind of glazed over and want you to get off the stage. Right. They're not art people. Yeah. So how often? You're using metal, you're welding. I mean, these are, these are, well, let me ask you this. Do you pencil sketch them first or do you just kind of like, you see. them in your head and you get going it varies i typically do a really crappy sketch you know and i don't need it to be good for myself um because i'm just doing more of like proportions kind of uh like fast sketching to get it out and not like overthink the project and then as i as i build it there's like a sketch versus reality right um but i've recently i've had to start and it kind of irks me, but I've had to do some like AI renderings off of my sketches for certain clients that are not visual. Well, they're not visual. And the way I handle those is I show them like, here's my old sketch of my headdress and then here's the finished piece. So I can still show from like concept of chicken scratch to like high detail, high end art. But even with that, I've had to Think outside the box. I'm not a big AI person, especially being an artist. I don't want it to be like an AI image. Yeah. So, you know, I'll dump my drawing that I do a little more detail into that and then try to get it. And I'll still show them the both so they can see that, hey, this was my idea originally. And then here's the rendering you asked for. Yeah. You know, which has just been a progression. And some of that technology is nice, but it's different in the art world, I think, too. There's definitely people that get on me like, you're using an AI image. I'm like, well, that's what the client asked for. I still got to make it. And the same. I do have contracts and this and that, and I have to very much in that verbiage say, if you're using an AI rendering, I have to make it in reality. It may not be that texture. It may not be that color. And it may not work in reality. And I want to change the positioning or the ratio. Yeah. And that's where my clients are trusting me. And then I gain confidence. Yeah, I mean, it'll look plus or minus 95%. of what this image looks like yeah you know and i'll show you later i've got an image that i had to do for my fab tech piece and and the same i didn't really want to do that but but it closed the deal and i've accepted that okay if i can if i can keep moving forward and still know that uh the image just is just an image for somebody else i you know the piece is still going to be my piece and it wasn't ai's idea Yeah, well, we were just talking about the authors. You know, it's kind of when somebody cranks out an amazing book, like, did you really write that? Yeah. Did you? We're in that age, right? And that's why I like to have the chicken scratches still too. And that's where I take like, if I'm making an eagle, I actually go on to like a Feather Atlas website and get like. dimensions of each feather, what age the eagle's going to be. Like I kind of nerd out on some of that stuff, which has been kind of fun too. Or, you know, I did like a turkey tail for a guy that was getting inducted in a Wild Turkey Hall of Fame and didn't know that like a fan of a turkey, each feather has its own individual pattern for those species and knowing it had to go to. somebody that's in the hall of fame for turkey hunting it had to be right you know so i i'm learning a lot of stuff about animals and other things sound like real deep dives yeah so let me back up so you you're in dorsey uh you went to high school there edwardsville high school so what how did you move on from dorsey like uh and how old were you when you when you moved out of there um Well, you know, when you get forced to work your whole life, you know, you're kind of anxious to get out of that environment. Yeah, somewhere I can go and not work. Yeah, and see, and growing up single parent family and so on, you know, when I turned 18, my mom was like, you know, if you're not going to work for the family business, then you need to figure out your path. And I, you know, I was in Boy Scouts. uh as a kids and um went to like filmont which is in northern new mexico and that was like my first exposure to like big mountains uh and i still remember the day like being on a peak and low clouds felt like you could touch them and looking over the green valleys like after that i knew i wanted to be in the mountains grabbed you um yeah so you know did a couple back and forth trips between california like lived out there on internships and took a corporate job with norton abrasives because they had said there was going to be some positions in colorado um that ended up taking me to nashville area instead Those are pretty far away from each other. They're pretty far away from each other. But, you know, the Appalachians and the Smoky Mountains are beautiful as well in their own way. Different scale. A little buggier. A little buggier. A little more banjo-y. Yeah. And then the same, just kind of figuring out what I really wanted to do and not sure the path I wanted to take. I knew. How old were you when you were in Nashville area? Mid-20s. And then in 2008, 2009, they cut like 70% of their sales force. Met us at a hotel the week before Christmas saying that it was going to be like a... a bunch of us that came in from all different areas and they took our company cars and our computers and our cards and handed us cash and said get a cab you guys are all fired all of us it was like 40 of us including me so I just at that point that's how I mean we'll be back up were you kind of like I wouldn't mind not working here at that point. Or were you kind of pissed about that? Well, yeah, I was pissed. I had moved. I had built my first house. My wife now, we had moved there together, and we weren't married at the time she was finishing college. It was really a kick in the teeth. But it also, you know, I've had a couple of things in my life that the perspective, like I did have other companies offer me jobs. in that same automotive aftermarket industry. But I just saw like I was a number on a corporate. And so were everybody else that, you know, and we were I was driving 100,000 miles a year, spending 200 nights a year in a hotel. Oh, wow. You know, like you're you're making a lot of money, but you're living this really unhealthy life for this company. And I just decided at that point, like, that's not really what I was chasing. You know, you know, young and 20s thought I was living it up with the company car and building the house and all this thing. And still to this day, it's some of the most money I've made in my life. And in the end, it didn't mean a damn thing. It was just money. Here I am sitting in this hotel. Yeah, you know, and trying to create a relationship and a family. And then, you know, I'm there like, you know, Friday, Saturday and leave Sunday again. Right. You know, type of thing. So, you know, I went back and worked for my family in Illinois. And then. Still was hunting that Colorado life and just came home one day after work and told my wife, like, look, we've got to sell the house. We've got to go. How did she react to that? Was she like, no? She kind of knew who I was. He's going. I've always been that person to take the chance. It's easy to go back home, right? It's hard to leave and start a life somewhere else, but I had done it. quite a few times on my own at a young age and and just knew that we would make it work and um so we took the chance when we went out for a week with like resumes and this and that which is unheard of in like a ski town to walk into businesses with resumes yeah here's my resume yeah and they're kind of looking at us you know and most of the were you going to like an outfit like Were they selling Patagonians and North Faces? Yeah, I mean, somewhat. I ended up, when I first moved there, I worked in a blacksmith shop. Okay. Which was right up my alley because I was trying to, like, create the lifestyle, right? We had went to change the lifestyle and do stuff that was more of what we wanted to do. And blacksmithing was really cool to learn. And Sam, like, opened that creative outlet again. I'm thinking blacksmith is just. You know, I have probably such an old idea in my head of what a blacksmith is, but you probably can't get too far from the fundamentals, which is you're heating up metal, bending it, hammering it. Yeah, it was like forges and power hammers. You know, in the mountains, there's still a lot of traditional scrolling in the handrails or twist in the handrails. You know, you're using like three quarter square stock because of snow loads and code. So, you know, you're manipulating some pretty heavy materials versus like a knife. Right. But we, you know, there's also like. backcountry ski things there so one of the companies has locations locally and in Iceland and all this so we were making like swords and axes and were you that's like the show forged in fire totally and then like down to like furniture you know we made a bunch of furniture and beds and hand you know the handrails and all that and and it's super fun and creative it just it also gets a little monotonous you're doing a lot of math a lot of repetitive stuff yeah You know, you do a whole hotel of handrails that it's the same balcony on 200 balconies. You're kind of like, all right. Kind of feeling over this. Well, that job kind of quit because, honestly, my paycheck started bouncing. So I was like, well, you know, this doesn't work. Now I'm paying Ð I'm getting a $25 hit because my paycheck bounces and had to move on, you know. What was that? I mean, was it just legitimately business was slowing? Just bad business. It wasn't ran well. They were bringing in plenty of money. Oh, okay. It just wasn't ran well. They were spending a lot of money. I think. And just not dealing with the overhead. Some of those big hotel jobs, you got so much overhead and you get your deposit for material, but that doesn't cover your payroll. And then six months later, you're still working on that job and thinking like, holy crap. That's the risk of those big jobs, right? You're not going to dictate your payment terms. You know, you're like psyched to get the great big job, but it takes forever. You've got a cash outlay for the material because you've got to have it on hand largely. And now you're just like, oh, my God. Well, and that's part of why I don't personally do Ð I do like some trailer repair for buddies or anything just to kind of do a quick job. But I don't Ð when I first Ð Went full time. I was doing some handrails and this and that. But even now, you know, when we moved there, a million dollar house was a pretty high end house. And now they're 20 million dollars. And to carry the insurance for a one one person shop and being a six month project, the insurance just sucked up any profit that you had for me anyway. And that was kind of the experience I was having. And is this were you in Crested Butte for this? Yeah, from 2012 to 2018, we lived like in Crested Butte proper, a valley near the ski resort. And, you know, we didn't have kids at that time. So, you know, skiing every day and like, you know, enjoying the lifestyle. Yeah, hanging, you know, hanging and working. Yeah. So what, so the black shop, the blacksmith shop sort of. wrapped up and is that when you moved into gunnison thereafter or like uh no i actually ran i was a production manager for a playground sculpting company which is in gunnison uh you know like 20 miles down the valley uh but the same it was like a lot it was back to traveling we were traveling all over the country you know spent like six months in salt lake city area you know we built largest outdoor climbing sculpture on the planet there and and things like that and I was using, like, all my skills on that from my days of running a territory for Norton and dealing with, you know, product. You know, I was setting all the scheduling for the jobs. I was doing all the housing. I was, you know, making sure the. employee rotation was happening so people weren't on the road is there anything else you guys need me to do yeah you know kind of all of it but then i was back on the road um and i did that for a while like on the road a lot quite a bit you know we would like prep projects in gunnison And then it was always a lot of the bigger stuff was like a spray concrete install. And then we'd like carve the concrete as it dried into like trees or animals or, you know, we even made like concrete slides. Feels time sensitive. It was. I mean, we would actually build like tents and put like porticles in the tents to keep it really humid environment. Slow things down. slow it down yeah because you know you would stamp it and then the stamps if you're in like a like moab utah we did a project there we would go make like latex stamps of the native rock yeah and then we'd sit there at the rock and mix the paint to match it and then you go you know that's your day before you spray and then you go and use those stamps to kind of give the cracks and some of the stuff that you could use and then you'd come in and accent it with carving knives and stress That's detailed work. It was pretty wild. It was cool. I really loved that. It was a lot of fun. But, like, the more I got into the production manager side, you know, the less I was carving, the less I was painting. I was more of an office jockey again. Yeah. And that was, like, exactly what I had tried to leave, you know. Well, okay. So what's next after that? So you were Ð did you Ð is that a place that Ð you decided to leave and go? When my first son was born in 2016, they called me when I was still at the hospital, you know, like 24 hours after he was born. And they're like, we need you in South Dakota tomorrow. And I was like, you know, my son was just born. How about now? So then, you know, things happen. I tried to step back and just be like a local sculptor. But, you know, I was still a high-paid guy. not be doing all the other stuff and and so on so i uh you know found another local job and i was volunteer firefighting at the time um and then that bond the city's been growing in the mountain area and the resort you know a bunch of resort buildings and all that uh the volunteer went to like a full-time paid position okay over time so then i was working as a firefighter i was an engineer for the fire department and then also um Like charging the hoses and stuff. Yeah, I was a lieutenant engineer, and then we also ran the ambulance service, so it would bounce between ambulance and the engine. So I have some experience there in the fire department world. And when you're learning how to do all of that, and you're behind, you're up on the pumper, they got all the valves that you pull, right? And it's a little nerve-wracking because you have all the... the hoses that have been pulled off the truck and they're, they're, you know, a couple hundred feet away or whatever. And then you've got a couple thousand feet of hose that's still folded up in the bed of the truck. Pull the wrong valve. You know, real quick when the, when the one in the, I'm sitting on top of the bed doors flop open. You're like, there was a kid that did that. And, you know, We gave him just an endless amount of shit. But the reality is, is that any one of us, we just all got lucky that we didn't do it. Yeah, well, and there's a lot. In the mountains, you're dealing with a little bit of lack of water and stuff as well. So we ran cav systems. So then you also had air valves. So you could do the same thing with air. And it'd flip the hose out twice as fast as the water. Yeah. So you had, you know, and the calculations dealing with elevation gain or loss, like there's a lot to it. yeah i usually was like so you're saying yeah like how far the water's got to go and what the pressure drop is over that and then yeah or like you know for every floor you lose five psi pressure and we're dealing with six floor buildings and all this so you know You're at your dry erase board getting, give me more water. And you're like trying to calculate how high you could go versus not. And then with the error in the calf systems, it's like very finicky to make sure the right foam mixture is there. And if you can't see it. What was that, like TF500? We used something like, yeah. We were AFFF, which is now like, you know. What they say gives you a lot of the nasty stuff in the health department and stuff. But it works really well. It works really good. It's crazy. You could use so little water and just like blanket this foam and just gone. Yeah, no, it works well. As far as like the pressure drop calculations, I usually just kind of like turn the dot. I was just like, that's got to be enough. They're good. Yeah. You know, certain things that didn't matter. But if people were interior and you couldn't see it, you know, you could kill somebody. That's the part that, you know, I've seen Backdraft before. Kurt Russell and William Baldwin. Yeah. And I remember that movie when I was going through this fire department. And you can't see shit inside of a fire. No. Like nothing. The whole room is completely filled with smoke. And the only way you know out of there is because you've got a hose that you can follow back out. And, you know, like the importance of just something like a spray pattern so you don't push it all right back at you. Yeah. And backdrafts are real. That's a real thing. Yeah, totally. But it struck me like you just can't see. And you just can't see anything. Yeah, I mean, at least now they have like the FLIR, like the infrared technology. But you're right. I mean, it's a lot of people, especially in the training and getting them bumped up when they got into like live fire. I was like a live fire instructor for the state. So I did a lot of these different facilities and that would get people a lot. That or like the entrapment. simulation where you're like climbing through the tunnel and you're stuck in a bunch of wires and training and people just freak out. Yeah. Well, it's unsettling. And the other part is just the amount of steam that's created. And so if maybe if you could see a little bit, now you got all that water on all this hot stuff and now it's. The room just fills up. You can lobster. That's what we always call it. You can lobster the whole room in a training if somebody did it wrong or everybody gets steam burned even through your gear. Yeah. And I don't know. It was fun. I always thought it was fun because, you know, for drill, you know, there was always some house that the city would buy. And then you just go, they were going to tear it down. Just go over there and torch it. Yeah. And that's what I did. I had gotten on the state cadre to, I was doing like live fire and really my specialty was like extrication because I grew up in the body shop. I kind of had an idea of how cars were constructed and could like articulate that a little differently than just like cut here, cut here, you know. Yeah. You know, why is the A pillar important? Why is the B pillar important? You know, all these things that most didn't have that background. Well, when we learned extrication, I remember a couple of things. One, it was hotter than shit outside. It was so hot. And we went to a junkyard for a couple of weekends. And we just had, you know, bring the generator out that's got the hydraulics on it. And, you know, you've got the spreader, right? And then you've got this one, the cutter. And then you have the rams. And doing like a dash roll. Yeah. It was totally cool. I thought that was. And if you didn't cut the right strap, you know, sometimes it'd be the smallest little metal strap at the center console. You'd fight it forever. Yeah. If you didn't understand that there's a strap that's a tensile strength issue, you know, and it's really strong in the tensile strength versus the sheer, you know, type stuff. And that's where my background and growing up really helped me excel in that and was already comfortable climbing around under the dashes because I was fixing. heater cores or, you know, things like that. The other thing that struck me, now that it's all coming back, and I remember is, you know, breaking the glass in the cars, you used actually the welding, like the word escapes you, where it's like click. The punch. Yeah, the punch, yeah. So you'd use the metal punch on the corner of a window. Just go click like that, and those laminated windows that are, they just, they just break instantly. all the way across or you see a cop up there like because i saw this in real life like hitting it with the butt of the gun and you walk up and you're like it's this way yeah it's like literally a pen you just go click yeah and the whole thing breaks and the other thing that i remember learning was the i don't know how bumpers are now because i haven't been doing this for a while now i just mainly drive cars but uh the older cars those bumpers would load Like I'm talking like 1995. Yeah, they had like the shocks in the back. Yeah, they had two posts and the bumper would be in front of it. And I didn't realize that those posts were actually like telescoping. And you could load them. Like when the bumper got hit, they'd go like that and lock. And you had to chain those back because if those went like that, when you walk in front of the car. It'd take your leg off. Yeah, it was a huge mechanism of impact. Yeah. Now they're all plastic and filled with sensors. Yeah. They don't do that. It's just foam. But I just realized, like, my whole life I've been walking in front of these things that are... Loaded. Loaded. Yeah. I mean, I could have been killed many times. Kind of that thing, the more you know, sometimes isn't always the best. Yeah, and the Nader pin's a real thing, trying to cut that. Oh, yeah. That's a serious... For anyone to know, it's like when you open your car door, that pin that sticks out, they used to be sort of brass-ish colored. Now you see a lot of just like the U-shaped things. Another loop was actually like tear out of the steel. Yeah, but the Nader pin that was there, I think we used to try and like work Ð I think we used a spreader to pull it off the pin instead of even trying to cut that pin. It'd break your cutter. It can shatter your cutters on those older ones. Yeah, so. Kind of a squirrel there, but good. Yeah, no, a little bit. But it was a fun time. And lastly, there's a guy who in the town where we were, it was a little bit like this boss hog guy who owned the entire town. And his sort of flagship piece of property was this hotel. Think of it wasn't. a Cracker Barrel, but it sort of had like this Cracker Barrel-y sort of feel. And anytime a new something would be built around it, it usually got burned down. You know? Interesting. Yeah, it was interesting. I mean, I'm not saying he burned anything down. I'm just saying like... near him tend to go up in flames. Very coincidental. Yeah, I think it was. So anyway, so you're in the fire department. You're in Gunnison, right, for that. And so we're rolling probably now into like 2020, which is, you know, COVID. This is, you commented on, that this is when you, well, just tell me the story, what happens, and how you really find yourself in art in a real way. In the mountains, we were... into COVID like 2019 from all the international travel. So we were like hot and heavy in that. And I was actually living in a camper building my current house at the time and was told I had a hemorrhoid and finished the house and so on. And then in April of 2020, went to go get the hemorrhoid fixed. I remember I woke up from the anesthesia and I heard him say, like, you know, was that eight or nine polyps? And I was awake enough to say, like, did you just say nine polyps? And the anesthesiologist hit me and knocked me out again and woke up and was told, like, you know, you have a really big tumor in your rectum and you need to go to, like, a top five cancer. you know hospital you know so uh which was wild because you know it was covid so your family wasn't in there they wanted to go tell my wife that i had cancer in the parking lot And I said, hell no. Bring her in here. Put a mask on her. I don't care. So then like the next week, we were down in Denver at a hospital and going through the gauntlet and was told I had stage four at that time. Okay, that's when you were told. Yeah, because my primary tumor was in my rectum, which is lumped in that colorectal thing. You know, a lot of people think that's colon only, but mine was very low in my system. And just for anybody that's out there listening, like I had blood in my stool. And that was like the telltale, which. Once again, thought it was like a hemorrhoid, but it wasn't. So I went through, like, the gauntlet pretty quick there. How old are you when this is all breaking this? I got diagnosed two weeks before my 40th birthday. Okay. You know, which was wild to think, you know, 40. They had said that it had probably been in me at least 10 years, which is kind of crazy to think, too. I was a healthy person and skiing and biking and dirt biking. you know doing all the stuff