The Real Hurt Locker - US Army EOD Staff Sergeant | Aaron Hale | Ep. 228

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to episode two hundred and twenty eight of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with David park. Our guest on tonight's show is Aaron Hale. Aaron served in the as an explosive ordinance technician in Afghanistan. Severely severely injured but made an incredible recovery. There's a lot to talk about here, and we're just really pleased, really happy to have you on the show tonight. Aaron Bosses lows, I'm glad to be here. Thanks for inviting me on.

Really pumped to be on the show. Thank you, man, Thank you, appreciate you having you here. So you know, I will ask you the first question that we ask all of our guests about your origin story, if you can tell us a little bit about your up your upbringing and that path that took you towards military service. Absolutely yeah. In fact, you know, mine isn't one of the you know gung ho kids played soldier boy. Yeah, as a kid and just knew his direction. In fact,

just the opposite. I was a Midwestern kid, loved my childhood adolescence, had enough natural belevated talent to just skate by. So I was. I was really an all American slacker, and you know, bes cs and the rest bs. So when I got to college, everybody he knew how to work, you know, quickly passed me by, and I soon find myself out of my butt a whole lot of tuition, pissed away and really embarrassed

and trying to figure out what to do with my life. So one thing that I can do and have been doing for my whole life, is able to you know, have this ability to just make decisions and act and go. And I loved cooking, so you know, ever since I could reach out of the counter, I loved. I love the culinary arts. I decided, you know what, I'm going to going to hold another direction. I'm going to go to culinary school. Except I need before I go to

another college, another university. And I tried first, I need those internal you know, the internal values, the core skills at work, ethic, ambition, all that kind of stuff, and you know, set and set some goals for myself and be productive. And also I needed to earn some more tuition money. So that's what I decided. The military was exactly what could answer all of that for me. I joined the Navy in nineteen ninety nine as a cook, and they gave me everything that I was looking for.

The early mornings, the fitness, the work ethic, and a whole lot more. So that's that's what led me towards the military. It was kind of failing up and I found that soon right after, right after basic and the Navy's a school, cooking school I was in. I wasnt sure duty in Italy, and I worked my way up to cooking for the commander of the US sixth Fleet, three star, in charge of all the Navy

troops in the Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic seaboard. And that was fantastic. Got to cook real food, got to tour around the a terranean in the flagship. And that's not you know, those those six months westpack cruises. It's three months or less, maybe one or two months. You hit three ports in the Mediterranean, run up the flag you hit a you know, throw a reception, and then scoot right back to Naples, Italy. Okay, to Italy. But uh, what what was that like, Nathan? Like

some of the differences just as a Navy cook. I mean, it sounds working your way up. I mean there must have been those times where you're cooking up slop for hundreds of sailors on the ship, and then it sounds like maybe you had this opportunity where you were cooking like restaurant style food later on, you know, the truth is no, I never did that. Okay, I'm spent four years in Italy, first duty station was actually barracks

duty. No kidding. They don't tell you this at a school, they don't tell I think they used to switch the jobs around a little bit, but they used to look at it like hotel restaurant management on the civilian side. So I get off the plane, they tell me I'm working shore duty instead of sea duty on board of ship, and uh, you know. My sponsor met me at the airfield and I for one of the first questions

was where I'm not gonna be cooking. They're like, oh no, we don't cook on on shorter at it And what do we do You're gonna be because you're the FNG, You're gonna be night watch at the b b EQ the desk, Yeah yeah. I worked my way up to like the officer quarters front desk and then the maintenance department. So it was taking trouble called tickets from the residents and walking them over to the public works, the local national Italians. The cool thing about that was I was I was escorting these

guys through the rooms and everywhere. I went almost to EJ colmost how do you say this? How do you say that? And I was learning Italian and drinking a ton of espresso in their office all day long. But the funny thing was I was learning not Polatan Italian, which is about the furthest thing you can get from book Italian, right right, and I was learning it from these public works, roughnecks, electricians, plumbers. So anytime I traveled, even off doing it, would do like MWR trips out to Rome,

Milan, that kind of stuff. I would try speaking the lingo because I was actually enjoying my time there. Yeah, but you know, the Italians would look at me, what are you doing? You must live in Naples. It was. It was hilarious. Gave a quick shout out to Augustus. I guess the Precious Metals, the sponsor for tonight's show. Text team to six eight five to nine two or go to Augusta Precious Metals dot com and we'll talk about them in a few minutes. Well please please can

tell you Aaron, sorry for the interruption. And so you had to fight just to do your job in a sense, like you had to work your way up to doing the job you wanted to do. Yeah, it's it's what I really wanted to do at the time, at least, was cook. Yeah, And instead I was wasted away at night at the night launch and then no one's having fun hanging out with the Italians. But it wasn't

really know what you were looking for, you know. So, uh, the base commander would sometimes throw parties literal receptions at his villa and ask for cooks from the barracks to help cater the thing. So I would do, would volunteer in my off time, and this was just to keep the skills sharp, do some cooking somewhere, and when it was time to PCs it just so happens about forty five minutes away in Guaya, Italy, there was a billet open for flag duty and it was a special position which required letter

of reference the from you know, somebody higher up. And because I had been working for the CEO and his wife, I got that letter and got my foot in the door to cook for the admiral. And it's really cool about cooking for flag flagships is that's often the the that wrung between you know, the big, big blue Navy and places like Camp David and the White House and even Air Force one. Uh, Eric, can you because you're the first we've talked before about how hard cooks and the military work, but

you know, we've never actually had some many. Can you tell us a little bit about the A school because the basic schools because one of the advantages that people don't know about, and as a military, especially in the Navy, because of the different mess decks that you can go on to very advanced training and culinary arts. But can you tell us a little bit about the A school? How long was it? And then like what types of things

did they cover? Over? Stuff? You know? In that school Navy A school, there were two major areas of study, and I think it's about ten weeks I think total, and eight of them were sanitation, don't kill these seculars and the other two the other the other two weeks was how to read and execute on the recipe cards. There it's like a publication, like an Army reg on army publication on how to make food. There's a

recipe card for everything. If there isn't a recipe card, then it doesn't exist and you shouldn't make it. And it was it was how to make it perfectly bland. So everybody was pissed off, right right, that's amazing. So I almost got myself in trouble by making guacamole not taste like well making make it a taste like blacamole, right, So sort of the opposite of like Hell's Kitchen or something like that, where everybody's tasting to be the

most bland and unoffensive as you can possibly be or inoffensive. Well, you know, it's it's the training school for the Big Navy, and they want to make sure that, like I said, the cooks don't kill the crew, right. So it really was how to make sure that everything about deva sanitation standards and cleaning and food cooking temperatures, all that kind of stuff, and there is really quite a bit of it. And then the rest of it was just making sure you can follow instructions on a recipe. Car.

Yeah, then once you get out there, there really are a lot of opportunities for chefs to advance into some like like incredible billets and take some really cool schools. In fact, every year, I think there's a joint Joint Services cooking competition and it's it's on the like Food Network and stuff like that, so it's pretty cool. So when you took this billet at the flag position, did they offer you advanced turning before you went or did you just

kind of go as as you were. I went straight there. Okay. I did get some training during and I also I was in Italy. I got the O JT type of training and off duty training just being in being in one of the major centers of culinary arts Italy. The funny thing was though that you would it's homeported there forward, homeported in guy to Italy.

So everybody just it's like a floating office most of the time. When it's in port, and the Admiral goes in for breakfast, lunch and close a business, everybody hangs up, the uniform goes back out into the economy. I made breakfast at lunch, and then I was, I was, I was. I was done by like two o'clock, fourteen hundred. I was gone and clean up the kitchen. And but the one major rule was the Admiral say, absolutely no Italian food. My American cooks are not allowed to

make Italian food while we're in port. Why would I have you guys cooked that stuff when we're here, right, right, So I couldn't practice what I've learned on him, right, you know, we get out to see of course we had a we had all three actually four meals to practice on the guy and the rest of the stad. So when you say four meals, are you including like midnight rats and that is that the fourth meal for people who aren't familiar with them. Yeah, yeah, we would do mid

rats because even you know everybody the ship runs. And that was the difference between It's kind of the difference in flagships. You've got the ship's company with the skipper the CEO, and that's one whole command, and then you've got the fleet command with the admiral and his that's a separate command altogether. So it made for interesting rivalry sometimes being on the flag staff on board the ship underway and they wouldn't be doing general quarters and something like that and running fire

drills, and I just kind of can I get by? I gotta get come to, you know, officer country. But we had it was it was a pretty incredible time and I learned quite a bit. And also it was terrific having an especial machine on board. Yeah, it must have been cool that, I mean, you were at that point exactly where you wanted to be, doing exactly what you wanted to do. Actually, once I'd reached I guess it was I guess it would say it was the pinnacle of

what being a cook in the Navy was going to offer me. I became a little disenfranchised, became a little wrestless. Were I'd gotten those I'd gotten those skills, that gotten those abilities, those core values that I'd come for. I'd earned my earned the gi bill. Of course, now it's like five years I was going to do the four now and it's already five six years later. And I loved the Navy. I had salted my veins. I love being at sea. I just h and I also loved cooking.

But it was something about being a Navy cook that just wasn't testing the skills. It wasn't it wasn't it wasn't challenging me the way I wanted to be challenged. Plus I actually did ninety nine Time of Peace. By the time I had left the Admiral's command, we were two wars and we've been out flood doing our figure rates and you know, in our body in the middle of the Mediterranean and commanding you know, the navy. But I myself, yes, all all of the jobs are important, every role business, you

know, necessary in the effort. But I was watching the war in Wars, and I ran and Afghanistan on TV on the ship, and I just I don't know it was there was something telling me I was not where I needed to be. I wasn't I wasn't where I was supposed to be. So when I got back to the United States, I volunteered to go as an individual augment tee to a provincial reconstruction team in far Afghanistan. Of course I'd still be cooking, but now I'm I would be right in the middle

of it, right almost. We were way out west in Farra, south of Parat. It was so so far in the middle of nowhere, in the desert. Even the Taliban were like, you can have it, but it was. It was. It was actually so quiet, there was nothing. People were getting in trouble for being bored that kind of thing. But I switched from cooking for the admiral and thirty five of his staff too, like five six hundred ice AFT troops, Americans, Portuguese, Spanish, even

some Italian special forces down from Murat. So I got to practice some of the lingo and trade firs more espresso. It was. It was fantastic. It was a great experience and that's when I met some EOD technicians. Now were they American? Were they Army? Were the Navy? Who were the EOD techs that you met when you're out there? We trained up actually in

uh it was that was the funniest thing. A bunch of Navy and Air Force components from all around the fleet, Cook's Admin, civil affairs all going to Fort Bragg for a like slap together basic training to teach us how to army and and that's when I met a few. I made a pair of Navy EOD technicians and they helped us, you know, understand the UXO and an ied threat that would be face we'd be facing out there or potentially if

we ever left a wire. And unfortunately, these guys were awesome. It was a chief miracle and AO and poland did those guys were really really cool dudes. But they switched out by the time we mated in theater, and there was a few Air Force techs assigned to the farm, and those guys rotated out, I don't know every three or four months, but it was a little bit after. I mean, I'd already already learned what ud he was about, but it wasn't until I've got to know these guys. And

I remember one day I was leaving the chow hall. I was heading back towards the barracks area, and these Air Force techs had it just like dumped out all of their gear to do maintenance checks on the everything, bombsuits, the robots, all the other gear, testing batteries, making sure everything was clean. And it was like a cool guy the yard sale. So I when others struck up a conversation, learned, you know, just chatting away and learning more about the job. You know, the tight knit brotherhood,

the technical aspect of the job. Yeah, the critical thinking skills it really need. And the fact that their first responders on the battlefield, they're running into the danger when everybody else is running away. Yeah, I mean everything about it. It just collect in a place. And that's that's what I knew I needed to do. So I put in a request with the Navy to go from cook to bomb squad And what year was that it did? It didn't go bre at all? Ye, No, they kicked it back,

said no, everything can be waived. Nobody wants to tell you my my rank in that job was undermanned. So not only did they not want me to leave cooking. I guess I'd like my cooking too much. No, but they listen, we're going to promote me. Oh wow. So when I returned from Afghanistan, my contract was about up. It was the reenlistment. Or walked and I took my service record and what you know, I walked and went over to the Army recruiter and told him what I wanted

to do, and they welcome right in. They did you a little dirty there, that's too bad. Yeah, it was a shame because I really loved being the Navy. It was cool. Yeah, and you fell in love with Navy EO D first, and we're totally ready to go do that. Yeah. Yeah, Well, you know, at the same time, not only was my job undergrand but it was a transition period for Navy EO D as well. Back in the day, EOD wasn't even its own rate

like it's own MS. He was a qualification, especially of suffix, so you had to come from different source jobs, source rates, and you since mate master to arms, you not cook. Yeah, so I had a few things going against right, Yeah, Aaron, let me, I'm gonna do another ad read here real quick, and then we jump back into the interview again. I'm sorry for the interruption. Yeah. So, our sponsor tonight show is august Of Precious Metals. You guys know what helps me sleep

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go to Augusta Precious Metals dot com. That's Augusta Precious Metals dot com. Thank you guys for supporting one of the sponsors of tonight's show. So back to you, Aaron. So tell us about how you made that transition then from I mean you talked a little bit. You took your service record down to the Army recruiters and they were like, hey, good to go. It wasn't it wasn't like a smooth pronuiziation. I took about half a year off, left the service entirely, moved to New moved to Brooklyn, New

York really and where we're at, went to work. What we're in Brooklyn, I was, I was looking for the most affordable. I was almost out by Corney Island by the time I can find a place I can afford, I think raves and yeah, anyway, so yeah, I was right on Ocean Avenue and King's Highway, yep, about there. But I was I was teaching builty in Lower Manhattan, so I'd take take the you know, the subway in and I was working with a wadi of mind, teaching

computer applications to the corporate setting like City Group and stuff like that. Uh, and Aaron, You're you're just one of those like what do they say, like thesbians, like the type of personally and just like do anything. What's up? Like the type of person I can just like like a jack

of all trades. Yeah yeah, or you know some people call that yeah yeah, So how did you like he taught you how to use the applications or you had been using those applications and then you turn around in like when look, you know, I had a buddy, and it's it's not as

hard. I mean, I was teaching Excel to all the it was like I was teaching the City way of formatting stuff that you know, there are new hires which are all like all sixteen SAT scores in the entire room, you know, so I was just teaching them how to put that particular type of blue fade in the background and stuff like that. But the truth is, well, when I was when I was teaching these things, you know, you get Microsoft Project, Microsoft Office or anything like that, and they

somebody hires you to do a level one. You buy the Level one and the Level two book, right, and you read it the day before and it's pretty straightforward and you just regurgitate level one and by the end of the day, when you have a couple of minutes leftover, or somewhere in the middle of the day, you just throw out a couple of pointers from level

two and they think you know everything. If they teach you, if they hire you for level one to level two, well you take a couple extra days and then you of course you buy a level three buck and you do the same thing. Right. So I learned it all on the fly and it worked out pretty well. The only thing was it wasn't for me, and I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to go with her, but it was I was pretty pissed off about not doing in the Navy.

Took that little time off just uh, not shaving stuff or not. You know, it grew out a nice beard. But then I decided, you know, I was going to go go to that armor recruiter and get back into the fight. Yeah. So you hadn't been on like the delayed entry program or anything. You were just taking like a person break, decompressing, uh and teaching excel and whatnot. Yeah, my own personal own delayed injury program, I guess. And you'll earn enough money to get buy in

New York. It was actually a pretty cool experience. Yeah, definitely a learning experience, but I quickly got claustrophobic. I was used to wide open seas, wide open deserts, wide open country of you know, the Midwest, and even going for a run in Brooklyn. You know you gotta get you go block stop, go block stop right, trip over or trash bag, you know, a dog or something. But you know, I went

to the owner recruiter and they welcome me in. I did do it was it was like I didn't go to basic training or did this gentleman's course. It was like a what was it like like a pilot program for prior service. It was so funny. All these guys have been out for at least different service or out of the army for at least three years. And because it was it's all of the knowledge based stuff, none of the inductrination stuff,

you know, the dogma. So I got the knowledge I needed to go soldier, and I got the uniform, but I still felt like a sailor at heart. I felt like an inntial trader. Then after after transitioning uniforms, learning some of the lingo, and I went to the EOD School

and that was pretty cool. I mean, you train together with all the branches, so we all learned the same language language anyways, and we're all you know, it's it's every branch comes together to teach the EOD techs the exact same knowledge so that I could be paired up on the battlefield with an Air Force tech, a Navy tech, a Marine tech, and we can all do the job together without skipping a beat. There's no friction, no lag time in understanding each other. We just know how to do the job.

And it also is great for actually when we have to do joint operations and there's there's no cross branch rivalries or anything like that. Yeah, it did, no click type of things. We're all in the same EO D family and I love it. Still are to get today. Yeah, so can you tell us a little bit about the EO D School. How long

was it? You know? I think that for a lot of us, who you know, when we watch EO E stuff you know on TV in a movie, if there's EOD person, they're always trying to defuse a bomb, but really a lot of times out in the field you're not diffusing like you're pipping them or whatever. But can you tell us, like all the things you learn, how long it was things like that. Yeah, I went through I think each of the branches have their own individual Phase one.

And the Armies used to be at Redstone Arsenal Huntsville, Alabama. They moved it to Fort Lee in Virginia. I went through Redstone and that's about ten weeks of really the kindergarten of EOD and it's stuff like ordinance identification would kind of what if it, what does it tell you if it has fins or a pin or a parachute, you know, different colors or what different colors are marketing signify that kind of thing. Electronics basic, basic circuitry physics.

You know, the different forces at play if a thing is dropped, fired, throne, buried, and how the different forces engage and activate, diffusing. That's all there, and it's all actually very basic stuff to then dig

dig deep into. You know, the hundreds of thousands of different types of munitions have been made domestically and abroad, and that's you know, when you get to the joint school run by the Navy on Eglin Air Force Base here in the Panhandle, you start right back from the beginning with electronics and basic physics. But you got a got a primer at your Phase one school and then and then you know, we're all trained together and you can't take any

of the material out of the school. So your train you're studying all day long. They learn all day long. There's about an hour or so mandatory study hall right after and then you got to leave it all at the school till the next day. There's there's a an exam or practical test on average every two to three days, and the the nutrition rate in that school is pretty high. Just knowledge based, there's there's definitely a physical component to it.

You've got to be able to physically fit enough to wear that bomb suit, and of course you got to go through the bomb suit test just to get into the school, and it's like a like a PT test in the bomb suit, of course. But then the real test comes when you know, they start asking you basic cognition questions to see if while you're smoked you can actually think, you still maintain your basic critical thinking skills. And that's

really what the test is about. That do you never quit and you can you can keep your head on while you're huffing and puffing, and and then it's about basic you know, pt maintenance while you get your skull crammed full of knowledge on everything that goes boom, from bullets to weapons of mass destruction and nukes. That's amazing. Do you do you recall how much that bomb

suit weighs? So do you recall how much the bomb suit wags? There are different models, and the latest model I think is somewhere ninety pounds with the helmet. Yikes. Yeah, that's that's something else because it's not just ninety pounds that like you're carrying like on your back in a focused place, like you have to be able to lift your legs under the pressure of the side. Does it Does it feel like you're trying to you know, render

safe bombs like while you're underwater at that point? Duh? I don't know. The first few times, it was definitely very very alien, very foreign being in this thing. And over time though practice it just don't think about it. Yeah, bomb suit time right to get on and get and the transition is it's pretty fast when you consider that what's in front of you is it could possibly explore it and kill you. You don't think much about the

bomb suit at all. I just put it on adapt And at this phase when when you went through EO D school, what stage were like the robotics at at that point as far as using the robots and the Johnny five model to go out there and diffuse some of these things. Yeah, I went through this is I went through an OIY and this was just a few I

mean Iraq. You gonna consider, you know where we were in that timeline of Iraq and Afghanistan and how slow you know, the trade doc and you know the other training branches and you know, the military aren't a really catch up to you know, the battlefield and we were. We weren't too bad about it, but all the same, remember, ordinances are bread butter,

it's in our name. And i EDS was actually still relatively new though it was all over both battle fields mostly are rock at the time, but we didn't have Actually i EEDS was only about two weeks of the forty three we're Eglin Air Force Base. And that's for everything. There's really not a whole lot to teach when it comes to I D S if you already know basic circuitry from the early stages, because they want the thing about I mean, there's there's, of course, lots lots of know about IDs, switches and

you know, fusing. But the thing is about IDs is that there's it's it's made of anything and everything, and the limits to what how you can make an ID is the only limit is the bombmaker's creativity. So how do you how do you really teach a class on that except in basic you know, the basics. So we learned a few of the most popular switches, that kind of thing, we do remote renter save procedures or disruption procedures.

We learn different tools to engage these different IDs and robots. Wasn't really that important. In fact, everybody at the schoolhouse knew that they'd get plenty of robot time once they got to their units. So maybe a few days out of that week they would play, you know, to get let let the students go out there and play with the robots. And like you said, the course was what forty three weeks long, but that's to teach the basics.

Yeah, yeah, the basic like basic laws of science, physics, electronics, chemical analysis, that kind of thing we would have a few weeks of because everything's broken up into different divisions from biochemical to weapons of amous destruction nuclear air is what are the most dreaded, most dreaded divisions in the school. And that's everything. That's everything that could be inside or inside an aircraft or dropped from its wings or chaff flares, everything that has an explosive on

an aircraft. And that's think about it inside a cockpit, everything explodes from even there, from on the rocket rockets under their seats. The canopy explodes before they even but you know, the pilot eject the even their harnesses have

explosives and that activated by sea saltwater, so ink that goes out. Think about what I want to do. Probably we're just saying that when you're talking about as far as the explosives and the harness, Dave was saying, is that does that deploy like an ink so that they can be spotted or is that for their their like water wings like the life preserver that's a release them

if they go unconscious. Yeah, yeah, so and even the ejection handle that like starts all of the other stuff that's that's like a little shotgun shell that that it's like a primer that sets it all off. So imagine you're a student maybe halfway through the EO D School and you face this thing that looks like a like a great big explosive cactus. You know that you're you're about to go hug and everything has to do everything is remember your safeties.

Right. We have I think it's twenty six different safeties and we have to remember and on a test forgetting one of the safeties. Each one of these tests, the minimum passing grade is an eighty five because you don't want to see student in a bonus here and like a parachute, we're not sure if we're taking the sea on this. Yeah, and any safety infractions is it's

an automatic sixteen point hit. Wow. So when you come up to an aircraft and you've got to render safe maybe the ejection seat because it had a

quote unquote hard landing. You've got to pass everything that's mounted under the wing of the aircraft and say, I'm recognizing heat, shock, friction, eject, laser, emar, static, anything that might set that thing off for every single piece of ordinance, and you can't miss any of them because each one of those, each one of those safeties on each one of those pieces of ordinance is a sixteen portant hit and sometimes to render safe, say the

like the gut eight alpha the gun on the A ten to render safe that thing, it's just sticking like a cutter pin in you know, a piece of the mechanics to render the safe the weapon, right, but you to get past all that ordinance to get there, and it was, Uh, it's a pretty harrowing experience. It's pretty nerve wracking, but that's that's how you get Did you also get some extra love in the MOP four protective suit during that course? Well, the that's in the eeds. Uh. The

division part of that is the bomb suit test. And other than that though you don't you'll put on a bomb suit for a known the hazard if you know what the hazard is, uh, and you you probably don't need the bomb suit. And imagine any time you're on deployment and you're on like dismount of patrol, you know, like UD decks are going to carry that thing around until maybe they need it. So bomb suites are a tool for certain

situations, certain places and time. But once you train how to use it and when to know when you need it, then you move on to the next division. Aaron, you know you you're talking a lot about render safe, which I think is you know, it's what we normally think of when we think of E O D. Right, finding something in a populated area, or like you say, with the aircraft, uh, with you know,

with Afghanistan Iraq. Obviously we move on to this model of you know, disposal actually like rendering or not rendering it, but like blowing it or whatever. Did you guys cover much about demolitions itself? Did you guys learn how to place charges? You know a lot? Obviously you are already covering explosive theory, but were you getting the hands on practical like a demolitions you know, training in that also? Absolutely of course act part I mean,

the majority of our job is using explosives as a tool. So and I'm not just saying slap a couple of blocks of C four, make something to go away, bip, blowing place and you know, making something to go boom as sexy for the cameras. And of course of course we like blowing stuff up. But but we also have explosive tools that I no kidding,

I have. We have tools we can shoot a bomb with a bullet to make it safer and never blew my mind first some I heard about that, But we're using you know, specific charges to shear or cut or impinge a piece of diffusing or to cause it to low order rather than high order, to blow small rather than big, or to burn instead of explode. And

yeah, we're we're like surgeons when it comes to explosives. And of course there's plenty of times when we've had to dispose of just huge caches of ordinance and a lot of times they don't have using so there's no reason to render and safe. They're already safe. They're just piles of explosives. We have

to make them go away. And well, we have specific procedures for where and how to place the you know, the shots and tie it all in with debt chord and primate and all of that, and it's all essential to making sure that it's done safely and you don't have to go back and do it a second time to clean up. I've I have had to go back on botched shots to go pick up blocks of C four that were punted into

the battle space just sitting there for the enemy to pick up. Or you know, something went boom and like maybe maybe somebody was trying to bring down a mud hut. Instead, all they did was brought down part of a mud hat on top of a whole bunch of on exploded blocks of C four And then what do you do somebody else? You know, the army is not going to want to sit around forever, as you know, pull brick by brick, But guess who wouldn't mind digging through the you know, the

mess to get at that explosive. So yeah, it's it's to be safe, not just in the immediate future, you know immediate like like on the shot, but it's to be safe to make sure we're not leaving anything behind for the enemy. So it almost sounds as though you're saying eighteen Charlie's were the bane of your existence. Well, we're jump we're jumping a few a few steps here. But I wasn't gonna say anything. Crams over castles, p for plenty. It doesn't always work, is that what you're saying.

I wasn't going to talk about the efforts at all. But that's hilarious. So was there any part of you know, this forty three week of course you were just like blown away by that. You know, you're like, this is the coolest thing ever again, was there any part of the E O D Course that you were just absolutely blown away by where you're thinking, like, this is the coolest thing ever. I never imagined I would see something like this. I don't know. I was so amped, I was

so excited about the whole thing. Yeah, I was having I was actually having a really good time. It was hard, it was a challenge, and it was it was it was really what I was looking for, you know. And I was around all these other people that were like alpha type nerds that competitive, smart, wanted to take charge, and yeah, I was. I was. I was in this. This is an amazing crowd of people to be you know, these these warriors learning this amazing skill.

So any one particular thing, I don't know, I get tired to pick one out. That's awesome. And so after you graduate from the course, tell us about, you know, landing in your unit and what that was like and when you know, you came down in deployment orders sort of what

the next stage was for you. After I graduated from Eyota School, I went to Fort Drunk upstate, New York, and it was immediately put in a company that was on the nod of war and two nine ten tennis is when my company went to Iraq, I was a new eoity tech, but I kept my rink from the Navy. So I went from petty Officer second class to sergeant. And that was tough because as an NCO, I was

expected to get my team leader certification. And the team leaders, the guy that actually gets into bombsuit makes that long walk, he's the most experienced, you know, the highest drinking guy on an EOD team. And some of these these you know privates had had come up through EOD from the beginning and had had far more badge experience than I did, you know, having been a cook for my entire military career. So you know, there was a

little resentment, but everybody understood it. I was I had just had to work twice as hard to get up to speed. I was the I was placed as a fourth man on a three man team when I went to Iraq, and it's kind of like tits on a bar. I was a team sergeant that didn't need a sergeant, but I was there. I was learning my team leader, the other sergeant on the team was teaching me as much as he could, as fast as I could. I could you know,

take it in. And I think my first sergeant recognized what was going on, so he pulled me from the team and he sent me to keep victory or liberty whatever, you know. I went, you know, right by buy Up and Baghdad, and I went to the higher level the Counter Explosive Exploitation Cell at Task Force Troy and that's the Joint id Operation Cell. That's where they take all of the the evidence collected from the teams off the battlefield

and they they trulyage it and they examined it. So but they put me right in the triage they receiving area, and I would take these boxes of evidence, the evidence kits you baggies and boxes of tape and pressure plates and batteries and debt core samples of all sorts of stuff, and I would I

would better package it for the next steps. Triash is really like if you think of role one, two three in the first aid on a battlefield, we we just cleaned up the evidence samples and then send them off to the different departments like chemical analysis, by biometrics, electronics, that kind of thing. And from from there that and the storyboards would go to a t F FBI D EA, D, I A and so on. So I got to learn exactly how you know, they wanted. They wanted to see the

evidence presented from the battle, you know, from the front. So when I actually did get my team litter certification had my own team, I knew how. I knew what the best way to present the evidence so that we could more quickly and more effectively get to the left of the bang. And you think, consider like, you know the timeline, you know, from explosion backwards. You got the bomb placer, the bombmaker, and the bomb financer, all of those guys, and that's really what it was all about.

We want to get there before they get to bury it. So it was an incredible learning experience and really handy when I finally did get my own team in twenty eleven, I earned my team to those seprocation and was heading back to Afghanistan for my third deployment, second time as an EOD tech and

second time in Afghanistan, but first as an EOD team. Later I went to we We were we were placed in support for CAV scouts out of Riley, and we just it was really busy, little west of Kandahart and a little town called a joy and he has to turp what that meant and he goes, I think it means cemetery, and it really did. It felt like I was in tombstone. I mean there's just IDs everywhere. I remember hearing one guy say, uh, what we got there? It's like around

here, every step is a uh is a decision? M yeah, this is was This step is deliberate? What was this far enough along in the war. It's not just roadside I eeds, but it's also like as you approach to target, it's along trails. It becaming like increasingly intense, right absolutely, And we we had had we had all the crew systems and the you know, the armored trucks, and then of course we have to leave

them all behind because everything's on dirt trails. So we have we have these metal detectors and those those guys, those uh you know, the privates that get the metal detectors and go pulling. I got a handle of those guys. They those guys have some balls. They are in their chops and uh

that was amazing what they did. They had some spiky scents sometimes and they were also I would try try my best to educate and inform uh, these these this component that I was supporting, my team was supporting while we were inside the wire the best I could. Any of those uh you know, uh red sheets with the new intel that come out for the area, I'd get that out. Anything we were seeing as a trend and maybe bondmaker's migration

type patterns, anything like that. I wanted to train them up the best I could and get them all the information they could, and even if it wasn't new information. I don't just teach them some of the skills of what to do if what to do if we were to run, or how to handle certain unitions and certain situations. I didn't want to give them license to do EUD procedures, but we can't be everywhere once and if there's a dire

situation, I want to make sure they were prepared. What were some of the ways that EO D the texts were being used, because I know that a lot of times you guys were doing route clearance where you were ahead of an act of patrol, you know, the vehicular patrol. Were you also embedded in the wine squads as they would go out, Like, what were the different ways you guys were being utilized? We we did quite a few,

quite a bit of age. We would go out, in fact, where we were most of that time, we were actually the the cascouts were building up command outposts all over place, almost within visual distance of each other, just to deny the enemy any area, any terrain. So we we

would walk behind the We had that was hilarious. We had the was it Puerto Rican National Guard engineers, you know, driving these the D two dozers, just cutting a road right through great great rows and poppy fields and marijuana fields, just digging a road straight through, and we'd walk right behind them, and then they would cut a two hundred and fifty meters by two hundred

fifty meter square and then we would set up our cots or whatever. We just lay out there, and eventually HESCO barriers will go up around us. And the whole time we just in fact, most a lot of that time, the dozers did have to work for us. They would just turn up the soil and then all you know, vigial oil jugs just sitting there in the open, and usually they kicked them around so much that they were already separated. We just had a place a charge on them, and debt made

them so that was great. But then of course with all these dirt roads cut, there was a lot of soft soil left. And you know that Afghan dirt, it's got three different forms. It's got the hard packed concrete like dirt. When it rains it turns into that slicks not then just walking from your your hoot to the chowd hall you get six inches taller. And then it's got that baby powder moon dust. It's so easy to just you do. All you have to do is drop an ID and the dust cloud

will settle right back down on it and bury it. So that was what was happening, and the route clearest packages were losing a truck on average every other day. Wow, So the mechanics were busy. We were busy doing post blast analysis. Most of the time it was just a post blast analysis on a vehicle. Thankfully sometimes it wasn't. So that's what we do. We were cleaning up all the IDs in the area and if we didn't get to the id left of the bang, well we do our best to analyze

right at the bank. So can you for people who you know, I mean, this is fascinating to me, but for people who don't have any idea of like how EO D operates, Like, so you go out there and one of the point guys on point see something suspicious, how do you proceed from there? Well, of course we'll We'll come up on who whomever

is the closest you know on the scene. We'll make sure that everybody knows they keep good distance from any suspect item, and then we'll ask all the information that we can, whether it's you know, some local or if it's when somebody in our element, we'll ask him as much information we can. We haven't pointed out from where we're standing, if it's not too close,

and we'll get as much information as possibly can. Then we'll make sure that everybody's in a safe standoff distance and setting a cordwn around the area, making sure that we don't get any surprises while I'm focused in on the suspect item and everybody else's eyes are facing out, and then my team and I will just get to work if if we do find it that it's an ied and here's the thing, if it's an unknown hazard or number one approach, Our

first approach was always either a bomb suit or a robot, and since most of the time we're on foot patrols. This amount of patrols, a lot of our guys would be carrying one of those man portable robots. So let send the robot down more often than not, you know, it would turn a little corner of one of those three foot thick your mud huts and that would be the end of the robot. Uh, just new signal whatsoever.

But that technology got a lot better. But then it was a it was me doing a I e ed you know, me walking down on the id and also rescuing a robot. But then it was it was doing whatever remote uh procedures I could possibly do if it if it was separating almost everything, I'm gonna talk about ninety eight percent of the stuff we ran on not deployment. It was an oil jug with homemade explosive nine volte battery, pressure plate with your just you know, a particle board or I would and then it

all connected with lamp cord. Super simple, super low tech and really really hard to detect except for the nine bold battery because there's almost no metal there. And the talent band, the insurgents, they didn't know this magic wand we swung you know what the magic was that found all of their IDs. But somehow they learned that we were finding the batteries. They didn't know why. But what they learned how to do was give They did a little standoff.

They fair they would they would fair lead the battery so they'd get a little more lamp court and run the battery around the corner so or it just run it off the side of the the trail, and right in the middle of the trail was the ID. It's almost no metal, and that was

what was getting a lot of us, thank goodness. Maybe after say twenty four hours, the dirt would start to settle and it would start to get concave a little bit, so it began to show telltale signs of something to be buried there, and then there'd be this little concave ant trail going off

the side of the road. But sometimes it was just pressure than that, and it's really hard to phone, I think, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they started doing that with their cell phone switches too, that once they learned about the jammers, they started experiment to find out how far out of like the jammers range the cell phone needed to be, and then it would connect the circuit back into the explosive that was

within the range. M Yeah, well in Iraq especially, they were far more sophisticated with their id is. I think I think I might have run one electronically controlled device in Afghanistan that whole deployment. Granted I only got to spend eight months of the twelve months there, but I wasn't I was going to find too many electronic devices. Yeah, even in my last few months.

But I some knuckleheads because I told you, they don't know the magic we were using to find those batteries, so they would they would connect the same kind of circuits whatever they could the explosives they could find. Most of the time it was the oil job with homemade explosive. Sometimes it was a pair. One time it was a pair of eighty millimeter Chinese mortars which are encased in iron. So it was buried right in the middle of the goat

trail. The you know this dirt trail with the pressure plate right on top, but it was pinging off the metal detector like crazy, and like what's going on here? And you can still see that trail leading off to the battery around the corner, like you guys come on. Yeah, so sometimes we didn't find them. M find until you know, with our metal detectors and so something. A lot of times you even find up with a freet find him with what oh with the feet? Yeah, like like I did

eight months into it. Yeah, you do you want to, you know, if it's okay with you telling us about or that incident and how that went down. Of course, it was about eight eight and a half months into the deployment and we were starting to see the you know, the end of the end of the road. With this deployment, most of the guys had gone on their you know that two weeks of R and R, and

I let my whole team and most of the company go before me. I waited till the end, one of the last guys in the company to go do my two weeks of R and R because it was Thanksgiving and my firstborn's first birthday. I only had a few weeks with him before I deployed, and I got to go home see him turn one, got to see the whole family for Thanksgiving, gather around the table. It was a pretty fantastic I call it my my last page in the photo album. And then I

got back on the battlefield. My team picked me up in my armored truck from Candaharn. We jumped in a supply convoy to head back out to see a joy And I wasn't weren't on duty or anything, and I didn't even reported back to the cop command outpost. But we were there. We were in the convoy and there was something found inside. Would so you know that we set up that quote on They asked me to get to work, and of course, why wait for QR REF when I'm right here that would be

a deck of This ain't my AEO. But I threw the luggage off of the robot. Robot out of the truck. It got to work. It found a pressure play with a jug and it pulled the pressure plate away and separate the components, so we're essentially rendered safe. But it couldn't get the jug out of the hard pattern dirt, and I wanted my evidence. If I could do it safely, then that's what I would dirt. So I grab my evidence kit and my bottle of the detector and I jumped out of

the truck and I started making my way towards it. No bomb suit because it's a it's a known hazard. It was rendered safe. There's no sense and getting in the bomb suit, and I'm not going to suit up for every unknown hazard that might be out there. That would be silly. But about twenty or thirty meters from the original device, there just happened to be a secondary device that hadn't been detected until my metal detector was trying to tell

me something really important. And that's when I got punted. The lights went out. I kind of kicked into the air, landed on my knees and elbows. I was still conscious. I couldn't see anything. It seriously rung my bell and I had like a gong was going off my head, and I thought that my helmet had gotten pushed over my face. That's why I couldn't see. The first thing I did was warded all the fingers and toes

and knees and elbows and make sure everything was where I left it. And while it's more or less I could taste like explosive and dirved, and maybe I was crunching on my own teeth. I don't know. It tastes that the crap, but I was more or less intact, except I just gotta, you know, move my helmet back and place and get back in the fight. So and I went to grab my helmet to find that it was

gone. Oh wow. Yeah. That's when I thought, Shit, a first sergeant's going to kill me for losing nothing but stuff that goes through your head, right, Actually, somebody, somebody asked me, what's the first thing that went through your head when that explosion happened. I said, over pressure. But I did realize at that moment that something was really wrong. I'm taking it, taking some damage. I knew that the first thing that's

going to happen because the training is still kicked in. I don't know how lucid I was, but I was thinking, okay, complex ambush. Are they gonna start taking pot shots? Are they gonna start attacking with small arms? Is everybody in that security court on now looking directly inside at me? Is in my team? They knew what they're supposed to do when a team later gets injured. They're going to clear a safe path for the medics to come get me out. And I decided I didn't want my team and potentially

hazard a situation. So I started up and I started making my way back towards the truck well the problem as I couldn't see. I had no idea where that damn truck was anymore. So I'm just doing this zombie walk across the battlefield, probably making it worse for my my team to get me. But they grabbed me, dragged me back to safety, and the medic starts comes running up, huffing and puffing because he's coming from like three hundred meters

away. The first thing he does is complaining about making him run. I'm like, sorry to ruin your day, dude, but you know that's yeah, warriors and you know, joking with each other. It See, the same time I asked my team, I housed my face and somebody said, well, you're not gonna do any modeling when you get out. But you know the medevac chapter. Remember we're just out of Candahar. So medivac came in fourteen minutes and within forty eight hours, I was in well to read.

But as to Maryland, it's in that hospital. But and was that about the time that you realized, you know what the extent of your injuries were kind of a whirlwind, you know, I was. I was, of course i'd received TBI. I actually would have made it back to the States even faster, but they helped me for twenty four hours in landstool just to let the swelling go down so I can do the cress across the Atlantic

flight. But it was it was you know, hoses and tubes and nurses, doctors, admin staff and paperwork, and thankfully I was glad to have an excuse not to write anything because I couldn't see people coming and going, and of course are on the belt Way and there's like elected officials and dignitaries,

a veteran service organizations with people coming and going. And also I learned something new that when when you have one hundred percent blindness, you get the added bonus of a sleep disorder because you can't reset your Cicadian rhythm to some light. So I was wide awake every night trying to figure out why I wasn't sleeping, and zombie during the day, just hoping somebody would like lock

my door, leave me a loan so I could fall asleep. But eventually, you know, I started thinking about in my situation and the fact that you know, the doctors tried to save one of my eyes. The blasted take completely taken one of my eyes, my right eye, and actually fused my eyelids together, so I had this permanent rink and a gutten thing going on. But the blast and there was a piece of frag that cut right

across the bridge of my nose and gashed the other eyeball. They tried to save it, but it was an og and the blasted I also blown up both my ear drums, though I could still hear, it was just less. And the blasted also cracked my skull, suppose leading spinal fluid right through my sinuses, not my notes. They did what they could for the burns and the scrapes and my eyes. They too took a piece of my septum and patched the cracks and my skull, though we'd find out a couple of

years later that it was never completely patched. That's all they could really do, and I would have to learn how to be a blind guy for the rest of my life. So that's that's what I did. After after you checking out of all to read four or five weeks later. There's some things who Tampa to the VA hospital there just for some scans and TBI had my old moderate TBI. But then it was to the VA Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, where they've got one of the blind of rehabilitation units in the VA.

You know, the VA's got i think fourteen up them around the country. And that's where I'd spend about six months learning how to use my accessibility tools like talking computer and Texas speech software on my phone and barcode scanner for the you know, anything in the pantry, and of course that white cane, the long cane for navigating. And you would be surprised things like learning how to pair your socks and how much, how to how to gauge how

much toothpicks to put on your brush. The thing was when I was still sitting at the hospital bed in Walter Read and I was pissed, man, these low tech cave man. I was so mad that they got me with that there. You know, we've been so highly trained. It was the best fighting force on the planet in history and this and I was mad at my I was mad at the army for some reason. I was mad at the President, I was I was mad at everybody I was. I don't know why. I was mad at some people, but they deserved it.

I don't know why. Actually, you know, mostly mad at myself, right, Yeah, but uh, it was it was always asking those questions, right, the winkies, the what if? What if? What if I'd done a differently, taking a different route, approaching the idea? What if I set the robot out again? What if I if? And why? Why me? Why? Why did this happen on that I wasn't even supposed to run that incident? I supposed to just had, you know, all these questions, what is this happening to me? Yeah? Why my

eyes? Why? Why would why didn't they just take a leg or something? I mean, it was buried on the ground. Why didn't you? I was virtually untouched from my neck down, almost not a scrape. I don't even know how that happened? But why? And like I couldn't nobody can answer. I couldn't answer any of those questions. It's it's they're impossible

to answer, and then it just leads to that downward spiral. Right, So I had to change my questions, and it was thinkness, my family, the military training, you know, all that resilience training, that welcome to the suck in Afghanistan, Embrace the suck. The type of mentality you're here, so you better do your best at it, right? And I'm there in Walter reed, and I'm not They only won in that hospital that's injured doing a whole bunch of Joe's and James in there that we're all fighting

their own battles. These warriors weren't quitting. Was I to say that I had my monopoly on pain or shitty days? Right? So do I really have a good excuse to quit? And what am I going to do other than just sit here? I better get to work, to get busy doing something if I'm not going to allow myself to just piss and moan all day. So I decided if I was going to be blind, I was going to be at the best, best damn blind guy I could be there.

I'm sorry, I just curious. Was this all, you know? With the anger and the and the the non official questions that you were asking yourself. Was there a particular moment or reason that you sort of turned around. I'd say it was incremental, but it was definitely, Yeah, it was. It was definitely at one moment. I'd love to it really paints a great picture. And I didn't mention this, but when I was home on

our and our just two weeks before. Uh you know, I I was visiting family in the DC area, and I'd gotten word that another team leader in my company, a friend of mine, Kyle Vickers, had gotten injured. Well, we were right there, so I'd hurried over to Walter read. We got right to the unit and we get to the nurse the station found out that he hadn't even gotten out of my cu yet. So we're the first ones there that knew him. And of course I wouldn't tell us

anything about his injuries confidentiality, but they said. One of the nurses to said, well, you can go wait in his room. He should be out any minute now. So I went to his room and saw his bed was just waiting for him, and right beside his bed was a pile of clothes and you know, one of those veterans organizations then no profits come with you shorts, sweats, T shirts. I didn't. On top of this neatly folded pilot was one shoot, okay, yeah, I don't have to

be rocket scientists, all right. So then kind of gets wheeled in and there he is, and then gurney under the sheet. You can definitely tell there's only one leg, and he he sees me, and he's got a terrific personality, but I think it was assisted by dynastysa. You see this huge smile as he goes, hell, dude, what are you doing here? It might must have been a surprise because the last time we saw me,

I was in Afghanistan with him. He kind of looks at me conspiratorially and whispers, man, I think I kicked myself in the face, and the worst thing you can say about it that day was that it ruined a terrible calf tattoo. Two weeks later, I'm right down the hallway from him, jeez, and I'm in a really really bad mood. Yeah. Kyle comes wheeling into my room one of the one day, maybe two or three days after I've been there, arrived, and he goes, heil, Man,

give me your hand. You gotta feel this. I'm like, okay, I'm not playing that game. You know, I don't know. I'm way too suspicious. Joke right, touch this right, So he grabs my wrist, he puts it up under his chin, and I feel this, you know, stubble. He's like two weeks of growth, my man, apparently, and is another one of those conspiratorial things, right, he's and I can I can hear him smiling as he's like. You know, the Marine uity texts they've got this Leason guy. Uh here, Walter Reid.

So when they get out of surgery, the first thing the guy asks asks is how are you feeling? If the marine says he's feeling fine, which every marine supposed to, he the guy, the liaison guy hands him a razor and says it great, get back into riggs. We don't have that liaison in the army, so grow your beard out. It's driving the marine text crazy and I couldn't. I couldn't help it. You know, I

had to crack a smile. You know, I'm sitting there going going that downward, you know, spiral of defeat, and it was me beating myself down and thankfully Kyle full Bay out of him. But you know, he's here, he's he's gonna have one leg for the rest of his life. He's gonna have to deal with that. And I learned about about his incident later, and that's a whole other story. But he he was here cracking jokes and playing games with the marine eority tacks and he was making the best

of it, and I had to snap out of it. I had to get on his level, or at least come close to it, And I had to get I had to get busy instead of just sitting there moping. Thank goodness for him and those other warriors guys. That was it was definitely a tough time. Yeah, what form did that take for you? I as far as getting busy, you know, get put throwing yourself at something, and of course learning to to you know, live with these injuries or

live around them in a sense. Right, How how did that sort of how did that progress take place for you? Well, you know, frankly, there wasn't really much for me to do at Walter Read except you know, sitting in the hospital bed and get healthier eventually. Yeah. I mean, like I said, I was just hit in the head and thankfully, you know, we hail boys are really thick skulled. It was the perfect place to hit me. But I was perfectly ambulatory. I could get up,

I would walk around, and they gave me a cane. I really didn't know how to use it. It was mostly just a sign for other people to let them know I wasn't getting out of their way, right, but you know, I had I had my family in town, my mom

from Ohio, my dad from California. My aunt actually is in the DC area, so we kind of I would check out in the afternoon from the hospital when the staff, yeah, when the regular doctor's staff left, and I would go have dinner at my aunt's house with my family, would go out to eat stuffing like that. Oh. Man, I went to a David Buster's. That was a mistake. Man, blind and overwhelmed right off the battlefield and all those you know, ourcade sounds, It's like I have

to leave. Other than that, it was just about they really couldn't do much for me. They were leading the way in prosthetics, but I didn't need any. So as soon as I was healthy enough to leave the hospital, I went to Augusta and I started learning what I could learn, and that was I just threw myself into this whole learning how to be blind. And as soon as I got my iPhone with a voice over the text to

speech software and I learned how to search things on the internet. Man, I was pumping blind keyword in plus outdoors plus hiking, climbing, running, whatever, and trying to figure out how because I'm not the first blind guy in the world. How how do people live? How do people do things? And you know, there was a couple of couple of names that kept popping up. One was Eric Windmer. He's the first blind person to climb Mount Everest. I thought, Dan, if if he can do that,

I could climb a mountain. So I looked him up and I want to mountain climbing with him. And there was a guy named Lonnie Bedwell, another Navy guy, though he didn't go blind in the service. He was Turkey Hunt of thinking says his body Dick, she need him. And Lonnie, Lonnie's the first blind person to kayak the entire Grand canad So I looked him up and I want kind of kick with him. We did sections the Yellowstone.

It was amazing, and you know what I mean, I was, I was like it was a It was a Army ranger, Ivan Castro. It was right at Bragg's Special Operations recruiting brands. He stayed on active duty, like Captain Scott Smiley active duty blind guys. They were working in more administrative roles, but they kept the uniform on. I gave Ivan a call one day and that was hilarious. He is a way of turning the whole conversations into the Evan show. But it's a great guy. He said.

He made we did a point every year to run the Air Force Marathon, the Army ten miler and the Marine Corps Marathon. And I thought, oh, that sounds like a great idea. So I've registered for all three of those, and then I got talked into By this time, i'd moved to England Air Force Base. They asked me if I would where I wanted to retire and I said I don't, and I asked him to send me to the year to school. I'd started instructing, so as I was learning,

I was instructing, I registered for those three races. I registered for the Pensacola Marathon, something local, and I got talked into the San Antonio Marathon. I don't even know how, but before I've registered four marathons and the Army ten miler, all within the span of four months. And I'd never run anything longer than ten k in my life. So more learning, more learning, I'd have to do that random and the three of those races qualified me for Boston. Wow, what can can I ask? What is the

process for running one hundred yards, let alone a marathon. When you're when you're blinding, you can't see the route. Oh yeah, you gotta pay. You gotta listen really hard for the traffic. No, we had a marathon, I would just start yelling marcom let's see what happens. Actually, the truth is there's a couple of different methods. But what I started using was just a simple short tether. I would hold one end and my guide would hold another. In fact, my very first tether was a dog talk

a war rope. You know. I'd hold a fat knot and my guide would hold a knot and I almost wouldn't have to talk. I would get all my cues from wherever that rope went. And there was a couple of different signals for like high stepping it or if we had to go single file. And then of course this is encumbent upon my guide to just work around any like open manhole covers or something. But that's that's how I ran. For nine years. I've been running marathons and then ultra marathons with a sighted

guide or guides side by side. That's hardcore, man m Actually it was just a side effect of trying to get ready for the mountains. You know, it's really hard to find a decent mountain of train on in Florida, but I would. I would pack, yeah, rock, are you one of those expedition packs and go find the tallest kind of condo building and go up and down the stairs, and then I'd find a guide and go for go for a run and train for these marathons. And that's how, you

know, besides kettlebells and stuff like that. It turned my garage into a pretty decent gym. It was. Running just happened to be a lot easier than getting to the condos or getting to an actual mountain, and it was a great way to socialize. I mean, everything now days is a team sport. So I love getting running with locals. And and there's a lot of times I run with first time guides. They're like, how do you, how do you? How do you? How do you do this sighted

guide thing? That's gonna be dealful of this? Yeah, and and then you know, I've gotta I gotta you know, I've got somebody trapped as I you know, I can talk to them. But right right, well, it sounds like you were probably dragging the guide after a little while, well, you know it is that is one of the challenges. And beyond, of course the obvious is also finding somebody that was wanted to good do the same distance or pace that I was doing and our schedules match up.

So it's it's some somewhat of complexity. I would love the mention here that one of my friends, blind Marine Runner, who started a site. A website is called United in Stride dot org and that's where interested people cited. People couldn't go and find blind runners around the country, I think even around the world, and you know they might be in their neighborhood and go running with them. But so I actually at the time I reached down to Team

RWB and found the local chapter went running with them. This is really cool. They started a Sunday marathon training run specifically to help me get ready for my first marathons, and with they invited everybody who wanted to come out at all ability levels, and they had like a paste vehicle loaded with the refreshments and stuff and more and more people every every week every Sunday will come out and would come and run, and before long it wasn't Aaron's marathon training day.

It was just training day and as far as I know, it's still going and it was it was it was great to be a part of something that grew beyond yourself, you know, grew beyond me. It was helping others somebody, you know, I know more than one person in that group was just getting ready for their first five k and that was That's the coolest thing ever. Yeah, yeah, so that was that was really like that

special. I also want to touch on you mentioned that you were allowed to stay in the Army and instrucked, which is really cool and I'm really glad that they're doing that. The Army has gotten better about that over the years. You talk a little bit more about what that was like. Well, this was I started, like they asked me at first, right at well

to read where do you want to retire? And I learned in that time that there's something called a continuation of Active duty service or co AD for short, and you still have to go through the medboard process and that's a nine months a year long. As they go through, I mean, there's a

huge review process. But once the Department Army, Department of Defense, we have their findings, that's what they send over to the Department of Veterans Affairs as a recommendation for retirement and like a transfer from one department to the other, and that's when you can put in your request for a co AD. So in the meantime, I can't just stay in patient at AUGUSTA, you

know, a graduated line school. And then as soon as you're as soon as you get to the health point where the military, you're like, the military can't do anything to improve your situation. I guess it is. That's when the medboard process begins. So I asked them to send me to the year at school. Now, of course, you know the military does have

these Warrior transition units there. The Army and at least did this, and it's like full units comprised of wounded wounded service members that wounded army well wounded soldiers that their full time occupation, the full time job it becomes and getting well, completing that medboard process. So if they have ongoing treatments, that's the first priority. If they then it's you know, completing everything they can

for the medboard process. And if they're there and everything along that ends, then it's then they're actually ordered to get an education while they're waiting for you know, the board finding stay to complete it. Well, I asked to go to work. I hadn't go to the un school. And it was funny, I didn't realize what kind of red tape it would take to it would send me to a war the closest warrior transition here and it and then

my place of duty in place of work. It is the red tape in all of that, being sent to a Navy base or a Navy school on an Air Force base in the army warrior transition here in it. So it got so confusing that nobody knew who I belonged to, which is also cool. But yeah, I went to the school house, I started started teaching. I actually went to the IEDs. I went. What I did was

I helped build up and out of cycle training course. In a lot of military schools, you know, it's there's cycles, you know, the classes and a pace that the classes go through. And if somebody you know, you know, fails a test or has some kind of a medical thing and they miss too much of their class, they can't continue on with that class. They can't miss that material, or they maybe because they failed that they

have to retake that material. They have to go out of cycle and wait till there's a spot opening in another class behind them to retake that particular part of the course and continue on. Sometimes there's days, maybe it's weeks or even months. But when they're out of cycle, our EOD detachment, the Army detachment there at the EOD school didn't have a whole lot for them to

do. They would put them on these working parties, you know, filling sandbags or doing bass cleanup or something they ever read, uh tried it decent Redman when he's at Ranger School and he's one day he's picking up cigarette butts and you know, they got EOD texts that had nothing to do. So back in the detachment in the backyard, we've built this huge sandbox training pet and started training the outer cycle guys wherever they wherever they were supposed to jump

back into the class. That's where we teach them and keep them sharp on the material that they're about to go back into. And I kept them sharp on the I EED stuff. And I did that for about a year and a half or so and until my my, you know, the medboard came back. And of course findings that I guess blindness and means I'm allowed to leave the military. In fact, I would do you're not even allowed to be color blind, and do you what you work? So at that same

time I was running this was it was taking time off. If I was running these marathons, I was climbing mountains, I was being asked to speak around with the country, and I was actually finding you enjoyment in sharing the story and doing these finding these other accomplishments, these other challenges, and well, when I was sitting at that you know, the hospital, men well to read, I might have been in definitely wasn't a bit of denial, Like I didn't want to let go. I could still do this, I

could still do something. I could still serve. I don't have to let go of the middle the uniform. By the time the medboard came back at the findings in the decision, I had nothing left to prove, especially not to myself. I retired. It's it's truly fascinating in your relations and sort of in the blind community. What are some of the biggest difference you find between like, you know, men such as yourself, you know, especially the veterans who as adults, you know, became blind, and then people

who have been blind either since early childhood or the whole lives. Like, what are some of the differences there that you've found some of the different understandings. Yeah, yeah, I guess, like because because there's sort of really two different sets of the subsets of the blind community. Correct, Like people who have who were cited for a long time and then became blind. Misconceptions. Yeah, but the first thing is we don't we don't touch other people's

faces. That's girls, I don't want to. I don't want to touch your face. And you have no idea where my hands have been. Those are my eyes, remember, right? And if you ever see a blind guy at a like a buffet, just walk out, just just go. I'm gonna be it will be me at the buffet and I'll be just sticking my finger in there. Yeah. But yeah, there was so many misconceptions,

so many things I didn't realize blind people could do. For for example, while in Augusta and learning how to be blind, there was this and I actually never knew this was even existed, but there was a recreational therapist on staff, and this guy, his old job was to have fun basically recreation. So he would come into my room and say, hey, Eric, you want to go golfing? I come on, Dard, you know what the funny thing is like even when after you go blind, golfers are

serious golf like about golfing. You don't how they get right even after we go blind. I mean there's there are two national associations, the US Blind Golf Association and the American Blind Golf Association. Apparent like one faction, uh split off from the other because a difference in like the rules, like an argument of the rules. That's that Look, these are blind guys that take

golf seriously. And so then this uh wreck therapist caring in the room another day and he goes, hey, Aaron, you want to go for a bike ride? Might come on, put messing with you, Dared. That's that's nuts bike rid And apparently yeah, like yeah, blind tandem cycling is a serious sport. That's a Paralympic sport. I mean there's real athletes you know that are blind and do cycling. When I when when when I got to the blind school in AUGUSTA, I was just a few months behind Brad

Snyder. There's a Navy EOTI tech who had lost his eyesight, and he's he's just he's just amazing dude. But being a Navy guy, he's a swimmer, he's a diver, and when he got to Augusta, he would train in the you know, the pool you to buy And every time I saw him, he's like, hey, Eric, you wouldn't go swimming with me, And I'm not haven't had much of a swimmer in a long time. And I'm like blown out of ear drums. I have to wear cotton

balls into the shower. I can't. I'm sorry, Mike. But after after he graduated from blind school, he went to the London Paralympics and won three medals. Then he's been to the next two Summer Paralympics and won more medals. I mean, the guy's a heck of a swimmer. Yeah, and now he's doing triathlons. So it was it was just this definitely this misconception about what we're capable of, and it was just for me, it totally broke through this glass ceiling. And then I was just thinking, Okay,

I don't It's not that I can't do anything. I just got to figure it out a new way. To do it. And my whole philosophy was you gotta figure out It's not that I can't, it's just how can I? Right, It wasn't why is this happening to me? It's why is this happening for me? What can I learn from? And that's what I did. I started running marathons and I started look climbing these mountains.

I joined Eric Wyne Merritt on the tenth anniversary of his ever summit. He took a whole team of wounded veterans because his dad's a marine, and he took the whole team wounded veterans up of nineteen thousand foot peak in Proving. Andy's called it Soldiers to Summits, and oh, I was on that team. The funny thing was we started off towards our towards the summit on on that you know that day, at three to four in the morning, and

it's so dark. Everybody's complaining that they can't see you where they're putting their feet and I walking to my world crep and this was an amazing experience. But then it was it was just Okay, nothing is off off limits except maybe helicopter pilot, but almost nothing is off limits for me. I just got to figure out how to do it, and then it was the whole My whole life became an adventure all over again. It's I mean, it's

truly fascinating. It's it's incredible. It's a testament to you and all and everybody else, you know, every other service member, but everybody else who is blind. Like, yes, I would never even think. It's so hard to imagine of all the senses, of all the things. It It feels as though for you know, yeah, just it's so hard to imagine what that would be. I saw I listened to I'm sorry, I don't

see much anymore. But I listened to another podcast and somebody was talking about was a blind guy that it was a food chemist, and I was talking about how most people, most humans get about ninety six percent of their information through their eyes. That's not because it's it's mostly because we stopped. You come to relion on our eyes and we don't pay as much attention to other senses. And that's that's when it's funny when people ask if the other senses

have gotten stronger. Uh, well, I'm deaf, and you know, the blast cut right across my nose. I kind of have a demandish sense of smell, which is linked to my taste. Don't ask me, but I can't tell people, you know, if I need to navigate. I got a good go down on the you know, hands and knees and lick the concrete. But it's it's true that we don't pay attention to other senses.

And every once in a while it really is a good thing to it close our eyes and just take a deep breath and listen really hard, beyond that point of boredom, because that's when we really start paying attention. But I think everything was going going really well. I don't know these these ventures I was speaking, I was I was teaching for a while, I was running the marathons and two summer spring of spring and early summer of twenty fifteen

or epic. I went to Colorado and climbed three fourteen ers in a day. I went hunting in Texas. I don't know, you guys can see I'm above there, that dude. I went to yellow Stone in Montana with my body Lawnie went kayaking skydiving, which I don't know. That was okay, but it's kind of like sticking your head out of car for me, and I was two weeks away from heading out to Tanzania to climb kilman Jarro when I got h knocked down to the mat again. I contracted bactilomategitis and

I was sent right back to the hospital. Man the cracks in my skull that hadn't been fully patched four years later. A path out is also a path in, and the bacteria crept right into my brain and was trying to kill me. And in the process, Yeah, I survived, but it had also stolen what was left of my hearing and it left me completely deaf. So you know, the when the doctor was breaking the news to me,

it actually felt like I was underwater. It was so congested, and I had my mom in the room, my girlfriend in the room, and talking to this doctor. It's like, don what you're telling me is I'm going to be completely hundred percent blind and a feud percent death. You mean I'm never gonna have to pretend to pay attention ever again, sever line and everything. Yeah, of course I blamed the meningitis, but I didn't. I didn't hear my mom or my girlfriend in life. But even though I

really do like using humor to diffuse the situation. Yeah, it was awful news. Yeah, kicking the balls, man, I was, I was just hitting my stride, Yeah I was. I was just I was. I was on my way to mastering this blind thing. And there are was. And also just like the blindness had an added bonus gift the because I lost those inner ear the little hair fodicals in your coclea. That also I also lost my vestibular balance, the inner ear gyro. So I lost.

I lost my sense of balance. It was like vertigo, but weirder because it was like all the ways. So and we thank goodness for those handicap rails in the in the bathrooms, because I would fall right off the toilet. I came home in a wheelchair, and man, I was passed again. Is the same calm my my demons, that what ifs the limes? I? When has this guy paid his fair share? When is enough enough? You know? When has this soldier sacrificed? Right? You know?

When can you just give it to another guy? You know? Yea one more thing taken from you? Yeah m hm. So I'm sitting there like that the counter in my kitchen, right holding on to the counter kind of fall off the stool and there would be a chance I could regain some of my hearing with a cochlear implant, which is not a hearing aid, like my ears are turned off permanently, but uh, there'll be I'd have to wait till the nangitis, let the infection cleared up. Then they would do

surgery on my right side, the more damaged ear. And for anybody watching, I'm not wearing one right now because after getting the surgery, waiting weeks for it to heal up, then getting the process external processor tuned in, found out that it didn't work. It was just too much inner ear scarring for the endplant to work. Then I have to start the process all over with the left ear. And it was over six months from you know,

infection to the first sound whatever you want to call. It's a digital signal scent right to my auditory nerve. My brain had to learn how long to hear again a different way, how to interpret this different sign sound. And it's nothing like the real thing. It's kind of like calling a friend at at a restaurant and he just puts it on speaker and puts in the middle of the table. You just hear every imperfection on the table, around the

table, clinking, the other conversations. It all kind of mixes into a wall of sound. Yeah, but fifth way better than the alternative use. For six six months, I was locked inside my body, but it was just trapped silent, dark, could not get a message in. I was thinking, damn, I should have learned brail at blind school. But all

the tech, it's just made me lazy and it's hardness. And we just wanted me to say, but you know, the only thing I can like, even think the liking it too is it's like you're in a submarine by yourself with no sonar, like just isolated m h and photosophial guy like me. That sucked. So I mean a frustrating and lonely it is. And uh, you know, people we went through the whole COVID quarantine era, you know that period. People were complaining about the isolation, like that's nothing

right. But I'm sitting there again, pissed off, and this ironic thought came into my mind. It was like, for four years I've been talking about triumph over tragedy and success through struggle and all this kind of stuff, and God was telling me to put my money where my mouth was like jerk, but it was it was like, okay, won't prove it. And I just remembered all the stuff that I went through the first time, and and I just like I told myself, like, this isn't your first radio,

You've already done it. You know how to do this, And I remember just just as in like an EOD team, we get this like a Tricondra quad cons shipping container full of tools and the bombs, says the robots, and it hasn't at kids and all sorts of things. But then you get it on deployment and you get that armored truck and it's just not as big as the shipping a tighter and you can't fit at all of your tools.

So this one three person team has to do the prioritize what is most likely to be used in this battle space and then leave some of the tools behind. And then of course we're going on these dismounted missions. You know, we're walking on foot on these dirt trails, and you only you can only bring what you can you can hump on your back, so you got to leave a lot of tools behind. And I love, how is it General Jim Mattess put it in call sign chaos said, at least in the

Marines. Yeah, things being hard, we're never a good excuse for mission failure. And you know, I've got a family, I've got a son, this this amazing girlfriend I've got, I've got that my fellow warriors to think of. My life doesn't belong to just me, and I'm responsible to them and for them, and I got to figure this out. So I left some tools behind. The mission continues. So I did what anybody in

my situation would do. Started a fudge company. What m besides getting on the treadmill and holder going for digger life because I just hit the vertigo and quick start button, just walked half a mile an hour. I was.

I was also I was also taking my trekking poles that I was using in the mountains, and I would did this weird daddy long legged crab walk thing out to my my mailboxing back and I'd be exhausted, but would I would do it every single day, a couple of times a day, and then I'll go a little bit further, go a little bit faster on my treadmill. And at the holidays, we're common Thanksgiving us around the corner, and I decided to stop worrying about myself. So I stop thinking about my situation.

And I was just going to throw a huge Thanksgiving faced. So I started cooking weeks in advance. I started making the cakes and the pies and cookies just throw in another the freezer until the day I started making batch after batch of fudge, one flavor after another. The combinations were infinite, and I was going to explore the mole and I just I just can't do it. I have to throw nuts it and spices, and I got the lick a cabinet and dump a little there and double in the mouth. And and

Michaela, my now wife, said she noticed two things. One was I had a smile on my face for the first time in six months. And two, the fudge was paneling up. So she snuck it out the front door, like you gotta be a restell, they round a blood deaf guy. But she was giving it away to your friends and family, friends and neighbors and whoever. A couple of people came back and said, yeah, hey, this is pretty good. Can we buy some for birthday or something?

Party? Office party, And the capitalist in me said, well, of course you may, and all of a sudden we had this business and it was so funny and for look, just months into it, I you know that home gym and micarad I had the light in line, I had the treadmill, the rower, the stationary bike and then the conveyor belt shrink rap machine. But it was it was something to do. It was a project. It was a challenge, and we threw an awesome Thanksgiving. I

was happy. We had even some of the stranded u uty students that you know, I didn't have enough lee days or everybody saved up for Thanksgiving. We'll say it for you know, Christmas or New Year's and the other During the holidays, the basics shut down, so we I had a few students, however, share our table and it was great. It was fun. I didn't worry about not hearing, and the fust business started taking off.

I started running again, and a year after the meningitis, I ran my hometown marathon in epern Ohio the same week of my twentieth high school reunit and got my first sub for our marathon. That's pretty cool. That was that was awesome, unreal and Aaron I would like to take just a moment to put a pin or point out that I think you mentioned a little bit before we started recording. Actually, had you been a World War Two veteran or

a Vietnam veteran, you'd be in a very different place. Because medical science has advanced so much number of the decades. I'm just interested to hear kind of your your thoughts of you know, I mean, in some sense, when we start talking about ocular implants and all these it almost is like a miracle, right absolutely, I mean, the technology science medicine, it's absolutely

amazing. This co clear implant is literally implanted in my head, and it's an electrode that goes into the couple a bone and the inner ear, and there's an electrode that connects to the branch that basically there's a bundle of nerves that's the auditory nerve. And if you can imagine like a big trunk that goes into smaller and finer roots until it goes into the cocleum becomes the really fine hair cells that are the actual things that pick up the sound and then

bring it of course into the brain. Well, the coupling implant is the electrode that attaches a little higher up on the trunk the roots and the way I imagine it is, it's not it's just not as sophisticated as sound. It's getting better all the time, and the processor is actually pretty smart, has different types of modes. But it's more like, in fact, it's like when they first turn it on, they only they can only give you the primary colors of sound. It's a very limited amount of data so your

brain can start learning. And then every few weeks you go back into audiology. They tune it in with like the sound board and the computer give you a little more data and you learn a little bit more, and they keep tweaking it until you get something that resembles sound. But like I said, it's kind of like, you know, trying to listen to the whole world through a drive through speaker. But it's it's it's amazing. You're forty fifty

years ago I would have been pulling the full hell and color. Instead, I'm you know, connected via bluetooth to my phone, my computer, we're talking to each other via the Internet. It's absolutely amazing. Of course it's also a hundred one way, so I could screw something up. But definitely way better than the alternative. Yeah, do we have any questions for Aaron? We do. Let's see here. Let me switch over real quick eron where can people like find you right now if they're you know, any of

your products, any of your social media anything like that. Absolutely, I'm I have a podcast, Point of Impact with Aaron Hale, and you can find that at Point of Impact pod dot com or on any of the major podcast athletes and on YouTube. And you can find me on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok. I think I don't know Instagram. I'm not very gonna take it photos. But that's at eight lay hail. And of course the main

thing is the podcast. And then you're also in your brio. Didn't I read something you're also involved or you started a charity for building homes for veterans. Absolutely well. I am ambassador advocate for a tourismic organization called Building Homes for Heroes, and that's Building Homes for Heroes dot org. They're the ones that build or adapt especially adapted homes for severely wounded servicemen, veterans, first responders, and Gold Star families like this house. I'm there right now,

and that's the organization. I ran to raise money. I ran bad Water one thirty five this last this July for to raise money to raise money for building those for years. Serbaty please check that out building Homes for Heroes dot org. Look, if you got a few bucks, it doesn't take a

lot to help out. You know, we'll have a down the description for you guys, can you can you tell sort of like how your house is set up for you in particular that helps that helps you you're blind, your effectively death except for the cochlear implant, Like what are the things that people might not know of or that help you? Know? That help you? Wow? Could others help me? No? No, I'm sorry? In your home? Like, what are the sort of accessibility that was? It's

actually funny because it was right. They found me right after I left blind school and they asked, how do we we I don't think we've ever adapted a home for the blind? How do we do that? What kind of special adaptations could use? I'm like, I don't know. I've been blind for like ten minutes. And this was also almost twelve ten, twelve eleven years ago, and there wasn't a whole lot of the smart stuff it wasn't as prolific as it is now. So they put in a talking cinmostat and

stuff. Had to go to it and press the buttons and stuff, and it just told you what. You know. They did put a different flooring in every room, so as I crossed the threshold in one room to another, I could feel it in my shoes, my feet. One special adaptation really had nothing to do with blindness or not a whole lot. But I asked him to put one of those pop fillers over the stove. Yeah, the cook guy always wanted one of those, right, So it was a

really a whole lot of adaptation for me. I was just extremely grateful that I got in just an incredible home in the Florida Panhandle, mortgage free, and it was a wonderful gift. Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, everybody please check that out Building Homes for Heroes right, Building Homes for Heroes dot org. So Lewis Vascas, thank you very much for your donation. Here's this question, what is your favorite Italian dish to cook? And what's the

recipe? Well, do you want pastry? You're talking dinner, talking breakfast? I could this could fill an entire episode itself. I think one of my favorite go twos is a spaghetti carbonara, very simple and very delicious. Yeah, essentially you can use panchetta or another type of Italian you know, cured ham bacon, the bacon, but really any kind of bacon will work for spaghetti. Little oil, garlic, of salt and pepper, one egg, and you've essentially got it, and you can customize it all you want.

I've had some fantastic wild boar and truffle carbonara, so it's definitely open to customization, but it's really simple and always delicious. Sean Walter, thank you very much. Great chat. Aaron just mentioned creating out of cycle training courses for EOD text. Why wasn't that institutionalized? Cost? Personnel cost question mark? Personnel question mark? Like, why wasn't that institutionalized from the beginning? Last questions? What the the out of cycle training that you helped create?

Why wasn't that institutionalized from the beginning? Well, I'm not sure why I hadn't begun until you know, I was there. I wasn't the one who dreamed it up. I just happened to be there when it was when it when it started and helped it, helped build it up. But you know, asn't live the service even over you know, a couple hundred years, we haven't gotten at all perfect. And it takes it, you know, just one person to say, you know what, we can do something

a little bit better. And so a few Joe's a few students that we weren't serving, and we're just sitting around getting getting a paycheck, but actually not getting better, probably getting worse by sitting around doing nothing, and say, you know what we can do. Let's let's help him out and let's make sure they earn their paycheck. But there's always a way to improve the situation if we just look around. Thanks a dog point, Thank you very much. Did your EO D unit have its own culture? Did you guys

complete or compete to diffuse the most bombs or have bomb jokes? What kind of stuff is in the team room? Of course we're doing there's always competition. There was always practical jokes, uh we The practical talker was one of the big things. You know, an electronics class we would get we would build a circuit using the capacitor from a you know, one of those disposable

cameras. If you could even find those anymore. But you charge up the flash and then we'd do like those little gator clips on each of the Anno catherde of the capacitor and it takes basically, you know, you either hook it to a circuit or you just complete the circuit with somebody's skin and turn it into a taser. So what we would do is we would conceal this little uh flash you know, disposable camera taser thing all over the place,

especially under people's chair arms. So you know, they grab each arm and there's a lead on either underside of the arm chair and zap. They just completed on the circuit. And so every once in a while you'd see somebody

jump and everybody start cracking on them, but it's it's pranks. But then we're always it was it's like that mentality, you always always trying to find a way to kill each other and think of new ways to build our own idis so that we're better at building them and dismantling them than the enemy. Plus shocking your body is hilarious, right and also doc point, thank you

very much. Could you describe your experience diffusing your first few bombs? How did your reactions before you're after and during change as you became more experienced. Yeah, there's definitely that nervousness excitement of being a novice. So we're just between so hard and I'd spend time in Iraq and then it spent time stateside working state side response. Yeah, just things in you old things of T and T from you know, farmers, you know, barn to something Grandpa

brought back from you know, the old War as a souvenir. And I'd had had practice on some of these things before getting out to Afghanistan, and yeah, you know, hit the prime time. But yeah, that that first time, it's pretty nervous. It's good that we do that right seat,

left seat thing. You get to be right there next to somebody's been doing it for a while, and then the watch over your shoulder as you do it, and then yeah, you know, the last handshake, high five, whatever, fist bump and it's your AO and by then pretty comfortable in in the role. And before before you knew it, we were really you know, running and gotten and doing doing tons of these things every day. So it never it never gets boring, never never. Really, you

shouldn't ever get complacent. Or anything like that. They're explosives. Who knows if the next next one just goes wrong. So it's always alert. But you get more comfortable in your own skills, right become you trust yourself a little bit more to be able to handle the situation ahead. And it also is all about trusting your team and their abilities. And you know the other resources, the other team, you know the key players on the battlefield in

battle space. There's a lot going on there and there are a lot of resources at your disposal. You just got to remember that all of that is part of your situational awareness. And Aaron, this question is for me, how horrible is the hurt locker? And why start? And I don't even call it that. I call it that ounch closet or pain cabinet or something.

It was so funny, you know, I was. I was at the FBI Anti Terrorists office in Manhattan, you know that Joint person Center there, and somehow that movie came up and I'm like, I was just complaining about how stupid it made us look, and the guys like, have you ever watched a movie with an FBI agent in it? The make it make it all of us look stupid all the time, so welcome. Yeah,

yeah, you're right, you guys look awful. Yeah, I'm trying to go ahead, please no, no, no, it's just that you know who picks up It was like five one, five fives, all Daisy Jaine together with that guard who just picks them up. By the way, you can't do that with one or yeah, he's throwing smoke between him and his like security. Like I just I had a couple of civilian friends like introduced me that movie, like, oh, you gotta watch this, so amazing,

and I was like so angry during the entire movie. Though you guys think this is good. There there there is one scene in that movie that I liked that I can relate to this, the scene where he comes back from Iraq and he's in Walmart, the grocery store, and he's just completely overwhelmed by all the lights and all the the like super abundance of it, right like and I had that exact same experience, like standing there for like forty five minutes, like I don't know what to do. Yeah, like

what am I doing? It just left it was it was the only the only pigs of truth or yeah, I didn't understand it was even if you put aside all of the artistic license with the operations of Egody, it was a terrible story. It didn't It was so disjointed. I didn't know what was going on. There was the it. We just went from one stupid act to another. There was no plot at all. Who is he fighting? What was the what was the meaning of any of it? He just

did this, did that, said something stupid? And if I'm going to die, we're uncomfortable. And then he's staring at some guy holding a battery or a cell phone or something. They have a meaningful moment as they look body broody at each other, and then he's standing in a grocery store and then he goes back on the planet. Yeah, it didn't make any sense

to me. It was a terrible, terrible story. Yeah, and Aaron, as we as we wrap up here tonight, is there any questions or that we failed to ask, or any final thoughts that you want to throw out there, anything you think we missed. No, you guys have let me talk far too long. I really do appreciate you having me on and and you know, have your ear and your audience here for a little while telling my store. I hope it was worthwhile. I hope everybody enjoyed it.

I know I am. Sometimes it's not the best days, but most of the time, I love my life all the time. I love my life. Most of the time, I'm having a great day and I'm just doing it because I love my fellow you know, service members, love the you know, the veterans, my family. I love getting out there, running, doing adventures, looking on my podcast, or you making fudge, or investing in real estate. All of it is a really cool challenge. Every day is a new opportunity, and I'm glad I got to share a

little bit with you. Guys. Well, thank you for so much for coming on the show and sharing it with us. I mean, it's a it's a great story. I mean it's a great life, and I really appreciate you kind of like giving us a sort of like very personal insights into it. We deeply appreciate it. For sure. I didn't even engine My wife and I had identical twins, so I wouldn't be the only one that's

con choosed. I mean, there are a couple of things that have passed by in the sense of you went on your first hunting trip and you or you went on a hunting trip, you have the trophy behind you, and you didn't Dick Chaney anybody. So Dick Cheney really has no excuse. Nobody's gonna know about that in a few years. It's not gonna be funny. What are you talking about? What the hell's dictaining? Maybe they'll google it after they listen to this podcast. Oh he's been. Oh that's cool.

Yeah, to tell them. Uh. And then I think that you know, with you know, you're running your mountain climb and you're kayaking everything you're doing. The only with with Jack and I both been comic book gigs. The only question is when are you going to dawn a mask and start fighting crime. It sounds like you're ready for it. Let's go after bad water. I don't know. I'm just taking a little time off, let my

toenails grow back. Darf man. You know, my wife and I really love doing the fix them up our houses, turning them into rentals, and building a portfolio. So I really think I'm just gonna focus on business a little bit more, do the maintenance, maintenance, miles and you know, stay fit. I'm definitely not going to be able to stay off the road for very long. And I'm not gonna find a pretty cool ultramah thon out

there fair fairly soon. Amazing. Yeah, please stay in touch and you know, happy to promote some of these things and put them out there as they come about. And again, just thank you so much for sharing your story with us. Thanks for hamm me on guys absolutely, and for everyone out there, We'll see you guys on Friday with Tommy Shook, inductee into the Ranger Hole of Fame, had a very long career. Excited to talk to him this Friday. And Aaron you can hang on for a second, and everybody else