OneWorks Andrew Paulson, renaissance man on Episode 247

Outdoorsman and Renaissance man, Andrew Paulson can do anything – if he’s interested. In the last fifteen years, we’ve watched Andrew build anything he set his mind to. The stories are fun. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

4:16 – this is why I always fought the educational institution, I had enough of it when I was a kid 

10:08 – I was taught to earn my allowance, I think that was great. You work for it, that has taken me far.             

20:03 – I didn’t realize a nail gun at the time was a thousand bucks, it was grand theft, adolescent charge.

36:50 – “I’m sorry, you didn’t get the rock climbing wall attendant job, we’re going to put everybody under you and make you the lead!”

46:15 – If I had the skillset to build it – why not? Why not capitalize on that? 

51:19 – On the water, whether I’m catching fish or not, that’s my decompress, where my brain slows down, where the noise shuts down.

1:11:53 – I meet Dustin and Becca Webster, it’s about this time, I realize I’m in way over my head. Four minutes after the National Anthem and I’m on my lid.

1:18:58 – “Hey, we’re going to need help with recovery, we’ve got a car in a tree!”

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:01.040] - 

Welcome to Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview-style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the off-road industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call off-road. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active and off-road. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call off-road.

[00:00:46.160] - 

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[00:01:13.010] - 

Have you seen 4Low magazine yet? 4Low magazine is a high-quality, well-written, four-wheel drive-focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4Low is the magazine for you. 4Low cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4Lowmagazine.com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:40.280] - Big Rich Klein

Today's guest is a renaissance man, a creator, an adventurer, Avid Outdoorsman, a loving family man, and a great friend, Andrew Paulson. Good morning, Andrew Paulson. How are you doing? It's been... When I lived up here in Idaho, it was really great because we got to hang out a lot more than what we do anymore. The Internet is great. I can watch what you're doing, but it's not the same as being able to hang out like we are right now. For sure. It's really good to see you again.

[00:02:14.600] - Andrew Paulson

It's good to see you, man. It's a pleasure to be here and just sitting across the table from you and just having a chit chat.

[00:02:20.190] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it's going to be fun. I'm going to enjoy this one. Good. For people that don't know Andrew, a little quick synopsis. Andrew is a rock Crawler. I'm going to say he's a renaissance man. That's what Shelley likes to say. Andrew finds something that piques his interest, and he goes all in. I don't know how all in he stays, I think he's one of those guys that just has to absorb information and try stuff. And very technical, very cerebral, unlike myself, which is probably more physical, and nobody's ever going to accuse me of any genius, that's for sure. So Andrew, it's been a great pleasure knowing you, and I'm really looking forward to this interview.

[00:03:15.410] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, same, same.

[00:03:16.710] - Big Rich Klein

So let's get started. And where were you born and raised? Tell us about it.

[00:03:23.120] - Andrew Paulson

So I was born in El Paso, Texas, 1977.

[00:03:30.730] - Big Rich Klein

You're a Texas boy.

[00:03:32.160] - Andrew Paulson

I am a Texas boy, and I was raised as city slicker. Really?

[00:03:38.020] - Big Rich Klein

Believe it or not-In El Paso?

[00:03:39.340] - Andrew Paulson

In El Paso, Texas. We had malls. That's what we do on the weekend, go hang out in the mall. It's been a long way from there to the red neck I am today.

[00:03:50.800] - Big Rich Klein

Do you speak Spanish?

[00:03:52.620] - Andrew Paulson

I used to. A lot of it's left over the years, but I understand it more. It's always fun in Idaho when individuals are speaking Spanish on an elevator and they think I can't hear them. That's always pretty interesting. They'll tell a joke and I start laughing and they look at me like, Oh, what's this red neck, Idaho? And he speaks our language.

[00:04:13.890] - Big Rich Klein

That's awesome.

[00:04:16.060] - Andrew Paulson

We moved... It was a great childhood. Two very academic parents. My dad worked for UTEP University of El Paso. My mom was a resource room teacher, mostly with the hearing impaired in El Paso, so very academically raised. My mom always made sure I had pretty good educational platforms. Got me into the good school programs, and this is back when public schools were a little different than they are today. I think the best part about Texas is, I mean, big city, but lots of educational opportunities, lots of stimulus. I was with ADD, I think in 1988, and I think that's where my mom got hyper vigilant about… I'd have my regular homework at the end of the day, and she would give me more being a teacher. So this is why I always fought the educational institution because I had enough of it when I was a kid.

[00:05:26.610] - Big Rich Klein

Okay, that's understandable. Growing up in El Paso and your parents in academia, I would imagine, were you a good student? But if you had ADD, it was probably hard for you to... I know that most ADD students have some problems with- I always needed the extra help to get the grade.

[00:05:51.170] - Andrew Paulson

I was honestly a C student average. But science, A student. So if it interests me, it was, like you said, all or nothing. Right.

[00:06:03.890] - Big Rich Klein

You could dive deep into it.

[00:06:05.070] - Andrew Paulson

I could dive deep into it. But if it was geography or history, something that just really wasn't hands-on, yeah. It was funny. I was having a conversation with one of my employees the other day, and he was talking about my grades on my report card. He was saying, Oh, a pleasure to have in class doesn't live up to his potential. We always talk about, so our new saying is, I just need to get my potential in a pile. Get my shit in a pile. Story of my life.

[00:06:45.520] - Big Rich Klein

So science was your go-to?

[00:06:49.600] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, I always hung out with some pretty nerdy guys. One guy, Kartik Srinivaskin was his name. He wrote a mathematical paper in college I couldn't even follow. But yeah, I was hanging out with the nerdy kids for the most part. Those were the ones that I was attracted to. Just either they were very creative or scientific. They weren't the kids that were worried about who had the coolest kicks, you know what I mean? The best clothes.

[00:07:19.050] - Big Rich Klein

Did you participate in any extra activities at school?

[00:07:25.260] - Andrew Paulson

I went a few science fairs. I went a couple of scolastic writing Awards. Very good. That's where I got my skill set when I did a couple articles for Four Low. I just had a good, decent beat on that. My dad was a swimmer in college, so I was on swim team and I was last place all the time because I just didn't have the build for it.

[00:07:53.440] - Big Rich Klein

I could float.

[00:07:55.600] - Andrew Paulson

You could float. I could float. That was good.

[00:07:58.620] - Big Rich Klein

You didn't need to wear a life vest in a swim competition. No. In a swim competition? Okay.

[00:08:02.900] - Andrew Paulson

No. I played soccer for a while. All right. That was my... I was pretty good at playing left wing or right wing or safety.

[00:08:14.650] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:08:15.500] - Andrew Paulson

Never had me up front, but I took a couple of hits to the groin, and I took it like a man, being a safety on the goals where we'd stand inside the goal to shrink up the goal. Right. Yeah. My dad coached that. My dad coached because he's definitely jockish. Right now in his retirement, he watches every volleyball, basketball, college. College sports is his jam. So he coached basketball for a while. I was on the bench most of the time. I was a scrawny little kid growing up, so I just didn't have the...

[00:08:56.560] - Big Rich Klein

So then What did the family do for vacations or on the weekends when they weren't teaching? What did you guys do for activities? That's a good Great question.

[00:09:15.870] - Andrew Paulson

As far as vacations go, I'll come back to that. Our weekends were pretty much up in the morning eating Fruit Loops or Cheerios. Actually, Cheerios because my parents were nuts, too, which was great. They were very vigilant about trying to raise good kids, which is awesome. It'd be a couple of hours of cartoons, and then it was TV off, let's read a book, do chores around the house. My dad at the time had a kennel that he bred great Pyrenees. It was called Dunord's Kennel. I remember at one point, he I had something like 13 great Pyrenees in a small backyard in El Paso, Texas, on Rim Road.

[00:10:06.710] - Big Rich Klein

Was your job to pick up poop?

[00:10:08.440] - Andrew Paulson

Yes, sir. And brush Pyrenees because they have an undercoat. Yes. I would get paid. I think it was something like 50 cents for a grocery bag of hair. So I was always taught to earn my allowance, and I think that was great at the time. I hated it because all my rich kids in that area, they just got a free allowance. They didn't have to do anything for it. My parents taught me, You work for it. That has taken me...

[00:10:39.230] - Big Rich Klein

That's why you're in business for yourself. Correct. You're not on theDole. Yeah.

[00:10:47.750] - Andrew Paulson

I wanted to come back to another story. Vacations, you said. My mom was born in Chicago. My dad, raised and born in Minnesota. Grandparents were in Minnesota. My uncle was there, too. We would fly out for a week or two at a time, visit the cousins. But we'd always, land of a thousand lakes, we'd fish. Now, there's not a lot of fishing in El Paso, Texas, but in Minnesota, that's what you do.

[00:11:20.320] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I don't know. What can you fish for on the... What's the big river there?

[00:11:27.170] - Andrew Paulson

Carp and canals. Yeah, the Rio Grande. The Rio Grande. Yeah, you fish for migrants. I don't know. I don't know if we can say that, but yeah. We can say that. Yeah. I remember my friend's house, I remember watching them try to cross the border. We lived on Rim Road, so I could see the lights of Juárez.

[00:11:49.700] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Yeah.

[00:11:51.450] - Andrew Paulson

I mean, at night. So yeah, city life, fair amount of crime, sirens going all night. And so I just thought that was normal. But again, my parents did a really good job of making sure my brother and my sister and myself had a good safe pocket to grow up in.

[00:12:08.210] - Big Rich Klein

You were talking about the fishing going up to when I interrupted you.

[00:12:11.870] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, I know. Okay. So yeah, Minnesota. That was our vacations, was family. I remember my grandma, she had, I don't know, a quarter of an acre of property, and she had this big garden. I used to hang out in the garden and then building forts with my cousins and stuff, just outdoors. We really didn't have a lot of outdoors in El Paso, but I've always been drawn to that. Through this conversation, you'll discover that that's where I thrive is in the outdoors. I mean, everything I've done From that point to being in a tree to here, I've always been drawn to just playing outside.

[00:12:52.970] - Big Rich Klein

I always say that I was born in the wrong time. Correct. I I tell everybody I live a Bedouin lifestyle. I love to move around. I've always had a hard time staying in one place and anchoring in that spot. Sure. Even when I was a kid, I was always out in the county park, in the city park. They ran together where I grew up, and we had thousands of acres to mess around in. And that was my playground. I mean, it was If we weren't playing football or baseball or basketball at the park, we'd go to the county park and ride our bikes or hike in scouts and doing all that stuff. Everything was outside. And I did that my whole life. I've never stayed with a job more than five years. And typically they were one or two years at the most until I got into rock crawling. And then I realized what it was I wanted to do. But I always thought I should have been born in the early 1800s. I should have been one of these mountain men that helped discover Yellowstone and all of that. I'm a real fan of reading that history, and I just find it fascinating.

[00:14:26.100] - Big Rich Klein

Was it a good lifestyle back then for the people that did it? Yeah. For the people that tried to do it and didn't like it or came across unwelcoming natives? It could be a short lifespan. Sure.

[00:14:38.820] - Andrew Paulson

Or a toothache.

[00:14:40.210] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[00:14:40.780] - Andrew Paulson

It could kill you. Yeah. I can definitely see that about you. You're an explorer, I would say, for sure.

[00:14:47.550] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I can see the same thing in you when you're saying that climbing those trees and building those forts, and that was going to be your lifestyle. After high school, what was the next step in your development?

[00:15:07.200] - Andrew Paulson

Well, let me back up a bit. Because I've got one story I want to tell. Again, it's an interesting one, the nerd side of me. I've always liked the technology things. I'm drawn to SpaceX and just the way things work. My brain has to figure it out. Again, it comes back to that.

[00:15:27.860] - Big Rich Klein

I've seen that in you.

[00:15:28.670] - Andrew Paulson

It comes back to that renaissance thing, whether it's building a buggy that doesn't work and one that does, it's just I got to tinker. One of my early memories, it was about fifth grade, and my parents, in case there was ever an emergency, we had a code word in case they sent a friend to pick us up. It was Tali, it was one of my dad's great Pyrenees, one of his favorite females. This guy, Victor Vargas, and his daughter, Vicky, Vicky and I were in the same fifth grade class, and it was an accelerated class. It wasn't the regular educational class. It was always special creative stuff. I don't remember what it was called, Project Challenge or something. They gave it a name. My mom made sure to pull some strings to get me in that. I'm sitting in class one day, and we're just starting class. And Victor, Vicky's dad, shows up. He's like, Yeah, I'm pulling you and my daughter out of school today. I'm like, What's up? He's like, Yeah, we got somewhere to be. I've got your parents' permission. I was like, Well, what's the code word? And he's like, Tauly.

[00:16:38.890] - Andrew Paulson

Okay. So I get in this white truck, GMC or something. We start heading out to Whitesands Missile Range. So apparently, he was head of head of security at White Sands. So we're going through these gates, and they're just waving them through. It's this fifth-grade memory. I'm just like, What the heck is going on? He's like, Well, we're going to watch a space shuttle land. It was the year that Florida got rained out. We're clear in the middle of White Sands' missile range, and we go to this little There was a shop out there on the tarmac, something. I remember sitting on a washer and a dryer. We're just waiting. There's this big sandy runway in front of us. The military police come by and they're like, You got to back up. You got to back up. Because we were apparently sitting on the runway.

[00:17:34.170] - Big Rich Klein

With a washer or dryer.

[00:17:35.690] - Andrew Paulson

With a washer, yeah. There was all kinds of junk out there. I don't know if they were nuclear testing or back in the day. Stuff just accumulates out there, people don't know about. So Yeah, sure as shit. We're sitting out there for a couple hours, and here comes, I believe it was Columbus. I heard the three cracks when it came out of a Sonic Sound. Bang, bang, bang. Here comes this Just, I mean, it felt like I could touch it as a kid. It heads down the runway, touches down, and I was like, well, I thought about that experience later in life, and I'm like, how did I end up there? Of all places. I asked my parents, I said, what exactly did Victor Vargas do for a living? They're like, we don't know. He couldn't talk about it. That was my fifth grade year. Then adolescence happened, puberty, and it turned in a shit head, probably.

[00:18:34.280] - Big Rich Klein

Let's talk about that. Some of us avoided trouble in those years when you start changing puberty. Some of us got into, were maybe ankle or knee deep or waist deep in trouble but never got caught. Then there was some that got caught and had issues. Where did you fall in that spectrum?

[00:19:09.180] - Andrew Paulson

There we come back into junior high. We moved to Pocatello, Idaho, in 1991. Building forts was something we were into growing up, if we could. We met up with the neighborhood kids, and we decided we were going to build a fort just off the back end of my parents' property, where four fences intersected. There was a little gap there. Trying to impress the new neighborhood kids, and I didn't know what Muslims were, or it It was a different world coming from El Paso. I knew what Catholic were, but not Romans. Trying to impress the neighborhood kids, we snuck out at night. There was a house under construction, and we stole a bunch of tools to build our fort.

[00:20:01.040] - Big Rich Klein

You borrowed.

[00:20:03.660] - Andrew Paulson

Well, we were going to give them back. See, that's a borrow. I didn't realize that a nail gun at the time was a thousand bucks. It was a grand theft, adolescent charge. To build a fort to impress the neighborhood kids. But at first degree, second degree, because it was at night, we snuck out to commit the crime. My adolescent years, I never acted out in a violent way, but there was some...

[00:20:33.410] - Big Rich Klein

There were some issues.

[00:20:34.560] - Andrew Paulson

There were some sneaking around, get you that dopamine hit.

[00:20:37.950] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[00:20:38.450] - Andrew Paulson

Please your friends. There you go. Just figuring out the world.

[00:20:42.560] - Big Rich Klein

At that age, you'd moved to IdahoYep.

[00:20:45.400] - Andrew Paulson

No friends. I mean, I basically was uprooted.

[00:20:48.610] - Big Rich Klein

All my friends-Was it your parents chasing a job?

[00:20:53.200] - Andrew Paulson

No. Yes and no. My dad got a job here at ISU. He's the Director of Counseling and Testing. Okay. He was actually the dean of students for a while. He's a big deal there through the paces. No, basically, my sister, the crime in the middle schools, this is back in '91, they already had metal detectors in the middle schools back then.In El Paso.In El Paso, yes. My sister was like, because I have a younger brother, older sister, a middle child syndrome for sure. Okay. My sister was She bounced between El Paso and Minnesota high school. She was more raised in Minnesota, come back for summers. But the crime had gotten so bad. My brother was in grade school. I was in middle school. She was the big influence. She told my parents, I think you need to get the boys out of El Paso. It's just not going to be... They're going to go into middle school, grade school, high school. They're going to get bullied. They're going to into some trouble. Right. My parents saw that. My dad interviewed here at ISU, got the job, and yeah, moved us. Perfect. But I think most of it was for my brother and myself.

[00:22:13.750] - Andrew Paulson

Okay. Yeah. All right. Just trying to get us out of that inner city and all the crap that comes with it.

[00:22:19.860] - Big Rich Klein

What was that transition like moving out here? You had your brother. It sounds like your sister might have been already out of high school at that point?

[00:22:31.380] - Andrew Paulson

She had graduated that year, and she was off to college at Hamlyn University in Minnesota.

[00:22:37.110] - Big Rich Klein

At that point, it was just the two boys. Correct. How much younger is your brother?

[00:22:42.720] - Andrew Paulson

Five years. Five years. Okay. Parents did the five, five, and five plan.

[00:22:47.040] - Big Rich Klein

Five, five, and five. There you go. I've always wondered about scheduling. You moved from El Paso to here, which is wide open spaces. Lots of it. You guys were probably pretty close to the campus then?

[00:23:07.140] - Andrew Paulson

So more in the-up Johnny Creek, actually. Okay. Up on the hill. All right. Nice house. I had just gotten built. A lot of builders were going at that time. My brother and I actually got to pick out our own fixtures and tile for our bathrooms.Oh, nice.Yeah, separate bathrooms. My parents were not super wealthy, but like I said, they always made sure that we had Christmas and things were going good on that. Yeah, it was interesting. I was in Boy Scouts in El Paso. Loved it. Again, Scouts in Idaho, well, it used to be under the LDS Church. And El Paso, it was either an Episcopal Church or the Catholic Church. That's where you'd meet. But there was a little less segregation. When we moved here, I just finished my 50-mileer hike. I don't know if you know what that is. Oh, yeah. Yeah, 50-mile hike with Boy Scouts. Basically, in Durango, Colorado, we took the yellow train in, dropped us off in the middle of nowhere. 50-miler. I always joke, I hiked 50 of the miles coming to Idaho because that was the same week that my parents moved us. Okay. They picked me up in Colorado, Durango, said bye to all my Boy Scout friends, and boom, we're now in Pocetell, Idaho.

[00:24:34.840] - Andrew Paulson

Okay. Tried the Scout thing here for a while. Turned out, well, because I wasn't LDS, there was the actual events that happened after the scout meeting, in the church. I wasn't invited to those because I was some shenanigan, Episcopal, Texan, whatever.

[00:24:54.500] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. We all get it. Yeah.

[00:24:57.290] - Andrew Paulson

Following that, to give you the timeline, was where trying to impress friends building forts that I got into some trouble. It was funny. My parents, being the good parents that they are, obviously, we got busted. Probation officer shows up. It was pretty embarrassing. The mini dome, all the seats there. What they used to do for probation kids is it was washing seats at the mini dome.

[00:25:25.980] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow. Everybody that doesn't know, ISU, Idaho State University, University has a dome stadium, and it's like an indoor track and a football field, and it's an old wood building, actually. Isn't it all wood-framed on the inside?

[00:25:46.240] - Andrew Paulson

It isn't wood. It's steel. But I believe it was the second largest indoor dome building built back in its time. So it held some records for it. I mean, it's big enough that it'll actually make its own cumulus cloud.

[00:26:00.270] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow.

[00:26:01.430] - Andrew Paulson

It'll actually rain inside there because it's tall enough.

[00:26:04.350] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow. Interesting.

[00:26:05.960] - Andrew Paulson

Okay. I've got many dome stories.

[00:26:07.540] - Big Rich Klein

You washed a lot of those seats?

[00:26:09.200] - Andrew Paulson

I washed a lot of those seats. I remember my mom, probation officer, is like, Yeah, he only has to do 10 hours of probation. She grabs the sheet out of this probation officer's hand. She tears it up. She's like, I'm going to make my own sheet. There's going to be 50 hours on that thing.

[00:26:25.500] - Big Rich Klein

Thanks, mom.

[00:26:26.530] - Andrew Paulson

I was grounded for a year. Yeah.

[00:26:30.530] - Big Rich Klein

Did everybody get their equipment back?

[00:26:34.090] - Andrew Paulson

Everybody got their gear back.

[00:26:35.780] - Big Rich Klein

Then she should have gotten easier on you.

[00:26:37.580] - Andrew Paulson

No, I needed it. Okay. I deserve it for sure.

[00:26:42.790] - Big Rich Klein

How did the fort turn out? Knowing how you are nowadays?

[00:26:48.880] - Andrew Paulson

Probably it was the second coolest Ford I ever built.

[00:26:54.810] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:26:55.880] - Andrew Paulson

The first maybe being this place. Okay.

[00:26:59.600] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome. So then you're going to school, finishing up your school here in Idaho. Not doing the scouting thing anymore. How far, how long did you get into scouts?

[00:27:12.120] - Andrew Paulson

So I gave it up that year. Okay. Just because it was a dead end. It was always roadblocks being with the culture. The year after I was released from being grounded, there was an Episcopal camp up in Northern Idaho, Paradise Point. Okay. Rusted cabins. They were built by prisoners back in the '50s or '60s. My parents went up there with the church, and we did what they called work camp, where everybody volunteers for a weekend or a and they get the camp up and running for the season. Not a very well-funded camp at the time, but that was it. That was my release of my being grounded from the last year. Okay.

[00:27:58.320] - Big Rich Klein

More community service.

[00:28:00.100] - Andrew Paulson

Pretty much. But I still had that work ethic that my parents taught me. I was like, Yeah, I'm out and about. I remember we were digging propane line trenches and cleaning up, and I just worked my butt off. We get back, and about four or five days later, mom comes down into my room and says, Hey, how would you like to work in McCall for the summer? They saw your work ethic. You're going to be washing dishes and pots and pans, and plungeing toilets. But how would you like to get a hall pass? I was like, Hell, yeah. That beats being grounded in Pocetella, Idaho. They sent me up there that summer. It was a rough go. There was definitely some bullying from the older staff and pots and pans at 3:00 AM and scheduling issues. I started there, and that would have been in '90. Trying to think. About '93, after my year being grounded. And that was my salvation was because it was outside on Payet Lake on a peninsula. You pretty much had water sports, canoes, hiking, and pretty much no parental guidance at that point. Most of the staff were usually college kids on break.

[00:29:26.890] - Andrew Paulson

The first year there was pots and pans, and then And then I figured out I was handy and I could pick some things up, and they were doing some remodeling. That's where I learned how to do some electrical sheetrock. Now I'm talking 16, 17 years old. Now, I did rock climb a lot here in Poctetla, so I did have enough of a sense about rock climbing, ropes, harnesses, and whatnot. As I evolved through the camp throughout the summers, I worked there seven summers. Oh, wow. Camp director saw potential, and they basically built me a ropes course.

[00:30:06.590] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:30:08.030] - Andrew Paulson

Project Adventure came in, built the ropes course for the camp, and they sent me to Oregon to get trained doing high and low ropes course, team development and all that. By the time I was 18, 19, I had already had a ropes course experience under my belt. Nice. When I graduated high school, I was rock climbing and then spending summer up in McCall. Very fortunate because I think that's what kept me from getting in more trouble than if I was just stuck in Pocatello, Idaho. Cool. Excellent. Does that make sense?

[00:30:42.390] - Big Rich Klein

The camp was a church camp, but they'd cycle kids in from different areas every week or so?

[00:30:52.460] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. It was a week-long camp, except for the kindergarten camp. I think it was a weekend, just the homesick kids. You had everything from They broke it up like the middle school cycle. You had the grade school camp, kindergarten, grade school, middle school, high school camp. I was a camp counselor for a while, too, in that stint. They would always give me the hard kids. Go figure. But no, again, great experience growing up because otherwise, I'd have just been sitting in Pocetell, Idaho.

[00:31:24.400] - Big Rich Klein

Looking for trouble.

[00:31:25.190] - Andrew Paulson

Looking for trouble, yeah. Plus, I got a lot of great experience, everything from maintenance to building to the ropes course to the counseling. The nice thing about that camp is it's Episcopal, so it wasn't all walks of life. If you're Roman, Episcopal, Catholic, if you're atheist, it was very open as far as that stigmatism goes, where you don't get that with a lot of church camps. You're under our regime or nothing at all.

[00:31:56.160] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Then they got all the prayer sessions or whatever Bible studies and all that stuff going on.

[00:32:01.690] - Andrew Paulson

That was always optional, too. It was funny because I never really did go to chapel. They had a Wednesday and a Sunday chapel, and I always skipped out. I'm like, well, my chapel is hiking in the wilderness.

[00:32:17.840] - Big Rich Klein

You get through high school doing that?

[00:32:20.620] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, then part of college. Part of college?

[00:32:22.600] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. Your little brother, did he follow in the footsteps, or was he-?

[00:32:31.390] - Andrew Paulson

He worked in McCal for a while, yes. Okay. Yeah. He did some of the arts and crafts stuff there. He worked several summers there as well, as did my sister. Oh, really? Okay. Honestly. So, yeah, it was a family event, venue, I should say. So, yeah, my little brother, he's smarter than me and way more put together as far as starting and finishing things. Okay. I think he learned a lot from me as far as how to get away with things. He's even said that to me. He's like, Yeah, I learned by watching you mess So he got in as much trouble as I did. He just didn't get caught.

[00:33:04.000] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:33:04.440] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. So he ended up after... I mean, he was a straight A student, was the head speaker at his class of Century High School here, and went off to Wisconsin State University, and he got his degree in nuclear engineering.

[00:33:23.910] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow.

[00:33:25.010] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. Okay. He is currently the state inspector of Wisconsin.

[00:33:30.940] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow. Okay. Very good. Yeah.

[00:33:34.540] - Andrew Paulson

So he's got two, three. He's got kids. They're a handful, but he's a great dad. Yeah.

[00:33:42.460] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome.

[00:33:43.140] - Andrew Paulson

So he followed more of that academic world.

[00:33:47.440] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:33:48.020] - Andrew Paulson

But, yeah, he's done good for himself.

[00:33:51.360] - Big Rich Klein

You said there was some hazing, I guess you'd call it, or initiations when you were at the camp, which I remember that stuff from Boy Scouts as well.

[00:34:08.210] - Andrew Paulson

Oh, yeah.

[00:34:12.070] - Big Rich Klein

Did you do that when you became one of the older kids?

[00:34:15.520] - Andrew Paulson

No, not really. I'm more of a lover than a fighter. That's my nature. It was more on the staff. We had this one guy, I think his name, I don't know if it was his real name, but they called him Buff. We'd be at the serving line, and he'd have a dip of chew in and spit in his cup and his shirt while he's serving food. Well, they go out to the bars and get drunk, and it would be his turn to do pots and pans. Well, he just wouldn't do it. About 3:00 AM, he'd kick me out of bed and be like, Pots and pans, go to it. In the middle of the night, I'd be rustled out of my sleeping bag and washing pots and pans.

[00:34:58.680] - Big Rich Klein

Otherwise, That stuff would...

[00:35:01.050] - Andrew Paulson

Kick my ass. Exactly. I did not mess with him. Yeah, he was a scrapper, and he was pretty intoxicated. So I was just like, I let it be.

[00:35:10.270] - Big Rich Klein

Kind of like doing somebody's homework.

[00:35:12.410] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, exactly. Again, just that nerd thing. Right.

[00:35:19.090] - Big Rich Klein

Then after camp, what did you get into?

[00:35:25.290] - Andrew Paulson

I was pretty heavy into rock climbing and outdoor activities at that point, water skiing, which I ran at camp. My first year at ISU, I didn't know really what I wanted to study. Just, again, my brain all over the place. You look around the shop, you can see it. But there was the outdoor program at ISU, and I had dabbled with that program in high school and even early in junior high. There was definitely some mentors that came out of that program. They did certain rock climbing here at Ross Park and various ski programs and whatnot. I was like, Yeah, I want to Definitely wouldn't mind working for that place. My first college job, Reeds Gym, which is a big gym at ISU, they had just finished building the climbing wall. With my With my ropes course history with camp, I figured, well, I'll apply for this job and see. So I interview. They're like, can you teach us how to put a harness on? Can you teach us how to tie a figure 8 knot, how to belay, all that. So I got the interview done and was a little nervous. I'm like, I don't know if I got it or not.

[00:36:50.720] - Andrew Paulson

Again, it was just a college job. Just finished building the wall. Anybody who's familiar with it, it's a big climbing Well, it was blank. There were no holds on it, but there were cases of holds. So they call me back and they say, Well, we're sorry, you didn't get the rock climbing wall attendant job. I was like, Okay, well, why? They're like, Well, we're going to make you lead rock climbing attendant. We're going to put everybody under you. My first, I want to say it was in the summertime, my first, I want to say it was in the summertime, my first I call it four weeks of that job, the wall wasn't open to the public, was just to build climbing routes.

[00:37:36.800] - Big Rich Klein

Nice. I mean, I was... In the hog heaven.

[00:37:40.290] - Andrew Paulson

A hog heaven, for sure. Because I love the puzzle of rock climbing. Right foot, left foot, order of operation. It's very similar to rock climbing. Tire's got to be in the right spot. It's the same thing with rock climbing. Your feet, your four points got to be in the right spot. My brain's always liked that puzzle. So, yeah, I was in heaven. And, yeah, so I worked that for summers, and then eventually bounced over to the outdoor program after that.

[00:38:11.880] - Big Rich Klein

What did you do at the outdoor program?

[00:38:15.580] - Andrew Paulson

Was a student worker for a while. Did everything from setting up open climb at Ross Park to taking people on float trips like the Palisades, freshman orientation. River rafting helped with the kayak course that they do in the pool there. Again, everything outdoors.

[00:38:37.250] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[00:38:38.030] - Andrew Paulson

That was, again, I come back to that draw, playing outside.

[00:38:41.980] - Big Rich Klein

And not just one thing, getting a chance to get your hands into everything. Everything. Everything.

[00:38:46.130] - Andrew Paulson

So perfect for the way I function. Right. Yeah. Wasn't just bored doing the same thing over and over. Cool. Then there was an opening for the... The outdoor program The program was a co-program with CW HOG.

[00:39:03.310] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:39:04.300] - Andrew Paulson

Stands for the Cooperative Wilderness Handicap Outdoor Group. In conjunction with the outdoor program, they would take individuals with disabilities and recreate outside with, obviously, modifications. I fell into that interim spot and eventually got that job full-time. I had the adaptive water ski program was under mine. Where you take paraplegic quads, people with disabilities, out to American Falls, and we had adaptive equipment. We take them water skiing, recreating outside. Then that's also where I came into meeting my wife at the time. Well, not my wife at the time, my current wife. My wife. Your wife now. Now, yes. Thank you.

[00:39:54.980] - Big Rich Klein

That current time was not your wife.

[00:39:57.420] - Andrew Paulson

No, she was an intern, and we hit it off on the main salmon river doing a CW hog. She's an occupational therapist, so she was doing her internship with CW Hog, part of her credits, getting her master's degree. We met on the river, taking individuals' disabilities on a week-long float trip on the main salmon river. That's where we met. That river has a lot of significance for me. That makes sense. We'll come back to that story. Okay.

[00:40:30.180] - Big Rich Klein

Not too much detail on that story, but no, kidding. Then as you're going through this program and your teaching and everything like that, did anything else that you did, or was that pretty much your sole focus?

[00:40:47.560] - Andrew Paulson

That was my sole focus. I never finished college, but I was a student for four or five years. I was taking what they call the bachelor It's the BUS degree, Bachelor of University Studies. Ironically, I was doing Fine Arts and Metalsmithing with a minor in Outdoor Recreation. Again, all over the place. If you will. Just going with the flow. When I got the opportunity opened up for that position at CW Hog, that's when I quit going to school and started doing that. That's my lead into starting a business. There was an individual, Cole and Die, still touch base with him. He's a paraplegic, got injured. A widow maker, he was cutting firewood. Another log hit him, took his back out. But very active guy, outdoorsy. He used to build these, what we call cross country ski adaptive frames out of Cro Mollet.

[00:41:54.790] - Big Rich Klein

All right.

[00:41:55.470] - Andrew Paulson

I'd hang out in his shop. He had a metal lathe, welder, tig welder. We We were made to be friends, let's put it that way. I was always at his place dinking around. He'd let me use his lathe and his mill and his welder. Of course, everything was four foot off the ground, so I had to adapt to his shop. He's building these cross country ski frames, and they just basically mount two ski frames. They sit in the track and you just push. But he was taking them to Idaho Falls to get powder-coated. One day, we chit-chatting. I don't remember how it all came to flourish, but we had just bought this property with Shannon and I had this shop, and I built a little homemade oven for doing my various projects, especially for my old international harvester that I used to wheel.

[00:42:52.740] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:42:52.770] - Andrew Paulson

So I was a scout guy. That makes sense. That's where I started, the cornbinder. Yeah. I built a little oven for my projects, and I showed him a sample. He's like, Well, I've been running these frames. I have. I'll pay you to powder coat these. Started powder coating for him on the weekends. At the time, I also had a side sprinkler job business, was doing my full-time thing with CW Hog, and then started this powder coat thing. Took out a thrifty nickel add. Next thing you know, I'm getting a little bit of business. Small oven, 4 by 5 by 6 for it, homemade. Nothing huge. But now I got three things going on at once, and I realized, Okay, I got to pick. Here's one job, C. W. Hogg, which didn't pay much. It's a great job if you're a college student living in your parents' basement, but it's not a living by any means as far as long term viability. Yeah. I started building my second oven, and that was 8 by 8 by 10 foot. That was in about December. I did that at night, stopped doing the sprinkler thing, maintained my CW hog job.

[00:44:15.700] - Andrew Paulson

Then there was a regime change with bosses, and this new boss at CW Hog, I was not willing to work for him. Just for a lot of reasons, I thought he was going to get people hurt.

[00:44:28.180] - Big Rich Klein

He just didn'tPersonality classes.

[00:44:31.610] - Andrew Paulson

And just responsibility. You're taking people on river trips, recreating. You got to watch things, and he just wasn't watching things. I was like, I don't want to work for him because my conscience was like, this is not going to work out. We did the ski swap in November. I quit and then started the powder coat thing full-time. Excellent.

[00:44:57.270] - Big Rich Klein

You're doing your powder coating as This is a business now full-time. At that point, you had built the larger one.

[00:45:10.000] - Andrew Paulson

Yes.

[00:45:10.720] - Big Rich Klein

You did that all on your own, which doesn't surprise me at all, because everything I've ever seen you do, you might buy parts, but you don't buy equipment.

[00:45:22.730] - Andrew Paulson

Correct.

[00:45:24.060] - Big Rich Klein

Maybe when it comes to a welder or a drill press or a lathe, but you're not You're doing that because you're not buying parts from somebody else. You're making your own parts.

[00:45:35.430] - Andrew Paulson

Correct. I think that comes down to just being resourceful with the dollar.

[00:45:42.300] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Frugal.

[00:45:44.110] - Andrew Paulson

Because I don't have a money backer.

[00:45:47.500] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[00:45:48.230] - Andrew Paulson

I didn't have that. My parents helped out when they could, but I think they bought me my first air compressor, but that's about... They put 700 bucks in a big air compressor, and the rest was up to me. When you look at the price of back then, a powder coat oven that was a 10-footer, it was like 60, $70,000. Where I could get it built for, I think it was about $6,000.

[00:46:12.480] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Yeah, that makes sense.

[00:46:15.610] - Andrew Paulson

If I had the skillset to build it- Why not? Why not capitalize on that?

[00:46:21.590] - Big Rich Klein

What time period was that, do you think?

[00:46:25.190] - Andrew Paulson

About 2004.

[00:46:26.720] - Big Rich Klein

2004? Okay.

[00:46:27.640] - Andrew Paulson

All right. Because we I bought this place in 2003. So, yeah, 2004 was when I made that transition.

[00:46:36.950] - Big Rich Klein

The shop here is when you first built the shop You guys bought the property. It was just bare property, right?

[00:46:49.160] - Andrew Paulson

No, it had the house and this original shop, not the addition. Oh, not the addition. It was 40 by 50. The guy who originally had the place Don Schnuck. Would have loved to have met him because I've heard stories he was an all or nothing guy, too. All right. Yeah. So I've met some of his relatives just doing business around town over. He's like, Oh, yeah, you got Don Snook's old place. That's always going to be Don Schnuck's old place.

[00:47:18.420] - Big Rich Klein

Someday people will be saying, Well, that's Andrew's old place.

[00:47:21.290] - Andrew Paulson

So I did build the addition and then the sandblast shop.

[00:47:26.220] - Big Rich Klein

So then Let's go into the four-wheel drive side of things.

[00:47:37.030] - Andrew Paulson

Absolutely.

[00:47:38.170] - Big Rich Klein

You're a cornbinder guy. What attracted you to the cornbinders?

[00:47:47.760] - Andrew Paulson

We got to back up on the timeline a little bit. No worries. My buddy, this would have been my senior year. I was still traveling to McAll in summers. I finally got my license. I didn't think I'd get my license until I was 20 or something. Was a late bloomer as far as that goes. My buddy, Jason Chandler, his dad was into scouts. He had a scout. I just thought they were just cool. We'd run around town. It was before internet, so we'd run around town in this scout and, flirt with the girls, meeting up with buddies to go camping, campfires, all that good stuff. And he's like, at the time, I had no mechanical experience as far as vehicles go.

[00:48:32.960] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:48:34.540] - Andrew Paulson

There was an old place in town, Panique's Appolstery Shop. They had three scouts. All three of them were run down, did not run. I bought those three scouts for a couple of thousand bucks. My buddy Jason's garage and his dad, they loan me his garage. I honestly didn't know what a transfer case was at the time.

[00:48:59.090] - Big Rich Klein

That was just a hunk of steel down there.

[00:49:00.290] - Andrew Paulson

I had no idea. Any drive line, what's that? What's an actual staff? He had no clue. He and his dad took me under their wing, working on these corn binders, trying to get one running out of the three. There was just enough there to make it happen. We spent two weeks. That was my mechanical education.

[00:49:25.140] - Big Rich Klein

Two weeks.

[00:49:26.640] - Andrew Paulson

There were a lot of late nights falling asleep underneath the vehicle. You're tightening one bolt, next thing you know, you're loosening it because you're just delirious from sleep deprivation. That was just my first vehicle I owned.

[00:49:43.010] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.

[00:49:44.410] - Andrew Paulson

That was my first vehicle. So drove it to McCall and blew up the motor in the process. That summer, it sat in the shop getting the top end rebuilt. Then the next summer I had it, took it up to McCall, For camp, on weekends, I would just take it up these old mining roads and go fishing. I learned what four-wheel drive was on these old mining roads, just soloing it, I learned how to stack bark when you get it stuck in the mud or had a high-lift jack, so figured out how to get it up off the ground and get enough dirt or rocks underneath it. That was my, I guess, my learner course of stacking. Okay. Yeah.

[00:50:32.300] - Big Rich Klein

Comes in handy.

[00:50:33.620] - Andrew Paulson

Because there was nobody there to help me, so it was on me. And that was just my getaway from the people because you're around people that you work with and the campers. I mean, it's a very busy people environment, so I always needed to decompress. It was like a fishing rod, my Scout, and old logging roads up in northern Idaho.

[00:50:52.720] - Big Rich Klein

The one thing that I see that's a consistent is fishing?

[00:50:59.240] - Andrew Paulson

Yes.

[00:51:00.190] - Big Rich Klein

What is it about fishing that you like so much? Is it, do you eat fish?

[00:51:07.550] - Andrew Paulson

I do eat fish. In McAll, that's what I ate. I'd maybe grab a baked potato, and if I got my protein, I got my protein. If not, I just eat my potato. Okay.

[00:51:18.610] - Big Rich Klein

That's handy then being in IDO.

[00:51:19.810] - Andrew Paulson

I think it does stem from an early neuro pathway, from those memories with my uncle, my grandpa, and my dad fishing in Minnesota. It was family reunions. It was family. It was busy, but we'd go out on the boat or out on the dock fishing, and everybody relaxed. That's the place when I'm on the water fishing, if I'm catching something or not, that's my decompress. That's where my brain slows down and doesn't pay attention to everything, the noise. That's where the noise really shuts down, especially with the ADD brain. When I fish, it's like I'm not everywhere and anywhere at the same time. Right. That makes sense.

[00:52:07.900] - Big Rich Klein

I've always loved fishing. I've gotten out of it for so many years just because of scheduling.

[00:52:15.130] - Andrew Paulson

Sure.

[00:52:15.850] - Big Rich Klein

Went fishing this last year took Little Rich's son Austin and Pat and two of my grandkids, and we went fishing up above Placerville. And Payton, she wasn't interested so much in fishing. She just wanted to hang out and talk. Austin, it's... He wanted to spin cast and keep walking up and down. Keep moving. Yeah. Oh, I got one. No, I didn't get one. Oh, I got one. That thing. And me, I'd hook a worm up and sit and drown the worm, not really expecting to catch anything or even didn't care if I caught anything. I think it was just... When I had my landscape construction company, fishing was a release, like you say, to get away from everything. And there would be times I'd put a line out with just a weight on it. Yep. Not even a hook. No bait. I get it. I just throw it out there and people would walk by, Having any luck? No, not today. But I never tried. I'd throw a line, sit in a chair, maybe read a book, But it was just a way to decompress.

[00:53:34.940] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. I would say the other draw isn't necessarily about the fishing, but the water. Because for some reason, I don't know if it's growing up in a swim team, but being on the water, that's the other decompressed. Just the sound of the river, for whatever reason, being on the water always had a relaxing allure to me.

[00:54:04.140] - Big Rich Klein

I've been the same way. Some people will say, Well, it's because you're a Pisces. I don't know if it's that. I don't know if I believe in all that. Sure. Focus, focus. The only thing I really... I don't believe in ghosts. I believe in aliens, but that's a whole different podcast.

[00:54:23.480] - Andrew Paulson

I think Elon Monks is an alien, but okay.

[00:54:26.990] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. At least South African.

[00:54:31.280] - Andrew Paulson

Sure. Yeah. Well, that's where they landed. That's okay. Another thing you said, you're an entrepreneur, you're a business guy, and it's hard sometimes to put that down because you're thinking about the next day, three days out. You're always doing the stuff different than the guys who are punching a clock. I'm making sure the oven runs, the sandblaster runs. So when the guys show up, punch their clock, we get business done. A lot of people don't see that behind the scenes. Again, that comes back to that fishing or just being on the water. It's one of the few times where my brain just puts that down. Yeah.

[00:55:15.220] - Big Rich Klein

I get it. I think that's what... Shelle is the same way. She loves being on the water. I think that's one reason we own a boat, even if we can't get to it all the time anymore. Yes. I'm looking forward to that. I'm heading to Corpus here in a couple of weeks for a week and to prep the boat for the season. So it's going to be... I'm really looking forward to being back on the boat and the water because that's the one thing nice about a boat. It's surrounded in water.

[00:55:46.720] - Andrew Paulson

Yep, and I get that. It's the boat, it's the water. It's not necessarily the fishing. That's a fun bonus, especially when it's hot, but you're catching them every cast. But even then, just being on the and nothing's happening. It's to decompress. Yeah, speaking of Shelle, how many years has it been?

[00:56:07.610] - Big Rich Klein

Well, as of today, it's 12 years.

[00:56:10.510] - Andrew Paulson

I'd say that was about, yeah, it was about, huh?

[00:56:11.850] - Big Rich Klein

It was 12 years, one week ago, that I called you up and said, Hey, are you an officiant? Do you have your marriage? Can you marry people? You said, No, my parents do, though. I said, Well, I'm not looking for your parents. Sure. Would you consider marrying Shelle and I? It gave you one week.

[00:56:31.130] - Andrew Paulson

Yep. And I got online and we made it official. It was the Y2K year, right?

[00:56:39.410] - Big Rich Klein

No, it was the Mayan calendar.

[00:56:43.060] - Andrew Paulson

Mayan calendar, yeah.

[00:56:44.240] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, the end of the Mayan calendar in the end of the world.

[00:56:46.550] - Andrew Paulson

We were at that place up in Blackfoot. I can't remember the restaurant.

[00:56:50.500] - Big Rich Klein

Tommy Vons.

[00:56:51.770] - Andrew Paulson

Tommy Vons. It was a small invite-only party. There's maybe 20 people there. That's probably one of the few or times you've seen me nervous. I don't know what happened there.

[00:57:05.460] - Big Rich Klein

It was pretty funny because nobody knew except for you, me, Shirley, and Shannon. I remember Kevin Reemer, I handed him my phone and said, I want you to take a video here in a few minutes. You'll know when to turn it on. He goes, What? Midnight. I said, Just wait. We had We'd been at a party, and Shelle had called some people and invited them to Tommy Vons. After closing, they closed at 10:00. We took over at 10:00. The party started at 11:00 or something.

[00:57:43.590] - Andrew Paulson

I hung out, had a spread. A couple cocktails, but yeah, just mellow.

[00:57:47.750] - Big Rich Klein

Watching short course racing on the television. It was funny because I knew just about everybody that was racing. It was strange. Then I walked outside at midnight and made a joke. I said, Hey, I'm going to go out and check to see if there's any zombies, the end of the world is supposed to happen.

[00:58:08.210] - Andrew Paulson

It didn't.

[00:58:09.050] - Big Rich Klein

It didn't. So I walked back in because Shelle and I had always told everybody that we were going to get married after the end of the world. Yep. Shelle always said that was... So I didn't have to. And I can remember the week before, maybe 10 days before, I'd ask Shelle, I said, So the end of the The world's coming up. Are we going to get married? She goes, see her eyes roll back in her head. She's thinking, and she goes, Let me think on it tonight. I'm like, What? I thought she was hard thinking about whether or not she was going to marry me. What she was doing was trying to figure out how we were going to get married. Correct. She devised this plan, going Tommy Vons, calling Kevin and that on the place and setting it all up. Then that's when I called you and said, Okay, this is what we're going to do. Can you make this happen? You did. Well, I walked back in after midnight.

[00:59:16.360] - Andrew Paulson

I think after you walked in, I looked at everybody. I think I tapped on a glass and said, It's time. Everybody looked at me like, Time for what?

[00:59:24.990] - Big Rich Klein

I said, Shelly and I are going to get married. I hope you all stay and join us. Her friends looked at her like with looks of just total amazement, or they couldn't believe that she was going to marry somebody like me.

[00:59:43.840] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, and I remember Kevin Reimer. He's looking at me like, time for what? He was nervous. He thought we were going to all turn into zombies or something. He didn't know. A lot of people did not know what's going on. You could see their brains trying to process Oh, oh, oh.

[01:00:02.420] - Big Rich Klein

That was pretty fun. So, yeah, I really thank you for that. You bet.

[01:00:07.690] - Andrew Paulson

And I'm glad it stuck. Yes. She puts up with you, so it's good.

[01:00:12.180] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, somehow. And the lifestyle. I mean, she didn't know she was a Bedouin as well.

[01:00:20.000] - Andrew Paulson

Closet Bedouin. Yeah, there it is.

[01:00:24.720] - Big Rich Klein

Then you're fishing, you're on the lakes, the rivers around here, but you've gotten into a new business. And working by yourself.

[01:00:38.400] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, that's why it's called OneWorks, because it was me. The buck stopped with me. I had to do it right or not at all.

[01:00:46.970] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:00:47.690] - Andrew Paulson

But again, that's when I got into wheeling a little bit with the old Scout. Again, we flash back to that outdoor program job. Down We are doing a mountain bike trip with the students. We do two or three of those a year, mountain bike all of Moab's trails. Now, the wheelers and the mountain bikers call them different things, right?

[01:01:10.660] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:01:11.720] - Andrew Paulson

We're there, and I'm there with my buddy Justin Daly, and I see all these tire tracks going up. It was Moab Rim. We were mountain biking Moab Rim. I said, What are these tire tracks? He's like, Oh, yeah, there's this Easter safari in this Labor Day camp out thing. He had a a Jeep at the time, a white Jeep. I don't remember what year it was, but he's like, Yeah, we come down and sign up with the Red Rock Club. He says, You ought to come with us this year. I'm like, Well, that sounds interesting. Back then, we didn't trailer our rigs. We drove them down there. We had to be to work on Monday. We're breaking our junk and trying to figure out how to get 400 miles back to Pucatela with broken drag links and chalks and leaf springs hanging because we got to be to work in school on Monday. That was my intro to what I'd call the real off-road world. I don't remember what year that was. It was probably around '98 or something. We would run with Safari, do the whole registration, Spanish work arena, do the whole raffle.

[01:02:26.010] - Andrew Paulson

That was our jam with him, he and I. And slowly, I was like, great. I graduated to 31-inch tires. I thought I was badass then. 31 tires and a spring over, not spring over, a two-inch lift, you could get it done in Moab back in the day. From there it cascaded because I like tinkering. Every year it was like a little new mod on the scout, whether it was an injection and got rid of the carburator so it wasn't flooding out, going up or downhill. My first one, I had drum breaks.

[01:03:02.300] - Big Rich Klein

So it didn't stop?

[01:03:03.700] - Andrew Paulson

Well, it was a record rain year. It was above the Dump Bump, Lake Michigan, they called it. You go through the water puddle, and then you go run all the slick rock ramps. Hell's Revenge and all that. Hell's Revenge and all that. Yeah. Let's talk about rain and drum breaks, wet drum breaks. Everybody would stop on the bottom of these hills, and I'd just get on the radio and I'd be like, drum break's coming down. Next thing you know, they'd be getting out of my way because I just… Everybody would crawl, front tires would hit the deck, and they'd do nice transition. No, I was like… Every Slick Rock… I mean, I was landing in the sand every time. The sand slowed me down. Every year, I'd make a modification. Eventually, got disk breaks on the front of the scout. Next evolution, because I was always dragging the ass end. They called me the the drager because the scout ends hung long. I bobbed the back end. That was one year modification. Eventually, the thing got tubed out into a buggy. Four-link suspension, air shocks all the way around. That was just trail running. That was my start in my official serious off-roading.

[01:04:22.700] - Big Rich Klein

At that time, did you know about International Harvester Parts and Jeff Ismail there in Auburn, California?

[01:04:31.440] - Andrew Paulson

It rings a bell. Did he have a web form or website?

[01:04:37.590] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, he still does.

[01:04:38.920] - Andrew Paulson

It was like every modification he needed to make on a scout. I followed that website, so I knew the shackling reversal. I knew the rag joint. Back then, we had to build our rigs. We couldn't just buy it off the shelf. Now, it's so kit and commercialized. But now, back then, it was like you take a piece of DOM tubing, split it down the middle, and encapsulate your drag link, and weld it all the way across so your drag link wouldn't fold. You know, stuff like that. Right. Busy, busy work.Yup. Yeah, I am familiar with his website. Okay.

[01:05:19.100] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, he's an interview I did not too long ago.

[01:05:22.530] - Andrew Paulson

Okay, I'll have to check that out.

[01:05:23.170] - Big Rich Klein

Up there in Northern California. Right. He's built a pretty successful business. It's all things international harvest Nice.

[01:05:30.780] - Andrew Paulson

Pretty cool guy.

[01:05:32.860] - Big Rich Klein

Then you got the shop going. You're doing off-road.

[01:05:38.240] - Andrew Paulson

Powder coating, little fabrication on the side.

[01:05:42.130] - Big Rich Klein

When did you How did you find out about competitive rock crawling?

[01:05:48.730] - Andrew Paulson

Well, so for my birthday, my wife bought me tickets to the event you put on was in Henderson.

[01:05:59.060] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[01:05:59.830] - Andrew Paulson

Remember Remember the sprayed out train car, our box car?

[01:06:02.770] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[01:06:03.260] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. So, Henderson, she bought me a air fare from IF to there for my birthday. Bought We Rock tickets, and I think there was even a pit pass that came with it, so we had access to the pits. So we got an extra arm band to wander the pits. This is where I met you in the elevator. You probably don't remember it, but- Probably not. You get in the elevator, and I knew who you were at the time because I was following some of the We Rock stuff online. You get in the elevator, I was like, Big Rich. I was star struck. It was hilarious. My wife's like, Oh, come on, don't embarrass me. I was like, Hi, Big Rich, and you're like, Hi, and went on your merry way because you were running an event. It was the coolest thing because I'm in the pits. Tracy Jordan, the Level Brothers, all these people that I've seen in magazines and in various media forms at the time, I'm watching them front row. Right. Yeah, hung out at that event. I was like, Okay. Kind of had some life decisions to make because all my buddies that we used to wheel with, we started doing our own thing, skipping safari.

[01:07:18.270] - Andrew Paulson

We'd go the weekend before, the weekend after. Well, most of them decided to get married and started having kids. Well, the kid thing, when you got a newborn, it's hard to make a Moab trip. A lot of them quit wheeling. Well, Shannon and I didn't have kids, so I'm like, Well, let's build a buggy.

[01:07:41.860] - Big Rich Klein

The buggy was your kid.

[01:07:43.490] - Andrew Paulson

The buggy was my kid, yeah.

[01:07:46.240] - Big Rich Klein

Let's talk about the significance of the number that you picked for your team.

[01:07:50.310] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. Monsters Incorporated. The movie. The movie, yeah. When a kid invades the monster world, they have a 2319, and everybody It freaks out because...

[01:08:01.300] - Big Rich Klein

Code 2319.

[01:08:02.680] - Andrew Paulson

2319, and all the special ops guys come in and they clean up the contamination. It was a joke because we didn't have kids. She works with kids. I work with kids in McCall. Not that we're anti-kid, but we did our part raising other people's kids for them. Yeah, my number 2319 from Monsters Inc. That's just something that happened. For some reason, I think I had a little miniature solely and he used to ride on my car back in the day.

[01:08:33.620] - Big Rich Klein

It's better than a duck.

[01:08:34.610] - Andrew Paulson

It's better than a duck, yeah. At the time, there's a popular movie. So all the kids and spectators, we'd be lined up on courses. They would see Sully and come check out the car. So it was a good fan-based allure. The kids are like, I want to watch this car.

[01:08:52.930] - Big Rich Klein

Now, that buggy, you had a single seat, unlimited rig. Two of them. Two of them, okay. Was Was one of those... Did the Scout end up as one of those? No.

[01:09:06.710] - Andrew Paulson

I sold the Scout. I had it for a while. It was a chassis. I built another trail rig, the green Jeep. I don't know if you remember that. Okay. Yeah, with the Lexan hood. That's when we got out of trail running. Then built the buggy, sold the trail rig. We had an overlap there for a while. I built the first car, and our first event was Pima.

[01:09:38.150] - Big Rich Klein

Okay. Pima Motorsports Park in Tucson.

[01:09:40.250] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. You remember that dust hole? Oh, yeah. It was brutal. It's a pit with a lot of concrete in it, and it is dusty, windy. Was it Pima? Was it California? I'm trying to remember. No, it wasn't Tucson. What was the one in California.

[01:10:01.690] - Big Rich Klein

Paris?

[01:10:02.500] - Andrew Paulson

Paris, yes. Paris, California. Excuse me. I stand correct.

[01:10:04.890] - Big Rich Klein

Ricky Johnson's old motocross track.

[01:10:07.600] - Andrew Paulson

I get confused with those two events. So yes, we did do Pima. Paris was my first event.

[01:10:12.070] - Big Rich Klein

Paris, okay. Nice. All right.

[01:10:16.050] - Andrew Paulson

So first event, three days before I finished the car. We're at the Circus Circus parking lot, I think is where I did my test in tune and was putting stickers, like my numbers on the car, checking fluids, and I'm driving it around the Circus Parking lot, just shaking the air out of the coolant lines. Right. So I was nowhere near prepared. But We roll in. I think it was at the Hooters. They did tech inspection.

[01:10:49.300] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, we did tech inspection at the Hooters.

[01:10:50.940] - Andrew Paulson

I had gone over the list. Little Rich did my tech, and he's like, That's the easiest tech I've ever had to do. He said, I wish more drivers were like you.

[01:11:01.650] - Big Rich Klein

Wow. Very good.

[01:11:02.690] - Andrew Paulson

He just went through the list, took me all of... We waited in line for 2 hours, but took all of 2 minutes to do my tech. Mind you, this car has had less than half an hour of run time on it. Right. So we finally roll over to the raceway there. My brakes aren't even seated. I'm running up and down that dirt track, just trying to seat the brakes, to get them to stop. And all the stadium lights were on. Well, I had done Glowing the Dark rims. All the lights, they clicked them off as I'm running down the raceway. And so all you see are these four glowing the dark rims hauling ass down a dirt road, me trying to learn how to drive this thing.

[01:11:51.430] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:11:53.020] - Andrew Paulson

And Dustin and Becker Webster were watching me at the time. When the lights kicked off and the glowing the Dark rims kicked on, Becker just went nuts. She's like, Woohoo. They like the show. That's their jam. So Dustin comes over to me and we start chatting up. He's like, Well, He started giving me pointers. He's like, do you have water in the tires? I'm like, what? Rang and buggy, water in the tires. He helped me fill my tires up with water that night. How full? He says, all the way. He loaned me their little water filler upper thing through the valve stem. He hooked me up with that. So, yeah, that next morning after the national anthem, by this time, I'm realizing I'm way over my head. We didn't have sportsmen classes then. You were just- I was just with the Unlimited. Yeah. And I got Tracy Jordan on one side and the Lovell brothers on the other side of me and all these pretty big names. And I think there were a lot cars that event, too. Oh, absolutely. Forty plus. It was a busy time. National Anthem quits. I start out on my first course.

[01:13:11.080] - Andrew Paulson

Coming off that one fin, I tipped it over. I didn't do the PCB valve, so I'm smoking. Cylindular heads are locked up, and I'm like the first one tipped over. You know how that was landscaped out? It was pretty good for spectators, right? Absolutely. I look across, I'm like, I'm I'm the first smuck upside down needing recovery. Here, recovery on whatever course, B1 or A1. I look across the landscape, and then I see another guy tip over. Then I see a third guy tip over. This is within the first four minutes after the National Anthem.

[01:13:51.200] - Big Rich Klein

There was a lot of rollovers that weekend.

[01:13:52.840] - Andrew Paulson

It was like right out of the gate. Everybody's upside down. I'm like, Okay, I'm not the only smuck upside down on course. That was my first dabble with professional rock crawling was that event.

[01:14:07.990] - Big Rich Klein

It was Paris, California.

[01:14:09.510] - Andrew Paulson

We still had two days, eight courses. We finished one course, that event.

[01:14:18.270] - Big Rich Klein

You know what? That's actually not bad from back in those days because those courses were a bitch.

[01:14:23.770] - Andrew Paulson

Oh, man.

[01:14:24.310] - Big Rich Klein

That was when Rich was really setting up some gnarly stuff. There was teams that would accuse him of building car killers just so that the second day would run faster.

[01:14:41.300] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, I believe it.

[01:14:43.150] - Big Rich Klein

Now he does Trail Hero in the Trailbreaker event. You know? And... Same, same? Yeah, might be some same, same complaints at times. But you know what? It's working. Nobody has to drive them. If the drivers really think that something is too much.

[01:15:03.600] - Andrew Paulson

It's a choice.

[01:15:04.420] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it's their choice. But if all the drivers decide not to do it, then that really sends a message to the course designer.

[01:15:13.230] - Andrew Paulson

You have seen that. I have as well when I was spotting for Tyler Roundy. There was that one obstacle that was too much, and everybody was like, We're done. As an event promoter, you totally respected that. I was like, That's awesome. You always were able to adjust for that.

[01:15:30.670] - Big Rich Klein

I remember one time there was concerns of a rock that if it fell off from up above, and the car was in the right place, it was like, do you know how hard it is going to be to move that rock? I think it ended up taking us four 45 minutes to an hour to move that rock because it did not want to go anywhere. There would have had been like a 9.0 earthquake for that rock to fall. But you do what you got to do. Then Was it the game in rock crawling that you liked, or was it the technical aspect of figuring out the line, or was it just... What was it?

[01:16:21.130] - Andrew Paulson

Well, there were at least two things I can think of.

[01:16:24.210] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[01:16:25.280] - Andrew Paulson

Yes, the puzzle, for sure. I mean, I was always the trail leader, spotter in Moab when we were trail running. I always had a knack for seeing the lines, again, from the rock climbing, where to put your tires, where to put your hands. I could see the path. I definitely enjoyed that, enjoyed walking courses, and then putting that puzzle to flourition under the clock. That was always a fun part. The other part is a A lot of people get the summit fever, podium fever. That was never what it was for me. It was about the adventure, the people I'd meet, the fans, the spectators. Back then, it was grassroots people that would show up, and competitors as well. If you ask my wife, I was always one that shut down the campfire. I like people. I was always, you know.

[01:17:30.070] - Big Rich Klein

You and Todd Young.

[01:17:31.110] - Andrew Paulson

Exactly. I mean, right there, 100% nailed it. Yeah, we would shut down the campfire. Between the fans and the people, the camaraderie that came behind it, it was just fun to be entertaining. I remember a couple of events in, say, Cedar City. I think I made the front page of the paper. Nice. I think I did three events at Cedar City total, maybe four. By the fourth event, I actually had a following of guys that were like, This guy is not going to finish the course, but he's going to either roll it across the finish line, he's going to roll it early on, he's going to be upside down trying to get upright, or he's going to break something.

[01:18:11.400] - Big Rich Klein

It would be fun to watch, though.

[01:18:13.160] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. So I had a following in Cedar City. They knew who I was, and yeah, so I just enjoyed that aspect of it. Not really caring about the podium, but just the fun of the adventure. Then the other part was the builder in me. Build it, break it, build it better. That stemmed from my trail years and putting a scout together because let's say they're There's a little work in making a scout trail worthy. Right.

[01:18:50.100] - Big Rich Klein

I mean, you could have picked something a little harder, maybe like a Landrover. Sure.

[01:18:57.170] - Andrew Paulson

Landruiser.

[01:18:58.230] - Big Rich Klein

Anyway, One of the event that I remember most you running, or at least one situation at an event, was in Oroville at the manmade course that we did there along the river, the the river there. I could remember over the radio saying, Hey, we're going to need help with this recovery. We got a car and a tree. Before I responded, I think I closed my eyes, I tried to envision a car in a tree. About that time, Bob Rogge walks up and he goes, or maybe I was walking past him and he goes, Just get a fucking chainsaw, I think is what he said. Bob That was a guy that doesn't say a whole lot of words, but it was like, you're going to need a fucking chainsaw, something like that.

[01:19:52.050] - Andrew Paulson

That's awesome. I hadn't heard that story. That's good. It would have been easier.

[01:19:55.940] - Big Rich Klein

It would have been. It would have changed the course a lot. Yes. I walk over and here you are against the tree, but in the tree. It wasn't like we could just pull you one way or the other and get you off of the tree because of the way the terrain was and how you were How you were wedged into this tree.

[01:20:19.220] - Andrew Paulson

Wedged is a good word.

[01:20:20.830] - Big Rich Klein

It was an interesting affair. It wasn't like you were going to jump right out of the buggy either.

[01:20:26.650] - Andrew Paulson

Oh, no. Yeah, it was a drop. I had to climb down my tires on the suspension. Yeah, so it was... I would say that was probably one of my favorite setups with Zorville.

[01:20:41.190] - Big Rich Klein

Really?

[01:20:41.760] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. Because you've got this Great. They did a good job on the shotcrete. But then you had these features of old military trucks. You'd have to drive over. They were part of the course. Right. So you're mixing rock crawling with demolition derby with monster truck, driving over school busses, that stuff. I think the fans appreciated that, too, in Orville. The technicality of those courses, they were just fun. They were just fun, especially with a rear-steer vehicle, having to drive through the old military truck bed. But yeah, the one thing my car did okay with, but not always, was those steep climbs. I believe that that tree was part of, sprayed into the course, and it was on that steep climb. I didn't make the breakover, pitched sideways, and that's how I got wedged behind that.

[01:21:49.210] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[01:21:50.280] - Andrew Paulson

I think what we ended up having doing was taking my front winch, my control winch, and winching me up into the tree so we could pivot the car around the tree And then lower it back down. Yeah, get out of the tree.

[01:22:04.400] - Big Rich Klein

Because the last thing I wanted to do is cut the tree down.

[01:22:06.280] - Andrew Paulson

No. Yeah. Because it would have changed the course because you would have had that extra. It wouldn't have forced you on the steepest part of that climb. Correct. Yeah. And we're all tree huggers here, let's face it.

[01:22:19.830] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. Yes. Our renewable resources. You also helped me when Dave Cole asked me to come down to K-O-H and run Chocolate Thunder and do recoveries there. It was the year after the big traffic jam, and I think it was Dean Bullock tried to pass Tony Pellegrino.

[01:22:46.740] - Andrew Paulson

They were all upside down and on top of each other. Yeah.

[01:22:49.280] - Big Rich Klein

And Chit Joe. Yeah. They didn't have it well marked off at the time. There was all sorts of people in the way, so they They decided they were going to make a... They had to change how they addressed Chocolate Thunder at that time and that little geek keeper down there. We went down and we rigged up. Well, with one vehicle, we could make six different pulls. Yes. It was pretty awesome.

[01:23:17.390] - Andrew Paulson

It was fast recovery, too. I remember it was a Christian group that helped volunteer that year.

[01:23:25.340] - Big Rich Klein

Is that right? I think it was, yeah.

[01:23:28.530] - Andrew Paulson

They were trail runners. When I'd get out there and start, because I was used to the W-Rock flow of recovery-Meaning you get it done as quick as possible.

[01:23:37.430] - Big Rich Klein

You didn't have time.

[01:23:39.060] - Andrew Paulson

You keep the crowd going. You keep the flow of the event going. That's what I think Dave wanted to accomplish with that. Get rid of the bottlenecks. That was the first year he started doing that. Made sense. Keep the fans happy, keep the action going. These trail crew, the first recovery, the first one we whipped, the lead of their crew looks at me. He's like, Whoa. He's like, That happened fast. I said, Yep, that's how it's going to be all weekend.

[01:24:05.960] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, because you think about it, you got more cars coming. That first recovery isn't the last car on course.

[01:24:12.340] - Andrew Paulson

Correct.

[01:24:14.350] - Big Rich Klein

They picked it up.

[01:24:16.190] - Andrew Paulson

That was a great group. Yeah.

[01:24:18.060] - Big Rich Klein

I think we did a really good job there. It was fun, too.

[01:24:24.640] - Andrew Paulson

We had our pull-out spots, too. When somebody would break an accel, it'd be like, okay. Get them to That spot, so we kept it flowing.

[01:24:32.840] - Big Rich Klein

It worked for years. You did it with me two or three years? Two years. Two years. Then Matt Hodges from Texas came up and helped me for a couple of years as well. While I still did that. Then Shelle and I quit going to K-O-H just because it was- It's a lot. It was a lot, yeah. It was getting to be too much. Maybe I'm just getting too old for that a crowd.

[01:25:01.080] - Andrew Paulson

Sure.

[01:25:02.810] - Big Rich Klein

So what are you doing? Well, let's go into the four low. Okay. Shelle was always amazed at all the things that you always had going here in the shop. It wasn't just the powder coating. It was the remote control cars and airplanes and the rock crawers and everything that you would create. I mean, you were always building stuff. Every time we walk into the shop, we didn't know what you were building, whether it be a little desktop or a tabletop still. Is still the right word for it?

[01:25:51.910] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah.

[01:25:52.410] - Big Rich Klein

I guess so. It wasn't for drinking, it was for creating fuel.

[01:25:57.710] - Andrew Paulson

Hand sanitizer.

[01:25:58.860] - Big Rich Klein

Hand sanitizer.

[01:25:59.570] - Andrew Paulson

There you That thing came in handy during COVID. Yeah.

[01:26:01.850] - Big Rich Klein

Thank you, COVID. Covid made some things legal and a lot of things illegal. But you always had something that you were That intrigued you that you were working on. Like building your own ovens. I mean, now you got an oven you can drive into. You've done mushrooms, meaning you grew mushrooms.

[01:26:29.910] - Andrew Paulson

Gourmet Gourmet mushrooms.

[01:26:30.890] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. Growing gourmet mushrooms. When I say doing mushrooms, I don't mean-Correct. Psilocybin and purple and pink school busses.

[01:26:42.550] - Andrew Paulson

No, we're talking lion's mane, blue oysters, gourmet for restaurants.

[01:26:46.980] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:26:47.540] - Andrew Paulson

That would have taken off, but COVID got me because all the restaurants shut down. That wasn't my another venture, and I might get back to it.

[01:26:54.130] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, good. Because you still have all the facilities.

[01:26:56.090] - Andrew Paulson

I still have the lab and the grow room. I I still have my cultures in the fridge.

[01:27:01.730] - Big Rich Klein

There you go.

[01:27:02.410] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, mushrooms going from RC airplanes to growing gourmet mushrooms. Yeah. Right. It's a weird brain.

[01:27:11.660] - Big Rich Klein

And hand sanitizer in between. Yep. So you wrote articles for Four Low in our man cave, which was... I really liked what you did because you put a lot of thought process into your writing, and you could see that, and you made it humorous, but yet still technical. That was awesome.

[01:27:36.970] - Andrew Paulson

I appreciate that. Yeah. I did enjoy doing that. When the business ran A lot of time. Oh, absolutely. It's time consuming when you do an article because, like I said, you come back to that all or nothing, I'm going to do it right. I'm not just going to- Half-ass it. Hand in a junk paper that was written in the last deadline point. The reason I missed deadlines was because I was mind-effing things to make sure it was a good product. I do that with my powder coating. I do that with everything. Do it right.

[01:28:13.610] - Big Rich Klein

There's nothing wrong with chasing quality. Correct. That's a good trait.

[01:28:21.640] - Andrew Paulson

I think we need more of that in this world. Absolutely. If I had to preach out on this podcast, I would say, take the time and do it right, guys.

[01:28:29.340] - Big Rich Klein

There you go.

[01:28:30.280] - Andrew Paulson

It'll get you further in life than the shortcuts.

[01:28:32.510] - Big Rich Klein

What things are keeping you going now?

[01:28:38.100] - Andrew Paulson

My new venture, my wife bought me a jet boat. I've been jet boating with my buddy on the Salmon River. Nobody knows anything about running rivers. There's lots of rocks. Some of them move, some of them will put a hole in your boat. It's like rock crawling on water. It's a puzzle. You have to memorize your courses. When your boat slips sideways or the water level rises and drops, you have to adjust. That's my new puzzle game. I'm working on just some of the The Idaho River is here locally. My long game, it would be fun to learn the Salmon River. I may or may not get there, but I've spent a lot of time on that river back in the day with C. W. Hogg, where I met my wife. Well, now we steelhead fish on it with my buddy who's learned the first 20 miles of that river, and he's maybe 1%. There's only about 12 people that know how to run that section of river.

[01:29:42.590] - Big Rich Klein

Wow. Yeah.

[01:29:44.360] - Andrew Paulson

So it's not for the fain of heart.

[01:29:47.260] - Big Rich Klein

No, it's one of the- It's pretty intense. It's truly... It might be the last true wild river in the United States. Correct.

[01:29:55.820] - Andrew Paulson

Because it's a river of no return. There's no dams. When you go to the end of the road, the only thing you pretty much have to get out is a pack trail on one side of the river.

[01:30:09.270] - Big Rich Klein

If you're going to have an issue, you better make sure you're on the- You better make sure you swim to the right side of the river because you're going to have to swim it twice if you don't.

[01:30:15.310] - Andrew Paulson

These are things we think about and talk about.

[01:30:18.100] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, right. Exactly. When you say there's a pack trail on one side of the river, it's true.

[01:30:23.150] - Andrew Paulson

The rest is Frank Church wilderness. Right. I mean, bear country and all kinds of things that want to kill you. Rattle snakes. Rattle snakes. Yeah. Rattlesnakes. That's been the newer venture is just doing the jet boat thing. Again, it comes back to that being on the water. Fishing is part of it, but the people you meet as well.

[01:30:46.300] - Big Rich Klein

There are adventurous souls that decide to put themselves out there.

[01:30:49.040] - Andrew Paulson

Yes.

[01:30:50.440] - Big Rich Klein

How about... We've talked What about Shannon. Do you want to talk about her accident?

[01:31:05.350] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, I can. If I get emotional, don't freak out. It's a very passionate... It's very It's such a changing point in our lives. About five years ago, her and her friend were biking down a country road out here. Speed limit's about 45 miles an hour. A kid, I guess this is the biggest plug, if Nobody hears this. He had a new vehicle. He saw them, but he looked down and he checked his phone. You see the commercials where they're like, Oh, yeah, don't check your phone. A lot of this younger generation, no big deal. I can multitask this, that, and the other. Well, yeah, it got us. She got hit from behind, ended up in the ICU for about two weeks. She had a pretty bad orbital and occipital brain injury. She had about three clots that happened as a result. Broken sacrum, some ribs, shoulder, but that was all triage stuff. They didn't even address that. They were busy putting her in the MRI, making sure her brain was working. That night, I watched her, my wife, love of my life, I watched her code out, stop Her heart stopped three times that night.

[01:32:32.590] - Andrew Paulson

Er nurses would come in and pump her with something and bring her back. At this point, she's in a coma. I don't know what I'm going to get. I worked for CW Hog with people who had brain injuries. I'm already doing the math in my head. I'm like, She could be a vegetable. She could be... What are the faculties? Quality of life. I'm already going through this, and this is only the first couple of nights. Yeah, pretty It's a pretty tough thing to witness. I used to be a wilderness first responder, part of a requirement for my job. I've worked on people that were in that state, but it's different when it's someone you're that close to. Right. Miraculously, a couple of weeks later, she wakes up. She's talking, she's walking. Not great. But the first day, so it was a month of We finally get her moved over to the rehab floor. First day, rehab doctor comes in. She had known him from past experiences, Dr. Hill. He's like, Okay, because all the doctors come in at 4:00 or 6:00 AM. That's where my sleep cycle got really messed up because I was always there for that.

[01:33:47.860] - Andrew Paulson

Come home, run the business, and then I'd sleep during the day. He comes in and he's like, All right. Well, good to see you. Yadi-yadi. She's talking pretty lucid with him. Next day, he comes in and down. He's like, Well, I looked at your MRIs and your brain scans. He's like, I can't believe we're having a conversation right now. He's like, You shouldn't be cognitive or talking based on the brain scans. Yeah, so she's a trooper. I mean, total trooper. And yes, it still affects her to this day, and I still do have some anger issues towards that individual. I probably always will. It's very hard to forgive and forget. I mean, he did stop. It wasn't a hit and run. He did the right thing he could for being a young- Afterwards. For being a young kid. Yeah. But probably shouldn't have checked his phone. That's all there is to it. But no, she's back to work. She's running her occupational thing for the school district and doing the best she can, given the hand she was dealt. It was not an easy hand. I don't know how I would have handled that. A lot of people, I might have just given up on life being that banged up.

[01:35:00.830] - Andrew Paulson

She trudges. She's a trooper, for sure.

[01:35:05.850] - Big Rich Klein

Awesome. One of the things that you guys do is dogs. You've created an agility course out here on your property called Dazyland. Talk about that and the love affair of pets.

[01:35:28.830] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, always My dad had the great Pyranies growing up. I always joke, I was raised by a pack of great Pyranies. I remember trying to ride one once as a kid. He bucked me off and growled at me. He didn't bite me, but I learned dog language pretty quick there. She always had a passion with her couple of rescue dogs during her graduate school, always teaching them tricks. I had a couple of dogs at the time. When we moved out to this place, we ended up with four dogs, and we just always liked animals. We've always done rescues for the most part. Then she got into doing this agility thing with a local place called I had. One dog makes a difference. Jane Goodinger runs that program. We had the property. Growing up, she always wanted to have a place for her dog Dazy was one of her first loves that she did agility with. She actually won a national event in agility.

[01:36:37.910] - Big Rich Klein

Nice.

[01:36:38.580] - Andrew Paulson

Out of Arizona. I bought an old tractor and We tilled up a little 100 by 200 patch of dirt, planted it with some grass seed, and eventually, we were getting it fenced in and built a little pavilion over the years. The group of people that do agility, they're just good people, a lot like the off-road world. It's a good attraction.

[01:37:10.700] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:37:11.290] - Andrew Paulson

I think that was a lot of the drive for building that. I've run agility personally a little bit, but not the passion my wife has. But then, again, the people it attracts is what really keeps me keeping it going because we don't make money on it. No. It's a hobby.

[01:37:31.500] - Big Rich Klein

That's what most passions happen. They're time consumers, but it gives you a release from your everyday day-to-day thing. Sure.

[01:37:47.150] - Andrew Paulson

We say we rescue dogs, but I think they rescue us.

[01:37:52.280] - Big Rich Klein

True.

[01:37:53.430] - Andrew Paulson

One of my favorite parts of the day is when I wake up in the morning and I get on the couch. These dogs, they found us, all our rescues. We're six or seven now. We had many over the years. It seemed like a lot more than that. It did seem like a lot more, yeah. The other day. They're busy. But in the morning, they're a little more calm. I'll just be waking up, checking text or whatever, and they'll just come lay on me. That's just one of my favorite parts of the day, it's just that calm. If I can't get out fishing, then at least I have my morning snuggles with my pack.

[01:38:31.230] - Big Rich Klein

There you go. Excellent. We've been petless for quite a while. Sure. With not knowing our current living situation, how long that's going to last.

[01:38:46.800] - Andrew Paulson

It's hard.

[01:38:47.290] - Big Rich Klein

It's hard to make plans.

[01:38:49.570] - Andrew Paulson

And that's responsible because so many people, it's Christmas puppies and this and that. No, you realize owning an animal is a commitment. Right. And it's not just It's not just buying a chicken for Easter. You got to take care of that thing the rest of its life.

[01:39:08.230] - Big Rich Klein

Some rabbit or turtle or something like that. Dogs and cats, especially, or horses, they take a lot more energy than, say, a turtle.

[01:39:18.260] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, and that's just being responsible. Right.

[01:39:21.760] - Big Rich Klein

I never understood where somebody will make a decision to buy somebody a pet or give them a pet, whether they buy it or however they acquire it, whether it's a dog or a cat, typically dogs because cats pick you. You can go and say, I want that cat, and then the cat disappears because it doesn't like you.

[01:39:46.660] - Andrew Paulson

There's two of them running around here, and they both pick me. Yeah, exactly.

[01:39:49.180] - Big Rich Klein

They just show up. That's what happened with our cat Calleigh that we traveled with, with We Rock and Dirt Right. That cat just, it showed up at Shelleys house. When we went on the road, the cat-Jumped in, said, let's go. Yeah, let's go. Let's go do this. It was awesome. Yeah. But I can't understand why people do that, whether it's for their grandkids, Grandparents have a tendency to do that. Oh, here's a dog for my granddaughter or grandson or whatever. It's like, why did you do that? Was your grandchild really interested in that in having that pet, or were you just assuming they would be? Because now you've just put a lot of pressure on that child or the parent, which typically is what ends up happening. That parent all of a sudden has another responsibility that they really possibly didn't want. Otherwise, they would have done it.

[01:40:50.420] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. I think grandparents, they like the dopamine hit of making their grandchild smile.

[01:40:56.730] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, there you go.

[01:40:57.840] - Andrew Paulson

I think that's some of that reason. But I think it's more responsible to just buy them a candy bar, get them sugared up, and then send them home. Right.

[01:41:05.270] - Big Rich Klein

I agree.

[01:41:06.630] - Andrew Paulson

That's my philosophy on that.

[01:41:08.300] - Big Rich Klein

I would never buy any of my grandkids pets.

[01:41:10.870] - Andrew Paulson

It is what it is.

[01:41:13.380] - Big Rich Klein

Here's one of your shop cats.

[01:41:14.400] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, that's Stinky. Hey, Stinky. Stinky is Onework's official position as human resources.

[01:41:21.730] - Big Rich Klein

Right.

[01:41:22.410] - Andrew Paulson

So if anybody has a problem, take it up with Stinky. Yeah.

[01:41:24.580] - Big Rich Klein

And Stinky has been around for a while. Yes.

[01:41:26.630] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah. Especially for an outside country living shop cat. He's He's done all right.

[01:41:31.420] - Big Rich Klein

You can see his ears are...

[01:41:33.160] - Andrew Paulson

He's a little nar-nard. Yeah, he's gotten shredded a little bit.

[01:41:36.450] - Big Rich Klein

A little bit. He looks at you like, what are you doing in my shop?

[01:41:41.030] - Andrew Paulson

Yep. But he comes and says, hi. Yeah.

[01:41:44.880] - Big Rich Klein

He's looking at you right now going, What are you doing?

[01:41:48.240] - Andrew Paulson

He's probably wanting food. Oh, yeah. Like all cats.

[01:41:51.210] - Big Rich Klein

He's over here going, Why are you in my chair? What do you think is next for you?

[01:42:00.040] - Andrew Paulson

A couple of things. I would like to grow the business to a point where I'm less involved.

[01:42:10.880] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[01:42:12.240] - Andrew Paulson

I imagine that's the goal for a lot of business owners that you might have interviewed, so that it frees them-Or myself. Or yourself. So it frees you up to do the things you want to do. And that's a really hard balance.

[01:42:24.890] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it is.

[01:42:27.440] - Andrew Paulson

Especially the way our modern society is structured. So that's my professional goal, is just to get a couple of solid guys, just get it flowing a little better so that I can free up to finish some of these things that I've started. And That is an ADD curse. We love to start things, and we get bored. I've been journaling about that and picking my priorities of things that I want to finish, whether it's the gourmet mushroom farm or just these little build projects I have floating around the shop. Nice. That's the direction I want to aim things. Then, learn how to read the water with a jet boat, learn how to be a better jet boat driver.

[01:43:17.610] - Big Rich Klein

There you go.

[01:43:18.000] - Andrew Paulson

Because it's not point and shoot.

[01:43:20.880] - Big Rich Klein

No, it's not. No, no. And you're right. It has a lot of the same attributes is the rock crawling does, reading a line. There's some people that it always amazes me when they come out and rock crawl, and they're first on course, and you can tell they can't see the line. They don't see it. They may have walked in listening to everybody else, and they're trying to do what the other guys... Those are the ones that always hate to go first because they really don't see it. There's nothing wrong with that. Some people will pick it up over time, and some people will never do But it's part of the game. It's a fascinating watch for sure.

[01:44:09.390] - Andrew Paulson

Absolutely. This is an old Timer, Bill Saylu, who runs the Salmon River. I've gotten to know him a little bit from being up there. He says, Come down. He says, Within the first day, I will tell you if you got it or don't got it. He's Coast Guard certified and all that. He's been running that river for 40 plus years. Wow. But same thing. He'll tell you right out of the gate if you got it or don't got it.

[01:44:39.910] - Big Rich Klein

There's a lot of that. It's like running a bigger boat with twin engines without a bow thruster. I've never been afraid to drive anything. Drive a semi-truck. Hell, I got the semi-truck in and out of your driveway here. Multiple times. Without dropping into that drainage or the water trench.

[01:45:01.840] - Andrew Paulson

Oh, yeah, the culvert.

[01:45:02.410] - Big Rich Klein

The culvert out there or anything. It's a little tight. Yeah, it's a little tight. But the boat, it's one of those things that... And I guess, again, I don't have a problem put that thing in the... Or the idea of putting it into its birth when there's not an expensive boat next to me, when there's an expensive boat next to I got you. I have a little bit more fear because I really don't want to be fixing somebody else's boat. If I damage the haul on my own boat, so be it. I can deal with that. It's damaging my truck as opposed to somebody else's. But that's my only fear. But it takes... Josh Jackson is the one that's gotten me into the bigger boats like that. He has got a natural touch to put that boat into... Like where we fuel, it's a narrow spot, single wide berth. And he'll back that thing in there, in a 50-foot boat, 48-foot boat, that's 14-foot wide, 14.5-foot wide. And you've got a stall that's only 16 feet wide, and you're pulling it, backing it in there with winds and everything else. It's amazing. He just nails it every time.

[01:46:40.010] - Big Rich Klein

Every time we go to go get fuel, he's like, You ready? I'm like, No, go ahead and do it. One time I was getting ready to pull the boat in to my own birth, and he was with me, and I'm like, Okay, I got this. It's a little windy out. Not too bad, probably a 10-mile-an-hour cross breeze. But I knew it was the way it was blowing It'd blow me into my side of the dock away from the other boats. All of a sudden, one engine dies. I cracked the throttle, tried to start it back up, and it ain't starting. I go, Okay, Josh, it's yours. I walked away. He just put it in that stall like nothing, like it was nothing. I was like, All right, I got to get to that point where it doesn't bother me.

[01:47:27.960] - Andrew Paulson

Do you have alternating reverse and forward between the two motors? Oh, yeah, absolutely. You can get the crab spin.

[01:47:36.650] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah. You could walk that boat. Yeah. Okay. Against the wind, it's a little tough without a bow thruster. Right.

[01:47:42.140] - Andrew Paulson

It's a lot of sail.

[01:47:45.710] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, because it's still, it's 19, 20 foot tall as well, too. It's like a big old box out there when the wind's blowing.

[01:47:54.890] - Andrew Paulson

This last trip on the main salmon, this guy Bill I was talking about, he had to They're a jet drive, not a prop. On a jet drive, you got a dump, which gives you reverse. He's coming in. Well, it was parked in the parking lot up there, and I think somebody borrowed a screw that connected his linkage to the dump. Cool. So he's headed downriver. We're about six miles in, and we're at a cabin down there. All of a sudden, he goes to pull in, and he's just doing circles. Well, so it's a twin pump. We call it twin. One of the dumps was locked in the down, reverse position. He just handles it as cool as can be. I mean, he's either done it long enough, he's wrecked enough junk that didn't It's not bothering him. He got it handled. But yeah, it's like you said, you lose that one side of the motor and you're like, Whoa, okay. I got it. I got it. I don't got it.

[01:48:54.910] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. It's like anybody has ever paddled, been in a canoe and in Unless you know the proper stroke, you're moving your paddle from side to side to keep yourself going straight. Then you'll see somebody that knows what they're doing, and they're using a J-stroke, and they're just nice, straight, even in the wind. They're never shifting sides, and it's just a nice smooth…

[01:49:19.130] - Andrew Paulson

Some of that, you just got to get out there and do it to learn it.

[01:49:22.860] - Big Rich Klein

Yep, absolutely. Is there anything that we haven't touched on that you want to touch on? Any projects, anything you're building now?

[01:49:34.080] - Andrew Paulson

Not that I can think of. The project I'm currently working on with my buddy who runs a jet boat. We're actually... He was running high water last year. I wasn't with him on that trip. So you've got the center top. Well, he stuffed it in a wave. Oh, wow. Pretty big and blew his center top off.

[01:50:00.590] - Big Rich Klein

That's a big wave.

[01:50:02.180] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, it was high water. He thought he heard the windows cracking. Our current project is we're reinforcing that center top. It's more lockdowns, making it more aerodynamic, water dynamic, fluid dynamic. Then we're putting lexan windshields in it. Okay, cool. I did print him a mug, his koozie. He had Cruisey. I've got a friend with a vinyl printer, and it was just to remind him, it says, Boats aren't submarines. He got a kick out of that. I said, Well, I just got to make sure you remember that.

[01:50:42.280] - Big Rich Klein

You know, though, in the Navy, boats are submarines. Yeah.

[01:50:49.300] - Andrew Paulson

Then you know how it goes with boats. I have probably half a page of list of things I want to do with my newer boat. Adjust the seats, move the batteries, the trolling motor, the angle on it's not right, so I need to cut that off and get my aluminum fab back on and get the angle corrected on that. Just those little things that make it Take your months to do so you have a good day out on the water.

[01:51:19.120] - Big Rich Klein

But it personalizes it to your taste. Correct.

[01:51:23.280] - Andrew Paulson

That's owning a boat. You know that. Oh, yeah.

[01:51:27.090] - Big Rich Klein

What do they say? The two happiest days for a boat owner are the day you buy your boat and the day you sell your boat. I have a lot of happy days just sitting on my boat.

[01:51:38.730] - Andrew Paulson

I agree with that as well.

[01:51:42.380] - Big Rich Klein

Well, Andrew, I want to say thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me and telling your story. It's been great. I just wish I could get here more often and spend more time with you because I always cherish those times.

[01:52:00.090] - Andrew Paulson

Yeah, and me as well. But that's the lifestyle, right? It is. Honestly, it's been an honor knowing you. I have utmost respect for you and how you navigate this world You've been an inspiration for me a lot of times, even when I was down and out with Shannon's accident or business, I remember, what would Big Rich do here? He'd keep trudging. He'd keep going.

[01:52:30.460] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, that's part of life.

[01:52:33.060] - Andrew Paulson

That's part of the off-road culture. Yes. I think that's why a lot of people are allured to it. Okay, well, we're broke now. How do we keep going?

[01:52:43.570] - Big Rich Klein

I think that is a big allure to it because you know you're going to... Own in an off-road vehicle is one of those things that... I don't want to say Jeep, but an off-road vehicle, because it can be a pickup truck, it could be whatever, but it's when you take it off the pavement. It could be a jet boat. Yes. Anything that you take off pavement or off the main road where everybody else is at, you're going to have issues. If you're not prepared for those issues, then it can be a life or death situation. It can be one of those hobby ending situations where you just give up. But the true enthusiast or the person with the passion for that never gives up and continues to trudge through and make it work.

[01:53:34.430] - Andrew Paulson

Yep. And always being willing to ask for help every now and then. Yep. Absolutely. It takes a community.

[01:53:40.990] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, it does.

[01:53:41.530] - Andrew Paulson

It does. You've built some pretty cool communities with your various venues. So thanks for that. Just so you know.

[01:53:49.650] - Big Rich Klein

You're welcome. And you know what? I have to say that if I leave a legacy, my legacy is the people that I have met that have had a chance to meet each other as well and create their own community outside of where I'm at with them. It's amazing. Just at Josh England's wedding, and the people that showed up for his wedding and the diversity of where we met them and knowing that it was because of what we do is why they were there. Not because they were there because they knew Josh, but they were all there because of what we were doing. If that's my legacy, then I'm very happy with that.

[01:54:48.350] - Andrew Paulson

That's a good satisfaction.

[01:54:49.810] - Big Rich Klein

All right, Andrew, thank you so much. You bet. Good luck in life. Yep, you as well.

[01:54:55.720] - Andrew Paulson

Be well. All right. Bye.

[01:54:58.960] - Big Rich Klein

Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email or a text message or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have or if there's anybody that you have that you think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoy life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gusto you can. Thank you.