The Legend of Niler
Welcome back. Here we are. The last Boy Scouts podcast.
We're back. We're back. It's been some time. Wow.
January 19th. January 19th. January 19th was the last
episode that we put out. Yeah. There has been. A lot
has happened. Wow. A lot has happened. An insane, like
we just, like we were just talking about time stopped. Yep.
And then all of a sudden it was like gone. Yep. And then like
it picked right back up and. Yeah. And we're going to get to the
meat and the potatoes. We're going to get into some of why the
Yeah. We'll catch everybody up and apologize to our
viewers and our listeners. Sometimes
life gets in the way and you've got to keep going, but
you've got to put things on the back burner. And unfortunately, this enterprise
was one of the things that just got shuffled to the back burner. Yeah.
Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for being patient with us. Thank you for listening
to us. And I'm sure as we go
on, you'll give some grace. You'll
give us a pass, like we like to talk about. First things first. Um,
I've been telling Tyler that I want to do this. I want to
do smelling salts. I've seen, I've seen, uh,
I've, I've seen the, the Joe Rogan and them doing the dancing
when they were on the UFC fight pass. And I was like, man,
I want to do that. I want to, I've never done it before. Um, so
this is a atomic red line and they're smelling salts. Tyler has done
it before I've done. Yeah. Um, popular lacrosse season.
I'm going to definitely have an elevated heart
rate. I was, you know, you, yeah,
They work. It'll get me going. I'm a little tired. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie.
So I'm going to open this and then, Oh, I'm
going to get it right there. No, I don't know. Let's see here. Here we
go. Oh, Oh,
Oh, it
really is. Holy shit. Wow. Oh, that's
not what is way stronger than the one I've
Holy smokes, dude. That was insane. It
was an instant. burning in my nose.
Yeah. Wow.
Wow. That was insane. We probably do one more. Um, maybe
at the end. Oh, it's like burns down my throat. Wow. That
was insane. That was, that's not even close to
Those were, that was strong. That was a strong hit. All right. Our
eyes are watering. Tyler's got tears rolling down his eyes. That was a strong, like
the ones I did were not nearly that strong. We did the little poppers.
Yeah. Like you pop them and they come in your first aid kit. That is like
atomic rhino. Atomic rhino. Where did you find these? On
Amazon. Using Amazon, huh? Yeah. But you know what? Chinese
We're all going to like, um, you
can't smell it outside of the bottle. I thought you
could like, uh, when I write, I listen to Joe Rogan and then they're talking about how
they can sell it outside. So there's probably some stronger ones, right?
I would imagine. I would imagine it's
like anything you get used to it. And so you got to like up yourself, yourself. It's
probably not great for you, but that was insane. That was, that was,
that Boom, it woke me up. Yeah,
it definitely had me going putting you right in in the thick
Yeah, so You know what this
this that we're gonna cover a lot of things we're gonna we're gonna get
into Some of the things that we've been that we've
been having going on, but let's get right into let's get right
into it Yeah, if you're cool with that, yeah, let's get started. So so so
This, this is a, again, allow a space cause
we're going to, we're going to kind of maybe like if we start to jump all over,
if we start to hop all over, it's because, um, it's
so, it's so new. It's so fresh. It's so brand new. It's
Yeah, no, I thought a lot about this in the month
that we've been off, a little over a month that we've been off. But on
January 27th, I got a call at
about 4.30 that my little brother had collapsed at work. and
that his
wife was on the way to the emergency room to meet him there. There
was some information that she just didn't have. She was panicked, and
I just said, calm down, you know, I'm here. And I
proceeded to spend like the next hour in just complete hopelessness,
like just thinking like, I didn't really have enough information. He
had collapsed. They had potentially revived him. But
he was collapsed and unconscious at work,
just kind of slumped over at his desk. And
so, I had to bear the weight
of just kind of like, okay, I trust the doctors, trust
the paramedics. I don't know what's going on. They're medical professionals.
He lives in Denver, so his office is
downtown. They took him by ambulance to
Denver General, which is a level four trauma center. And
unfortunately, after about
an hour, they just couldn't revive him. And he passed
away on the 27th. And
so I immediately had
to break the news to my parents. I kind of told her she could
not You know, you do things for family, right? You
carry things, you share the burden of these things. And we talked about
death in a previous podcast. And it's
interesting because our attachment was, we were a little bit more detached, and
this was definitely more personal, more at
home. But I broke down,
I felt very, very helpless for a good
72 hours until I could get out to Denver. And, um,
it was less than that. It was maybe 12 hours till I get to get out
It was fast. Yeah. And, and man, I remember, I
remember the day. It's so weird. Like, cause I was detached.
I have been detached from debt before. Like I wasn't, it's not, there's
times that it's personal and then there's times that it's like non-personal. And
then there's times where it's like, Whoa, that's not even close
to what we're planning. Um, Yeah,
I mean, the text, the text came through and then the text came through
that like, he didn't make it. And I'm thinking, wait, what?
Yeah, wait, look, what? This is almost like a movie. And
so whenever I, and then I, you know, when I, by the time I had gotten here,
Yeah. Yeah. It was like a tidal wave,
right? Like you, you're strong because, you know, I'm six,
700 miles away in, in, in Utah while he's in, in
Denver. Um, you know, you feel that it's just
an incredible feeling of helplessness. And the other thing I had
to do is I had to be prepared to, to tell my parents. And so,
um, I, I personally chose to wait until
I had more information and unfortunately, That
choice wasn't until after I knew that he had passed to
tell them so I Immediately made calls to
people I knew because I knew I was gonna need somebody so I texted you I texted my
daughter Bryn and I just said hey Nick needs some good juju. I
don't know what's going on right now But I just need some good
vibes put out his way um and
you start making the phone calls to family and and making you
know making people aware of the situation um
you know that during that 40 minutes i i talked to his
wife once and i said who are you with who's
driving you to the hospital give me his information because i want you to just be
completely present and just know that i will
i will handle What I need to handle from
my end, whatever it is I need to do. And that for me was the
phone calls to family. My dad
took it really hard. He lost his brother to
suicide, and he took it really hard. I can't imagine what it's
like to lose a child, to survive
your child. I
can't imagine what it's like to survive a spouse. My
heart is just broken for Casey and Nick's
boys. Nick had two boys, 11 and
7, Grayson and Jamie, who are just adorable, incredible young
men, and he had such a good relationship. He was really one of
those fathers you aspired to be. Very present with his
children. um had such a great
relationship with them um that
you know you just you feel sad because you know the
only thing he would have wanted um would be to raise
those boys for sure to raise those boys for sure i
was you know a wreck on the flight i overslept
my first flight thanks to a little bit of uh liquid courage yeah
liquid Maybe it's not courage at that point, maybe it's numbing.
Yeah, because I had came over and we
were talking and we were emotional and we were in the moment, right? And
I had came over because I knew Cami was over here. Yeah. And
I wanted you to, to, to have like, you know, solid, solid
ground underneath you. Solid, solid people
underneath you. Not that Cami's not, but just the fact that like, you
know, you're, she's, she's your, she's your, she's
your spouse. and you're divorced, right? So
I wanted to make sure that I was here. I ran home, got
my C-squared away, came back, and I was like, whoa. Dude,
what happened? Buffalo trace. Yeah, we didn't even wait. And
I understood it. I understood it. And I put the alcohol away because I was
like, well, we're done with that. We're done with that, and we're going to go ahead
and we're going to feel, and we're not going to try to mask it anymore. And
I understood it. I did understand it. You
know, um, you and Nick and my
brother and I were about the same age difference apart. And
my brother and I, I mean like, you know, we don't talk every day,
but when we talk, it's like, I mean, he's my brother. He's my
brother and I love him. And I can't imagine, I couldn't imagine, I
couldn't put myself in your position, but I did, I did
put myself in your position. And I did like think like, oh my gosh,
man, like what would I do? How can I, how can I, how can I
be, a strong person for
you. Yeah. And still, you know,
not like force my
own, like how I, how I would be, you know, like what I
would do or how I would be. I was just like, it was, it was very, it
was a very confusing trying time because I,
for Bryn's graduation, Nick was in town. Yep. And
I got here and he had just left. Yes. He,
he, he rode his motorcycle. Yeah. He rode his Harley from, from Denver
to here. And when I got, I came
over here cause I wanted to meet him cause I had heard so many things about him and
he had just left because he needed to get back over the mountain cause he
had rode his motorcycle. And I was like, Yeah, shit.
I should have came over like just 10, 15 minutes earlier and
I would have. Yeah. And then after a while,
when I told you, I was like, yeah, I never met him. You were like, oh, he was here for Bryn's birthday, for
Bryn's graduation. And I was like, I missed him. Yeah. We missed
Interesting story. Cause he rode his Harley. It was the first time, first probably not,
maybe not the longest trip he's ever been on, but as he was riding back, he
hit a snow storm going over Vail pass and just
powered through the snow storm on his, on his Harley. And I'm just like,
boy, he's crazy. It was all gas, all gas, no brake
was kind of a, a theme for, for Nick and
he lived. And so I got out to Denver as
soon as I could the Sunday morning after I called You
know, I got off work and notified work and let them know and
they were all just take your time. And
I was shocked. I got there probably about 11 by the time
I finally landed and got my ride. And there were
probably about 40 people in his house. And I was just like,
I was blown away. Like I was so grateful that like, I
didn't know everybody. I didn't recognize a lot of the faces. But
Nick was a connector of people. He was a general manager of
a car dealership, a dealer, a broker, and
there were people that were there that were neighbors. There were people there that he had sold
cars to, and there was just – his family was
just kind of like, embraced by this community. He
had a very good core group of friends that
as I would spend the week out there and get to know, I just got
to know each of them. In a way, I felt a little bit like
a surrogate Nick for their own healing journey. For
me, it was awesome to be
able to spend some time out there just in his world and see because,
you know, we're separated by that distance, right? Like we talked every
week, you know, once a week, even it was just like, Hey, what's up? He
would send me music. He sent me a song that morning
at six 30. And, and
I listened to it and I was going to text him back and I, you know,
I hadn't, I hadn't texted him back and I was like, I
Yeah. Yeah. And those little like emotions start to
really, really, if you're not careful and
you could go down a couple of bad, bad, bad rabbit holes, bad
rabbit holes. And so my, You know, I was
really worried about your mom. Yeah. I was really worried about your mom. I was really worried
about like Doug, you know, when I seen Doug on the phone, I
could tell in his eyes that he just was so lost. Yeah. He
was so lost. He was just so sad, you know? And,
and I think that I think like, man, that's gotta just be so hard. It
has to be really hard. Right. Um, so unexpected. He's
so young. Um, I seen his pictures, the pictures that
you posted on Instagram and I was like, man, you guys look so similar. I
know everyone said that. Your face, your hair, your face features.
But I, but I, and I asked you, I was like, man, he's kind of a big dude. He
Yeah. And all the pictures. And then you said like the people that some of the people that
he hung out with were a little smaller, but I was like, dude, he was, yeah, there was
a picture of him next to a Christmas tree that I was like, that dude looks like the Christmas tree. He's
He was, yeah, he was, he was probably a big presence. Yeah, he
was. He was a connector of people. And I think of this, if you haven't seen
this movie, have you ever seen the movie Peanut Butter Falcon? It's
an incredible story. And it's so interesting. The
main character played by Shia LaBeouf is named Tyler. And
he's kind of the guide, you know, in the traditional hero's journey sense. He's
the guide to this I
don't know if it's down syndrome, some sort of handicap, right? They're on
this adventure and they're about to swim across this
river. I love that part. And the kid goes, hey, Tyler,
are we going to die? And Tyler looks back at
him and he goes, yeah, of course. We're all in the process of dying, but that's not
the question. The question is, what kind of stories are they going
to tell about you after you're gone? And that's
what I've been riding on. That's the cloud that I've been riding on. It
would have been very easy to catastrophize this
and say, oh, why me? Why another shitty thing that's happening to me? But
I believed there was some wisdom that I could learn from this. There
was a next step in my
progression as a human being. I'm
ready for the things that happen to us, but I must be built for it because they've
happened. And here I am. And yeah, I
just think of the stories that his friends were would tell about
him as I was, as I would meet them throughout the weeks. And, you
The crazy part about that also is that you had just started a
new job. So you were in St. George. That's, that's another reason
why we weren't able to record is because, you know, we figured Record,
you'd go to St. George, come back, record, record in Florida.
We had all these, we had like, we
had our plan out there and we, we had committed to that plan,
right? You started that job and you were
gone for a week and it was, you know, when I had talked to you and you were like
really stoked, you were like really excited, you had gone to training, you had
gone to a couple of places down there that you needed to, to do some market research
on for, for our project, for our personal project that we have. we
have put like, effort into our own personal project, like
this project is not just the podcast. Yeah, it is all encompassing
of yours in my life. Right? Yeah. And so
we had that, like, okay, you're gonna start this job. And then we have this
plan. And then it's like, Yep. Yeah.
Pause. Yeah. Press the pause button and everything kind
Yeah. You come back and you adjust. You know, obviously my kids scheduled
because of the divorce. We're, we split time. And so, um,
not having my kids, my option was to wait another week or
to take them for two weeks. And, and so I, I opted to take them
for the two weeks and, Um, at that same time we
had Florida planned and I, I ended up just because I
had started this new job. I ended, I opted out of Florida. I
regret it. I regret, I guess there was a space shuttle launch. I
guess Pedro shower sour showed up and master Pedro was
I haven't even like ever, I have not free just
so you guys know, I have not even told Tyler a single story from Florida.
I've, I mean, I've caught like some, some things here or
there, and I know there's more and we're going to get to you because there's one, well,
there's one last piece of this and we'll, we'll, we'll let it be because, um,
you know, you only process things a
little bit at a time, I think in reality. And I think, um,
part of our processing is, you know, we ended up traveling, I took my
kids out, we ended up traveling back out there. Um,
and celebrating Grayson's
birthday. Grayson is Nick's oldest son. How old is he?
He turned 11. He's the same age as my youngest. And
so I took all my kids out there for his birthday, and we spent three
days out there. We did an escape room. We did indoor
skydiving. One
of his neighbors hosted a poker tournament. I
I should say, until that moment, until that moment you came in,
I had been doing sober. Like, I was trying to see how far I could go sober.
And so, when I did start drinking it, it hit
me hard probably pretty quick because I had flushed that out of my system
since mid-December. We were doing it. We were
doing it. And to be honest, since I came back from the poker tournament, there
was a situation at the poker tournament I'm not proud of. All of
his friends were there. I
think 12 guys there and there was a lot of tequila being poured. And
they woke up next to the toilet. I'm not proud of it. of
it. But, you know, hopefully I made him proud because he was,
you know, they kept telling me he was the life of the party. Man, one of his neighbors was from the
Dominican Republic. His English was like, he
was just like, I don't know. I don't, I've got brothers. I
don't know. And I'm like, I'm like, just tell me in Spanish. Just tell me in Spanish. And I
just sat there and made eye contact with him while he was, while he
told me how he felt, how he felt in Spanish. And like, I
didn't, I didn't say anything. I didn't understand anything,
but he was crying and he was just like connection, connection. And
this was, this is who Nick was. It was the stories that, that, you
know, he was, um, that he has. And so on
my way back from that drive, there's an incredible podcast on
grief. Um, Huberman, Andrew,
Andrew Huberman, um, the grief. So what is
grief? Grief is a state of pain and a stain of a state of wanting, but he breaks it
down. And this is where I like really have found, Like,
this has been an aha moment for me. He says, grief
exists in three dimensions. that define our relationship with
people and or things. The first one is space, the physical distance between you
and the object, the thing that you want. So for me and Nick, it was the
600 miles. Time, the time it would take for
us to reach that person should I want to speak to him.
Now with technology, it was always a phone call. We were always just calling.
We were always, you
know, just a phone call away. The third dimension is closeness or
the emotional closeness or attachment. Nick
and I were, despite the space, Nick and I were thick as thieves. We
survived our childhood together. We grew
up together. There
was definitely an emotional attachment there. He was my brother. He
was my only brother, my only sibling. As
I think about that three dimensions, and I think about how my brain is
really trying to process that, as I put some science behind
it, I'm just like, wow. wow, how incredible it
is that we study these things. For me, it's like knowing
how things work kind of helps bring me a little bit of I
don't want to say closure, but it helps me at least understand what
I'm going through and process a little bit better and
feel through it a little bit better. I
saw how my dad took it, and he was very quiet,
very stoic, very emotional and just kind of within
himself. My mom, I think, did her best. We made
all the arrangements for his body and stuff like
that. For her, it was good to get out and do some work. But
now, we are planning a celebration of
life, and we'll go out and do that when the weather warms up, and we can do
a celebration that really celebrates Nick, because I believe that's
what he would want. He wouldn't really want a funeral of people crying and
feeling sad. That man lived
life, that man built relationships, and that man
loved his children and his wife. He will
be missed, but we're going to move forward, and we're going to honor his
always we're gonna remember that dude and yeah, like remember his pictures and
and and and Honestly, like there's pictures where I was looking
at him and I was like man you can you can hear his laughter you
can hear his laughter in the picture cuz like I could only imagine that he
he Would be a life of the party or
would be somebody that stood out, you know like like that you would be drawn
to the pictures of him and his wife in the when
they must have did a Vow ring in
Vegas and they're both in their dresses. And I'm like, man, this is,
you know, a really cool, really cool thing. You know,
and I'm sure there's story after story, after story, after story. And the, the,
the hard thing is, is literally our
podcast starts in this, um,
I always tell people start at episode one, because if you start at episode 19, it's
not going to make sense. You have to start at one. And now this
chapter, as we move forward, if
you just listen to us, you're not going to grasp the fact that
like, In my opinion, men are just
not built for this sometimes. We don't know how to handle our
emotions sometimes. We do. We will hit the bottle, and
we will go down a negative path, and we will struggle, and we will
fight, and we will get lost in
ourselves. We will. We don't know how to deal
with these things. But if you have a good support system,
good bounce back, bounce back techniques. Like,
okay, I'm struggling today. I'm struggling today, but tomorrow I'm
going to hit my routine. I'm going to do my morning routine and
it's not going to be perfect. I'm not going to be okay. But
it's going to get me through the day. You are going to find these techniques and these
things that we've talked about from the very beginning, from the things
that we've talked about. You're going to learn that, like Tyler
and I, like we said from the very beginning, we are not professionals. We
are not perfect. But we are in our own journey. And
all we're doing is saying, it is OK to have
Absolutely. It's interesting because as I was at this poker tournament, it's
12 guys. I mean, I'm, I knew a handful of
them pretty well. Um, you know, I'm, I'm just
sitting there and I'm like, I'm having this like moment where I'm in
his life. I'm literally in his life. Like people are looking at
me, they're seeing Nick and they're like, they're grieving and I'm
grieving. And like, I started to well up and And one
of the gentlemen next to me saw that I was kind of getting weepy. But
I'm like, I was actually just really happy to be able to
share this moment with these men who loved him. And this was his
crew. And he was like, oh, we got to change the song. He
was like, it was really scary for him to see me emotional.
And I'm like, no, I'm perfectly happy with where I'm at. I'm
crying. If I'm welling up and getting emotional, I'm
actually really happy. We don't need to change it, but that little
And we want to get past those things. Yeah. And when
you have that tribe and you
have those moments that you're just so lost and so scared
and so nervous, you don't know what tomorrow brings. Because,
like we talked about, that night. death
is so final in certain instances right for
us yes for us it's so final it's so final
at that moment but then you start talking about stories and now you start talking
about the legend yes the legend of nick clark yeah and legend
of nick clark and now not only is he alive
he's thriving he's right the stories are being told you're
telling stories and he never he never dies he
never dies yes he's not here in the form that we want
him to be here right But we're going to tell stories about
Yeah, the best parts of him are still here. For sure.
The best parts of him and those two boys and
the stories and the experiences that we shared together are still here.
And they're going to be here. And they will be. And, you know, life
is inconsistent and unpredictable and nothing's guaranteed. Nothing
is guaranteed. I mean, the young man was healthy. He was training for a marathon. Like, you
know, there was no, you know, it wasn't a tragic overdose. It
wasn't a tragic, like it, I mean, it was tragic. Just, it
was just a tragic, unfortunate series of events. Like, you know,
to this day, I don't really understand or know what health-wise happened, but
it happened. But it happened. But it happened. And like
we said, the best of him is still here. And so, um,
yeah, next step is we're getting, uh, we're getting Nick Clark Memorial
Yeah. It's good, man. And, and, and, and
I want to encourage our friends and our family and stuff like
to, to, to, to really find those like moments
where you're like, When you're in struggles and
you're in grief and you're in grieving parts, don't forget
that the people around you are still alive. And
you have to find some way to
claw your way out of that paper bag, that wet paper
bag, or that plastic bag that you just feel like you're stuck in because you
just don't feel like you can breathe. We're
here for you. We don't want to see anybody get
so stuck in that and so lost in those grief things, because it's not…Corey
and I were talking about this today. It's so crazy, because
you know, like we're living to
die. We're literally living to die. You
can try to not talk about death as much as you want, but somebody's
going to call you, something's going to happen, something's going
to be there that's going to remind you that death is there. It's
going to happen to you and you're crazy to think
that it's not going to happen to you, right? And it
could be one of us. It could be one of us that, you know, ends up
not being here tomorrow. But hopefully you've written a story
so far that the legend that you want
is going to carry on. It's going to continue on. And that's how I think about things. I
know you do too. You want them to write stories about
you. You want them to tell the story of you you want them to to
have good Stories and yeah, and you're writing your
story right now. You're writing that story and and just
remember that Yeah, just remember that just remember that the story is
being told and it doesn't have to stop just because you're
in a lull right you're in you know, the
ebbs and the flow of your life and you're like man, I'm in I'm in a lull
and I can't I The next wave is going to come. The
next challenge is going to come. There's going to be another challenge that comes to Tyler's
life, and like you said at the beginning, This is just
Yeah, it is. Oh, yeah, it is. It's it. There's there's wisdom here. It's
it's unfortunate. There is wisdom here. I'm
I'm I'm honestly excited to move forward
and strengthening my relationship with with Grayson and
Jamie and Casey and like seeing
them not just survive, but thrive, because that's
what's important to me. That's what Nick would want. And that's, you know, as an older brother,
like I'm knighting myself with that kind of like, I'm
going to make sure that they thrive. that they thrive, that as Casey
heals, you know, that she will find whatever's
next in her life, whether that's another, another, another person or
to throw herself into those boys. Like I want her to find happiness and
joy beyond, beyond this tragedy because life is meant
for joy. Life is meant for joy. And if we're, if
we're not living, we might as already, we might as well already be dead. Yeah.
Agreed. Yeah. Agreed. You don't want to tap out.
You know, we, we, you want to find like you, like you were telling
me, you want to find, you want to find a place to breathe. You want to find a spot
to breathe. You want to find a spot to get to where you can advance
a little bit. Yes. But if you need to go back to just breathing, just go back
Yeah, I mean, I think, like I said, these things come in tidal waves, right?
So I think your body does protect itself a little bit, right?
And I've noticed this over the past month, where I'll be super emotional and
then it'll ebb and flow. I don't know that we're meant to
carry it all at once. for sure. And so we let it out a little bit at a
time, a little bit at a time. And I'm, I'm sure there'll be a day or
days when I'm out snowboarding and like that memory hits me or,
you know, I'm out, you know, fishing on a lake and that memory hits me and like,
and that's okay. Like that's when we honor the, we honor, we
Yeah. And you don't want to stifle those things. No. You don't
want to put those in a box, a compartment where you don't want to be able to access
those things. Yeah. You want to be able to like, enjoy
the highs enjoys the lows and enjoy those memories even though
that sometimes they bring you like really really serious sadness and
really sincere like yeah angst yeah and and
frustration and like struggle and so even
along with that man like um take care of yourself yeah
take care of yourself go to the doctor yeah do
the things that you need to to uh Again,
I don't I do not believe this is a learned
behavior to go to the doctor to as a man to take care of yourself.
I think our generation, especially probably like my
dad and his dad, their generation, we're all taught to
just toughen it out. Be tough, be tough. The
pain will go away. The struggle will go away. Your body will
learn to adjust to what you got
going on, right? And I fall into those habits.
I think the other, you know, and this is kind of logistically speaking,
right? Go to the doctor, but also, you know, do
you have a will? Yeah. Do you have an estate? Do you have
a plan set up? Do you know who's going to delete your browsing history?
Right? Agreed. I mean, do you
have life insurance, right? Like, I know life insurance can sometimes, there
can be costs, whether you get it through work. What
you want to be able to do for your people that you're leaving behind is
give them the opportunity to grieve. Fortunately,
Nick had done that stuff, and it was eye-opening to me. Because
of the divorce, I had so much going on
that I let a lot of that stuff fall by the wayside, and I
immediately came home. set up a new
trust, set up additional life
insurance, so that if
something like this were to happen to me, that the people that rely
on me would have the space. They would have the space.
They wouldn't have to worry about, okay, I got to get up and go to work, because if
I don't go to work, then I won't be able
to eat, or I won't have a place to live. And with young
people especially, have young people in your life, you need
to prepare for them in case of an emergency. Maybe we
Yeah, there you go. Now we're talking. I
have a friend whose dad passed away And
they didn't know the passcode for his phone.
They didn't know what his passcode was, so they weren't able to get into his phone. So
they asked the kids, the grandkids, hey,
do you play with Papa's phone? And the grandkids were
like, yeah. And they're like, okay. They hand the phone to him and the kids put in the password. Oh,
dang. And they were able to get into some of the electronic devices because
the kids had, the grandkids, just from, you
know, the grandpa saying here. Yeah. Yeah.
And play with this. I was, I'm, I'm really surprised that
like, you know, you have to deal with death certificates, which is not something I
thought I would have to deal with, but like you need original copies
for everything. Everything. So make
sure that you have some of that stuff written down. Who has
your mortgage? What are the passcodes? Where
are those important documents? What are the
things that need to be taken care of every month? Where are things getting billed to? I
mean, it screws up everything. Your banking, your credit cards. Your
spouse could be on there, but she might not be able to get into that stuff. because
it gets locked down and potentially could go through a probate process.
And I'm not like, I'm no attorney. I've just done some Google
researching and spoken with
those people that were trying to help me help her through
the process. And I'm just like, I had no idea this
is what goes down. You don't just die. whole
series of events that you have to like, and tasks
Yeah. Gosh. Crazy. Crazy how that brings that
to the forefront, right? Yeah. All this, um, yeah,
yeah. I can't even imagine. There's probably so many more. I'm sure that all
of our people in our audience will have way more things that they can, they'll have.
Yeah. Suggestions about to do but yeah, I think like man
making sure that you're making sure that the things
are taken care of and that you do Have people
that can access your yeah, you're what
you what they need to access because you're not gonna be there I mean like you that moment you're gone. Yeah.
Yeah um Man, Tyler.
Oh gosh, man. I told you a couple times that
I was so sad for you guys. I was
so sad because I didn't know what to say, didn't know what to
do, didn't know how to act, didn't know what to be besides just
be your buddy and just be there for you and do whatever I could to call
and to check in and to reach out and just
be like, hey man, you good? Knowing the answer. I
know the answer. I know the answer. having
the ability to like see, okay, it's,
it's tomorrow. And like I told you, tomorrow is going to come,
right? Tomorrow is going to come. And the fact of the matter is,
Oh, yeah. And quite honestly, if I look at
my past, my backslide would be to fall into that pit
of despair and say, poor me, look at this shit that's going on, right?
Here's another thing. But, you know, specifically around
my issues with abandonment and, you know, feeling
alone. Oh, I feel so alone. Like, that would be where I would backslide to. But
when I would start to have those thoughts, I'd get another
text. I'd get another call. And it was from you.
And it was from Cookie. It was from Howlett. It was from Professor.
It was from Preston. It was from these people
that I built. And then it was his friends. His friends, when I
got there, they got my number. And it was his friends. And we were checking on
each other and hearkening back
Check on your friends. Check on those men. Yeah. We need it. We do.
100%. Yeah. Yeah, my, my
time was not my time was crazy, too. Like
in a different way. Yeah, I'm gonna do way differently, dude. My
time off from this started with
a little bit of a pain, like a little tiny pain. in
my groin. And I thought maybe like a pulled muscle. Yeah.
But then I was like, it's kind of in my ball sack. So maybe like,
maybe there's some such feel around, you know, you're supposed to feel for a lump
I think he's the guy that was like doing something to a
Yeah, he was like really obnoxious. I don't remember the
song. He wrote a song about
touching your balls, especially if it's to look for cancer. Oh, because he
He had testicular cancer. Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was freaking out,
man. I was like, something is wrong, right? So I had this pain in my
left side. Started in my balls started and it
started to move went to the doctor. They put me on a Antibiotic
and I do not deal with like antibiotics and pain pills. I
know that about my body So I go there and this is like a
week before Florida. I'm getting ready to leave for Florida and
I get thrush oh thrush if
you don't know is a mouth
yeast infection. It's like herpes of the mouth. It's
the weirdest thing in the world. And not only
that, but my, my pee hole starts to
itch. Like you would not like, like literally want to rip my rip, rip
everything off. And I am freaking out. I
am like, what in the Sam hell is going on with me? Cause
I've got cold sores all over my mouth. I mean, it was horrible.
And I had no idea what was going on. Now, I'm telling you this because I
only knew this after, I only found out this thrush and this yeast,
what happens to an antibiotic. I guess it's a common thing.
Antibiotics throw off your biodome and
your yeast. And so you're supposed to take a probiotic along
with your antibiotic. And you're supposed to really, really high dose your
probiotic along with your antibiotics so that your body stays
So is it, it kicks off like an excess of
I don't actually know the answer to that question except for that it was like, I'm
not kidding. I was in Florida, could not eat, my mouth was full of sores,
couldn't eat, couldn't hardly function. I mean, I was like, no drinking,
no nothing, no eating, training, and people
would hit me in my mouth and I would go home
to our room and I would just sit there like, I'm so
miserable. This is horrible. Spent the whole time
in Florida with this like mouth. Luckily my, you know,
everything started to settle down downstairs, no
kitchen, but I was freaked out. I'm like, I don't, I don't know what the hell's going on. And
I'm still got this pain in my nuts
that I'm like, what in the world is going on? The pain of my nuts
kind of go away. And I'm just dealing with this, you
know, weird, I'm putting canker sore medicine all
over my mouth, just trying to get my mouth to like settle down. When
we get home from Florida, it kind of settles down, but then the pain kicks up
in my left side of my body again. I got to go back
to the doctor. And they're like, you know, they're, of
course they're checking me again. And then they put
me on another antibiotic and they said, well, this one, you know, this
one you have to keep, be careful of if you're allergic to it. And
I'm thinking, how do I know that? And they're like, you'll know. So
I take the first one and I'm like, well, I can't hardly breathe. And
I'm thinking, is this panic? Is this frustration? Am I
having a panic attack? And I'm like, doing
my breathing. I'm like, man, I'm telling Misty. I'm like, it feels weird in
my chest. It really feels weird in my chest. And
she's like, oh, you're just being a hypochondriac. Just finish. And I'm like,
Okay, but I'm telling you, it feels weird. Everything feels weird. Like my head would
go cloudy and I'd be sitting there like, kind
of like, what the hell is going on? I kind of feel like I'm in a cloud. And
then apparently also with antibiotics, you're not supposed to
go in the sun because you get a real bad sunburn.
Yeah. And if you go, your immune system
is so low now because the antibiotic has killed everything. Yeah. That if
you go around somebody with a cold, you get it, you get it. And I
got sick. like really sick, like
really sick that I was like laying in bed and I'm like, Oh my gosh, this is so bad. I
don't want to do this antibiotic because I feel like shit. And the doctor's like, Okay,
stop the antibiotic because we don't know if you're allergic to it. So
you need to be careful. So I get off the antibiotic. And
now we're like, so now I'm on week three of not only
my, my groin area hurting, But now
I'm sick and I'm irritated and I'm grumpy. I'm not sleeping well.
I'm going to work and I'm just pissed at the world. And
then I have to go to the doctor, to a urologist,
because now I need to make sure, okay, what is going on?
Is there something serious? She gives, this is a
female urologist, and I walk in
and luckily she was awesome. And she's like, you know, I'm going to
have to check everything. And We're going to check
That is an appointment you're never prepared for as a man. I mean, I
don't want to discredit your story, but my dude walked in in cowboy boots
and a belt buckle. And I thought, did I hit the veterinarian? And
You know what she told me? Don't worry. I have small fingers. That's
what she said. Thanks. And I was like, thank you. And
now, like, it's so, you know, it's awkward.
Yeah. It's so awkward and She
checks everything and she's checking and she's like I think it's maybe
kidney stones Mmm, you gotta go get a CT scan because I think
all of the signs are pointing to kidney stones I don't think we needed to put a
blood and about you don't need to be on an antibiotic I think that you just maybe are
passing the kidney stone that got stuck and that's why it's so irritated down there
Clear, everything's fine. Did they do a CT, like an actual
No, no, no, CAT scan. So CAT scan, so you're thinking of MRI. Oh, or CIA, okay.
And that's what I thought. I'm like, you can't put me in that MRI because
I'm not prepared for it and I have not taken enough drugs. Yeah. I
Dope me up. I need to be as, you know, put me out almost. I'm
not sitting in that thing. And she's like, no, no, it's just going to take a picture
of just, it just is like a little circle half moon thing. And
it just takes a picture of your, of the part that they need to take
a picture of. comes back normal, everything normal, like
everything fine, your prostate's fine, your everything is fine. And I'm thinking, everything
is not fine, like something is wrong down there. And, and
I think that's where I get frustrated with like, with, you
know, even myself is that I, I go down the path of like the worst case
scenario. Yeah. It may, it might potentially just be
a pulled muscle. Yeah. And because I don't stop training jujitsu,
Your hips, if you train Jiu-Jitsu, you know your hips constantly hurt.
And maybe I just have a torn muscle or a small hernia is
what they think. Maybe a small hernia for not intestines. It's
not intestines coming out, but there's some fat sac that can come out that can cause
pain. And so that's where we're at now is she,
this is even funnier. So she tells me, yeah,
just stay off the booze. Stay off the vitamin
C because vitamin C can cause irritation. Stay
off of caffeine, which
I don't drink a lot of caffeine anyways. And stay off of, I can't remember what
else. There was something else that she said that you can't, that I needed to be careful with,
which wasn't something that I did anyways. And
so stop that for a couple weeks and then let's
reintroduce like some of the things that you're doing. And I'm like, okay, well,
the first, my first question, can I train, you
know, like, can I train? And she's like, as long as it doesn't hurt, don't,
don't stress. It's like, go cool. I'm going to training that
night, Tuesday night to Lehigh and Tuesday
night in Lehigh apparently has turned into all out
war. It is all out, a hundred miles an
hour, get after it. And it's start on
your feet, go to the ground, 20 rounds of,
it's a damn gladiator thing down there. You
kind of told me about this. I go there and me and Corey are like, what the fuck? What
the fuck did I sign up for? We are drilling takedowns.
Now, Yes, I wrestled. Yes, I grew up. Yes. Yes,
I've done wrestling. I
haven't been drilling wrestling, so I'm a little soft with the takedowns, so
I don't really like to do them very much. We did an hour
of takedowns, right? Then you start standing,
you go to the ground, and you fight, but then
if you get a submission or something happens, you go back to your feet and start over.
20 rounds of this shit. And I'm like, what
the fuck? What happens? I get need in the balls twice in
the balls twice. Not only that, I'm like, you
know, my hips are so damn sore. I've already been pissed,
right? Yeah. I went to bed after I
went to lay down. And I'm telling you, Tyler, I have
not been that sore in years where
I was laid in bed and I was like, there's no sleep happening
tonight because I'm so sore. Everything hurts. Plus I got need
I tore it. I did something bad. Why
did I have to train? Why did I go down to Lehigh for gladiator night? What
the fuck is wrong with me? And Corey
calls me the next day and and we're both telling each other like I'm
never going to that class again. No way! If
I go, it's only once a month. I'm not, that is not a regular on mine. That
It was. It was. Because that was the one, that was my,
not my first class back after all of this, but it was my second or
third. It was my only day off from my, you know, I
had one day break in February from my kids just based on
the schedule. And I was gladiator night. I
It was insane, dude. And don't get me wrong.
Like it's really fun training. It was really fun. It was, it was one
of the funnest. And I tell everybody that like Jesse and I were there and we're like, that was super
fun. It was really fun. But I
do not see myself going back there for a couple of weeks. But now
my, my hip hurts. I, Corey threw me and I
landed on my hip wrong. Cause I didn't break fall correctly. And
I was like, Oh, that's not gonna, that's not going to feel right for weeks.
And, uh, Yes, I don't
exactly know what happened. I
don't exactly know what's going on. There is no
definitive answer of what exactly is going on in
my groin, but here's the other part about that. I
don't have a dad that I can go talk to about this. I don't have somebody
that I can go and like ask, Hey, has this ever happened
to you? I'm an open book. I talk about what's going on
with me to most everybody. Like, Hey man, my balls are hurting. I don't
know what's, I don't know what's going on. I'm, I'm having some boy problems and,
but it still feels a little weird to
talk about it, you know? Cause I don't know. And I don't, I, I
did get, a blood test for just
a screen for prostate cancer. They don't think there's anything like
that. The doctor said everything felt normal. She said, oh, when
I had my finger up there, she said everything was good. And I'm thinking, okay.
It's so weird, but you know, like that happens, right?
Like again, like as a man with, with these
things is we're not, I
wasn't taught to go to the doctor and to get things taken care of.
I wasn't taught to, I was taught to just be tough
and to, things will get better, right? Things will eventually get better. Um,
I have a hard time staying off the mats. If I'm hurt,
I'm like, well, I'll just train around it. I'll figure out how to get better. And I tell people that
all the time. I'm like, hey man, I train. I don't stop if I'm hurt. If my knee's
out of whack, I tape it up and I protect
the hell out of it. If my head is not right, then I just train. I
go and train. I'm
stubborn like that, right? But there are things that I'm like, man,
I need to really be careful with, because I'm not getting younger, right? I
need to be careful with things
that are serious. You know, like anything that could be serious, anything that could really affect
me or could disable me from training,
I need to be careful with that. And if I have to take a couple days off, man, take the days off. Don't
Yeah. Yeah. It's cool. I did. I, um, the
rock, rock, paper, scissors. I did that with the kids today. Rock,
paper, scissors, whoever wins drills, wins the takedown. And
then you start fighting on the ground. Right. Yeah. And they were like,
they loved it. Oh yeah. For sure. Oh man. The
It was a long, long, long month. A long month
And we still haven't covered hardly anything besides the
main things. The main things that happened. We are
not stopping. No. We are not
giving up. We're not doing anything like that. We are
human. We have things that happen that
may pause our game for a moment, and we
appreciate that. I've had a lot of people reach out
to me and say, when's the next podcast coming out? When's
the next podcast coming out? I haven't heard a podcast for a while. And some of
those people hadn't have no idea, have no idea what
we just talked about. Nope. Cause it, cause we didn't put it out there like
in mass. Right. We, for one, it
was, It's so fresh and it's so new
and it's so it's so real that For
me, I called a couple people and I said hey this happened. Yeah, and
they were so grateful that I had let them know because they cared about you a
lot and they wanted to reach out to you and they They were like,
hey, I'm gonna text him and then I'm gonna call him just
in that order just because he's gonna get bombarded with calls and
we don't want to like interrupt what's going on and And our
tribe was very worried about you and
very concerned about your family. And I think that's what you want. You
want people that are going to be like that for you, that are going
to be there for you. And we're grateful for this. We have not
stopped. We had to pause the project just for a moment. We
were still working a little bit on the project, but we've hit
the steam again, and we've got some good Feedback, we've
got some good leads and we're moving in the right direction again.
I believe hopefully I mean, it's it's so hard to be entrepreneurs It's
Yeah. Yeah There's so many things going against you and
going against Tyler and I with our entrepreneurship and this is
just a small Cog in that wheel that
we're doing with yeah with our with ourselves. Yep growing
our our brand and growing ourselves and I'm grateful for
you, man. I'm grateful. And I'm, like I said, I'm, I'm truly
sorry, truly sad to Nick, to
Nick and Nick's family, you know, like we're, we're, we're
pulling for them and, and The legend
Legend of Nick will live on. I appreciate you. I appreciate the brotherhood that
we've built this last few years. Um, those, the
men in the gym, the women in the gym that have reached out, um, to
the friends, family, um, the new friends and family that
I've made, like I'm, I am really grateful for all of your
support and you, you feel kind of
frozen with, you don't know what to do, but you, You know, the
phone calls, the texts, they mean a lot. They really do.
They break the cycle of thoughts in your head. They break up the
monotony of reliving things or catastrophizing
things. It's super important. So thank you.
I'm grateful. And we're not done. We're not done. We may
not hit 24 this year, but We're not done. We're
We're not going anywhere. Announcements? Things coming up? So
Park City is doing their summer camp this year? Yes. Huge. Yes. Huge
news. Some of the instructors that
will be there will be Jeff Curran, Professor Mike Diaz, Nick
Hallett, James Gardner. I've heard
LaMal, Luis Herrera will be there. His
chief LaMal, he's from Hawaii. Amazing guy. He's getting
ready to become a master. Unreal. Maybe
Ryland Lazarez. That's Max Holloway's jiu-jitsu
coach. He's amazing to talk to. I
love having conversations with him. And it's going to
be great. We're going to have some super fights. We're going to have some black belt fights, some, some
fights from within our little association community. And
that's going to, it's going to be interesting. It's going to be fun to see how it goes. July
19th. Let me, let me look at my calendar.
So I want to make sure I get the days, right? So the camp is going to be
July. 18th, 19th, 20th,
and 21st. We'll put
a link on our website for registration. If you have any questions,
hit Tyler and I up for that. Um, belt test coming
up for, uh, some of these new belts, um, March 23rd
for us. Okay. It'd be nice. Um, it's a Saturday, so we'll
be able to hang out there. Um, the weather's nice nasty
I heard that too. And you know what? I channeled my, uh, my inner
ATC, Jeremy and, uh,
ATC Jeremy. ATC Jeremy. I was like, I just want to be just like him.
Dude, that dude, man, he is doing some amazing stuff.
ATC Jeremy. Proud of you, dude. Yep. I'm going to get you to do these
smelling salts, ATC Jeremy. It makes a popping sound.
