Dangerous Dave
You know, we have today with us an amazing guest, this is super impressive, we have dangerous Dave with us. What? Yes, dangerous Dave and I’m super happy to have him here.
He’s like an amazing person. We call him Captain Dave. Right. But Omkar, just before we started, he told us what dangerous Dave was all about.Yep. And he kind of fits that criteria.
Dave is our very best friend and has we’ve gone on many, many vacations with Dave and there’s always something adventurous that happens that never fails.
Just out of nowhere, you know, we’re signed up to do something pretty crazy and we don’t have time to to question it or say no.
And sometimes they are a little dangerous. And so the reason we’re doing this right is we brought Dave on because sometimes he pushes us just a little bit further. Yeah, right. With what he’s trying to accomplish, with how he’s trying to live life with what’s going on.
He has this, like, gusto for life. He has a passion for life and for doing things and doing more than most people think are possible and doing it like faster and better in like higher or whatever that is. Right. And in doing so, I believe he totally pushes himself. Yeah, right. And what I was the tie in here is between how Dave pushes himself and how you as an agent can also push yourself to do things that you didn’t think were possible at all. Right. So, Shawn, go ahead and kind of interview Dave and let’s let us down that path. Well, you know, we we love Dave.
And like I said, it’s always an adventure. Our families have vacationed at many, many times together. And, you know, we went from I would go as you as the example here, really amazing.
Mike was never an outdoor camper as a kid. You know, I did that as a kid. So, you know, I’m somewhat familiar with that. Mike, on the other hand, had never done that. So we have gone from that to now you love it. You love the outdoors. You’re sleeping outside at night in, you know, below freezing temperatures. And I don’t think we would have ever done that or you would have done that if it wasn’t for Dave. I mean, do you agree? Yeah, no, I totally do it. So, you know, is that we’ve gone on all these adventures, Dave, I want to ask you first, what is it that you love about this and what makes you want to to up it the next time and do something more and push ourselves more each time? Like what is. How do you do that?
And the question was, Dave, what pushes you to become better all the time and what pushes you to, like, go to the next one? So we were talking, you and I, about doing different things for these different trips. Right. And like we’re talking about maybe the next one is Machu Picchu or to Everest base camp. What pushes you to get to, like, the next one? So. I’m always looking for a challenge.
And trying to do something a little bit further and more difficult than what I’ve done last time, and you can do a lot more things than you might give yourself credit for.
Yeah, no, I agree, and it’s kind of like working out right, like if you work out with friends, you always seem to push yourself. It becomes a little competitive. And I think that’s what’s pushed you to is, you know, you’re not battling against each other, but you set a goal for one another to push each other and achieve something that you didn’t think you could achieve.
And we talk about all the time in the office how have a buddy, you know, and we’re all on the same level playing field. However, sharing and seeing what each other you know, what we do out there in the field and our accomplishments and celebrate it, you know, we’re all happy for each other, but it pushes us to do things a little bit, you know, a little bit harder. And, you know, I think that pushing yourself out of a comfort zone, out of your own personal comfort zone is really important to do. And there’s days where I don’t want to get up and walk out. And there’s I’m sure that there are many times that Mike thought, why am I doing this? Dave’s asking me to do what? And you always just say yes and you do it. And you have pushed yourself way outside of your comfort zone. This this was never your comfort zone. And I would say every vacation that we go on with Dave, there is a time that I am pushed out of my comfort zone. I mean, so tell me.
But ask about the 99 percent and explain that, what, 90 percent of the time? No. So, Dave, go with, like the 99 percent rolt Grand Canyon.
Yeah, you’re exactly right and, you know, we saw that, like when we took a trip to Utah, right. And we went down in these canyons and saw things that you would never see just from the top.
So that’s you know, that’s totally true. I looked at your map. I have I do have one question. I saw that there was a Supai Tunnel. And, you know, I think it was last year we went to the Havasupai Falls. We hiked down 12 miles.
And you know that I thought that I had a 40 pound pack and it was really like 12 or something. But we went down, you know, to the Havasupai Falls. And I’m curious if that is the same. Is it I mean, what is that is that is that related to the Havasupai Falls at all the Supai Tunnel?
Ok, and I noticed on this map that it said if you scroll down a little bit, it says, do not get into the the Colorado River, it’s deadly and dangerous.
I’m just curious, did you guys get in it? Because that would be an example of something that we would do on our vacation is stop. Don’t go in here. People die every year here and they will be like, you’re fine, let’s go.
It’s like, OK. Not surprised. Especially when you only take one pair of underwear, but that’s a whole other story, right? I don’t know. I guess we got used to not having clean underwear. It’s like being.
Yes, you got. Yeah, well, I don’t plan on having, like, camping like expeditions here at my own home, but tell us maybe a little bit about the trail itself.
So the adventure that you signed us up for and put in for is room to room to room. So describe like what that’s all about. Describe the reservation. Describe what the ranger told us, like all those things, kind of like give us a good intro.
So the Ranger says that the itinerary is a little bit more difficult on that last day, that they don’t recommend anybody take those.
That last day, which was for us, was seven miles from the campground to the bottom of the canyon in another 10 and a half or nine and a half out of the canyon of hell with packs.
All right, yeah, and the reason that they gave us the itinerary and we were able to get it was because it was labeled like a super aggressive itinerary. Right. And the guy’s like, no, you can’t do this. And we as a team had to make an appeal to them and we had to give them like our resumé of what we’ve done.
And you list out the stuff and the guys like I enjoy yourself. You’ll have fun. And that was it, right? Yeah. And as it so the last day was difficult and but it was totally doable.
Yeah, no, it really was we’re looking at some of these pictures here real quick, Dave, and the picture we’re looking at here in particular is on our way down.
So we were going down into the canyon and it’s a picture of the two of us and we’re looking back up and it’s on a relatively narrow place. So we have our packs on and we’re headed down into the canyon. Right. And as we’re descending in there, spots that like there’s steep drop offs on each side. And tell me about the mental part of it and what’s going on here when you’re there.
Right. So you can’t be can’t be afraid of heights, obviously, because some of these trails do have steep drop offs, ledges. But you’re focused really when you’re hiking, you’re focused on where you’re you know, where you’re placing your feet. You can’t be looking up and gazing and wondering as you all you have to focus and get down the trail and know where your feet are going because you don’t you don’t want to trip and fall. You can only look around when you actually stop and take a break.
So in this year in particular, I happen to be wearing a pair of shorts and like a short sleeve cut off shirt. And I had advice that it was gonna be super cold and I should make sure that I bring two pairs of thermal pants and thermal tops and all that stuff.
And so, like, the best laid plans. Tell me about that.
So when we started with the weather forecast, five days out was severe weather. It was going to be record cold. We were expecting temperatures in the teens at night.
And so five days out, we were changing our plans. We got crampons for our boots and we changed what kind of clothing we’re going to put in our pack. And you don’t want to over pack because whatever you put in your pack, you have to carry.
So based on the weather forecast, we were going with warmer clothes instead of shorts and muscle shirts.
But my every day the the weather forecast got a little bit better and a little bit better. And the weather did not turn out to be as severe as the weatherman forecasted.
So Mr. Mike was like, I’m taking the shorts and the muscle shirt while everybody else had long pants and down fast and plenty of warm clothing.
And my just pretty much every day in the shorts and the muscle shirt.
Wow. Yeah, it was really great. So once you get moving, you get warm. Right. But the moment you stop, I’m like, I need every article of clothing possible. And it was weird.
I really didn’t sweat too much when I obviously had less clothing on. So a lot of the time I actually hiked in my new shorts that I bought. It’s super sad, but true.
So I bought a pair of Lululemon one liners and they’re actually pretty cool. So if you want to know more about the five inch is actually pretty good, pretty good there.
And so it was just like a short sleeve shirt, but the short sleeve shirt I didn’t plan on wearing as a shirt. I planned on wearing it underneath my thermal because it would keep me a little bit warmer. I only wanted to warm like my core and then it got so hot that I ended up taking the thermal off. Now I’m wearing like a shirt I didn’t ever intend on wearing. It was, you know, and it’s just that it continues to evolve. And then I was crazy enough that I’m in like shorts, an undershirt and gloves and a hat, and it’s just like total ridiculousness.
So I would like to ask a couple of things. Yes. One, what part of this trip did you feel the most challenge? Like what was happening when you know, because there’s always that moment where you feel like, oh, I don’t know.
I mean, for me, I don’t know if I can do this or not.
Was there ever a moment like that? And how did you how do you coach your brain to get to keep going? Because some sometimes people just say, oh, I’ve done this part, I’m satisfied with that. And they might turn around and go back. But you guys, you know, you persevered and went forward. So tell me about if there was a time like that. Oh, this looks familiar, Dave. But anyway, that’s another story.
She’s looking at what she believes is an unstable bridge that’s in the the cliffs.
There was a time this is kind of a sidetrack that we were in France and we were doing a the craziest one of the craziest adventure.
I think we’ve ever done and we went across it’s called a virata, we went across, this was the only way across. There was no going back. You had to cross this bridge. That was a swinging bridge, very unstable, missing some slats and it moved. I mean, you’re moving in below is a river.
Yeah, it was minimum, like two thousand feet down.
Ok, so it’s my turn to go across and see where that little hole is in. This picture is where Dave is. So I’m going across and I’m not afraid of heights, but I was at that moment, I was very afraid of heights. And I’m going across and Dave’s like, come on, who? And he’s on the other side shaking this. And I thought, if I make it across there, he’s not going to make it. I’m just not going to make it. And it was crazy. And I did. And I looked back and I thought, wow, that’s crazy.
Well, this one in particular was actually really cool. So there was a tunnel that went through the rocks and it went right through the mountain and then you get out of the tunnel. So I’m showing the tunnel right now. And then as soon as you get out of the tunnel, you show up and you have to actually cross the Colorado River to go from one side to the other, because the whole thing is called rim to rim to rim.
So you start at one side and then you take your 45 pound pack down the mountain and then you go get to the bottom and you have to cross the river and get to a camp. Right. And then you have to hike across all the way across the bottom and then you have to hike yourself up, back down all the way across and then back up the rim to rim to rim, touching it all and getting yourself back out. So it was roughly a 45 pound pack and 45 miles of hiking. Plus we did like some different side trips and you really don’t.
Yeah it’s so go back. There’s a question of, you know, was there a point in time and here what was your most challenging moment and how do you mentally what do you tell yourself to just keep going?
So when you are hiking up to the to the north side, you turn around and you look and you say you see where you came from and you’re like, oh, holy cow, I’ve got to go all the way back.
Right. And I got to carry my pack. And so what it is, is it become it’s like a marathon because you’re going four days in a row and every day you’ve got to care. You’ve got to cover so much ground to get where you’re going. And so that challenge as well. Tomorrow, I got to do this and then tomorrow I got to do it again. And I what I enjoy the most is I enjoy watching other people accomplish things that they wouldn’t normally do and accepting the challenge and going ahead and coming along for the trip. And my satisfaction is when they’re able to do something that they would never have done or planned on themselves. And and they push themselves to do something that is not comfortable for them.
So something that might not be comfortable for me is every time that you get to the top of the mountain and you take a picture of the mountain in your feet, what’s that all about?
That’s just me relaxing, that’s just, you know, my viewpoint, my daughter actually started that for me. And you can see here we’re on the north rim and on the horizon there is the is the south rim. So the next two days, we’ve got to go all the way back down the canyon that you can see on the left side there and back all the way to the south rim.
So we’re physically ten miles away from the south rim at this point in a straight line. That’s unbelievable.
And is this the moment when I decided that I was going to find my beach somewhere else at the visitor station that you want to do?
Yeah. So Mike was, like, totally exhausted. And as soon as he found a place you could sit down, he did it. I was like, come on, you got to come here further. There’ll be a better viewpoint and say, no, I’m done. This is it right here. So he laid down and had a little bit of lunch while I went down to this view point.
And then you had maybe an even better viewpoint that you found. You definitely did.
And yeah, there was all types of obstacles along the way. They were doing stuff from like fixing the trail to make it better for next time and like go over things. There’s consistently obstacles along the way. They’re difficult, just like there isn’t anything that we do in life or in real estate and all these different variables that continue to change.
And now we’re showing off pictures of us on our way out. We had breakfast at was at Fantham Ranch on the way out. Yes. Yes. And what kind of breakfast did we have had? Chili, Mac and what other thing?
Chili, Mac and and the like meal plan on.
And we didn’t have enough carbs. And so people were going to the to the store and they were buying Oreos and crazes and apples so we could have more carbs and less protein.
Yeah, that was really fun for everybody because they didn’t accept cash and they only took a card and I put it on my card with me.
So everyone’s like, oh, I’ll have Oreos from the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Yeah, go ahead.
Was there a Starbucks I had.
Yeah, they had hot coffee and I put some hot chocolate and so I had my mocha my coffee yesterday.
There’s a few things that they tell me that kind of, you know, just in in talking like, oh, I think there’s a Starbucks down here or whatever. And when we went before, it was a joke like, hey, there’s a Starbucks at the bottom. It was
like it’s kind of cool. There wasn’t there was also a time I you know, I’ll talk about my personal experiences. I’m not afraid of heights. And we were going on this. And Dave, you know, I want to also give him credit. He pushes people, but he’s not going to push you to a limit that you physically can’t do. Right. He’s he somehow is in tune with what you can do, maybe sometimes a little extreme. But, you know, he’s not going to put us in danger. I mean, we’re all like family. But we went on a hike a couple of years ago and I had heard there was going to be rappelling. And there’s a few things that I just I have no interest in doing. And I think I wouldn’t even want to push myself and do that. I just I have no interest, but I’m always in. Right. I, I have famo really bad and I always want to go and be there and participate. Well I was like rappelling. Mm. I don’t think so. And you were like it’s only like 20 feet, 10, 15, 20 feet at the most. I said OK. And then somehow I don’t remember if it was Dave or Mike’s told me that don’t worry, you can go around if you don’t want to do it, you just go around.
It’s like, OK, so we hide in and we come to our first rappel. Yes, there were several. And our son Taylor was with us and he has always been afraid of heights. When we moved in our house like he remember, he crawled across the top. He was afraid of the catwalk and fell off. So he’s always been afraid of heights. And he was with us on this trip. So I looked at him and I said, \” well, I’m going to go around. And he was like, You can’t go around, mom. I said, no. They said there’s a way to go around. I’m going to go around. He was like, well, I’m not. And I said, well, I’m going to go around. So I asked and I think Dave burst out laughing that, like, carried through the whole canyon, like, there’s nowhere to go around. You have to do this. And there was not one or two. I think there were. Five repels and the whole time I’m shaking inside and it was funny that Taylor was pushed, right, and he’s with all these guys, May, it’s OK if I’m a little scared, but he went down and got off and I said, oh, my gosh, were you scared? I was like, no. And and he overcame I mean, he’s he’s totally fine with it. Right. And one of them. How many feet was that last one that we rappelled down in Moab?
I think it was like 250, 250 feet.
These pictures, they do not do justice. You just have no idea. And I really wanted to turn around and go back. And there wasn’t there wasn’t an option to do that. So that’s something I never in my lifetime thought I could do or would do. And I did it and I wouldn’t do it again. But I am very thankful for Dave that he pushed us, because when you do these things, I don’t know what it is, but it pushes your mind. It opens your mind to all these things and it gives you the courage and confidence that you can you can do other things right. It just something very fulfilling. And it does mentally push you to come outside of your comfort zone and start thinking about other things that you thought before you couldn’t do.
You definitely get clarity on something like this. I don’t know. You come back and your mind is just a little bit different, right? That the scale and the scope and the wonder and what you accomplish and how amazing that is something very impressive.
So on to Captain David Venture to kind of wrap this up and put it in full is he always pushes people far enough that it’s not you’re not going to participation trophy with Captain Dave.
And we there’s a low success rate and we bring all these different people that are totally capable and amazing and well prepared and experienced in this and the success rate we had with this one.
Captain Dave.
50 percent, 50 percent.
So we brought six people and the three others are not still in the canyon, right.
Like they got they got out, but it was not it was not that it was backed by you know, they had they had to make a choice that on one of the other days they just couldn’t get up the other side. And, you know, we won’t go over what that is. Right. But it’s always an obstacle, whatever that is. Right. And so I’m showing here at the end.
And so you and I get up to the top and, you know, it was really, really a good moment for me because we were we’re hiking out. And there were different times when you would lead the pay service times in Austin,
Patterson would lead us, would lead us. And there’s times when I’m like, all right, it’s my turn right. And we just kept alternating kind of who is leading and who is pushing and setting the pace to get us up there. And it takes a little bit more effort to lead or to pull.
Right. And you’re setting the pace.
And then, you know, we ‘re close to the top and it’s just you and I and we could have, like, Race to the Top or any one of those things. Right. But it was totally not about that. And we realized that, like, hey, we’re here and we don’t care who finishes like first or any of that right now, like we kind of do.
But like, we really actually we do. But we don’t. And I’m like, no, Dave, we’re totally we’re finishing together, whatever that is. Right.
And so Dave and I get up there to the top, I’ll say first.
Right, the two of us together. And then we took our time and relaxed and did all types of things. And people talk to us up there. But the picture that’s up on the screen is Austin here at the top. And Austin’s coming up. And he was the next person to come out. And that was just amazing, the moment when he comes up and he’s all done with it. Right. And tell me, Dave, kind of what happens to you know, it’s like a personal thing, but it often happens when you have a big accomplishment and you complete it.
When you push yourself to the limit and you finish finish that goal, it can be an emotional time or that that moment when you have realized that all the preparation and all the work that you just did, you you’ve got it done.
And as far as emotional being, I’ll go ahead and say it so there is definitely times when I’d finished something and all of a sudden, you know, you just break down and you don’t know why, but you expend so much energy and take so much time. And then you just have like a second where you’re sitting there and all of a sudden you’re like.
Like, why am I crying?
And it’s a really difficult thing to kind of explain. So if you haven’t pushed yourself to that limit, that you complete something physically, then you’ve got to end at the end, that you’re actually in tears and then you’re thinking yourself, what am I doing?
Why am I crying right now? Then you actually have pushed yourself far enough.
I’ve cried after closings before.
So Austin’s coming out and we had this moment of camaraderie. Right. And then the next ones to kind of come out were lining the path as they’re coming out saying he wants to go do it again. Yeah. So Colin’s coming out right now. And I was down, like, greeting them and there’s people all behind me and whatever. Right. So we got there to support them as they’re coming up. And I have no idea how much, whatever this time distance had passed. But I’m clearly now in a lot more clothing.
And I put my hand out there and he’s just as happy as could be getting to the top. And you can just see that he slaps my hand like I am totally done with this, not done with me, but like doing with just this whole adventure. Right.
And it’s a lot. It’s a lot and, you know, just being out in nature like that, it does something it’s amazing if you haven’t done it, I highly recommend so. So here’s the end picture we all completed getting up and getting out of there and it always ends with never really being over, because then after this, I’m like, yo, Dave, worse, like, how do we get out of here? Right. And he’s like, well, yeah. So we have to go get cars all around because it always ends up like we started here and have to go there. Right. And it’s like, well, no, you and I will go get the cars to go get the car and then we have to like drive here and walk there and all that stuff. And then we’re in the car and I’m like, where are we staying tonight? And he sets everything up. Right. And it was no problem. But it’s like you spend every piece of energy and he’s like, oh yeah, we have to drive to Phoenix tonight.
