861 | How Wooldridge Boats Shaped Jet Boat History from the Rogue River to Togiak River and Beyond

00;00;02;01 – 00;00;25;17 Dave I fish a lot of rivers in the west, from the rogue to the Skeena and beyond. And I’ll be honest, I’ve completely missed the story behind the boats that shaped half the fisheries I love. Somewhere between grants passed and the Upper Skagit, the entire history of modern River boating was written blowing up rivers to access wild and scenic areas, hand-built drift boats and one wild idea at a time. 00;00;26;03 – 00;00;48;01 Dave And at the center of it all was a kid who built his first boat for $6, pointed it into the Rogue River with zero experience and decided the only way to learn the river was to run it. That kid grew up to be Glen Woolridge, the man who carved out channels of the rogue ran the Salmon River of no return before anyone believed that could be done and mentored the inventor of the jet pump. 00;00;48;18 – 00;01;14;06 Dave This is the way I Swim podcast, where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, and what you can do to give back to the fish species. We all love. Grant Woolridge, great grandson of Glen Roll Ridge, is here today and he’s going to take us into a bunch of the great stories about the man who conquered The Rogue and first floated down it and came back up in a jet boat. 00;01;14;26 – 00;01;31;16 Dave We’re going to find out what this first run was like. We’re going to go back to the 19, the mid 1940s. And even earlier we’re going to talk about the first motors that allowed Glenn to go up the river. We’re going to hear about this insane jack ass motor lift and why Boatmen of the day. This was a game changer. 00;01;31;28 – 00;01;46;15 Dave And we’re also going to get the real history of Blossom Bar. We talk about Blossom Bar and the picket fence, a rapid IV run, that super technical, super hard for me. But when Glenn was running it before they blew it out with dynamite, he was running a real rough river. So we’re going to get into all those stories. 00;01;46;15 – 00;02;03;27 Dave This one’s amazing. Excited to share this with you. We’ll get into a little bit of everything, including some Alaska chats. And so I hope you enjoy this one. Here he is, Grant Wooldridge. You can find him at Wooldridge Boats, CNN.com. How’s it going, Grant? 00;02;04;07 – 00;02;06;16 Grant Doing great, Dave. Thanks for having me, man. 00;02;06;19 – 00;02;28;01 Dave Yeah, yeah. I’m really excited about this and I’ve been thinking a lot about this ever since I was up at Togiak River Lodge, and I picked up the book about your great grandfather, Glenn Wooldridge, And we I’ve had a long love of the Rogue River, you know, and so I’ve been on that river and through the wild and scenic and, you know, and on boats as my other things, you know, boats. 00;02;28;01 – 00;02;40;04 Dave I love boats. So. So I’m excited because we get to talk about the rogue, the boats and then you, and then how this all came to be. But maybe take us back real quick. It’s kind of hard to find a place to start, but what’s keeping you guys busy this time of year? 00;02;40;16 – 00;03;02;19 Grant Oh, man. What’s keeping us busy? Well, we’re never bored down here, which is an exciting thing. So never go home from work wondering what happened to the day. I mean, we’re always wandering, and it just goes by fast. But right now, we’re a lot of it’s preparation for spring. You know, we have numerous dealers that during the winter all the is hard whether it’s the dealers in Alaska or Canada. 00;03;02;19 – 00;03;26;21 Grant So by the time the water starts melting and getting soft, everybody’s anxious to have their toy because the seasons are short. So they all get orders in well in advance. And so we’re busy trying to be prepared for for springtime and and all that. So even though sometimes people might assume November, December, we’re slow now, we’re jamming on all the stuff that we want to have everyone next spring. 00;03;26;21 – 00;03;41;02 Dave The next spring. And yeah, and part of that is like we said at Togiak, we were up there this year and it was amazing because we were chasing those Chinook, you know, up there and, and the boats, I think the pretty much most of their boats were your guys’s boats. You tell us about those boats a little bit. 00;03;41;02 – 00;03;46;04 Dave First up at Togiak, are those all do you guys sell a lot of those boats? Is that a pretty common boat you guys have? 00;03;46;14 – 00;03;52;27 Grant Yeah, they they have four of the big a lot. Well, first of all, aren’t the Togiak guys just awesome? 00;03;53;01 – 00;03;55;20 Dave Yeah. Yeah. Jordan and Zach? Yeah, the whole gang. Yeah. Yeah. 00;03;55;20 – 00;04;24;00 Grant You couldn’t come up with a better quality group of good people and, you know, the location is just a bonus as far as I’m concerned. But who you’re with up there is just, just awesome but known them since before they had the lodge, before their dad even had a Aldridge boat and even meeting them at the sportsman shows when they were young teens with the desire to someday they come in our booth want an older boat someday always showing Dad, and they were just always the coolest guys. 00;04;24;00 – 00;04;38;26 Grant And one day they, you know, hey, guess what? We’re we’re going to be, you know, we went to this lodge in Alaska and we’re going to go up and work up there. And, you know, they’re going to do some guiding and Jordan’s going to do some filming and on and it wasn’t long that they came in another time. 00;04;38;26 – 00;04;56;18 Grant And I guess what we finally made it that point. Dad’s once a Wooldridge boat, you know because they lived down here on the Squali and love playing around. And so we built Dad a cool boat and wasn’t long after that that they, they mentioned, hey, looks like we may have a big opportunity of a lifetime here to, to take this lodge. 00;04;56;18 – 00;05;24;17 Grant And so at the time there, there was a couple of used Wooldridge boats available, some Alaskan XLS. So they have four of those those two the biggest of the Alaskan series. We have four boats in the Alaskan series family and so they got four, they got a number of those and I don’t remember which one was the first one, but they have four now and then they have two Alaskan Altis, which are our smallest boat in the Alaskan series Lightweight, agile, really cool little boat. 00;05;24;17 – 00;05;32;27 Grant And then they have a Alaskan XLT. And I’m trying to remember what the eighth one was, but they have that green one. That’s just the 20. Oh, yeah. 00;05;32;27 – 00;05;34;01 Dave The green one. Yeah. 00;05;34;02 – 00;05;35;05 Grant Cool boat. Really neat. 00;05;35;05 – 00;05;35;18 Dave That’s cool. 00;05;35;18 – 00;05;44;08 Grant But yeah, they’re, they’re also they’re all in the same family, the boats that they have up there and Yeah, I was up there a couple of years ago and it’s just a special place but. 00;05;44;08 – 00;06;06;17 Dave Yeah, yeah it is a special place outside. And we had a great trip, had my first chance, really got into Chinook, you know, and that was really cool. So, so we’re going to, like you said, we’re going to try to jump around a little bit. I do want to take it back, you know, go way back on this because, you know, back to the rogue, maybe talk about your connection to, you know, So Glenn, was your great grandfather, right? 00;06;06;17 – 00;06;08;21 Dave He’s the person who started the company. 00;06;08;29 – 00;06;09;14 Grant That’s right. 00;06;09;22 – 00;06;18;03 Dave Yeah. What was your first memory of of the boats like you, I’m assuming you’ve been at your whole life. What was your first like? What boat were you first in out there? 00;06;18;16 – 00;06;38;11 Grant Oh, I have memories. Back to just even being a tiny little guy in boats. I mean, so small that were in rough water. Well, up there, you know, above where you’re at, running up the Upper Skagit. We had a friend who was an engineer at the dam. And so we’d go up there and he had a jet boat and the dam on some jet boats up there on the Skagit. 00;06;38;11 – 00;06;52;20 Grant And, and we’d go up and there’s some, there’s some decent rapids if you get up there a little ways and just going up jet bond as a little kid small enough that I can’t see over the side of the boat. But all I know is we are in the water because I just feel bouncing and jumping and I’m can’t stay on my feet type of thing. 00;06;53;01 – 00;07;14;25 Grant And so as a young guy, I mean, boats were just just what we did. And of course, you know, it is it memory or is it because I think a photo. But yeah, lots of the photos of me as a little one in boats. I remember that as far as Great Grandpa Glen is concerned, I remember as a little guy, I remember sitting on his lap on the couch, just him being great grandpa, you know, I remember that. 00;07;15;19 – 00;07;32;25 Grant And then, you know, and the boats that I went in that he was in at the same time as me at that point, it was more my dad driving and great grandpa’s with us, just having a hoot of a time because he’s been there, done that. But now he’s going out with his grandson and great grandson, you know? 00;07;32;25 – 00;07;40;12 Grant So those are like my boating memories with great grandpa. And then the memories continue to increase with grandpa and dad. 00;07;40;12 – 00;07;44;09 Dave So that’s really cool. So you had memories of your great grandfather. You remember those? 00;07;44;13 – 00;08;08;18 Grant Yeah. Yeah. No, I remember going down to Grant’s path and going to his house down there. And my grandmother, Mary, who was his wife, and she was just a sweet, sweet, amazing lady because, you know, my great grandfather’s first wife passed away, and when my grandfather was just six, and then then his next wife, she passed away also. 00;08;08;18 – 00;08;32;22 Grant And then then he married Mary, who survived him. And she was who I remember as great grandma. So my interactions with her and then I remember him coming up to visit up to Seattle, and I have memories of him at my parents place to my grandparents place up up here. So they were all good. And he was just a just a strong, cool man. 00;08;32;22 – 00;08;38;28 Grant And, you know, you always look back at those who, if you have lost and just like, oh, man, if I could ask him this story now, I. 00;08;39;00 – 00;08;39;14 Dave Hate. 00;08;39;21 – 00;08;59;29 Grant Ask about this because one thing he was was just and anyone who knew him knows this. He was just a great storyteller. And he had stories, you know, And so just the way he would tell stories, people always marvel at that. And my grandfather had the same gift, too. So grandpa could recite a lot of the cool stories, and he looked a lot like great grandpa. 00;09;00;12 – 00;09;18;03 Grant So being with my grandfather, Bob, when we were saying Grants Pass or floating the rogue and running into people who knew Great grandpa, they would all like double take and like, Oh my kidding. You’re you look just like him and you talk like him. And he wasn’t as tall as them, but he he just had that face and that that glint in his eye, you know? 00;09;18;07 – 00;09;36;12 Dave Right. That’s really cool. Wow. So. So, yeah. So he was a storyteller. I mean, that it’s pretty amazing. So it started down in Grants Pass, right? So maybe talk about that, you know, a little with that history of the original. You know, take us back to, you know, Glen, your great grandfather prior to maybe getting started. How did that all come to him? 00;09;36;25 – 00;10;02;19 Grant Well, it was never like, hey, I should be in the boat business. And it’s still not necessarily that for us, for him, even as a young boy, he was fascinated with the water and watching it. You know, he grew up in Grants Pass along the Row river and at the time there was no documents, kid, no documenting of what the river really was like between Grant’s path and Gold Beach at the coast. 00;10;02;19 – 00;10;10;03 Grant Everyone knew it made it to the coast, but there was no like, oh, this is this rapid down here going around. And he just was fascinated with it. 00;10;10;21 – 00;10;18;03 Dave Basically. Yeah. So nobody knew back in the day. And we’re talking back in the day. When was this when was when he’s getting going on his boat? Was this like early 1900s? 00;10;18;10 – 00;10;43;21 Grant Well, the first boat built was 1915. And so leading up to that, yeah, he he knew that he liked the water and was intrigued by it from, you know, whether sticking a chunk of wood in the water or little ripples and watching what the wood would do around a ripple or something, just a little even a creek two feet wide, just watching what water would do and how it would react and what it looked like going over a rock and what it looked like going over a stick. 00;10;43;21 – 00;11;05;05 Grant And so he he was intrigued by it and he was intrigued by what’s between here and the coast, like what’s the river really like? And so he was just in high school, young teens, and him and another buddy pooled together between the two of them, $6, bought some lumber and built the boat with no boat knowledge at all. 00;11;05;21 – 00;11;08;25 Grant But they built the boat and said, Let’s go on an adventure. 00;11;08;25 – 00;11;16;09 Dave Wow. So they built a boat for $6 back in the day and then just built this boat. No experience and just let’s go. Let’s go for it. 00;11;16;12 – 00;11;33;26 Grant Let’s see what happens. What an adventure. Right. Well, the best way to get down. There’s, you know, a boat. So let’s build one. And so they did that. And they. They launched the boat. And for all I know, like parents and everything didn’t really care. Noticed that they’re heading off to go on an adventure, you know. But anyhow, they built the boat and headed off. 00;11;33;26 – 00;11;55;04 Grant And what they found is what stuck with him for life. He fell in love with the game, the fish, the canyon. Just like this is special. And and, you know, the things that he did find that people would not find today because of another story. But like there was there is that this river is it’s impassable. You can’t float this river. 00;11;55;04 – 00;12;17;09 Dave Yeah like one spot and I’ve been down in a number of times. I mean, it is for those that don’t know the rogue. The Rogue River is special for a lot of reasons. But it’s got this wild and scenic section which I float adrift. But most of the time and I’ve done some technical stuff, but down there, when I’ve taken my boat down there, it is like Blossom Bar, you know, is one that I think back in the day when your dad was right, I think, didn’t they have to dynamite that out just so you can run it eventually? 00;12;17;13 – 00;12;38;08 Grant Well, yeah. He he dynamited a whole lot of people wouldn’t like to hear this, but because everyone can go enjoy and feel nature’s behind him because of him, there are sections in the river, including Blossom, but other sections that, you know, a hundred yards you have to portage about. Oh yea. Like it’s not just like, oh, there’s a couple of rocks in the way. 00;12;38;08 – 00;13;05;16 Grant This is a hundred yards of just land mine field of boulders that it’s just impassable Swiss cheese. It’s like a, a fence all the way through trees and so they have to unload all the gear out of the boat, carry a very heavy waterlogged boat, 100 yards to carry all the gear down, reload it, go. And oh, man, here we get to do this again and so, you know, the Forest Service would give him expired dynamite. 00;13;05;26 – 00;13;22;10 Grant And so how else are you going to get rid of it? Well, give it to the crazy old guy and grant that and so what’s he going to do with it? Well, he’s going to blow all the rocks out of the river so it’s run a ball. And later in life, he admitted he’s like, you know, if there’s one thing I’d change, I wouldn’t have made this river so easy to run. 00;13;22;21 – 00;13;40;15 Grant And there’s a lot of people who run it today. This is so technical. He considered it easy when he was done with it. The story with Blossom is that, you know, when you’re running down the river, heading down River Fay, you’re floating, which is most common. You come down in the left side of the river is where all this rocks are. 00;13;40;15 – 00;13;42;21 Dave Picket fence, the picket fence, as they call it. 00;13;42;21 – 00;14;06;21 Grant And so you need to very strongly row your your craft over to the right side and then thread down through the deal. And so that that’s the trick to it. It’s not just a straight flush. You got to come down then rural horizontally or perpendicular to the river and then come down. And so for years he would blow the rocks out of there and then high water in the winter, the rocks would come back down. 00;14;06;21 – 00;14;25;14 Grant So he over and over and over, so blossom bar, if you would, of went through his quote unquote photo album of the year, looked every different every year because it would refill back up and there was a few years where he had it where it stayed clear on the left side, which had been the easiest way to run it, just run straight down the left bank. 00;14;25;14 – 00;14;39;25 Grant And he had that for a while. But then finally the rocks would fall back in and he just left at one point. And I don’t know the details on this, but there was a point is like, I just leave it. It’s doable. Yeah, to leave it. So that’s kind of what’s up with Boy, oh my gosh. And even. 00;14;39;25 – 00;14;40;11 Dave Amazing. 00;14;40;11 – 00;14;47;04 Grant Yeah. You know, the rainy falls, the little chute on the side, you know, that chute that they line them down, that’s him, too, you know. 00;14;47;17 – 00;15;06;25 Dave He blasted that. Yeah, that’s great. Well, I think we all. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s pretty amazing. He did that because it allowed a lot of people I mean, the first time that I experienced the rogue, I hiked up from the bottom before I even floated. And I remember in that wild and scenic and looking and watching boats, I remember watching drift boats anchored up, just hanging out, you know, down the canyon and tell myself, Man, I’m going to run that someday. 00;15;07;03 – 00;15;20;02 Dave But he did everything. It wasn’t just these boats. I mean, when he was doing the boats, who like, how did he learn? Because there were some adrift boats right back in the day. Was he how did he eventually get to a point where he had this amazing boat? And then when did the motors come and play? 00;15;20;10 – 00;15;37;16 Grant Yeah. Yeah. Good question. So him and a buddy, obviously they made it to the coast, right? And so they gillnet it. Once they got there, then he could take home. And there’s that point. It’s like, okay, I’m going to build another boat, not because I need boats, but that’s the means to be on the river and that’s the means to get to the game and the fish. 00;15;37;27 – 00;15;54;24 Grant So each boat is like, Well, I’m going to try this now because I was a little wonky on the last one. I wonder if I can shape it. And so he, you know, arguably is the inventor of that shape of drift boat. He was the one creating that and making that shape, obviously, way back in wood and then into aluminum. 00;15;55;02 – 00;16;15;16 Grant But he would just keep making different shapes to do what he wanted to do to grow it better, easier. And then people, you know, the river had a reputation of being quite fierce. And so he thought he had some people who wanted to go with him. So he took numerous people, including Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, Herbert Hoover, Zane Gray. 00;16;15;23 – 00;16;19;15 Grant Mr. Coleman, if you ever, ever had a Coleman camping bag or Coleman lantern, you know you. 00;16;19;17 – 00;16;20;09 Dave Mr. Coleman. 00;16;20;12 – 00;16;22;04 Grant Mr. Coleman Yeah, right. 00;16;22;04 – 00;16;33;23 Dave Yeah. Because what happened was the rogue it became, and probably partly because of Glenn, maybe a big part, but it became this river where all these famous people wanted to come to the Rogue. And did Glenn get that going like you happened? All that. 00;16;33;28 – 00;17;03;20 Grant He did. But he really struggled to at first because it had a scary reputation. And so what he did, he was he was a pretty brilliant marketer. I guess he went to the hospitals and offered free trips to nurses. So what he did is he took women nurses down the river and of course they’d report back. And now what guy can be now choose to be afraid When a bunch of nurses went down and there was an article written about it and how much because he got the he was friends with some publicist at the newspaper. 00;17;03;20 – 00;17;26;04 Grant So they come up with an article about the nurses from whatever local hospital going with him, and he would do this on a regular basis. And then it’s like, okay, I guess we can’t be afraid. And so then other people would go and then it, it kind of went from there and he would have different different trips, you know, his three day trip back in the day with 75 bucks, you know, and that was the food and all the stuff and everything. 00;17;26;04 – 00;17;35;26 Grant Yeah. And so he had different versions of it. Glen’s Hellgate adventures. He had some different brochures. I’ve got one of those old brochures hanging here in the showroom. It’s pretty cool. 00;17;36;09 – 00;17;40;22 Dave Yeah. Guys. HELLGATE Yeah, Yeah. The Hellgate. Is that what they call that? That area? The Hellgate. 00;17;40;22 – 00;18;07;02 Grant Yeah. So it gets confusing because there’s a Hells Gate up on the Fraser River in Canada, but there’s Hellgate with not Hell’s Gate, but there’s Hellgate down there, you know, on the Rogue River there’s a section called Hellgate right there near Grants Pass. And that’s a common like, you know the one those big jet boat tours will take you out of Hellgate to or not down through the wild and scenic but so he called it Hellgate Adventures and Tours was was great grandpa Wow. 00;18;07;06 – 00;18;19;13 Dave Yeah okay And then and so he has these boats go and so he’s basically crafting some of the first wooden drift boats you know what boats and at what point when does that come in like he motors and going up river. When does that start. 00;18;19;13 – 00;18;42;13 Grant Yeah, that’s good question too. So the first documented upriver run and he’s just chomping at the bit I imagine to do this. That was in 47 so. Oh 47. Yeah. So 47 he and anybody ran up it with an Evinrude or a Johnson. Actually Evinrude on it and, and it was quite an adventure and is a big deal to run up it. 00;18;42;13 – 00;19;02;25 Grant And Mercury heard of that and thought that that was pretty cool but they should have some marketing involved in that so they basically had him redo recreate the whole trip again with Mercury and Mercury filmed it and took photos and a bunch of stuff. So most of the photos you see today show Mercury. Okay. Yeah. Because that that’s where all the great footage comes from. 00;19;02;29 – 00;19;23;26 Grant Is that. And then right at the same time, you know, he, he was told about this river in Idaho called the River of No Return. You know, the salmon River, and that it’s unreasonable. And so he says, well, then I’m going to go run it without sight unseen. Let’s go run that, too. You know, since we’re on a roll here, I might as well go run that. 00;19;23;26 – 00;19;42;16 Grant And, you know, he had friends that would say, You can’t run now. That’s that’s suicide and you can’t do that. And he would just listen to people. But then as they would go away, he would say, How do they know what I can or can’t do? Don’t let anyone ever tell you what you can’t do. And so he went and he ran it. 00;19;42;16 – 00;19;48;07 Grant He ran that from Reagan’s up to Salmon City. And so that was the first time that had ever been been run. 00;19;48;07 – 00;19;49;18 Dave And and no kidding, he. 00;19;49;18 – 00;19;50;02 Grant Did that. 00;19;50;12 – 00;19;57;06 Dave Where people back then were people other people using motors like in the forties up doing it, going up rapids and stuff. 00;19;57;17 – 00;20;26;00 Grant Not like he was because what you realized real quick with rapids and outboard propeller engines is you’re going to destroy lower units and you’re going to destroy props and you’re going to be stuck in a hard to reach spot. And so he realized that pretty quick. And so he had a couple of different inventions that he had to to help him and one, have one sitting on my desk over here. 00;20;26;00 – 00;20;44;29 Grant My great uncle down there gave it to me, these brass heel guards that would basically go on the lower unit of of a prop. And so it would cover the gag, it would cover the right in front of the prop where that that job is. And each shape each one different to match the shape of the bottom of that deal. 00;20;44;29 – 00;21;05;07 Grant And they would clamp it around there. So if he whacked it in here, this armor, all the next thing was he started off with the motor lift. He called the lift or upper and he later in the lift or up or was it it said what the thing did, but it didn’t gain a lot of traction. So he renamed it the jackass motor lift. 00;21;05;07 – 00;21;20;29 Grant Why? I don’t know. Maybe because it’s kicking the engine up like a donkey weight or something, but he renamed it that and it got a lot of traction. And basically what it would do is you have a your tiller handle in one hand for the engine, for throttle and steering, and in the other hand you have this motor left handle. 00;21;20;29 – 00;21;42;27 Grant And so he created a cam and there were the first generations you’d push down on this hand, we’re coming to shallow water. Oh, man, let’s keep our momentum full throttle. Full throttle, full throttle. Okay, cut the throttle. Right hand. Push down motor lift. Jack, this engine up. Slide over. Stop. We slide over. Boom! Drop it back down and we go and then later he reversed the. 00;21;42;27 – 00;21;57;21 Grant It did a little bit engineering and he made it where he didn’t have to crouch to push down. He could stand there and just pull up and that would also raise the engine up. We got a few different versions of it here. There’s a 1955 Wooldridge here in the showroom that he made and it has one on it. 00;21;57;21 – 00;21;58;10 Grant It’s kind of cool. 00;21;58;15 – 00;22;12;29 Dave Wow. Wow, that’s really cool. It sounds like a lot of the tech these new inventions are. I mean, he’s involved in all of this. I’m guessing at some point there’s other boat builders out there kind of doing things, but when did the jet pump thing come to be right? Because that was probably big tech technology. 00;22;13;13 – 00;22;33;22 Grant Yup. Yup. So early sixties. So the oldest one in existence is sitting here in our showroom. It’s an old Johnson with with a jet on it. The second one created. So Dick Stallman, he’s the inventor. He’s the genius behind the jet pump. So Dick Stallman had a family, He was an engineer, and he had a family cabin on a river in California. 00;22;34;02 – 00;22;53;23 Grant And so to get the family up to the cabin, he he’d run a prop boat and he destroyed many props and lower units any. So he came up with an idea to make this thing called the jet. And so he made the jet and but the river, he was on wasn’t necessarily super technical, but it did get shallow enough to destroy a propeller case. 00;22;54;10 – 00;23;10;28 Grant And he wanted to learn how to go run more technical water. Now, he was not a jet boat driver or the super complex, so to speak, but he’s this great engineer. And so someone told him, Well, man, if you want to learn how to run the wild Rivers, you need to go talk to the crazy old man in Grants Pass, Oregon. 00;23;11;07 – 00;23;30;07 Grant And so they got connected and they actually became fast friends. And there’s a cool picture we have in here from 1962, running up some of the wild section of the road where my great grandfather’s in a boat running and not, you know, 100 yards behind him is Dick Stallman running and great grandpa stay and follow me. I’m going to teach you. 00;23;30;07 – 00;23;51;04 Grant And so so that was 62 was the right in the beginning there. And so the oldest one in existence here in the showroom is it’s a 1955 Johnson Power head. But of course he’s trying a thing out. And the first one he made, he cannibalized it to make the next version. So there’s pieces from the first one here and this one here. 00;23;51;08 – 00;24;19;00 Grant Okay. And so, yeah, so then that started their relationship. And then my great grandfather became the first and only dealer for outboard jets for forever. Really, For a long time. Not forever, but for a really long time. And, and we worked and close family friends with the Thalmann family for four years as dad would innovate different things. And you know, he’d tell Dick Stallman, Hey, you know, I got this idea, you guys should do it. 00;24;19;00 – 00;24;33;26 Grant And Dick, like, I’m I got a lot going on. And Dad would say, Are you opposed to me doing it? And Dick’s like, No, you go for it and I’ll even support you. So it’s nice. It’s like when Dad came up with instead of a three blade aluminum pillars, it would have been the four blades and using stainless steel and and such. 00;24;33;26 – 00;24;38;29 Grant And then dad innovating the the tunnel of the outboard jet. And so yeah. 00;24;39;03 – 00;24;49;15 Dave Wow. When you were doing it in the back in this period, the 5060s, what was going on with the business at this point? Was he shipping boats just locally or were they going all over the state or country? 00;24;49;25 – 00;25;10;05 Grant Most of it was hanging locally, but he did have boats going places. Yeah, but most of it was still still local. Yeah, I was the when my grandparents really started getting involved is when they started going further, like heading up to Alaska and such and getting outside of the lower 48. And that’s when things really started booming. 00;25;10;14 – 00;25;30;14 Dave That’s right. Because your boats are made for I mean, just like you said early on from the very day one, you know, you’re you know, Glenn was it was all about the Whitewater really getting down the river, going down and going up. So feels like your boats have always been crafted for that. You now make a diversity of boats or have you stuck with that same model where you really focus on that same style? 00;25;31;00 – 00;25;53;14 Grant Yeah, we our heartbeat surely is the shallow water and whitewater and such, but we build a lot of stuff. But the passion is still the same. It’s, you know, what’s the tool that can have me on the river and further and safer and just to experience what the river or the water body water run has to offer, you know, and take people with me and feel secure doing it. 00;25;53;26 – 00;26;12;21 Grant So it’s like we feel like that’s where we want to be. I mean, a lot of the guys that work here, they show me Steelhead pictures today. One of the guys, man, look where I was this week. And, you know, I mean, that’s who we are, right? But yes, I mean, we right now, currently in this shop will build as big as a 33 foot by ten foot wide off shore boat. 00;26;12;21 – 00;26;26;15 Grant We call that the deep water really robust stuff. Awesome boat, So great, like six pack boat, tuna boat. And we’ve got a number of them, some lodges in Alaska. And it’s just a big brawny. It’s the king Yeah. 00;26;26;20 – 00;26;29;15 Dave Made for like the ocean and rough water and all that stuff. 00;26;29;15 – 00;26;43;25 Grant Yeah. We make a number of boats and boats, you know, even down as far as, you know, 18, 20, 23, 24, all the way up to 2930. But the big deepwater, it’s it’s a flagship. It’s, it’s Yeah. Heads above water, all the other stuff we built. Yeah. 00;26;44;00 – 00;27;02;04 Dave Gotcha. Gotcha. What about the going back a little bit on the drift boats. I feel like I’m I’m not as I’ve been in and I love the boats but I’ve done a lot more drift boating. But you guys had some drift boats and he slowly move out of the drift boat or is that something you guys still had for a while in the we yeah we. 00;27;02;12 – 00;27;30;20 Grant We still built drip boats for quite some time and we built one of the best rowing lightweight good rock or drift boats that there were and it’s just a wood but we at the same time we were also really doing a lot of jet boat stuff, a lot of powerboat stuff. And then there was quite a few guys coming into the game that were just making nice drift boats too, and it was hard to compete on such a small thing is like Ben, they’re doing a fantastic job, in fact, where they build them, there’s more drift boat stuff. 00;27;30;20 – 00;27;41;11 Grant It’s kind of like we just kind of phased out of it. I still have the old plans for all of great grandpa shapes and our shapes and whatnot. We’ve got all that gear, you know, people like corn. Please do it, man. 00;27;41;21 – 00;27;43;00 Dave Do some more. I know. 00;27;43;00 – 00;28;00;25 Grant And I’m not opposed to it. And people just like, begging for it, but like, man, there’s there’s some boats you look at. They’re just ridiculous how many cool little things and features they got on. I’m like, well, if I’ve got to match every little feature they have, I’m not too interested in. You just want the great performance shape and some of the basics. 00;28;00;25 – 00;28;04;12 Grant I have an interest in that, I think. Yeah, but yeah, yeah. 00;28;04;12 – 00;28;22;05 Dave It’s interesting. Yeah. The drift phase is gone, a whole nother thing because you’ve got these skiff now skiffs in Montana. The they’re really low sighted, They look totally different than the normal rock, you know. But we’ve done a couple of, we did a whole season on kind of boats and really focused on drift boats got into the door is on the Grand Canyon. 00;28;22;05 – 00;28;30;01 Dave I’m sure you’re you’re I’m sure Glen would have read. Did he ever get involved in that? Did he ever go down the Grand Canyon in a in a boat for his time or after his time? 00;28;30;01 – 00;28;34;07 Grant He would have it was after his time. He would have absolutely ate it up. You know, he would. 00;28;34;07 – 00;28;44;25 Dave Only do that because that’s a crazy that design was I’m sure. I mean, those guys probably learned some or there was probably some connection, right? The guys building those boats that flipped upside down, you could roll them and they were decked over and all that. 00;28;45;06 – 00;29;03;06 Grant You know, maybe I can’t I’d hate to speak for it without confidence, you know, but the yeah, he, he surely had lots of influence when he did and he wasn’t afraid of big water, you know, you know when he ran hell’s Hell’s Gate up on the Fraser River at that time no boat had ever been up that, that was some treacherous big water. 00;29;03;16 – 00;29;19;18 Grant If you’ve ever been on the tram that goes above it or looked at it, I got some serious, serious white water on the only boat that had been up. And at that point, I think there was a some type of stern wheeler that like 300 or 500 guys showed up with a rope through the rabbit or something like that. 00;29;19;18 – 00;29;19;25 Dave Right. 00;29;19;26 – 00;29;46;25 Grant So but then that was 1975 and he was 79 when he ran that and no one had ever run it. And then, you know, after that was done, he went up the Thompson Dispensers Bridge, you know, later that the next day. I think so. Oh, wow. He saw that. He he would have been to every big whitewater place that someone said, hey, this is unreasonable water here have been like, let’s go. 00;29;47;00 – 00;29;47;24 Dave He would have been on it. 00;29;47;29 – 00;30;08;05 Grant Yeah, that’s what he liked. And then my gran father ran some white water. I got a picture right outside. Well, right here in my office of Grandpa running Health Canyon, but. Oh, he, he did more of that with my dad. My dad was the real like, let’s go for it. Big whitewater type of guy, too. 00;30;08;05 – 00;30;09;25 Dave So. Oh, your dad was Your dad got it? 00;30;09;25 – 00;30;21;10 Grant Yeah, he he he got the bug from great Grandpa, and he spent a lot of time with great grandpa on the summers down there. And that was just great. Grandpa’s the hero. He’s the king. You want to be like him? That’s what we’re doing, right? 00;30;21;10 – 00;30;34;26 Dave That’s right. Now you’re kind of at the helm there. What is that like now? Feeling where you are? I’m not sure. Assuming it’s still a fully family run business, but you must think about that a lot, like the history and where you guys are at. 00;30;34;26 – 00;30;52;16 Grant And I do. I don’t take it for granted. I am so thankful. God’s really been gracious to us. You know, we you don’t you don’t deserve to do what you’re doing, you know, but just the grace of God and ideas that he gives and putting it into practice and then, you know, going and doing it, it just it just works. 00;30;52;16 – 00;31;00;06 Grant You know, me, you know, just just because the proximity to the type of water that I have, you know, I’ve got all these Western Washington rivers, you know? All right. 00;31;00;06 – 00;31;02;09 Dave Yeah. Where are you guys at? Where’s your where are you located? 00;31;02;09 – 00;31;04;24 Grant We’re south of Seattle. By 10 minutes, we’re in. 00;31;04;24 – 00;31;05;00 Dave Okay. 00;31;05;01 – 00;31;37;25 Grant Temple Boulevard Park area. But like, you know, I mean, the Green River is right across the street, but we like to go up to the sky or the Snoqualmie or Snohomish or, you know, the Skagit or the on the Cowlitz or whatever. And there’s lots of little rivers you can go run. But so I’m used to technical in the on the side of super shallow gravel bar left right the read the water at a very, very shallow level is kind of where I’ve got my teeth though I sure enjoy the big water to time over on the on the salmon and the snake and that to me that’s just so much fun. 00;31;37;25 – 00;31;45;08 Grant So much fun. We’re building a few boats for that type of water here now, and I just can’t wait to get them out and go play a cool. 00;31;45;08 – 00;32;11;18 Dave We’ve heard many of the stories on this podcast. Togiak River Lodge is one of the great destinations for swing and flies, for Chinook stripping for Coho all day and unwinding in a lodge right on the riverbank of the Togiak River with access to all five salmon species plus rainbows and more. Togiak offers a true Alaskan experience. Picture over 30 miles of river season guides, high quality boats and low fishing pressure. 00;32;11;18 – 00;32;33;08 Dave It’s fly fishing Alaska at its best. I’ll be heading up the summer, so reach out to Jordan and the crew to see what dates they have available this year. You can learn more right now at wet flight swing dot com slash togiak. That’s togiak towing ojai ak alaskan fly fishing like you’ve always dreamed about. Yeah. You guys have a diversity for me. 00;32;33;08 – 00;32;50;03 Dave I don’t know as much about the the jet sleds, you know, the motor and all that, but yeah, it looks like a diversity has over time. What does that look like? You know the evolution. Have you guys, you know, can you see that? Is it interesting or do you see still boat designs you have now that really are similar to, say, back to the seventies and sixties? 00;32;50;03 – 00;33;11;20 Grant There has been a lot that’s changed and there’s certain key things that stayed the same. You know, Dad coming up with proving and creating a very well working outboard jet. Tunnell in the early eighties, patenting that and and it really being untouchable even to this day there’s been people tried to duplicate it and if you don’t get it right, it’s better to not have it. 00;33;12;00 – 00;33;14;23 Dave All right. And what is the jet tunnel? What is a jet tunnel? 00;33;15;01 – 00;33;38;20 Grant Yeah. So conventionally on the outward jet boat or like you’d see my great grandpa running when the Jets first came out a complete flat bottom. And you have your your water intake, jet foot intake hanging down below the bottom of the boat to suck water in by the impeller spinning and spin it around the stale shell of a jet and blasted out this small nozzle to then propel the boat forward. 00;33;38;29 – 00;34;04;05 Grant And so though we’re not nearly as vulnerable as the prop engine, you still have three inches of something hanging down below the bottom of the boat. And so the idea is if you can create a tunnel that gets the foot above the bottom of the boat, then we can’t smack that thing. Well, the problem is any bits of air fed to our jet is not good because that’s called cavitation. 00;34;04;05 – 00;34;24;27 Grant As soon as there’s cavitation, we lose our ability to stay on top of the water. We lose our ability to corner aggressively at corner, aggressively comes with throttle and the right shape of boat. And so dad coming up with a tunnel, trying it in flat bottoms and realizing this doesn’t work, because if you’re a flat bottomed boat, you’re just basically carrying any air that you riffle, that you run over at the front of. 00;34;24;27 – 00;34;41;01 Grant The boat’s just going to run straight back to the jet and just feed right in. And so having some dead rise in the boat so we don’t do flat bottomed boats, we all have a little bit of a dead rise, a little bit of air. And so now a boat, when it goes into a corner, it can still slightly lean like it naturally wants to wear a flat bottomed boat. 00;34;41;01 – 00;34;58;02 Grant You go into a corner once the lean, but it can’t because it’s flat. So grabs and hops and skips and slides. And it’s just a very situation. If you’re truly in technical water where we got to go left and then we got to go right, maybe we might make it. Luckily, if we got one big left hand sweep or one big right hand sweeper, but if you got an obstacle course, where you going? 00;34;58;02 – 00;35;16;19 Grant Left, Right. Boy, you’re you’re on the rocks pretty quick. And so having some dead rise in there in combination. So the shape of the bottom key then getting this tunnel that lifts this jet foot up above the bottom about, okay, now we’ve got clearance. None of that matters, though. In a straight line. You can make a tunnel and run straight on the river and be. 00;35;16;19 – 00;35;37;28 Grant But what rivers are straight forever. And so now this boat has to be able to corner aggressively. And that’s where we really come into our own as we make a boat with a shape of our bottom, with the shape of the tunnel that allows that jet foot to be up, to run shallow to now corner aggressively, because now either side of that tunnel wall in combination with dead rise that allows the boat to lean. 00;35;37;28 – 00;35;53;09 Grant Now the tunnel walls grab there at the rear. They grab some water when you’re leaning in the corner and it keeps your rear end from sliding out on you. And it helps force feed clean water into the jet. If you get that shape wrong, you’re going to create air right there at the back of the boat and put it in the jet. 00;35;53;09 – 00;35;55;12 Grant So the tunnel is a big, big deal. 00;35;55;12 – 00;36;02;23 Dave Real big. That’s huge. So basically, it allows you to maneuver around while you’re turning it very shallow water, which you couldn’t do before. 00;36;02;28 – 00;36;21;06 Grant Yeah. Yeah. So because shallow so you can run really shallow. Well, good for you. But can you corner too? It means nothing unless you corner aggressively and get on the throttle. Mid-Corner If you’re in this fine line of there’s this point. If I give it too much throttle, I’m going to lose the rear end. What’s the point? I want to go up here and be confident. 00;36;21;06 – 00;36;34;09 Grant I want to take somebody. I want to be a guide. I want to like, not risk. Everyone’s life. Every time I’m trying to go through the skinny section at this time of year, the water’s low. But we all know the good fish are just up here and I got to be able to get there. So I want to be able to do it safely. 00;36;34;09 – 00;36;41;18 Grant I’m not trying to be a cowboy. I just want to take people up safe and take them back down safe. That’s the whole point. And so that’s what we’re trying to create. 00;36;41;19 – 00;36;55;13 Dave That’s cool. Well, and as they’re Ben, so that sounds like a very big kind of improvement on the design of there have been some other over the years, some others lots of those types of things or have there been some big ones that have really changed the game and Well, that. 00;36;55;13 – 00;37;06;13 Grant Is a huge one and we’ve improved it and continue to fine tune it. I’ve seen people come into the game who put them in their boats, major brand manufacturers. I see them them back out because they’re like, Man, we just. 00;37;06;13 – 00;37;06;28 Dave Don’t get it. 00;37;07;01 – 00;37;35;28 Grant You don’t get it right. It’s bad. Other shapes that people kind of connect to. Wooldridge would be the square nose, though We build square nose, we build kind of ball noses, we build pointing nose. I do them all. But the square nose is something that evolved from like big whitewater stuff. So a big broad bow create lift and big whitewater, you know, where appointed nose would point right into a big roller and then you’d VSP, you’d be fighting. 00;37;35;28 – 00;37;50;20 Grant The thing’s going to turn. You left, right? Because the hydraulics are like you put a it’s like putting your hand out the window when the car is going 70 miles an hour, you raise it up and down how quick the wind aims the direction of your hand appointed nose right into a big roller. Same thing. It’s going to want to spin around. 00;37;50;20 – 00;38;18;07 Grant So big, broad, wide noses when we hit big Whitewater, you know, big class four or five Whitewater, they create lift and then we can power up and over the top, hopefully. And that’s the desire. And so we started taking that design and putting it in some of the smaller, even shallow water. Jet boats were really a guys probably not taking this in big Whitewater, but that broad nose became so popular because it increases square footage of a said length boat over another same length boat with a different shape. 00;38;18;09 – 00;38;38;22 Grant Ours has so much more efficient area and load and people in and out, in the front. Or if we’re hunting in Alaska, get some animals in and out and like it made it so much easier. So that’s one of those designs that stuck and kind of people it’s kind of quintessential. Walters The two piece walk through windshield, a lot of boats convention would have a three piece with you walk through the center and we do some of those. 00;38;38;22 – 00;38;58;17 Grant But that’s what everybody did forever. And, you know, big uncle, Uncle Bachmann getting him through that center door is a struggle, let alone carrying a cooler through at the same time. And so dad came up with the two piece, which, you know, we get the port side over there, opens up just huge and broad. Big guy can go in and out easily, carry a cooler. 00;38;58;24 – 00;39;15;02 Grant Now we have two pieces of glass. So in crummy weather, it’s easier visibility than the three, you know. And so that was something that we do. But, you know, that’s just in a front windshield boat. A lot of people want the same shape boat, but would rather have a center console or tiller. And that’s fine. But that that’s something. 00;39;15;02 – 00;39;30;09 Grant And then just just we’re known for just the durability and toughness. We’re not an assembly line. We build them all really tough. If a guy saw the beautiful show welds on the gunnels, he pulls the floor up. He’s going to see the same quality under the floor that someone will never see unless they pull the bar. 00;39;30;09 – 00;39;31;22 Dave So that’s amazing. 00;39;31;25 – 00;39;49;28 Grant Besides that, some other real big innovations is here. We launched a little about a year ago, the the HDPE high density polyethylene jet boat that we’re making, and we’ve been playing around with that for a while, but launched a video kind of explaining it in this last January. And that’s kind of gone a little bit bonkers. 00;39;49;28 – 00;39;52;08 Dave So yeah, And what are those? What’s polyester? What is that? 00;39;52;15 – 00;40;15;29 Grant But it’s a plastic, basically. There’s lots and lots of plastic, so but there’s lots and lots of polymer. So and there’s very big differences in the properties of different materials you’ve heard about over the years. Probab Well, let’s start with something as simple as a drift boat. You know, a lot of people are going to put glove it or wetland or on the bottom of an aluminum drift boat because you know, this is not a planing haul. 00;40;15;29 – 00;40;35;11 Grant Obviously I’m just floating down the river and when we go through that shallow section of rocks with a aluminum boat, especially compared to, say, a fiberglass drift boat, the aluminum, it sticks, you know, and that’s what aluminum does when they hit rock. So we paint glove. It or wetland or people will bolt on a real thin sheet of plastic. 00;40;35;11 – 00;40;56;20 Grant And it would be usually UHF, W and, and maybe even the the HDP. And then people with big jet boats do that too. And for two full pulling on and off the beaches, we have a little bit more slick or if we accidentally hit a rock, we’ve got a more of a slick glancing blow than, oh man, we stopped really quick because the aluminum sticks to the rock. 00;40;56;27 – 00;41;09;12 Grant And so people have been put in plastic on the bottom of jet boats for quite a while. But the problem still exists. If I hit a rock hard enough on this plastic, I’m still going to really damage my aluminum hall. 00;41;09;21 – 00;41;10;03 Dave Right? 00;41;10;11 – 00;41;31;00 Grant You can hold a piece of plastic next to your truck door and smack that plastic with a sledgehammer. And the plastic is fine, but the door behind it dented. You know, I mean, so that’s kind of an example that’s not really justifying because an aluminum boat’s much thicker with proper structure, but you can still damage aluminum hall. And so the HDP thing is not new. 00;41;31;09 – 00;41;52;18 Grant I’ve seen them built overseas for years, but different applications. People build them because they don’t have saltwater issues. You know, and and no corrosion issues and such. And so I was dad and I were next to one a few years ago. I’m not new to these things. I’ve seen them. But it was just kind of one of those light bulb moments where you now are looking at this prop driven plastic boat. 00;41;53;00 – 00;42;13;01 Grant And I’m like, What are you thinking? What I’m thinking, Why are we not making outboard boat? Oh, my goodness, we fixed enough outboard jet boats for people who smack stuff. Why would we not make one out of this? And he’s like, why wouldn’t we? So let’s do it. So we did that. And the two most important things to us was, number one, it has to handle like a Wooldridge. 00;42;13;01 – 00;42;32;18 Grant It has to because not all outward jet boats do and people don’t understand that till they’ve driven a few of them in aggressively. And so that’s got to handle like our Alaskan dad. So let’s shape it just like our Alaskan. So let’s make a five and a half foot wide bottom, let’s make nine degree dad drives, let’s put the same tunnel in there, let’s get a keel, let’s hang the engine the same way and let’s go see. 00;42;32;18 – 00;42;54;16 Grant And we built a prototype and well, man, we the handling. This is fantastic. A corner so hard. This is cool. Secondarily. Well, the whole point of building it all this material is it’s got to be durable, like it has to be. Otherwise Why are we making the boats look uglier, you know? And so we did some abuse the thing and they took the abuse is like, okay, great. 00;42;54;20 – 00;43;14;21 Grant Does it? All right. Next thing, let’s just keep refining the form factor and pretty shape to it, you know? And so that’s what we got. So you don’t need this to go catch steelhead. You don’t need this to get up the river where you need this is you know, you’re the guy like me who gets it bored sometimes and want to just go run a ripple and go check what’s up further up this river. 00;43;14;21 – 00;43;41;24 Grant Let’s go on an adventure. And I’m not trying to be careless. I’m not one of those guys who wants to go jump beaver dams or goes go across dry ground. That doesn’t interest me because that takes no talent. I just want to cleanly get up the river and back cleanly. But here maybe there’s a little technical section that I would be pretty nervous to take an aluminum boat through and say, I’m off by four, six inches, and I knocked the bottom with this boat. 00;43;42;03 – 00;44;01;14 Grant There’s no consequence. Like I with the aluminum. That’s why we built it. Not to be a cowboy. You can be a cowboy with the boat, but it’s not the purpose. The purpose was like, can I still get people safely up here? The river level change. They shut down the dam. Oh, my goodness. I didn’t calculate this right. We got to get up there. 00;44;01;14 – 00;44;26;11 Grant I don’t want to put half a golf ball sized dent in my boat and be embarrassed now when it’s on the trailer because everybody sees that little dent there really doesn’t matter and doesn’t affect the handling. But, you know, I’m just I’m self-conscious. So that’s the why behind it or for those guys, we built a lot of boats for first responders, sheriff’s departments, police departments, fire and rescue, Department of Fish and Wildlife, Water, just all sorts of those guys. 00;44;26;21 – 00;44;49;19 Grant And here’s a tool that they have. And sometimes the job requires us to sacrifice the tool to save the life or to get the bad guy. And in that case, I don’t want to have to fix their tool all the time when because of training or whatever and here the thing just goes on and keeps ticking and it can take that abuse or that lack of knowledge when we’re running. 00;44;49;29 – 00;44;52;05 Grant And it’s pretty impressive that way. 00;44;52;05 – 00;44;54;15 Dave So these are out there right now, these these boats. 00;44;54;15 – 00;44;55;16 Grant Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. 00;44;55;16 – 00;44;57;08 Dave And what are they call what’s, what’s the name of the. 00;44;57;08 – 00;44;59;11 Grant Well we named it The Rock. 00;44;59;17 – 00;45;07;18 Dave Yeah, the rock. Okay, I’m looking, I am looking at the photos of the rock. Yeah. So it’s like actually when you look at the photos, it’s hard to tell from It almost looks like it’s aluminum boat. 00;45;07;25 – 00;45;34;15 Grant Yeah, it’s got similar shape. We’re. We’re trying to make anything look any different. The shape and what our boats do in shallow water is absolutely what makes us special. One of the biggest things. So let’s stick with that for sure. But now let’s make a platform that works with this material. Material moves differently than aluminum. You can’t necessarily bend it and form it the same way you can aluminum, but so there’s different limitations, but also things that are great to me. 00;45;34;15 – 00;45;40;17 Dave Yeah, that’s amazing. So that’s something that you basically you and your your dad or you guys kind of came up with this idea. 00;45;40;28 – 00;45;51;13 Grant What we came up with was let’s make an outboard jet boat of a thing, you know? Yeah, I yeah. So that’s the and I don’t see anybody, any other major players doing this. Why isn’t anybody doing this. 00;45;51;13 – 00;46;10;29 Dave Oh why is it. Yeah. I wonder about that. Because the drift boats the same thing and you got these, you got, you know still even today you got wood boats, you got aluminum, you got fiberglass and you got some plastic boats too, out there. I think that’s the main thing. And and you think of so what is when you go back to aluminum, what is the aluminum for somebody that maybe says guy, you know, why is an aluminum good? 00;46;10;29 – 00;46;18;03 Dave What is an aluminum good? If you compare it to, say, I guess we’ll just say fiberglass, plastic and aluminum, What is alumina do better? 00;46;18;15 – 00;46;36;02 Grant Aluminum is fantastic. People ask me, well you’re building the the rogue now or you guys just stop aluminum. No, you like I said, you don’t need plastic to go catch fish. Aluminum is such an art form. It’s so beautiful. It’s one of those metals that’s so light but so strong and you can do so much cool stuff with it. 00;46;36;02 – 00;46;49;04 Grant I absolutely love aluminum. We are going to keep building aluminum and they’ll be predominantly what we use is aluminum. Why is it different than fiberglass? Well, there’s a difference there. So a fiberglass, let’s just say an offshore world. 00;46;49;04 – 00;46;50;05 Dave You’re not sure. Right? 00;46;50;05 – 00;47;11;18 Grant So the difference would be, well, with aluminum, I’m not restricted to a mold. Okay. So the fiberglass guys, there’s a certain mold shape and so until they make enough boats to justify the cost of that mold, they don’t really change the mold unless there’s something wrong with it. Or they need a new shape of cabin or windshield or floorplan or or bottom. 00;47;11;18 – 00;47;32;07 Grant Right. So once they’ve committed to it and hopefully they’re got a good enough engineers and designers that what they decide, it’s just a really great haul and they don’t need to change anything. And that’s the case for many glass boats out there. However, one of the beauties with aluminum is like from one boat to literally the very next I can go, let’s make the fish box hatch a little bigger, like it’s no big deal. 00;47;32;07 – 00;47;51;02 Grant I’m not restricted by a mold. I’m just like, Well, let’s cut it and bend it bigger. And if we like that, let’s put it into the Caddy. So the next ones we were out. Are that just that way? It’s like, Let’s try this. Let’s cut the windshield shorter, you know, or let’s, you know, like that. We have a lot of freedom with aluminum to just change things. 00;47;51;02 – 00;48;11;16 Grant So then aluminum is lighter. So if the shape of the boat say we take apples to apples, a 24 foot glass boat at 24 foot aluminum boat, if their bottom shapes are exactly the same and they got the same power, the aluminum boat’s going to burn less gas. It just is because it’s lighter. It’s not because anything other more special than that, It’s just it’s just lighter. 00;48;11;26 – 00;48;31;22 Grant So the fiberglass, the advantage to it. Well, because it’s just heavier, not for any negative of its own because it’s heavier. It might ride a hair smoother. Right. Because it’s heavier now. It’s you don’t ever intentionally add weight to a boat. But if I threw the same amount of weight in the aluminum version. Now, what’s the point then, though, at that point? 00;48;31;22 – 00;48;43;13 Grant So and then just really the durability, when it goes to the riverside, you don’t see fiberglass jet boats. There are some, but they’re going to be more careful. You see fiberglass drift boats in that race. 00;48;43;13 – 00;48;44;18 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00;48;44;18 – 00;49;07;02 Grant So there’s some really nice ones, Clark And, and whatever you come down and your your drift in over the rocks, you don’t stick like you would an aluminum boat with the glide right there, you slide And so that’s, that’s a huge beauty there. But boy you’re getting risky now if we have a fiberglass jet boat because now we’ve changed the game when instead of drifting into some rocks, we’re actually a power with weight in the boat. 00;49;07;02 – 00;49;26;06 Grant So it changes the whole ballgame. People say you should make a HDP drift boat. I for, I guess for kicks and giggles. That’s cool. But you don’t need to we don’t have impact the same way with a drift boat that you do when you’ve got propulsion here. And so if you just want it for novelty sake, fine, but it’ll be slippery. 00;49;26;06 – 00;49;35;26 Grant Sure, you don’t have to coat the bottom or anything, but you you don’t need that in the regards that you do with a jet boat. The jet. But when we hit something hard. 00;49;36;07 – 00;49;51;13 Dave Man, you’re hitting it hard. It’s whack it. Yeah. Yeah. It’s going to put a hole in a fiberglass, a wood boat, I mean, yeah, all that. But the plastic and the aluminum. Aluminum is going to most likely dent in plastic. What you’re saying is it’s just going to it’s not what’s it going to do, flex and bounce off. 00;49;51;14 – 00;50;15;08 Grant That’s right. Now you got to be careful. Nothing is indestructible. You know, you can destroy anything. You can destroy an Abrams tank or Apache helicopter. Okay. But there’s reasons why that they’re in the application that they are is because they’re tougher than other things. Okay. And so, yeah, yes. With the properties of what we use, which is really important, is pipe grade, virgin HDP. 00;50;15;08 – 00;50;42;24 Grant That’s all very, very important versus recycled material, which would cost me a whole lot less money, lots and lots less. But the virgin stuff just has is more robust. When you’re thinking about that impact, it wouldn’t matter if is the drift boat or saltwater boat or something, but because the purpose of me doing an outdoor jet boat out of this stuff, the purpose is if that just in case when that oh when that sacrificed the thing to save the life situation comes into play. 00;50;42;24 – 00;51;15;17 Grant I want to have spent the most money on the best material to handle that impact. That’s my why okay so and and then the pipe grade is just the really tough stuff. But you’re exactly right. There’s a flexibility to it that you can hit. I’ve hit some stuff I’ve gone out testing because in my video people will see me, my buddy comes down with an excavator and we drop things like we put a boat upside down in our parking lot and we drop like a V8 engine block and a boulder that weighs £557 on it. 00;51;15;17 – 00;51;44;26 Grant We do all this without showing me being reckless in a river, which I don’t want to do, but showing me trying to hurt it. I launch it off a launch out in our parking lot, like trying to hurt the thing, you know, and, and we don’t. But just for my own knowledge, me and some guys really trying to look for trouble, too, to see if we could hit the boat hard in a river, have done that and not hurt the boat in any further testing would require me to be in a helmet and suit to not get injured. 00;51;44;26 – 00;52;02;23 Dave So yeah, that’s amazing. Well, that’s pretty cool because, I mean, you look at the technology again, I was asking whether they were down now or over 100 years since, you know, the first boats that your great grandfather built and, you know, he was using wood back then. Right. And are there any wood boats from the day? Do you guys still have an old wood boat back? 00;52;02;23 – 00;52;06;05 Dave What’s the oldest Woolridge Aldridge boat that’s out there. 00;52;06;05 – 00;52;20;03 Grant That’s old man. So there’s one at a forest Service station down, I believe, near Exxon. This or maybe it’s really an undercover. There’s one at Paradise Lodge. 00;52;20;08 – 00;52;22;27 Dave Okay. And these are old boats from, like, the early days. 00;52;23;03 – 00;52;52;14 Grant Yeah Yeah. And then I have the coolest one to my opinion is here. I got a 1955 one here right now, But it’s a prop boat, so it’s has a prop mercury, old key Hopper. Mercury with one of my great grandpa’s old motor left. And it was built for a guy whose name was Lyle Woodcock, who lived down in the Applegate River Valley, who went fishing with my great grandpa and loved multiple times the fish and women says, I want you to build me a boat. 00;52;52;14 – 00;53;15;16 Grant So great Grandpa built him this boat, and Lyle used it and loved it. And eventually Lyle passed away. But his daughter, Kit, her name’s Kit Allen, called me and years ago, and it’s like, you know, I’ve got this boat that’s been in our barn, and it’s one of your great grandfathers. And people have called me and tried to like, get the engine or the motor lift or different things. 00;53;15;16 – 00;53;30;09 Grant And it just doesn’t seem right. It seems like it should all stay together. She’s like, well, what’s what’s this boat worth? I’m like, Can you send me some pictures? And she sent me pictures. I’m like, Oh, that’s cool. That’s sure is an older thing. I doubt the engine runs. The trailer definitely needs to be thrown away, but it’s cool looking, you know? 00;53;30;09 – 00;53;45;25 Grant And she’s like, What’s it worth? I says, Well, as a functioning river or fishing boat, nothing. But sentimentally I think it’s priceless. It’s so cool. You know, She was like, Well, people keep wanting to buy this part in that and such. I just don’t think that’s right. She’s like, If you had it, what would you do with it? 00;53;46;07 – 00;54;03;12 Grant I’d put it right here in the showroom with a story about your great grandfather. She’s like, It’s yours. Come and get it. That’s cool. I’m like, Wow. So me and Grandpa, who was alive at the time, and my cousin drove down there with a flatbed and and met her and Kit and Ron, her and her husband and and heard more of the story and took the boat. 00;54;03;12 – 00;54;06;27 Grant And so we have that here in the showroom. And it’s a really cool piece in the showroom. 00;54;07;04 – 00;54;13;02 Dave That’s really cool. So people could somebody could go there now and go is public is this You go, Oh, yeah, stop by. Yeah, the. 00;54;13;02 – 00;54;21;13 Grant Showroom is like coming into a I don’t know, a Bass Pro or Cabela’s. There’s right cons and tons of historic photos. There’s mounts all over. 00;54;21;13 – 00;54;22;09 Dave That’s amazing. 00;54;22;10 – 00;54;29;16 Grant There’s some neat steelhead mounts and big things and there’s a bunch, you know, there’s three elk and lots of deer and some bear. And I’m. 00;54;29;16 – 00;54;36;07 Dave I have to stop by. I’m going to be up there. I think the the show, the fly fishing show is coming up early next year. So I have to swing by and check it out, see what I love. 00;54;36;07 – 00;54;37;04 Grant To have you give you. 00;54;37;04 – 00;54;54;13 Dave Totally. It’s fun. It’s really awesome. So so this is cool. So basically there’s a history. I was going to ask you about that, too. You know, you have all this history of and we’re not we’re only touching the surface on stories. We haven’t even got into all that. But we’re I would somebody follow up on this. And if they want to learn about, you know, your family and all the history there of your great grandfather, where could they read? 00;54;54;13 – 00;54;59;25 Dave I mean, they had the book, right? That’s one place to talk about that. Is that book a good place to just hear some of these stories? 00;54;59;25 – 00;55;25;17 Grant Oh, it’s a fun spot. The Rogue River to run. Florence Almon co-wrote that. Well, basically what she did, which was really cool, she was good friends with my great grandfather. He he always had stories and and she is really smart what she did. She took a recorder, a voice or tape recorder at the time, and they would just sit down, whether it was driving in the car or at a cafe or at her house. 00;55;25;17 – 00;55;52;06 Grant And she just set the recorder down and hit record. And he would just tell stories. And so if someone opens up the book and if anyone who’s a fan of outdoors at all or the Rogue River especially or many others, they would enjoy it because it’s one it’s chock full of cool, old historic photos. And then the way it’s written is so everything she’s recorded so verbatim, she writes exactly off the tape recorder and it’s in bold. 00;55;52;07 – 00;56;02;07 Grant So, you know, in its normal font that she’s just connecting the dots and telling the story. And then it goes to a whole section of all bold, which is basically exactly what he said. 00;56;02;14 – 00;56;06;23 Dave It’s yeah, it’s actually his that’s the cool thing is it’s actually him talking Right. Yeah. 00;56;06;28 – 00;56;31;18 Grant So cool. And dad, my dad got these recordings. He got them all. They’re not of any great audio value, but we went through and listened to a lot of them and put them over some cool video. So on our cool on YouTube, we’re going to organize our YouTube even better. We’re going to. But if you scroll down through the videos, there’s lots of historic ones that someone can watch there and there’s some pretty cool stuff. 00;56;32;04 – 00;56;42;14 Dave I think it might be cool. You know, again, as a as a podcaster, I think it’d be really cool to hear some of those audio clips. Maybe we can get one of those from you just so people can hear what your great grandfather sounded like and throw them in the attic. 00;56;42;14 – 00;57;04;03 Grant Oh yes, there’s some fun ones. The audio and then audio with him, him on on the screen to tell the inner being interviewed after you know running Hells Gate up on the Fraser you know there was a reporter there and it was a big deal that day when he did it and you know people talking to him about don’t you think this is dangerous? 00;57;04;03 – 00;57;17;26 Grant And he’s like, well, no, he’s like driving an automobile. All seems more dangerous, right? He’s like, you know, you’re not going to find me too high up on a mountain peak. But there’s people who love to do that. But you’ll find me here in the river looking for the wild, you know? 00;57;17;28 – 00;57;37;06 Dave That’s great. He must have had some. I mean, I’ve been on, you know, kind of my home River is the Deschutes, and I’ve definitely been floating by and floated over 20 foot jet sleds upside down below. And, you know, I mean, like just gone through, you know, big, rapid. I mean, you’re drenched. You must have had that. He must have had some stories where he flipped boats and all that stuff or what does that look like? 00;57;37;06 – 00;57;38;17 Dave You hear some of those stories over the years. 00;57;38;19 – 00;57;57;24 Grant Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, real quick, the Deschutes. I love the Deschutes. I grew up going in camp, Jet boat and camping up on the. Oh, cool. That’s a special, special place that is. And it is deceiving people who don’t know it. It can get them because it reads different the way the rock shelves are and they’re don’t read the same way that like boulders and ripples do. 00;57;57;24 – 00;57;59;05 Grant Yeah and other river so. 00;57;59;09 – 00;58;16;28 Dave And I’ve seen that in the wind and when you throw the window we’ve been down there and some really bad guys you get that Columbia River gorge wind coming up and I’ve seen we’ve been floating down again. I’ve been on some sleds. In fact, Frank Amato, who yeah, of course, you know, famous Frank Amato. I had him on the podcast a number of years ago, but we talked about this story when I was going down right as a kid. 00;58;16;28 – 00;58;23;11 Dave I was like a teenager. I was letting my buddy were going down. The wind kicked us. We were in a raft and it flipped upside down. It was like yard sale gear everywhere. 00;58;23;11 – 00;58;23;18 Grant Oh my. 00;58;23;18 – 00;58;35;12 Dave Like I was the only person on the river was Frank Amato, And he came up in this old wooden I think it was a wooden jet boat or but it was maybe it wasn’t wooden, but it was all. And he came up and it was only about it. Like it seemed like it was like 16 or 17 feet. 00;58;35;12 – 00;58;49;14 Dave And he he said, Hey, you guys need some help. And he picked us up at the bottom, three mile down, and he brought us back up. And I’m telling you, he went through I think it was Gordon Red. He hit that first wave and a wall of water covered the boat. And I was like, wow. Frank Amato, you must know a little bit of Frank. 00;58;49;21 – 00;58;51;10 Dave Have you connected with him over the years? 00;58;51;14 – 00;58;55;12 Grant Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Danny, who works here, really knows and well. 00;58;55;17 – 00;59;01;07 Dave Okay, so, Frank, I mean, again, I love because there’s all this history of the Jets, but did your great grandfather ever lose a boat? 00;59;01;23 – 00;59;31;26 Grant No, he never did lose the boat. He had some wild ride, for sure. It’s the most notorious wild ride was there was a there’s a flood that took the main one of the main bridges there in town. I think a couple of them. And basically if you put in well, I think it’s where if you put in at galley and you’re going down that first big bridge, you see when you go under you can see painted up on the abutment where the flood levels were over the years. 00;59;31;26 – 00;59;59;28 Grant You know, and great grandpa had a good friend named Fred Hale and Fred Hale was a pilot and Fred Hale would often times take deliveries down into Paradise or Black Bar Lodge, and he had taken a delivery down into Black Bar Lodge and Great Grandpa knew of it, but there was quite the storm of the century, so to speak, and the river was at the highest flood level had ever been extremely, extremely treacherous. 01;00;00;10 – 01;00;26;26 Grant And of course, there’s not telephone communication. But Fred Hale went down to go drop off stuff, a black bar lodge where there’s a little grass strip and he didn’t come back and what had happened and unbeknownst to great grandpa, what had happened is Fred Hale had had plane issues and crashed crashed in the hillside up above Black bar Lodge crashed this plane, which if you go to Black Bar Lodge, you can hike up the hillside and see the wreckage. 01;00;26;26 – 01;00;46;28 Grant To this day, I’ve been up there and seen it. And so Fred Hale was in a bad way, burns all over his body, busted up. And he’s they’re needing of real medical assistance, which they just don’t have great grandpa. I don’t know how it was. One of the things I’d love to ask him. He just had a premonition that Fred needed help. 01;00;47;11 – 01;01;08;19 Grant And. But this is flood stage the most extreme flood stage the rogue had been in in his lifetime. So he took my great uncle, Uncle Bruce. And who was the good Auburn as well, young man at the time. And they got in a boat and headed downriver looking for Fred. And it was just one of the most treacherous wild rides you can imagine. 01;01;08;19 – 01;01;42;07 Grant Just constant, but just going for it. And they get there at a black bar lodge, which of course, the water’s way high and they go in there and sure enough, there’s Fred and Fred looked up at great grandpa and he says, I knew you’d come for me, you know, And he’s on it. He’s on a board. And so they they take him out and they get him on into the boat and they tie him the best that they can to the board and the board sitting on the benches in the boat and they go rowing back down the river to try to get him to where they can drive him out and get some help. 01;01;42;16 – 01;02;00;04 Grant And there’s so much water in the boat at times that he’s literally floating on his back board in the boat. Oh, bouncing around and they’re bailing at the same time. But they, they get Fred out there and they they’ve. Fred. Yeah. And there’s some good stories and pictures of Fred and great grandpa, but that’s not the closest. 01;02;00;04 – 01;02;01;17 Dave Do you know what year that was? Roughly. 01;02;01;20 – 01;02;04;04 Grant I should. Yeah. 01;02;04;15 – 01;02;17;14 Dave I mean I tried to go back and I should because again, I’m thinking true because these were drift boats, Right. These were when they were before you had the motor. So. And I remember seeing those old photos. You’re right. The book is really cool because there’s all sorts of amazing old photos in there. 01;02;17;14 – 01;02;22;03 Grant But yeah, 1964 was the 100 year flood on the river. 01;02;22;03 – 01;02;23;04 Dave That was 100 year flood. 01;02;23;07 – 01;02;26;06 Grant Yes, hundred year flood. That’s when went and got him. Oh, it. 01;02;26;06 – 01;02;30;27 Dave Was so 64. So. Wow so he boated the road in the 64 flood which is that huge. 01;02;31;02 – 01;02;31;29 Grant That’s, that’s the one. 01;02;32;07 – 01;02;43;16 Dave Oh okay. That’s what a story. And then in the boats they had were, you know you had these what looked like drive boats but they had these higher sides they put on them right in the front. What do you call that, that thing. You know, they put like taller sides. 01;02;43;19 – 01;03;05;07 Grant Well he just wanted extra, you know, splashed flare. He was real there. Yeah. He was real big on on flare in the sides out of a boat because you could have a narrower bottom boat. But if you had all this flare on the sides as you went down into the water, incrementally gained more displacement, every inch you draw up, you know, to help push, push you back up and out of there, you know. 01;03;05;07 – 01;03;23;08 Grant And so that’s that was the that was the big deal to be able to be pushed back up as we hit those. And so depending on water level, time of year would be which which boat is running, you know, because obviously you can get away without that. The boat’s lighter and and everything else. But if you’re in that type of water that’s that’s what you do. 01;03;23;15 – 01;03;37;02 Dave Yeah, that’s what you do. Wow. This is cool. Yeah. I think, you know, there’s so many good stories. I think we we might have to follow up with you and get some more history. Maybe we could talk when we get up there to see how. But when did that change take for you? So you had, you know, your great grandfather. 01;03;37;02 – 01;03;42;02 Dave He was down in the the rogue area. When did the move up to Seattle? When did you guys make that as a family? 01;03;42;08 – 01;04;03;18 Grant Well, my great or my grandfather did. He moved up here. My Grandfather traveled around. He worked in San Francisco as a taxi driver, moved up here, started working out on the base and in Bremerton and met the love of his life, which kept him here in Seattle. My grandmother. And there you go. And and there is a point that he did a number of things. 01;04;03;18 – 01;04;21;25 Grant He was a mechanic and he just felt like he wanted to work for himself. He wanted to do his own thing. And he he felt like God told him to start his own business, a boat business. But he wanted to do that in conjunction with his dad. Great grandfather, who was Peter and out really down in Oregon, still selling some boats and not really, you know, I guess. 01;04;22;03 – 01;04;41;11 Grant Yeah. And so what he did is he wanted to check with both his his brother, who was Bruce, and he wanted to check with his dad separately because they both kind of were into building boats, but not really branching out any further. Then the grants pass too much, and Bruce built a very unique type of version of the Wooldridge boat. 01;04;41;11 – 01;04;53;28 Dave Oh, so you had so basically you had Glen, your great grandfather was Bill in these boats. He was slowly petering out and then you had your grandfather and then his brother Bruce were building different boats at their own from the same style of what Glen did. 01;04;54;02 – 01;05;11;26 Grant Not even quite that yet, because so great Grandpa had two sons, Bruce and Bob, who love each other and all that. And but Bob, my grandfather, didn’t have a ton of interest to continue in it, and so he was off doing his own thing up here. But then he’s like, you know, I think I want to do the boat thing. 01;05;11;26 – 01;05;28;09 Grant I think it could do well up here. And so he went down there and talked to each one individually. Would either of you care or be opposed to me doing this up in Seattle, continue in the Wooldridge boat’s name up there and he said if either even if one of them said yes, but neither one said no, he said he wouldn’t have done it. 01;05;28;19 – 01;05;46;29 Grant But they both said no, go for it man. So he did a combination of taking their boats, hauling them up here and selling know Glenn Wooldridge boats, our Bruce Wooldridge boats and bringing them up. And then, you know, as he started going he’d have a design and the idea that he’d want to do and, and they maybe didn’t want to do that. 01;05;46;29 – 01;06;06;04 Grant Same designer liked what they’re doing. So he’s like, okay, if I build it like this, go for it. So he started very in out and build things and then my, my dad came to work for him eventually, which is another story. But then Dad really had some innovative ideas and it just came to a point where we really just started ramping up with what was going on up here versus what they were doing. 01;06;06;04 – 01;06;21;16 Grant And they they eventually just kind of petered out of it. And we’re happy to and in full support of what we were doing. And so that’s kind of how it got moved to Seattle was because of that. So in that late sixties, early seventies is when that went on. And then my dad there in the seventies came to work for him. 01;06;21;27 – 01;06;26;22 Grant I was born in 78 and, you know, I was all grew up around the shop. 01;06;26;26 – 01;06;30;03 Dave Yeah, you did? Yeah, you grew up. That’s all you knew was growing up around the shop. 01;06;30;13 – 01;06;50;05 Grant Yup. And I was never forced to come and do it. They said, Go do what you want. Go to college. Go try what you want. If you want to come work here, you can. And I remember, you know, working on the summers when I was like 15 and such and enjoying it and and then going to college and doing fine there, but then coming and getting work in another summer and being like, Man, this is pretty cool. 01;06;50;13 – 01;06;57;07 Grant Now, they didn’t let me touch all the cool stuff. For a long time. I was moving floors and cleaning and flowerbeds and that’s what you got to do. 01;06;57;07 – 01;06;58;01 Dave Yeah, that’s awesome. 01;06;58;11 – 01;07;12;20 Grant Which is the right way. And doing doing all that stuff and then getting to do build little things here and there and then growing up well, and then building all the stuff and now managing and working the team and, and doing everything else. And it’s a great joy and a blessing. 01;07;12;27 – 01;07;14;12 Dave Yeah. That’s so cool. Wow. 01;07;14;14 – 01;07;18;13 Grant I got five little girls, and some of them like to come in now. And where are you doing that? 01;07;18;16 – 01;07;26;00 Dave Yeah, there you go. That’s pretty cool. Yeah, I have a couple girls as well, and it’s a pretty it’s pretty exciting. I remember you probably. So you don’t have any boys? 01;07;26;08 – 01;07;28;11 Grant No, I have a chocolate lab named Roger. 01;07;28;16 – 01;07;35;21 Dave There you go. There you go. That’s awesome. Yeah. Yeah, it’s. It’s pretty amazing. Are the girls are they are they into the the boating and all that stuff? 01;07;35;21 – 01;07;55;22 Grant They love everything outdoors. They I mean, they want to be with me, which I sure them cherishing My oldest is 15 and the youngest is eight months. Really. Wow They they love doing it. I mean they my oldest is I’ve taken the nine year olds up on the high hunts before and we go fishing up in the he and river you know, in September. 01;07;55;22 – 01;08;17;18 Grant And they’ve all been out in the ocean fishing They just a couple of months ago in the pink came in we were all pink fishing together We we go dominate the trout derby at the local lake and they they just love doing it. They’re all outdoorsy. They know how to put a pack on their back and go dry camping in the woods for days without, you know, digging our own holes and cooking our own food and filtering our own water. 01;08;17;18 – 01;08;19;25 Grant They they all do that. And it’s it’s a gift. 01;08;19;25 – 01;08;20;21 Dave That’s so cool. 01;08;20;21 – 01;08;21;18 Grant Yeah, they’re a lot of fun. 01;08;21;27 – 01;08;37;18 Dave That’s great. Yeah, I think I think that’s a probably a good segue way to take us out of here. Like, we start at the start. You mentioned the family. You know, Jordan and Jack and the family. I mean, that’s what I think, you know, Togiak River Lodge has is the farm. I think really that’s you know, there’s nothing bigger than that. 01;08;37;18 – 01;08;43;17 Dave Right. Or better than than having this family atmosphere. And it feels like that’s what you guys have built over 100 years. Right. And you still have it going. 01;08;43;24 – 01;09;14;10 Grant Yeah. No, it’s it’s it’s the truth. Yeah. Family’s everything. And the crew here is is family. I mean, we just came out of a big company dinner here this last week and down here and having the crew in here and just having a good time with everybody and. And. Yeah, I’m real thankful for family. I’m thankful for the Lord who’s led us and, you know, and just having those times with your kids out, out, whether it’s in the woods or on the water and just talking to them and and building that type of relationship and sharing with them the neat things that you’ve got to experience out there. 01;09;14;10 – 01;09;34;17 Grant You know, when you if you asked your kid, you know, tell me five things you remember getting for Christmas last year, right? You’re going to have a hard time remembering that, if you could say, what adventures did we go on? They’re going to remember them, you know? And so like, I just think of building memories is important. I think quantity time is important. 01;09;34;17 – 01;09;55;21 Grant People say quality time is more important. Well, you can have the dad who’s pretty absent most of the year but takes his kid on a wonderful Hawaii vacation and Sea World vacation each year. But he wasn’t. He missed all the in-between things. You know, he wasn’t there and thought that I think it’s the quantity time which becomes truly the quality if you’re there for that little that battery that came down now. 01;09;55;22 – 01;10;06;00 Grant Yeah. And you would have never noticed it if you’re too busy like to, to dive in and see what’s going on and check in on them, you know, and do real life together and have all the conversations, that’s what really matters, you know? 01;10;06;08 – 01;10;15;23 Dave Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. Well, this is perfect, Grant. I think we can leave it there. We’ll send everybody out to Aldridge boats or actually, Walter Edgecomb if they want to check in with everything you have. And you just. 01;10;15;23 – 01;10;16;29 Grant Want both dot com. 01;10;16;29 – 01;10;18;23 Dave Yeah, it is. It is. Walter Jpost.com. 01;10;18;23 – 01;10;27;12 Grant Yep. And then on social media, it’s just I believe at Walter Reed, both Facebook comments as official and then Instagram as at Walter Reed. 01;10;27;13 – 01;10;38;24 Dave Both Yeah, that’s right. Walter is both stuck on perfect. So we got that in there and then then we’ll be in touch with you. Like I said, hopefully we can get up there and swing by and take a look at some of the old history as well in person. Yeah. Thanks for all your time today. It’s been awesome. 01;10;39;01 – 01;10;44;19 Grant No, I really appreciate the conversation. Can’t wait to hear more about you someday too. 01;10;44;19 – 01;11;03;17 Dave All right, before we get out of here, I just want to give you a heads up. Remind you, if you haven’t already checked in with old bridge boats, check in and let Grant you heard this podcast that’s at Wooldridge dot com. If you’re interested in taking this to the next level and grabbing some trips with us, go to FIA swing dot com slash pro and join pro. 01;11;03;17 – 01;11;21;23 Dave That’s where we’re building trips, We’re building a community and we’re traveling around and fishing the country. One trip we do have going this year is to mountain waters resorts, Atlantic salmon. If this is on your bucket list check in with me Dave at white fly swing dot com and I’ll let you know what we have for availability moving ahead here. 01;11;21;23 – 01;11;38;26 Dave So that’s all I have for you. I hope you enjoyed this one. I know I did. And I hope if you are loving the boat episodes we do, send me an email. I’d love to hear from you, Dave. At flightaware.com, it’s the way I know that we should do more of these boat episodes. So if you’re like in this one, the history and I know there’s some other people out there checking with me and let me know. 01;11;39;11 – 01;11;56;27 Dave All right, I got to get out of here. I hope you’re having a great afternoon. If it’s evening. Hope you’re having a wonderful evening. If it’s morning, I hope you have a good day. And I hope you find some fish and and have a good have a good journey out there. We’ll talk to you soon. Thanks for listening to the wet fly swing fly fishing show for notes and links from this episode. 01;11;56;29 – 01;12;05;18 Dave Visit Wet fly, swing, dotcom or.