That was a joke

Kalen Jordan introduces the concept of a new podcast called “That was a Joke,” sponsored by Cricket Protein Bars.

So far, we do not have the sponsor or the podcast, but this is our first attempt at accomplishing this task. You will learn about surfing in Costa Rica, swimming in Minnesota, and electric skateboards. As a bonus, I have left in our conversation on Employee Happiness.

Brent talks about his new favorite author, Caimh McDonnell, and reads a Love poem from John Kenney

Kalen tells us about his week-long surfing lesson in Costa Rica from Witches Rock 

Kalen: How are you doing? I’m hanging in there, man. You’re look-in fit is a fiddle. Thanks, dude. suns out guns out. Do you know what I’m saying? 

Brent: Wow. I could tell those are some good size guns. You got the, and you’re in Texas. Those are the rules.

Brent: I don’t make the rules. You move from California to Texas because of your arms. So you could be legal in Minnesota. We don’t have li it. Yeah. 

Kalen: Yeah. Those are street legal. Those are street-legal in Minnesota, but yeah, I might run into some run into some snags. How are you doing, man?

Kalen: What’s heck where are you? Hawaii. Min, Minnesota. I’m in 

Brent: Minneapolis. 

Kalen: Minneapolis. 

Brent: Okay. Yeah, as they say, as the credit board, a plane somewhere. 

Kalen: I don’t get, I 

Brent: don’t get, I don’t never mind. It’s a joke. Just ignore me for a while, 

Kalen: dude. If we ever do our own podcast, never mind. It’s a joke.

Kalen: That’s the whole podcast. Oh yeah, there you go. How good is 

Brent: that? Yes. Sponsored by. Somebody funny, 

Kalen: we’ll figure it out. Cricket, protein bars. I, there you go. My whole goal in life is to have a podcast with a cricket protein bar as a 

Kalen: sponsor. 

Brent: Yeah. And those are, I don’t know why. And those are actual crickets, right?

Brent: That use the protein from actually grinding up the cricket powder. Yeah. Yeah. That’s good. It’s gluten free 

Kalen: is it? Yeah, that makes sense. 

Brent: There’s no gluten in crickets, right? Unless they’ve just eaten some fresh grain. 

Kalen: True. I’m actually, by the way, I’m using a gluten-free microphone right now. I don’t know.

Kalen: I can tell looks 

Brent: great. Yeah, no it’s yeah. Mine is a paleo microphone. Okay. 

Kalen: It’s non GMO 

Brent: as well. It is non GMO. My microphone was built or was grown in fields in North Dakota that had GMO products next to it. They blew the extra mic. Bits of microphone blew into the field and contaminated it.

Brent: And that’s why I have my stand, which is blue and my microphone, which is I believe a zoom. Is that 

Kalen: a GMO adjacent microphone? Because I can’t do this. I know. Sorry about that. I can’t have you on this esteemed podcast with that kind of a setup. That’s absurd. 

Brent: It is. And I agree with you a hundred percent.

Brent: It’s can we talk about disgusting? 

Kalen: Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, which is the gigantic BigCommerce partner award behind you. 

Brent: It’s okay. It’s actually not an award. It’s just that we’re a partner with BigCommerce now because I’m on all kinds of BigCommerce calls and they got sick of seeing the Magento stuff in background did that’s in fact, sums out.

Brent: We did get an award in in. 21 for, from BigCommerce, but it was during the pandemic and they never shipped him out. Oh, I’m gonna call him out right now on this podcast that never got our award. That’s rough, the old that they did send me that in place. 

Kalen: That’s the old partner award trick.

Kalen: Oo, that’s the oldest trick in the partner book. 

Brent: We’re gonna go heavily branding here. 

Kalen: I like, what is that? What is that hat that you got on there? I should have one of those here. It’s 

Brent: called Hoooooooofa 

Kalen: dang it. If I would’ve had that in 

Brent: your video I gotta take off. Cause I click a little kid with a hat on.

Kalen: Yeah. That’s the problem with hats. They can tend to do that, 

Brent: unfortunately. All right. What we’re talking about, some fun stuff today, man. You had some really topics, all 

Kalen: sorts of topics, all sorts of fun stuff. We’re gonna go all over the map. 

Brent: What is the end of your podcast this week? Or is it a video 

Kalen: series?

Kalen: We’re figuring it out as we go. We’re figuring it out as we go. And it will be reveal at the proper time, 

Brent: but I’m gonna, we are in the, we were, we are gonna remix and it is also gonna be a bonus episode on talk commerce. Perfect. Fantastic. Fantastic. So we’re, we’ll see, it’ll be competing and we should release it together.

Brent: Same week, same apple podcast stream. 

Kalen: You’re gonna compete with my own podcast. All I can 

Brent: do is try to keep, I can try to keep up with 

Kalen: that non GMO microphone. 

Brent: Yes. But I do feel like on my stream, I’m gonna put a bunch of beeps in. Just to cover up your swearing. Oh, okay. 

Kalen: Son of a bur yep.

Kalen: Burp. Yeah I do swear a lot these days. just not on podcasts. You’re 

Brent: You’re in Texas. You have to, 

Kalen: it’s a lot, it’s a lot to swear about including. Employee culture and happiness, which is one of my favorite topics. Really. Okay. It really is. I’m big on call employee culture and happiness.

Kalen: I’m surprised that you’re surprised you sounded like you were surprised by that, which I don’t I’m particularly 

Brent: appreciate. I, because I’m not surprised. 

Kalen: That’s my whole, that’s my whole life. 

Brent: That’s your whole shtick. 

Kalen: I have a handbook. Have you read my handbook on employee culture and happiness? 

Brent: No. No, we should read it right now.

Brent: yeah, no, I don’t have a, it could be like an audio book. 

Kalen: yeah, one of these days it’ll be an audio book. No, but that was something you wanted to talk about was employee culture and happiness. 

Brent: So yeah, I think in today’s age, when while we’re here in Minnesota, the unemployment rate is 2% or something like that.

Brent: Oh, crazy. Like crazy low. Yeah. As an employer, you have to go the extra mile to retain your employees. 

Kalen: you have no choice. So is this just a pragmatic, is this just a pragmatic thing? Listen, if the if the unemployment rate were higher, we wouldn’t care about this at all, but because it’s so low.

Kalen: We gotta bite the bullet and be nice to people. 

Brent: yeah. That is a great, that is a great way to look at it. I will answer that in full transparency that that you should not take an employment rate into account. And the reason is what does it cost to rehire the next person?

Brent: The 2% is a hard. Wall for an employer to get over. Because there’s simply not anybody you can hire, right? Yeah. Let’s just say it’s 10%. You get really sloppy and you’re hiring. You’re like, oh, we’ll hire people and blah, blah, blah. And if they leave, who cares? Just because we can hire more people.

Brent: Yeah. But does that mean because you’ve hired somebody new that person is gonna just hit the ground running. like even in the programming world, developers could be the only, one of the, they developers theoretically could be the fastest onboarding person you could have because hopefully your projects is detailed well, and they can come in and they just look at the requirements they’re already qualified.

Brent: They could start working right away. There’s still gonna be a week or two of rampup 

Kalen: Point them at some tasks and have ’em like jump right in, in theory. 

Brent: Yeah. Theoretically, they’re gonna have to learn a little bit, but let’s just say have two weeks or a month to get them up and running. Okay.

Brent: Let’s just say in the US developers make whatever we’ll use a round number, a hundred grand a year. What does that then cost you that one that’s $8,000 that you have to pay that one month of trying to get everybody up and running, onboarding all those other things.

Brent: Yeah, so it’s a lot of money. I think that, that 2% unemployment rate is a wake up call to employers who haven’t been big on employee culture and should be working on that. 

Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. No, and yeah, I was just kidding. It’s easy for me to beat, to joke about these things.

Kalen: Cause I don’t have any employees and. And then I give you a heart. You actually have responsibilities over there. So I’m busting your chops. but 

Brent: it is a I appreciate that question and I believe that is a completely fair question to ask any employer. I 

Brent: think it’s a factor for sure.

Kalen: It doesn’t change, like what’s the right thing to do, but it is a factor. But what are, so you’ve been in the. Working world for a long time. Since the Dawn, but so what are some things that are top of mind for you as far as like employee culture, 

Brent: keep people happy.

Brent: think that Time off is certainly a big one. Having well planned and thought out like for a developer, right? want a developer wants to have a project manager that is going to help them be better developers they’re they don’t want help technically, but they need help org or 

Kalen: they things to be organized.

Kalen: They just want like requirements not to change things to be straight forward, tell me what I need to do. I can do it. It’s not gonna change 16 times and then I can get it 

Brent: done. Yeah. They want them to run interference.

Brent: They don’t want the client talking to them directly. Yeah. They, hopefully the project manager can handle all that. So yeah, from a, from an employee stand happiness standpoint, we want to encourage that and support that. Yeah. All those pieces as you come down the whole pipeline of getting work done.

Kalen: That’s really good, actually, because there’s so many different, you could talk about benefits and perks and but I really think the core of what a developer cares about is exactly that make the work itself. Clean to whatever extent, in the real world, things are gonna change.

Kalen: Things are gonna be requirements are gonna be fuzzy and stuff like that, but as much as possible make, the process of getting work, done the project management structure, like straightforward, I think also probably you wanna work on challenging stuff. Interesting stuff too. That’s also obviously gonna be a big component.

Kalen: But like the work itself, make the work, improve the work itself, as opposed to all the things around it that are important. Are. Nice to haves, but they’re not really the core of what your job is about. 

Brent: Yeah. This actually, this whole discussion would be better for a panel.

Brent: If we had say four or five employers, that’d like to just talk about what is it that they, or even employees like are just a regular. Developers. No developers are regular, they’re all extraordinary. Find four extraordinary developers, which are every developer and ask them what makes them happy.

Brent: You’re probably gonna get four different answers, right? Some of them want to get paid. Some of them would like lots of time off. Some of them like flexibility in their schedule, as a edge agile, is all kinds of things. It’s, it is gonna be varied. It’s a complicated, it is a complicated task.

Brent: But that culture that any company embodies would have people that have been there for a long amount of time and they would be the ones driving this culture, the ones that like the culture. So maybe it is about time off or flexibility. Those are the ones that are gonna stick around.

Brent: And if somebody doesn’t care about some of those other things, then all they wanna do is make the biggest money. Then that’s where you see developers jumping from jumping around the agency. And again, I don’t wanna make it sound too general. Like not it just because somebody goes from one agency to the other because they make more money.

Brent: Doesn’t mean they’re jumping because of the money. There’s all kinds reasons. I don’t want to generalize it, but it’s just an example of the different parts of that. That encompass that whole idea of employee happiness. 

Kalen: I think of the dev teams that seem felt to me, the strongest are where there’s this combination of you enjoy working with your peers, you respect them. They help you and also challenge you. So if you have a problem, you can get feedback, get help, get support. The work is interesting. You have a high level of autonomy or ownership of what you’re doing.

Kalen: There’s not a lot of red tape and, nonsense. And and then you get paid well, that’s that never 

Brent: all those 

Kalen: things, right? Yeah. But you’re an employee, right? Are you technically an employee? Yes, I am. Are you ha are you happy? Are you, 

Brent: That’s good. Yeah. I think part of that is autonomy.

Brent: You want to give people a degree of autonomy to to be able, you wanna give them space to make some of their own decisions. Yeah. So that’s huge. Yeah. I think one thing that’s always important is knowing what is that space? And then what is, how does creativity go into that space?

Brent: As an employer, you want to recognize that people need some of that space, right? They, and they, and if you’re demanding so much time out of it what is an acceptable, modest time to for either create creative growth or personal growth or educational growth?

Kalen: Yeah, because like I I remember this one dev team I was on and we were working on a new project. It was interesting. It was fun. It was exciting. And then certain people were building certain components of it. And. When you talk about like creativity and stuff, like they were taking some very creative approaches to the architecture of how to build this thing.

Kalen: And we would talk about it and be like, oh yeah, it’s gonna, it’s gonna work like this. And it’s gonna be super extensible. And it’ll, the code’s gonna be so clean. It’s gonna be. You could tell they were super excited about it from like a creativity standpoint and it sounded cool.

Kalen: It sounded great. But then, a day turns into a week, turns into two weeks and it’s like the thing isn’t getting done, and it’s oh yeah. And they show, show you all the stuff. And then they have a good explanation for why it’s not done.

Kalen: It’s oh I gotta do this. And then I got da, and I gotta refactor it. And they’re all good reasons. And then sometimes people just get caught in like a loop of things can be complicated. And so that’s the flip side of it, is if you’re too creative, like you gotta get stuff done.

Kalen: Like you gotta get, things out the door.

Brent: Yeah, there’s a in the development world, there’s always a push and pull be between the developer who is a perfectionist. And the developer, who’s just a get stuff done. Developer. In a past life I liked, I did development work.

Brent: I would never say I was a developer, a very good one anyways, and I was a get stuff, done, person because especially if you’re a. Single contractor, or, you are the only person accountable to that customer. And so you’re just trying to get as much steps down as you possibly can.

Brent: I think another good role for a project manager is to be that person who can say this task actually takes this long and to do it right. It’s gonna take that long. And the only way to get around doing it right, is doing it wrong. 

Kalen: Say the only way 

Brent: to get a, if you, the only way that’s not do it right.

Brent: Is to not do it. You can say it in so many words, but if you want it done faster, you’re gonna have to take some shortcuts and chances are, it’s not gonna be right. Like you’re not gonna write your unit tests or you’re not gonna do QA on it, or you’re gonna skip over a bunch of functions that, or whatever it is, there’s just things you can do to cut corners.

Kalen: Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. And that’s. Yeah. And then that’s the problem. Like I’m a get stuff. I’m a get stuff done developer and I can move pretty quickly, but I’m not like the perfectionist. And then the downside to that of course, is that, down the road, you realize there’s technical debt.

Kalen: There’s. There’s limitations to what you built that really can start to compound over time. And I really should. , I really should have taken a little extra time and done it, done it. The fir, but there’s really no such thing as doing it. You want to do it as.

Kalen: As best as you can and then improve on that. And that, and this is why somebody that’s been coding for 10 years is so much more efficient. Somebody’s been doing it for a year because they’ve gone through enough of those cycles that they can see, the problems ahead of them and then fix them, from the get go.

Kalen: Yeah 

Brent: yeah. What, so you had some other topics you wanted to go? I did have some topics I had let’s jump into ’em. Let’s 

Kalen: talk about exercise, man. Cuz you’re a big exercise guy. And what have you been doing to. Exercise. What’s your what’s. What do you do, man? You do a lot of stuff. You do cross country skiing.

Kalen: You do all sorts of stuff. What’s. what’s your latest deal? 

Brent: My goal is not to do cross country scheme cuz I’m very tired of the cold weather. Although I do enjoy it when I do it. Yeah. And it is super fun. Yeah. But it’s also cold enough to. Walk on a lake yeah.

Brent: And in order for the ice to be thick enough for you to walk on, it has to be cold for a sustained amount of time. Wait, just the opposite of being a hundred degrees for 13 days in Austin is the opposite of that is to be below freezing for right a month. So the lake is a foot thick anyways.

Brent: Yeah. Yeah. So I, right now I’m running and I’m biking and I’m swimming. , I’m doing a little yoga. oh, nice. When did you start the yoga? I had a pretty significant injury back in February that sidelined me. Oh no. Am I running? And, I think stretching is one of those things that I just have to do.

Brent: And so yoga has been a good thing. I was doing it every day, but I’ve cut it down a couple times a day. Just flexibility as a runner. Yeah. You’re you become very inflexible. Yeah. Oh, do you in the same from running thing all the time. So your hips are super tight and oh, 

Kalen: interesting. Yeah. How did you injure yourself?

Brent: Running on the ice. If you can think about and I’m writing an article about it right now I wanted to detail my injury. There’s Icelandic horse that, that has very tiny little steps, lots of tiny steps, right? Lots of cadence you call it. When we run in Minnesota, because we’re running on snow and ice.

Brent: you change the way you run and that then changes like smaller steps a thing. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not a bad thing, but if you go from, running in a warm place, , I’m not embarrassed to say that I spent most of my November and December in Hawaii, which was warm. Nice.

Brent: And I came back at Christmas and went immediately to Fargo. And it was like going from 80 degrees to minus 10 and go running. And I was in a running streak. So I had to run every day and I hate running on a treadmill. 

Kalen: Why didn’t you stay out there longer? Why didn’t you stay on Hawaii, longer 

Brent: Christmas?

Brent: We have family, like we celebrate some of these holidays and the family that liked whatever reason they like to have us around. I don’t know. Yeah, so just repeated 

Kalen: stress, just a repeated stress thing of running in a little bit of a funny. 

Brent: Yeah. And then, I think my body reacts better to cold weather, like the cardiovascular part.

Brent: So I feel like I can run a lot harder and I do. It just makes it worse because your muscles are super tight because of the cold weather. Anyways, I ended up with a very bad glued injury. I had a running streak going, I had 683 days of running straight before I stopped. What? Wow. And so you really, why did keep that streak going?

Brent: I really wanted to, and I was on a treadmill and I was holding myself up with my arms. Oh, just trying to let my legs dangle. Oh. Until that one mile I thing clicked around and I’m like, this is so stupid. I’m not really running a mile. I’m barely touching the treadmill. I might as well just call it quits and oh no, I got, so I, I had to heal.

Brent: Yeah. So took a while. I did a lot of stretching, lot of trips to the PT. Oh wow. And yeah, it felt, I started feeling better and then immediately, because of all the different pieces, I’ve had IT Band problems and, tight tightness and my IT Band and I’m about 99% now. Oh, that’s 

Kalen: great.

Kalen: How how long did you have to stop running. 

Brent: I stopped for about six weeks. Oh, okay. 

Kalen: Oh, wow. Yeah. That’s frustrating when you’re doing something and then you have to stop cuz that becomes your whole routine and you start to depend on it and stuff and and then if you have to stop, it just sucks.

Brent: Yeah. So now I’ve started doing open water swimming and believe it or not. Our open water swim club starts. June 14th. okay. Cause that’s June 14th. That’s when the, what lakes are, that’s pretty much warm enough to swim in. The water was still 69 degrees on June 14th, right? Yeah.

Brent: That’s chilling by August. They’re gonna be 80 because it’s so hot here in the summer. Do you ever do 

Kalen: ice baths 

Brent: or cold? I’ve done his best. Yeah. 

Kalen: Yeah. Okay. I’ve been wanting to get, I keep hearing about the benefits of I do sauna and stuff, but I keep hearing about the benefits of ice baths. So I wanna do that, but I gotta buy a bag of ice or something like that and just put it in a bathtub tub 

Brent: or something.

Brent: I think Philip does ice baths does into a very, really long run. 

Kalen: Oh, okay. Yeah, a lot of the people I follow on social media related to Jim and workout stuff. Talk about ’em and I gotta get that going. Yeah. I, what were you gonna say? 

Brent: Yeah, I was gonna tell you my last thing that you asked me what I’m doing.

Brent: I have one more thing that I’m doing. Yeah, what I’m biking. Okay. So I swim, I bike and I run. That’s what I pretty much do on yoga. Nice and yoga. I did my first triathlon last weekend and no, 

Kalen: way’s it. Your first tri your first tri. Cause before it was, you were just more pure running and then now you for this year.

Brent: Okay. I did lunch last year too. Anyways, that’s it first. Oh, what are you doing? Tell me what you’re doing. No. For this year. Cause it’s so cold here. 

Kalen: Okay. You don’t your first triathlon this year, but you’ve done triathlons in the past. right? Yes. Okay. You’ve done a ton of 

Brent: them. No, I wouldn’t say a ton, but I’ve done.

Brent: You’ve done a handful. I’ve done solid. Yep. And I’m a terrible swimmer. yeah. You look 

Kalen: like a terrible swimmer. 

Brent: Yes. That’s what everybody says too. 

Kalen: do here’s do you when it comes to exercise, do you do the things because they’re beneficial for you or do you just do the stuff be like, have you gotten to the point where you just do it because you enjoy doing it?

Kalen: Like you do the running cuz you enjoy running. You don’t do it because. It helps you to be healthier or is it a mix of the two? 

Brent: Yeah, I think I am doing it because I absolutely enjoy it. I am trying to enjoy swimming more. , that 

Kalen: swimming is so boring. I’ve tried to do the swimming thing, but I can’t do it.

Kalen: I just lose my mind. I get too 

Brent: bored doing it. They have headphones you can wear while you’re swimming. But oh, I do mainly open water swimming. So the, in Minnesota here it’s supported. So there’s buoys and they have peak lifeguards on paddleboards.

Brent: Oh, that’s cool. I swim with the swim buoy. So I feel pretty safe. And you have a goal, you go. 400 yards come back, four yards. That’s pretty cool. Too big circle or 

Kalen: whatever it is. That’s kinda of an epic dude when I’m in Costa Rica like surfing. you’ll first of all, like just being on a surfboard and paddling is so tiring and you’ll just like, just going from A to B you’ll be exhausted.

Kalen: But then of course you just lay on the surfboard, and chill out and you’ll see dudes open water swimming in the ocean. And. You will just see a guy just go out like as far as you can see, like he’s practically out past the horizon. Just swimming. No, support. nothing. Not even sometimes they don’t even have a boo or anything like that.

Kalen: I don’t know what these people are thinking. It’s insane. 

Brent: But yeah, there’s people that swim miles and mile. I was talking to a guy last night who is in a swim club and he met a lady that is, he, she, there’s a swim you can do across the English channel, which is like 26 or 30 miles or whatever.

Brent: You get out, you stamp your passport and you swim back. That’s funny. So it’s like a 50 mile or 60 mile swim. That’s funny. That’s not gonna be me. I’m not gonna 

Kalen: do that. You’re not gonna do all that. Let me grab another water real quick. Hold I’ll be right back.

Brent: This episode of Kalen talks is sponsored by. Protein cricket bars, protein, cricket bars, bring you crickets and protein in a nice condensed package. Dude, 

Kalen: let’s start a protein cricket bar brand. How cool would that be? 

Brent: There’s probably one that exist. We could be the 

Kalen: spokesperson. That’s true, by the way. I need to install an AC in the garage but which is on my to-do list.

Kalen: So if you wonder why I’m sweating like a madman that’s the reason why I’m just, 

Brent: and we don’t have our AC right on our ACS, not on right now, but it was on last week and it was like, 90, it was 96 here. and it was 64 degrees in my basement, cuz all the, oh, that’s not bad. All the AC drops, that’s not bad.

Kalen: Yeah. But yeah, I like, I feel like on a, like I, I recently got an electric skateboard because I just, I think it’s a lot of fun and I feel like I’ve been on a path of doing, like doing exercise, cuz you, you have to, you wanna get in better shape, you wanna get healthier and then gradually you start to find the things you really love to do.

Kalen: And then eventually you just do the stuff cuz you like, that’s ultimately where you want to get to where you just do the stuff that you love to do. And it’s not, you would do it even if it didn’t make it’s not about the getting healthier is like the byproduct. 

Brent: You know what I mean? Yeah. I is that I totally get a high from running. There’s nothing more fun than getting up, as the sun is rising and having. Whatever amount of miles in front of you and just having this little adventure of running around. And seeing things like when I travel, I always try to do some kind of extended long run or I’d stay on a Saturday to do my long run.

Brent: I think we were gonna get together last spring. I was gonna come to Austin for some event and I had planned on staying an extra day and that’s when I got injured. So I had to cut that one short, but I had a 20 mile run planned in Austin and I have a route planned out and I was super excited to kinda, ah, that’s a bummer.

Brent: Go see the it’s fun to see that I’ve done the The murals, there’s all kinds of paintings and there’s a walking tour. I did eight miles of just running around, looking at all the great paintings on the side of buildings in it’s a great way to see a city. Yeah.

Brent: I think it’s EXPECIALLY fun. Did I say that, right? It, especially cuz I said, some 

Kalen: people say, EXPECIALLY, 

Brent: I feel like that’s a, and that is pronunciation That the one thing I love to say to my wife is I love to say, Hey, would you like to get an EXPRESSO? Yeah. If she said, do you mean Espresso And I said, oh, she 

Kalen: Expresso She corrects you. No, that’s not cool. Yeah. EXPRESSO that’s valid. Yeah. Hundred percent. valid No. I’m jealous of people that are into running, cuz it seems like a really cool way to, like you said, see a city and I’ve tried to get into it, but I’ve just never, and like my joints drive me crazy, but I’ve tried.

Kalen: But that’s how I feel about the skateboard now is I want is it’s a fun way to like I’ve been exploring different parts of the city where I live in that I hadn’t seen before. And it’s a neat way to get around. Yeah, it’s funny how, when you’re just driving you, you just go through the same route that wherever you’re going and you never really stop to smell the roses, 

Brent: or and did you get a one, one wheel, one of those one wheel skateboards or no.

Brent: So 

Kalen: I got a it’s called an evolve. It’s like an actual skateboard with four wheels. Huh? I did try the one wheel and I rented it and I have a buddy here nearby. Who’s super into ’em, but I couldn’t quite get it. Have you ridden a one wheel before? 

Brent: No, but I have a friend who has one.

Brent: Okay. 

Kalen: They seem really cool, but the problem is that you can also, you can fall on them a lot. And they do this nose dive thing. 

Brent: Where that’s exactly what he just broke his collarbone. Are you for real? Yep. He was going 20 miles an hour and it just there’s something with the battery happened.

Brent: The 

Kalen: battery dies it’s oh my gosh, 

Brent: you’re supposed to get a warning. Yeah. He put little wheels on the front, on the back now. So if it does a nose dive, it can but I still think if you’re gonna nose dive and you’re gonna dig in, you’re just gonna, it’s gonna, yeah. You’re not gonna recover 

Kalen: from it.

Kalen: Yeah. It’s scary. I watched a ton of videos on that and I was really nervous about it and stuff like that. Apparently you learn how to feel when that’s happening and then you can avoid it. And those things that you, the wheels are called fangs, the wheels that you put on the front, and then they make it so that if it does nose dive it, doesn’t like hard dive.

Kalen: It gives you a little bit more space or whatever, but yeah, I was just like, nah, and just riding it. It was just weird. I just more comfortable on the skateboard, but I’m still, I’m super nervous about falling just off the skateboard. Because they go, 15, 20 miles an hour and stuff like that.

Kalen: And, 

Brent: And do you have a remote that you hold because I’ve seen those electric skateboards and I’ve seen people holding it remote and they’re just yeah. Cruising. 

Kalen: Yeah. It’s nuts. Yeah. Okay. There. There’s a little remote and actually right after this, I’m gonna go to this meetup and we’re gonna, I’m gonna cruise around with some people 

Brent: electric skateboard meetup.

Brent: Yeah. 

Kalen: Actually it’s a one little bikers too or not, oh, it’s a, I think any electronic per a transportation device, whatever they’re called, but but yeah, it’s a one wheel group and then there’s some people with skateboards too, but I’m gonna be like the one I’m gonna be like the weird one, cause everybody else is gonna have a one wheel.

Brent: Susan and I went out and joined a new bike group on on Wednesday night and nice. There was an, a and B in biking. And so we, and there’s a 40 mile and a 25 mile. So we joined the slow 25 mile group. And I haven’t actually ridden that far this year. And it was an, a group for us anyways, but I was so tired.

Brent: that’s a long 

Kalen: ride. Yeah. That’s a 25 miles. That’s a ride for me at least. If I ride 10 miles, I’m tired. 

Brent: Yeah but you’re going like 10 miles an hour. So that’s pretty fast. 

Kalen: I get

Brent: I know you don’t even know how 

Kalen: fast you’re going. I don’t know how fast away hours making fun of me, but I don’t exactly know why. So 

Brent: did you take, let’s go. I wanna come back to surfing cuz I took surfing lessons last year. Did you take lessons in Costa Rica? 

Kalen: Yeah, I went to a surf camp for a week.

Kalen: Took lessons, whoa. A week. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then shout out to witches rock and then and then I stayed it by myself for the rest of that month. And then we’ve gone back. This is gonna be like our fourth time going there. We were there for three and a half months last year, total. And part yeah, so we loved it.

Kalen: But that’s kind of thing with the skateboard is that I loved surfing so much and I was like, we need to move here. I was talking to my wife about it. Didn’t you know, then you realize it’s a little more complicated than that when you have three kids and stuff, even though we homeschool. kids have dance, they have music, they have their friends.

Kalen: You can’t you gotta stay put, so 

Brent: yeah. I’m just gonna put out a little shout out for Hawaii because the one thing that a lot of people don’t realize about Hawaii is that it is a US state and getting a house there is far easier and than like Mexico or Costa Rica. And getting the other thing is what?

Brent: Go ahead. 

Kalen: Getting a house there is easier. Is that what you said? Yeah. Cuz 

Brent: it’s a US state. You can get a mortgage. I know you wouldn’t need a mortgage, but people that would need one, 

Kalen: I would need a mortgage but it’s expensive there. It’s crazy. 

Brent: It’s crazy expensive. It is expensive, if you go there as a tourist and go out to eat every day, but if you’re making your own food and.

Brent: you live in a local, it’s not as bad, much more expensive. They have a Costco. So that’s all you 

Kalen: need the houses. The houses are expensive. 

Brent: The houses are expensive, but they’re smaller. You pay the same amount for a house, but it’s not gonna be like, it’s not gonna be, what do you have?

Brent: Like 12 or 15,000 square feet in Austin. It’s you’re gonna, you’re probably gonna have to. For the size of the house you have, you’re gonna have to, yeah. If you settle for 2,500 square 

Kalen: feet. Yeah, no. Yeah. If it’s just the two of you and you’re getting a small house, it’s probably super doable. 

Brent: A big house in Kona is 1500 square feet oh, okay.

Brent: Yeah. And a big house for millions is gonna be anything over three or 4,000. 

Kalen: So did you do some, so you did some surfing out, you did some surfing out there. In Hawaii. 

Brent: Yeah. I only did one day of surf lessons. Which now have hearing that you said a week, that’s probably a really good idea.

Brent: The mistake I made and I went with my son was he said paddle back as soon as you can. And so we would go out, do our little run and then we were just both Gavin and I are just whipping it to get back to the start. And it’s man, you guys have never had anybody get back as fast as you guys get back.

Brent: But what happened I wasn’t used to that motion and I ended up bruising, one of my ribs between the waves bouncing and me paddling so hard. It’s bruised a rib. Dude 

Kalen: it’s. Yeah. And it’s so painful. 

Brent: I don’t know if you’ve heard of persuasive kids. I have a very, I have a very persuasive son.

Brent: He’s dad, we’ve gotta go by. Let’s just go to Costco right now. I know they had surfboards he’s like he, he talked me into going to Costco. We bought two surfboards. So you bought, and then every single day, he’s we gotta get out there. We gotta get, which only makes your ribs hurt more. 

Kalen: So you kept going out.

Kalen: I 

Brent: did. 

Kalen: Yep. Okay. So how how many times did you go out total? Did you get the hang of it? 

Brent: My son definitely got the hang of it. I would say because I was in such pain that I never got, I was never relaxed enough that time that we were just back in May and susan. And I went out and just paddled around and it was so much easier once you’re comfortable and not in pain.

Kalen: To, yeah, totally. I feel like that first week for me was like, the there’s just balancing on the board was super hard, like laying down balancing and paddling for me was like, I was just like, I was a wreck. I was like all over the place. And then the rib pain and stuff like that. And then your arms are so sore.

Kalen: It’s yeah, after that week I feel like I started to get the hang of it, but 

Brent: the first, so I’m not the only one that gets rib pain. That’s good to know. Oh, I’m glad that I’m glad that you had all kinds of rib pain. 

Kalen: Yeah, I had so much. And then it’s weird how the pain just starts to go away. Like I think you’re you’re at your, whatever your ribs get conditioned to it.

Kalen: And then, I don’t know, you probably figure out your technique a little better too, whatever, but. 

Brent: It’s fine. You’re from California originally. So was that part of your culture? Did you, were you a surf kid? 

Kalen: No. I didn’t grow up near the beach at all, but I was always into skating and rollerblading and stuff like that.

Kalen: And then snowboarding. So I picked it up relatively quickly, but yeah, it was a new, that was a new thing, but it’s pretty fun. Pretty fun, man. Are we with our time here? We’re almost at our time,

Kalen: there was a couple other things on the list, but I don’t know. I feel like we had a solid sesh, solid yeah. Podcast sesh. 

Brent: So can I’ve got a good I’ve got a one of my favorite poets. Yes. It’s called love poems for married people. Oh, wow. This is great. Can I read a poem? Oh my gosh.

Brent: As we close it out, please. All right. Yeah. And I got this book for Susan. So this is gonna be a joke you’re setting. No, they’re real. It’s love poems by it’s John 

Kalen: Kenny world in which you’re gonna read a real poem right 

Brent: now. Poems 

Kalen: look at it says poem, you found a poem. That’s gonna somehow be an, a joke one way or another, but we’ll see..

Brent: We’ll find out after I read it right. We’ll find out real soon. Okay. Title the Mo title. Ready? Here we go. Are you in the mood? I am. Let’s put the kids down, let’s have a light dinner shower, maybe not drink too much and do that thing I would rather do with you than anyone else lie in bed together and look at our iPhones.

Brent: that’s so dumb. It’s a real. It’s a real poem. 

Kalen: Yep. Yeah. That’s 

Brent: wow. I find all of his poems completely hilarious. And are they all, 

Kalen: they’re all funny. 

Brent: Are they all if you think that’s funny. I think it’s hilarious. 

Kalen: but they’re not like sincere love poems. So it 

Brent: was a sincere love poems.

Brent: I’m this guy has to be Irish because the humor that comes out of it is very Irish. Yeah. 

Kalen: I like it. I like it. I’m gonna flip. I’ve been thinking about actually trying to read some more poetry. I’ve been trying to read fiction. I can’t read fiction though. It’s so hard for me to it just goes in one ear and out the other.

Kalen: versus mostly I’ve just read like non-fiction books and 

Brent: all I’m reading a fiction book. It’s by comb McDonald, and it’s the dead man sins. And we’ll have to put it in the show notes. It’s completely hilarious. He’s got all these anyways. Nice. I am reading a fiction book.

Kalen: Sorry. You cut out just a tiny bit. What was the, what was that book? 

Brent: It is it’s called dead man sins. It’s by Cole. It’s C a I M H I know it’s Irish. And I should know how to say it cuz they often say it, but Cole McDonald. Okay. On Amazon C a I M 

Kalen: H. And 

Brent: what’s it about? It’s a sort of a it’s a detective novel, let’s say, but nice.

Brent: Quite a bit of Irish humor in it. 

Kalen: Nice. I’m reading the Hobbit with my daughter. Oh, that’s a good one, which is fun. Yeah. It’s yeah, it’s pretty. It’s pretty cool. She reads it to me and she understands it much better than I do. Good. She’ll actually test me. She’ll be like, she’ll test my comprehension. She’ll be like, did you understand that part dad.

Kalen: And I’ll be like she’ll have to explain this to 

Brent: me. That’s good that you have to read the line, the witch in the wardrobe. Yeah, 

Kalen: I think they’ve read that one. Yeah. Yeah. They were 

Brent: contemporaries. CS Lewis and JRR Tolkin. 

Kalen: Yeah. I think there’s some science fiction from CS Lewis.

Kalen: I’ve read a bunch of when I was in college, I read a bunch of CS Lewis’s books on Christianity and stuff like 

Brent: that. Yeah. My favorite book is called the Great Divorce. Yeah. 

Kalen: I think I read that 

Brent: one. Yeah. It’s a good one. It’s not about divorce. Yeah. 

Kalen: But anyways, he has some interesting science fiction too.

Kalen: Yeah, absolutely. Brent Peterson, thanks so much. This has been a lot of fun. Where can people find all your content and links and web links? 

Brent: If we’re gonna put this up, mine will be on talk hyphen commerce.com. Fantastic. And I don’t know, we’re gonna name this episode. We’ll 

Kalen: figure something out for that’s for darn.

Kalen: Sure. All right. Thanks everybody for tuning in. See you next time.

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