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We're chatting about the people, places, events, and flavors that make Johnson City, Tennessee a lovely place to live. An interview show hosted by Colin Johnson.
Proud member of the Maypop Media family of podcasts.
0:00:00 - (Colin Johnson): It is a beautiful July day here in beautiful east Tennessee. It stopped raining for a little bit. We've had a lot of rain this week, which we really, really needed. So thank you, Lord, for that. I'm excited for you guys to not have rain right now, but also more so. Except this guy's going to love the rain. I bet his name is Patrick Manion with Osprey white water rafting outdoors.
0:00:24 - (Patrick Mannion): That's correct.
0:00:25 - (Colin Johnson): Is that good?
0:00:26 - (Patrick Mannion): That is correct.
0:00:27 - (Colin Johnson): Well, thanks for coming on the podcast. You are probably loving all the rain we're getting.
0:00:31 - (Patrick Mannion): Thanks for. We're some of the few folks around that wanted to rain pretty much every day.
0:00:35 - (Colin Johnson): Every day. Like, I wish it would rain at night. I've talked to the Lord about this. It could just rain at night. We'd be good, right? And then they.
0:00:42 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, that would be even better. But, yeah, but we'll take a little bit each calendar day or a little bit here and there. But we, we love seeing the rain.
0:00:49 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, it's, it's, it's good. All right, so John C. Living, you've probably listened to it hopefully a thousand times. What do you love most about Johnson City, Patrick?
0:01:00 - (Patrick Mannion): Ooh, you know, I think Johnson City is such a, such a cool city. It's got a little bit of everything going on. I love that. Over the last decade or so, things have really kind of changed gears in Johnson City. You know, I think that founders park is awesome. I'm excited to see the infrastructure improvements on Walnut. Yeah, go, you know, kind of be completed. I think we've all been living through it and eagerly, we're kind of waiting the finished product on there.
0:01:27 - (Patrick Mannion): But the people are awesome, man. Great university town, amazing food, good nightlife. You know, as someone who lives in Irwin, it's nice to know that I've got Johnson City just about 15 minutes away.
0:01:38 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. And Irwin's great. What is your favorite thing about Irwin? I mean, it's a cool little town.
0:01:43 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I like a lot of things about Irwin. You know, I think Irwin's interesting to me. It's a sleepy little town and I kind of like that aspect to it. You know, we're hop skipping the junk from a couple of cool cities that have a little more going on downtown wise. But we're, we're making some steps in the right direction as well and hopefully have a forward kind of looking mindset or vision toward the future and progress as a whole.
0:02:10 - (Patrick Mannion): But I love the fact that Irwin is surrounded by, by the us national Forest system, you know, unicoy county is 52% national forest. And as far as hiking or biking or fishing or hunting or playing outside, man, we've got it going on.
0:02:24 - (Colin Johnson): I didn't know is 52% of the county is national forest. That's cool. That's a neat statistic.
0:02:29 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah. Pretty sweet.
0:02:30 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. How much of that's whitewater? You know, 1%.
0:02:35 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, percentage wise, not that much. Yeah.
0:02:37 - (Colin Johnson): Like 0.1%.
0:02:38 - (Patrick Mannion): But, yeah, we do have tons of waterfalls, and. And certainly the Nolchucky river gorge is. Is a place that's near and dear to my heart. And, uh, and I'm stoked that it comes tumbling out of the mountains of North Carolina and ends up just outside of Irwin.
0:02:52 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, it's awesome. All right. Where were you born? Tell me about the Patrick origin story.
0:02:58 - (Patrick Mannion): Ooh. So I was born in. I was born in southeastern Virginia, Langley Air Force Base. Both my parents were in the military. Both in the army.
0:03:07 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:03:07 - (Patrick Mannion): And, you know, that being said, you know, we traveled around quite a bit. So from Virginia to California to Korea to Germany a couple times.
0:03:17 - (Colin Johnson): Holy smoke.
0:03:19 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I'm lucky enough. Lucky. Luckily enough, I was the youngest of three, or am the youngest of three. And so right around fourth or fifth grade, we ended up around in Washington, DC, as my parents kind of finished up their careers and, you know, graduated high school from Lake Braddock Secondary School in northern Virginia and ended up going to George Mason University for a couple years before I transferred to app state.
0:03:44 - (Patrick Mannion): And I think transferred into appalachian state is what's led me down the path that I've spent the last two and a half decades doing.
0:03:52 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. And tell me again what you tell our listeners, what your degrees in, because I didn't even know you could get a degree in this, which is super cool.
0:03:59 - (Patrick Mannion): So I transferred into Appalachian State and ended up in their health, leisure, and exercise science program, studying recreation management.
0:04:08 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:04:09 - (Patrick Mannion): And ended up getting a triple concentration. So I have a certificate for public parks and rec management, a certificate for commercial rec and tourism management, and a certificate for outdoor experiential leadership.
0:04:23 - (Colin Johnson): So you probably are the most educated, qualified guide on the water, if I had to guess.
0:04:30 - (Patrick Mannion): I don't know about that. You know, I spent a lot of time in school. You know, I like to say that my undergraduate career spanned eight and a half years, and I if the state of North Carolina hadn't doubled my tuition because I had so many credits, I'd probably still be at app state.
0:04:43 - (Colin Johnson): There you go. Yeah. Consummate student forever. I love it. I love it. So how did you get into rafting.
0:04:52 - (Patrick Mannion): So I was, I trained sedan and transferred app state and was working at a bar in Blowing Rock and came home one beautiful spring mountain day. You know, those days that we think about all winter long, you know, birds are starting to chirp, dogwoods are Bloomingdez. And I left a daytime bartending shift at a little establishment in Blowing rock and drove past a rafting company on my way back to Boone and saw boys and girls unloading rafts and kayaks and literally got to the top of the hill on 321, turned around and went back and filled out my application that day. And I was like, I want to spend my summer guiding.
0:05:28 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, that's cool. Had you been on, had you done much of that before then?
0:05:33 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, we had, we as a family, we had been rafting a time or two, um, during my years growing up, you know, kind of moving around here and there.
0:05:39 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:05:39 - (Patrick Mannion): Um, you know, nothing crazy whitewater wise, but, you know, I think that my passion for, for spending time in the outdoors really started to kind of blossom when I was in high school. And, uh, you know, I ended up working for the state of Virginia as a park ranger for, I don't know, about two and a half or so years. And that was my reason for wanting to get a bachelor's degree, was I ended up in a position at Mason next State park in Virginia, where I needed a bachelor's degree to actually have the position. And I got promoted into it without that. And so to further my development, my career, I transferred into app state.
0:06:16 - (Patrick Mannion): And that was kind of the stepping stone for sure. I always figured I'd get back into the field of public parks and rec management, but hasn't happened yet. It has not happened yet. The rafting took over.
0:06:27 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Well, tell me about the process of becoming a rafting guide and maybe some tips and tricks for our listeners to go, hey, kids, let's get back in the car, because this guy's a little, doesn't seem real safe, you know? Right. Like, what's the process of getting your guide? I mean, or is it a licensed position or so?
0:06:49 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, every river is governed a little bit differently, you know, on the Noll Chucky river, our staff's required to be 18 years of age, have basic first aid and CPR, and have twelve trips down the river, you know. So for the company I started with, in theory, they would slide trainees on any trip where they had van space or raft space, and it was just about getting trips. And you start out pretty much as a paying client would.
0:07:14 - (Patrick Mannion): And after a couple days, you know, the system, you understand, like, okay, you know, this is the me time. We're going to gear folks up. We've got this, you know, short ride to the put in, but it's all about exposure and it's wild. I think I've got over 3500 commercial days on the no chucky. And I learn something every day, you know, 3500? Yep.
0:07:35 - (Colin Johnson): And the river's never the same, right? And you're never the same.
0:07:37 - (Patrick Mannion): It's never the same. The Nolchucky is an interesting and very dynamic section of river to work on, to play on. The water levels are always going up or coming down. And that's based entirely upon water level. Water levels are based on rainfall. You know, rainfall on the water table. And the water table in a lot of ways is based on rainfall. So yeah, even when you look at today, this morning, it was a little bit higher than it would be this afternoon, but tomorrow morning should be a little higher than it was this evening or even this morning. And on the average season, I'll work between 140 to 160 days out there and no two of those days will be the same.
0:08:16 - (Colin Johnson): How long does it take for the water to matriculate? Like, because you're saying the water. So it rained this morning, it rained last night. So it's all coming out of the puddles, off the leaves, going down the streams into the, into the river. Good question.
0:08:29 - (Patrick Mannion): There's a couple factors that go into it. You know, where it hits in the watershed. And the watershed for the no chucky is just under 800 sq. Mi of mountains of North Carolina, upstream of Poplar, North Carolina, which is where we launch for the null. Chucky. Gorgeous. You know, some of those creeks that are right there in poplar or Green Mountain or Red Hill, North Carolina, are going to hit pretty quick or quickly.
0:08:52 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, if you look at some of the stuff higher up on, on the north toe, up in Newland, or on the south toe coming off the side of Mount Mitchell or the Cane McCain river, it's going to be 24, 27 hours before it gets to the gorge down in Poplar. And so that is something that is pretty dynamic is, is there's days where we're all wake up in Irwin and I'll take a look at the river and I've looked at the radar and, and I'm trying to guess what it's going to do and I'll look.
0:09:19 - (Patrick Mannion): And down by Uncle Johnny's, where the appalachian trail crosses an old chucky, it'll be clear and low. And uh, next thing, you know, we meet our guests, we drive over to the hill, to the. To the put in and bam. It's muddy and high, you know, and it's rolling and, uh, you know, we tighten up our drawstrings a little bit. We change the safety talk a little bit here and there and. Yeah, and we go for a big splashy ride.
0:09:46 - (Colin Johnson): Is there a time where you're like, it's. It's running too. Too much? We can't do it for sure.
0:09:51 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, that's when you and the.
0:09:53 - (Colin Johnson): Guides get in and go, yeah, the Nol Chucky.
0:09:55 - (Patrick Mannion): The Nol Chucky does get too high to go. No, Chucky Gorge does. In that case, you know, we'll move folks down to the lower Nol Chucky.
0:10:02 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:10:03 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, we booked the Nol Chucky as a. As a class two, three and four run at summertime water levels. We take kids seven and up or 60 pounds and up. If we. If we get to the launch ramp and, and things are rolling and it's above that kind of class three to four designation, we're going to go ahead and switch gears, you know, and if we have a. If we break up the groups, that's fine too. Where some of the folks are looking for a class five run, we'll go ahead and take them if, you know, but if some folks are more conservative or they want to stick with what we're going with, we're certainly happy to oblige and then give them the trip that they paid for.
0:10:40 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, we look at it. We look at it as a bonus.
0:10:42 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:10:43 - (Patrick Mannion): If we get a couple high water days in and the average year we'll get. We'll get a couple handfuls in some years, you know, we'll get 30 or 40 of them. And I think that's one of the cool things about the old chucky, is, is it's rainfall dependent and I've yet to meet anyone who can control the rain. So, you know, we deal with the punches. I think it. At high water, it's a splashy and exciting and exhilarating. At low water, it's splashy and fun, but.
0:11:06 - (Patrick Mannion): But it ends up being a technical challenge for the staff. We use smaller boats and, you know, drops that are. That are one and 2ft at high water end up being four and 5ft at low water. And so with, with high water, low water, mid range, mid range water, it's. It's always an incredible experience. And the scenery is always remarkable.
0:11:28 - (Colin Johnson): It is beautiful. Yeah. I've had the pleasure of coming down, I think from the top part all the way down. That's just gorgeous.
0:11:35 - (Patrick Mannion): Thank you.
0:11:35 - (Colin Johnson): Did you have a heart? So if you've been around this summer, it's been pretty dry. I mean, we were gone for a couple weeks and I came back and my yard looks crispy, like just burnt desert and so. Yeah. Has that affected you guys considerably? And now we're now totally changed. It's raining like last six or eight days. It feels like.
0:11:57 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah. So we had, you know, a real, real hot and dry June. Um, you know, we make a couple of accommodations. We use smaller boats that I. That we had custom built for. For the, for the knoll Chucky. At this water level, um, we'll lower the ratio of guests to guides.
0:12:14 - (Colin Johnson): So rides a little, floats a little.
0:12:16 - (Patrick Mannion): Easier so we float a little higher. It's uh, you know, I think it's one of those, one of those unique things that we can do is, is we can actually hurt our profitability a little bit or not that we can do. We choose to hurt our profitability a little bit to provide a better experience. And you know, the noble Chucky is such an amazing section of river that, that even at low water the scenery is remarkable. It's going to be splashy and fun. We're going to stop and swim in the pools.
0:12:41 - (Patrick Mannion): And unlike some of the other dam controlled runs around, the water is comfortable. You know, I mean, those days when, when we were in the mid nineties in Irwin, the water temperature was 78 degrees. You know, it felt great to just kick it and float through those pools and, and we take ample time to really enjoy that and maximize the experience.
0:13:00 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, it's a lot of fun just getting in the water and seeing the outdoors. And you're right. I mean, we're in one of the most beautiful places in the country. It's just over and over, just astounding. And it's cool for you to have 3500 days down the river and still enjoying the, you know, the scenery every day. That's really. I think that's a great perspective to have on it and. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
0:13:24 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, it's, it's, it's an amazing place. It's uh, you know, we never, we're never certain what we're going to see.
0:13:30 - (Colin Johnson): You know, some of the wildlife you get to take a look at on the regular.
0:13:34 - (Patrick Mannion): Oh, so this season, pretty regularly we've seen osprey and bald eagles, um, saw a huge buck swim across the cool. Yeah. Right at the state line a couple weeks ago, um, river otters saw a couple of those two days ago, Canada geese, mallard ducks, crest mergansers, another type of duck that's been around. We've seen cormorants for the last couple weeks, which are an interesting bird that swims to catch fish.
0:14:00 - (Colin Johnson): Really?
0:14:01 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah.
0:14:01 - (Colin Johnson): That's cool.
0:14:02 - (Patrick Mannion): And so, yeah, I've seen a bear or two this year. The old Chucky river gorge is steep and remote and rugged, and you're surrounded by pristine wilderness. And there's really no way in or out of there except by river.
0:14:15 - (Colin Johnson): Right. It is steep. We don't have a lot of snakes right around the river.
0:14:22 - (Patrick Mannion): There's some snakes around, but they typically leave us alone. There's no snake around that's going to see a twelve foot orange raft with five people in it and think that that's lunch. But we do see them and sometimes we point them out, sometimes we don't. I think the brown water snakes are just doing their things. Every now and again, we'll see a timber rattler, a copperhead, but very rarely.
0:14:43 - (Colin Johnson): Right. I mean, it's not like, yeah, those are the only two poisonous snakes we have in our area.
0:14:47 - (Patrick Mannion): Those are the two that we're really worried about. And I'm thankful that we're out of the territory of a water moccasin.
0:14:56 - (Colin Johnson): My dad grew up with those in Memphis. Yeah. No, thank you. So tell me about Osprey rafting. Is that your company or.
0:15:03 - (Patrick Mannion): So, I'm the operating partner for Osprey Whitewater, and we are the paddling wing of Hawk's Nest.
0:15:08 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:15:09 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, Hawks Nest has been a long time kind of center for family fun, outdoors fun up in seven devils, North Carolina, in between banner elk and Boone.
0:15:19 - (Colin Johnson): Can you see it still from the interstate? Hawksness?
0:15:22 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, you cannot.
0:15:24 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:15:25 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, Hawks Nest is up by grandfather Mountain.
0:15:28 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, that's right.
0:15:30 - (Patrick Mannion): But it's an amazing facility. And so we've got the, you know, we now snow tube in the winter and we zip line in the summer, and we're looking forward to expanding in the next summer or two into the mountain coaster.
0:15:41 - (Colin Johnson): Oh.
0:15:42 - (Patrick Mannion): Kind of bracket, which is going to be pretty sweet. So we're really working on rebranding Hawks Nest, which originally started out as a golf and ski resort and kind of just keeping with the flow of things and utilizing the terrain we have to really kind of keep family fun and the outdoors going as we kind of switch gears into the new millennia.
0:16:03 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's pretty cool. Are we for snow stuff? I mean, we're talking global warming. You hear that all the time. Is that a thing for you guys? Or are we seeing less days on the mountain for skiing and snow? You know, snow activities or.
0:16:20 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I think. I think every winter is, is different and unique, kind of the same way that every summer is. You know, I think that we are noticing some trends, but I think as of right now, we've set ourselves up from an infrastructure standpoint to where we can still have a pretty long and significant snow tubing season. We've got the right guns, we've got plenty of water. We just put in a new three pump automatic pump snow making system down in our pump house, and we've made some strategic investments to maximize our snow making abilities during the time frames and the windows that were allotted.
0:16:59 - (Patrick Mannion): Um, just so that we can keep snow on the slopes and keep folks tubing.
0:17:04 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, that's a lot of fun. Um, it sounds like, I'm sure you work pretty hard, but you get to play every day. And what I'm thinking about, like, you're like, okay, in the winter, I'm going to ski and snowboard, and then in the summer, I'm white rider rafting, fishing, swimming, hanging out. It's pretty good gig. That's why you got a big smile on your face right now.
0:17:23 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, I mean, I'm. I'm cheesing, you know, I love hearing about it. It's, uh, you know, it's wild to think that on my to do list tomorrow, I'm not on the water tomorrow. My to do list tomorrow is to vacuum out a couple vans and deep clean the bathrooms and change the rooms after a busy July weekend. And so that's not the stuff that we think about as far as being a river guide. Right.
0:17:45 - (Colin Johnson): But it's operations. You gotta get her done.
0:17:48 - (Patrick Mannion): But it's gotta be done. And we love making sure that our facilities and our equipment are as clean and dialed in and prepared as possible. And so there certainly are a lot of things that I enjoy about what I do. And, you know, I look forward to every day. Every day is different, whether I'm, whether I'm rafting or whether I'm making snow. And, you know, we kind of roll with the punches. We're always ready to call an audible if needed, and we've done everything we can to kind of surround ourselves with the best, the best staff members and the.
0:18:21 - (Patrick Mannion): The best equipment to be able to handle those, those changes.
0:18:23 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. That's awesome. What do you, what do you see? Like, I mean, in the future for you, what do you see yourself continuing to guide forever or what's kind of the plan.
0:18:36 - (Patrick Mannion): So my goal is to, is to guide as long as I can. You know, I think that's where I want to be. I think that's where society wants me to be, actually, is out there in a lot of ways. And, um, I don't know how long I'll be able to guide, but I'm hoping I've got a couple more years in me.
0:18:50 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:18:51 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I've ended up in a unique position where, you know, I worked for one company for 25 years. Over those years, I worked for a lot of other companies too. But, um, and starting out, um, this new venture with Hawks Nest as my partners, um, I've ended up in a very similar position to what I've had for the last 20 years. And so for 20 years? For the last 20 years, I managed an outpost on an old chucky.
0:19:10 - (Patrick Mannion): And I spent those 20 years hiring, acquiring, training, and retaining the most dialed in staff I could find and surrounded myself with those folks, worked on tweaking our boat designs to make them as dialed in as we could as well. And I think one of the cool things about my partnership that I'm in right now, or about our partnership is that we are in our, as a staff, as a river based staff, are in a very similar situation where we have another entity, another part of our organization that's going to do all the marketing and all the promotions and do all the payroll and HR and all that. And that allows us to focus on what we do best and where we want to be. Which is on the water.
0:19:45 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Which, yeah. Makes it a lot more fun. How many trips a day do you take down the river typically?
0:19:49 - (Patrick Mannion): We do typically do one with the right water levels we can run to. You know, our goal is to get folks out in the morning and hopefully get out there before the other folks are out there and before all the birds and everything kind of gets scattered away. But ideally, we'll do one in the morning and then one in the afternoon, but we're guaranteed that we can do that that morning trip for sure.
0:20:10 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. How do our listeners make sure they get with you on the river?
0:20:17 - (Patrick Mannion): Very nice. So our website is hawksnestwhitwater.com. you can also give us a call at 828-963-6561 if you'd like to talk to a customer service representative. Or our outpost, our noble chucky raft and outpost is at 857 Rock Creek Road. So we've got a convenient location to the tri cities for sure. You know, probably 15 minutes from where this interview is being, being made. Downtown.
0:20:40 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. If my wife is a planner, I'm like, hey, let's go whitewater raft on this afternoon. Can you do that or do you have to call, like, three weeks in advance? Five weeks. How far out do you need to book?
0:20:52 - (Patrick Mannion): I would recommend calling in advance. We've had a pretty busy week, especially this time of year. July is going to be kind of our hottest month as far as bookings go. Typically from the middle of June to the middle of July, we're going to be pretty gangbusters. That doesn't mean we won't have availability, and you can certainly check that online with our website. But if you want to guarantee to have some spots or guarantee to have the guides you want, because a lot of our returning clients love requesting guides, I would book that as soon as you know.
0:21:24 - (Patrick Mannion): And that way we can guarantee that you have the guide you want and that you have the date and the time slot that you want.
0:21:28 - (Colin Johnson): Gotcha. Yeah. Because, yeah, you kind of make friends with your guide as you're going down the river because you're like, all right, I'm putting my life in this guy's hands. And, yeah, you just wind up laughing and having a great time with the guides. Everyone I've had has been fantastic. Talk to me a little bit about, like, community of the guides and what life looks like for you guys. Because, yeah, I think it looks, from the outside looking in, it looks like a lot of fun.
0:21:53 - (Patrick Mannion): So it's pretty cool. And I wouldn't change it for the world. You know, over the years, I've worked commercially on pretty much every river that's commercially run from the cheat river and the panhandle of West Virginia down to the Chattooga river, which forms the border of Georgia and South Carolina. And I think our community of guides here on the knoll, Chucky, is pretty unique. You know, for. For probably the last ten years or so, there were only three companies out there. Now we're up to five rafting companies, which is still not that many. And one of the cool things about it is, over the years, I've worked for pretty much every company that's been permitted on the no, Chucky.
0:22:25 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, even this year, I worked for other companies. And so a lot of our guides, you know, if we don't have a trip for them, they're welcome to work for whoever. And I think that that allows us to have a sense of camaraderie.
0:22:36 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:22:36 - (Patrick Mannion): Amongst the company. Sure.
0:22:37 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Where collaboration instead of competition.
0:22:41 - (Patrick Mannion): Exactly. You know, we're not competition to one another. And if one of the other companies out there has a bigger day than us, it's certainly not something that I see as a negative. I'm not threatened by it at all, and they shouldn't be threatened by me. But at some point, I think there is that cool aspect in such a remote kind of wilderness setting. It's nice to know that we have that sense of camaraderie where if we really need a hand, or if they really need a hand that we know that back behind us are.
0:23:06 - (Patrick Mannion): Are coming. Coming up in 15 minutes behind us, that there'll be some help and some folks that we know.
0:23:10 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, but, yeah.
0:23:12 - (Patrick Mannion): So it's a really cool sense of community. The old chuck is pretty tight knit, and once we're out in the woods, it doesn't really matter what color boat we're in or what color paddle we're holding. That's right. We're all out there for the same reason, regardless of those things.
0:23:26 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. Talk to us a little bit about some fun trips you've had down the river, some adventure, some scares, some, I don't know, celebrities maybe you took down the river. I don't know, whatever you want to tell me. I think you've got a lot of great stories I can tell just by the way you're thinking and smiling and laughing.
0:23:44 - (Patrick Mannion): So, yeah, you know, I think that. I think that we all have a lot of interesting day, you know, every day out there. Every day out there is interesting. You know, I think that. I think there's a couple that stick out. You know, I think one of the amazing things about outdoor adventure businesses is that the people that are doing the marketing and the people that are actually booking the reservations oftentimes are not the people that are providing the service.
0:24:12 - (Patrick Mannion): And I think it's always interesting to me. In fact, we did it yesterday. The first couple cars pulled into our parking lot, and I could see my staff kind of, like, peeking around the corner trying to get their first look at the clients. And you see the clients, too, like in the car, looking out over their Stanley cups and their cups of coffee, you know, like they're eyeballing us and kind of ranking us, and we're eyeballing them, too. And I think that's something that is pretty funny. That's hilarious, because, you know, we end up with some. Some very interesting folks. We end up with folks going rafting who.
0:24:45 - (Patrick Mannion): Who I never would imagine would sign up to go rafting. And, you know, we give them a good time, and at the end of the day, they put their dry shorts on and, um, hopefully buy a t shirt and. And head on down the road and leave us a five star review. But, um, yeah, I think that every days differ. You know, we have. We have days with no swimmers. We have days with, uh, you know, with boats upside down. And. And I think one of the cool things about it is, as we work together as a team, and a lot of these boys and girls I've worked with for 20 or so years, um, we pick up the pieces and we put a smile on their face, and, you know, eventually we'll find the paddles and the water bottles and.
0:25:22 - (Patrick Mannion): And we cruise on downrange. Yeah, I mean, interesting stories. I just. I think one of the more impressive days was we somehow ended up with a group of 78.
0:25:37 - (Colin Johnson): 78 people.
0:25:38 - (Patrick Mannion): 78. And they were. They were.
0:25:40 - (Colin Johnson): They were. They were.
0:25:41 - (Patrick Mannion): They were, like, korean or asian women. And I lived in Korea for a couple years.
0:25:44 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, that's cool.
0:25:45 - (Patrick Mannion): You know what I'm saying? So, like, I didn't. I don't recall any of the Korean I learned in elementary school, but. But I. But that day, I certainly wish I had anyone. Do I have. We, uh. Yeah, you know, we rode there. They had charter buses, so we used our, one of our vans for equipment and staffing and then staff getting over to the river, and then we used their charter buses to transport them. So they showed up to our shop.
0:26:08 - (Patrick Mannion): We, you know, bathrooms, changing rooms. We got them geared up with life jackets, helms. We put them back on their bus and then on their buses for the 15 minutes ride to the launch ramp. We, we gave them a safety talk, and I. And there were some interpreters, you know? And so as we were talking about, like, this is how you put your helmet on or how you adjust your helmet, you know, someone in Korean would, you know, would tell their homies, you know, kind of interpret what we were saying. And we gave the full safety drop. We got to the launch ramp. We broke them up into boats, and, I mean, we're looking at 15 or 16 rafts out there.
0:26:39 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow.
0:26:41 - (Patrick Mannion): And at some point, we went out in the pool. We practiced paddling forward, practice paddling backward, practice leaning in, you know, yada, yada, yada. And we entered the first little raft of the day, and I remember the raft in front of me. I was somewhere in the middle of the pack. The raft in front of me hit the first little wave and maybe four inches tall and called for one forward stroke. And all the participants just threw their paddles as far as they could and they looked like blue and yellow fireworks. Oh, my gosh. And the next ref got to that little wave. Boom. And it was the same thing and the same thing and the same thing.
0:27:16 - (Patrick Mannion): That's probably the most memorable day I've ever had is by the second or third rapid of the day and there's 27 rapids out there and you're going down with. No, we had. Yeah, we had stopped calling strokes and we had stopped giving folks paddles back and we were just trying to find them. And I remember at the end of the day, our group sales coordinator being like, how were they? You know? And I was like, man, it was quite a show, you know, but we got them all backs and we're down 47 paddles.
0:27:49 - (Colin Johnson): That's a lot.
0:27:51 - (Patrick Mannion): That's a significant amount of paddles for sure. And, I mean, more than we had lost in probably ten years before. And I think at some point I was like, man, I don't know how we got that group. I remember literally being like, I don't know how we got that group. They had flown in, flown into LA and hopped on these buses and gone to Grand Canyon and gone to Zion and, you know, I mean, coming across the country and they were flying out of LaGuardia, but they stopped into Irwin, Tennessee and didn't know how to hold onto a paddle.
0:28:25 - (Colin Johnson): Like, it's bad. Get rid of it.
0:28:27 - (Patrick Mannion): It was a different. Different adventure than I think they signed up.
0:28:30 - (Colin Johnson): You're like, interpreter gat. What did you say? You know, that's funny. Ever take anybody famous down the river?
0:28:38 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I'm trying to think. There was presidents or I. Yeah, no presidents. I've had some famous folks on the Gotley river. We took down, like, the backup singers for the Fujis one time.
0:28:52 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, nice.
0:28:52 - (Patrick Mannion): And that was pretty amazing. You know, they had their dreadlocks on. And I've got crazy long hair too. But, like, the background singers had dreadlocks that were, like, all over the place. I mean, you have the size of, like, that amplifier for a guitar, you know, like. So their helmets were like, kind of.
0:29:09 - (Colin Johnson): Sort of riding on there.
0:29:10 - (Patrick Mannion): Apparently there were some folks where there were. Their helmets seemed to seem to be like, 2ft above, right.
0:29:15 - (Colin Johnson): You're not gonna need her with all that hair. You'll be fine.
0:29:17 - (Patrick Mannion): But they were pretty sweet. I'm trying to think there was one. One, like, news anchor. It wasn't Kathy Lee Gifford, but it was someone from, like, that era. Someone.
0:29:28 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:29:30 - (Patrick Mannion): And that was a pretty interesting day. Like, she wouldn't get on the school bus with other folks. It was like, well, that's how we're getting to the river, you know, where's my limo? And she was like, my production assistant won't let me get on the bus or whatever. And I was like, I've been like, but you signed up to go rafting. That's how we're going rafting. Um, that's funny. And so we ended up, you know, kind of blocking off a couple seats around her, and we took her after.
0:29:52 - (Colin Johnson): That's fun. What are some of the scariest days you've had on the, on the water?
0:29:58 - (Patrick Mannion): Oh, you know, I think that, uh, yeah, I think that the. There's been a handful of days, for sure that stick out and, uh, you know, on the noble chucky, um, at real low water, so that there end up being some pretty tight and technical moves. At real high water, the pools get really fast, and so there's different potential consequences and different hazards at every water level. You know, a couple years ago, we had a couple weeks stretch of pretty good water. And I think one of the amazing things about my staff and I is that, you know, even if it's been two or three years or five or six years since we've seen a specific water level, at some point, you don't think it's back there. It's like an elephant, like a herd in the Serengeti that's going through a drought they haven't seen in five years.
0:30:51 - (Patrick Mannion): But there's somebody who remembers that 30 miles this way, there'll be a water source. And after a couple days of some pretty high water, we got to the launch ramp, and we ended up, I don't know, five or six boats. And we had a boat that flipped below a rapid called jaws, which the first couple miles of the old chucky are really steep and narrow and constrictive. And things get moving pretty quick at high water. So we pick and choose the features that we want to hit.
0:31:21 - (Patrick Mannion): Oftentimes going around what looks like a big, fun wave, but we know that if we eat it there, it's going to be a long and potentially pretty brutal swim. And we had a guy that just caught the corner of the hole of jaws and ended up upside down, and we ended up scooping everybody up, and we got them all to the bank and a big eddy on the left below a rapid called snappy. The next rapid down, and it's right above canyon entrance, which is right above quarter mile. Quarter mile long class four that starts to all run together at pretty significant water levels. And I remember this young lady named angel just, like, shaking her head like, I'm getting back in the boat.
0:32:00 - (Patrick Mannion): And I tried to talk to her for a bit. Oh, you can ride with me. Like, da da da. We got everybody back, and luckily, we had Ethan. We had Ethan. He was our voice of reason, and Ethan Sane, who's now a state park ranger for the state of Tennessee. You know, Ethan gave her just a very relaxing, good talk, and we got her back in a boat and had a great day. And at the end of the day, she was like, well, I'm thankful to be here on land, but I can tell you I'm not going to be taking a shower anytime soon.
0:32:30 - (Patrick Mannion): And I think that that's pretty funny.
0:32:32 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, it's.
0:32:33 - (Patrick Mannion): At some point, you know, she had enough water for a minute, for a while.
0:32:38 - (Colin Johnson): She's gotten pretty wet. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it. It can be. You can be if you get scared really fat. I mean, I like, sometimes you're cruising, you're like, okay. And then you'll see it coming up, and then, like, it goes. You accelerate very quickly at some points, and it's just like, whoa. Okay, we're moving pretty good here. And, you know, and you're, like, walking in, and I'm always watching out for family and, you know, that kind of thing. And so it's. It's a lot of fun. It just really kind of gets your heart racing.
0:33:05 - (Colin Johnson): It's exciting and. Yeah. And super powerful. Yeah, it's fun.
0:33:11 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, it's cool. It's an interesting, interesting game. There's also what I call the snowball effect of failure where, and I proved this the other day. I was the first boat into quarter mile, and I had one swimmer, and the boat after me had two or three chasing after that one. And, you know, we pick up the pieces as quickly as we can, and we surround ourselves with some of the best of the best. And at the end of the day, you know, everybody's buying t shirts and stickers, and it was the highlight of the summer. Yeah, I think it's interesting, too, the difference between adults and kids. And I think about it now as myself, as a middle aged man, you know, like, how much more conservative I am now.
0:33:51 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, we're like, if we break something, it's going to take a while to get better, you know, like, we think about that as opposed, let's jump in, let's go. You know?
0:33:59 - (Patrick Mannion): But, yeah, little, little kids love it. You know, that's the experience of their summer is getting splashed and having a good time. And then parents have a good time, too.
0:34:07 - (Colin Johnson): Riding the bull and all kinds of fun stuff. Well, I've enjoyed learning all about it. What else can you tell me about rafting that we haven't covered that you'd like to. Like to share with our audience?
0:34:21 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I. I think one of the cool things about the noble Chucky is even if you've done it once, you know, even if you've gone with one of the other outfitters, or even if you've gone with me back in the day when I was just in a different colored boat, man, one of the cool things about the Noel chuggy is it's always different.
0:34:34 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:34:35 - (Patrick Mannion): And so what we see out there with the wildlife, the other paddlers, trains coming through the gorge on a misty day like this morning, you know, the water levels are always different. The scenery is always amazing, and it's always a unique experience. And so just because you've done it once, I wouldn't let that refrain you from coming back again.
0:34:53 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. What? Let's say the noble chucky is number one for you. What would be your number two river in the world that you've been down? That you're like, this was awesome because obviously you're staying here. You must love this.
0:35:04 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, I love the Nola chucky the most. I think it's the most dynamic. You know, after. After high water events, the rapids change and move around, the sandbars move, and so we're constantly kind of learning and relearning and forced to stay on our toes. I think that the close second for me in a place that I. That I'm already looking forward to getting back to again, it would be the Colorado river through the great.
0:35:26 - (Patrick Mannion): And I've been lucky enough to get on eight of those trips. And that's. That's an ultimate expedition. Um, you know, launching at Lee's ferry right below Glen Canyon dam and taken out right above Lake Mead at Pierce Ferry. Um, you know, that's 277 miles by water. And, uh, and that's an amazing journey.
0:35:43 - (Colin Johnson): How long does that take you?
0:35:44 - (Patrick Mannion): So I've been on. On eight trips. I've been on a couple that were like 23 days, 25 days. I've been on three that were 30 days.
0:35:52 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow. So the water's moving about 10 miles an hour kind of thing.
0:35:55 - (Patrick Mannion): So, yeah, we're cruising. We're hoping to make about 10 miles a day. You know, we'll stop and do side hikes and stuff. We're camping every night. Um, but that is an ultimate expedition and, uh, the Nolansucky has a very western feel to it as far as, as the deep, remote parts of the corridor where you're two and a half, 3000ft below the rim. You know, I think on the Grand Canyon at your deepest point you're like 7800ft deep.
0:36:18 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, wow.
0:36:19 - (Patrick Mannion): Um, and so it's just a different scale.
0:36:21 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:36:21 - (Patrick Mannion): Um, but yeah, the, the dole chucky is, is amazing. You know, the, the eight and a half miles between road access points keeps us from, from just having a lot of folks out there. Um, the Grand Canyon, you know, it's kind of that on, on a bigger scale.
0:36:35 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:36:36 - (Patrick Mannion): And certainly we're using bigger boats and we're camping and, um, you know, I've refinanced my house twice to get back on the Grand Canyon.
0:36:43 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, that's cool.
0:36:45 - (Patrick Mannion): Because, because life is about priorities.
0:36:47 - (Colin Johnson): There you go. Yeah, I like it, I like it. They're like, I gotta go, I gotta get back.
0:36:52 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah. Gotta check.
0:36:52 - (Colin Johnson): I gotta get back. How, what's the longest period of time you've been off the water, not counting like the winter and where you're just like, oh, man, I'm itching to get back onto the wire.
0:37:03 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I've, I've had days where I've paddled an old chucky over 300 times. 300 days of a year. You know, I, I think the longest I've probably gone without being out there is probably 40, 45 days.
0:37:16 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:37:16 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, if I go out west for a month, month and a half, you know, the day I get back, I'll be on the water.
0:37:20 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:37:21 - (Patrick Mannion): Um, you know, it's, it's where I want to be. An addiction.
0:37:26 - (Colin Johnson): That's probably a good one.
0:37:27 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah. You know, it's wild. I've got 18,000 or something unread emails. I noticed that today is. I was checking some work related emails.
0:37:33 - (Colin Johnson): It's hard to check your email while you're going down the river.
0:37:36 - (Patrick Mannion): It's hard to check it and I don't want to, you know, and I think that's, uh, at some point it's like, well, I guess they'll get back to me.
0:37:41 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, you know, that's fine. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, they're not that important. Um. All right, you ready for a quick speed round of questions?
0:37:51 - (Patrick Mannion): Sure.
0:37:52 - (Colin Johnson): All right, so burger or pizza?
0:37:56 - (Patrick Mannion): Who? Where? Frog. Really? Just got a answer.
0:38:00 - (Colin Johnson): Sorry. For dinner tonight. Burger or pizza?
0:38:02 - (Patrick Mannion): So, yeah, I mean, I'm kind of a both person. Okay. I weigh 260 pounds. I've got a lot of gravitational pull.
0:38:10 - (Colin Johnson): I don't know. Let's see. I guess you could go to Cootie Brown's and get a burger and a pizza.
0:38:14 - (Patrick Mannion): Yep. I went to Cootie Brown's last night.
0:38:16 - (Colin Johnson): I did too.
0:38:16 - (Patrick Mannion): I got the Pittsburgh pie, which has the sirloin steak on.
0:38:21 - (Colin Johnson): That's awesome. Okay.
0:38:24 - (Patrick Mannion): Because I couldn't decide because I like their burgers. You know, I just, uh.
0:38:28 - (Colin Johnson): They're so good. Yeah.
0:38:30 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah. Tonight would be pizza.
0:38:31 - (Colin Johnson): Okay.
0:38:32 - (Patrick Mannion): But last night was pizza.
0:38:33 - (Colin Johnson): So what's your favorite pizza place locally?
0:38:36 - (Patrick Mannion): So I like cooties pizza. I love their pizza.
0:38:39 - (Colin Johnson): I love their caribbean pizza is my favorite.
0:38:41 - (Patrick Mannion): The Caribbean?
0:38:42 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, the caribbean jerk sauce and chicken and mango. It's so good.
0:38:46 - (Patrick Mannion): The caribbean pie is good.
0:38:48 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:38:48 - (Patrick Mannion): I'm a big fan of main street.
0:38:51 - (Colin Johnson): Those are big plate covering pieces of pizza. So good. Yeah. Okay. Where are you going to get a burger?
0:38:57 - (Patrick Mannion): So I think. I think the drunken boat, the drunken goat burger at the label is my burger.
0:39:03 - (Colin Johnson): It is really good. That thing is so good.
0:39:05 - (Patrick Mannion): I think the label does a lot of things right. And I really like their burgers. I like their signature burger. But I think that the drunken goat burger with the. The Buffalo trace BlackBerry jam calls my name.
0:39:17 - (Colin Johnson): They know what they're doing. Where are you going to get a burger in Irwin. Where's your hometown burger?
0:39:22 - (Patrick Mannion): So in Irwin, my burgers. My burger shop right now is going to be the Red Fork. You know, I'm super stoked that we've got a new restaurant in town. Yeah. And they're doing it right. You know, I liked the burger at timber, and now I've got one I can ride my bike to in Irwin.
0:39:38 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah. So Red Forks, part of timber, I.
0:39:40 - (Patrick Mannion): Believe they have kind of the same back of the house kind of ownership. Nathan and management, I think there's some local Irwin partners too, is my understanding. Okay. But yeah, real good burgers, man. Amazing fried chicken dinner. And I think it's going to be a game changer for Irwin. It's nice to see that we have options that aren't just fast food and like diner. And I'm a diner person too, but it's nice to have a place I can sit down on the porch and have a good kind of sit down meal.
0:40:10 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, yeah, that's, that's special. Uh, coffee or tea?
0:40:14 - (Patrick Mannion): Ooh, coffee.
0:40:15 - (Colin Johnson): Okay, where's your favorite coffee spot?
0:40:17 - (Patrick Mannion): The steel rails coffee shop.
0:40:18 - (Colin Johnson): Man, that place is nice. I do. Carly and I like going there when we're in Irwin, it's nice. They're good people.
0:40:24 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, steel rails has got the best breakfast in Irwin. You know, I get the, the southbounder bagel.
0:40:29 - (Colin Johnson): And what's on the southbounder bagel?
0:40:31 - (Patrick Mannion): Oh, so it's. I guess it comes with your choice of protein. I get bacon and so choice of protein. Egg and cheese. Um, on a bagel, I add lettuce, tomato, and onion. And it comes with, with a steel rail special sauce. But I get it on the side because I'm more of a dipper. Okay. When it comes to sauces, I like dipping.
0:40:50 - (Colin Johnson): I like it. You like donuts? You got any doughnut places you like around here?
0:40:55 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I.
0:40:57 - (Colin Johnson): More of a protein.
0:40:58 - (Patrick Mannion): Haven't had donuts in a minute.
0:40:59 - (Colin Johnson): Uh oh.
0:41:00 - (Patrick Mannion): But I'm looking for recommendations. You got a good donut shuttle?
0:41:02 - (Colin Johnson): Well, we used to have Peggy Ann's here in town, and then they closed this location. It's still in green Bull. I think I'm headed there tomorrow. Just their plain glazed doughnut is just world class, but, yeah, it's hard to beat Krispy Kreme. Yeah, they're so good. And then my son and I used to get these chocolate covered, cream filled donuts from Dunkin donuts, called the manager special. And so those are. That's. That's so good. They're just icing, and that's just good.
0:41:32 - (Colin Johnson): So it's hard to boot that. Yeah, I've got.
0:41:34 - (Patrick Mannion): I've got a heck of a sweet tooth.
0:41:36 - (Colin Johnson): I know, right?
0:41:36 - (Patrick Mannion): I love it all. I love it all. Yeah.
0:41:38 - (Colin Johnson): Well, and you probably. You thought mark off a lot of calories carrying boats, pulling people out of the water, rafting, paddling. I mean, it's probably a workout. Yeah.
0:41:48 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, we get our strokes in. That's for sure. The, you know, usually by now, I'm working off my hoodie weight that I gain over the winter. Winter. I got a couple extra layers.
0:41:58 - (Colin Johnson): Oh, you're hibernating all the way.
0:42:00 - (Patrick Mannion): A couple extra layers. Making snow. Lots of snacks overnight. Making snow. And that's one of, that's one of the things that, you know, we need people to go rafting, so I could lose that hoodie weight, get back to where I could wear a hawaiian shirt and not look like a float in the Macy's day parade, you know?
0:42:16 - (Colin Johnson): Does that come in a double extra large? Yeah, that's fun. Okay, so I think I'm. That I can't think anything else to push in on you about except remind our listeners how they connect and get on you. Like, let's say they want to go rafting with you because they're like, we listen to this guy. He sounds like a cool dude. He is super cool guys. One of those handsome long haired fellows are like, this guy's just cool. How do we hook up with Patrick to be your. As our guide?
0:42:46 - (Patrick Mannion): Heck yeah. Well, we'd love to take volkswagen. You know, it's what we do. We specialize in the NoL Chucky. It's a, it's a marquee section of river. And we're one of the exclusive outfitters licensed and permitted by the National Forest Service to take folks from Papa, North Carolina to Irwin, Tennessee on the gorgeous. You know, we offer some amazing experiences and we make a lot of folks kind of highlight Rio, their summer and the fall, too. We got fall coming up. Leaf season is an amazing time to get out there.
0:43:14 - (Patrick Mannion): You can book trips at www.hawksnestwhitewater.com. you can give us a call at 828-963-6561 you can check us out on instagram at osprey. Whitewater is our handle. Or on Facebook, it's hawks nests. Osprey Nol Chucky outpost.
0:43:31 - (Colin Johnson): So in the notes, when you're making your online thing, you're like, I want Patrick as my guide.
0:43:36 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, you can, you can, you can request me as a guide. You can request it other, anyone other than me. Do you know? We do.
0:43:41 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah.
0:43:42 - (Patrick Mannion): A lot of times folks will come back a couple times in the summer, especially folks with vacation houses. And they kind of like checking out different guides too. So that's something that's pretty cool. Was. Is. We're all characters, you know, I'm privileged to work alongside the boys and girls that we've got on the, on the staff. And every one of them is going to give you an amazing trip. You know, some real historical, some real nature bound, some just funny kind of telling stories and laughing and having a good time. But, but we guarantee that, uh, we guarantee you'll have a good time out there. In fact, if you don't have a good time out there, we'll, we'll send you a rafting with another company out there and uh, man, maybe they can give you a good time, maybe not.
0:44:15 - (Patrick Mannion): Either way. Either way, we took you once and we on our email list. That's right.
0:44:22 - (Colin Johnson): You're gonna hear about us forever. You're gonna remember that. Not so great time.
0:44:26 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, kinda like, yeah, I guess. I guess the guarantee should be a little bit. The guarantee would be like, we guarantee you'll have a good time. You don't have a good time, we'll actually send you pictures of people that did have a good time.
0:44:35 - (Colin Johnson): That's right. You missed out. Cause it was your attitude on the. On the river that was your problem. Like, yeah, and sometimes you can't make everybody happy. You know, some people just show up there grumpy, but.
0:44:45 - (Patrick Mannion): Yeah, but we're gonna paddle our way. We're gonna paddle our way through the shoals, trying to make sure you have a good time.
0:44:49 - (Colin Johnson): And do you ever get just a bunch of grumpy people and you dump them all just to kind of get them?
0:44:53 - (Patrick Mannion): You know, I think as I've. I'd like to say as I've grown as a person, but my girlfriend tells me all the time I haven't grown as a friend. At some point, I think that, yeah, you know, we used to put the crushing on some folks and, you know, I think we're at the point now where we like keeping that med kit closed and.
0:45:11 - (Colin Johnson): Right.
0:45:12 - (Patrick Mannion): And I think that's the goal, man.
0:45:14 - (Colin Johnson): Yeah, keep it safe. But you know what? You changed your attitude a little bit. When you're all soaking wet and you went for a swim, you know, it's just, for sure, a little different. So. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming on the podcast. I really enjoy getting to know you now. I feel like I got a friend on the river now and looking forward to coming down, taking the family. It'll be fun. And thanks for the conversation. It's just good to know that there are great people doing awesome things in our beautiful country, and it's just awesome. So, until next time, I'm Colin Johnson with a Colin and Carly group and Keller Williams realty. If you want to move to Irwin and hang out with Patrick on the regular, or we can help you buy a house down there here in Johnson City, or we can help you sell a house anywhere in the world. So just call me, reach out, connect with us, and thanks again for listening and share this podcast with somebody and give us a like down below. Thanks and have a great day.