Speaker 1: Mike was relatively quiet.
Speaker 2: He was basically listening to what everyone was saying, and
Speaker 2: everyone seemed to be happy to be there, even before
Speaker 2: they had even before they'd hit a shot, they were
Speaker 2: delighted to be there.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was.
Speaker 2: The just the atmosphere of an opening day and a
Speaker 2: golf course.
Speaker 1: But when they came.
Speaker 2: Back in, Mike Goodness, the comments and the clubhouse, and
Speaker 2: the atmosphere in the clubhouse was just out of this world.
Speaker 2: You could almost even today, I could you can feel
Speaker 2: it here in the back of your next standing up
Speaker 2: because you knew that something had happened to you in
Speaker 2: a place which was out in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 2: It was an incredible day.
Speaker 3: Put another log on fire.
Speaker 4: Nobody here is getting tired. Welcome to the fire pit
Speaker 4: with Matt Chanella.
Speaker 5: Welcome back. Settle in this story is one that means
Speaker 5: a little more to me than most. After all. On
Speaker 5: May twelfth, twenty seventeen, we named our son Bandon, which,
Speaker 5: according to some research by my wife, means cooperative, courteous,
Speaker 5: and she says people named Bandon tend to be considerate. Apparently,
Speaker 5: peace and harmony are of the utmost importance to someone
Speaker 5: named Bandon. If you've been to the resort or have
Speaker 5: met my son, you'd say most of the above is true.
Speaker 5: As far as our sun goes. It's a work in
Speaker 5: progress in terms of the destination. I've been covering the
Speaker 5: development of Abandon Dunes since two thousand and one, and
Speaker 5: I've been going there every year for my annual Buddies trip,
Speaker 5: the Uncle Tony Invitational, since two thousand and seven. The
Speaker 5: fire pit at Bandon Dunes in the middle of the
Speaker 5: Grove cottages, the nights I've had there, the stories I've
Speaker 5: told and heard there, that was the inspiration for this podcast.
Speaker 5: Today you'll hear part one of the building of Bandon
Speaker 5: Dunes as told by Mike Kaiser, the owner, David McLeay
Speaker 5: Kidd and his father Jimmy, the architects, and Josh Lesnik
Speaker 5: and his father Steve, who won the bid to manage it.
Speaker 5: I interviewed Mike Kaiser on his own David and Josh together,
Speaker 5: and Steve Lesnik and Jimmy Kidd together. Bandon Dunes, the
Speaker 5: original course at what is now the best pure golf
Speaker 5: destination in America and arguably the world, was an outlier
Speaker 5: that opened in nineteen ninety nine. Like sand Hills and Mulla, Nebraska.
Speaker 5: The story we told in the previous episode of this podcast,
Speaker 5: to build a golf course in a remote location using
Speaker 5: a minimalist architect or architects was anything but what was
Speaker 5: being built in America. In the nineties, Mike Kaiser of
Speaker 5: Recycled Paper Greetings in Chicago started developing courses with the
Speaker 5: Dunes Club, a private but non pretentious nine hole course
Speaker 5: built in the sand of New Buffalo, Michigan. Kaiser was
Speaker 5: then brought in to invest a little money into what
Speaker 5: Young's Cap was building in Nebraska.
Speaker 1: My model has always been even though Dornick and St.
Speaker 6: Andrews old are important, Pine Valley has always been my
Speaker 6: model because it's in the US. It's not remote, but
Speaker 6: it's sort of a hole in the wall place and
Speaker 6: it's totally natural, built on sand dunes. It doesn't have
Speaker 6: an ocean, but magnificent sand dunes. So that was my
Speaker 6: motivator and model for the Dunes Club. And when I
Speaker 6: saw sand Hills that was in the same genre as
Speaker 6: Pine Valley, and before we knew.
Speaker 1: It, Dick was full.
Speaker 6: That gave me a lot of courage out there in
Speaker 6: Mandon because that was the missing ingredient the courage to
Speaker 6: build something in Bandon.
Speaker 5: Or Kaiser says that when sand Hills got one hundred
Speaker 5: and fifty members in Mullen, that's the mitosis of modern
Speaker 5: minimalism in America. As Bill Corr said, a watershed moment.
Speaker 5: But what if it didn't work? Why was this worth
Speaker 5: the risk? For Mike Kaiser, you.
Speaker 6: Know, Josh and I discussed you know what happens if
Speaker 6: no one comes, or what happens if we break even?
Speaker 6: Because we all had bats the first year how many
Speaker 6: rounds we would do, and twelve thousand rounds is break even.
Speaker 6: And most of our bats about how many rounds we
Speaker 6: would do were less than twelve thousand rounds. So in
Speaker 6: my group, no one thought we would break even. And
Speaker 6: their discussion, I remembered brabi than the Ninetyfore, Well, if
Speaker 6: it doesn't work, I'll give it three years for it
Speaker 6: to catch on, and if it doesn't, we'll turn.
Speaker 5: It into a sheep ranch, which is a bit ironic
Speaker 5: considering this podcast is going live on the eve of
Speaker 5: the opening of the Sheep Ranch, the sixth course at
Speaker 5: Bandon Dune's another Billcore and Ben Crenshaw designed. Their story
Speaker 5: is told in episode six of The fire Pit. But
Speaker 5: we start this story in January of nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 5: Mike Kaiser's first trip to Bandon, Oregon, five hundred miles
Speaker 5: north of San Francisco, almost three hundred miles south of Portland.
Speaker 5: Kaiser is standing on what's now the fourteenth tea of
Speaker 5: bandoned trails, looking out over Gorse choked dunesland out to
Speaker 5: the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 6: I went to the lookout site which you've seen with
Speaker 6: Shorty and Charlotte Dowe, the caretakers of thirty five years
Speaker 6: of the property who knew the property better than anyone,
Speaker 6: and he said, if you're looking for a golf course,
Speaker 6: Shorty said, I'll take you to the spot, and the
Speaker 6: spot is marked today is the spot that Shorty down
Speaker 6: took Mike Kayser and I looked out and said, this
Speaker 6: is it. There can't be another site. It was just
Speaker 6: I later toured the land, which was twelve hundred acres,
Speaker 6: but just from that lookout site it had everything. It
Speaker 6: had beautiful sand dunes that had the ocean. You just
Speaker 6: knew it was as good as Dornick, or in the
Speaker 6: same brat as Dornick and Belly Bunion without knowing the
Speaker 6: specific so that one tour with Shorty and Charlotte was.
Speaker 1: All I needed to see.
Speaker 6: So then all I had to do was buy it
Speaker 6: from Duke Watson and Seattle Washington, and yet David Kidd
Speaker 6: and his father on board to do a routing.
Speaker 5: Before we get to the kids, I circled back on
Speaker 5: the cost.
Speaker 1: They were asking five.
Speaker 6: It had been in the market for four and a
Speaker 6: half years, according to Shorty Dow and a broker, so
Speaker 6: I felt that there were there weren't any buyers, that
Speaker 6: I was probably the only buyer, and therefore Anne decided
Speaker 6: that you would be much more effective if I was
Speaker 6: seeking a fifty percent discount.
Speaker 1: I went there in person.
Speaker 6: So I flew out to see Duke Watson, the owner,
Speaker 6: along with his two brothers in law, and said, Duke,
Speaker 6: I don't have enough money to do this project, so
Speaker 6: I can only pay you half of what you're asking.
Speaker 6: If you're asking five, I'll give you two and a half.
Speaker 6: And he said, let us let us go caucus. So
Speaker 6: they went into these three there were in their eighties
Speaker 6: or the old guys, go into another room and came
Speaker 6: back fifteen minutes and I said, well take it.
Speaker 1: They became big fans.
Speaker 6: That Duke in particular came down at numerous times and said,
Speaker 6: you know, it was always dream to build a resort,
Speaker 6: and you've gone and done it.
Speaker 5: Now that he has the land and we know Kaiser's inspirations,
Speaker 5: he was looking for some authenticity in terms of the
Speaker 5: course itself, which is about the time Kaiser had a
Speaker 5: conversation with Rick Summers, who worked for Glen Eagle's Golf
Speaker 5: Developments in Scotland and worked with David McLay Kidd, who
Speaker 5: was in his mid twenties.
Speaker 7: And in that conversation, Rick said, why don't you hire
Speaker 7: a Scottish architect if you're trying to build a Scottish
Speaker 7: links course, And Mike said, I would, but there aren't any.
Speaker 8: The old died one hundred years ago.
Speaker 5: And then Ian Ferrier, also of Glen Eagle's Golf Developments,
Speaker 5: made a trip to the States to try and drum
Speaker 5: up some business.
Speaker 6: And Ian came to see me and said, if you're
Speaker 6: looking for someone to do a links golf course, which
Speaker 6: is how I defined it, there's only one group for you,
Speaker 6: and that's the Kid family. David Kidd and his father
Speaker 6: Jimmy know what they're doing. Come on over to Glen
Speaker 6: Eagle's and we'll show.
Speaker 5: You entered Jimmy Kidd, David's father and the director of
Speaker 5: agronomy at Glen and Eagles in Scotland.
Speaker 2: We will bring Mike to Scotland. We will base them
Speaker 2: at Glen Eagles Hotel. We will visit Irish Links, we
Speaker 2: will visit Scottish Links. We will convince Mike that we
Speaker 2: know everything about Link's golf, how it should play, how
Speaker 2: it should look, what kind of vegetation and such light.
Speaker 2: And we got to we got down to North Berwick.
Speaker 2: It was the very last one that we played, and
Speaker 2: we played the second hole. Mike pushed one onto the
Speaker 2: beach and he said, well that's set, I'll drop another ball.
Speaker 8: I said, no, you want, Mike go down there and
Speaker 8: play it.
Speaker 2: Yeahlish As you can't play it, I said, get down
Speaker 2: on the beach and play it back.
Speaker 1: He knoked it back to nine feet and hold the
Speaker 1: pup for a three. And at that point I knew
Speaker 1: had the project.
Speaker 6: I was totally captivated by Jimmy Kidd, who's my age
Speaker 6: in particular, who convinced me that he knew everything you
Speaker 6: could passively know about golf and Scarland and especially link Scott.
Speaker 5: Jimmy Kidd was a bit of a legend. His son
Speaker 5: David was still leaning on.
Speaker 7: His d You know, my father was in a group
Speaker 7: along with Walter Woodsits and Andrews, George Brown at Turnbree
Speaker 7: and I'm merry out of others that he came up
Speaker 7: through the ranks with. And my childhood was staying at
Speaker 7: these golf courses, with these superintendents and golf crews. I
Speaker 7: completely immersed in Scottish golf.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Josh Lesnik was trending to work
Speaker 5: in his father's business.
Speaker 9: You know, I grew up in the golf business as well.
Speaker 9: I mean he grew up with superintendents, and I grew
Speaker 9: up more on the service side, working at Kemper Lakes,
Speaker 9: which was, you know, one of the first upscale daily
Speaker 9: fee golf courses opened in the in around nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 9: nineteen eighty, I think all eighteen holes open and I
Speaker 9: worked there in summers of high school and college.
Speaker 4: Because services is.
Speaker 9: A way that my dad, the founder of Kemper Sports,
Speaker 9: always felt that we could differentiate ourselves.
Speaker 5: Stars haven't aligned yet, but we're getting there. The kids
Speaker 5: receiving an invite to Kaiser's land in Abandon. That's a
Speaker 5: big step.
Speaker 7: And my father and I flew out in July of
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety four to Bandon Dun's and we spent a
Speaker 7: week on the site with Shorty Dow who just passed
Speaker 7: a year ago or so, who was the caretaker of
Speaker 7: the sixteen hundred acres if I remember right, that Mike
Speaker 7: had purchased, and my father and I spent a week
Speaker 7: going around the land. My dad and I were super
Speaker 7: excited at what the possibilities were. We thought the piece
Speaker 7: of land that Mike had had huge potential, and we
Speaker 7: thought maybe somehow we were sneaking under the wire into
Speaker 7: America for a developer that some way, somehow was going
Speaker 7: to hire these complete unknowns to build a golf course.
Speaker 7: But what happened was during that week, Shorty kept asking
Speaker 7: my dad and I for our business cards. I mean
Speaker 7: he kept asking and asking and asking, and so it
Speaker 7: became obvious that he was collecting business cards. So I said, sure,
Speaker 7: I'll give you a business card, but I want to
Speaker 7: see your collection. And when I saw the collection he had,
Speaker 7: my heart sank because the collection had all of my
Speaker 7: heroes in it. I mean, Mike had had everybody out there,
Speaker 7: you know, we weren't sneaking under anywire. I mean, this
Speaker 7: guy is It was obvious. He was pretty sophisticated, and
Speaker 7: he was able to get Jack Nicholas, Tom Fasio, Pete Dye,
Speaker 7: whoever he wanted on the phone, and could have hired
Speaker 7: any of them. So it was pretty obvious to my
Speaker 7: dad and I that we were in a competition and
Speaker 7: we were way the hell out of our league, especially me.
Speaker 7: I'm twenty six years old and I haven't done Jack,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 5: Pausing David's narrative for a second. Going back to Josh,
Speaker 5: where the Lesnicks were also eyeing for the contract to
Speaker 5: work with Kaiser.
Speaker 9: There was a bit of a competition as to who
Speaker 9: was going to manage bandon Dunes. The company David worked
Speaker 9: for at the time that he mentioned, Glen Eagles Golf,
Speaker 9: also had a management arm or said they had a
Speaker 9: management arm. Not sure what all they were managing, but
Speaker 9: there was a bit of a bakeoff between Kemper Sports
Speaker 9: and Glen Eagles Golf. It happened at our sister company, Kemper. Lesnik,
Speaker 9: the public relations agency, has an office downtown we met
Speaker 9: Mike there. Glenn Eagles was there. David wasn't in that meeting.
Speaker 9: I was there just watching my dad do his thing.
Speaker 4: Which is he's a phenomenal salesperson.
Speaker 9: And thankfully Mike selected Kemper Sports to manage it, and
Speaker 9: he called me the next week after that meeting and said,
Speaker 9: I'd like you to think about moving out there.
Speaker 5: Steve Lesnig founded Kemper Sports in nineteen seventy eight with
Speaker 5: a focus on golf course development and various aspects of management.
Speaker 5: Steve reflects on k Are picking his son as the
Speaker 5: first general manager of Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 10: It was another a great insight of Mike we all
Speaker 10: know he has so many because he recognized that Josh
Speaker 10: had a passion for the game that equaled his own.
Speaker 10: And Matt, as you well know, his extraordinary people's skills
Speaker 10: really contributed to the development of Bandon doings.
Speaker 5: Meanwhile, the kids, specifically David, was back in Bandon and
Speaker 5: he wasn't having an easy time coming to terms with
Speaker 5: their odds to get the job of building the golf course.
Speaker 7: I took a little bit of a fans to the
Speaker 7: whole thing. I figured that my dad and I as
Speaker 7: these you know, colloquial skulls out there on this piece
Speaker 7: of land with this mega rich guy from Chicago going
Speaker 7: to fly in in his private jet. You know, we
Speaker 7: were just entertainment. I mean, there's no way this guy's
Speaker 7: going to hire us. So I take it upon myself
Speaker 7: to be blunt, I mean just kind of brutally blunt
Speaker 7: with them, because I figure he's not going to hire
Speaker 7: us anyway, so what the hell? So I paint out
Speaker 7: this scenario that if you really want to build a
Speaker 7: real links course in America, in this place that's miles
Speaker 7: from anywhere, then you need to be authentic. But I
Speaker 7: know you won't do it. I mean, I've seen what
Speaker 7: links golf is in America. Links golf in America is
Speaker 7: Peble Beach, with everyone driving golf cars and playing into
Speaker 7: poll A greens with perfectly trimmed bunker edges. You know,
Speaker 7: I pick up any American golf magazine and every new
Speaker 7: course is called a links course, and they're not links
Speaker 7: at all. They're not even close to a links course.
Speaker 6: He's very entrepreneurial, he could say brash. I would say
Speaker 6: entrepreneurial and cantident.
Speaker 5: Call it what you want. But David brought all of
Speaker 5: it to a pitch meeting at the c Star Guesthouse
Speaker 5: in downtown Bandon.
Speaker 7: And I gave what would be today a PowerPoint presentation,
Speaker 7: but I did it with poster boards and a sharpie pens,
Speaker 7: and I wrote down on these poster boards, you know,
Speaker 7: like no cart paths, and make you know they would walk,
Speaker 7: and that the fairways would be uneven and there'd be
Speaker 7: pot bunkers, and the clubhouse shouldn't be on the water's edge.
Speaker 7: It should, you know, the best green should be on
Speaker 7: the water's edge.
Speaker 2: I said to David, if we deviate at any anytime
Speaker 2: from offering Mike anything more than a true and I
Speaker 2: mean a true Links experience, Irish Links experience here, you
Speaker 2: will not hire us as architects.
Speaker 4: He will go elsewhere.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 7: It was completely the antithesis of American golf development circa
Speaker 7: the nineteen nineties. It was everything that golf was not,
Speaker 7: and lo and behold, it pretty much was exactly what
Speaker 7: the audience was there to hear. That was I was
Speaker 7: pushing an open door with Mike. That was actually what
Speaker 7: his intentions were.
Speaker 6: I think it was a meeting of eight or so
Speaker 6: of us who'd flown out with me from Chicago, eight
Speaker 6: friends and avid golfers and Goersionado's who were there basically
Speaker 6: to say, you've got to be nuts to do this.
Speaker 1: And I think David Kidd gave his presentation to convince them,
Speaker 1: to convince me that it wasn't such a crazy idea.
Speaker 1: He kedn, you know, how do we get hired? AIKIDN,
Speaker 1: Do I really want to do this?
Speaker 5: In theory, the kids had the job and that was
Speaker 5: because of their commitment to building true links, and Kemper
Speaker 5: Sports had the job to manage it. But why does
Speaker 5: Josh Lesnik, the age of twenty nine think he was
Speaker 5: Kaiser's chosen one.
Speaker 9: I think in the end, maybe the way Mike feels
Speaker 9: if Kemper Sports was going to manage it and the
Speaker 9: owner was willing, the owner of Kemper Sports was willing
Speaker 9: to send his son out there, that they weren't going
Speaker 9: to let me fail. They were going to get me
Speaker 9: all the support I needed to be successful opening.
Speaker 4: That resort.
Speaker 9: And that's, you know, what our company's all about is
Speaker 9: supporting the general managers to be successful. And I had
Speaker 9: a ton of support, whether it be accounting, legal operations, policies, procedures,
Speaker 9: all the things that maybe weren't my straints mine probably
Speaker 9: more in building the relationships and communications and building the
Speaker 9: brand abandoned Dunes. But you know, I think he was
Speaker 9: just like, well, the company's not going to let Josh fail.
Speaker 9: Let's send let's send him out there.
Speaker 5: Steve Lesnick agrees.
Speaker 10: By having my son go out this was going to
Speaker 10: have my full attention and the full attention of the organization,
Speaker 10: because we certainly were not going to let Josh fail
Speaker 10: or not be successful, or not.
Speaker 4: Hit the ball out of the park.
Speaker 10: I know we've all watched the last dance these last
Speaker 10: couple of weeks, and it is true that in a
Speaker 10: way organization win championships. But you know what, the players play,
Speaker 10: and Josh played, and those first three years were crucial
Speaker 10: to all of us, to the success of all of us,
Speaker 10: the reputation of all of us, and he did a
Speaker 10: great job, and I'm very, very proud of him.
Speaker 5: Like I said a few minutes ago, in Theory, the
Speaker 5: kids had the job to build the course. Josh the
Speaker 5: GM and David the Kid explained.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure Mike ever gave him the job.
Speaker 9: Every time he came out there, he was like, let's
Speaker 9: see what he can do, and he just kept living
Speaker 9: up to the task. Every time he had an idea
Speaker 9: about a hole in the route and this and that,
Speaker 9: Mike liked it more and more and gave him more
Speaker 9: and more of a I.
Speaker 4: Mean, David, is that how you kind of remember it?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I wrote Mike a proposal that basically sold him my
Speaker 7: time on a day basis a day rate, and Mike
Speaker 7: sent me back a fax that was on recycled paper
Speaker 7: and hated no paper, and it said, Okay, let's go,
Speaker 7: and that's all it said, classic Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 6: David had never done a golf course. He just had
Speaker 6: this lineage that I thought, as long as his father,
Speaker 6: Jimmy was involved, it would work out okay, And so
Speaker 6: it was. Jimmy was a great help to David. They
Speaker 6: came over and bushwacked through the gorse plants and came
Speaker 6: up with this routing that was pretty good. Not good
Speaker 6: enough to build, but pretty good. And they were the architects.
Speaker 5: We heard why Josh thought he got hired, So why
Speaker 5: does David think he got to build bandits?
Speaker 7: I think Mike hired me for what I didn't know,
Speaker 7: You know, I didn't know how it screwed up because
Speaker 7: I never built much jails.
Speaker 8: What I had was this extremely.
Speaker 7: Raw in instinct for what golf is in the British Isles,
Speaker 7: and so it wasn't uncommon to me I had. I
Speaker 7: barely played many golf courses driving a golf cart on
Speaker 7: a concrete path, much less built one. So I didn't
Speaker 7: know how to do that. I hadn't built a bunch
Speaker 7: of lakes with fountains on a golf course, much less
Speaker 7: played one.
Speaker 5: As for kids compensation, he was getting a daily fee.
Speaker 7: It was about a couple of hundred bucks. I think
Speaker 7: something in there. But I was working for a company,
Speaker 7: so I lived on site at Bandon through the whole
Speaker 7: entire build, so pretty much it was like eight or
Speaker 7: nine months I was on site, and that year I
Speaker 7: made forty thousand.
Speaker 8: That year.
Speaker 7: You think Mike Kaiser got a steal the best deal ever?
Speaker 5: Did Mike Kaiser on the team he had assembled.
Speaker 6: David had never designed a golf course, and Josh had
Speaker 6: never managed a golf course or anything. So I had
Speaker 6: dude talk about rookies, real rookie.
Speaker 1: But David had his dad Jimmy.
Speaker 6: Too sort of hubbler, a little bit and guide him,
Speaker 6: and David then didn't find in his own and Josh's dad,
Speaker 6: Steve Lesnick, was president and owner of Kemper Sports. I
Speaker 6: figured that the dad there, Steve Lesnick, would not let
Speaker 6: his son fail, and in fact, Josh did great on
Speaker 6: his own, but that remained in my mind a big
Speaker 6: thing that Kemper Sports was not going to let this
Speaker 6: be anything other than a great success, and they worked
Speaker 6: hard at it.
Speaker 5: Josh and David, both in their twenties, would meet on
Speaker 5: what would be the Twelfth Hole abandoned dunes about two
Speaker 5: hundred yards from the coastline.
Speaker 9: Because I remember my first visit flying out with Mike
Speaker 9: and we basically went went straight to what is now
Speaker 9: the twelfth Tee to meet you, and Mike said, well,
Speaker 9: this looks like a part three. What are we going
Speaker 9: to do here? He said, well, we're standing on this dune.
Speaker 9: This is going to be the tea. That part that
Speaker 9: looks like a green right there, that's going to be
Speaker 9: agreed And Mike, well, what are you going to do
Speaker 9: in between? He said, not much, maybe just like one
Speaker 9: really deep bunker. And you know that's the Twelfth Hole
Speaker 9: today as it stands there, And.
Speaker 6: I said, well, I'm in the greeting card guy, greeting
Speaker 6: card business guys, and I know the power of a
Speaker 6: visual and this is a great photograph. And Josh, take
Speaker 6: a photo of this right now before we build it,
Speaker 6: because after we build it, it's going to be a
Speaker 6: bat News photograph. And we're going to take that photo
Speaker 6: and we're going to make reading cards and send them
Speaker 6: to everyone we know in the golf business. And there
Speaker 6: was our initial press release that not hard on copy.
Speaker 6: It was just a photo of number twelve and the
Speaker 6: copy was for additional information called jeshuas.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 5: Josh was busy getting the word out. David was busy
Speaker 5: in the dunes.
Speaker 7: The sequence we worked through was we started on the
Speaker 7: holes that were on the ocean, so twelve, fifteen, and
Speaker 7: sixteen were the first one that got built, and those
Speaker 7: are iconic gouffles. So I think that Josh and I
Speaker 7: both were we lacked hesitation. We were both sort of
Speaker 7: point and shoot at that point in our lives. We
Speaker 7: did not have any doubts in what we were doing.
Speaker 7: We didn't I guess we were too dumb to know
Speaker 7: the risks that we were involved in or the how
Speaker 7: it could all go wrong.
Speaker 4: We were.
Speaker 7: It was straight point and shoot. I mean we were like, Okay,
Speaker 7: I'm going in this direction, lead follower, get this out
Speaker 7: of my way. I mean, I'm going this way. And
Speaker 7: we both had our own little teams that were happy
Speaker 7: to follow. I mean, if we were both Godfathers and
Speaker 7: the Mafia, we had the group around us that would
Speaker 7: have died for us.
Speaker 8: At that point.
Speaker 5: Mike Kaiser stayed close to the process.
Speaker 6: Truly, and it was David and Jimmy and then later
Speaker 6: Jimmy Withdrew once we had a routing and it was
Speaker 6: pretty much all David and his brash approach, and you know,
Speaker 6: I approved everything and liked what I saw, hold by
Speaker 6: hold by hold.
Speaker 5: Josh remembers the thirteenth Pole as being something he had
Speaker 5: never seen before.
Speaker 9: You had, you know, an American shaper, and no one
Speaker 9: could believe that you wanted to leave that fairway with
Speaker 9: all the dunes in it, and you know, having David
Speaker 9: there was, I mean, it was so inspirational for the
Speaker 9: whole project.
Speaker 4: But that fair every time I walk.
Speaker 9: Down that fairway, I think about those discussions and how
Speaker 9: you and Jimmy, your dad were wanted to leave the
Speaker 9: dudes there no, it's unlike any other American fairways. You're
Speaker 9: saying that may be common in Scotland, but one very
Speaker 9: common here. And that's just one of the so many
Speaker 9: ways you had effect on that property in that project.
Speaker 4: Really a neat memory.
Speaker 5: I asked David of the original routing that got them
Speaker 5: the job, what if anything changed during the build?
Speaker 7: Well, the first routing, the back nine never really changed.
Speaker 7: Holds ten through eighteen were on the very first layouts
Speaker 7: and they pretty well got built. The front nine got
Speaker 7: completely changed. The original parcel that Mike had bought, the
Speaker 7: northern boundary was basically the existing third hole. The third
Speaker 7: hole was on the plan, but everything north of that
Speaker 7: did not exit.
Speaker 8: Mike didn't own that land.
Speaker 1: I hope he told you about David Schumann and the
Speaker 1: land next door. He might not have said this, but
Speaker 1: David and his father's original layout and the twelve hundred
Speaker 1: acres was about three holes short of being really good.
Speaker 1: And I told David that and he was sort of
Speaker 1: respond so I've used a bob a land. What do
Speaker 1: you want me to do? And I said, I don't know.
Speaker 1: You're the golf court, you're the golf architect. You think
Speaker 1: of it virtually at that moment it was you know,
Speaker 1: it was weeks and weeks later our neighbor to the
Speaker 1: north declared bankruptcy. It enabled meet to buy it and
Speaker 1: to give to David what became.
Speaker 6: Number five, six, seven, and eight the really good holes.
Speaker 6: Those in particular were gifts from big golf guys. Who
Speaker 6: would have thought that within months of having this log
Speaker 6: jam with David Kid that the land would present itself.
Speaker 5: We know Bandon Dunes now as pristine minimalism, with picturesque imperfections,
Speaker 5: natural nuances and such a soulful approach to the game
Speaker 5: as it was meant to be. But back then, I
Speaker 5: wondered if there was much of a social life in
Speaker 5: and around this budding destination.
Speaker 9: It's a small resort town. It wasn't even a resort
Speaker 9: town at that time. It was becoming a resort town.
Speaker 9: And when you live in a small resort town and
Speaker 9: your David Kid or you're Josh, you're kind of always on.
Speaker 9: I mean, you're always that's you're representing Bandon Dunes, You're
Speaker 9: representing Mike Kaiser. So work never ends. Fortunately, as it grew,
Speaker 9: you know, David was surrounded by the people that work
Speaker 9: for him, I was surrounded by the people that work
Speaker 9: for us, and.
Speaker 4: You know, maybe there's one local bar in town.
Speaker 8: Where you could go Lloyd's abandon.
Speaker 4: Lloyd's abandoned, which I heard reopened. I haven't been back there,
Speaker 4: but goodness, I heard it reopen.
Speaker 9: Everyone had been going to the Arcade, which is owned
Speaker 9: by a family that works at the resort, and a
Speaker 9: couple of caddies bought it.
Speaker 4: And it's a great place, the Arcade Tavern.
Speaker 9: But back then it was Lloyd's, and uh, you know,
Speaker 9: I had a house and would open my house to anybody,
Speaker 9: and you know, so it's just small resort town and
Speaker 9: you kind of live and work and play with those
Speaker 9: that you work with.
Speaker 7: Wait, there was there was a law of drinking went
Speaker 7: on by then was a lot. When I was building
Speaker 7: the golf course in the heat of battle in late
Speaker 7: ninety seven and then through ninety eight, there was nothing there.
Speaker 7: There wasn't even a road up onto the golf course,
Speaker 7: so we were hiking through sand to get out onto
Speaker 7: the golf course every day. And then sometimes I would
Speaker 7: drive up to Empire while the guys were working and
Speaker 7: I'd buy a bushel of oysters or some tuna and
Speaker 7: I'd bring it back to the site and I'd build
Speaker 7: a fire below the sixteenth Green. We did this many times,
Speaker 7: and I would barbecue the oysters, cut up the tuna,
Speaker 7: put cold beers down there, and then after work people
Speaker 7: would drive down where the sheep branches now break out
Speaker 7: onto the beach, and their pickup trucks come around and
Speaker 7: park underneath what is now sixteen Green and we would
Speaker 7: party there until I got dark or very dark, and
Speaker 7: we'd be hitting golf balls down the beach and drinking
Speaker 7: beers and eat oysters. Uh.
Speaker 8: And that went on quite a bit.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and then I would I would get a call
Speaker 9: the next day from Mike Kaiser about what was what
Speaker 9: happened the night before, because as David mentioned earlier, there
Speaker 9: was a caretaker was also the sheriff of the property,
Speaker 9: Shorty Dow and his wife Charlotte. But Shorty would monitor
Speaker 9: everything that was going on, and no matter how hard
Speaker 9: I tried, I couldn't get him to call me with
Speaker 9: the information.
Speaker 4: He would call Mike and say.
Speaker 9: Oh, yeah, the you know, the Scottish geyser, and David
Speaker 9: would have his interns and you know, there were a
Speaker 9: lot of fun things that happened down there on the beach.
Speaker 9: I'm sure I wasn't. I wasn't always invited in those
Speaker 9: parties or didn't know about.
Speaker 7: Him, Josh, you needed plausible deniability.
Speaker 4: And uh sure, you know.
Speaker 9: Then I'd get a call the next day from Mike
Speaker 9: about something that might have happened on the beach, and
Speaker 9: I was supposed to be responsible for this place, but
Speaker 9: I think it was It was more fun and nothing
Speaker 9: too bad happened, and a lot of a lot of
Speaker 9: good came out of it. So some not so good
Speaker 9: you guys at one of your oyster clam bakes or
Speaker 9: whatever you guys were doing on the beach, Simon drove
Speaker 9: the old Blue into the ocean and was surfing on
Speaker 9: the hood of this pickup truck, and the pickup truck
Speaker 9: went out to see and Simon jumped in the water
Speaker 9: and was was okay. He came to the beach and
Speaker 9: Shorty had watched this whole thing happen. And I got
Speaker 9: a call the next day from Mike Kaiser saying, where
Speaker 9: is my pickup truck?
Speaker 8: Yeah, that wasn't such a good one. That was a
Speaker 8: tough one.
Speaker 9: I got the call the next day, like you know,
Speaker 9: and Mike was probably messing with me, like Josh, you're
Speaker 9: supposed to be in charge.
Speaker 4: You know what's good? Look what happened on your watch.
Speaker 8: Fuck.
Speaker 6: One of the mornings, he and Charlotte were driving on
Speaker 6: the beach, which they always did, and Charlotte looked out
Speaker 6: the window, looking towards the ocean, towards the orient, and said,
Speaker 6: isn't Shorty, isn't that Troy's truck? And Troy was our
Speaker 6: superintendent and he had a truck. Isn't that Troy's truck
Speaker 6: out there in the ocean? And Shorty said, well, well,
Speaker 6: my gully, that's a truck. That's Troy's truck out in
Speaker 6: the ocean. So Ranther then get angry about destroying perfectly
Speaker 6: good property, which I could have gone in that direction.
Speaker 6: I decided to lecture David, as follows, David, one of
Speaker 6: your people, or if you for all I know, I
Speaker 6: don't want to know whose idea was, maybe to remunerate
Speaker 6: me for the lost truck. And that's how we left.
Speaker 6: We left it as a very funny story. I didn't
Speaker 6: lose money, and we'll never know that the specific details
Speaker 6: of just who cooked up the Hey, let's drive Troy's
Speaker 6: truck into the ocean, let it float away.
Speaker 5: Mike's right, We'll never know until now.
Speaker 7: The fuller story was that Simon the intern, was the
Speaker 7: local high school math teacher down on the beach in
Speaker 7: that pickup truck and he got it stuck in the sand,
Speaker 7: and then the tide came in and.
Speaker 8: All sorts of ship then ensued.
Speaker 7: So those where yeah, there was hard charging times back then.
Speaker 1: Was there any adult supervision.
Speaker 6: And the golf course there was, And the golf course
Speaker 6: I approved every read every the routing.
Speaker 1: So there was oversight there.
Speaker 6: And David and I got to know each other and
Speaker 6: know what we liked together, networked really.
Speaker 5: Well, which brings us to Mike's site visits.
Speaker 7: That was probably the hardest part of the whole project
Speaker 7: was Mike would fly in pretty regularly, so probably at
Speaker 7: least every third week for the seven or eight months
Speaker 7: we were in construction, and he would fly in with
Speaker 7: a bunch of what he called retail golfers, which I'm
Speaker 7: sure Josh had to deal with too. So Mike would
Speaker 7: fly in with you know, three, four six of his
Speaker 7: golfing buddies who were doctors or lawyers or you know
Speaker 7: who knows that this was not their business. They were just,
Speaker 7: you know, keen amateur golfers with an opinion, and Mike
Speaker 7: would wander around the golf course with me, I mean,
Speaker 7: not wonder. It was very focused, and he would want
Speaker 7: me to explain what I was doing, what I was
Speaker 7: planning to do. He would question me about why things
Speaker 7: were the way they were, and his buddies would have
Speaker 7: a free for all doing the same thing and telling
Speaker 7: Mike what they thought. So they'd be like, no, I
Speaker 7: don't think that bunker should be there, I think it
Speaker 7: would be better over there, or why don't you move
Speaker 7: that hole over here? And Mike, as Josh knows, would
Speaker 7: listen to all of this, and it was absolutely infuriated
Speaker 7: because I'd be working my butt off with my guys
Speaker 7: to try and build something really cool, and these guys
Speaker 7: that didn't know Jack would turn up with all of
Speaker 7: these thoughts and they'd be in my head, infecting Mike
Speaker 7: with all of their myriad of ideas, and I'd be
Speaker 7: trying to herd cats and it.
Speaker 8: Was really, really tough.
Speaker 7: It got to the point one day where one of
Speaker 7: Mike's buddies was suggesting some idea that just couldn't work,
Speaker 7: wouldn't work and Mike was nodding his head in agreement,
Speaker 7: and I was just seething inside. I mean, just wanting
Speaker 7: to just scream. And at some point with a few
Speaker 7: minutes later or an hour later, I went to Mike
Speaker 7: and I said, hey, you know that guy made this
Speaker 7: suggestion and you agreed. I'm going to bring the bulldozer
Speaker 7: back and and do what it is. I totally disagree
Speaker 7: with you, but if that's what you want, then that's
Speaker 7: well do. And Mike got pretty stern with me, and
Speaker 7: he said, hey, you need to understand. When I'm agreeing
Speaker 7: with one of my friends, it means I hear them.
Speaker 7: It doesn't mean I'm saying yes unless I tail you
Speaker 7: to change something.
Speaker 5: More on Mike's visits, from Josh's perspective.
Speaker 9: You didn't want to be a naysayer with Mike and
Speaker 9: his friends. But his visits to the property, as David said,
Speaker 9: extremely focused. I mean, I don't know anybody that takes
Speaker 9: their time more seriously than Mike Kaiser. From the minute
Speaker 9: he steps on property, he's laser focused on whatever. You
Speaker 9: know again, I mean I talked to him on the
Speaker 9: phone for twenty years as we were building the whole
Speaker 9: place in all the golfer I talked about the phone
Speaker 9: every day, and he's equally as precious with his time
Speaker 9: on the phone. But on property, whatever it is. If
Speaker 9: we're do we need to build more rooms, where are
Speaker 9: we going to build them? What are we going to do?
Speaker 9: What's the room? You know, And every minute on property
Speaker 9: is scheduled, doubt as to what he's going to do.
Speaker 9: And then you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 9: dinner and let's talk about dinner and how the food
Speaker 9: and beverage works and what's the best, and you know,
Speaker 9: by the end of his they were typically two night trips,
Speaker 9: so he'd come in on a Tuesday morning, he'd stay
Speaker 9: Tuesday Wednesday night, and he'd leave Thursday afternoon. You know,
Speaker 9: by Thursday night, I was exhausted, I can tell you that,
Speaker 9: and everybody around me was exhausted, because he's his mind
Speaker 9: is incredible and you have to be on all the
Speaker 9: time and you're getting a lot done when he's around.
Speaker 9: And it's been that way since my very first trip
Speaker 9: in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 5: You can't talk about the development abandoned dunes without a
Speaker 5: deeper dive on Howard McKee, who died of colon cancer
Speaker 5: in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 6: He was a very good friend of mine from Chicago.
Speaker 6: He had moved to Chicago from Portland and then therefore
Speaker 6: knew the coast of Oregon very well. He was the
Speaker 6: managing partner of skid Moro Owings and Meryl in Portland
Speaker 6: and very well connected.
Speaker 1: With planners, et cetera. And he said, well, if your
Speaker 1: helpent to build a golf course somewhere on the ocean,
Speaker 1: and either the east coast or the west coast, you
Speaker 1: should go take a look at Oregon. We've got a beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful coastline, which is true. I dubbed it America's links Land.
Speaker 1: It's sixty miles of uninterrupted beautiful sand duns, big enough
Speaker 1: for probably a fifty golf courses.
Speaker 7: Howard's a real contribution was getting the permits. Without Howard,
Speaker 7: there would be no abandon Duns because he was the
Speaker 7: one that went through all of the permitting. And it
Speaker 7: was complex. So even though you're in rural Oregon, you're
Speaker 7: still dealing with all of the state and federal regulators
Speaker 7: to get a resort permitted. And that required a law
Speaker 7: of bureaucratic and polar ticking. And I did my base
Speaker 7: to help there. But that was all Howard McKee. Without him,
Speaker 7: there'd be no Bandon, right, Josh, I.
Speaker 4: Agree with that. Howard was a brilliant guy.
Speaker 9: That the old saying that you ask him what time
Speaker 9: it is and he tells you how to build the watch.
Speaker 9: I mean, you ask him what time it is and
Speaker 9: he tells you what time means.
Speaker 4: I mean he was he was.
Speaker 9: Brilliant and he could convince anyone of anything, and so
Speaker 9: that was that was a huge part of his contribution.
Speaker 9: And then I would call him kind of the project architect,
Speaker 9: if you will, after that, I mean he wasn't you know,
Speaker 9: David was a golf course architect and we had building architects, but.
Speaker 4: Howard kind of oversaw that. And I would have weekly
Speaker 4: meetings with Howard, you know, for.
Speaker 9: You know, the year and a half before we open,
Speaker 9: weekly meetings on kind of how where is the progress,
Speaker 9: how's everything going? And really really an interesting, interesting guy
Speaker 9: to work with.
Speaker 5: The pub on property is named after Howard McKee. There's
Speaker 5: a labyrinth in the trees near one of the foot
Speaker 5: trails in his honor. But what there isn't at Bandon
Speaker 5: Dune's thanks to Howard, is a clubhouse on land best
Speaker 5: used for golf.
Speaker 6: I knew there were models from Scotland where it was
Speaker 6: the clubhouse was on the on the ocean, and when
Speaker 6: it wasn't on the ocean, So no model told me
Speaker 6: what to do, so I went in sort of blank slate.
Speaker 6: And it was the kemper of people who were the
Speaker 6: president at the time, not Steve Lesnick, but someone is
Speaker 6: no longer with him, who said, you've got to put
Speaker 6: the clubhouse out here where currently number sixteen is his
Speaker 6: gorgeous site. And one of Howard McKee's great moments was
Speaker 6: he was listening to all this and he waited for
Speaker 6: a suitable time to go by and watched eli Us
Speaker 6: say yeah with the clubhouse right here in the best place,
Speaker 6: and Howard said, where are the beer trucks going to go?
Speaker 6: And there is silence when everyone realized that in order
Speaker 6: to get to this club a great clubhouse site on
Speaker 6: the ocean, we needed a road from way back five
Speaker 6: six hundred yards inland. We start this long road with
Speaker 6: cars to park and beer trucks and ups delivery. And
Speaker 6: it went from what a great idea to put the
Speaker 6: clubhouse out here in this photogenetic site to what a
Speaker 6: stupid idea. You know, want beer trucks on this great site,
Speaker 6: Let's make it a golf hole. And one of the
Speaker 6: most photographed pole at the resort still to this day
Speaker 6: is that number sixteen A short part.
Speaker 5: For so there's damn good golf. The clubhouse is inland
Speaker 5: where it's supposed to be. Word has obviously gotten out
Speaker 5: and around town that the course is about to open.
Speaker 5: Meet Mick Peters of Mixed hair Surgeons. Peters isn't a
Speaker 5: great player, but he's avid and he's been barbering in
Speaker 5: Bandon for fifty four years.
Speaker 3: And in the shop we said, oh yeah, they're gonna
Speaker 3: be a world class golf course in band and who's
Speaker 3: going to come to Bandon to play golf?
Speaker 8: That was that was the talk right off the bat.
Speaker 5: Bob Gaspar now known as Shoe because he looks like
Speaker 5: the jockey Bill Shoemaker, lived in Bandon and was one
Speaker 5: of Mixed clients.
Speaker 3: As the story went on, Shoe came in and he
Speaker 3: was getting a haircut. He said, I'm going to go out.
Speaker 3: They're looking for a caddy master. He said, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go out and apply for that. I said, cool,
Speaker 3: So he did and of course, as the shoe story
Speaker 3: went on again, he got it and he was in
Speaker 3: my shop again. I've got this here, and he says, man,
Speaker 3: that first day is a really filling up. I said, wow,
Speaker 3: I said, is the first he taken yet? He said,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I'm going back out there and
Speaker 3: i'll check and i'll call you. So he did, and
Speaker 3: he called me.
Speaker 8: He said, no, it's open.
Speaker 1: I said.
Speaker 3: He said you want it? I said yes, and he
Speaker 3: said you'll have to have a board him. I said,
Speaker 3: that's cool.
Speaker 8: I can do that.
Speaker 5: KUIs of reflects on the build up to the first
Speaker 5: tea time.
Speaker 6: The entire time leading up to opening day was an
Speaker 6: equally low point of you know, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: Everyone who's everyone who saw it said what a dumb
Speaker 1: i'd be.
Speaker 6: You know, golf guys now, golf guys, bankers, business men,
Speaker 6: family friends, all meaning well for me, which was pulled
Speaker 6: the plot, don't do this. It's a terrible idea. So
Speaker 6: I lived with that for the two and a half years,
Speaker 6: and it took to build it. And I'd say the
Speaker 6: crescendo was the night before opening day at Van and
Speaker 6: Dune said nineteen ninety nine, I was having dinner with
Speaker 6: Josh and Steve Lesnik and Howard McKee, and it was raining,
Speaker 6: and it was supposed to rain the next day, and
Speaker 6: I knew we had a pretty good t sheet the
Speaker 6: next day. But to take the negative side of it,
Speaker 6: we whine about the weather is going to be bad
Speaker 6: and all of our all the people who were thinking
Speaker 6: about coming, will come and we'll have an empty golf course.
Speaker 5: What was us so on Sunday, May second, nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 5: the first to the first t the Mick Peters forsom.
Speaker 3: You know, looking back on it, it was special at
Speaker 3: the time, but we didn't know exactly how special it
Speaker 3: was going to be. It was just getting to go
Speaker 3: play golf and be the first one on a fantastic course.
Speaker 1: It was just it was bigger than I expect that.
Speaker 3: I didn't think there would be that many people there watching,
Speaker 3: and I was so nervous I couldn't already put the
Speaker 3: ball on the tee.
Speaker 5: Which is where we're going to hit pause on the
Speaker 5: building of Bandon. Part two will go live next Sunday.
Speaker 5: We'll pick up where we're leaving off, find out how
Speaker 5: Mick Peters played, how the course was received, and we'll
Speaker 5: get a better sense of what Bandon meant to the
Speaker 5: future of golf in Oregon and in America in general.
Speaker 5: But before that, a few reflections from our main characters.
Speaker 5: As Kaiser said at the start, Pine Valley Dunes Club
Speaker 5: and sand Hills were his inspiration for Bandon Dunes, but
Speaker 5: they're all private. I asked him if there was ever
Speaker 5: a chance Bandon wouldn't have been open to the public.
Speaker 6: I had decided that I was a populist as related
Speaker 6: red to golf. I loved playing Pine Valley, I loved
Speaker 6: playing Marion, but I appreciated more Pebble Beach and Pinehurst
Speaker 6: because they were equally great in.
Speaker 1: Public and in Scotland, where my models were.
Speaker 6: Even though most of the courses have a private membership,
Speaker 6: they allow man Chanella and Mike Guiser go.
Speaker 1: Over and be tourists and made them full of green speed.
Speaker 1: So that was really my model, the Scottish.
Speaker 5: Model Josh lesnik On when he realized he was part
Speaker 5: of something special.
Speaker 9: And it was, you know, that first day and I'd
Speaker 9: met David and when we got to where sixteen green
Speaker 9: and seventeen t would become for me.
Speaker 4: When I saw that, I was like this is different.
Speaker 9: But no one really realizes now as you look back,
Speaker 9: just how risky this all seemed, how crazy it all seemed.
Speaker 9: It was so unconventional, you know, to stress what David
Speaker 9: was saying, golf courses were being built close.
Speaker 4: To people, you know, close to cities.
Speaker 9: People didn't necessarily care about the site for golf. You
Speaker 9: could have mud and clay and rock under the soil,
Speaker 9: but if we were close to people and you could
Speaker 9: put houses around it. That's the kind of golf courses
Speaker 9: people were building in the nineties, eighties, nineties in America.
Speaker 4: This was close to nobody.
Speaker 9: This is going back to the golden age when you
Speaker 9: look for the best site for golf and you know,
Speaker 9: no bank would finance it. No, no, everybody thought it
Speaker 9: was crazy. Mike's friends thought it was crazy. Mike thought
Speaker 9: it was crazy.
Speaker 7: I don't think Bandon Dunes is near as unique as
Speaker 7: you guys think it is.
Speaker 8: Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 7: If it were in the British Isles, it would be
Speaker 7: one of dozens of really good links courses, but it
Speaker 7: would not be unique. It's only unique here where there
Speaker 7: is nothing else like it.
Speaker 1: Put another log on five.
Speaker 4: Nobody here is getting tired.
Speaker 5: Are you looking for good value on great golf apparel?
Speaker 5: As a listener to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth
Speaker 5: and Jeff Cunningham at link Seoul in Oceanside, California are
Speaker 5: offering you a twenty five percent discount on all future
Speaker 5: orders of What I Where All Day, every day, on
Speaker 5: and off the course. Whenever you go to linksoul dot com,
Speaker 5: just use promo code matty G twenty five m A
Speaker 5: t t y G twenty five. Thank you for listening
Speaker 5: to The Firepit. It's produced by Alex Upeggi. It's edited
Speaker 5: by Rex Lint. The theme song is by Joe Horowitz.
Speaker 5: Please rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts and
Speaker 5: we might track you down and send you one of
Speaker 5: our new Imperial Roe Pats. Got a question, comment, or
Speaker 5: a story for us to track down, you can find
Speaker 5: me on Twitter at Matt Janella or on Instagram at
Speaker 5: Matt Underscore Janella. And if you haven't already done so,
Speaker 5: please subscribe to The Firepit on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or
Speaker 5: wherever you listen to a story like this one. You
Speaker 5: can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is where
Speaker 5: we post portions of our podcast and add some visual surprises.