American Kids Who Went to School in Canada - The Briefcase & The Barn - EP 86

March 11, 2026

KYLE: [00:00:00] We get

real

DUSTIN: creative here.

KYLE: I'm, I'm bad. Gotta go through that right here.

FINN: I know I should go that way.

KYLE: Um, no. Yeah. I'm a super fan.

FINN: That's great. And it's funny what you posted today, Kyle, 'cause I'm like, boy, I watched you a lot more if you did have short, shorter clips.

KYLE: Well, exactly. I

FINN: I just

KYLE: don't have the,

FINN: the pockets of time.

DUSTIN: Yeah.

FINN: Right. Where I'm just gonna sit and listen.

DUSTIN: Yeah.

FINN: So then

DUSTIN: I, I know I debated on how many notes I needed to start taking and, and videos on Instagram, um, to, uh,

KYLE: you guys know anybody that could do that? Create reels?

DUSTIN: No. I,

FINN: um, you

DUSTIN: know who? Ken, like a 13-year-old. Yeah. Now. Except

FINN: that's gonna be really organized.

I don't

DUSTIN: wanna hire, I, uh,

FINN: I have, I actually have somebody that Roberto's wife. Oh. So she created a, uh, 2 million, uh, follower channel for baking. And she got sick of it 'cause it was her. And [00:01:00] now she does it for plant some.

It is just a job, right?

KYLE: Mm-hmm.

FINN: And it's just a job. Yeah. There's nothing personal. It's a lot easier for her.

KYLE: Yeah. I, I need to listener to the show. 'cause the guy I was doing it with in the Philippines, they just don't get the

FINN: Oh

DUSTIN: no, that was weird. From

KYLE: like Fiverr or something.

DUSTIN: That was, that was weird to me when you said that.

I was like, wait, they used somebody in the Philippine, like, I figured you like didn't have a life and you were just building those on your own.

KYLE: No, I, I'm way too busy. I got like, I paid people six bucks an hour out there. Do everything

FINN: if that, is

KYLE: it hot?

FINN: That's probably generous.

DUSTIN: No, it's, it might be hot up here. I was just

FINN: shocked. We were just at grandma's so it was like 900 degrees in there.

DUSTIN: I'm just gonna keep his open on Gary. Um, no, I, we were standing down there going, oh, I see. He's gonna throw a rope down and make us climb up. But I see Rahab,

FINN: [00:02:00] the HARs, these harlet up here.

Yeah.

DUSTIN: Mercy. But

FINN: you're a har

DUSTIN: I was thinking more along the lines of like, oh, you're, you're American military men. See what you got.

FINN: Yeah. Well, you already know what you got. It's not that. Oh, I think's

DUSTIN: good.

FINN: Where's Gary?

DUSTIN: Are you? So you already recording?

KYLE: Yeah.

DUSTIN: You like just why not start and then you chop him back?

KYLE: Yeah, I always talk. Yeah, that's right. I always, then the Patreon and the un unedited one goes on Patreon.

DUSTIN: So I quit Patreon just 'cause I was like, I only had it for you. And I'm like, you know what, like, what am I gaining four hours? Like Yeah. You know? Yeah.

KYLE: I know. I have to go, I have to

DUSTIN: bring over gun back.

But Does Spotify pay you?

KYLE: Yeah, a little bit.

DUSTIN: If

KYLE: I, if I, if Oh no. Like,

DUSTIN: because I listen to it on Spotify.

KYLE: The overtime or what

DUSTIN: Well, overtime's done, isn't it?

KYLE: Yeah, it is. Or already just Oh, just the show and Spotify, the show.

DUSTIN: Yeah.

KYLE: No, they, they don't pay me. They don't pay me. So how do you make money coaching and Oh, okay.

And [00:03:00] so you're not

FINN: like, this is for fun until it makes money.

KYLE: Yeah. Well it's basically the marketing. When I started the coaching, I was like, I need something to, uh, to promote it. To promote it. And so I had the furious security show, but I was like, it's pain in the ass a guess every week. So I was like, I'll just come and buddy Gary up and we'll just record half hour a week.

Won't care what we talk about.

FINN: That makes more sense. Yeah.

KYLE: And the people that resonate with you the most will listen to you, and that's your customers. So all I need to pay is one wage, right?

DUSTIN: Yeah. No, and it was funny because I think I just was cracking up in the first few, because my first year of high school was when Gary graduated, so like I remember him as a senior.

Yeah. And oh man. Did.

KYLE: Oh, he got me to do stuff. He got me to like sell smoke, like, um, for a water balloons in herb curls head. And he like convinced me of the pack to pack of smokes, things like that. Like

DUSTIN: I just was thinking like, yeah. And then the fact that like he breaks innocent stuff. Yeah. Innocent.

Very innocent. [00:04:00] Yeah. Otherwise we don't come up here. Like I come see grandma, but like, like Danielle and Denise and my cousins are always like, why come visit? Well,

KYLE: my wife gets busy.

FINN: A hundred percent. That's hard.

DUSTIN: It's gonna get really busy July 6th. My wife's due July 6th.

KYLE: Congrats on that, by the way. Yeah.

You know, if it's girl or boy.

DUSTIN: Nope. Not finding out.

KYLE: Okay. I remember on our first one, Malachi was like, uh, two days old. I went out for breakfast and the waitress comes running up and uh, she's like, oh, it's a girl or boy. I'm like, excuse me, it has to decide Miss. And she's like, oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so, I'm not used to these things yet.

I'm not used to these things yet. And I'm like, nah, it's fine. He's a boy.

DUSTIN: Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, we had one of those incidents crossing the border 'cause the lady wanted to know why we were coming to see grandma. And I said, our dad's mom. And then in my head I went, I gotta come out of this conversation 'cause I'm making it sound like we have a dad's

KYLE: dog. Yeah,

DUSTIN: yeah, yeah. Like she doesn't, she just sees our name.

She doesn't know we're

KYLE: [00:05:00] cousins. Yeah. Smile. Get people a sneak peek. Dustin, get in there. Double trouble. This is what I got.

DUSTIN: You get my bald spot or you get my, uh,

KYLE: that is flattering.

DUSTIN: Yeah, let's try that again.

FINN: Uh, he was always the good looking one. There we

KYLE: go.

DUSTIN: So we sit down by my grandma and she goes, what's happening to your hair?

Like, I'm starting to go bald. And she like, I, I thought, I'm like, she's gonna say something. Yep. As long as ever. What, what do you do? Oh yeah, yeah. Like,

KYLE: I

DUSTIN: go thatwhere by your old house.

FINN: Yeah.

KYLE: Yeah.

DUSTIN: It's empty

FINN: stomping grounds.

KYLE: Yeah. Someone needs to take a spot who's up and to tell the people

FINN: You can do it.

You can do it.

KYLE: Thought they thought, one thing you

FINN: need. My father-in-law told me I should be a preacher the other day.

KYLE: You following

FINN: me? I don't think I can speak more than five minutes at a time. So

KYLE: AI helps ai An

FINN: AI preacher. Yeah.

KYLE: You know what you can do? I'm scared it's getting recorded now, but, uh, I'll, I'll chop it out.

But you can, [00:06:00] uh, I can take like a transcript of like John Piper Sherman and then I can give AI my dad's voice. I can get him to preach. Oh, that's horrible.

FINN: That's horrible. See,

KYLE: and all of a sudden it good stuff, AI stuff, AI is gonna do more

DUSTIN: damage than so

FINN: bad.

KYLE: It's at

some

DUSTIN: point,

KYLE: well, it's gonna do a whole lot of bad

DUSTIN: Yeah.

KYLE: And, and good, but a whole lot of bad. Yeah.

FINN: Keep your head down.

DUSTIN: Well, no

KYLE: white color jobs are good. That's

DUSTIN: my bald spot. I can't get my head down.

KYLE: I don't know, I don't know if I recording now or not. It's

FINN: flash, the light's flashing.

KYLE: Good that Gary get off your phone. This is very common. It usually is Tuesday afternoons and he sells up and sits in his truck for 20 minutes.

FINN: He's on his phone.

KYLE: He's on phone, he's talking on, he's very busy, isn't he? What's he do?

FINN: Uh, real,

KYLE: real estate. He's a dairy farm. He's a mechanic shop. He owns a, um,

FINN: like multi.

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: Oh boy.

KYLE: He sells hay. He sells cows.

DUSTIN: Yeah. See, I know the t and t hay thing. [00:07:00] It's funny, once in a while I've seen 'em at the border with the cattle thing.

'cause I got beef cows too. You though?

KYLE: Oh, okay.

DUSTIN: Well I shouldn't

KYLE: say hey, get used to sitting closer to that thing you sold out.

DUSTIN: I know Mike, you

KYLE: sold out.

DUSTIN: But they're still in my house.

KYLE: What do you mean sold? If you didn't move closer this way? It's fine. Whatever's comfortable.

DUSTIN: I just feel like, I'm like, I don't know.

KYLE: like Undo that top one. No, the other one.

DUSTIN: I'm not a big fan of being recorded.

KYLE: You, you can go up. Yeah. I was impressed you guys said yes. I was like, sweet. These guys got ball. We

DUSTIN: knew that Trump was gonna bomb. I ran. So we figured we'd show

KYLE: up a couple days afterwards. You guys like my meme? That was

FINN: so funny.

DUSTIN: Wait, I didn't see the latest meme.

FINN: No, the the,

DUSTIN: oh yeah. That beam. Yeah.

FINN: I mean, I dunno.

DUSTIN: I got so many opinions that could blow your mind.

KYLE: Come on.

FINN: I don't know that I have a lot of opinions on

DUSTIN: that. I got into a conversation on Saturday with some people that are I starting to get, I,

FINN: sorry,

DUSTIN: that are, that are very deep into the studying if maybe Hitler was right.

And that's a whole nother

FINN: whole

DUSTIN: Yeah.

FINN: Let's start with that.

DUSTIN: Yeah. No, but

FINN: let's

DUSTIN: start with that.

FINN: I

DUSTIN: just

FINN: say,

DUSTIN: I'm like, what [00:08:00] did you just say? And I'm like, I, what

FINN: is

DUSTIN: their, I don't why mentally think I need to even, like,

FINN: where are they coming from?

DUSTIN: Well, like that the older Jewish men were pedophiles. Like I, I'm like, um, like I don't,

FINN: so Hitler

DUSTIN: was the

FINN: answer.

DUSTIN: So it's that Sean Ryan Right. Brought it up.

FINN: Okay. But he never, Hitler never came out and said anything

DUSTIN: like that. No, I know, but they're taking Hitler, speaking with AI and they're translating it and they're like, I don't know.

FINN: Yeah, they're, it's, it's, it's

KYLE: clicks.

DUSTIN: Yeah.

FINN: It's

KYLE: Candace

FINN: owns Yeah. Yeah. It's clicks.

DUSTIN: So we landed on the moon.

FINN: We've talked about that. No, we haven't. No, you did. Yeah,

KYLE: you did. And I always crack it up because my brother, Dave's wife

DUSTIN: is, we did not like, she just is adamant.

FINN: Oh, I'm on that. Adamant. Oh, okay. I'm definitely not, we did not land. No moon.

DUSTIN: No moon. See, and I

FINN: like that

DUSTIN: was

FINN: a military move.

DUSTIN: No. And I just think that

FINN: why

would

DUSTIN: you not in my life, it doesn't matter. Right. Like, like if, you

KYLE: know, it's not

DUSTIN: right. Like, same with finding out about the flat earth. Yeah. No,

KYLE: flat earth. I have some friends that are like Christians' [00:09:00] flat. I'm not a, you care way more that the earth is flat than if Jesus died for people.

That makes no sense.

DUSTIN: Yeah. Know that you fly in an airplane, you, you like see it, right? Like

KYLE: it's, it's pretty visible.

DUSTIN: Oh, that's funny.

FINN: I think Gary's a conspiracy theory. He definitely has theories. No, I think he is a conspiracy theory.

KYLE: Oh, he's not real.

DUSTIN: Does he

KYLE: exist? He's part of the universe.

DUSTIN: Uh,

KYLE: is that like flashing loud?

DUSTIN: I see that one's

KYLE: red. Yeah.

GARY: Mr. Tom,

DUSTIN: Gary,

GARY: good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Dustin.

DUSTIN: How are you?

GARY: Are you good? Good. Really good. Good, good. Are you guys pretty regular listeners of this or you're just coming?

DUSTIN: I have listened to every episode you've been on.

FINN: Where are the bookends?

KYLE: Because

FINN: I don't listen.

KYLE: Okay. So if you gonna sit this far away, that's, that's, no, that's good. But then just move

GARY: it back. Talk about that on the show. We'll just

DUSTIN: get going. Okay. I think it's already going.

KYLE: It's already going. We'll get the elder to open in prayer's appropriate. [00:10:00]

GARY: Don't ever rush me. I'm never sitting there doing nothing.

Right? Whatever I'm doing is more important than rushing for you. So, heavenly Father, thank you for this, uh, time that we can, uh, hang out with these. Our, uh, we won't call them friends yet, but Americans, uh, Lord, we just thank you for the many blessings we have. Uh, we thank you for even this podcast and just the chance to have fun chat and, uh.

I don't wanna say enlighten people 'cause that's probably not gonna happen. But, uh, Lord, we just thank you for this, uh, chance to hang out and, uh, pray that we can have a, a good time and honor you, uh, while still being somewhat interesting and entertaining. Yes. In Jesus' name, amen.

DUSTIN: Amen.

KYLE: Okay, thank you Gary.

DUSTIN: Long time listener. First time caller.

KYLE: Welcome back from episode of the Briefcase in the barn. Oh no. Well, we should, we should. What make, make Canada great again? Yeah. How would you guys do it? Elect Trump. First of all, elect elect Trump in Canada. So we got, uh, no. Introduce your, introduce [00:11:00] yourselves and you're real.

You want me to You gotta be close. Yeah, you gotta be I know that. Eat, eat the mic.

DUSTIN: Oh, I'm Dustin. You already know that.

KYLE: Yeah.

DUSTIN: Finn Winger and my favorite cousin is with me.

KYLE: So you guys have really unique experience in that you are Americans, but you went to high school and elementary school, everything in Canada, right?

FINN: Yeah.

KYLE: What was that like?

FINN: K through 12. So that's an hour bus ride plus, right?

KYLE: Each way.

FINN: Which I guess that's not uncommon. It's just we would just be driving, right? Yeah. So it'd be like, all right, hit the border back. Like

DUSTIN: looking back on it,

FINN: are you kidding me? I used to be sitting like ready to pee my pants every single bus ride.

I believe it. That's fair. Well, you know, maybe in high school years I wasn't so bad, but when I was younger,

GARY: still like that as an adult, so

FINN: it just gets worse for me. The bladder starts shrinking. It's true. No. I had it many times when I was like, I, I gotta get off this bus or I'm just gonna pee on the floor here.

Yeah. [00:12:00]

KYLE: Geographically, we uh, you guys are in Linden,

FINN: right? Yeah.

GARY: You're still there? You're still both there?

FINN: Yep.

GARY: Okay.

DUSTIN: I moved, I live within a half a mile of where I was born.

KYLE: Yeah. Oh, you actually moved. Okay. Less than me.

DUSTIN: Mm-hmm.

KYLE: So you're really cultured.

DUSTIN: I am, yeah. I really got out. Yeah. If you know where the marker throat and the badger meet that I have not gone far from there in a long time.

You

KYLE: gotta hit 60 by the pool. Right. I remember that.

DUSTIN: Yes, you're correct.

KYLE: So when my parents went to Holland all the time. Um, because that's where I'm from. Uh, I went to stay at Dustin's house in the States. In the States, so I'd stay there like three weeks at a time. So I'd get used to the 6:00 AM bus rides or whatever time it

DUSTIN: was.

We didn't know about the psych ward, but we had, were we the psych

FINN: ward? You were

KYLE: the psych ward. Yeah. It's like those crazies. Well, you

FINN: were there too.

KYLE: So

FINN: they had experience how you get paid.

KYLE: Now,

GARY: have you been

KYLE: the

GARY: psych ward?

KYLE: No, I

GARY: have been. So

KYLE: how old were you when you went

GARY: an adult?

KYLE: Wait,

GARY: you were,

FINN: you were

GARY: put

FINN: in the psych ward?

GARY: I put myself in [00:13:00] there basically. Really? Yeah. Wow. Horrible shape, man. And the interesting thing is when you put yourself in. And then you try to get out. They don't let you out as easy as you threw out, got in there. Oh, like they take you in real fast, but when they, they're not keen to let you out when you're, uh,

DUSTIN: so it's not really a joke when you say, oh, I'm gonna end up in the psych ward.

'cause it you, I mean,

GARY: I mean I think it's a beautiful thing 'cause a lot of people in my life have been there for long periods and it's obviously a place that, you know, is necessary for people that are in a bad spot. For me, it's like a lot of my mental health issues were related to a lot of my bad behavior and my own, uh, my own problems.

But I had punched out my own windshield and my hand was like just bleeding and I was all cut up. I had had a drunk and high episode of some sort and punched out my own windshield from the inside of my car. And then somehow I ended, I can't, I still remember like driving to the hospital and saying, Hey, like I got some, I got some issues here, man, this.

So, and they

FINN: helped.

GARY: I don't think they did. But I think that every, and this is why I [00:14:00] think it's fascinating watching people try to help people. Um. I think a lot of helping hurts people. I think a lot of,

FINN: yes,

GARY: life is just about hitting bottom and realizing you need to be,

FINN: I

GARY: agree with that. You need saved to be saved and you have to go

FINN: through the stages.

GARY: You have to go through the stages. So for me it was like, um, I had a lot of pain and suffering. Much of it self-inflicted for sure. Some of it just 'cause of circumstances that happened to me and then my journey was such that I do everything the hard way, whether it was necessary or not. How

DUSTIN: long were you, how long were you in?

GARY: Not long at all. Oh, okay. No, I've been to jail longer than I've been to the psych ward. Okay. Anyway, so

DUSTIN: yeah, I got really close to going jail once.

GARY: Okay. Yeah.

DUSTIN: Was. You don't know this story.

No.

FINN: American stuff.

DUSTIN: Yeah. American. Maybe I, maybe I

KYLE: do.

DUSTIN: Do you know this story? I was like 19 years old and it was back, so this would be like 2008.

And this is when they had like this emo culture thing where they like golf music, they still

GARY: have

DUSTIN: it. Right. My dad was into that. No.

GARY: Went outta saddle for you. But everybody else is still into it.

DUSTIN: Yeah. No, but like there was a big, that's all black,

GARY: right? The guys that were [00:15:00] all black. That's different.

DUSTIN: They wear black eyeliner too.

GARY: Race. I brought

DUSTIN: candies

KYLE: for the third song.

FINN: Yeah. That is not for the third song. That's, I brought one role for the

DUSTIN: first song. Yeah. But now where I go to church, we stand for the third song. So it's harder to have Can you Oh, you

FINN: have sto? Oh yeah, that's, yeah.

DUSTIN: So I get like kind of jumped by like 30 kids and I pulled my gun, my shotgun.

Oh, okay. Actually they, oh, ran. I do remember this. I do remember this. It worked.

GARY: I've

KYLE: had a few of

GARY: those

DUSTIN: experiences too. Yeah. And, and then I learned a lesson about. I'm an adult and they're not. And

KYLE: Ah, okay.

DUSTIN: Luckily it was like

KYLE: the, can the cops come into your house later?

DUSTIN: No, I end up getting pulled over and arrested and then released because of, my favorite brother-in-law is the Sue Mass Police chief.

KYLE: Oh,

DUSTIN: okay. Cut that out.

GARY: So you're not that. Yeah. We'll cut that out. Yeah,

DUSTIN: cut that out.

FINN: Good job.

DUSTIN: Good. Safe. So, Gary for reverence, Kim is my older sister and Jen

GARY: is, yeah, I put that together. I put that together. Mm-hmm. Funny. So who else is in your family?

FINN: So I didn't get to introduce myself 'cause Dustin talks so much, but [00:16:00] I'm Tom, er one

GARY: leg.

Tom, right?

FINN: One leg. Tom. He

DUSTIN: works it.

FINN: One of 11 kids. So Jen, Len. Tom. Oh, huge family. KML family. Hannah, Sarah, Esther. Matt,

DUSTIN: you might have to cut that out. Yeah.

FINN: Who do I miss?

DUSTIN: No, I'm just saying you want to mention

FINN: Joe

DUSTIN: Matter

FINN: does

DUSTIN: not matter.

GARY: Trust me. If you're in the family of the winger, in especially these big months, that's just, that's just part the social media says about, it's the, you're just the number.

FINN: Here's the number. You

GARY: just the number. You don't

FINN: forgotten Middle.

GARY: The only thing, Dustin, like my whole frame of reference, I have a few, uh, shady memories of you being a meathead in school way younger than me. No, he said the

KYLE: same thing about you

GARY: to that it's fair. You can share some of those memories in a minute, but then everything else is literally through social media.

It's fascinating to have you like, you know, your whole journey of dating and then not dating your journey. I'm like, oh, is he gonna marry this one? Please put us outta our misery. Just locked stick in the [00:17:00] dating pictures.

DUSTIN: Were you just sitting at Sunset Manor? And we visited grandma and she said, oh, we wondered, is anybody ever gonna come along for him?

And now Tom's my only witness. But I probably married up outta any of us. Yeah, I really did.

GARY: We do have to pay her. And that's 'cause you're so low. I know. It has nothing to do with how they married down. That's just boat. That's who she picked. Not who they picked

KYLE: uch.

DUSTIN: But he,

KYLE: he,

DUSTIN: he will witness this to it. I

KYLE: didn't, you married a great lady.

I think

GARY: every van winger and married

KYLE: up. Yeah. You're

DUSTIN: on. So,

KYLE: so why'd you guys go to school in Canada? 'cause a lot of people wouldn't understand that.

DUSTIN: Yeah. Well, 'cause of the church thing. So I think if you back up before, like, we even were born, the little NRC in Linden was like, Hey, it might be easier to just bring the kids from the Linden, NRC to Timothy Christian School.

And NC is the church. The, yeah, because the chillowak, NRC has the school and it continued and there was a point where we rode on that bus with 65 kids.

KYLE: I remember it was

DUSTIN: packed for while. No, we used to be. Yeah.

KYLE: I, I'm

FINN: grateful for it though. [00:18:00] Peak.

DUSTIN: I, I have like, what's

FINN: that?

GARY: Peak, peak years? There was a lot of kids that would've been in like Yeah.

Nineties,

FINN: early two

GARY: thousands. Why, why are you grateful for it?

FINN: I don't know. There's like. I'm sure it would've been fine if they would've found another school closer to where we lived.

GARY: They are now, right?

DUSTIN: Yeah.

FINN: My kids are.

GARY: Your kids

FINN: are

GARY: going, there's, there's other, the kids from the NRC church in Logan School.

Yeah. They have own They have a small school. Yeah. Do some still come here?

FINN: Yep. Few. Gerard still comes up

DUSTIN: with few finishing out. There was one kid who was the youngest of a family, and it was like,

GARY: my mic high,

DUSTIN: you know? Yeah. Higher. It's fine. Yeah.

FINN: Just

GARY: yell. Okay. Sorry guys. Total distraction. Not important.

DUSTIN: No, and I agree with Tom. Like, I can't go like, oh, I wish it, no, it, it ha like

GARY: just the bus ride, man. That's the only part. Brutal. The school.

DUSTIN: How often do you drive? Because don't you come like,

GARY: not as, I mean I go to the US a lot for work, but I mean the idea of like driving even like to Langley or like people drive minds numbing.

Yeah. New West and bad tr and the traffic is way worse [00:19:00] now than it was when we were kids. That's true. That's true. And I mean, I went to birthday parties at your brother-in-law's place.

FINN: Yeah. So one thing I always, uh, like Kaylee and I, my wife's Kaylee, we always talk about like her upbringing, she was homeschooled and she didn't love that.

GARY: Mm.

FINN: Right. And I always imagined when I was younger, love to be homeschooled, get all my stuff done.

GARY: Mm-hmm.

FINN: Work, play, whatever. Right. Every kid would be different

GARY: about that though, right? A

FINN: hundred percent. Because some kids

DUSTIN: school, my wife was also homeschool. And

FINN: did you love it?

DUSTIN: I, she, she has nothing against,

KYLE: see, we had to go after the homeschooled kids get married.

It's all, it's all, it's all, you know though. It's all you know though.

DUSTIN: No, but for my wife, wife was an only child too. So like, can you imagine what this, you guys are

KYLE: both like only child from It's fine. Yeah,

DUSTIN: I know, but like, can you imagine you're, you're this poor lady that meets me and you come into the Wir family.

KYLE: yeah. That's gotta be a hard

hat.

DUSTIN: That'd

KYLE: be wild.

DUSTIN: Gotta be wild hard. Like she gained 19 nieces and nephews the day we got married. I mean, that's, that's

FINN: what a fumble, like [00:20:00] good fumble fell into it.

KYLE: And you guys, what

FINN: do you,

KYLE: so you grew up in, uh, flower business, right? Yes.

FINN: Still in flower business. Still All of you are?

Mm-hmm.

KYLE: So your dad's both have their own greenhouses? Yep.

FINN: Yeah, they started together. So they started in 1980 in Blaine.

KYLE: Okay.

FINN: And they're still both in Blaine, but um. They ended up separating four years in.

DUSTIN: Yeah.

FINN: I think

DUSTIN: it was a big push.

FINN: And basically Opa

DUSTIN: Yeah. Was

FINN: like

DUSTIN: winger

FINN: look at all day together.

KYLE: Smart man.

FINN: No

DUSTIN: wise man. And it was a brilliant move because we get along and that's a good Right.

KYLE: Sometimes

DUSTIN: so

KYLE: sometimes you die. Sometimes I get along with my wife either, so it makes sense. Yeah. We're not that close. Yeah.

DUSTIN: So we,

GARY: so sorry, just can I back up the bus?

DUSTIN: Yep.

GARY: Slow thinker here. Um, you said you visited your Oma in Sunset Manor, which is in Choa here.

DUSTIN: Yep.

FINN: Grandma.

GARY: Grandma.

DUSTIN: Yeah.

FINN: Topa and grandma.

DUSTIN: Yeah. We ran a weird ship there.

GARY: Very

FINN: good. She was from [00:21:00] the Mafia, so

DUSTIN: Yeah.

GARY: Why is she in Canada if you guys are Americans?

DUSTIN: She has two daughters up here.

GARY: Okay.

FINN: And we don't, so her church did not have like a rest home, like Sunset Manor has. Or like the church up here.

Yeah,

GARY: totally.

FINN: So it's just a better option. It was the best option, I think. And actually,

GARY: so a lot of your family's coming up here all the

DUSTIN: time.

FINN: Yeah. Yeah.

GARY: All the time. Mm-hmm.

DUSTIN: For

GARY: that alone, just to see her.

DUSTIN: Totally. Yeah. I, I've, I mean, yeah. I think Tom said he'd saw you the other day at Steve's birthday. I would've been there, but I was on vacation.

But like we do, we did come up live a

FINN: lot

DUSTIN: of your life. It's a little less now and like, yeah. It's kind of weird, like grandma used to be two miles away and now she's 45 minutes away. It, the water's not problem cars. No, it's too busy. Yeah.

FINN: Life's busy too, right? I mean, like, you don't have any kids yet, but you got one on the way, so

KYLE: that's exciting.

Yeah, that's exciting.

DUSTIN: 4th of July, baby. America's 250th birthday's

KYLE: drunk, paying more money.

DUSTIN: Not parade. No. Well, he's giving me a grand already.

KYLE: Oh,

DUSTIN: wow. You do it right? You see that he's giving Yeah. My boy Donny, he

KYLE: just added to the, he just [00:22:00] added to the debt. We don't have healthcare, but we just, yeah.

GARY: Oh, trust me.

Proliferate. Okay, so let's, let's get into this. So what's the difference? No, I think we need to do more. I want to hear more about the greenhouse business guys. I love the greenhouse business.

DUSTIN: You love

GARY: the green? I don't anything about it, but I just know people in it and it seems fascinating to me. Has your guys' family businesses grown or are they Absolutely.

Or are they still growing now?

DUSTIN: They, and yeah, you, we really could like swing for the f You could grow 'em big time. Okay. All the little guys are going away. It's. Happening.

GARY: Is your business all wholesale or do you guys have retail locations where you're selling?

DUSTIN: You can go first.

FINN: This is kind of complicated.

So we do have a garden center that's inside of our wholesale business, but we, we sell wholesale with one of our divisions, which is young plants, and we sell through a broker, so no sales staff. Then we have a wholesale division that sells to grocery stores, mainly like Safeway, Albertsons, [00:23:00] trader Joe's Whole Foods, um, grocery outlet,

GARY: all small places,

FINN: all smaller places, all expensive.

That's all finished goods. Potted, right? Yeah. So then I'm the sales guy for that. And then we have two garden centers now. We're opening one in Skagit grand openings this weekend. Your

KYLE: own

FINN: garden. I'll see you there.

GARY: Your

KYLE: own garden center? Yes.

FINN: Yeah. Like the one as the

KYLE: brand, same o same one as the one you have in

FINN: the Yeah, so it's, it's an expansion on the current brand.

So we have one in, at our home place in Blaine.

GARY: What do you call that?

FINN: VWs? Home and Garden. Uh, click the link below to visit our website and then on

KYLE: Tom's head, selling hard

FINN: on my head. Okay. Salesman Tom, big Pany. We just closed on the new one down in Skagit. Um, it used to be called Skagit Acres. It's south of Mount Vernon.

And

KYLE: you're naming that Tulalip?

FINN: Yes. It's called VWs Now. That's north, not that far south.

KYLE: You know where that is? I know where

FINN: Tulalip is North. Got a few,

KYLE: few

GARY: stints

KYLE: in the Tula

FINN: invested there.

GARY: Invested,

FINN: yeah. Invested And

GARY: left it behind. Yeah. [00:24:00] Yeah. It's still,

FINN: they're holding, they're holding it for a

GARY: few Canadian dollars.

FINN: And then what else are we doing? Uh, we started a software business this year. Uh, selling, uh, fundraiser program management. So it's, it's could also do a

DUSTIN: link below to your cool

FINN: video about

GARY: that. Sorry. Only for, only for, for greenhouses selling plants or for any fundraiser.

FINN: For right now it is for greenhouses selling to fundraiser groups, but it'll go to under other industries once we expand there.

GARY: And is it patented?

FINN: It's not patented, but so, so it's hard with that kind of thing, right? Because you have to have a, it'd have to be so proprietary, really specific Yeah. Like function within your software to patent it.

GARY: Okay.

FINN: But it's protected to a certain extent. Um, the process is what we're selling basically.

GARY: Okay.

FINN: And then, so then

KYLE: fundraiser has like a plugin basically ready to go. Well,

GARY: it's interesting. I do lots of fundraisers, right? And so,

FINN: yeah. Yeah. Most of

GARY: my business

FINN: is not profit and I'm used it for my, for [00:25:00] my kids' school.

GARY: Okay.

FINN: Right. It's

GARY: okay's

FINN: what I'm getting at fundraisers.

GARY: Okay.

FINN: Because they're so unorganized.

Then the reason we built it was so the manufacturer can sell to the fundraiser and keep them organized, right? So that they stay organized and then they have their teams selling under them, they sell and whatever. Then they close the fundraiser. But even though

KYLE: the money goes

FINN: directly consolidate. Right.

And then we're collecting the cash the whole way through the manufacturer. So the greenhouse collects the cash and then when you close it out, then you, uh, finish the order, deliver it, deliver them a check. Right. So that they keep their margin.

GARY: Yeah.

FINN: And you're done.

GARY: Sorry, is it a percentage of the

FINN: They set their on margin.

GARY: Yeah. No, sorry. How does this, how you get paid for the software?

FINN: Uh, so it's a subscription. Okay. Uh, let's see. Pricing model roughly keeps changing roughly, but it's like roughly $900 a month. And then we take, we have a take grade of like 0.9%.

GARY: Is that the cheapest? [00:26:00] $900 a month?

FINN: No, that's the top end. 500. Way to go bottom.

Way to go.

GARY: That's low. That's a lot. Sorry, came wrong. Think it's

FINN: low.

GARY: Well, I've used like tria.com so like if you're running a, a charity event, like we do our school auction for example. Mm-hmm. And actually Timothy uses TRIA as well.

FINN: Yeah.

GARY: School that we all went to. And I mean that's very reasonable. Right?

FINN: So, but the fundraiser doesn't pay a dime. The manufacturer pays it 'cause they're the ones managing the software. Okay. Yeah.

Long

GARY: story. And by manufacturer you mean like reseller of flowers or whatever And that's how it's set up right now.

FINN: The person selling the goods.

GARY: Yeah.

DUSTIN: I think you use the reference kids and money like, doesn't work well.

So like this eliminates the kids from carrying cash and checks and things amongst the fundraiser.

Consolidate

GARY: the

DUSTIN: confusion. Yeah.

GARY: Interesting.

FINN: Right on.

GARY: So you guys have retail outlets and you guys don't, I'm

DUSTIN: assuming we, we really don't have a retail outlet. We have a wholesale nursery and 93% of what we sell goes to Fred Meyer.

So Kroger.

GARY: Oh, wow. [00:27:00] One customer.

DUSTIN: Yeah. We have like one big customer and then we deal with a few little independent garden centers and then we open our entire facility for six Saturdays a year for all the local people. And it's kind of like, it used to be kind of fun and now it's getting really busy, so it's, I don't know.

It, it's different, but yeah. So, but really good to be a member of

GARY: community. People would

DUSTIN: appreciate that.

GARY: People

DUSTIN: would love it. People love, like, like for us, Tom talks about his fundraiser thing where we give out like. 12 inch hanging basket gift cards or give 'em out. Or sell them out. And then you make, if you're a baseball player, you know, raising money for your little league team, you sell you your hanging basket for $5.

Yeah. You come to the greenhouse and buy a couple, but while you're there you're like, oh, two more would be nice. So you're making money either way.

GARY: Do people come fast and furious to that? 'cause it's a scarcity model where it's, Hey, these guys are only open a couple times, we're gonna hit wing and

DUSTIN: greenhouse.

They come like crazy and then, but then they also will be like, where, where do you think all the flowers go? They close next week. Right. They totally think everything's there. And it's just a big old dump [00:28:00] aisle when you're done. Right. They don't like, so many people are like, where do? And it's like, well, we sell to Fred Meyer.

Oh, well the one in Bellingham where we're like, no, there's like 140 stores in Washington, Oregon. And then they're like, oh, like, yeah, it's, do you

GARY: have concerns about having one customer or just does not matter? It's the relationship's so good. It shouldn't.

DUSTIN: His dad once said something. This was a few weeks ago, a few months ago at lunch.

I said, if you grow quality plants, you'll never have an issue keeping a customer or getting a customer. So like you, you kind of gotta take the risk. Mm-hmm. I mean, like, we would never do what our dads did. They were 20 and 21 came from Holland with nothing. Right. Like bought a piece of property and started bulldozing.

I, there's no way I would do that now. You would never,

KYLE: the land was, well,

GARY: somebody grand.

KYLE: It just

DUSTIN: not me. You wouldn't, we all know

FINN: grown up. I

GARY: disagree with that. It's gone. It's interesting to a, you'd say that because, interesting you would say that

FINN: there's, there's a friend of ours, Justin Brand, right?

Northwest, uh, Northwood. Nursery. Nursery. He is doing that. [00:29:00] Right? He started from scratch, but it's his grandparents' land.

DUSTIN: Yep.

FINN: Right. And he's building up this business and he quit his job at the refinery and he is doing really well for himself.

DUSTIN: Yeah.

GARY: Same

FINN: type of, of product still be done.

GARY: Same type of product nurse

FINN: nursery stock.

But he's doing more and more.

DUSTIN: Yeah. Yeah.

FINN: He, I, I think you can still do it.

GARY: Do you guys grow the same kind of stuff?

FINN: Mm-hmm. Yeah. We're direct competitors.

GARY: Okay. Well, not really. 'cause he has one customer and you haven't taken that customer.

FINN: That's his job. But we

DUSTIN: really are though,

FINN: because my customers

GARY: dirty dog.

FINN: Not surprised. Yeah.

DUSTIN: But we really do grow a lot of the same. Like this morning, his brother Joe calls for certain house plants that they don't have in inventory right now. And two weeks ago they're bringing us four inch prim roses. 'cause we're short, like, okay, you guys are

FINN: literally working together.

DUSTIN: So that's cool.

I like

FINN: it.

DUSTIN: And he talked about their like plug and liner business and we buy, plus they're our

FINN: biggest customer.

DUSTIN: Yeah. So it's a, it is still all there. So it's like we go on vacation in the summer with the two families and it's kind of like, well we all work in the business. Mm-hmm. So it's just one big [00:30:00] business expense.

Yeah. Okay. Let's go.

FINN: It's expensive.

DUSTIN: It's funny to see our dads bring it up, like, who's paying for golf? You know, well you bought, but like, you know, they argue like, guys, you can argue who's the better customer to the other one

FINN: who's, who's accountant's gonna bring it up.

DUSTIN: Yeah,

FINN: very

KYLE: interesting. Sorry, go ahead.

I wanna move on.

DUSTIN: No,

KYLE: Kyle gets boring. Kyle. Yeah. Kyle's just,

DUSTIN: do you wanna go onto this, these hockey games or what are we going on? No,

KYLE: we can't talk hockey games. Talking about, we talking about, I was hoping we go to Iran. What's going on? You, you happy that Trump's bow in Iran?

DUSTIN: I don't, I don't like, it's weird we were talking about this.

I don't have like an opinion on it. Like

KYLE: it's a tough one.

DUSTIN: Yeah. It like, I feel like. Trump bombing I ran is just ironic that we happen to be here tonight. It is. That's pretty weird. Especially because

KYLE: our text

DUSTIN: message, because you made a joke about it, but like, if you wanted to back up and wanted be like, you pause,

KYLE: pause,

DUSTIN: pause, pause the

KYLE: joke.

GARY: Don't say the joke. Did not, don't say the joke so bad. I felt mortified. I showed [00:31:00] my wife and we ran the,

DUSTIN: the only text I've received from Gary in 12 years, like

GARY: oil prices go up. This was, yeah, we're, this will come out a week and a half after, uh, after, or he's

FINN: not gonna stop bombing, so hopefully it's over by then.

DUSTIN: But I think if you back up from the conversation though, you know me, I have from the minute Trump stood up in public, what, 12 years ago now? Yeah. Or more. Yeah. And said, I'm gonna run for president. I'm like, I, he's got a chance. And, and I think he's gonna shake this country like no one has and. We needed a bull in the China shop, but you know, and it goes on and everybody will, oh, you really?

I'm like, okay, do I think the guy is a perfect angel and everything's great? No. But like all these opinions, and you know, I deal with this. I have a ton of Canadian friends.

KYLE: Yeah.

DUSTIN: And I told Tom on the way here, there's one thing I wanna say real politely. If you didn't get the opportunity to vote for or against him, your opinion really doesn't [00:32:00] matter.

I, I can't say anything about Canadian politics.

KYLE: Yeah.

DUSTIN: Because I, I can't,

KYLE: I I think, I think you're allowed to have an opinion. I, I,

DUSTIN: I mean you can, but I'm just saying, I drives me bonkers when people wanna argue with me about it. Like, I, I voted for him all three times. I got two outta three. Right. The one was a little corrupt.

No, you got

FINN: the, you got 'em all right,

DUSTIN: right. Yeah. Yeah. But it's that simple now.

GARY: I love it.

DUSTIN: I just, I mean, I thought his state of the union was phenomenal. But then they're like, oh, you're biased. I, but it was, he recognized. Yeah. I mean, the fact that he got that war veteran from Korea up that hadn't nobody could talk and all these things, and like how, I mean, I don't know.

KYLE: Yeah. For, I mean for me on the outside,

DUSTIN: but I'm biased, right?

KYLE: Like, I remember watching like, uh, um, when Bush invade in Iraq, like we were camping as a family, and I was like in the little, um, camping room. I was watching Bush give a dress, like as a 9-year-old. I was like, I was into this stuff in American politics.

Um, and so I, I've always been following it and uh, I think Trump did a lot of good, but the [00:33:00] war thing confuses me because he specifically campaigned, yeah.

FINN: He ran on,

KYLE: on normal wars America first staying

GARY: out

KYLE: of other people's countries. So I'm just confused about the fact on that part. Like the debt is higher than ever.

You've got more problems in the US than ever. Like put the money towards ice and get the 18,000 terrorists that Biden led in, that they known terrorists that Biden led in, put the money there instead of helping a country way out. In Iran, like I think it's more of a political move because

FINN: Mm.

KYLE: I kind of like in terms are coming up and he needs to at the country.

FINN: Have you heard Marco Rubio talk about it all at all though?

KYLE: No. Not Marco Rubio.

FINN: Like, I think he's much more clear about why

KYLE: Mm.

FINN: Right. They're they're in that country because they have a lot of intel, right?

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: We don't know.

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: 1 million of what they know.

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: So if we don't act, what happens?

KYLE: But they've been saying that since 95 that they almost had nuclear weapon.

Okay.

DUSTIN: I know that's

FINN: classic And maybe, and maybe they're wrong.

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: But if they're right, then it's a good thing

KYLE: that if they're right. Yeah. [00:34:00] If it's a, I mean, he is a bad dude. I just like, like the, the Iranians like that they got rid of like they are bad dudes. It's just,

DUSTIN: did

KYLE: you see it's a lot of money?

DUSTIN: Did you see

KYLE: that you guys do.

DUSTIN: I decided to share a few on over on social media over the weekend, but like these Iranians that are like thanking the us Yeah. And you're like, so then there's some people like, oh, we shouldn't be there. And the next one's like, well, they're thanking us. And the video I shared today of those quakes sounds like quat accidentally shot a few fighter jets of the sky.

And they're like, oh boy.

KYLE: But who do you care more about the Iranians that are happy now, or the single moms that can't pay for the groceries anymore in the United States? Because that

FINN: is what,

KYLE: and that's where Trump

FINN: kind of going back on his word a little bit.

KYLE: Yeah.

GARY: In what way? Sorry. How would he be, explain that to me, Tom.

FINN: So fixing what's in our country rather than global conflicts,

GARY: how would you fix what's wrong in your country? Explain that to me. What would that look like? Well, going to

FINN: Iran doesn't, isn't

KYLE: like the money you're spending

GARY: there. Like, okay, I see what you're saying.

KYLE: He said,

GARY: yeah, but you people. Anybody [00:35:00] that's a Republican is not gonna be okay with a cut in defense spending, are they?

Or would you guys be okay with a cut?

KYLE: Hugely. That's what he ran. Absolutely not. No. He ran hugely uncut. He, the Republicans, there's a huge vein of war guns always.

GARY: No. Okay. Well, I guess I'm asking the, this is what, this is the problem I have with people that vote. In general, everybody, or not everybody, the vast majority of a population, whether they be left-leaning or right, would say we want balanced budgets.

Mm-hmm. Even, even people that are pretty far left, a lot of them are pretty fiscally responsible and would think, Hey, we gotta balanced budgets. But when you really start to ask a voter, Hey, what are we gonna cut? What did you like? What, what are we actually gonna cut?

FINN: Did you like what Doge was doing?

GARY: I did.

I mean, there again, I think the, i, the idea of, um, the chainsaw technique, I mean, granted the metaphor is probably accurate. There needs to be some serious cutting. Yeah. But I mean, like. Drain the, the drain it from the swamp. Like start with, you know, the amount of lobbying dollars that go for [00:36:00] sugar for like, you know, hundred percent.

You know what I mean? Hundred percent. The richest people always do the best because they have the most firepower to, to get what they want. Right. And I guess my thought would be, and I just picked on defense 'cause I assumed you're a military and I mean, I, I mean, in our country, even people that are left leading would agree we should spend more on defense.

KYLE: Now.

GARY: Now, well why would you? Well, in general, no, I would say even general,

KYLE: 10 years ago they kept cutting.

GARY: I mean, people are pretty big supporters of the military. Of course they really are now, you know, as if we're gonna catch up to the neighbor, to the side. But like, it's this idea of like, no, there's this people, you know, people are becoming militant in that way.

Right. But I guess my question is,

KYLE: I two different countries.

GARY: Yeah.

KYLE: And it definitely changed a lot after Russia invaded Ukraine. Like all of a sudden all the countries in Europe started talking about spending money in defense again. Uh, since Trump actually pushed, Trump

FINN: started cutting, right? Yeah. His support for Europe.

KYLE: That's right. And NATO wasn't spending their 2% of what they owed mm-hmm. Uh, uh, to nato. And so the defense spending has gone up a ton and there has been more support for it.

FINN: I think this is an infinitely [00:37:00] complex problem.

KYLE: Yeah. We're not gonna figure it out here.

FINN: We will.

GARY: I wanted to read something, but

FINN: I'll

GARY: let you finish.

FINN: Okay. But like, I think the tariffs tie really well to this conversation too. Okay. And everybody hates the tariffs, right? 'cause it creates chaos in pretty much global markets.

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: But has it not helped that, uh, that deficit a lot?

KYLE: I'm not sure.

GARY: It's complicated. It's complicated. It has. I think it's probably more nuanced than like.

I think what happens with tariffs is that for a very prolonged period of time, businesses in other countries will eat some of the losses and you know, the trade will carry on.

FINN: Sure.

GARY: But I think a lot of the caught the effect of, of

FINN: short term.

GARY: I think a lot of it, the detriment will come and play out much later.

Like for instance, I have a friend, a guy I know shouldn't call him a friend, that's not the right word, but somebody I know pretty well in Abbotsford who owns a big business, who ships aluminum siding, gets aluminum siding into the US main, almost 80, 90% of the business. Well, you know, the last time I talked to him it's like, Hey, we're eating a lot of it.

We're losing money. We're [00:38:00] losing money. Well, at some point. They change, they change, they make changes. They find other customers. They sit, try, sell in other parts of the world. And so, you know, I think a people pro-American person would say, well, we're just gonna start manufacturing this out. That would be the point of the tariff.

Right? And I could see that. And I, and I think, I think those days to some degree, just like Canada, I feel like Canada has fallen so far behind. I feel like, are we really gonna become a man? I mean, maybe like that would be cool. But we have so much bureaucracy, so much red tape. It's terrible up there.

There's so many other countries that people will work for, you know, five bucks an hour instead of 50. Like you just knock nobody here, everybody here, self Right. Fighting for the wrong until they gotta pay, until they gotta pay the piper. They're like, I'm not paying

FINN: that. I, I like the attitude of actually fighting to do something though.

Even, even if it's not perfect.

GARY: Okay. At least we're doing

FINN: something. 'cause we're getting there. Right. I agree with that. And it's like sometimes with government. You're just like, okay, we can do this, but no, we can't do that. Okay, we can do that. He would've be not.

KYLE: He's a so much better than Camel ever would've been.

Okay. Like that. [00:39:00] That's

DUSTIN: that's, yeah, sure. I know. And that's where I always feel like when the people that come out swinging against him, like you really think if you just would've reversed the last election, you think? I think it would've been unreal.

KYLE: Oh yeah.

DUSTIN: Nasty right

KYLE: now. Yeah, it would. It would've been.

It would not. Would not have been good. But you don't think with this Epstein thing, another thing that he ran on, I'm like getting all these names out and him losing support heading into the midterms this November that like I ran, is like he unites the country. Unites the country, doesn't it? Legitimately though, like, like M-S-N-B-C, they're pro war now.

Everyone's coming together. You can't go after ice when you're bombing Iran. You can't be upset about ice when you're bombing Iran. Everyone's like, well, we're America. We're all together.

GARY: So I'm gonna, I'm gonna read a piece here from an article today, uh, Dr. Ed Less who you've had on your show.

KYLE: Yeah.

GARY: Very, very, uh, well spoken man.

Uh, wrote an article today, a brief synopsis of the situation in Iran. Okay. He talks, um, basically starts off by saying how there's supposed to be US congressional approval.

KYLE: Okay.

GARY: To do what Trump did. And then talks about [00:40:00] how all the times with Truman and, and, uh, and even Obama going into, uh, take out Gaddafi and Libya back in 2011, how it's never happened.

They just always kind of, presidents do what Presidents do. And then he says all of that is important context. Given the widespread out red outrage being leveled at Donald Trump for waging war with Iran, without the blessing of Congress, Trump was never likely to seek the congressional stamp of approval.

He's well aware of the door cracked open by his predecessors, and he drove an entire war machine through it. The key factor of. Of course that his detractors spitting with rage is that Trump is Trump. A man whose notion of diplomacy seems rooted in perpetual true sealants, which that word I've never seen before.

A man who drives his critics batshit crazy with bombast and blesser. It is foolish to predict with any confidence, of course, that the current fight with Iran will end well. Military forays in the Middle East have a depressing history of descending into endless bloody qua quagmires. And so anyways, the article's great.

You can post in the show [00:41:00] notes, um, the link to Substack, but it's fascinating how. You know, I, the only thought I had, I mean, first of all, the guy who we white took out is a total animal and probably totally deserved to be taken out. And one factor, and we learned this pretty well at our school, we went to, I think, is that throughout the years, like people have been screaming in the last week, on the weekend, especially on Twitter, Hey, where's the, you know, the un how come we're not doing the, we're not, we're not following protocol.

The the United Nations back all the way to, what was it? The League of Nations in the early 19 hundreds never has done a thing. They've never tooken a stand for the right thing. They always come in after some country, you know, grabs the mantle and does the right thing. So in your sense of kind of like, hey, take action.

Like I would, I would really struggle with how this was done and I would have like, sure, I would similar say, Hey, how is this gonna play out real? What is the end game here? Yeah. How is this gonna play out? You know, but, so

FINN: this compared to Venezuela, I think Venezuela was like.

DUSTIN: Pristine. Compared [00:42:00] to,

FINN: compared to this,

GARY: but even Venezuela.

Explain to me Venezuela going into Venezuela.

FINN: I mean, if, if you're, that guy was, um, that guy was a disgusting, just

GARY: horrible

DUSTIN: band. We had, um, two gals at the greenhouse that brought it up, used like Jose, the translator, to tell my dad how pumped they were.

GARY: Yeah.

DUSTIN: And you're like, what?

GARY: So I get all that guys, but let's just let, help me understand this.

Yeah. Yeah. In, in a, in a world that we live in with however many countries, or 170 countries, or, I don't know, maybe more, how do, how do we decide which country gets to go in and assassinate people and who kind of decides? Like in what sense is like, how do we, how do we come to kind of like globally as, as you know, the gsep.

I mean, there again, how do we decide as, as as I know what you're saying. I don't, I

FINN: think you do.

KYLE: I don't think you do. I think, I think Trump's not thinking about that. He's thinking about America first. He thinks America's in debt. He wants to get oil from Venezuela. He knows he can control it a hundred percent.

GARY: he's not, you guys would agree with all that? Yeah. Was it about the oil? Zu know oil

KYLE: was in

GARY: place?

KYLE: Yeah. Huge. Huge. But I also

GARY: think just like you, you [00:43:00] thought it was

KYLE: a good move. Yeah,

GARY: no, I was just thinking about my own pocketbook. I wasn't even thinking

DUSTIN: about my country. I get what you're saying because like, I'm glad I don't have to make these decisions.

Right. Yeah. Like there, that's why I am not in office or anywhere. Brilliant. Right. But he does, he, I always see these random posts and I love it. 'cause you can have, you know, Kyle post something on Twitter and Tom can, and you can be like, oh, I really like what this person said. But like, when these people bring up, Hey, while you watch the news, talk about this.

This is what else happened. And you look it up and they're not lying about it. And they always refer to it as like, you know, Trump makes chess moves. Right? And I think it's a, and then it's like, well, are they right or the wrong? But. I don't know. Sometimes I don't even like what, we're in Venezuela, I gotta go catch up.

Right. Like it's that kind of thing.

KYLE: I like that he's putting America first. I wish I, I posted this recently, um, after something happened and I said, I wish Carney would put Canada first and not else. Right. And so I do, I do appreciate that Fight for Canada. Yeah. Fight for [00:44:00] your world. You have to take care of your own crap

GARY: first.

It's pretty hard to fight when you're a country with this large of a land mass as us in such a small population.

KYLE: Oh yeah. With a lot of oil we could pump.

GARY: Yeah, we do.

DUSTIN: But I was trying to look into it more, have some tools today and I didn't get very far, but I think that, you know, Washington State's politics, you want to, we can talk about the country of America, but we Oh, it's all over the place.

Yeah. We're screwed.

GARY: You do have a horrible state.

DUSTIN: Oh yeah. Like yeah. You might be, you guys might be better off right now. I, I don't it like

KYLE: you can carry guns around

DUSTIN: so, well,

GARY: barely.

DUSTIN: Barely.

GARY: And you guys are very. Like, help me understand that. In the US it's very, uh, state by state, right? Yeah. It's like things, real state.

Politics play a huge part. We're punk Trump talk as much as you talk about part of being is helping us

DUSTIN: right

KYLE: now. Yeah. It's United Country is basically what it is. Yeah.

GARY: So back to the, I guess the biggest question, 'cause I, I guess, well there was two parts of that i, I struggle with. One is his character.

'cause like even in the, you just shrug your shoulders.

DUSTIN: Yeah. But, but he does have the weirdest character, right?

GARY: No, but I mean, like even the other night in the speech, I listened to a few [00:45:00] minutes of it. Was that the speech you're talking about the

DUSTIN: state of the union?

GARY: Yeah. Where the US hockey players came in.

Yeah. Yeah. Two hour monologue about how great the man is spoken by himself. Yeah. It's nauseating man. It's nice,

KYLE: but I would much rather have Trump than Barack Obama who can speak really nicely and it's probably just as big of a bigger of a liar. But he just says it calmly and with an eloquent voice.

Everyone's like, Ooh, it's amazing. Trump's just a shit talker from New York who has ran businesses his whole life, didn't have to be in politics and now he's in politics. So like try to change a 50-year-old,

GARY: I mean 7-year-old. I appreciate the part. And I always have about finally somebody who just doesn't care what anyone thinks, because most politicians are literally lying all the time.

That's all I look for, because they're just living for the next vote. And yeah, I mean Trump, he has done everything basically in his power to not get elected again. And he did get elected, which is kind of,

FINN: yeah, unfortunately we're never going to get the guy we want in office.

GARY: And why is that? 'cause it's such a sewer in politics.

FINN: No, because humans.

KYLE: Humans systems. Yeah, humans that too

FINN: sinful humans.

KYLE: You get empowered.

GARY: No, but [00:46:00] I'm saying there, there's men of great integrity in the us.

FINN: Sure.

GARY: There's men of great integrity

FINN: was when Winston Churchill. A man of great integrity.

GARY: No, I wouldn't put him in that account.

FINN: He, he, he's in the history books as one of Yeah.

If you

KYLE: get to the top, I

FINN: don't know how you could be a man of great integrity. Once you're at the top, you're under a microscope and you're, you are a

GARY: simple and you're going to chain smoke cigars. It's too bad whiskey.

FINN: It's

GARY: too, you do it. But if I was living the dream

DUSTIN: president, I'll come back on the podcast.

GARY: Let's go. Let's go. Alright

KYLE: man.

GARY: Have you ever thought of running for a local office or anything in Washington

DUSTIN: State? I am the vice president of the Wacom County Farm Bureau Board. Let's go.

GARY: It's a slippery slope. Sounds like a big board. Farms are leaving Wacom County left. Right. Instead of I think you're

DUSTIN: chasing

GARY: them

DUSTIN: away.

Do a

GARY: better

DUSTIN: job. We

KYLE: got that.

DUSTIN: We know

KYLE: onto, uh, Trump and ice though. I like what he's doing there because loves ice. This is, this is specifically what he campaigned on. Loves he said. He said he's Canadian. He said in his campaign, we're [00:47:00] gonna get these 5 million or 10 million illegals that Biden allowed in out.

Because they're here illegally. They're breaking the law, and so he's fulfilling his promise. I think that's a good thing. Yeah. Like are all the right people being taken out? Probably not perfectly. How do you get 10 million out people out perfectly. I can't even like get own kids outta the house that

way.

DUSTIN: You guys, you guys talk, Hey, you guys talked about this the other day. That's fair. And, and in a way if you really simplify it. They're here illegally.

GARY: They

DUSTIN: broke the law. So as a country you have every Right? Yeah. To move them out. Like

GARY: it's fascinating grabbing clips there. Again, if you spend enough time on social media and I follow enough people where I don't only follow right wing, wing nuts like yourself, Dustin, I follow a few people that are on the other side of the political aisle.

And I mean, there's lots of clips of, of people like Clinton and Obama talking about getting illegal people outta the country. Every, I think everybody, you know, law abiding American citizens would agree with that. I think the question would be, Hey, is it being done in somewhat of, how, how is it being done?

Right?

DUSTIN: So I, I'm gonna tell this story, but, but if the guy's running

KYLE: away,

DUSTIN: if the guy's running

KYLE: away, get him.

DUSTIN: Okay.

KYLE: If he's not coming out of [00:48:00] his house, break the horse down. He's breaking

DUSTIN: the

KYLE: law.

DUSTIN: So, so

KYLE: Right.

DUSTIN: Because he'll never hear of it and it doesn't matter. 'cause he is been deported. But I had a kid working for me for like 12 years.

His name was Omar and this past spring,

KYLE: LA Lao,

DUSTIN: no, this last spring.

KYLE: Omar cut that out too.

DUSTIN: He, he, he got, he got fired over some issues.

KYLE: Okay.

DUSTIN: And find out three months later, I get a phone call from him. Yeah, he got picked up by ice.

KYLE: Okay.

DUSTIN: Well, in a real short form, this kid got pulled over for a DUI years ago and he kind of resisted arrest.

So guess what? He put himself on the radar now so he gets deported. Right. Because he has a criminal past. He had a little domestic dispute with his early friend. Whatever he gets supported, a gal from the office at the greenhouse goes to help his sister pack up his things, and in the drawer in his house filled out and not sent was his dreamer paperwork.

Obama gave this guy the opportunity to be here and, and they, and you miss the window.

KYLE: Mm-hmm.

DUSTIN: And then you have them. Oh, I'm so upset. I got No, he had the [00:49:00] opportunity to do it right. Yeah. Now, do I feel bad for some of 'em that have been here 30 years and have done no wrong? Yes, but, but you're

FINN: still breaking the law.

DUSTIN: Yeah, you're still breaking the law. Yeah. Just because you're doing 37 and a 35, you're still breaking the law. That's right. But

FINN: would you help 'em come back?

DUSTIN: Yeah. If there was an easy way, but there's really not anymore.

GARY: I, nobody's coming back in. In our country. They have really tightened up on who's coming in.

Even just people that

DUSTIN: were here working for years. Years, nobody. Just like H two A program. And you guys have it too, the worker program, the like nine, 10 month come work. Go back is great. That's their way back in What? I think it's interesting

KYLE: though. You hired an illegal for 12 years.

DUSTIN: Yeah. Well guess what?

Welcome. Welcome to Washington State. By law we're not allowed to question 'em, but also by law we're not allowed to hire 'em. So how would you figure that out?

FINN: I know

KYLE: what I'm not allowed to question. We not allowed to hire 'em.

DUSTIN: Yep.

KYLE: That sounds, I know what

FINN: companies getting drop picked by ice next week.

DUSTIN: You know?

KYLE: Sounds like COVID. Sounds like COVID. Yeah. It sounds like something they said. Should we talk about

DUSTIN: vaccines?

KYLE: Yes, let's do that. I've seen a guy vax himself, [00:50:00] vaccinate himself underneath the overpass the other day and I'm like, how can he do that? Wow. Yeah. I can assure

GARY: you that he was bent over in the field after there vaccination.

KYLE: You think it was vaccinations?

DUSTIN: I'm just glad you brought candy actually. So

GARY: good. Guys. Nobody wants to watch four dudes eat candy. Eat in a podcast. This is

DUSTIN: good.

GARY: No,

DUSTIN: we're supposed to be on

KYLE: this diet. Okay. So, so from the American perspective, uh, grill us on Canada. Has it changed the last 10, 15 years on how

DUSTIN: No.

You wanna I I do not have the slightest about your politics. Yeah. You guys don't care. Nobody in America

KYLE: cares about

DUSTIN: Canada. You guys are careless people. Dude, up at school the other day. I knew about that. Right. And I, I told Tom, I'm like, why would I get to post that on social media? Like every time it happens in the us I have a comment about it, but like, I mean, you guys have really strict gun laws.

Exactly. Like explain it proves itself, but it's not a good thing. It's just. I honestly do not pay attention. I could not tell you the, I don't even know who your local leaders are. I remember,

KYLE: I remember it's Rick Mercer.

GARY: Do you know who the provincial leader is?

DUSTIN: Nah. Well, who carney's in [00:51:00] or something? I, I really don't know.

You remember Rick Mercer? Pier's a good dude. Him and Trump are gonna be buddies. Then we were gonna be a superpower, but you guys decided to just,

KYLE: you're gonna

DUSTIN: shut that down.

KYLE: Invade us first. Yeah. On 51st day.

GARY: It is fascinating. Like, it's fascinating the amount of people in my sphere of people that you're thinking, Hey, you're seem like a relatively intelligent person, and they voted for.

The liberals based on the fact that Mark Carney people really respect him. He's the Bank of England. Um, got bank of, uh, England governor. Okay. He's the bank of the

KYLE: media Canada up. But if you look at, and the

FINN: media's got back as a person, is he an intelligent individual?

GARY: I

KYLE: think he is. I think he's fairly, I think he is a lot intelligent.

Trudeau is,

GARY: oh, a hundred times.

KYLE: He knows how to run a, we would all

GARY: agree with that.

KYLE: He knows how to run a meeting. He like, he has experience. Yeah. I think

FINN: it was a definitely a step up,

KYLE: but I don't think he's any better for It was like,

GARY: ironically, ironically. And then, so this goes back to the root of what I wanted to ask you guys.

'cause I think that, you know, socially people tend to veer into a camp where all of a sudden you don't appear to care for people or, [00:52:00] but like money doesn't have feelings. And at the end of the day. I think that the, the root of our issues in our Western culture now are the fact that we run huge deficits.

Yeah. And we think that does not matter.

KYLE: So a really smart guy just ran a $90 billion more deficit.

GARY: Well, that's what I was going with that, and I guess even that's the question I've always asked about Trump. I follow Peter Schiff. How do you fix it? I follow Peter Schiff. I don't know if you guys follow him, American Economist.

I mean he, he's whatever.

DUSTIN: But it sounds like small business. But go Lincoln, in Washington state, they had it again where four or five Republicans speak and go. What do you mean for the state of Washington? You're, you're adding more to the budget and, and, and tax more and all this stuff. And they're like, where are the cuts?

Like, you're right. Everybody's spending like crazy,

GARY: but nobody wants a cut. Nobody's suggesting a good cut.

FINN: That makes sense. It's been a while that out Elon. Elon did some, he did

KYLE: some

FINN: cutting, some cutting.

KYLE: The, not, not, not,

FINN: not enough trillions.

KYLE: I think it was six weeks ago. They did, uh, defense, um, changed their budget from 1 trillion to 1.5 [00:53:00] trillion.

I'm, I'm assuming, anticipating Iran is coming up.

FINN: Right.

KYLE: So many, so many do. So, yeah, they knew up a notch, $500 billion. Like, wow. That's, yeah,

GARY: that's, I wonder how that does work. Hey, you wonder if like they're actually spending that much more 'cause they're flying all the stuff all the time anyways, and there's just a lot of money spent or I don't know, those would be questions ever that nobody has the answer.

Right. Ever.

DUSTIN: Do you ever, um, I feel like you've referenced Dave Ramsey once in a while.

GARY: Oh yeah. Did you ever

DUSTIN: hear him talk about Trump before he fi He admitted on his show that he was gonna vote for him. Yeah. And he broke it down really simply. And I really liked that. That was like. Good to hear, like, you know, so many people, like, I hate him.

I love him. Right. But he just said, no, I want you to take some simple things like not, I mean, there's so many things you can look at. Right? And he just real simply went through it and said, if you just agreed with all that, then I think you need to be like myself and I'm gonna vote for him.

KYLE: Yeah.

DUSTIN: And his daughter's like, you're, you just said it live, that you're like, you know, and

FINN: well, if you look at

DUSTIN: a, but what does he care?

You have two people to

KYLE: vote for. I mean, it, it's gonna be

FINN: pretty easy.

KYLE: Yeah. [00:54:00] Yeah.

FINN: On the side, I, I still go back to like, as a, a group of Christian men, if you look through the Bible and you had a chance to vote for any of the leaders in the Bible.

KYLE: Oh yeah. They're pretty sad.

FINN: It is pretty rough, right?

KYLE: Yeah.

GARY: That's fair.

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: And then like now, like you go through all the president, I don't know all the prime ministers of Canada and history, but all the presidents in history, like which one really stands up as a pillar compared to the rest?

GARY: We've in Canada. I'll say this, or maybe you wouldn't agree, but I feel like in my childhood, even left-leaning prime ministers as as much as socially, there were certain things they were doing that I would really disagree with.

Overall, they were pretty decent character individuals.

FINN: Okay.

GARY: Especially for someone that like, interestingly enough in Canada, and we learned this in social studies, but in Canada, the prime minister actually probably has more control of the country.

KYLE: Yeah. Way more

GARY: internally than the

KYLE: president does.

GARY: Yeah.

KYLE: Yeah.

GARY: Like even now there's the screaming about the congra and there is certain stops and balances where [00:55:00] like as long as a prime minister in our country controls the party so much that as, as long as he's got control of his party in his, his caucus meetings,

KYLE: no problem.

GARY: And he is a majority government.

They can do whatever they want and they do. I mean, they pass laws. That's why we're in the trouble war. 'cause we had, Trudeau had majorities for so long and such horrible policy changes that are affecting us now. And it's, it's hard to tell people they're losing their jobs and that's what needs to happen.

KYLE: Mm-hmm. Happen.

GARY: And it's fascinating. It's for me because I use government agencies, they'll remain unnamed on a regular basis. Um, and over the last, I've been doing it since 2008 and the employee count in those government agencies has just gone on a 45 degree angle trajectory up. And the service time and everything else is just on the opposite way.

Just these people are. They're really busy. They are puppy makers. I'm telling you, it is a disaster.

DUSTIN: I, I was like too little to even know. But, um, you have, you have older, you know, guys my dad's age or whatever that talk about, or you've heard from, like, my dad even used to joke about it, like [00:56:00] Bill Clinton.

Right. What we know of Bill Clinton. He was just awful person. Right. And now it's getting worse and worse. But when he was president, they were like, you know, he was Democrat. Exactly. He was okay for the economy. And he did, he was

GARY: good for the

DUSTIN: economy. Yeah. But guys, he was good. The, the minute everybody had to go hard.

No. Is all the, all Monica comes up and then all of a sudden everybody has to hate him. Right. And, but like you, who would ever thought my dad would be like, yeah, the Democrat wasn't bad. What did you say? Like, you know,

GARY: Hey, sorry. When, when you were a kid, were they saying that already?

DUSTIN: No. No. I don't

remember

KYLE: the name.

Not now either though. Either. Like the guy's a total creep.

DUSTIN: Yeah. No, now, yes. But what they meant is when as a president, the vote against him as a president.

GARY: As

DUSTIN: a president, it was like, it was like, Hey, at least you had like, he was not horrible. Now you felt like you had Kamala.

KYLE: Yeah, she was crazy Get

DUSTIN: started.

Right.

KYLE: So Carney would be like Gavin Newsom in my opinion. Yeah. Policy wise I

FINN: see that.

KYLE: Yeah. Which is still really bad.

GARY: I wouldn't put him in that bad. Not that bad. Oh, I hope not. That's, that's tragic. I hope not. You might be right, but hard to compare.

KYLE: Yeah, I know.

GARY: Hard [00:57:00] to compare

FINN: scu.

KYLE: So I was, I was referencing Rick Mercer before he used to be a television, uh, CBC radio guy, and he went down in the States one time and interviewed a whole bunch of Americans about America and like asked him to congratulate them on like, uh, thank you that you, uh, rat that you don't live in igloos anymore.

Or like, just all things about, like, nothing about

DUSTIN: No,

KYLE: but that's still a

DUSTIN: joke. Right.

KYLE: But I think they got Bush even before he became president and to say something crazy. But yeah, generally Americans don't know anything about Canadians. It's usually the other background we

DUSTIN: do. Yeah. We know a little bit.

KYLE: Yeah, a little bit. Tiny bit

DUSTIN: you, you referenced compared to your social studies. 11. Oh, I snuck through that class. Yeah,

GARY: but that was a great class.

DUSTIN: No, I don't remind

GARY: you. If you went and did it now, you'd love it. Probably you finally care. You

KYLE: know,

GARY: finally realized

FINN: how much you missed out on

KYLE: the black

GARY: hand.

KYLE: The black hand didn. He

GARY: start

KYLE: me

GARY: back week

KYLE: one.

Yeah.

GARY: Did you enjoy school?

FINN: Mm. So. I enjoyed some of school. Okay. Um, am I in 11th grade or grade 11? [00:58:00] Depending on what country you're from?

GARY: I was deep.

FINN: You don't know that?

GARY: No.

DUSTIN: If you're Canadian, you were in grade 11. I've

GARY: always been up on the roof and

FINN: never knew what was going on.

DUSTIN: Crack.

GARY: I

DUSTIN: can wake, I can wakeboarding. You were a junior in high school.

GARY: Yeah.

FINN: Yeah. So I, an

DUSTIN: athlete,

FINN: uh, I got in a motorcycle accident. Right. And when you were in school? Uh, no, I was on the road. No,

DUSTIN: in grade 11. In grade 11

FINN: we drives motorcycles in school.

DUSTIN: He meant it as, were you like, I

FINN: know that,

Hey, we got you with the group text. It corrects me. Yeah,

DUSTIN: you, I thought

FINN: he was still convinced. We're driving here. He is like, do you, he doesn't

DUSTIN: know.

FINN: Do you think Kyle knows that you're missing a leg? Like Yeah,

KYLE: that's why I love my comment. Did you lose it in the war? 'cause I knew people gave you that all the year, all the time

FINN: Anyway.

So you asked if I enjoyed school. Actually, in my last year, I took some like AP classes, which at Timothy was like, you know, chemistry, [00:59:00] biology, it wasn't too fancy. But

KYLE: yeah,

FINN: I did enjoy those,

GARY: Mr. Bruce.

FINN: But at that point I was like, I could barely walk. So what else?

GARY: So you lost your leg when you were very young?

FINN: No.

GARY: When you were 16.

FINN: 17 I got in a motorcycle accident. Yeah. In Greendale.

GARY: Yeah, I

FINN: remember. Remember that. But I didn't lose my leg. So what?

KYLE: Just

FINN: pause, listen,

KYLE: listen to the story. This is the art of listening.

FINN: It took me to the great hospital of Chillowak general.

KYLE: Yeah,

DUSTIN: no, we wanna talk healthcare. Here

FINN: we go, talk healthcare.

And um, they gave me some really strong Tylenols there. And

DUSTIN: he's not lying to you. Gary thinks you're telling jokes. But

FINN: anyways, so they, they were, by the time I got to Harborview, I had like a lot of damage, like in my nerves and, um, they hadn't really done much yet, so they ended up saving most of it. But then a lot of like my nerve damage had to grow back and.

A lot of the, can you describe

KYLE: [01:00:00] the accident? What, what happened and like what, what part of your leg got damaged?

FINN: So I was on my friend's bike, um, riding around on roads. I had no being on Crocket, ran a stop sign, T-boned, uh, SUV of some kind and

GARY: flying.

FINN: Yep. Lady came out from her house and she was basically took my phone outta my pocket and calling people for me.

And, uh, at one, the, like, I don't remember a lot from that scene, but the one thing I do remember is the RCMP that came to the site. He talked to me and he said, well, it looks like you kind of got what you deserved, so I'm not gonna give you a ticket.

DUSTIN: Savage. Savage.

FINN: It's like a one

DUSTIN: day savage.

FINN: You were awake?

I probably did, but uh, so I don't have any memory before, like waking, like talking to the lady on her lawn. Okay. I still don't remember anything before that. I remember [01:01:00] like snippets after that. So I remember like talking to her, uh, her calling somebody, and then I remember the, the cop and then I remember Uncle Teo in the hospital.

Other than that, like the flight, nothing.

GARY: I'm pretty mixed up the la I'm, I remember you saying they gave you horse tranquilizers at the Chill hospital and then what happened after that?

FINN: So after that, you still

GARY: had your leg on it

FINN: this point. So I didn't have proper ID on me for them to get me out of the country.

Right. Even though, you know, I don't, I don't know what I was gonna do once I got outta the country, but by the time they got like my, my ID to me, then it was like six hours later.

GARY: Yeah.

FINN: So they put me on a plane. I think my dad came with me and we flew down to Harborview in Seattle. Oh,

KYLE: were

FINN: you

KYLE: awake this whole time or

FINN: were they put you

KYLE: out?

FINN: Out. In and out.

KYLE: Okay.

FINN: Yeah. Yeah. So then they flew down, I think to Boeing Field. On off of Boeing Field. They airlifted me to Harborview. [01:02:00] Harborview rolled me straight into surgery, and then, yeah, from there, I think you came right after that.

DUSTIN: I came like two days afterward. Yeah. And then like a week later he says, just said, why haven't I seen Dustin?

You're like, Hey, you've been here. Sure. He was like, Dustin hasn't given video.

GARY: Sorry. Did they take the leg off of the surgery?

DUSTIN: Nope.

FINN: No. So they, I had like 23 surgeries that time, like in my first month and a half there. So then they, they pieced everything back together. I had like external bracing,

GARY: awful.

FINN: It was shattered from my left knee down.

Um, my right knee cap was shattered. My right femur was broken, and then my wrist was broken.

GARY: During the hospital, obviously the whole time, you're never leaving the hospital.

FINN: Correct?

GARY: For that first month

FINN: and a half, yeah. Month and a half later, went home still on bedrest. Um, got really constipated. It's the worst.

KYLE: Sounds shitty.

GARY: Oh, I, I tell you a story about that on my honeymoon, but we'll, we'll go there after.

FINN: I don't know if I wanna hear that story.[01:03:00]

You gotta finish your

DUSTIN: story about losing the leg.

FINN: Anyway, story guys. This why I'm not allowed to talk. Everything's saved, right? I, I have all my pieces, but like, I, I'm like hardly walking. I'm on crutches. So I started the 12th grade,

GARY: yeah,

FINN: grade 12 for the Canadians. Um, and I had like this weird little crutch thing I was using and, uh, I, I, they gave me like study class, which was really dumb.

But, you know, I needed to make up some, some work from grade 11.

KYLE: Yeah.

FINN: So. For some reason, two of my friends at the time got to do study with me and so we screwed around. Disaster way too. Yeah. That was a bad move. Zero learning happened. Bad move.

KYLE: That sounds like Nick.

FINN: It was, hasn't him really?

KYLE: Wow. I'm so impressed.

FINN: Upstanding citizens now. They're fine. They're fine. Yeah. Didn't

GARY: affect them like it affect you. You lost a leg and they've gone on to

FINN: success. Yeah, I know. [01:04:00] Those are jerks. Um, anyways, so, so then I started getting staph infections. Oh yeah. And that's what ended up taking my leg

GARY: six, eight months later.

FINN: No, like years.

Yeah. So, uh, you ended up, you ended up weight again. You lost your leg at

DUSTIN: 17

FINN: before you lost your leg. And

DUSTIN: were you 21 or 22?

FINN: I was 20 on my 23rd birthday. I had my amputation. So

KYLE: you go to IHOP for breakfast.

FINN: So how did that He

GARY: did tell, he did. Were you dating already then or were you still a single guy at that time?

FINN: Uh, I was dating when I got in my accident. She was at a dance that night. So. See, you shouldn't, when, when this lady took my phone and called, she was one of the phone calls, probably shouldn't have told her to call my girlfriend.

GARY: No, no kids, kids don't know how,

FINN: but like bring it back. So you are not equipped to deal with that sort of trauma

GARY: at that age, but for yourself, how did you deal with that?

How was the

FINN: journey? Oh, not great.

GARY: No,

FINN: no. Very broken. I mean, like, I feel like I. You know? Yeah. Looking back, I don't think you [01:05:00] did. Yeah, I'm doing fine. Right. But there's some screaming and Yeah. When you're alone, like, well, I

DUSTIN: even remember you.

FINN: I definitely not already

DUSTIN: had the,

FINN: well, we grew up, sorry.

DUSTIN: And he had the morphine button and like his dad would tell, like, this was like when he first, oh, I was

FINN: dilauded.

DUSTIN: And like he'd sit there and he goes, oh, he's get, he's in pain now. He's clicking. All right. Like, wait until it clears another shot of morphine into his system.

KYLE: But I can imagine years afterwards, that was probably the harder times. 'cause then you're like actually dealing

FINN: with like constant

KYLE: pain.

FINN: Yeah, exactly.

Right. You, you're recovering. It's like you can feel yourself kind of getting somewhere and then it's pretty good. You're in school. You, so how often did he

GARY: get infected?

FINN: I had six staph infections, so that were

GARY: obviously pretty serious.

FINN: Oh. The one, the first one actually I went to the hospital, they did surgery, cleaned it out.

So to back up and then, uh, it was like, okay. And then the second one came like, I don't know, six months later or something.

GARY: Oh wow.

FINN: And uh, I think it was the third one. I just had them do it like in the clinic instead of [01:06:00] going under, and that's like the most painful thing.

GARY: Worst experience ever.

FINN: Oh. Like, he's like, you're gonna feel a bee sting.

It was a little more, but then

GARY: that was an alligator.

FINN: So,

GARY: so when you're getting this, this infection, is it your leg still fully closed up then, but you're literally inside your leg. It's getting or less getting infected somehow.

FINN: More or

GARY: less, but coming outta your skin because it's so bad.

FINN: It was on my shin, so, uh, I had a walking boot for a while and it really thinned out like just a little, like it was gnarly curs of my skin.

KYLE: Seeing it like his, he, he just, it just, what did his stab infection?

GARY: That's what I have. Something, something. Yeah. That's what they have at the greenhouse with other employees, right?

DUSTIN: Yeah.

GARY: They are an infection, uh,

DUSTIN: illegals.

GARY: Yeah,

DUSTIN: so, so I, I wanna interrupt him because he calls me. It's his birthday, he's 23.

January three, he calls me and I knew his leg had been removed and like my grandparents had been, like, anybody heard from him about it. He [01:07:00] calls me. I'm like, Hey Tom. He goes, guess what? Lost more weight than you have. First thing out of his mouth. I'm like, wow. Like this is how this conversation's going.

You guys have always been good at humor. How much weight, how much

GARY: weight did you lose when you lost your I from your knee down? I kind of wanted to keep it, but

FINN: I think it's

KYLE: like

GARY: against the law maybe.

FINN: Yeah.

KYLE: So we're also in

GARY: our, that's like my brother who was blind, right. My brother was blind Derek. And uh, I used to take his like eyeballs once he outgrew them 'cause they were glass because he was born without eyeballs.

And I would take the eyeballs to school and put 'em on girl sandwiches. He'd be like into his sandwich all a sudden. Wow. What's this glass? Oh,

DUSTIN: amazing. That's so gross.

GARY: Anyway, he also lost them water skiing a few times because he,

DUSTIN: I remember those stories.

GARY: Yeah. Because expensive

DUSTIN: mom taught us.

GARY: That was

DUSTIN: pretty awesome.

He water skied.

GARY: Yeah. And snow skied. Very gifted. My kids today were asking how he played piano. He's

DUSTIN: like, how did Uncle Derrick play piano with eyes?

KYLE: Very carefully,

GARY: very careful, very gifted. No, really amazing man. Played with us.

KYLE: So

GARY: like, played his way to university. It's pretty cool.

KYLE: It's a funny story.

When he was in the [01:08:00] hospital, my dad went to go see him 'cause he would've been the only NNRC pastor or whatever. And he just got a new car and, and he had butt warmers in it and I, he didn't know he had those, so it was in the summertime. So he turned 'em, I turned 'em all the way up to six. Oh that's sucks.

And he went there and back

GARY: salvage, just sweating for fuse.

KYLE: So he come, I came, I remember coming home from school or something and he was in bed and I was like, why are you in bed? He goes like, I'm sick. I went to go see Tom and I'm just totally sweating, but I had just turned his orders back three hours back.

Well, he was pretty mean too. So

DUSTIN: he was when you, and then not

KYLE: really. Another

DUSTIN: thing I remember this was, this was a funny one. We all came to visit you. Yeah. Brought, bought 'em a brand new wakeboard. They were in there. I I was not much of a wakeboard, but Tom and my brothers and they were, a group of them were phenomenal.

Right. Yeah. So we bring Tom a Wakeboard brand new one. We had a deal. Nobody rode until Tom could ride.

KYLE: I remember this.

DUSTIN: Yeah. And this is January three. When do you think we all had to go wake boarding with Mr. [01:09:00] Amputee?

KYLE: April?

DUSTIN: No, it was like March 10th. March. Oh, wow. He, he's like, I wanna go guys.

GARY: Was that a big motivator for you, that they challenge Oh yeah.

Yeah. Okay, cool. It was

DUSTIN: like,

GARY: oh, so, so are you able to wakeboard? Oh yeah. One leg.

‍

keep reading

Why Some Christians Realize They Aren’t Actually Saved - Briefcase & The Barn - EP 87

March 18, 2026

Why Sexuality Has Become a Church-Breaking Issue | Rev. Aaron Vriesman - EP 49

March 14, 2026

Gay People & Jesus | The Briefcase and the Barn - EP 84

February 25, 2026

Stop Work From Controlling Your Life

Together, we’ll forge your path through the hard stuff to get to the good stuff.

book a call

A scenic view of a golf course with tall trees and mountains in the background.

American Kids Who Went to School in Canada - The Briefcase & The Barn - EP 86

March 11, 2026

keep reading

Why Some Christians Realize They Aren’t Actually Saved - Briefcase & The Barn - EP 87

Why Sexuality Has Become a Church-Breaking Issue | Rev. Aaron Vriesman - EP 49

Gay People & Jesus | The Briefcase and the Barn - EP 84

Stop Work From Controlling Your Life

Company

Resources

Opening Hours

Office

Contact us

Podcast Question

American Kids Who Went to School in Canada - The Briefcase & The Barn - EP 86

March 11, 2026

Stay Updated With Our Latest Releases

keep reading

Why Some Christians Realize They Aren’t Actually Saved - Briefcase & The Barn - EP 87

Why Sexuality Has Become a Church-Breaking Issue | Rev. Aaron Vriesman - EP 49

Gay People & Jesus | The Briefcase and the Barn - EP 84

Stop Work From Controlling Your Life

Company

Resources

Opening Hours

Office

Contact us

Podcast Question