Roostertail Talk

Episode 134: Mark and Mitch Evans, Part 2

• David Newton • Season 6 • Episode 22

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Mark and Mitch Evans, legendary figures in the world of Unlimited Hydroplane Racing, join us for part 2 of their 4 part interview. We revisit their riveting exploration of their high-octane careers in the late 80s. From Mark's poignant hiatus after a personal tragedy to his triumphant return, their stories are filled with the adrenaline and heart that's powered their iconic presence on the water. Hear about their collaborations with renowned names like Chuck Hickling and Ed Cooper, offering a window into the challenges and triumphs of a sport that demands both bravery and brilliance. 

*Photo from Jon Osterberg

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Speaker 1:

Ruchetel Talk, the podcast dedicated to everything about the sport that we all love Hi, jibbley and Reese. I am your host, david Newton, and it's time once again. So sit back, relax and welcome to Rooster Tail. Talk, we'll talk. Welcome back race fans.

Speaker 1:

This is episode 134, tuesday, december 17th 2024. And this is part two of my interview with Mark and Mitch Evans. Last week we left off talking about the early 80s and Unlimited Hydroplane Racing for Mark and Mitch and we're going to continue that and we're going to talk about how they both worked with Chuck Hickling, how they both worked with the Coopers and their journey into the late 80s of Unlimited Hydroplane Racing. They both share great stories around the time frame and I'm excited for you to hear that. I just had such a fun talk and I can't stress that enough.

Speaker 1:

It was a fun afternoon I had down at Sunset Marina with them and you know what, you know who they are. They both have great success in unlimited hydroplane racing and I'm just going to tell you, you're going to hear some fun stories about Chuck Hickling, about his shop. You're going to hear some more fun stories about Ed Cooper and working for him, and let's just get into it and enjoy part two. This is four parts. Remember there's going to be four parts of this, so we're about halfway there after you finish this episode. But part two of my talk with Mark and Mitch Evans. But part two of my talk with Mark and.

Speaker 1:

Mitch Evans. It was a few years before you. At that time, before you got back into the woods, mark, um, you know what? What was your why? Why did you have a break there? Well, I mean you ran the, the, the green bomb Right, and then Mitch was racing unlimited, and then it was a while before you got a seat. Yeah, it was a while before you got a seat.

Speaker 3:

Yeah Well, dad got murdered in 81. And that was just consuming and we had the marina going on and just lots going on. So I just stuck to the marina. We had the driving and stuff and plus the green bomb, we took the Allison out and put it in the other boat, so I was without a ride really. But, mitch and Rick, let me take the. What did we call it at the time? Kw3? Yeah, kw3.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I got to take a couple spins out here, so that was kind of fun and went and crewed with them and just bided my time to get another ride and that's about the time Chuck Hickling came around, I think yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was the tunnel hydroplane that you built.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yeah, yeah, it was the tunnel hydroplane that you built. Yes, yeah, that was a scary ride there. Wow, that was something. I mean beautiful boat, like cabinet work. You know it's a beautiful craftsmanship, but boy, it was scary Bob.

Speaker 1:

Mashman drove it and he didn't like it.

Speaker 3:

Jack.

Speaker 3:

Schaefer oh yeah, and then when I got in it, jack was actually really nervous. He came down to the docks and said listen, buddy, just be careful. He says he won't like how it turns. He said it's either going to want to hook or take off on you, and sure enough it would. You go to turn it and just jump up and take off and hook. It was that big Merlin in a tunnel boat. Just didn't really work.

Speaker 3:

But I got the opportunity, you know. Of course, one of the best ones was, I think, the second year. Chuck decided to put some nitrous in it, and you know be careful of the nitrous. And anyway, I pushed on the button a little too much and exploded the thing. Well, the batteries were right underneath my seat. The fire come up through the cockpit and started burning me. So I just reached out and hit the fire button and jumped about 100 miles an hour. I think it slowed down anyway. But we got front page in the sports section and so bernie little came up and he was all giving me a bad time. What about I have my driver jump out just to get on the newspaper? And I said yeah, bernie, and you have your driver jump out right at the final, quite the experience with that. Yeah, that whole thing, yeah.

Speaker 1:

That was quite an interesting design. I built a model of it one time. Oh did you? Yeah, and I ran it and it was fast. But every once in a while it would get to the corner and it would hit awake and it would go up and it would just float for like 40 feet or so. It wouldn't go over it for like 40 feet or so it wouldn't go over, it would just float and then it would come back down. No kidding, yeah, Similar to the big one Now did you put the little wings on the front?

Speaker 2:

I didn't do the wings, yeah, second year.

Speaker 3:

And, by the way, those wings were solid, mahogany.

Speaker 3:

Oh my gosh. Yeah, they weren't light weight, yeah. And so a couple of guys said man, if you get this qualified, you go race. Stay out of a rooster tail. You're going to get it right in the forehead. Yeah, probably could have. No, he carved them out by hand. Beautiful, did it work? They were really slow. Our servos were really slow. Then we kept having engine problems. Fortunately, without getting into the heavy story about my gearbox being hooked to an allison and having the same fluid go through to lube everything, chuck put his gearbox in the boat with a separate system and slid the Merlin back into the gearbox so if we ever heard an engine, we didn't have to mess with the gearbox the shavings going through. That was a unique setup that I really liked. That Chuck did Cool.

Speaker 1:

He was quite the innovator and mechanic and craftsman, wasn't he? Yes?

Speaker 3:

He was very picky and any of us that went up and worked there, he already had our tools lined out. He had the project he wanted us to do. He had the little vacuum cleaner there and you better vacuum If you drilled a hole. You vacuum right now. And then later on I got to notice and I went in there one day and I looked and all the Phillips screws on the bottom were lined up. They weren't. Oh yeah, that's how detailed? It is Wow.

Speaker 1:

Wow, yeah, there's something I didn't write down, but I remember my dad having a book and I thought it was by Chuck Hickling, and it was just a collection of how-tos for like the shop and the boat Putting things together. Did you ever see something like?

Speaker 3:

that from him? I did no, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, my dad was crew chief and he was looking through it and he was looking at tips on how to do certain things that are on the shop. Yeah, yeah. But I haven't found it.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if it— Gosh, yeah, but I haven't found it.

Speaker 3:

I don't know if it gosh. I yeah, I don't remember anything like that, but I'm gonna think of it. It's a little vacuum cleaner be hanging here, he's arrows and everything's in place. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, maybe we can find that out online somewhere in the hydro world that we kind of fun to see. Yeah, but it just had had stuff around the shop and electrical stuff and the walls in the shop. On the trailer there were things and there was stuff about the boat, oh yeah.

Speaker 3:

To get the boat down his driveway. It had a really steep driveway there. You park up top and unhook the truck, turn it around. You had a hitch on the front and then he had little lines marked on the asphalt. So you drove that boat trailer right down those exact lines. You had to in order to get a clear shot and he was that picky. Oh, another thing about Chuck. I think they call it OCD now the impossibility well, it worked for him.

Speaker 3:

Another thing about him if you came down there in your car and you left and there was a drip of oil there, chuck would circle that and when you come back next time he would have the rag and the MEK or whatever to clean it up. Wow, yeah, I know he's a character.

Speaker 1:

But, mitch, he drove another Hickling boat. Yeah, I believe was that Cooper's first boat. He purchased it from Hickling. Yeah, what was that experience like driving that boat.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was pretty great because I had met. Ed the year before when Rick and I decided to take the boat on the tour. We went to Houston and then we went to Detroit, anyway. So we got to meet him and then of course Ed calls. Hey, he always called me cracker ass for some reason. That's an Indiana thing or something.

Speaker 2:

He goes and Jack was helping him drive at the time, cracker ass for some reason that's an Indiana thing or something he goes and Jack was helping him drive at the time, couldn't make it or whatever. So yeah, I come to Madison and just plopped right in it. You know he goes, here's a switch, turn this on and go out, you know, make some laps and come back. I mean, what are you thinking? It was really. It was pretty terrifying because that was really my first time.

Speaker 2:

And the boat, pleasantly enough, handled really well. You know it was a conventional but it it had a little skid fin on the side, it had a wide transom on it so you could go down and, you know, turn the thing without feeling like you were going to end up in kentucky. And ed's motors, you know at the time were pretty stock. But as we went on with the program he had those kind of an adapted 10 and a quarter blower, bigger carbs, nitrous I mean we ran 100 pounds of nitrous in there for heats and he said he wasn't afraid to have it used when needed. Anyway, that was just a great experience. And then obviously it led to 20-plus years of racing with him.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, he had a few. Yeah, he had some highs and lows there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's part of it.

Speaker 3:

And same thing.

Speaker 2:

I mean gosh, ed was a school teacher right by trade. You know all-volunteer crew but he worked endlessly in the shop, you know, to build everything right. I mean everything about the program he did in-house that he could. I mean there was some some exterior stuff, but no just just a great guy to to work with and drive for. Yeah, so I was really lucky that way I haven't figured out how he does it.

Speaker 1:

I follow in his footsteps. Then I'm a school teacher, I don't have a hydroplane, I don't have a boat. I don't know how he does it. I follow in his footsteps. Then I'm a school teacher, I don't have a hydroplane, I don't have a boat. I don't know how he was able to manage that To this day, me either.

Speaker 2:

I mean, I look at it, I've been in business, self-employed, all my life, done all these things. You know. He just had that mentality and he, like you say, was able to just bit by bit, and there were some great opportunities, some good sponsorship came along at the right times. You know, he got into the I mean, chuck gave him a great deal on the boat and the trailer, you know. But it was years and years and years of grinding away at it, years and years of grinding away at it.

Speaker 3:

Is it true, mitch, that Ed was sick one September and couldn't go teach school, but the principal saw him on ESPN down there in San Diego?

Speaker 2:

or something there might have been a time or two of that.

Speaker 3:

yeah, Got in trouble because you're sick, huh, Ed?

Speaker 1:

I just saw you on ESPN. He was always really careful about that kind of stuff. But there were sick huh Ed, yeah, yeah okay, I just saw you on ESPN.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and Ed always he was always really careful about that kind of stuff. But there were just some times because I mean Ed did everything and drove the truck, I mean, you know, took the boat, you know, and we would try to trade off some. But I mean the guy is just wow, yeah, and so he made it all work, like I say, and the teaching in the early days was obviously his livelihood and his passion. He had this side gig, you know. He put in all the hours it took to make it work.

Speaker 2:

And the rest of his family, his wife, of course, barbara. She was a teacher also. Oh, and then his dad was a character.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

I'd throw in Ed Senior. There was somebody that was just another great guy and volunteered and he was a big help and I know there were some times that we all needed to come together from many different directions and that's how he did it and the great volunteers out, there too, it took the village to do it, because no way we would have done it.

Speaker 1:

I called out sick today, so don't tell anyone You're sick.

Speaker 2:

You don't look real well, so I'll tell you.

Speaker 3:

You know another thing this TV can get people in trouble. Back to the story when I uh used a little too much nitrous in chuck's boat and jumped out. Yeah, I also got a call that money from uh insurance company, life insurance company goes, dude, you get in the office. I saw you on tv on fire jumping out of a hundred miles. You are not covered for that kind of stuff. Oh man, I'm sorry, sir, I've got my own shirts. We get on there TV.

Speaker 2:

You'll get yeah TV. We need it, you know for our sponsors.

Speaker 3:

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

That's really just be careful what you show yeah. Yeah, there's quite a few stories out there that we can't talk about, so people get invested well well, mitch you I think was it the winner of 87 88 you built, uh, a new boat or helped build a video boat, yeah yeah, so.

Speaker 2:

So, mark I, that was a another project that we decided out of the blue and, um, we had the pieces and parts and then, and then, yeah, we were able to put it together. We took the sponsons off the old predelco there. We cut that thing apart basically, and then we thought we were going to be able to just kind of rebuild that but it ended up just— the center section was rotten.

Speaker 3:

We'll back up just a little bit that predelco hole that we use as sponsons. I was working for Jim Lucero at the time and it showed up down at their shop and it was the Miller American and the Circus. That was the same time and there was a bunch of controversy going on. So a friend of mine, george, and I, we bought that hole from Fran Muncy and I took it up to Edgewood where I was living, and we put it in the backyard and we proceeded to work on it.

Speaker 3:

Well, jim Lucero had a couple of Merlins that we wanted to buy but we didn't have the money. We tried to get the sponsors and so on and so forth and we just couldn't do it. But we didn't have a trailer at the time. So, believe it or not, that thing, that boat, was sitting behind Boeing surplus at Lucero shop and on a sunday morning I had a flat trailer and I didn't tell my buddy and I said, george, just follow me, drove down 167 all the way down to eduid, up jovita boulevard. We got it to the backyard and, wow, that's when I thought, okay, we need to tilt trailer, this isn't going to work. And then we knew we didn't have the money and I can't remember how we we just decided to sell it to Ed.

Speaker 2:

He started gathering up all the pieces and parts and then, of course, got it here and then began the long process. And then, when?

Speaker 3:

we found out the center was so rotten we just dropped those functions on the floor through the middle of the way and Mitch called up Ed and said Ed, you might want to send out some panels of honeycomb, some cash, some fiberglass, some cash.

Speaker 2:

He was really silent for a long time. He was telling me he goes. I thought we were just rebuilding. I said no, there's just no way. He said it's done and, as it turned out, we were able to do some things to it with the help of a lot of people asking a million questions. The cool part.

Speaker 3:

Part of my favorite part was I hadn't interacted with Jones Jr and Sr really that much their lives were, you know. And so once we chopped the sponges off, we knew center section. Well, you have the angle of the bottom, how far is your break, how wide the boat you want to build? Well, the Madison folks were building the boat at the same time. So I just walked in the door of Jones' shop half nervous and hey, I'd like a little information on how to build an unlimited here. And Jones Jr says, come on, you know he's all gruff. He takes me back in the holy grail, the back shop that no one gets to go in. Go into the drawing room. There's a senior there with all these top secret drawings and the Madison stuff. I'm like holy cow. Junior says my dad will help you out, he just leaves.

Speaker 2:

I go. What's all this? I go holy schmoly.

Speaker 3:

I said, well, how wide should we make the boat? How long is the break? He goes. Well, mark, we're doing this to the Madison, here's this and here's that. So we went home and I said, mitch, let's do a little more than that. So we went, I think, two inches wider, the break was only four feet, and so on and so forth, and it really worked. But what got me and Ed Cooper, I think too was, once we got rolling, someone said oh them Evans boys don't know how to build a boat and Ed Cooper doesn't know how to build no engines. Well, shouldn't have said that, because that read me out, and I told that to Ed too. And Ed goes. Hmm. So from then on, think about the battles that Mitch had with Mike Hansen at Madison.

Speaker 2:

You always whipped him when he went twice cities, yeah, and it was just by pure desire, you know. And it all came together. Yeah, it was the combination. I mean at that time they committed to running the turbocharged motors, right, and of course, bill and Graham. You, you know, bill built all the induction stuff for the top and the hillborn and putting all those pieces together and and then and then making it all live in the early days was was a miracle for sure. But there again, being from madison, I mean there was, you know, he was able to to get some good information from a lot of different people and, and the crazy thing is, is the more questions you ask, I mean, the bigger the project becomes. And then so at some point you just got to say, okay, this is what we can do and this is how we're going to get it done. And then that was the path we went down and it ran well, um, um, for years.

Speaker 2:

You know there's you know you've got to budweiser, you know Atlas and Miller and all those other boats to run against, but we were just determined to do the best we could with what we had. But you set a bunch of records yeah, I got off.

Speaker 3:

You were pissed and powered Right. Yeah, right it was cool.

Speaker 2:

How fun was that first win for you in tri-cities 89? Yeah, it was great, obviously. I mean, I was more amazed at the amount of people that were on the dock, because before that time, you know, there was really no radios. We're just learning about the canopies and, you know, and I see all these people jumping up and down. I'm thinking I was pretty sure I had second, you know, but obviously I hadn't heard about no to you know getting disqualified. I was just racing, mike you know, and.

Speaker 2:

Tommy was in front of us, and then he came back and went how did you win? Anyway, then, chip Hatter he was one of the first ones, he was there, you know, chugging me. It took a while for it to sink in. It was a great one, for sure, and being that was would be my home track.

Speaker 1:

That was great too, for sure, yeah, fun times. And then I heard a story that Seco Aviation Fuels wouldn't sponsor you for that race.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we obviously had the help in Seattle there and ran. Good, there was a discussion about it, so the old Cooper's Express went on there and that was what we ran. So yeah, he missed out on that one. For sure. He let us know that for a long time. I'm sorry, I just couldn't do it right. Those opportunities come and go, all forms of racing yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah. Well, I think around that same time, mark, you were dabbling toes in with Shaneth and the ETA project and all that, and I think you bought a boat Was it a fat boat.

Speaker 3:

Well, I leased a boat from Jerry called the Double Trouble. It was the twin propeller shaft one with the offset engines, and so he made me a deal, and the deal was I had to go out and get it in Michigan. But to go get it I had to stop at the Rutt Brothers and tow another Stoddicker out there, and it's the one that Ron Snyder drove with Tri-Cities with the wing on it, the Tri-Cities, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3:

So we made arrangements and I towed that out to Michigan. A little side story halfway out in the middle of Wyoming a windstorm came up and blew the thing upside down. I bounced that right down a guardrail, ripped the hitch right off of it, almost put us into a canyon. Yeah, about eight hours later and $450, I think it was I had it upright, a new hitch welded on it and I called Jerry. I called Jerry and said there won't be any honeymoon. If you don't know what, send money soon or there'll be no honeymoon kind of like that and I told him I blew the boat over and I never forget Jerry's.

Speaker 3:

So, wound up, he goes where are you at? And I said Wyoming and he said he went, silence goes. There's not even any water in wyoming. So anyway I literally because those framed trailers, there's no storage so there's no ballast down low and the wind was blowing so hard so I I stopped and got a bunch of burlap sacks at a feed store and went to a gravel pit and filled them up and tied them on the trailer for ballast and made it clear to northern michigan. That's when I met john statiker and and I was amazed at all his stuff and then got that double trouble drug at home and it is in my backyard, by the way, right now, yeah okay, yeah, we, I uh.

Speaker 3:

It sat over at ray forsman's for years in the weather and I don't know if I can rebuild it or not, if I don't have anyway. Having said that, uh, I got to drive it once and then later on I drove Brian Keel's dual automotive boat. So I've had a taste of dual engines and when they're working man, it's got some horsepower and it's loud and it's fun. And I am just still stuck on this dual automotive scenario. Or one big reciprocating engine of the newer type. These offshore guys are phenomenal with their engines they have now and their computer systems. So I just so really want to try another reciprocating engine of some kind. We had the guitar boat for a bit, but we couldn't get Elstrom to figure out what he really wanted to do, sell it for a reasonable or so on, so that sort of fizzled. So about that era I pushed and spent my life savings to get that going. I spent my life savings a year and a half working in about 15 minutes it wasn't eight and a half.

Speaker 2:

Don't do the math on per second how much it costs.

Speaker 1:

Do you think it would have worked if you had the?

Speaker 3:

technology now, yeah, convinced, especially if they let us use a two-speed gearbox. Oh yeah, I was in Madison when Was it Alamo? Yeah, ned Allen, I was right there when they first tried it. Bo took off and he came right back in. He said well, something's wrong. He was shifting, it was in high gear and he was shifting down to low. Once he figured out it was low gear and then shift up, he whooped them so bad. He came in and he goes. Mark, I'm using only half throttle, I can't even go any slower. It was phenomenal and they got banned. I bet my life that some nice offshore engine, maybe a couple of them, with a two or three speed box will do it. I mean Sheikh Hassan, his boat. I think he had a five or six speed in his. Really, yeah, yeah, wow, so shift and go.

Speaker 2:

I just need to hit the lottery or have someone put up a few million bucks just a couple.

Speaker 1:

There's no do you think they have a durability as well?

Speaker 3:

oh, possibly not. But hey, drag car racing, they were both the engines right in the pits. So, uh, I didn't want to. Uh, yeah, maybe maybe so, but maybe not, who knows. With the two-speed gearbox and the way things are, yeah, yeah, you might want a few of these engines stacked up ready to go, like they used to in the old days. You know the old Merlins?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no doubt they'd be a whole lot better than what they used to be. Yeah, just by being computer controlled.

Speaker 3:

And then a key thing for me right now in the unlimited sport, I've already had this conversation with two really big hitters wanting to come into the sport and they both went wait a minute, I'm going to have to go buy an engine from one of the competitors and they'll call him up and they won't sell him one and he goes besides. How do I know if it's any good? Who builds the hull? So this sport has no resources for new people to come in. So that's why recently I busted my butt with Murdo Cameron. He popped a mold off of Unlimited and he was wanting to try to cut the price clear in half, make it affordable. And then we worked with another engine guy.

Speaker 3:

I think it's got potential to bring in a new owner, especially if you could go to someone that doesn't race and buy the hull and even put it together. There was a really well-sponsored offshore group that actually was going to send their guys up to Murdo's and look at the molds and they wanted to do all the work and put it together, which would be great, and they ran some fantastic big engines and I was so hoping that would work and that fell through. Their sponsor pulled. So I still think it can work. I would really like to try it.

Speaker 1:

Well, I saw a great picture of both of you and I think there was another guy or two in the picture. I think it was a John Walker with the Elan boat. He had a big old engine there. Did that project just fall through because you couldn't get a deal on the whole?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, eric Elstrom, I'm going to throw him under the bus, I don't care, he would not cooperate. He was just wishy-washy. There's another guy that has a giant engine, tim Gross out of Michigan, and he built the thing. It's almost done, 3,000 horsepower with an amazing amount of torque. So we're right in the range of the turbines. And he sent the block out. We put it at Mitch's shop. I set up the whole shop. We started mounting it in. We got a gearbox. It was fit right in there. We were on a roll. But again, I wish Eric would have cooperated. But the sponsor that I had and the engine guys they knew that I didn't have anything signed they said, listen, we can't go any farther unless we know you actually own that hull. You have a lease for a couple of years. I just couldn't get anything from Erickson. So it's back over there sitting in the field. Unfortunately. That's too bad.

Speaker 3:

That's sad yeah but I don't know. There's a couple guys out there. I've got a couple big projects I'm finishing up right now. Maybe this winter, if I take a deep breath and think about it some more, I might give it a try just well.

Speaker 1:

There's a guy over in detroit sitting on I don't know how many boats. Oh gosh, like what 10 or 12 yeah, I know, can I just?

Speaker 2:

give you one. I bet you you know that's a good idea. I hadn't even thought of being there first yeah, we'll see.

Speaker 3:

All right, it's just that two million dollar part that I need.

Speaker 1:

It's just a small, small little heck up there, golly, yeah, it's such a shame that that couldn't happen yeah, I was close.

Speaker 3:

We were just about to get on a roll and what we were going to do, we weren't going to get up on the soapbox and say we're coming out. We weren't even going to go to a race, we're just going to go right out here make sure we got up on plane.

Speaker 3:

I mean, we were willing to spend that much time and money to just see if it would get up on plane and do a few laps and if we could see the potential, then we were going to go to the next level and start pursuing things. We weren't even going to pursue a sponsor and try to get to a race without testing it. Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, we were really close, but maybe someday We'll see.

Speaker 1:

We'll keep holding on Under hope someday we'll see. All right, well, we'll keep holding on under hope for that. That would be fun to see. Yeah, because I mean that's a good point. I mean anyone who's not in the sport now wants to get in. I mean props, yeah, like what. I mean you can count like gearboxes, motors, all the stuff there and can't go to somewhere other than a competitor to get that stuff. But I don't know of any other sport in the world that is anywhere near that. I don't. Yeah, it's ridiculous.

Speaker 3:

Well, actually, if they want, you know what that's that ended our career with the u57 here a few years ago. I blew that gearbox to smithereens down there in san diego. We went to detroit. You had to order three of them at 65 000 bucks a piece and that the gordon family. But then, uh, one of the Gordons passed away and that ended the whole gearbox thing. So there is no gearbox, there is none. Someone would have to start over and boy, a new person. So back to these gearboxes, the offshore boys. There's a gearbox out there. It's a two speed for $13,000. That is already proven that they're using. Of course, yeah, they aren't putting that pressure on the corners like we do, but they're in and out of the water.

Speaker 1:

So I mean that alone right there, that's a lot, of, a lot of work.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so that just convinces me even more to try it. Yeah, see if it works. Wow, and that ego engine still sitting back there. Tim calls me up about every month.

Speaker 2:

Hey, I got that boat ready to go so close.

Speaker 1:

Well, that's all the time we have for this week. Knuckleheads, tune in next week on Christmas Eve as we continue my talk with Mark and Mitch Evans and at part three of four. Don't forget we're on social media. We're on Facebook, instagram, online, our website, richardtel talkcom, and on there you can find a Richard tell talk plus subscription service where you get early access to all episodes and you get entered into a monthly raffle drawing.

Speaker 1:

This month we had a prize, a Christmas present, which I'm not going to give away for our, our winner, stephen Gibson. I don't want to give away cause I don't know if he's open, waiting till christmas to open it up. But next month we've got more prizes to give away. I got some fun things on the horizon for the subscription service, so you get to choose your monthly donation and all the donations go back to all the hidden fees and costs that come up with the podcast and really appreciate all the support I'm getting from the subscribers. But not too late to become part of that subscription list. That's all I got for you this week, so until next time, I hope to see you at the races.