6| Army Airborne Ranger / Angel Investor Dan Kanivas

Dan Kanivas is a true Renaissance man. As an Army Airborne Ranger, he spent time as an artillery officer near the DMZ on the Korean peninsula and later worked closely with Iraqi officers during the Iraq War, where he trained a 130-soldier Iraqi Army unit while serving as a strategic advisor to senior Iraqi Army officers. He has since shifted his sights toward both public investing and angel investing with Triple Summit Advisors, all while prepping to summit Mount Rainier. Show Notes Triple Summit Advisors
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Audio Transcript Brian Schoenborn  0:01  
Hello, Hello, everyone. Our guest today is a true Renaissance man. As an army Airborne Ranger, he spent time as an artillery officer near the DMC on the Korean peninsula. And he shifted a size toward both public investing and angel investing while prepping to summit Mount Rainier. Give it up to my friend, Dan kind of us.
 
My name is Brian Shin born. I’m an explorer of people, places and culture. In my travels, spending over 20 countries across four continents, I’ve had the pleasure of engaging and authentic conversations with amazingly interesting people. These are their stories on location and unfiltered presented at media. This is half the city.
 
So what’s up, Dan, thanks for coming up. Appreciate it.
 
Dan Kanivas  0:55  
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show, Brian. It’s great to be here. Awesome. You know I’ve always had a respect for airborne Rangers right stuff like that, you know, you’re watching the movies, the hundred first airborne, you know, dropping down from the skies and like D day or whatever else. You know, the Hollywood’s really good job kind of I don’t wanna say romanticizing, but like maybe, you know, telling our story anyways. Right, right.
 
Brian Schoenborn  1:26  
And when you told me the other day that you’ve done both airborne school and Ranger School, I was like, wow, this guy is legit. And you never would guess because he is one of the most calm, cool and collected dudes. I think that I know. Anyways, I appreciate that.
 
Dan Kanivas  1:43  
So, um, so why don’t you tell me a little bit about like, you know how you made that decision to join the army. How you made the decision to move towards airborne school Ranger School. I’d love to hear about you know the challenges of each Yeah, you know, that sort of thing? Yeah. Alright, so let’s start. That’s a, that’s a multi part question. So let’s, let’s start with the decision join the military. So I grew up in Scarsdale, New York, which really nice suburban community in the suburbs of New York. I was very lucky, as were other members of the community, to have the resources, whether it’s great school, safe neighborhood, very great public services, etc, care and community where children are put first, and students were put first. And so as a result, we had every opportunity available to us. And I was very grateful for that. And I felt like a system and a country that could produce something like that was worth defending. I wanted to give back and show my gratitude for it. There are a lot of ways to get back, whether it’s public service, volunteering, whatever it might be. In my case, I’d always had some interest in military history and I was athletic enough. I said, Okay, I wanted to give back by serving. I felt like that was My way where I could show my gratitude and then continue with the rest of my life. Luckily for me, that’s basically how it worked out. And I did four and a half years of service and active duty as a field artillery officer in the US Army. So for those listening, you know, For the uninitiated artilleries what the big guns that big guns That’s right. So cannons, and the rockets, etc. And so I had the privilege of serving there with some fantastic soldiers, fantastic leaders. And I had overall a great time in the military and there’d be very few things. I tried it I tried it for. For me, my path towards Ranger and airborne school started with my initial training as an artillery officer. So at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, we got the option while we’re doing our officer basic course for artillery. We got the option of trying out for Ranger School. what that entails is showing up in the morning to do a lot of PT physical training, lot exercise with the instructors that we had as a lieutenant of time there’s a captain who was instructor who, at the artillery school who also happened to be Ranger qualified so he had gone to Ranger School. This is back in 2005. The instructor and instructors are multiple them by the end of it would lead us through training just to get us familiarized with some basic things that would be required of the required of us at Ranger School, but mainly is a lot of physical training. And so the first day of the training, maybe half the class showed up and on purpose just like they do and other military schools, the instructors to use the military terminology, smoke the hell out of you. Right.
 
Try to separate the men from the boys. they
 
purposely make it difficult in the first day because they want to see who won Come back next day. So, yeah, so the I had a pretty big class at the officer basics course. And I want to say we had class with 120 230. Somewhere around those lines. So maybe 60 people showed up the first day and it was all officers. It was all officers, all the tenants. Yeah. And then the next day, 30 people showed up. And so the, the group of people who are training for Ranger School was cut out quickly. And we did this for the whole entire five or six months that we were there. And I think in the end, we ended up sending somewhere between 12 to 15 people who made it through that pre Ranger prep program.
 
Unknown Speaker  5:39  
So you’re talking like 10% ish, you
 
Dan Kanivas  5:44  
know, like 120 that showed up for the for that signed up for
 
Yeah, maybe 60 people showed up the first day, so maybe 20% of them, or so made it and made it through them and 25% and then I think we ended up graduating from Ranger School, those 12 or so people who went I think we end up graduating maybe six, seven or eight some like that. I know at least one guy I was friends with, couldn’t make it through at that time or have to drop out but then he subsequently went back and so good for him. I think he sold the reserves actually. But anyways, yeah, that was the process of, of getting there of starting it. And in my case, it was never a gigantic goal. My some people were gunning for it and they had to do it. You know, the kind of the two leaders in our class who I’m still friends with today, who are, you know, corralling the solid encouraging us all to, to do this pre Ranger prep, they they were gunning for they they knew this what they wanted to do. In my case, I just put one foot in from the other. And a lot of it’s just about not giving up, right. Ranger School they they call someone who quits not, they don’t say it. It’s you quit because you couldn’t, you know, handle The technical aspects of it or something like that, or because your muscles were too weak or something and then they say you quit because you are an LLM lack of motivation. There you go. Right. And so you put one foot in front of the other, you’re not guaranteed to succeed and graduate. Definitely not. But it is the main part, in my opinion of being able to graduate from Ranger School is putting one foot in front of the other.
 
Unknown Speaker  7:23  
Yeah, you know, it’s kind of related to my own experience, right. Like I was a marine. Yeah, right. And, and
 
Unknown Speaker  7:31  
there’s statistics somewhere like I heard this before I joined maybe it changed in the last 20 years. But before I joined, I remember seeing or hearing a statistic, talking about like, one in five recruits to enter boot camp don’t make it
 
Dan Kanivas  7:47  
right.
 
Unknown Speaker  7:49  
And for the Marines, you know, it’s one of those things where, you know, you’ll be able to do the physical stuff right, as long as you can pass the minimum physical fitness tests. Which is like three pull ups, you know, 60 crunches in a second, like a five k in like less than 20 minutes or something. Haha. It’s not like extreme right? As long as you can pass those minimum Pft requirements. You know, it’s really more mental than anything short.
 
Dan Kanivas  8:15  
Yeah, absolutely. I think a lot of a lot of military training military schools are very mental, very psychological. And that’s intentional. that’s intentional. You do leave Ranger School and this is not a new sentiment that I’m expressing other people express this to you do leave Ranger School, if you pass it feeling like you’re fairly impervious to things that life can throw at, you know, for sure.
 
Put it lightly right
 
through there and you’re just like I could do anything. Exactly. Superman. Exactly. Exactly.
 
And so
 
that that is the whole intent. That’s the whole intent, right of any Military School. And so last thing you want is somebody going into,
 
you know, going into fire potentially with any sort of self doubt. Right, right. And that’s hesitation. Yeah, killing,
 
right? That’s completely the idea and the military, US military is fantastic at training people to be able to do those sorts of things to act against your basic instinct of self preservation and do things that are essential for the survival the team the accomplishment of the mission. Absolutely. So anyways, that was me at Ranger School, which took me a little while to get through to get through it right away. I didn’t I wasn’t a true blue just pass every phase the first time ago. took me a little while but I got through. And that’s perseverance and resilience. There you go there. Yeah, that’s right.
 
There’s a lot of bunch of character. There you go. That is one way to look at it.
 
And then
 
for airborne school, a lot of people go to Ranger School. Ready, everyone qualified meaning they’ve successfully pass airborne school but in my case I did and I got sent to Ranger School first. Okay, basically once you pass Ranger School, you’re already at Fort Benning when you when you finish up which is the home of the infantry and also the home and airborne school and they’re going to give you the the people who are responsible for processing you give you orders airborne school after that, because oftentimes those two things go together and there were major go, you know, submissions go together. Hands, they generally had extra slots to give right there had at Fort Benning and so I just got a slot for the next one. And so, typically every school certainly is an intense school, you’re jumping out of airplanes, right? And safety is paramount and taking care of, of your buddies your teammates is paramount and certainly the instructors there are not not kind about any any infractions, right i’m sure but given the experience, I just previously gone through Ranger School. Everyone’s school is relatively easy. And so I I use it as mainly a three week vacation.
 
So you got your degraders go
 
right through here. Yeah. So yes,
 
yeah, I wouldn’t have felt that way that I’m not just into that experience, but because I had it felt that way to me. It’s all about relative intensity. who’s
 
Unknown Speaker  11:23  
struggling and you’re like,
 
Dan Kanivas  11:25  
yeah, I wouldn’t go that far. We’re still I still out there in the you know, the in the Georgia heat and in June, but
 
yeah, I all due respect to everybody. Yes, of course.
 
Of course, you know, it’s all relative. Like you said, That’s right. It’s all relative. It just happened to be that I was coming out of situations. Yeah, right. Exactly. So and yeah, and that was the that was my training in the military took a year for me to get through six months of my Artillery School and then Ranger School and airborne school and there’s some kind of downtime in between all these things. So yeah, it’s been a year and training. And then they sent me off my first actual duty station, which was Korea where, again, the privilege of serving for two years. So we’re so so this was near the DMZ, right? Yes. So at the time, the I’m not sure where where everyone’s station now. But at the time I was stationed north of Seoul, but not quite the DMZ at two different bases, camera cloud and camp Casey. Who my dog’s name after, by the way, at those two duty stations, I served with the second Infantry Division the whole time, but specifically the artillery unit that I was with that camp Casey was one free field artillery, which has rocket launchers mlrs multiple launch rocket system rocket launchers as its primary weapon system.
 
Unknown Speaker  12:54  
So we’re sort of getting an understanding of like, where about you? I mean, you said you’re near the DMZ. Belinda gap. Can you maybe show me on a map? So yeah, sure. So So audience listening at home, you could just just kind of visualize
 
Dan Kanivas  13:06  
Google Maps and zoom in on soul, which is towards the northwest of South Korea.
 
Unknown Speaker  13:13  
Yeah, I’m looking at it as it’s I mean, I’ve been to Seoul yet. So it’s it’s literally like, what 20 miles or something?
 
Dan Kanivas  13:19  
Yeah, from from the border borders and soul as well within artillery range of the North Korean artillery. That’s your order. And as a result, that means all the American troops and rock republican troops, who are north of Seoul, also within archery range of the North Korean guns, and so that’s one of the 49th parallel?
 
I think so i think so. I know 77 I think so. Yeah. And so you see this region blue right here. Yep, that was work. That is where camera cloud is located. And so I was stationed there for a little bit and then further north and Tom to john bears were kept Casey’s located where I was stationed for my second year. Huh, yeah, so that’s literally I mean, that was like, probably no more than like 20 miles. Yeah, it’s it’s pretty short. It’s it’s not a lot of distance. And while you were stationed in Korea, you also had the opportunity to do the JSA tour, if you saw these at the J stands for Joint Security Area, and you saw the news footage about Donald Trump crossing into North Korea. Yeah, that’s exactly where you where you do it. And so you can as a US service member, go and visit there and take a tour and you know, the US service members and current service members who are there, both maintaining the area and protecting the area will take you on a tour of the area. So they
 
Unknown Speaker  14:41  
allow you to cross the border,
 
Dan Kanivas  14:43  
technically, I’ve crossing North Korea technically, yeah, what they do is there’s these buildings, which again, you can see in the footage with Donald Trump. They’re these buildings where the negotiations between the two sides of historically happened. These buildings are bisected by the border by the actual border. So it
 
Unknown Speaker  15:00  
isn’t like a demarcation line or something like that. Yeah,
 
Dan Kanivas  15:03  
there is if you look at the pictures, you can see there’s a line. And so what the on the tour, what they’ll do is they’ll take you on the tour, and they’ll go, one of the Korean guards will go and check the building and go lock the far side door that’s in North Korean territory. And then you go inside the building, and when you’re inside the building, you can see all around the building and technically crossing the North Korea. You know, it’s interesting, because I’ve heard so many stories of like, you know, North Koreans trying to defect and crossing the border and right, you know, getting shot or something like that, right. So like, you know, so everything that I’ve heard throughout the years is like, the DMZ, like that line border is like the most dangerous border in the world, because there’s never officially the words never officially right. It’s still under an armistice. And so it is they’re there. It’s a heavily guarded border. You wouldn’t cross there at the GSA because there’s a lot of attention at that location, but I imagine there are other points along the border where there the defenses are softer. It’s less monitored at any given time. Also, defectors go through China’s right Russia. Yeah. Because both of those countries border North Korea Well, I’ve heard there’s actually a whole like, almost like an underground railroad to us like an American. Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But there’s you know, there’s like this whole network of people that like help get people through Yes. The northern border Yes. Through China. And and yeah, maybe down to like Southeast Asia or something like that. Back to the south. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. That’s that’s exactly how that underground railroad works.
 
Yeah, in essence, right very much. Yeah.
 
I wonder like so. So you cross over the border. Right. And
 
Unknown Speaker  16:52  
so what was the experience level you said heavily heavily guarded is it also like
 
Dan Kanivas  17:00  
You know, let me put it this way. When I was living in China, yeah. All right, I was in Beijing. I’ve got a lot of friends that have visited North Korea, right? Americans English, other expats, right? Americans can only fly in. Okay, for example, now that drive into the Chinese border can take the train to the Chinese go, right. I forget the name of the city dumb down or something. Okay. But if you’re if you’re English, you can take the train, okay. Yeah. If you’re American, you have to fly in.
 
Unknown Speaker  17:35  
And from what I understand, like it’s the most
 
Unknown Speaker  17:39  
eye opening like, surreal.
 
Dan Kanivas  17:42  
Yeah, that’s what everyone says. Yeah.
 
Right. You know, like, it’s one of those things where you can only go the tour group. Yep. And you do absolutely everything. Yes. That they tell you. Yes. You don’t do anything else. Right. I’ve got some friends at random jogging marathon. Wow. Right, which they’ve done every year for the last, I don’t know, five years at least. Okay. Yeah.
 
But it’s one of those things where the North Koreans run first.
 
Okay, so that was so they went
 
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
 
Unknown Speaker  18:17  
Um, but I’ve got friends that have done that and I’ve got it. I’ve actually got a friend. I think he’s still in Beijing, but he owns and operates this tour group in North Korea. Yeah. In fact, he actually he was the tour group operator that was heading this group in which our warm beer was okay arrested right
 
Dan Kanivas  18:46  
for potentially doing
 
okay apparently apparently what happened is he tried to steal the posters haha right right propaganda. Right, right. Right. We don’t really get it all right, like it’s just kind of a Yeah. I know some people that have significant experience God, that’s the point that I’m making. So when I hear that it’s like a surreal experience, you know, I’m just kind of curious if you’ve had anything similar like that. And your experience crossing the border, even though it may have been limited since you’re in this building. No, no, I did not have any experiences like that every. I think most people who have that JSA Joint Security Area experience is going to be very similar to mine. Yeah. It’s very scripted. Designed to be that way. Yeah. It’s still a singular experience a unique experience, because there’s not too many other places in the world where exactly right there may be not there may not be right. But it’s not anything like actually going on and run a marathon there. That’s, I can’t imagine what that’s like, well, but even something like that, like from what I hear from what I’ve heard, I’m like, as soon as You land or arrive in North Korea, the police or the guards, whatever. They’ll take your phone and they’ll go through all your photos. Yeah, I’m sure it makes sure that there’s nothing that’s like wouldn’t be in line with the North Korea’s values. Yeah, I’m sure. And I guess they check your photos, you cameras and all that stuff as you’re leaving. Yeah. Make sure you’re not you know, it makes you like there’s there’s apparently there’s only one way you can take pictures of the cheerleaders. Okay. Right. Things like that so bad. So if you’re like, even veering off from that a little bit, you’re screwed. Yeah, yeah. I this is not a level of risk that I would be comfortable taking but more power to the people who want that sort of adventure in their lives. You know, it’s funny, as a couple of my friends were like, yo, let’s do the Pyongyang marathon. And I’m like, Oh, that sounds sweet. Let’s do it. Like I can all fall in line and do absolutely everything that you know, not color out of the lines of short, right. And I put a message on Facebook. I was like, I think I’m gonna go to North Korea and my mom and my older sister We’re reaching out. Yeah, sure. You’re like, Oh my god, Brian, you’ve done some like, you know, you’ve done some crazy things in your life, but please don’t do this. Right. Right. So I buckled in our didn’t go. Yeah,
 
yeah. But
 
yeah. So what do you think you’re kind of bringing back to this this DMZ thing? You mentioned? You know, Donald Trump stepped over? Yeah.
 
Unknown Speaker  21:24  
What do you kind of make of all of that sort of curiosity? I don’t have much an opinion on it.
 
Dan Kanivas  21:31  
I’m not a Trump supporter. Yeah.
 
And so to political rights, but it is a historical moment. Yeah. I don’t know. How much intention was behind it. I don’t know generally what his strategy or lack thereof is with North Korea. Yeah. All I know is I’m not a Trump supporter in any way, shape, or form.
 
Yeah, no, I mean, sit here. Yes. In here. Right. You know, I feel like he’s
 
Unknown Speaker  22:01  
He ramped up this crisis unnecessarily, my opinion. Sure.
 
Unknown Speaker  22:06  
And now he’s going to try to find a way to put it back the
 
Dan Kanivas  22:08  
way it was before. Yeah, my claim to victory. Sure.
 
Unknown Speaker  22:11  
Sure. Like you said, With so many other just
 
Unknown Speaker  22:16  
sorry, anyways, we can we can move on from that.
 
Unknown Speaker  22:20  
What other stuff did you do? As an army officer? Like where like, were you? Were you other places as well, or So you mentioned you’re there for like two years?
 
Dan Kanivas  22:29  
Yes. How long were you in the service overall, so four and a half years in active duty. So I mentioned one year and training two years in Korea, where most of the time not the whole time I was actually doing an artillery job. I was also generally generals aid for a little bit. And then after that, I got orders to go to Iraq on a military transition team and what those what those teams are MIT teams for short and acronyms, everything and military, of course, on the MIT team, we were responsible for training Iraqi security forces. They army be the police so that we could eventually pull out. Right? They can be self sufficient. And so this was back in 2008. I got I got the orders 2007. But I deployed in 2008, after some training at Fort Riley, Kansas. And while you have questions, yeah, well, I’m just thinking like 2008 we’re working with the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Was that during like the counterinsurgency plan, or Yes, it was, it was during the surge, sort of, and so the unit, I believe, the knit team that I believed, was just coming down off the surge, they’ve been there for the surge, and I was relieving them. And so luckily, I think history will show this to be true. It certainly felt that way to me over there, the search worked, it worked, the additional deployment of troops and also more importantly the deployment of a strategy to Solve the root problem of or help solve the root problem which has the root problem of what was going on in Iraq at the time, which is that there are a lot of unemployed, underemployed, specially males, so young and otherwise desperation, right, who couldn’t feed their families because previously they had a source of patronage that the US took away. The US restored a lot of that patronage hired the sons of Iraq and things like that to pay them essentially to not attack not just us, but also their fellow countrymen and provide some life security duties. And that in conjunction with additional us troop deployment, actually did the trick. And so when I got to Iraq in 2008, I spent the year in 2008 2009, doing training for two different Iraqi army units. One didn’t really need us anymore, the mission was essentially considered More or less accomplished, they were trained. And so we spent about six months down before I was sent up further up north east to a brand new unit in her cook. And this is where I most of my experience I remember Matt and most of my experience there, it’s more vivid there, where we’re trying to help stand up a brand new unit. And try to help them do simple things like get concertina wire to string around their perimeter what is concertina wire? So is barbed wire, the military version of the spiral Yeah, the spiral with with the barbs on it. And it’s much more intense than what it’s what you see above president channeling. That’s right. So more intensity to see perhaps in a pasture. So getting concertina wire around the perimeter, getting their soldiers to get the proper uniforms, getting their soldiers to learn how to put on the proper uniform, so it’s like that, especially setting them up for success. So they self sustaining, right so basic things like that. I’ll say a few things about this, the rocky officers that we worked with, who almost by definition, to the last man had served under saddam almost by definition, not everybody, but almost all of them, because in order to be that senior had them experience they had to have certain understood. They were very professional in general. Some of them, you know, had less experience and they were more political appointees had less, were perhaps less professional that way. And most of them were very professional. They generally knew what they were doing under their own system. But like all bureaucracies they never could get all the supplies they needed. They can never get all the ammo, they need the training, they needed the manpower, the money, basically various
 
extremely important choke points,
 
random acts Exactly. So we may do with what what we had. Luckily, again, at the time, the search, I was beneficiary of the search hadn’t worked out pretty well. So my time in Iraq generally was pretty peaceful. Generally, let me ask you, kind of in general about the Iraqi people, yes. Right. So like, I didn’t go It was right. I was medically discharged or, you know, whatever you can listen to relentless and hear that whole story.
 
But I was discharged
 
one week before my you know, into Iraq right post 911 right. My It was the first to go to Iraq at we fought they fought to Lucia Yeah, right. It’s fucking crazy. Yeah. But I never got my I never got the opportunity to I was never there. Yeah, right. Let’s put it that way. So I’m just wondering, you know, like you hear on the news all the time about like, the terrorists and like, you knows, which ties in with like anti muslim sentiment and stuff like that. I’m just curious, like, you know, you spent like, a year and a half a year. Yeah. A year. Okay. Yeah. So you spent a year over there, um, any work with some of these generals and high ranking officers. I imagine you probably interacted with some of the people For the everyday civilians as well, a little bit or no, not as much, sometimes we did, but not not too too much. My job wasn’t that I wasn’t on patrols trying to learn about what was going on at the village chiefs house or something like that.
 
Unknown Speaker  28:16  
Well, I guess I mean, I’m not necessarily saying that I’m kind of thinking more like,
 
Unknown Speaker  28:22  
you know, what was your general impression of like the culture and like the people like at their core, even you know, even if they were some of Saddam Hussein’s henchmen or whatever you want to call it? I’m just kind of curious, like, what the, the, the the,
 
Dan Kanivas  28:38  
the overall feeling. I suspect that it would be the overall feeling that you would have in a lot of other countries that are foreign to you. Sure. So people will keep to themselves that they don’t have any particular business to be dealing with you. I mean, I was rolling around and heavily armored via with machine guns, yeah, right. So, but that’s dead. I can’t remember single instance where I did interact with people and folks for angry at me or there’s a mob yelling at me or something like that, that that never happened. I remember one time we broke down the middle of a small village, small town that was along the roads that the road that we often travel pass through, and we broke down. So we had to perform recovery operations to get our vehicle moving again, we essentially towed one of the back to the base. No one gathered around us and started anything, they just left us alone. And I think generally that is the attitude that most people would take, because there’s not a lot of advantage, I think be gained by interacting with heavily armed people unless you’re trying to harm them or otherwise have a mission related to That people just want to be left in peace, they want to take care of their families. Right. And they want the same things for their families that that we would want for ours. You know, it’s curious that you mentioned that,
 
Unknown Speaker  30:11  
you know, with your experience during more time, right.
 
Unknown Speaker  30:15  
You know, like, I’m always curious about this stuff, because in my travels, you know, like I’ve been to I traveled through Vietnam, for example. Yeah. Three weeks back back in Vietnam. Yeah. I lived in China for over three and a half years. Right. Right. And one of the things that surprised me most about Vietnam was how friendly Franco genuine, right? The people were and and how much they love Americans, right? We’re just people in general. You know, it’s very warm welcome, right people, right. And then like in China, I remember when I first came back home like six months after staying in China. I ran across this lady that I grew up with insurance or whatever. And she’s working. She was crying. What do you don’t know? Living in China whatever she was, she was China. China.
 
Dan Kanivas  31:04  
Brian, what are you doing there? So scared China’s communist like, are you okay? Right? And I don’t fucking love it there.
 
Unknown Speaker  31:11  
Yeah, you know like the government’s yes CCP, all that stuff right authoritarian whatever you want to call it right but most people don’t really pay attention to it yeah you know and
 
Dan Kanivas  31:23  
most people in general are very welcoming right you know right they want to share their culture with us right they share their food yes they want to drink with you Yes China’s heavily smoking country oh yeah they want to they want you to try their regional cigar yeah that’s why smoking right ridiculous but you know like this very warm welcoming people
 
right
 
Unknown Speaker  31:46  
and essentially what it what it sounds like you’re telling me is like you know, place in a rocky with all the propaganda that we receive, right.
 
Dan Kanivas  31:55  
People pretty much anywhere you go Yeah, whether it’s an anime Or whether it’s a country that we’ve fought before, right, or whether it’s a people that were fighting at that moment? Yeah. No, people are essentially people. They also seem stuff. Yes. Right. They have to they want to be able to provide for their family. Right. Right. They want to live in a safe environment. Yes. And they want to, you know, and they want to have a smaller group of family and friends, like people can be successful, right, like people want to have some sort of value, right? Yes, absolutely. 100% I think it’s human nature. Yeah. Cultures affect the expression of that. But ultimately, that’s human nature, and it’s going to be universal. I didn’t have the good fortune of interacting as much with the average rocky was over there, because my mission just didn’t take me there. But the Iraqis I did interact with, whether they were military, or they were soldiers that I was serving with advising or otherwise helping, or our interpreters who are with us. I generally had a good experience with them. And I have, you know, nothing. I have nothing negative to say about that interaction and I think that’s really I think that’s poignant. Because when you’re fighting in different you know, when you’re when you’re at war was another side easy for all that stuff to get lost or Yeah, because what whichever side you’re on Yeah, you know, they’re they’re propagating to turn this turn this group of people into an enemy or whatever right
 
dehumanised Georgia area, you know,
 
Unknown Speaker  33:38  
and, you know, you may you may have disagreements on like fundamental beliefs. Yeah, but at the core,
 
Dan Kanivas  33:44  
we’re all the same Yeah, and part of my mission was to do the exact opposite, that not g humanized but understand that we were fighting the same fight on the same side of most people anyways and That we had shared interests and shared values they gave us the military gave us a fair amount of cultural training before when when I, I can. Not today, but at the time, I tried to conduct as much of my conversations with my counterparts, my rapping counterparts in Arabic as possible. I always had an interpreter with me, obviously, I don’t speak Arabic. But I tried to pick up phrases here and there. That would be helpful. And that goes a long way to Oh, yeah, it goes a long way. Because
 
Unknown Speaker  34:34  
when I was in China, like, I took one lesson. Yeah. But everything else I picked on Yeah, you know, the urgency Chinese, China’s, but even if I could just say hello, yeah, he’s there like, Oh, my God, you know? Yeah. Yeah,
 
Dan Kanivas  34:48  
he does. Jessica. Yeah, it goes a long way, man. Yeah. Um, yeah, I think that’s I think that’s pretty interesting. I think that’s pretty interesting. But I do want to move on to some other stuff. Yes, absolutely. Let’s do it. We could talk about that and get into this deep as we want them off that as long as humanly possible. But I think the biggest point for me on that is, even though it’s pretty interesting ship, and you know, something that you’ve realized is that people are people are people. Yep. 100%. And I think that needs to be made more known. Yeah.
 
When you’ve got people like our current president threatening to wipe Afghanistan off the face of the map,
 
I did not catch him say that. But if he did say that, that’s very wrong.
 
So he was meeting with the leader of Pakistan. I think his name is momager off or something. Okay. I forget his name, except that they were in the White House or Oval Office. Yeah. Camera opportunity. Yeah. Like he’s been doing where he’s got this leader, but he’s really just talking about his own stupid agenda, of course, right. And he, someone else would want to understand Yeah, and he goes Look, I have all sorts of options with a canister. If I want to can wipe both can stand up the face the masses. He’s like, I don’t want to kill 10 million people.
 
Yeah.
 
But if I had to, I could do it awful just and so if gassed and comes back and they’re like, Fuck you, dude, how could you possibly say that? Yeah. And everybody else do like, yes, seriously. You know, it’s called soft power credit. Obviously we got that but you don’t talk about it incredibly bad but that’s but it’s unfortunately par for the course here.
 
Unknown Speaker  36:29  
No
 
Dan Kanivas  36:34  
lie
 
you know the scary thing too is that there’s a lot of writing articles, etc from new sources that are typically considered liberal that are saying that Trump will probably win reelection, which is just scary to think about. Well, I think right now. You know what, I’ll get Political or topical, but I think right now, the democratic field is so big. Yeah. Then it’s hard for that base. Yeah. To really consolidate around one person. Right. You know, right.
 
I think I agree. I agree with you. Yes.
 
Unknown Speaker  37:19  
So I think as there is candidates drop off, yeah. You know, that will consolidate itself a little bit more. Yep. Yep. And, you know, hopefully, hopefully that madman is dethrone. Oh, I I thoroughly hope so. You know?
 
Unknown Speaker  37:39  
Cuz I think he’s setting us back a long way.
 
Dan Kanivas  37:41  
Yes.
 
Unknown Speaker  37:42  
But, you know, we’ll have to wait to see you know, like, last last cycle, or last presidential cycle. You know, everyone thought that Hillary was gonna kill it.
 
Dan Kanivas  37:51  
Yeah, and right.
 
I remember where it was that night on election night. 2016. And I remember exactly what it was. was like and what it felt like in the depths of depression that we all went through then. So yeah, yeah. I remember
 
I was sitting in Beijing watching this thing on. I’m not coming for the next four years, maybe it?
 
Yeah, I contrast that with how I felt I was in Iraq in November in 2008. And I remember being in the dining facility at the time, we got news that Obama had won. And wow, the feeling of excitement then, was great.
 
Unknown Speaker  38:34  
Yeah, yeah. You know, what’s weird is like, I actually I was a registered Republican for like, 10 years, right.
 
Dan Kanivas  38:44  
I was always like, fiscally conservative, socially liberal kind of guy. Right. Right. Right. Not that any of this matters, but I voted for Romney. McCain. Sure. Right. So I didn’t vote for obama either time, but
 
Unknown Speaker  38:58  
I’ve since dropped my affiliate. But I also believe that brock obama is probably the best president we’ve had in our generation.
 
Dan Kanivas  39:06  
Yeah, I’m against down. I thought,
 
yeah, I mean, you know, there’s there’s positives and negatives that you can say about anybody, but that’s kind of how I feel. Yep. Um, so I want to move out, move on, like move out of military stuff a little bit. Because I know you’re up to Charlotte. Cool stuff. Yeah. I mean, you’ve managed to maintain your, your physical endurance activities, that kind of stuff, trying to try and Yeah, I know, you mentioned something about Mount Rainier. Can you tell me like what you’re planning to do? And like how this whole thing came about? Yeah, sure. So last year, one of my friends texts me and says, Hey, Dan, do you want to climb Mount Rainier? And I said, Okay, I’m interested. What What does that entail? He’s like, well, we can go with guides and will take us through it. It’s a four day program. It would be next August, but you have to decide now. And you have to decide, like right now basically today. And I said, Okay, let me go ask my wife. And so I said, she said, sure, that sounds good. And I said, Okay, all right, I’m in. I had no idea what it entailed. Mad zero idea would entail. So my friend who, who, who asked me to do this was my friend from the army who was in Korea. He just recently got out of the army. So he’s in much better shape than I have than I am. That I am. I’ve been out for almost 10 years now. But we’ve been training. We’ve been training for trying to summit Mount Rainier next month. So actually, tomorrow, we are headed out to Mount St. Helens, again for the second time this season, to do our last big training hike before renier when we attempt that, and so that is something I’m definitely looking forward To come, you know, one way or the other is going to it’s all going to culminate here in a few weeks. I’m looking forward to that. Of course, I hope I’m successful. Of course, I hope the weather cooperates and have the endurance and the fitness and the ability to, to make the summit and all that stuff. But ultimately, I’m looking for just general experience. Nice. Well, so let me let me clarify for our listeners right now. So we’re currently in the city of Seattle. Yes. Right. So Mount St. Helens and Mount Rainier. Those are the two of the those are the biggest peaks, right? renier is the tallest one here in the state of Washington. St. Helens. I don’t know where it ranks, but it’s up there. It’s up there. It’s up there. Yeah. So how, and they’re not far, like our two or three can drive north south to the state of Washington, you know, comfortably within hours, not two hours, but right. Yeah, they’re there. They’re all within driving distance. Seattle yes yeah okay yeah um so so they’re close by but they’re like huge yes you can see them on the horizon and see yeah at least right here yeah I’m Do you have an idea like how like how tall these are like their peaks or whatever yeah I don’t know St. Helens off the top of my head I want to say it’s like eight or nine simulate that but rain years over 14,000 Yeah, yeah. So it’s it’s definitely towards some serious altitude you when you do it, I’ve been told that I’ve done it yet that you do feel the effects of altitude sickness. Yeah, so it’s, it’s definitely going to be a challenge. So monster house is pretty good forever. Yeah, I think it’s it’s definitely on the training plan for a lot of folks and Mount St. Helens. Because it is popular for people to hiking, climbing have to get permits during the season in order to be able to Like it so I’m going with some other friends of same group of people who I’m training for a mountain right near plus, we’re adding on a few more to do Mount St. Helens again in two days oh cool yes two days yeah so Saturday is what we do is we will take off tomorrow afternoon from Seattle head down their bed down for a little bit and then start now time start to am something like that so that we can start start headed up to the top of St. Helens while still while still dark out. So cool out. And then if we’re lucky, depending on conditions we might get to crusade down St. Helens. So yes, this is the funnest part of and the payoff for climbing. So you get to the top and there’s snow. And what people have done rather than walk back down is you
 
ride the snow back down. Do that sounds awesome. Yeah. So so that that I’m excited for Hopefully that will happen. That’s what we did last time, but we also went May when I suspect there was a lot more snow. This time. There should still be plenty of snow dickless A down, but I don’t actually know.
 
Unknown Speaker  44:11  
How are you? How are you sliding out of the city like snowboards toboggans, just like the little $5 plastic sleds like the saucer slows. What do you
 
Dan Kanivas  44:20  
all see about some people bring their snowboard some people bring their skis. You can just do it in hardshell pants. You can even take them this is what I did last time you take a trash bag and just write down and trash bag. It works. And it’s sure as hell beats walking down. You don’t want to walk anymore after you stop. So yeah, standing down is is pretty fantastic.
 
Unknown Speaker  44:46  
But that reminds me of
 
Unknown Speaker  44:49  
doing these Nicaragua stories right now. That reminds me this time I somebody was a short volcano. Yeah, right. But as an active volcano, yes,
 
Dan Kanivas  44:58  
one of the world’s youngest volcano Yeah.
 
years old, one of the world’s youngest
 
or no, no, it’s only like 150 Oh really? Yeah. Oh wow. Okay, it actually sprung up out of the cornfield. 150 years old 950,150 Yeah, and apparently it glows like every 15 years. Okay. And when I was there it was around 15 years I don’t know if it’s it didn’t blow up when I was there but it was definitely active George George
 
gases and that the
 
somebody could see a little in the crater. Yeah, you could see gases coming up background. Yeah. So we went to the top of it. Yeah. And we had a fast way down to Yeah, we we with with the tour group. They gave us this backpack. Yeah. And you can choose between a snowboard looking thing. Yeah. And like a mini toboggan looking Yeah, nice. And we volcano sir. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Yeah. I like the idea. Doors a lot. I say of course, generally don’t say no and people want to do outdoorsy things but I almost never wake up and say to myself, I really need to get outdoors today. Yeah, I for better for worse live in my head a lot. I love to read. I love strategy games, things like that. Right? So I don’t feel compelled to go and get outdoors However, I’m almost never almost never regret it. Because there’s so much fun to be had outdoors, including all kinds of surface that’s awesome.
 
Unknown Speaker  46:32  
You know, like, like, well go sailing or surfing areas. I mean, what else can you do that is there’s only so many volcanoes. It’s not like they’re everywhere. Yeah, I mean, there’s they’re all over the world. Yeah,
 
Dan Kanivas  46:44  
but they’re only in very specific locations. Yeah, they’re very, they’re very cool experiences. A lot of people I’ve talked to about, you know, our pending not not very near adventure here are very curious about it because they do realize that Okay, yeah, there’s not a lot of other ways to kind of express this sort of desire to experience nature and experience your own backyard your own environments in a very in a unique and very singular sort of way. And so you just got to go out there and do it right and you have which is fantastic.
 
Unknown Speaker  47:25  
I’ll never forget that. That sounds fucking awesome. Yeah, I’m super looking forward to hearing about all of it. Yeah,
 
Dan Kanivas  47:31  
fingers crossed and all yours well, so yeah, I got a pretty good feeling about it.
 
Unknown Speaker  47:36  
You mentioned something about strategy stuff you strategy game.
 
Dan Kanivas  47:42  
That kind of caught my attention. Yeah, let’s dive into that. What do you what kind of games you into like? Yeah, like for me, me and my brothers and my dad. Yeah, we have a tradition every time we go home for the holidays. We play risk. Yeah, I get super into it. Yeah, sure. Like we used to like pretty much be offered blood fridge. Oh, sure. Yeah, sure. Um, I think there might have been some fistfights
 
at one point where my mom was like she took it away. Yeah. banned us from school. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I’m just curious, like, what can I hear the strategy stuff? What are the strategy games and other, you know, tell me like what kind of stuff to do. So,
 
growing up, definitely my favorite type of video game, for example, was role playing games. So RPG, Final Fantasy, configure that sort of thing. And if I had more time now I still play them because there’s no shortage. There’s no shortage of fantastic stories that are told through these through these media right through those mediums, right. And they get you so invested and they know how to get your message. These game designers know how to get invested in college it but a lot of poker for various reasons socially, also to try to attempt to win money mainly that things like That was a large part of my college experience. And also as a kid
 
12 years old, 11 years old that that sort of timeframe.
 
It was around 9495 96. So magical gathering has just come out
 
as we’re together. Yes. No unheard of that game. I think I’m a little bit older than you. I was, you know, I was active duty the Marines
 
to So, ya know, I was born in 1983. So I’m two years old. I remember. I think it was enough early and I school from you said seventh or eighth grade? Yes, sir. Put me in high school. Right. So I remember hearing about magic together. Yeah. But it was kind of at that point where it was. I don’t know. I just, I wasn’t. I wasn’t there at that point. Yeah. Oh, yeah. You know, yeah, it was a different spot. Oh, yeah. But my younger brother. Yeah.
 
Born in 83. Oh, yeah.
 
Huge. Yeah. Yep. Yep. And
 
Unknown Speaker  49:57  
shout out to Dave.
 
Dan Kanivas  50:00  
Being born at a certain time or being a certain age, and that timeframe made all the difference if I was actually a if I were actually a year holder or two years older, it may have worked out that you know, I made miss it just like you or I could have gotten in on even a little sooner. And had I done that then some of those cards from those era from that era, which I’ve missed by just about the year are invaluable. Now. They’re quite, they’re quite expensive. Yeah. Because it becomes collector, not collectors items, they will like baseball cards. Yeah, that that idea that they’re not being made anymore. So anyways, so I played for a little bit back in those days, as a middle schooler, and, you know, as the nerdy kid who was looking for something that was popular to do the time will mainly with other boys. This was you know, spoke to me strategy games and the the fantasy portion of it, you know, dragons and, and demons and angels and stuff like that. That’s pretty cool like that was that kept us interested but like move in other directions I got involved in sports before I became more active socially, especially with the fairer sex.
 
Unknown Speaker  51:22  
And so, you know, magic disappeared from my life. And that’s where I was at but just out of curiosity, do you recall like playing the game? Like, can you can you just I don’t know anything about it. Yeah, like, can you kind of give me like a high level like the highest level overview like how it works?
 
Dan Kanivas  51:40  
Yes, sure. So it’s a card game, that you take a set of cards and you build decks with them. And the idea is that you and your opponent is typically played one on ones. Typically your opponents are both Powerful wizards, and you cast spells to try to defeat each other. The game was actually created by a grad student, I believe that you patent a mathematics grad student that you can who had a lifelong fascination and love for games. And though as soon as Richard Garfield though he’s brilliant. This is going to be his legacy on Earth. Yeah. So not mathematics or anything else. Most likely it’s going to be this game, which is going to be very, very popular. It’s pretty impressive legacy. Yeah, absolutely. And he’s still active in making games and things like that. But anyways, so that’s the basic gist can use these cards, cast spells to try and defeat each other. And you know the game. Though I love the game a long time ago, it grew and grew and grew and grew. And in 28 teams last year, one of my friends who I worked with right out of business school, turned out that he has some cards. I talked to him about He’s like, hey, Dan, did you know there’s an online platform for this now that it’s pretty nifty? Yeah. And, you know 15 years yeah. 20 years 20 years? Yeah 20 years. Had I not had that conversation? I don’t think I would have rediscovered it but now it’s 100% of my guilty pleasures to play Magic the Gathering arena online. And it takes away a lot of the issues of having to play with paper cards not that I don’t like to play with them I do but it’s one of these things where you don’t have to do it in a room full of other people. You can do it from your bed or from your desk or on a train right just on your laptop and what I thought I liked before about the game the you know, the again, the fantastical aspects and then right, the the dragons of stuff actually turned out not to be the exciting part of the game for me. What I thought the game is how deep strategically it goes. It combines the the deep strategy of a game like risk or chess or settlers. And there’s like that right? Where each choice you make really matters. It combines that with randomness. Again, that’s, that’s involved in risk or poker, right where the top card of your deck that you don’t know what it is, will change the outcome of the game. And so the combination of those two things, the skill and the luck, the roll the dice and risk keeps people coming back for more because it makes every game you play different. Which is really really cool. And it goes very, very deep. So I’m, I am a newly newly reintegrated
 
Unknown Speaker  54:55  
essentially interesting you know, I’ve heard I’ve heard some people have been kind of researching It’s like dungeons and dragons and stuff like that. I dabbled with it, but I was never really like that into again. I was my brothers. Yeah.
 
Unknown Speaker  55:08  
But I’ve heard that a lot of people like kind of our age Yeah, but getting back into these things. Yeah, must be must be interesting to play against these people with that new perspective and that level of knowledge and experience that you’ve gained. Yeah, thought process
 
Dan Kanivas  55:23  
has got to be pretty cool, but you can get some like if you were to play if you had some buddies that like are in the area, and they have like a deck of cards it would probably be pretty cool to have like a dude night a dude Magic the Gathering, a person a friend, I guess I don’t want to be gender bias or whatever. For for better, for worse. And this is actually a big topic of discussion within the community. Not just magic, but gaming generally. Right. And gaming began to explode. And my wife works for a gaming company like it’s everywhere. Yeah. And so yeah, gaming is I’m Unfortunately, very biased towards males. And as a result, oftentimes, there are people in the community slash the companies and the, you know, the policies that inadvertently get set up not I don’t think it’s intentional, at least from a company standpoint. Our exclusive unfortunately, right, and they’re not not always integrative and not always inclusive. Right. And so there’s actually to magics credit, they really do try to be inclusive, you see the artwork, you see it in their messaging, you see it in how they treat people who are not inclusive. Yeah. Which is great. I think that’s fantastic, you know, because like I tripped up and said, Oh, dude, you know, it’s a good thing, but it’s finally not it shouldn’t be right you know, it’s games you’re having fun, right? strategizing, right, like you’re using your use my mind, right with a social environment. Like that’s not Yeah, I don’t I don’t picked up at all, I think this is a real issue. And it’s something that the community has to figure out. If you if you go have a board with friends, which like you said, it’s kind of you’re seeing a resurgence people around our age doing this and I think there’s several reasons for one. It’s if people have families, it’s a pretty low key way to get together and you’re not going crazy. Exactly super wasted. Right? Magic, right? When you casual beer, we’re not going to Coachella because we have kids. Right? Exactly, exactly. Right. So you know that that’s a great way to get together and like I just played actually last weekend. So there’s potatoes and friends around here. While we’re out in Walla Walla, you know, wine country was great. It was one of the highlights of the trip. It’s always fun playing with them. And so, you know, it’s a very enjoyable, easy to get into and social thing to do. I think this is why board games should be around for a long time. And also in this day and age with the digital space. That we always have. It’s so easy to sit there on your phone and be anti social right now, this forces you to be social kindness to analog ones. No, yeah, absolutely 100%. It’s really nice. It’s really nice go analog. And the more you do it, the more you’re like, wow, I want to do this again. And so I think that there are a lot of social games that and actually, Ron, you and I and your brother Dave, and whoever else wants to do we can do this together. There a lot of social games where there are spaces, especially here in the Seattle area, that are welcoming and really, really conducive to doing that. Like there’s one store I’m thinking about in particular that have a spot in Seattle also out in Tel Aviv, close to where I live, called Knox boarding house and they have a full on restaurant, tons of beer on tap large play games and yeah, it’s it’s it’s basically mecca for gamers. So we’re working on this pretty again, not to be gender bias. Sounds like a man came. He says and then you get there and you’re like wow, this is actually pretty gender diverse because a lot of people go there to play certain games that are not don’t have as much of a stigma or much of reputation as being just just mail. So again, sellers squad is
 
a good one. So I feel like when we drop this episode, I’m going to get a bunch of women that are like, what the hell What about us? But dude, guys, I’m like, super, like welcoming everybody. Oh, yeah.
 
Right. You have that reputation for
 
for being exclusive. And also Yeah, pretty inclusive. So when I say things like man cave and stuff, I’m not saying no girls.
 
impression that that’s
 
commonly understood. boardshorts for sure. So yeah, we’ll do that sometime. Actually, I have here because I knew this was going to come up at some point in the conversation I have here. two decks of cards here for union fellowship and other used to play and you can tap they can teach you how to play. Oh wow, these are what these things look like. I remember Dave had so many of these things yeah it was it wouldn’t even do this. Can you maybe like I’m just I don’t know randomly pulling out and kind of like Tell me like explain like what this thing is about all right it’s just a curious go and down.
 
Honestly we’re gonna
 
we’re not gonna open them play a game right now I’m just trying to you know, open my eyes open the ears for people that are listening on sharlee maybe so this is something that’s very basic in the game and I’m gonna I’m gonna look at it really quick. Yeah, so discards, says swamp. Yep. And then below it is like a, a design an image of a pretty hellacious looking swamp. Yeah.
 
That is what they’re trying to convey
 
lack of a better term.
 
Unknown Speaker  1:00:55  
Something like basic land, dash, swamp and 19 Right, and then there’s a skull yellow.
 
Dan Kanivas  1:01:02  
Yep. And so this is the part of the storyline of the game is that the wizards? Who are the powerful wizards who are doing against each other, using these spells need to pull the source of their magic from somewhere, okay, and it actually comes from the land. So if you are a black page, a black wizard, you can pull magic from
 
the swap. So how do I know that? I’m a black wizard? And I know it’s your choice.
 
It’s your choice. Yeah, it depends. Everyone kind of has different styles. And there’s five different colors five different sources of man they call it in this game. So the swamp is one planes or another islands or another force or another and the fifth one is mountains. So you have to like choose to specialize in one or can you just be like, Oh, no, I’m a rainbow or you can be a Rainbow Warrior. Absolutely. The problem with it is and again, this is part of the beauty of the design of the game. Is that The more colors you play, the less of a chance that you’re going to draw the right type of manner to be able to cast your spouse. And so let’s say you are in the world and you have cards of all five colors in your in your deck, but you only have these two lands in front of you claims in the swamp in your man, you have a green card, which is cast with farce, you can’t cast it. If you can’t cast spells you lose because I’m going to start casting spells. Yeah, kick my ass. So the more the more power you try to pack into your deck, the less consistent your decks going to be. And this is again, part of the reason why the game survived so long, these fundamental mechanics were built into the game for the various Gecko 25 years ago, and those things have not changed. And that is part of the reason why this this game has, you know, apparently, if the statistics are to be believed, is played by or has been played by almost 40 million people.
 
Unknown Speaker  1:02:58  
Yeah, wow. Yeah. That’s a couple of comments. Yeah, yeah. There’s
 
Dan Kanivas  1:03:03  
a couple of comments there. Yeah. Yeah. And again, this the digital platform is without it, I would not be. We would not be having this conversation but has a fantastic
 
job with it. But I see you shuffling the deck. And like I said, I’m not trying to give you a game right now. But yeah,
 
we’re on. Yeah. In the future. I want to play.
 
Dave, I’m coming for you.
 
Yes, I hope you guys enjoy. And this brings back some good memories for Dave and I also got some new ones for you. Yeah, cool. No,
 
Unknown Speaker  1:03:36  
I just said that. I think about who I saw. I was watching one of those late night talk shows. And this guy, this actor, Joe Manchin now I think was on and he was the one that was talking about how he’s super into
 
Dan Kanivas  1:03:51  
dungeons, right? Yeah.
 
Unknown Speaker  1:03:52  
And he’s married to Sofia Vergara. Hi. Yeah. And he mentioned how like, she was like, Oh, I want you like something like low key to do like, you know, take it easy. And you found a bunch of his Hollywood friends and he built this like DVD cave in their basement with like horns I’m like, yeah, yeah so I just sit there I go How cool would it be like even with like magic gathers and like actually create like your own little like
 
Dan Kanivas  1:04:21  
you know arena yeah you know yep yeah magic k yeah
 
Unknown Speaker  1:04:26  
right yeah basically your house so bring bring the dudes bring your friends or your
 
Dan Kanivas  1:04:32  
friends or your friends over Yeah, bring a keg
 
or a bottle. Yeah. Just like
 
destroys. So certainly some people have and again, as I mentioned there are at least two stores here in the Seattle area that have very conducive environments for that. And, you know, for a lot of people this is a very exciting thing, especially as I’ve gotten older as a kid, you know, I I bought heartless allowance that I had the board that my dad would give me for dropping off his card for that sort of thing at