Lightning strikes often with the King of Pirate 4x4 and Glitter, Erik “Camo” Linker on Episode 182

What do glitter and rockcrawling have in common? Only the lightning strikes of Erik “Camo” Linker – Camo is the co-founder of Pirate 4x4 and a good friend; we are thrilled to have him on the podcast (finally!)  Buckle up; you are in for an adventure. Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

7:26 – growing up in the era was magical; I tease my mom that we raised ourselves

15:34 – “the bad news is you don’t have enough credits to graduate, the good news is we don’t want you back”             

23:46 – Over the next 18 years, we turned the business into what everybody knows as the Glitter King 

28:40 – I broke my neck crashing, I was better at crashing than winning

31:20 – that was my first connection on Pirate with my fake internet friends became real

41:16 – we just went with the mindset of destroying sh*t

52:29 – the thing I’m most proud of with Pirate years is how it enabled so many people to make a business out of something they loved

1:07:37 – that’s what the internet is best at and Pirate was the best of the best

1:16:37 – the offroad angels (this is one of my favorite stories EVER!)

1:40:11 – the sale of Pirate 4x4

Special thanks to 4low Magazine and Maxxis Tires for support and sponsorship of this podcast.

Be sure to listen on your favorite podcast app.

Transcript

[00:00:01.060] 

Welcome To Conversations with Big Rich. This is an interview style podcast. Those interviewed are all involved in the offroad industry. Being involved, like all of my guests are, is a lifestyle, not just a job. I talk to past, present, and future Legends, as well as business owners, employees, media, and land-use warriors, men and women who have found their way into this exciting and addictive lifestyle we call Offroad. We discuss their personal history, struggles, successes, and reboots. We dive into what drives them to stay active in Offroad. We all hope to shed some light on how to find a path into this world that we live and love and call Offroad.

[00:00:46.120] 

Whether you're crawling the Red Rocks or Moab or hauling your toys to the trail, Maxxis has the tires you can trust for performance and durability, four wheels or two. Maxxis tires are the choice of champions because they know that whether for work or play, for fun, or competition, Maxxis Tires deliver. Choose Maxxis,Tread victoriously.

[00:01:13.000] 

Have you seen 4low magazine yet? 4low magazine is a high-quality, well-written, four-wheel drive-focused magazine for the enthusiast market. If you still love the idea of a printed magazine, something to save and read at any time, 4low is the magazine for you. 4low cannot be found in stores, but you can have it delivered to your home or place of business. Visit 4lowmagazine. Com to order your subscription today.

[00:01:39.220] - Big Rich Klein

On this week's episode of Conversations with Big Rich, a long-time friend, Eric "Camo" Linker, joins us. From glitter to hardcore rock crawling to pirate 4x4 to desert racing, moving boats around the world, and rescuing airplanes in Baja, Camo has more experience than most. This is going to be a real pleasurable interview for me to talk to Camo. We go back, well, to the early days of Offroading and Werock and Tin Benders and all that stuff, so the late '90s, early 2000s. Camo, thank you for agreeing to do this and letting everybody know. I'm going to let everybody know that Camo and I are actually sitting across from each other in his house at a table. This one is special. It's only the second one I've done like this.

[00:02:31.970] - Big Rich Klein

I like doing these so I can see the look in the face and play off of that. Camo, thank you so much.

[00:02:40.860] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, thank you, Rich. That was a very kind introduction. We'll start off with I turned you down the first two times you asked me to do it, which was weird. I can't even say exactly why I didn't want to do it, but a part of me felt like when we sold Pirate and I walked away from that world, it was behind me, and I wasn't really ready to… I wasn't really ready to talk about it. And maybe I'm still not. It's not that I'm bitter or anything. I mean, obviously, we did very well, and I've moved on past that. I guess I just wasn't ready to have a conversation that goes out to the world about it, is all. Right. Not necessarily what we're going to talk about. But from what I gather, we can touch on it. Anyways, you asked me again, and I think I said possibly, and you laughed and said way to commit. But at least possibly was a lot better than the two no's I gave you previously. So thanks for staying on it. I'm glad to be here. I did want to do it in person, one, because we do go back to the 90s.

[00:03:53.960] – Erik “Camo” Linker

We've known each other for a long time, both professionally and just as friends. We live in a pretty small community and where we basically grew up.

[00:04:07.090] – Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. The last 25 years of our life.

[00:04:09.680] – Erik “Camo” Linker

We've been through, at least the rock-crawling portion, journey on similar parallel lines and experience some of the same hardships and challenges and successes and at the same time, guts to watch it grow up and see what it became.

[00:04:28.310] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. And I think it's... I wanted to do this interview with you, first of all, because everybody is asking, especially after I did the Lance, When's Camo coming on? When's Camo coming on? Or after I did Bender? The guys that you were really tight with. You did say no a couple of times, and I did say it exactly a way to commit. I'm glad we got this to happen. The very first question I'm going to ask you is the same question I ask everybody, is where were you born and raised?

[00:05:03.200] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, I was born in a small town in Southern California, next to Pasadena, called Sierra Madre. But at a very young age, I moved to Moral Bay, California, which is near San Luis Obispo, small town of about 10,000 people. It's a beach town. It might be like one of the last, like Southern California small beach town. It's literally the same population, 10,000 population, as when we moved there in 1970. It's the same population. It's the no growth, I'll call them hippies, but very much a we're here, lock the doors, nobody else can come here and build. So it's still a small town, very popular tourist spot, obviously. But it was a pretty fantastic place to grow up.

[00:06:01.610] - Big Rich Klein

About how old were you when you moved there?

[00:06:03.830] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I think I was five when we first moved there. My mom, my brother, and I moved there. But my dad continued to live, because of his job, continued to live in Southern California for two years and drive up on the weekends. We lived with my grandma. Then when he finally moved up, we bought a house that is the house I grew up in. Yeah, such a neat place. If you've ever been to Morro Bay, and you mentioned Rob Park, it turns out, like later in life, when him and I became friends, I found out that their family has a house there. He grew up going to Morro Bay for the weekends and getaways and family vacations.

[00:06:48.930] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty awesome. I've surfed there one time. I had a girlfriend that went to college at San Luis Obispo. Calpoli. Calpoli.

[00:07:00.880] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's a fantastic school.

[00:07:02.410] - Big Rich Klein

I'd come up from Santa Barbara because I was going to college down there, and we camp at Avila and stuff like that. No, I went to Brooks Institute of Photography. Ah, Brooks. And then did some City College there as well.

[00:07:17.720] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I did not.

[00:07:18.200] - Big Rich Klein

Realize that. Actually, I trained commercial photographer. Product advertising was my degree. So yeah, a little different.

[00:07:26.050] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, growing up in Morro Bay was... Wow, it was magical. I think growing up in that era, let's face it, we're a little oldest, and I graduated from high school in the '80s, but it was the era of latchkey kids. You came home when the streetlights came on, and my parents were at work, and I teased my mom that we raised ourself. We were on our own, but we spent our days surfing and playing at the beach and screwing around on boats and fishing and basically growing up on the ocean.

[00:08:10.420] - Big Rich Klein

And a great lifestyle. I mean, that's the nice thing about that area is the way it's situated geographically, it's almost hard for it to grow any bigger.

[00:08:21.000] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, they call it the hidden kingdom for a reason, and it really can't grow bigger. Now that they have state water, I guess technically it could, but because of where it's at on the Coast, you're right, there's really not room to grow like the Southern California beach communities have. But really, it's the politics long ago that stopped the growth. I guess you would say I grew up being in a Republican household, and we might have been one of three and all of more obey. Because when I say hippies, what I really mean is it was pretty liberal place to grow up, but somehow I grew up a very much Republican. Nowadays, I think I'm indifferent to both parties. I can both pound sand for all I care. Let's just do the right thing, people forget your... Anyways, we probably don't want to go into politics.

[00:09:21.210] - Big Rich Klein

Politics and religion. Those are the two that are pretty hard.

[00:09:24.100] - Big Rich Klein

We'll.

[00:09:24.370] - Big Rich Klein

Stay away from those. You can't convince anybody to go your line if they're against it. That's just the way it is.

[00:09:31.260] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But because I grew up in a family business, we actually moved to Morro Bay because my grandmother moved there and started a retail store, and my mom, we moved there because it was growing so much. My mom moved there to help, and they turned it into a small chain of retail stores. So I grew up in a family business, and maybe it's that business background that I had that led more towards the Republican side of the fence. But definitely, not so much like as a kid, but I still own property there, my brother still lives there. But going back now, you definitely feel like an outsider, an outcaste being not liberal, driving a Prius around. I have.

[00:10:32.100] - Big Rich Klein

To admit this. I grew up in a very liberal household. My dad worked for the federal government. My mom was a teacher in medical profession, and growing up just outside of San Francisco, I think I changed politics or my ideals once I did get into business. When I worked for others, it didn't matter. I really wasn't, you know, growing up until I was in my mid-20s. I wasn't very political anyway. I didn't think about it. It wasn't something that was a driving force until I got into business for myself and then saw the hurdles that were thrown in front of me by the government to try to prosper as a small business?

[00:11:19.750] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Nowadays, I'm pretty much not political. I don't really think about it. But I will tell you that my two best friends that have been my best friends since first grade, they're both pretty much as liberal as they come. When we're together, it never comes up. It's not part of our conversation or thoughts or I mean, so. It's not something I'm so stuck on that I can't talk to them or even acknowledge their existence. But for the most part, I'm not political. School. I believe in what I believe in.

[00:12:03.310] - Big Rich Klein

And those are.

[00:12:03.670] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Your personal beliefs. I don't really care what side of the politics it is because it's just bullshit. Right.

[00:12:10.770] - Big Rich Klein

So let's get away from that and talk about those early years. Were you interested in school? Were you a good student or were you indifferent?

[00:12:20.030] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I was a terrible student. And because my parents were busy building a business empire, I don't want to say they didn't have time for me. We traveled for a bit. I've been very fortunate that even in high school, they took me with them and traveled the world. I've been around the world before I even got out of high school all over the… Every major city in the US. They would always take me on business trips. But they weren't real involved in my, I guess, education. I had one expectation, and that's that I would graduate. But short of that, I don't want to say they didn't care because I know they did, but they were hands-off. And it bored me. I don't want to sit here and tell you I'm too smart for them, but just it didn't suit me. At that time, we had, I guess, a nationwide-recognized automotive program at our school. The team that came out of our auto shop went to the national, believe it or not, they have national competitions, and had a street going where they won the top honors in automotive technician troubleshooting competitions back in Washington, D. C, they won it for something like eight years in a row.

[00:13:57.340] - Erik "Camo" Linker

And when they didn't win it, they were always in the finals. So we had this incredible auto shop. And I guess it was just a different time back then. I would not go to math class, and I would spend it in the auto shop working on my car. I'll never forget one time, you know how they call if you miss school? The office calls your parents and like, Why isn't your child in school? My mom literally said, Well, he left for school, but I know his truck wasn't running well. Have you checked the auto shop? And they went, What? Literally, the vice principal came walking into the auto shop and said, Your mom said you might be in here. Why aren't you in class? Well, my truck doesn't run, and if it doesn't run, I can't get myself to school. So if you want me to come to school tomorrow, I need to spend the day working on my truck. He literally said, Okay, turn around, left, and let me work on my truck for the rest of the day. Also, if you look at Google Maps, Morro Bay High School is literally built in the sand dunes on the beach.

[00:15:10.780] - Erik "Camo" Linker

When the windows in the classroom are open, you can hear the waves breaking. And more than one time, I've crawled out of the classroom window and would go out to my car where my surfboard was and just go surf rather. I mean, waves are good. I can't sit in class and listen to the waves breaking.

[00:15:32.890] - Big Rich Klein

Too much distraction.

[00:15:34.370] - Erik "Camo" Linker

And try to focus on algebra. So surfing and working on my car was more my distraction. But I did get the diploma. I did graduate. I think part of that helped me develop, I guess, the habit that I've been a lifelong learner where… The things I'm interested in, I'll dig in deep and learn about it, and even before the internet, I would get the books, I would go meet the people. I would get involved in that subject to learn about things that I was interested in, whether... I mean, not just automotive things, but it could be geography, it could be any number of subjects. I find myself, like all my life, I've been, I guess, a student of learning. No, I wasn't very good at school, early graduated. If I ever even knew my GPA, I'm guessing it was, I don't even know what F-plus would be, but like a 1.1 maybe? I don't know. Not very good. As a matter of fact, I was short one credit in English. Vice principal called me in my senior year, said, Well, I've got some good news and bad news. The bad news is you don't have enough credits in English to graduate.

[00:17:03.010] - Erik "Camo" Linker

The good news is we don't want you back, so we're going to overlook it, and you're going to get your diploma, and you're not coming back.

[00:17:10.610] - Big Rich Klein

Different times. They didn't make you take one English test? Something easy.

[00:17:15.580] - Erik "Camo" Linker

They didn't make me take a test. They didn't want me in summer school. They just wanted me gone.

[00:17:20.670] - Big Rich Klein

I got my English credits in high school by being on yearbook staff. That was the easiest way to do it. I didn't realize that that's what was happening, but it worked, and didn't have a problem with that. Now I'm a publisher of a magazine. There you go. But luckily, I have a really good editor, Shelley.

[00:17:40.130] - Erik "Camo" Linker

That helps. Having a good partner, anything, makes a lot of things possible because none of us can have all the skills to be at all. Correct. Whether it's a business partner, a marriage, magazine, whatever, having a good partner is definitely key to success. Agreed.

[00:18:00.340] - Big Rich Klein

So after high school, what was the next step?

[00:18:06.050] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, I certainly had a strong interest in cars and working on cars, building my, we'll just call them truck, or Baha Bugs, actually. I was big into Baha Bugs. And so it seemed like the right thing to do would be go to, what is it, UTI or basically the automotive trade schools. They came and visited me at home and do the thing where they sit down with the parents and I signed up for it. I was going to go, I was all signed up. At that time, I was working at the graveyard shift at the gas station. I was flipping, also been a snowskier all my life because even though I lived at the beach, Fresno, Sierra Summit, or China Peak, as it's actually called, is only two and a half hours away. So grew up loving skiing, flipping through the magazine one day and I see the ad in the back of Ski Magazine, room, board, and annual ski pass, plus I think minimum wage at the time was like 3.35, and McDonalds was paying 12 bucks an hour. You could work night shift. You got a ski pass, and you got an apartment.

[00:19:27.470] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I called the next day and they're like, All right, you're hired. I literally loaded up my stuff and I said, You guys, mom and dad, I'm not going to automotive school. I'm moving to Vail, Colorado, to be a ski bum. I spent three years there, skiing 100 days a year.

[00:19:45.140] - Big Rich Klein

Working at McDonald's?

[00:19:46.860] - Erik "Camo" Linker

That was pretty short-lived.

[00:19:48.130] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[00:19:49.870] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It was an interesting experience working for McDonald's just because it's such a refined process, and it was actually a neat experience. I'm glad I did it, but it turns out in Vail, they're desperate, everywhere's desperate for employees, and there was just better jobs to be had once you were there. Got to know a few people and got in on the inside. Everybody's trying to recruit good employees. It was pretty easy to find a better job that also included a ski pass. So you.

[00:20:30.670] - Big Rich Klein

Loaded up your stuff, I'm assuming, in a Volkswagen, in a Bug?

[00:20:34.810] - Erik "Camo" Linker

No. At the time, I had a Baja Bug that wasn't going to drive to a thousand miles to Vail. And one of my best friends that I mentioned earlier, their family car was this Toyota station wagon that they had the entire time we were kids and growing up, that was their family car. And they gave it to Jim when he turned 16, and he promptly overheated it and blew it up, and it had been sitting in his backyard. And I found myself in need of a car, and he was away to UCSB going to college. And I went over and his mom was there, Carla. And I said, Carla, Jim said I could buy the Toyota. And she's like, buy it. It's blowin up. It's no good. She's like, You can have it. Here, take, get it out of here. I want it out of here. And so she gave it to me. I drove it home and put a new head on it, put some new tires on it, and literally drove it back and forth to Vail over the next three years, probably five times. The heater never worked in it. The entire time I'm living there, there's no heater in my car.

[00:21:47.160] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But I was also one of the few people there that have a car. I don't know why it just turned out that way.

[00:21:55.720] - Big Rich Klein

You had an ice scraper for the inside of the windshield?

[00:21:58.270] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yes. Okay. You know.

[00:22:00.450] - Big Rich Klein

The routine. Well, I had a '54 Volkswagen bug, and would go from the San Francisco Bay area up to Tahoe to go ski as soon as I turned 16. Because I was in a ski club that from the age of eight or nine years old, and would go every weekend up to Squaw Valley. As soon as I got my car, it was like, Okay, out of the ski club, I'm driving myself.

[00:22:24.330] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, I drove my Baja Bug, skiing enough times, which was only two and a half hours to know that it wasn't going to make a 24-hour road trip to Vail reliably. While I'm pretty good at fixing stuff, I needed a little bit better transportation.

[00:22:40.730] - Big Rich Klein

Makes sense.

[00:22:41.470] - Big Rich Klein

The Skadoo, as it got named, served me well.

[00:22:44.610] - Big Rich Klein

So working at Vail, you worked on the mountain?

[00:22:51.530] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I did a number of jobs from... I was a ski instructor for a while, which was a pretty prestigious job. It certainly got you the chicks. The problem was during the day, you were teaching other people how to ski, not skiing. I went through a number of different jobs until I got on mountain night crew for the mountain. I could work at night, ski all day, and then work at night. Yeah, it's not strenuous work. You ride a snowmobile around, you look at a few sprinkler heads, and it's a pretty kickback job with great benefit. I found my niche there that let me ski every day and pretty much slack at night. Slack off. Not a lot demanded from me for work. It was a good ski bum job.

[00:23:45.520] - Big Rich Klein

Perfect.

[00:23:46.860] - Erik "Camo" Linker

That suited me well. My dad, every year, both my brother and dad came out to ski and just... I'm living there. They had a place to stay. The third year that I was there, my dad mentioned to me that they had started a wholesale side of their company. By accident, it grew bigger than they could really manage and still be focused on their core business. They were going to shut it down. He said, If I wanted to move home, I had to pretty much, here at yours, take it, do what you will with it, fold it, run it to the ground, make it thrive, whatever you're going to do with it. I talked to my brother, who was still actually in high school at the time, and we decided we'd be partners in it back to the partner thing. Over the next 18 years, we turned it into, I guess, what everybody knows as the Glitter King. 110 employees doing millions of dollars a year with companies like Walmart, Michaels, National Retailers, and was the Glitter King. Sold literally tons and tons and tons of glitter, like unimaginable amount of glitter. For more things that you could ever even dream that glitter is used for.

[00:25:19.730] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But of course, to the rock-crawling world and certainly on Pirate 4x4-.

[00:25:25.080] - Big Rich Klein

Glitter bombs.

[00:25:26.580] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Glitter bombs and stripper glitter is the thing to explain, but it's in so many products. It's a pretty phenomenal little niche product that who would think that you could sell millions of dollars worth of glitter and have 100 employee company with glitter? It was pretty wild.

[00:25:48.220] - Erik "Camo" Linker

All there in San Luis Obisbo?

[00:25:50.990] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Actually in Morrow Bay. Morrow Bay, okay. It was the largest private employer in the city of Morrow Bay.

[00:25:59.060] - Big Rich Klein

That's pretty good.

[00:26:00.940] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's pretty good. It was interesting being a big fish in a little pond. It was hard to hide from just about anything because small town atmosphere and everybody wanted to think they knew your business. It was interesting. I was ready. Looking back on it like I was ready to get out of that town in that situation. But it's one of those things once you leave, you realize what you had. It's pretty hard to live there because it's so expensive. The cheapest piece of property, which is literally a tear-down house that's uninhabitable, is over a million dollars.

[00:26:41.330] - Big Rich Klein

It's where wealthy people go.

[00:26:44.970] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's where wealthy people go to retire. It's hard to live there and be working class person. Once you leave and sell your house, it's hard to get back to. Luckily, I still have property there. Possibility, I could move back there someday, but still have family, still have roots, still go there. Cool.

[00:27:09.000] - Big Rich Klein

While you were doing Glitter is when you got into Off Road? How did you get started in Off Road?

[00:27:18.510] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Going back to high school in my Baja Bug, if I wasn't in an auto shop working on it, like I said, the high school is literally built in the Sand Dunes, which means I'd be out wheeling my Baha bug in the Sand Dunes of Moray Bay, which was illegal. But back in those days, it really wasn't like you could just go do it. I spent a lot of time just Baja bugging around out in the sand dunes. And quite often would go to Pismo Beach. I'd cut school in the morning and me and a couple of friends, or sometimes just by myself, I'd go to Pismo and just go wheeling all day by myself for a couple of friends. And then that led to an interest in desert racing, Baja Bugs. I followed it through Hot VWs Magazine and started going to offroad races in Las Vegas. My dad went with me one time and there was a race car for sale. It was a 1600 Volkswagen based car. It was pretty much a Beater, but it was also pretty cheap and had some money saved up. My dad saw it and thought it was pretty cool and said, I'll split it with you.

[00:28:40.640] - Erik "Camo" Linker

If you have half, I'll pay the other half. Let's buy that thing and race it. And so we did. I got into off-road racing, and of course, was completely overtaken by that. I got into off-road racing, even though living in Morrow Bay is not exactly known as the off-road capital of the world. Very much got into off-road racing and did that for years. And broke my neck, as most people know, crashing, which is, I guess, I'm good at that. Probably better at crashing than I am winning. But whatever I crashed broke my neck, slowed me down a little bit, but I'm pretty dumb and kept racing anyways. But at some point, I had to slow down. I think the very earliest of rock crawling, actually, when Marlin Crawler came out with the first Crawler box, my buddy had one of the, I'll just say, one of the early prototype units in his Toyota. He took me up to the Sierras, camping. We literally went up to strawberry Lake, if you know strawberry and swamp Lake, went rock crawling, and instantly it clicked. It's like, I can still go wheeling. I can still have fun offroading.

[00:30:05.010] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But my offroad racing, because of my neck, was done. I was paying too steep of a price and the pain was too great. But rock crawling hit me just as hard as desert racing. I was able to… For me, it's always been as much fun to build them, to work on them, to maintain them, prep them as it was to actually go race. Like, racing in a way is very selfish because it takes a whole team to work on and make a race car and get a race car ready to race. But yet only one person gets to drive it, so it's selfish. But with rock crawling, I could work on it mostly all myself, build it mostly all myself, and go drive it. I loved it and literally took one time going camp and do it. I started building one. I guess the rest isn't history because there's a lot of stories behind it. But I instantly became a rock crawler building Toyotas. I got a toyota out of a junkyard. A lot of you probably remember my Green Toyota with the exoskeleton, but it had the flatbed cage on the back where my kids would ride and the toolbox was on the side.

[00:31:20.030] - Erik "Camo" Linker

That was the very earliest days of Pirate when there was only maybe 100 people on there. And Tim Bender, Rob Park, was one of them. They were from Ridgecrest and Surprise Canyon at the time was a big attraction. They had posted their club. We're going to go there. Anybody want to join? Of course I do. Like, okay, I'll go. Out in the middle of the desert, they're parked on the side of the road waiting for me early one morning. It's like where we decided to meet. I'll never forget, I was with my ex-wife at the time, and as we're pulling up, they're a pretty motley-looking crew from Ridgecrest We'll just leave it at that. They're a little rough looking and some pretty beat-looking rigs. My wife's like, Just keep driving. Just keep going. Don't stop. Don't stop. I'm like, No, man, I talked to them online. They're cool. They're cool. They'll just be fine. But she's like, No, don't stop. We hit it off instantly. It just went from there. That was my first connection on Pirate with my fake internet friends became real. To this day, I still consider them a true friend. We've done a lot together, had a lot of great experiences, and happy to see him grow in his field and find success and follow his career.

[00:32:53.640] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But I can say that about a lot of people I've met through Pirate, watching them succeed. Right. In their business. It was a unique perspective on Pirate, watching these companies start up as nothing in their garage. One of them that I guess recently found out about was rigid bites. He started on Pirate, just making them in his garage and selling them on Pirate. And ultimate, actually, we were in Baha at a race. And he started telling me the story, and I wasn't even aware of it. And he sold that thing for just a hundred million dollars. And it literally started because of Pirate in his garage. He's like, No, I want to thank you, Cammo. Without you, this never would have happened. I was blown away. It was wow. I knew that it was supporting all these other companies doing things, but just how much impact it had, I don't think I realized at the time. Until years later, hearing the stories. But for some people, Rob Park, for example, because we've been friends and I actually introduced them to Dan at Blue Torch to get his first, I guess, real job in the industry.

[00:34:17.890] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I was part of that, so I was aware of it. But it impacted a lot of people, a lot of companies.

[00:34:23.610] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. It was a way for rock crawling to get the word out that it was becoming a sport instead of just a hobby?

[00:34:36.960] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I think it had a lot to do with it becoming a sport. I mean, you had your efforts at the time. Lance and I were just in a place where even we're just two idiots that caught lightning in a bottle. We were just lucky. Right place, right time. It's not that we were so smart and figuring it out. We just happened upon something that was magic special.

[00:35:05.660] - Big Rich Klein

The right time, the right.

[00:35:07.170] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Place, the right people. It happened to us as much as it happened to everybody else. So it's hard to be aware of just how much impact it had at the time. Certain aspects I realized at the time, obviously, like when we'd promote an event, even yours, for example, and people would show up or know about it because of that. So yes, right place, right time.

[00:35:32.470] - Big Rich Klein

For sure. Those pirate years doing... I don't know if event coverage is really what to call it to begin with. It was more like going out and experiencing the events and talking about it and showing it. It wasn't like you guys... I don't know if it was like you guys went out going, Okay, we're going to go out and do this as event coverage, as a production, so much as just experiencing it.

[00:35:59.620] - Erik "Camo" Linker

We very much had the goal of doing event coverage. It's hard to remember what the technology was at the time because technology changes so fast. We were always trying to do more than technology allowed, but we very much were trying to do event coverage. We had this dream of what we wanted it to be is a live production event coverage. We were always fighting with the technology available. Also, there's several things that I'm pretty proud of that I feel like we pioneered that is normal today. But at the time, was practically impossible, certainly on the budgets that we had to do the best we could with event coverage. Our goal was event coverage. Maybe at times it didn't seem like that. We were just doing the best we could with what we had and trying to achieve something that didn't exist at the time.

[00:37:01.930] - Big Rich Klein

When you first came to me and asked about if I would be interested in producing or having another class of vehicles at the We Rock events, and it was the F-toys. You guys put together, and I said, Yeah, as long as you guys run the rules, I don't have to worry about the cars are teched properly, and they fit into all the group. As long as the group took care of that, I was game. Bring it on. I thought that was pretty interesting, you guys, you and Mike, doing that.

[00:37:42.160] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Where that came from was my background in desert racing. Most of it was in class 1,600, which is a very limited class. There's very specific rules on what parts you can use. It's a driver's class. The cars are supposed to be identical, like everything from the weight to which parts you can use. It's very much a spec class. Because I was a Toyota guy, I just had the idea that all the people I knew with full-bodied Toyotas, myself included, they were getting smashed and ruined. The next step was truggies, if you will, and started with a Toyota frame and the Toyota running gear made sense. What if I could find manufacturers that would build to have somebody design a frame or a tube chassis that would weld onto the Toyota? Because the rest of the parts were pretty much all standardized, instant buggy. Mike Hendrix ended up being the primary manufacturer. My dream was really to have a couple around the country, so shipping wasn't an issue. But Mike, I think he made over 150 of those. It was really based off my experience in desert racing and just wanting a class that was affordable and people could build with the Toyotas they already had and take them out and compete because that was, at the time what the rage was, of course.

[00:39:22.690] - Erik "Camo" Linker

They turned out to be capable wheelers, fun trail wheelers. The competition was fun. There was always enough people in the class that it was a good time.

[00:39:32.800] - Big Rich Klein

I agree. It was popular. There's still so many of those buggies out there running around that are the ex-com breaks. Truly, there was only probably 25 that actually came out and competed at least more than once. But those guys, they're still out there being wheeled.

[00:39:53.450] - Erik "Camo" Linker

There's over 150 of them that were built and wheeled that I know of. It might even be more like 175. Been a while since I last talked about that. But yeah, no, for sure, it was successful. I never thought it would be the most popular class to watch because there's still Toyotas. Right. But they were quite capable. It was fair because they were all built very similar specs. Even though you had some options on how to set up, it was more of the setup, and they were pretty affordable to build. I felt like it was a success. It did what, I guess, my idea before it was, and a lot of people embraced it. So it was fun.

[00:40:44.390] - Big Rich Klein

Those tinbender years, there was a lot of partying at JV, especially. Then there was the competitions between clubs, which I got involved with, with with the with carnage for the con, not carnage on the con. You guys did that one outlaw event up there.

[00:41:16.530] - Erik "Camo" Linker

That was just a spur of the moment brainstorm I had. But with the tinbenders, they're a neat group of guys. It was, I think, what attracted me to the Tin Benders when I first met them and went to Surprise Canyon was the camaraderie. They were the Un Club, even though most people think it's a club, it's really an offshoot of an older club in Ridgecrest. I think it's called the gear grinders, and it's a traditional Jeep club with a lot of rules. It was the younger generation of that, and they were purposely not an official club. It was just like-minded guys that liked to wheel hard, beat on their… They weren't going to do it the traditional club way where you get in line, there's a caboche or on the radio, everybody stops at each obstacle and watches old school, jeeping, I guess. Jv was their stomping ground, which we all know is a great place to wheel. We just went there with the mindset of destroying shit. We had fun just destroying shit. We weren't having the pretty rig and showing off and going to car meets and waxing our rig was like we were there to smash them.

[00:42:53.600] - Erik "Camo" Linker

We would all even say, King of the hammers really was the spirit of the way the tinbenders wheeled. We would be sitting around camp, almost like itchy-fingered gunfighters. Everybody staring each other to see who is going to flinch first, and nobody would want to call it, and somebody would make the move and Le Monde start, everybody would run to their rig. Whoever got out in front was the one that got to pick what trail they were going to because everybody had to follow them. Just getting to the trail was a race, and it was perfectly fair game to try to crash the guy in front of you. Just on the way to the trail, we're going as fast as we can trying to crash each other. The first person on the trail, they got to pick the trail, and they're the trail leader. They weren't stopping to see if people behind them were okay. They're trying to stay in front of the guy behind them, and the guy behind them is trying to wreck him, run over him, and get in front of him. The whole was a race, and that's just how we wheeled.

[00:44:02.620] - Erik "Camo" Linker

We're smashing each other and the legend of the tin benders, I think, grew out of people seeing that and it being so different than traditional wheeling at the time. I guess I'll even tell the story like Dave Kohl, when he got into wheeling, he had heard of the tin-benders and hes he was telling a friend of his, he wanted to go to Johnson Valley, but this friend knew of the tin-benders and knew that it was the 10-benders stomping ground and literally told Dave, No, no, you can't go there. That's the tin-benders. They'll kill you. You don't go mess with the 10-benders. They'll wreck your shit. He went, Anyways, and that's where I met Dave, was at JV. He tells the story best, so I'm not going to try to tell it. But we literally met on the trail, and he got, we'll just say, mixed up in our antics of smashing each other. He thought it was great, but he was also scared to death. We were just going to run him over and leave him for dead. But then once we finally got in what happened to be clawhammered, the first person, and I think I was the first person to the top—so I get to the top of Klawhammer, second person, third person.

[00:45:36.580] - Erik "Camo" Linker

As Dave pulls up and he made it, we're passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels. Literally, because he made it, it made him one of us and like, Eric, you want to shot? Literally, since that moment, he wild… Yeah, he just like, That made you one of us. Because it was an un-club. It was just one of those things that you hung out and wheeled with us, and that was your mindset. You just became a tinbender. Yeah, we developed a little ceremony to jump people in and whatnot. But it was really just a matter of showing up and wheeling with us made you a tinbender. From that, it was fun to talk to Pirates because they were the biggest, most notorious club at.

[00:46:28.000] - Big Rich Klein

The time. Notories.

[00:46:29.610] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Then we were shit-talking-wheelers that just like to have fun. Carnage on the con was just calling them out like, Yeah, you guys think you own the con? You think you're cool? Well, we're going to show you what we do. It was really nothing more than that, just calling them out. Okay, let's raise some money for a good cause and let's invite a couple of other clubs. I don't think the other ones, nothing against them, but they were probably more traditional clubs, but obviously cool guys and part of the Rubicon and part of the scene. But it was really a smackdown with the Pirates. We were, I think, out to show the world that, Yeah, the Pirates are cool. And they were feared on the Rubicon. People were afraid of the pirates on the Rubicon.

[00:47:23.650] - Big Rich Klein

Oh, yeah.

[00:47:24.110] - Erik "Camo" Linker

For sure they were. We were out to prove to the world that they weren't the baddest dudes around. And that was the start of that. To add to that story, so I came up with that one day and just threw the challenge on the internet and it became the legend. But I'll never forget, during that event, the sheriff's helicopter shows up and starts circling, and then it lands, and I forget how many, but I'll just say four armed, dressed sheriffs come out of the helicopter, and I see him asking a couple of people and everybody pointing towards me. And these four sheriffs come walking towards me, Are you Camo? Yes. Do you have a permit for this event? What event? And they just laughed because they read about it on Pirates just like everybody else. They literally said, This is bitching. It's cool. Be safe. We got to go. They were super cool about it. They said, if you need us, call us. But looks like you got it under control. There's a big crowd. The box back then, you know what it was. Nothing will ever be that again. It was a pretty rowdy.

[00:48:42.950] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It was a gladiator. I thought it was a good thing, man. Yes, it was. That was wild times. It was that with a little extra spin on it, I guess, with something at stake. Yeah, that was fun.

[00:48:55.690] - Big Rich Klein

That grew into the next year, Carnage for the Con, up at Donner Ski Ranch. That was the first event we did that I put on at Donner. That was over, it was a fourth of July weekend.

[00:49:10.680] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I was more than happy to have somebody else be the person the sheriff was going to come look for. Like, for me, it was just smack talk, throwing down against the pirates and having fun. Yes, we raised some money. It was cool, but I was more than happy not to be the promoter of it. Thank you for taking that over.

[00:49:33.750] - Big Rich Klein

I enjoyed it, that's for sure. The rock crawling has been my life story. Real quickly is I never had a job or a career, whether my own business or working for somebody else, it lasted more than five years. Interesting. I would... I mean, it was like management at Sears Automotive. Within a short period of time, I was in a year and a half, two years, I became a store manager from being a salesman. It was just that natural progression. It always happened. No matter where I went or what I did, my photography business, landscape business, it just never… I mean, all those things were less than five years. When I found the competitive rock crawling, my first trip on the Rubicon was in '81, '82.

[00:50:28.430] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Wow.

[00:50:29.110] - Big Rich Klein

I was instantly hooked. Of course, I was a young guy, just married, didn't have the funds to build a Jeep, but man, I would ride with everybody and anybody that would go up. I ended up with a one-ton Chevy in '86 that I'd take through, and it was still my work truck.

[00:50:50.840] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Not an easy fit on the Rubicon at that time.

[00:50:55.200] - Big Rich Klein

Period either. No, but it was fun.

[00:50:57.070] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It wasn't really full-size-friendly back then. Not that it necessarily is now, but-.

[00:51:03.190] - Big Rich Klein

It's more so.

[00:51:04.080] - Erik "Camo" Linker

-it's a different place now, for sure.

[00:51:06.760] - Big Rich Klein

But the whole idea was to get to Spider. I didn't get to the Springs until probably 20 years.

[00:51:13.350] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But back then, you didn't need to because for locals, it was all about the box and the Spider Lake. That's where the happenings was. That's where it was at. That was the Rubicon, at least for us.

[00:51:25.460] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. That rock crawling gave me gave me a sense of purpose to provide a place and something to do for people that wanted to take that next step beyond just trail wheeling. There was already events going, Arca and what became Proroc. Then, Uroc started about the same time I did. It all was spun from turning that… I mean, rock crawling, whether it was just regular trail wheeling or going out and busting trails like you guys would do with tinbenders down in Johnson Valley, it was still a competition. It was not… It was like, Okay, I'm going to do this obstacle better than you can do it. Watch me. We just took it and refined it and put rules around it so we could have a scoring system and proclaim a real winner without people applauding and holding up cards saying, You got a nine or a 10.

[00:52:29.760] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, you found a way to make a business out of a brand new sport, which is pretty amazing. You did it by doing events. I did it via Pirate, four by four. Somebody else did it by making a widget, a chassis, or whatever. But it's still to this day, when I think back on my Pirate years, maybe the thing I'm most proud of was how it enabled so many people to make a business out of something they loved.

[00:53:08.840] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, taking a hobby and making a lifestyle out of it.

[00:53:11.150] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yeah. It enabled a lot of people to do that. And I'm probably the single most proud thing about Pirates and the friendships. It's amazing how many… My wife's always called them my fake internet friends, but they've never been that to me. They've always been very real. Everyone I've met, like I've always felt connected to because we're cut of the same cloth, just to be on Pirates, certainly to survive on Pirate, you're just one of those people that's my people, our people. We're all the same at a very core essence. We might have different exterior things, but there's something that we truly are passionate about, and that was the rock crawling. They were never faker internet friends, even if I never met them. They were very real to me.

[00:54:12.410] - Big Rich Klein

Right. I agree 100 %. Then Pirate, you guys somehow got into the whole racing with Schafer and getting back into the desert racing thing for you and jumping into it to begin with for a lot of rock donkeys.

[00:54:33.280] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Lance and I were at Bob Sweeney's event at the Placerville Fairgrounds. I forget exactly what it was called, but it was basically a short course, smash them up, Jeep event. Bob Roggy was racing in an interesting side note. I'd never seen this before. In a Jeep six-cylinder, Cherokee, he not only hold the block, he broke the crank in half and it still ran and he still finished. It's the most strangest thing I've ever seen. But we're at that… I'm at that event watching the short course racing. Lance, of course, knew that I had a desert background, because I talked about it a lot. It was still very much part of my soul. As we're watching that racing, I referred to something about desert racing and how much fun it is to be in the car for hours and hours and hours just on level 10 getting it. The longest adrenaline rush you've ever experienced to where it just goes on and on and on. It's truly unique. It was literally, Well, why don't we go do it? We made one call and bought a car right then and there. We bought a Jeep Speed, which just seemed to make sense.

[00:56:14.910] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's affordable within our price range, I guess. If racing is affordable, how stupid does that sound? Let's just say we had enough cash to buy a decent Jeep speed. Just one of those spur of the moment seemed like something to do, seemed fun and cool, and we could cover it and do it. All right, I'll try that. We went and did it. For me, I was just as hooked as I had ever been on it. Lance took to it like a duck in water. I mean, it'sNobody can do it. If you love rock crawling, you're going to love desert racing. I mean, look at King of the Hammers. It's a thrill. It's the shit. Yeah, we got into that. I think just because of who we were and Pirate, we were able to attract enough other people who maybe have dreamt of it, doing it or seen it or thought it was cool and wanted to be part of what we were doing, so we were able to attract enough other pirate guys to get involved in a race to where we made our own little group to compete against and shit-talk on pirate and throw down.

[00:57:52.610] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It brought in, and I'll just use Pete, who became a true friend of mine, and I missed to this day, but it brought him on board more so with Pirate. He obviously started the rock donkey thing, and that just became its own... That just became its own thing, and it was fun. I mean, you're proud to be a rock donkey and go show them idiot desert racers like we're more than just rock crawlers.

[00:58:29.250] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. I know that-.

[00:58:32.610] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Put it this way. We had zero, and I'm not talking just Pete. I'm talking rock crawling had zero respect from the desert racing community. We weren't even nerds. We were nothing.

[00:58:48.250] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah.

[00:58:48.970] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Exactly. I'd been friends with Robbie Gordon since we were 14, desert racing together in the same class. I raced against him in 1,600 class. I remember getting thrown out of casinos, me and Robbie trying to play the slot machines when we were 16 years old and getting thrown out of casinos and just being hoodloom's in Vegas because that's where you're hanging out at the desert races. He opened a new shop that the fabricator on my desert team, he went to work for Robbie, and Robbie was having an open house and invited me down and wanted me to bring my rock crawler. I brought my rock crawler. This is my truckie that John Hall built. At the time, it was all about articulation. It had just stupid, crazy articulation to where your average person looked at it and it was like, What? Is that thing broken? I took it down to his open house and it's on display with there's trophy trucks and class one cars and all the desert bling. The biggest crowd was around my stupid rock crawler, which I had flexed out on a forklift. Everybody was fascinated by it. Robbie, from the get-go, was interested in what it was all about.

[01:00:17.340] - Erik "Camo" Linker

He might have been the first desert racer who truly gave rock crawling a serious look and a bit of respect and went and tried it. But we had no respect. That's why the rock donkeys were so funny. Pete was good at naming things like that, and it was just funny. It was neat to see through King of the Hammers, see it come so full circle to where, at least with the trophy trucks, that's one of their highlight races now. They very much take the rock crawl or- They're serious. They're legit. They're badass. If you're a motorhead and you look at the state of the art, king of the hammer's car, you can't help but see the amount of real engineering and fabrication and sophistication and money. But they've come a long ways from...

[01:01:24.890] - Big Rich Klein

Well, when you think about it, the four-wheel drive class was basically class three. At score or any of those, that's that big bronco, the broncos and the Blazers and that stuff.

[01:01:41.330] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Big Olly. Yeah.

[01:01:44.950] - Big Rich Klein

Then the first, the only one that really took it outside of that, outside of just modifying the stock rig, was the Landshark being a four-wheel drive. But that had some limited success. Then Shannon took his 4400 car, king of the Hammer's car, and went down to go play in class one, and everybody was like, This isn't going to work. You can't go those speeds with four-wheel drive. It was proved that you can now.

[01:02:29.100] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But even in the early days, before even rock crawling was a sport, there was several high dollar, even factory-involved attempts to make four-wheel drive Class I cars. I've seen several of them. One of the more famous ones, reportedly, it was a million-dollar car. They spent a million dollars developing this car, and it was a lump of shit. It didn't work. It just didn't work. It was… I think, and everybody knew that it didn't work. You could see it did. It was just wrong. I think they just assume there's no way a rock crawler can go fast because I forget what Nissan spent a million dollars trying to do it. If they can't do it, you rock donkey certainly can't do it. That seems normal. We're a bunch of garage guys just.

[01:03:27.050] - Big Rich Klein

Making stuff. That's the difference between engineers and guys.

[01:03:31.170] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, I learned very early on, never underestimate a red neck. They will get some shit done.

[01:03:41.650] - Big Rich Klein

That's very true. I mean, look at the market now. When we got first started in rock crawling, everybody was... They were basically the highest percentage of them, and the guys that were winning were in full-bodied vehicles. The Fireant by Curry.

[01:04:06.740] - Erik "Camo" Linker

That's an amazing vehicle. Amazing vehicle.

[01:04:09.340] - Big Rich Klein

And the technology in that was, nowadays isn't looked at as real technology compared to what is being rock-crawled now, that would be a mod-stock rig in our We Rock classes. It would be.

[01:04:24.220] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's not- It was Shannon's Pinky. It was a tube-chassie Jeep, which was cool just because it's a tube-chassie Jeep. But compared to what the desert guys were doing, it was just a joke. Correct. To us, it was, at the time, the coolest Jeep there was. Wow. Exactly. Even today, I think Piggy would still be a sweet rigged out and be a fun wheeler on the Rubicon and whatnot.

[01:04:53.530] - Big Rich Klein

And look at where the technology has gone in the four-wheel drive industry because of the competitions, because of people wanting to do it better. Same thing that happened with desert racing back in the late 60s, early 70s, is that, Oh, we're going to take Volkswagen Bugs in a pickup truck or whatever it was, a Gairner drove with just big tires on a street car, and get across Baha. Where that got started years before we did. I mean, in four-wheel drive, it was all about, How many more shocks can I add? Can I do it to re-arc the springs to get the lift? That wasn't real. I mean, it was advancements, but it wasn't real technology.

[01:05:48.790] - Erik "Camo" Linker

If you look at the desert racing scene, and how long it took to develop the technology because of the time, one thing that maybe gets overlooked about what Pirate did for rock crawling, it condensed the development time because we, and when I say we, everybody on Pirate, we could go have an idea, take it out this weekend, try it, and everybody could see if it worked or didn't work or what did work about it. The next guy could improve upon last weekend's effort and next weekend be out with a better version of it. It vastly accelerated the development of the sport because everybody could see what you're doing, so you would share it, and then take what worked and prove on that. Literally, week by week, the technology was advancing. It wasn't just one person. While there are individuals who have made great contributions, and Shannon Campbell always comes up in my head, and there's others, but we'll just say that your garage guys were able to see what worked this weekend, and I've got a little different twist on it. Let me try that. Then we could see how that worked. The advancement was so much faster than it had ever historically been because of Pirate, and everybody could go there and.

[01:07:36.400] - Big Rich Klein

Share what.

[01:07:37.150] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Was happening. That's what the internet is best at, and the Pirate was the best of the best of that, for sure. There were so many people with so much different life experiences, whether it's fabricating or just in what they do, coming together. It was able to accelerate rapidly.

[01:08:04.610] - Big Rich Klein

I agree. All of the motorsports are that way now because of that shared information and that collective of being able to communicate and observe and critique what other people are doing, where before without it, you'd show up with something on your race car, and everybody had to look at it.

[01:08:30.710] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Might take a couple of weeks for teams to figure out what it was you were doing.

[01:08:35.510] - Big Rich Klein

Correct.

[01:08:36.270] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But on Pirate, you were happy to share what you figured out and share that information, and the next guy could take it and try it a little different or modify it. And yes, today I think all of motorsports does that. But I have no doubt, Pirate was the first. It led the way in doing that.

[01:09:02.420] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I.

[01:09:03.050] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Agree. Sure, there was other forums at the time, and I used to track them, like how many users and their metrics and all that, it was part of my job. Pirate was in a league of its own. It was at the time of all websites, not just automotive, one of the largest websites on the internet. Obviously, Facebook and other ones came along and it changed what the internet is today. But back then, Pirate was one of the largest websites on the internet. The fact that it was about rock crawling is, you know, that's not what they were tracking, rock crawling websites. It was all websites. But yeah, nowadays for sure, all motorsports have, I guess, their edition of Pirate.

[01:09:55.520] - Big Rich Klein

So how did Pirate TV come about? Because that was something that was pretty cool. I'd be sitting in Placereau, watching you guys up there in Georgetown do your thing. I was always intrigued by it because you guys, it was like a conversation we're having now, but with a lot of input, and just talking shit, basically.

[01:10:20.930] - Erik "Camo" Linker

The very first one, I wish I could remember what the subject was, but I believe it was an upcoming race, and we decided to just have a live conversation. We're in the office doing what we normally do, and we just decided to have a live conversation, and make it pirate TV. We went out in the shop, set up a little thing, and it was just Lance and I just talking about this upcoming race that was going to be and who we thought was going to do what. We had a lot of insight, information with various teams, some of it confidential a lot of times. Both of us had spend a good part of the day on the phone with whether it's vendors or teams that wanted to talk offline. Plus, reading most of what's on, you got to stay abreast. We just had a lot of information. We just wanted to talk about this upcoming race and break it down in a talk show format. We did that. It turned out pretty cool, so we decided to do it again. I don't think Lance ever wanted to be on TV. When I met Lance, he was very shy.

[01:11:52.650] - Erik "Camo" Linker

He had a hard time talking to people he didn't know, I guess. I don't want to call him a computer nerd, but he was just more comfortable not being in groups of people that he didn't know and didn't want to be the face of a TV show. So I did it. That's where the bottle of Jack came in and he put one on the desk and we had no time limit to it. It went on until I got so drunk I fell off my stool and that was the end of the show. But from there forward, with just the guests, we always had the bottle of Jack, and it was really for the guests. You come on... Because it was a full set in a studio. It looked like any television production studio. We had cameraman, lightmen, soundmen. It was a full TV set. It was a little intimidating for guests to come on to realize like, Oh, this isn't just a hokey little thing. This is a real-TV studio, and people that you would think wouldn't think would be nervous about it, and I'm not going to drop names, you could see they were visibly nervous to where they could barely… They weren't going to have a comfortable conversation.

[01:13:18.500] - Erik "Camo" Linker

And booze is a social lubricant, so have a shot or two of Jack and loosen up and we're just going to talk about whatever we talk about. It just became a thing that there was always a bottle of Jack on the table until we got, we'll just say, our first big national sponsor, advertiser, and their concern was the drinking on set. We just hid it under the desk and on the commercial breaks, we would all do a shot. We still did it, but it wasn't in public view. Just back at that time, Lance and I had just gotten divorced. Literally, when Lance and I became partners, we were both, I'll just say, happily married. And within six months, we were both divorced, single, and ready to raise hell. Literally, I was living in Moral Bay at the time, and he's like, Well, what are you doing? If we're going to do this, we're trying to make Pirate a business six hours apart. Why don't you come sleep on my couch and let's do it together? Let's just go all in. All right. Literally, I didn't even own a truckload of stuff at the time because it all went away.

[01:14:59.110] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I drove up to Lances, lived on the couch, and like Pirate was a 24 hour a day, seven day a week endeavor. I think it's just fair to say after recent divorces, it was time to raise hell, and we did. The reputation was partly earned, partly Urban Legends. We've never really been like that hardcore partiers. But when you're trying to be, I guess, popular and get attention, like going with the crazy party animal routine isn't the worst act. It was not really staged. It's like we would go have thousand dollar barbills at rock crawl events because we're having a good time.

[01:15:54.990] - Big Rich Klein

Renow Rocks?

[01:15:56.650] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Pretty much all of them.

[01:15:58.940] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Reno Rocks was off the hook.

[01:16:01.910] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, for us, most of them were. But yes, Reno Rocks was epic. That was a... It's too bad it didn't continue, but the fact that it was a one-timer makes it special. Hats off to Barbara because definitely at the top of the list for cool events.

[01:16:23.830] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely. Everything that happened around it for those three, four days was just... There was some pure insanity going on.

[01:16:34.020] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yes, there was. Yes, there was.

[01:16:37.970] - Big Rich Klein

So then you and I share a story with Bob Rogey, especially, and then Jody Everding. We were on a... You and I were on our way back from the Baha 1000 down in Cabo.

[01:16:56.110] - Erik "Camo" Linker

We raced the Jeep speed to Cabo, and we can both tell the story, but the part that I cherish, we're driving back on the pavement and about halfway up the Peninsula, I remember saying, This pavement sucks. Why are we on pavement when there's a racecourse right over there? Let's take the racecourse home. We're in no hurry. We got nowhere to be. We got three, four-wheel drive trucks. Let's take the racecourse home. I remember we turned off the pavement and we're taking the racecourse home. You can take it from there. I just wanted to throw how we ended up on the racecourse coming home from the thousand. Haven't you had enough? The answer is no. Never. We're never get enough.

[01:17:46.050] - Big Rich Klein

What was funny is that we were not in a four-wheel drive pickup. We were in a two-wheel drive Nissan, a club cab pickup at that point.

[01:17:56.870] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I believe it was a rental car.

[01:17:58.370] - Big Rich Klein

Well, it was aA partner of mine had the vehicle and said, Here, take this truck. It had the big crunch in the front where somebody who had driven it prior had hit a pole and caved in the front bumper and the grill. That comes into play later on when we crossed the border. It seemed like weeks later.

[01:18:23.980] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It took us a while to get home, yes.

[01:18:26.630] - Big Rich Klein

But we finally found Bob Rogey on the way up. He was out at Buena Ventura on the sand spit. He had broke his Cherokee and had gone basically I'm done. I'm out of here and just was doing his own thing.

[01:18:49.780] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Bob Rogey style?

[01:18:50.880] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, Bob Rogey style. We found him out at Buenaventura on the sand spit, and we had a couple of bottles of tequila with us. That's pretty much all we had. I think somehow we ended up with some shellfish.

[01:19:07.110] - Erik "Camo" Linker

We bought some shrimp from the local shrimp pedaler, which if you've never been to Buena Ventura, actually, you've driven by it and seen it, and it's a cool place to go be, for sure. It's a lot of good memories there of just funny stuff that's happened in my life. Most of it, no, all of them involve Bob Rogey somehow. This case was with you as well.

[01:19:37.870] - Big Rich Klein

I remember watching the sun go down, and then watching the sun come up. I don't think there was any sleep in there. It was a glorious evening of just sitting around, bullshit, and the three of us just having one of those times. Then the rest of the trip home, we're dirt roads, racecourse. The most memorable part began when we were at a military checkpoint between Gonsaga and Portacetus.

[01:20:18.250] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Correct. We stopped- Which at the time was a four-wheel drive, slow, rocky.

[01:20:25.090] - Big Rich Klein

Dirt road. Yeah, it was not. You wouldn't want to take a camper down it. Not at all.

[01:20:30.290] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Because it would destroy it.

[01:20:34.280] - Big Rich Klein

This vehicle that we were in, it had these chrome running boards on the side that were round tube with an imprint for a step.

[01:20:48.470] - Erik "Camo" Linker

On it. Pad.

[01:20:49.650] - Big Rich Klein

Pad, yeah. The one on the passenger side kept falling off, so I had tied a rope around it and tied it to the frame of the passenger seat. Getting the door closed was quite the chore. Which this will come into play later in the story. Then we're sitting there at the military checkpoint, and this is nothing more than a couple of pieces of plywood that have been leaned up against each other. There may have been a cactus involved and some cones.

[01:21:24.050] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I remember a 50-cal machine gun and a military tent were the two things I remember from that checkpoint. But other than that, it was just out in the middle of nowhere on this dirt road.

[01:21:37.180] - Big Rich Klein

Exactly. We were sitting there trying to get through. They're doing the inspection and all that stuff. I don't remember if that by then, Bob's truck had broke down and he was on the toe strap at that time? No, it was.

[01:21:55.930] - Erik "Camo" Linker

After that? It was still running at that point. Okay.

[01:21:58.820] - Big Rich Klein

But we're standing there. Bob and I are trying to communicate with the guard, the military guy. All of a sudden, we see you just wander off, and you're looking up, and there's this airplane that's circling around us. It's getting lower and lower and lower, and he's circling, and he's obviously got some problem.

[01:22:21.450] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, I heard his engine sputtered. Then once I heard his engine sputter, I started watching him. But then I literally saw and heard his engine stop, and I knew that guy's going to crash. So I started going towards the obvious crash site or closer to it.

[01:22:43.640] - Big Rich Klein

There was an old road or runway that had been-.

[01:22:49.180] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Definitely wasn't a runway.

[01:22:51.680] - Big Rich Klein

Well, no, but maybe it was maybe 20 years before, and they may have tractored out, dug out some holes or something.

[01:23:00.700] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I think it was the road that went down to a fish camp.

[01:23:04.330] - Big Rich Klein

That's right.

[01:23:05.110] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Okay. It was washed out, and rudded, and rough-shaped.

[01:23:08.800] - Big Rich Klein

That's the line, that's the road or the area that the plane was heading for as he was coming in. There was a second plane up there, and there were some people from the States that had an experimental plane. I mean, the plane was a normal plane, but it had an experimental engine in it. It had some Uberu motor or something.

[01:23:34.490] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Like that. It was a home-built experimental plane. I mean, it was a real plane. What made it experimental was they built it themselves, and it wasn't made by a manufacturer. They built it themselves, which made it experimental.

[01:23:49.060] - Big Rich Klein

And then I can remember one of the funny things to me that stood out in my mind was trying to communicate with the Mexican guards, military guys, and the one guy had a mirror, like a little handheld reflective mirror that would be on a semi-truck to show you what it looked like right next to the truck, a wide-angled mirror. And he was standing there and he was signaling the plane that was still up there. Bob and I were just cracking up over this because it just seemed hilarious.

[01:24:32.390] - Erik "Camo" Linker

What's the guy? What are you.

[01:24:34.730] - Big Rich Klein

Trying to tell them? Exactly. You know semi-four with mirrors or something? Anyway.

[01:24:40.920] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Is that plane crashing? What are you trying to.

[01:24:43.730] - Big Rich Klein

Signal here? Exactly. Exactly. So the second guy runs into their shack, tent, whatever you want to call it, and comes out with a bigger mirror. Now, this isn't just a mirror. This is like a bathroom, vanity mirror with the cabinet still attached that goes into the wall. And he brings this out. I look at Bob, and I said, Oh, long-range communication now. I mean, this is this big, huge, vanity mirror that this guy's holding. Bob and I are just laughing our asses off, and you're walking down toward where this.

[01:25:21.840] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Plane is. I missed that because I had taken off for where I figured the plane is headed to try to land, which is that old dirt road down to the fish camp. Right. So I missed that, but that's hilarious. They're trying to, I mean, what are they going to do?

[01:25:36.810] - Big Rich Klein

I mean.

[01:25:37.640] - Erik "Camo" Linker

We're over here.

[01:25:38.810] - Big Rich Klein

That was the whole thing, is you know what... I don't know what they were.

[01:25:43.260] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Trying to accomplish. I have no idea, but it was pretty apparent they thought we were there to meet our drug supplying plane. That's what I got out of the whole thing. Exactly. Because instantly when... Well, you continue with the story.

[01:25:59.710] - Big Rich Klein

So up from the fish camp comes this military, like six by, two axels in the back, one in the front, and it's got steak sides on it. And here's all these young military, Mexican military, that some of them had boots on, some of them didn't. Some of them had just their underwear on.

[01:26:23.250] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I remember the ones that scrambled out of the tent, that were obviously off-duty at the time, literally scramble into the truck and down to the side of the plane crash in their underwear with a machine gun with their boots on. Exactly. And I remember all of them surrounding not just the plane, but us, because they thought we were part of that, surrounding us at gunpoint. And the one leader guy screaming in Spanish, trying to give us commands of what to do.

[01:26:57.020] - Big Rich Klein

And all of us are looking at him.

[01:26:58.670] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Like, What? You want what? What? Huh? Could you just put the guns down, please? And somehow we were able to get them to calm down to where most of them lowered their guns, not pointed at us. And I think they saw it in the pilot and his wife's eyes who they were, I guess for our listeners, they should know that he didn't necessarily crash like Digger into the earth. He was able to glide in and landed on a very bumpy runway.

[01:27:32.500] - Big Rich Klein

How he didn't wreck on the landing.

[01:27:34.800] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Actually land it without destroying the plane. But it wasn't running and he was able to glide into a safe landing. But their eyes were like you could see the terror in their eyes. And it wasn't because machine guns were pointed at them. They just survived a plane wreck. Correct. And I think they sensed that, and we were trying to say, Hey, just calm down. We saw it like you did.

[01:28:03.560] - Big Rich Klein

That was intense. It was. Then we spent days, maybe even a week, trying to get that airplane out of, helping them get that airplane out of Mexico because they weren't going to get it running. We had to get it up to-.

[01:28:18.440] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, it was so remote. I remember their thought was, That's the end of our plane. Now, I mean, it's remote. You can't get it out of here. Us being rock crawlers, to us, it was just a challenge. What do you mean? We can't get a plane out of here. Of course, I could get my race truck out of here. I can get a plane out of here. I mean, it must come apart, right? So to us, I think it was just a challenge. We gave them a ride back. We went to San Felipe with them. I think it was Sarah Everding's family or friends that let us use their house in San Felipe?

[01:29:04.100] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, we were meeting somebody.

[01:29:06.110] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Because we had Thanksgiving on the beach. Right.

[01:29:08.410] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. They're at Pete's camp somewhere. Somewhere around there. Yeah. Which all turned out great because we got a Thanksgiving dinner. I remember it was you and I in the truck and the wife.

[01:29:24.490] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yeah.

[01:29:27.050] - Big Rich Klein

You were in the back seat. She was up in the front seat. Okay. Bob and the husband were behind us. At that point, Bob was on the toe strap.

[01:29:36.470] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yes. His truck broke somewhere between the plane crash and San Felipe, where we're staying. We're towing Bob.

[01:29:46.450] - Big Rich Klein

We're on a 20-foot strap. The two vehicles in line, and we get through San Felipe, and we're heading up to Pete's Camp, and we get just past the roundabout down there, where the racecourse normally in San Felipe, heads off toward the dumps. That's where the road, the northbound is six or seven feet taller than the southbound. It's two lanes. Bob's on the strap and right behind me at 20 feet. We're doing about 45 miles an hour. There's a car pacing us between Bob and I next to the strap. I see two dogs run out from some little business, run out into the road. They get to the center area and stop. Then one of them walks out into the fast lane and just stares at me as I'm coming down on him. It's not like I got a quarter of a mile. This is all happening within a couple of hundred yards maybe.

[01:30:51.620] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I forgot about the dog.

[01:30:53.950] - Big Rich Klein

I can't slam on the brakes because Bob's right behind me. We hit the dog. The lady that we've got in the truck that owns, the wife of the guy that owns the plane, starts screaming.

[01:31:10.550] - Erik "Camo" Linker

She's already terrorized, and now we just murdered a dog.

[01:31:14.290] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Murdered a dog in front of her.

[01:31:16.660] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I don't think we didn't feel good about it. No. You had no choice.

[01:31:22.020] - Big Rich Klein

No. But yeah, because I couldn't hit the brakes. I couldn't swerve because there was a car next to me, or the road drops off six feet.

[01:31:28.960] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But it was brutal. It was a.

[01:31:30.430] - Big Rich Klein

Big thump. Yeah, it was a big thump. And then, of course, after I hit it, Bob goes over it, and Bob and Bob's wisdom comes on the radio and says, Don't worry, Rich. I finished him off for you. Well, this lady is just beside herself. She's crying. She's totally in tears. Mirroreds just having a fit. I'm trying... I don't know about you and the back to you, but I'm trying not to laugh because Bob's comment was just classical. It was Bob. It was Bob. That was the second part, besides the mirrors, that really stood out to me in that whole sequence of events.

[01:32:27.640] - Erik "Camo" Linker

You know what stands out to me? Many parts of that. But there are certain people in your life that, well, I'll just say, I remember we didn't have a trailer. We called Jody Everding, who was with us, but he had already made it back home to San Diego. I remember we called Jody, and this was probably midnight when we finally got back to San Felipe. It was late. We called Jody at midnight, Hey, Jody, we need you to come down to San Felipe and bring a trailer. He didn't even ask why, just, Okay, that's what you need. That's what I'm going to do. To me, Jody and why... It's like I remember when Lance and I were trying to decide who is going to be on the team, like Jeff Mello was never… For sure, it was going to be Jeff Mello, but Jody Everding is just all… At the competitions, when he would be helping other people at the maybe detriment to his own effort, he's just always been that guy, and that's who you want on your team. And that phone call, like when you get a call in the middle of the night, Hey, I need you to come to Mexico and bring a trailer.

[01:33:46.950] - Erik "Camo" Linker

You don't even ask why. It's just like, Okay, I'm on my way. And that's the guy he is. Yeah.

[01:33:54.150] - Big Rich Klein

And so then he gets down there, we.

[01:33:56.370] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Have to go.

[01:33:57.150] - Big Rich Klein

No idea why. Why? He's got his truck, and he's bringing his trailer.

[01:34:00.400] - Erik "Camo" Linker

He's like, You.

[01:34:01.600] - Big Rich Klein

Want me to do what? He thought he was going to be taking Rogey's broken rig back. Which, sure. Yeah.

[01:34:08.950] - Erik "Camo" Linker

So what- Not, Hey, we need to go four hours south on this four wheel drive road, and go take a part of plane and bring it back to San Diego.

[01:34:17.560] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, on a flatbed car trailer, and figure out how to make that work, and then getting it out of the country. Because remember, the Mexican authorities were like, No, the plane landed here. It has to fly out.

[01:34:29.820] - Erik "Camo" Linker

The Mexican FAA was involved, and they wanted... Their procedure was they needed to fly their mechanic, whatever guy, from Mexico City because we weren't allowed to do the work taking the plane apart. We were supposed to hire Mexicans to do the work, not to mention all the paperwork. We spent a day at the San Felipe Airport with the airport, whatever she was, the airport, whatever, official lady trying to go through all this. If you remember correctly, it came down to I bribed her. I gave her a hundred bucks just to ignore it and let us do what we needed to do. And'i'm like, How much does this guy make a day? It comes down to labor, keeping them employed. Here's his money. Give this to him. We don't need him. This plane's out in the middle of nowhere. We don't need a team of Mexicans take this plane apart. We can do it. I bribed him. It was really the only way it was going to happen. Which maybe we shouldn't put that out to the world, but hopefully the Statue of limitations applies, and that was then.

[01:35:43.490] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, well, we're not in Mexico either.

[01:35:45.390] - Erik "Camo" Linker

No, we're not.

[01:35:46.430] - Big Rich Klein

But the rest of the story is we get the plane onto Jody's trailer, we get it out of there, deal with it at the airport and all the red tape there. We get to-.

[01:36:01.210] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yeah, they didn't want it leaving Mexico.

[01:36:03.020] - Big Rich Klein

Right. Supposedly, what I remember is if it flew in, it needed to fly out, something like that.

[01:36:09.590] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I remember they wanted to investigate it. It was a bunch of red tape, and we needed to bribe them to make the red tape go away, is what it boiled down to.

[01:36:20.710] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But when Jody drove the truck with the trailer and the airplane on the trailer- Across the border? -through- Across the border, it was the first time that it ever happened, and they were-.

[01:36:37.310] - Erik "Camo" Linker

They looked at the plane. They looked at Jody. They looked at the plane and just went, I'm not even going to ask. Get the hell out of here. Somehow you guys got it here against all the rules. Just get out of here. Didn't even pull them.

[01:36:55.900] - Big Rich Klein

Into secondary. Exactly. An airplane on a trailer. Absolutely amazing.

[01:36:59.780] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's a crazy story.

[01:37:00.740] - Big Rich Klein

Then the thing that amazed the owners of that plane is that here's a couple of a group of off-roaters, anti-environmentalists, you might say.

[01:37:17.050] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, it's a little deeper than that. They were hardcore Sierra Club members, active members of the Sierra Club, vehemently opposed to off-roaders. They were the enemy, no doubt about it. And we knew that when we were helping them, we knew it all along. We were in it because it was a fun project. It was an adventure. It was an adventure and somebody needed help and we were able to help. If you remember, she wrote that letter that got published in Sierra Club Magazine called Offroad Angels, where she admitted essentially that they were wrong and the off-roaders aren't as evil as their group makes them out to be that we were real, genuine people that care about the environment and our fellow humans, and it changed their attitude and their outlook. I'm sure they're still Cieara clubbers and whatever, but it affected them pretty deeply that their enemy saved their ass.

[01:38:36.020] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. And we just looked at it as an adventure. It didn't matter what their politics were or anything else. We weren't going to leave anybody out there.

[01:38:44.320] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well, how often do you get to take apart somebody else's plane and wheel it out of the desert? I mean, come on. Because if you remember right, we paid, we bribed one of the fish camp fishermen to sit and babysit it and not let any parts get taken off it. And the cost was exactly one case of cold Coca-Cola.

[01:39:12.990] - Big Rich Klein

That's right.

[01:39:13.650] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Remember that? And we delivered it. When we got there, he was still sitting on that rock under the shade of the wing, guarding that plane, just like he said he would. And we said, Here's your case of Coca-Cola. Thank you very much.

[01:39:29.760] - Big Rich Klein

And he was happier.

[01:39:31.640] - Erik "Camo" Linker

And I believe that was maybe two or three days later. Yes. He stayed there and did his job. Yeah. That's right. For a case of Coke.

[01:39:40.480] - Big Rich Klein

It was a pretty amazing story. It was a fun time. Something I'll always... At least highlights of it is what I'll remember. But that was pretty cool. So then Pirate got so huge, and you guys had an offer to be able to step away.

[01:40:11.210] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Lance and I were at Google headquarters at a Google conference. We used Google advertising as an ad agency for some of our ads. And so they had a conference for companies like us to help us, I guess, be better partners with Google. We're at the Google headquarters. Google's cafeteria is pretty famous because they bring in chefs from around the world. It's not just like a buffet. It's a buffet of world-class chefs, and it's the views out of the cafeteria, of the ocean. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. We're at this conference, and it's lunchtime. Lance and I are sitting next to each other. A gentleman who we've known for a couple of years and has inquired about Pirate before was sitting across the table from us. He takes a pin out of his suit pocket, and he takes his napkin, and he scribbles something on the napkin and folds it in half and slides it across the table to Lance. Lance takes the napkin, opens it up, and I can't see the napkin, but I'm looking at Lance's face and I knew the second he opened it, I guess you're supposed to turn your phone off when you do these.

[01:41:41.140] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I will do that now. I knew by the look on Lance's face the second he opened that napkin, exactly what it was and it was over. Lance folded the napkin up, put it on the table, slid it to me. I looked at it in complete shock at the number. You have to understand at the time, we were having the time of our life. Pirate, it was like living the life of a rock star. We were given the opportunity to do things, to go places, visit factories, meet with people, literally live in the life of a rock star, at least a rock donkey, rock star. We're having a lot of fun and had so much opportunity and so much more to do. Even though it was a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week job, it never seemed like work. They say, Find something that you love, and it'll never seem like work. It was true for us. It's having a great time. We always knew some day the out would be to sell it. It wasn't right then, but it was when somebody writes the proverbial check that you can't say no to, couldn't say no. I personally, I'll use the word bitter, but I wasn't ready to sell it because honestly, I was having too much fun being in camo and living the life and getting to really live the dream.

[01:43:25.360] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Why would I want to stop doing this? Pretty hard to pay me enough money to get me to quit. Being a big kid, getting to… I mean, it was fun. But at the same time, it was that check that you just can't say no to because you never know if it's coming again. But I was a little bit bitter and so much my identity at that time was being camo. It was rough on me. Not only did I go finally have the surgery, and they had surgery on my neck that I had needed for a long time, and I had been putting off. So after that, but I didn't even log on to the internet for a year after we sold it. I completely checked off the internet to the point where my wife had to bring it up to me. And she's like, I'm a little concerned. You don't communicate with any of your friends who are even local. Yes, they're your rock-crawling buddies, but they're your friends. You've checked out. And it was just... I think I was sad. I was sad at him.

[01:44:40.430] - Big Rich Klein

You were going through a depression. I was. Separation.

[01:44:45.300] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It was a huge... It just happened so quick. And while I'm obviously grateful that we were successful and able to sell it, and for me, enough money that I don't have to have a job anymore. I haven't had a job since then. I don't need to work for money. I'm not like I'm baller-rich and I can go jet-setting around the world, but I'm comfortable and I can do what I want to do and enjoy life, which is a pretty unique opportunity to own several homes that are paid for and get to do what I want. I'm truly blessed. But at the time, yeah, I went through a bit of a shock and a depression and was, I guess, a little bit bitter that we sold it right in the midst of having the time of my life.

[01:45:41.040] - Big Rich Klein

That's.

[01:45:41.490] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Understandable. But I've gotten past that. I cherish the memories now.

[01:45:49.590] - Big Rich Klein

And the newest gig that I know that you're doing, and I don't know if there's something in between there that I've missed, but that's what I think would be just the ultimate job. And that's moving boats all around the world. I'm a boat owner now. Not like the ones that would hire you to move their boats from point A to point B, but it's still that life is really cool.

[01:46:29.010] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It is the ultimate job. Pretty much anybody who likes boats and finds out what I do. We went to dinner the other night at a steakhouse, and it came up with our waiter. He literally almost started crying. He's like, You are living my dream life, my dream job. That's all I've ever wanted to do. A lot of people have that reaction. But it's funny how it came about growing up in Moreno Bay, comfortable on the ocean, boating, something I've just always done. When we sold Pirate, I said to Heather and my wife, I said, Honey, let's buy a boat and sail off into the sunset. She grew up in the mountains, and I'll just say, is not comfortable with the sea like I am. She looked at me like I had three heads and was completely crazy. She's like, I'm not sailing around the world. As a matter of fact, I'm not leaving the sight of land. We go on charter boats every year in the British Virgin Islands, you get a catamaran and island hop, which is basically bar hopping. But land is never more than a couple of months. You can always see land.

[01:47:58.490] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's fun and it'sjust you're in paradise. But she's like, No, I'm never sailing. I'm not leaving the sight of the land. But if that's what you want to do, go buy a boat and do it. If that's always been your dream, do it. If you got the money, buy a boat and sail around the world. I started looking for a boat, and I found one that was far away. At the time, I didn't have this gill to sail a boat across an ocean. I had to find a captain to deliver it for me. I did. I met a captain. That deal fell through. About a year later, on a Wednesday, my phone rings and it's Captain nick, and he said, Hey, Cammo, you want to go sailing? My answer was, Of course I do. He said, Can you be in Hawaii on Friday? Of course I can. I got on a plane, flew to Hawaii, and sailed the boat back from Hawaii with him. We hit it off. I enjoyed doing it and became his engineer slash mate. And his clientele is such that they own these incredible yachts that are exploration yachts. They're made literally for traveling around the world.

[01:49:32.760] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But they're also slow and it takes a long time to go around the world. They will fly to where their boat's at and they pay a captain to move the boat without them. We move the boat from one cruising ground, let's say, the San Juans, and next I want it in the Mediterranean. Well, that's a five-week trip. Let's face it, people with that money don't have the time to do that. They have businesses and empires to run, so they pay, and I say us, but captain, it's his customer base. He's got a large customer base of these yacht owners that need somebody to move their boat from season to season to the next place they want to be to be in paradise. I guess just fell into it that I've got the time and the ability, and literally, I'm on a different boat every couple of weeks taking it to some incredible place on getting paid to fly. They fly me first class. Everything's paid for, and I'm getting paid to basically live on somebody else's yacht and move it around the world. This last trip was from Florida to Australia, which is 12,000 miles, which is 12 time zones.

[01:51:02.370] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It's exactly halfway around the globe. I literally got paid to take somebody's boat halfway around the world. Took us three months. Of course, it's a dream job. I will literally be driving the boat in the middle of the night and I will just start laughing out loud at myself like, Who the hell hands me their keys to their $10 million boat? And go here, Camo. Take my boat to Australia. It's so ridiculous to me that I literally laugh at myself all the time. It's wild. I get to get on a lot of amazing boats and go to some crazy places.

[01:51:46.290] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, I get really get boat envy when you start posting the pictures of the boats that you're on. And my little 48-foot, crisscraft, Catalina, is like a dingy to some of these. It's just amazing.

[01:52:02.730] - Erik "Camo" Linker

It is, but it's your boat. To me, I think it's cooler that you own that boat than me being on their boat because it's yours, man. It's your boat to live your dream on, and you're doing it. To me, I think that is cooler than what I do because I don't own a boat. I don't get to go where I want to go. I go where I'm paid to go. It's a little different, but I get it because I get to go on a lot of boats that most people never get to experience, even walking on, much less traveling across the world on it. Yeah, it's pretty unique. Just locked into it, but I always lived under a lucky star, obviously, because you think lightning doesn't strike twice. Well, it struck with glitter. It certainly struck with and it struck with the boat thing. Most people that are doing what I'm doing on the boats have spent an entire career in the marine yachting industry to get to a place. It's like their retirement, the perk for a lifetime spent boating, where they finally got into the place where they get to do the cream of the crop, the coolest part of it.

[01:53:28.500] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yet I just looked into it one day and now I'm cruising around the world on some amazing yachts. I will say, most of them I can't post on the internet because they're people's private yachts, and these aren't the people that like putting their things out on the internet. The ones that I do post are usually like a boat that's being sold, is on the market and has to, for whatever reason, be moved. Or it's not currently owned by somebody that would be particular about that. Most of them, we sign nondisclosure agreements so that they just don't want their business being public knowledge and me talking about anybody talking about it. Right. I don't even get to take pictures of some of the super cool ones, but the ones that I do put on there are still really cool boats.

[01:54:29.080] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Absolutely. Yeah. No, it's amazing. They're incredible.

[01:54:33.660] - Big Rich Klein

Besides doing your current thing, moving boats, anything in the future?

[01:54:40.870] - Erik "Camo" Linker

That's a good question. It's not that I'm done doing boats. There's still a couple places that I haven't been that I want to go. It's just the opportunity hasn't come up. I turned down more trips than I'm currently doing. Obviously, crossing the South Pacific and getting to visit some of those South Pacific islands that you can only get to by boat has been a lifelong dream. That was the pinnacle of my career. But there's still some places and things I want to do, and when those opportunities come up, I'll do that again. For right now, I'm not just doing the Seattle to San Diego. I could be doing that full-time as a job, but I choose not to. I don't really need to do that run again. I know it by heart. But there's some places I still want to go, and when that comes up, I'll do that. I'm working on a new idea right now. We'll see where it goes. But this is one of our rental houses, and we're working on… We had a renter in here for the past eight years. Went to go re-rent it and realized it was time for refresh and redo it.

[01:56:02.030] - Erik "Camo" Linker

We're in the process of that. Once we finish this, we're, I guess, still deciding what we're going to do. But one of the things that we'd like to do next is I'll call it the vanlife, like the sprinter van, and go explore North America by road and see. Like I said, I've traveled a lot and been to most major cities, go into conventions or trade shows. But we live in a pretty cool country with a lot of stuff to see. And so I think I'd like to go do that for a while. That's probably next.

[01:56:41.440] - Big Rich Klein

So #VanLife.

[01:56:43.620] - Erik "Camo" Linker

#vanlife.

[01:56:44.470] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah. The pandemic.

[01:56:46.820] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Yeah. I think most of my life I've dreamt about doing it in a school bus. But just like race cars, part of it was just building my own school bus. The reality is I live in suburbia. I don't have a shop, so I don't think my HOA is going to be down with me building a school bus out in front of my planned community home. I'll probably buy a ready-made van life, which they're more comfortable to drive in. But I've always loved the hippie school bus. It's always been a.

[01:57:25.050] - Big Rich Klein

Thing for me. I think that would be more of an adventure because you're probably going to spend more time wrenching on it.

[01:57:30.810] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I would definitely spend more time keeping it running, sure. Let's be fair, that's not usually the woman's ideal of traveling the country. To me, putting a new trainee in on the side of some rural highway, adds to the adventure, but I can do it out. I've done that enough, I think, at this point.

[01:57:53.600] - Big Rich Klein

That's awesome. I want to say, Camma, thank you so much for allowing me to come down here and sit with you and have this discussion and just talk about everything that has gone on. It's been great. I know there was a little bit of fear there maybe, of getting back into some of this, but hopefully this was an easy process for you.

[01:58:20.600] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I enjoyed it. The reason I said no, I felt like when I stepped away from Pirate, I was done with it, and didn't want to feel like I have been trying to relive my glory days talking about it. It was a hang-up of mine, so it was just easier to say no. I didn't feel the need to explain it to the public. I mean, they all have their perception of what happened, and that's fair. That's how they experienced it. I apologize I haven't listened to your show. I just haven't. Just wasn't really ready to be a has-bit and talk about how cool I was on Pirates. I'm just me. I've always just been just another dummy that got lucky. I've enjoyed the time. Mostly good seeing you again, Rich. I mean, it's been a while since we've been on an adventure together. Absolutely. It used to be a regular thing for us, and it's been a while. I will say let's make a point of getting together and going on some dumb adventure.

[01:59:34.650] - Big Rich Klein

Yeah, if you get one of those really cool trips and you need another person to come along on one of the boats, let me know.

[01:59:42.600] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Well-.

[01:59:43.350] - Big Rich Klein

I know there was a... At that time, I was transitioning out of the rock crawling and the racing. Now I've got a partner. I can do everything as long as I have internet at times. Thank God we have Starlink and.

[01:59:57.810] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Those things. Starlink has been a game-changer for us.

[02:00:00.510] - Big Rich Klein

Yes. I can do those kinds of things now. We're not traveling like we did. I don't have.

[02:00:09.000] - Big Rich Klein

The-.

[02:00:09.200] - Big Rich Klein

I'll tell you what. -the leash, you might say.

[02:00:11.830] - Erik "Camo" Linker

Generally speaking, we don't need another crew member. We're a pretty solid team with what we have. But I can invite you anyways to come along and experience it. I'd like to share it with you because I know you love boats. You have a boat, but these are a different boat, and I'd like for you to see what it's about and enjoy it. Let's make that the goal.

[02:00:40.070] - Big Rich Klein

Okay.

[02:00:40.900] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I'll even take a trip that I might not normally take because it's easier for you to do than some of the ones we do, and we'll go spend five days moving a boat somewhere.

[02:00:53.230] - Big Rich Klein

Sounds like a plan. I appreciate it, buddy. Thank you for the friendship that we've had over the years. It means a lot.

[02:01:02.460] - Erik "Camo" Linker

I feel like it's been mostly a friendship. There's been times where it's been a business relationship, because that's what it needed to be.

[02:01:11.060] - Big Rich Klein

Absolutely.

[02:01:11.920] - Erik "Camo" Linker

But I've always just considered you a friend. I like that.

[02:01:17.110] - Big Rich Klein

Take care and everybody out there. I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Camo.

[02:01:23.170] - Erik "Camo" Linker

And if you didn't, well, who can blame them? Anyways, thanks. Peace out and see you next time.

[02:01:32.330] - Big Rich Klein

Sounds good. Bye. Well, that's another episode of Conversations with Big Rich. I'd like to thank you all for listening. If you could do us a favor and leave us a review on any podcast service that you happen to be listening on, or send us an email, or a text message, or a Facebook message, and let me know any ideas that you have, or if there's anybody that you have that you would think would be a great guest, please forward the contact information to me so that we can try to get them on. And always remember, live life to the fullest. Enjoying life is a must. Follow your dreams and live life with all the gust of you can. Thank you.