185 - This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month | Unsubscribe Podcast Ep 185

Summary

Detailed Summary of Unsubscribe Podcast Episode 185: "This Operation Was Legitimately Insane ft. Griff - Veteran's Month"

Release Date: November 4, 2024

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Introduction to Veterans Month

In Episode 185 of the Unsubscribe Podcast, hosts Eli Doubletap, Brandon Herrera, Donut Operator, and guest Griff honor Veterans Month by dedicating the entire November to celebrating and supporting the men and women who have served in the military. Eli introduces the episode with a heartfelt message and outlines the podcast's initiatives for the month:

Eli Doubletap [00:18]: "Welcome to the Unsubscribe Podcast. It is Veterans Day month, and we have something for this month... 100% of proceeds from these shirts are going to three veteran nonprofits."

Veterans Month Initiatives and Fundraising

Eli details the podcast's fundraising efforts aimed at supporting veteran nonprofits. The team has launched two specific shirts—"Undiagnosed" and "I'm Dead Inside"—with all proceeds benefiting selected veteran-focused organizations. Eli emphasizes the importance of these initiatives in providing support and a voice to veterans who may struggle with seeking help:

Eli Doubletap [00:18]: "We make a difference. It is helping people and giving people a voice that they might struggle with the idea of therapy or asking for help because it's not easy."

Griff's Military Background and Experiences

Griff, a veteran and the founder of Combat Flip Flops, shares his intense military experiences, providing listeners with a firsthand account of his deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq. He narrates Operation Winter Strike, highlighting it as one of the few instances where all three Ranger battalions were deployed simultaneously to the same high-altitude region during winter:

Griff [09:16]: "It's called Operation Winter Strike, and it's one of two times in history where all three Ranger battalions were deployed to the same area at the same time."

Griff recounts the challenges faced, including harsh weather conditions, operational logistics, and the ever-present danger of combat. His stories paint a vivid picture of the stress and camaraderie inherent in military life:

Griff [12:18]: "And so, like, they put on armor and like knee pads and everything else have to get out the right time. And I got you some Hawaiian brass knuckles... What you really don't understand is that they're going to have a whole bunch of like chain machine gun fire."

Combat Flip Flops: From Military Necessity to Business Success

Transitioning from his military tales, Griff discusses the inception and mission of Combat Flip Flops. The company was born out of a need for durable, combat-ready footwear that could withstand the rigors of military operations while offering comfort for everyday wear. Griff explains how the brand collaborates with veterans and supports various initiatives:

Griff [35:39]: "We're just putting people to work, we're putting girls in school, we're clearing landmines, we're helping veterans. Anytime you buy our product, good happens."

Brandon Herrera adds his personal endorsement, highlighting his long-term support and satisfaction with the product:

Brandon Herrera [26:14]: "I've been wearing your stuff for maybe five years. It is a great product."

Business Partnerships and Collaborations

The episode delves into the collaborative efforts between the podcast team and Combat Flip Flops. Eli and Griff discuss the intricacies of product development, ensuring that each pair of flip flops not only meets tactical needs but also appeals to a broader audience:

Eli Doubletap [35:39]: "What you really don't understand is that they're going to have a whole bunch of like chain machine gun fire and or 2.75 rockets and or a 500 pound bomb."

Griff emphasizes the quality and durability of their products, attributing their success to the unwavering support from their community and partners.

Humor and Camaraderie: Coping Mechanisms in the Military

Throughout Griff's narratives, the importance of humor and camaraderie emerges as a vital coping mechanism for dealing with the stresses of military life. The hosts share anecdotes illustrating how laughter and strong bonds among soldiers help mitigate the harsh realities of combat:

Griff [99:50]: "The dark humor, it gets us through. People just don't understand it unless you've been there."

This theme underscores the resilience and mental fortitude required to survive and thrive in high-pressure environments.

Supporting Veterans Beyond the Service

The conversation also touches on the broader implications of supporting veterans post-service. Eli stresses the need for continuous support systems to aid veterans in their transition to civilian life, emphasizing mental health and community integration:

Eli Doubletap [46:39]: "We're putting people to work, we're putting girls in school, we're clearing landmines, we're helping veterans anytime you buy our product, good happens."

Griff echoes this sentiment, highlighting how their business model inherently supports veterans through employment and philanthropic efforts.

Conclusion and Final Remarks

As the episode concludes, Griff shares more personal stories from his deployments, reinforcing the episode's central themes of sacrifice, resilience, and the enduring spirit of veterans. The hosts express their deep appreciation for Griff's service and contributions, both in the military and through Combat Flip Flops:

Eli Doubletap [00:22:07]: "Thank you from the bottom of all our hearts... enjoy this episode because, holy moly, it's freaking dope."

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Eli Doubletap [00:18]: "100% of proceeds from these shirts are going to three veteran nonprofits."
• Eli Doubletap [02:00]: "We want to make a change so it's easier and more normal to ask for help."
• Griff [09:16]: "It's called Operation Winter Strike, and it's one of two times in history where all three Ranger battalions were deployed to the same area at the same time."
• Griff [12:18]: "They put on armor and like knee pads and everything else have to get out the right time. And I got you some Hawaiian brass knuckles."
• Griff [35:39]: "We're putting people to work, we're putting girls in school, we're clearing landmines, we're helping veterans."
• Brandon Herrera [26:14]: "I've been wearing your stuff for maybe five years. It is a great product."
• Griff [99:50]: "The dark humor, it gets us through. People just don't understand it unless you've been there."
• Eli Doubletap [46:39]: "We're putting people to work, we're putting girls in school, we're clearing landmines, we're helping veterans anytime you buy our product, good happens."
• Eli Doubletap [00:22:07]: "Thank you from the bottom of all our hearts... enjoy this episode because, holy moly, it's freaking dope."

Final Thoughts

Episode 185 of the Unsubscribe Podcast serves as a profound tribute to veterans, intertwining gripping military narratives with entrepreneurial ventures dedicated to supporting the veteran community. Through Griff's compelling stories and the hosts' unwavering support, the episode not only entertains but also educates listeners on the significance of Veterans Month and the enduring impact of military service.

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Note: Advertisements and non-content segments have been omitted to focus solely on the episode's key discussions and narratives.

Transcript

[Griff]

So my whole thing is, if you shoot at my guys, I'm just gonna roll, though. One team, one five, mother done.

[Brandon Herrera]

I just wasn't prepared to see that someone got school.

[Cody]

Yeah, it's called fun.

[Griff]

Contact left.

[Eli Double Tap]

Those military guys.

[Brandon Herrera]

Boys will be boys.

[Griff]

Boys will be boys.

[Eli Double Tap]

Hey, everyone. It has been a while since I've sat and talked to y'all. It is Veterans Day month, and we have something for this month. First, just as we did in April, where we raised together $110,000, we are going to do the same for Veterans Month, the entire month of November. We are dedicating it to the amazing men and women that serve this country. This is our way of saying thank you for sacrificing so much and answering a higher call and also helping a lot of people along the ways. Second. Yo, what's that shirt, Eli? There's two shirts that we are donating 100% of proceeds for. My personal favorite, Undiagnosed, and I'm dead inside. Nick killed this one, my boy. A hundred percent of proceeds from these shirts are going to three veteran nonprofits. We will pick those three nonprofits throughout the month. We are doing our research and due diligence to make sure they are causes that actually make change. This is how I feel. We make a difference. It is helping people and giving people a voice that they might struggle with the idea of therapy or asking for help because it's not easy. War can change you, and it adds this new layer that you approach life differently. It's hard to put into words. You really do appreciate life, but the hyper vigilance, the depression, they do take a toll. War can be hard on a lot of people. I've lost a lot of friends in war, and then I lost more friends outside of war. We want to make a change so it's easier and more normal to ask for help. And I think this is how we start again. 100% of proceeds from these two amazing new shirts, which Nick did kill, go to this amazing cause. And then a portion of all stuff on unsubstore will also go to that amazing cause. Also, we got some new stuff that's gonna surprise a lot of y'all. And this entire month, we are focusing on veteran stories as the one you're about to hear with Griff and his amazing story. These are the individuals where your jaw will drop with what they've experienced, what they went through, and how strong they are and persevering once they got outside of the military. We have Medal of honor recipient Clint Romeche. Coming on, we have Cappy from Task and Purpose, Habitual line crosser. So many people. For this entire month, it's dedicated to y'all and the amazing veterans out there that deserve a pat on the back and a little bit of help. One quick thing. I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart and all our hearts for this amazing community that we are blessed to have y'all go above and beyond so much and you push us to be better versions of ourselves. Each and every day we try and push ourselves harder to never disappoint y'all. That is the standard. Because we want to be here without y'all. And we know that we work for y'all at the end of the day, not the other way around. So each and every one of you, thank you from the bottom of all our hearts for how you push us, how you make us better men, and how your support never ceases to amaze us. Thank you, each and every one of you. And now, enjoy this episode because, holy moly, it's freaking dope. And because I've said community so many times. Cheers. Love y'all. Oh, that's tequila, dude. That is amazing. You guys look cute today.

[Cody]

Fuck off.

[Eli Double Tap]

After we just released the. I know.

[Brandon Herrera]

Almost totally not a gay couple.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, and then they subconsciously match today.

[Brandon Herrera]

I wish I had a defense. Eli.

[Griff]

I don't got nothing.

[Brandon Herrera]

Nope, I got nothing. All right, well, we're fucking gay then, I guess, dude.

[Eli Double Tap]

But strong and powerful.

[Brandon Herrera]

Powerfully gay.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, Think military gay right there. That green God.

[Brandon Herrera]

Military grade gay.

[Eli Double Tap]

Green gay.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh.

[Eli Double Tap]

Now hold hands.

[Griff]

I notice that you're on top. Guys. We swear we love. Boobs are cool.

[Eli Double Tap]

I love boobs. They feel like bags of sand.

[Griff]

Hand.

[Eli Double Tap]

We are good to go. Oh, yeah, we'll get this crackdown going extra. Want to make you pop that one.

[Griff]

Yeah, yeah, get this.

[Eli Double Tap]

Okay. Three, two, one.

[Griff]

Hi, everyone.

[Cody]

Welcome to the Unsubscribe podcast. I am joined today by Eli Double Tap, the head in charge of combat flip flops, our friend Griff. Brandon Herrera, my self, dawn operator. Thank you for being here.

[Eli Double Tap]

Hey, it's part of the Veterans Month thingy that we're doing.

[Cody]

Woo.

[Eli Double Tap]

Veterans Month? Yeah, we're just having a veteran every day. Well, we have you always, Brandon.

[Cody]

It's like our fourth podcast in a row having a veteran on.

[Eli Double Tap]

Well, technically 100th with Brandon.

[Brandon Herrera]

Shut up. This is. This is like the one month you're not allowed.

[Eli Double Tap]

I know. Brandon's like, just not this month, bro. Just of all the months.

[Cody]

This is Brandon's month, man.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm like, I've got a daisy chain of, like, episodes since he's made a joke. Like, damn it. Now I gotta rip it down.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's just one. It always stays at 1.

[Griff]

Yep.

[Brandon Herrera]

Days since last.

[Eli Double Tap]

Days since Force Valoranted. You love it. You don't.

[Brandon Herrera]

I love you guys.

[Eli Double Tap]

I know. I hate that it became that big of a thing.

[Brandon Herrera]

We'll have to find it. We'll have to find a creative way to kill that joke. Like, it's. It's coming soon. We'll figure it out. Me and Nick had some ideas, but we've got a. We've got to wrap it up in the universe.

[Eli Double Tap]

I think I still want. My one ask is we get you a dress, green top. And then all the medals that people bring you, you have to wear throughout an ad throughout the live shows. So by the end, you are that general.

[Brandon Herrera]

The General Zhukov from the death of Stalin just throws back the coat and it's just full of medals.

[Griff]

Or you just keep giving his name to recruiters, and they just keep calling.

[Brandon Herrera]

I had a recruiter call me yesterday, like, over three times.

[Griff]

Really?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, Dead serious.

[Cody]

Technically, you still couldn't enlist.

[Brandon Herrera]

I don't know if. I don't know if I can.

[Cody]

Brandon does the military. That's the new video they had.

[Brandon Herrera]

But he called me like it was a Fort Bragg recruiter calling me, like, four times yesterday.

[Eli Double Tap]

Would they. Do they.

[Griff]

I don't know.

[Brandon Herrera]

I never responded.

[Eli Double Tap]

Do I. I will say they have such bad. Well, it's government. They're not talking. I remember getting out, being out of the military for a year or two. You probably had it happen, too. And then recruiters would call and like, hey, you ever thought about joining the US Military, son? I'm like, huh?

[Brandon Herrera]

I just need to fuck with him. And just respond back like, you sure I can get into the Patriot missile program.

[Eli Double Tap]

Dude, welcome back. So happy you're here, Griff.

[Griff]

We have so many cool things going on right now.

[Eli Double Tap]

We. We.

[Griff]

It's gonna be an unboxing episode. I'm really excited about this.

[Eli Double Tap]

We are gonna unbox a new thing because. Oh, man. Okay. You also brought some.

[Griff]

I brought some gifts for you guys.

[Eli Double Tap]

Do I want. I. I'm so pissed at that box, actually. Let me see if it dropped off.

[Griff]

Yours hasn't shown up yet. Well, I've had yours in the making for months.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, no.

[Griff]

And I flew it halfway around the fucking world, and we're, like, barely missing it on this podcast.

[Brandon Herrera]

Really? Oh, I haven't been told about this.

[Griff]

I don't think you have not.

[Eli Double Tap]

No. This is actually, like, it's. It's dope.

[Brandon Herrera]

When Eli doesn't tell me about things, I get kind of scared, just naturally, so I don't.

[Eli Double Tap]

When Rich doesn't tell you stuff is when you get scared. I didn't know about that.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Griff]

So you guys are actually really hard to shop for. I mean, like, just, like, you guys, like, got all the cool stuff. You guys get to, you know, go hang out with all the cool, like, rock stars and shoot all the guns and do all the cool things. So, like, what can I get you guys that would be unique? And so I was, like, sitting there and, like, a camera. Like, literally, I was on my way to the airport. I was like, I got this. I got you some Namia Kaua. Some war things.

[Eli Double Tap]

We like war stuff.

[Griff]

War things. Right. So I've recently moved to the Big island, and I got a Hawaiian teacher. So he's a Hawaiian historian and Hawaiian weapons maker. So all the historic Hawaiian tools, because they're very, like, Polynesian, like, boring culture. And I met him because my wife's Hawaiian, and we were moving to Hawaii, and she's like, you got to be less white, you know? So we gotta. We gotta get you culturally appropriated. So she like. I went down and I took a class at the Four Days of Aloha in Washington. They have this big thing. So obviously, I took the weapons making class and I took the poi pounding class. And my teacher there was really cool. And turns out he lives on the Big Island. He's a fellow hunter. So we made friends, and we've been hunting for the last six months. And he makes some pretty badass stuff. So, trout, I got you first, so come on now. Oh, shit, man.

[Eli Double Tap]

I'm trying to find if that got delivered. It might have actually been delivered.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's just a live trout, babe.

[Eli Double Tap]

Grab it real quick.

[Griff]

So I got you some Hawaiian brass knuckles. So these are. These are tiger shark teeth.

[Cody]

Cool.

[Griff]

That you wrap around your hand. What, like this?

[Eli Double Tap]

You try. So happy.

[Griff]

Right? So it's like. It's a hammer fist with a twist, but you can slice somebody up. So you got some Hawaiian brass knuckles. Dude, I'm gonna kill somebody with these tiger shark teeth.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, that's intent.

[Griff]

Thank you.

[Donut Operator]

I'm not gonna kill somebody with.

[Eli Double Tap]

Thanks, man.

[Griff]

These are cool shit.

[Brandon Herrera]

That is really cool.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

You made this?

[Griff]

No, I didn't make it. No, but we made it. Like, actually, I could say I made it because I held onto it as he was braiding it because he had one that he had. He. He was supposed to give it to his dad. I was going to buy. He's like, dude, this one's my dad's. I was like, how fast can we make one? So I literally held it as he was making it.

[Brandon Herrera]

You were involved in the making.

[Eli Double Tap]

I was.

[Griff]

I was involved in the making of it. So that's cool as shit, dude.

[Donut Operator]

Thanks, man.

[Griff]

You're welcome, man. All right. So I feel bad, Cody, because I kind of came at you pretty hard about your ostrich boots last night.

[Brandon Herrera]

Do you want to explain that at all? About my ostrich boots are bad. That I didn't know.

[Griff]

So to make ostrich leather, you have to pluck an ostrich and leave it bald. And then it has to heal until the scabs fall off of it, Then you kill it, and then you make the leather. So I feel fucking terrible.

[Brandon Herrera]

Cody's over there at dinner last night with a single Indian tear running down his cheek.

[Eli Double Tap]

He kicked up both boots at the beginning of the night, and he slowly brought them down at the end of the night.

[Griff]

So do you know what a hypocrite is Slightly. Who isn't? Right? So.

[Eli Double Tap]

New Trout's wearing his brass knuckles, right? What is? Shark knuckles.

[Cody]

You're gonna make Trout punch me right now for my ostrich boot?

[Griff]

No. No. So I.

[Eli Double Tap]

Is this the most Trout thing ever, though? I love his soja.

[Cody]

No.

[Eli Double Tap]

He doesn't. Take him off the rest of the night. Do you have a ballistic filling?

[Brandon Herrera]

I actually do at my house, if you want.

[Griff]

Y. So when I was doing this weapons class, like, he brought out marlin bills, which they form into daggers. And I know you've been doing a lot of videos and people getting stabbed and shit, and I was like, dude, I'm not gonna make this knife. He was like, why? I was like, because I am, like, kind of an animal lover, and I love marlin and swordfish and things like that. And I just. I'm not gonna do it. But since you've been making all the videos on stabby people, I got you a Marlon Bill Shiv.

[Cody]

That is cool, dude.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's a fucking sharpest.

[Griff]

That is a Marlon Bill Shiv. Yeah, that's the best drop.

[Cody]

I'm totally not going to kill Trout with this later.

[Griff]

So that is a. That's the name of his paoa. Ahu. And then yours is Pu.

[Eli Double Tap]

Just shanked them.

[Griff]

Yeah, yours is Pu Lei Niho. And I'm sorry to all my Kanaka brothers and sisters here If I fuck that up. So I'm sorry, I'm still learning my.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, Travis. Gonna type this out.

[Brandon Herrera]

Incredibly sharp.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, dude, that's a gangster shit.

[Griff]

And then sho. I got you. Because I know you're the one who makes everything happen here.

[Eli Double Tap]

And a car bomb.

[Griff]

No. So these are an opihi shell necklace. So if you ever see, like the videos of Hawaii and the black sand beaches and the waves crashing up on big vertical cliffs, this is a delicacy, kind of crustacean that like hangs onto those cliffs and for the guys to get them, they put on armor and like knee pads and everything else have to get out the right time. And they descend down these cliffs to pick these out. But I got you ophi necklace. And then. And then I got you a weapon as well, because everybody's got to have a good weapon. But this is a cattle. Cattle hair pick. So you can throw a nice little hair pick in there, but if you need it, you can pull it out and shiv somebody with it. I can.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yes.

[Griff]

Yes. Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Show the shiver.

[Eli Double Tap]

Showing a shiver.

[Griff]

Did Brandon's deliver or no?

[Eli Double Tap]

No, it has not delivered yet. I'm so.

[Brandon Herrera]

Suspense is killing me.

[Griff]

It should. It's really fucking good.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's so good.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's really concerned. I also get very uncomfortable with gift giving.

[Eli Double Tap]

Tell them the gift and we'll reveal it. If it gets here in time or we'll insert it. Actually, that's what we'll do.

[Brandon Herrera]

I believe it's your. It's your turn, I think.

[Griff]

Okay, now I'll do yours first. We'll close him out.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, all right.

[Griff]

We still got a lot of like. I couldn't be more proud of you for running for Congress, man.

[Brandon Herrera]

I appreciate, man.

[Griff]

I really think that we need good people with common sense running for office that are going to represent the needs of the everyday people. Right. People who care about the rights. They care about freedom of speech, they care about taking care of their families. They want to live in a safe environment in America. And, like, it's really awesome to see people like you being willing to stand up and do the right thing.

[Brandon Herrera]

I appreciate it.

[Griff]

Not enough people do that. So I'm really proud of you for doing that.

[Brandon Herrera]

I just. I hope that whatever we did with that run inspires more people to go out and do it themselves.

[Griff]

Yep. So I had. I commissioned a handmade custom afghan rug that said let's go Brandon on it.

[Eli Double Tap]

One of one.

[Griff]

One of one. So they literally actually.

[Brandon Herrera]

So fucking funny.

[Griff]

Yeah, I. It's. Let's go, Brandon It's a, a. It's a Afghan handmade tapestry. It is the only one in existence, probably the only one ever to be made, but that was made in a home. They've, like, sheared the freaking goats. They made the wool, they tied the knots in a home. And it says, let's go, Brandon. And I have you a one of one custom Afghan.

[Brandon Herrera]

So I know you don't know this, and I don't think my friends know this. I collect Afghan war. War rugs.

[Griff]

Do you?

[Eli Double Tap]

No shit. Yeah. I did not know. Well, now you have. Like, I straight up.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like, my closet upstairs is full of those mothers.

[Griff]

Yeah. We started bringing them in. Like, if you want a custom one, let me know. I'll make you whatever you want.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's fucking rad, man. Well, I appreciate that.

[Griff]

Thank you, dude.

[Brandon Herrera]

Thank you so much.

[Griff]

I'm really proud of you, dude. Well done.

[Brandon Herrera]

I appreciate that.

[Eli Double Tap]

We're gonna open that on camera and, like, answer it in this. It's like, yo, this is what we act. This is what Griff got our boy. All right? He told me that. I was like, dude, he's going to love that. I did not know about collecting.

[Brandon Herrera]

I have some of the. The war rugs that they made as it was like a peace kind of thing, like a symbol of peace. But there was a bunch of Afghani war rugs that were made commemorating 9, 11, and like, if you didn't know any better, you would think it's kind of like a rub it in kind of thing, but it's straight up. It's supposed to be like a piece rug with the dove and everything on it, but I've got a couple of those in the closet. I think I gave you one for your Hilux.

[Eli Double Tap]

If it was from Saudi Arabia, then it's rubbing it in.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Griff]

A lot of people don't know the history behind the war rugs. So when the Soviets invaded, all of the kids went out of school. And the Soviets were brutal in Afghanistan. Yeah, they, like. There's still just beautiful mountain ranges. If they were in America, they would be a national park. And outside of those mountain ranges, there's just rows for miles, hundreds of miles. Like, white rocks that are painted. And that represents landmines. You just don't go past the white rocks. And so they. But before they painted those rocks, there were just kids that didn't know any better. And, you know, on one deployment, we had some kid who picked up a dud mark 19 and smacked it on a rock, and he's now missing his right Arm. They drug him to the front gate and we had to fucking get him to the medics and get him helo'd out of there. And so unexploded ordinance is a big deal. Yeah, they didn't have paper, they didn't have pens. They couldn't go to school because of the invasion. But what they could do is they could weave rugs in their homes. And so the women knew that they had to educate their kids and what to stay away from. So they started doing in the patterns of the landmines, like stay away from these landmines, stay away from these grenades. Hey, if you see this type of helicopter, you need to stay away from it versus this one. This is an ak. So that's how the war rugs actually got started. It was an educational thing to keep kids from getting hurt to tell us. And then it turned into the story of wars. Right. Because that's the only thing they can do in their homes. They got, they can shear wool, they can do it all in their house. They can tie it together. And that's one thing they can do in Afghanistan. So that's the tell their story.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's really fucking cool. I didn't know that.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

God, I love cultures and how they. Even as you're saying they don't have pen or paper. But this is how we get that message into the next generation. Kids like big, no, no, don't go around this stuff. And then also it becomes this thing that Brandon collects or like, it's wild.

[Griff]

Yeah. But when you, you know, say for example, we do a Brandon Herrera war rug collection, which we're gonna do now.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh God. To me it's just cool because it's like the history of warfare. Like no matter what it is, it's very cool to me. Like in my particular tism, I guess is firearms. To me it's cool like from the 1700s all the way to modern day, every way it's ever been done, like that is just so fucking cool.

[Eli Double Tap]

Eli. I'm a ghost. What are you doing?

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm here to tell you about ghost bed.

[Eli Double Tap]

Is this an ad?

[Donut Operator]

It might be an ad.

[Eli Double Tap]

Why are you in my bedroom? I don't know.

[Donut Operator]

Scoot over, let's talk about it. Every ghost Mattress has a 20 year warranty. Some even have a 25 year warranty. And you can try them out for 101 nights worry free. If you don't like it, just send it back.

[Eli Double Tap]

I don't like this.

[Donut Operator]

No hard feelings. One of our favorite things about ghostbed Is that it has cooling technology. So if you get hot at night, like we do down here in Texas, it's a lifesaver.

[Eli Double Tap]

I'm uncomfortable.

[Donut Operator]

But you're not hot, are you? I'm uncomfortable, but you're not hot, are you? Ghostbed also offers bundles, so they have everything you need. Just choose one of their four mattresses.

[Griff]

And pick your bundle.

[Eli Double Tap]

Why are you doing this to me?

[Donut Operator]

Four mattresses.

[Eli Double Tap]

Four.

[Donut Operator]

Right now, Ghostbed is offering 50% off all their products. Just use code, unsubscribe at checkout or go to ghostbed.com unsubscribe please.

[Eli Double Tap]

Buy some Picasso pet.com unsubscribe.

[Donut Operator]

I'll be under your bed if you need me.

[Cody]

This could get past TSA.

[Brandon Herrera]

The new 20 trillion dollar box cutter.

[Eli Double Tap]

Did get past TSA.

[Griff]

So my kumu, which is a Hawaiian teacher, kapono, made all these. And if anybody here leave, you guys give them a shout out. But is namak kaua. So N A underscore M, E A underscore K A U A. It means war things in Hawaiian. But that's his Instagram. If you guys want these on your own, you want to support a Hawaiian small business, you guys can get some of these for yourself.

[Brandon Herrera]

Everybody does. Because that's fucking awesome.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yes.

[Griff]

Thank you.

[Eli Double Tap]

Put it how he spelled it. I'll take a photo of it and send it to you. So you have the proper spelling too.

[Brandon Herrera]

I love the translation is just wore things.

[Griff]

Interest.

[Brandon Herrera]

Just war things.

[Griff]

Just a good shirt.

[Eli Double Tap]

Just four things.

[Brandon Herrera]

Pretty funny.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Griff]

But I know rangers and rangers love tomahawks. So I brought you a Hawaiian tomahawk.

[Eli Double Tap]

You got a tomahawk. I'm not a ranger.

[Griff]

Swordfish bill.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's fucking dope.

[Griff]

That is a. That is a Hawaiian war club. A swordfish bill. They would take them, dry them out and you would cleave somebody with that thing.

[Eli Double Tap]

Holy.

[Griff]

Or you could. Or you could stab them with it.

[Cody]

Double sided.

[Eli Double Tap]

We are putting this in the background of this to live on the set forever. Holy. Brother. Thank you so much.

[Griff]

Yeah, but you guys make a lot of things happen. And you'd know with the war rugs or with what we're doing right now. We're about to unbox. Dude, dude, dude.

[Eli Double Tap]

I appreciate that.

[Brandon Herrera]

Has some.

[Griff]

That has half to it. It's got weight to it.

[Brandon Herrera]

It doesn't look like it would, but it does.

[Eli Double Tap]

I will just. I got it.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

If I can say one thing, it's like thank you. First off, thank you for all these amazing gifts. And then also Just for being such an amazing human. Like, you are the individuals that we look up to and want to partner with or create these friendships with, because you understand, like, it's camaraderie, friendship, and what brotherhood should be. And, like, when you're looking to even business partner, it's like you're one of the rare breeds. We could surround yourself like, one in a million. That's what finding individuals like you in our lives is one in a million. And you hold on to those because you understand, like, you make the best of any situation you're giving. You're an amazing human, and then you. Nothing but positivity that you bring around you. And Andy, it's. It's a rare thing, and we are truly blessed to have you at this podcast table and then to call you a friend, like, I mean that from the bottom of my heart, brother.

[Griff]

Thank you, dude. Appreciate it.

[Eli Double Tap]

I appreciate you.

[Brandon Herrera]

We appreciate you carving out time to sit here and talk to us and tell stories and bullshit, man. It's been a lot of fun.

[Griff]

I've really enjoyed coming down here and hanging out and learning from you guys, too, so it's awesome. It's hard to explain to somebody how heavy that thing is. And if you had any kind of arm speed, getting hit in the head with that thing would be fatal. Yeah, absolutely fatal.

[Brandon Herrera]

It doesn't look like it should have any weight. Like, that does not look heavy.

[Cody]

Right. But as soon as you hold it and you feel it, it's like, holy.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, it's.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's bone cultures.

[Griff]

How.

[Eli Double Tap]

What they. They use. Like, they made weapons out of what they. Trout. I really want to hold it. Oh, that's cool. It. It is how cultures adapt to their versions of war. They're like, yo, okay, this kills stuff. Okay, let's. Let's fight with this thing.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, Cain and Abel with the first rock. Yeah, bro.

[Cody]

That could have some swing to it if you're really mad at someone or stabby to it.

[Donut Operator]

Now, I have a beautiful bracelet that if I get into an altercation with.

[Brandon Herrera]

They'Re gonna be like, how the fuck.

[Donut Operator]

Did a guy get murdered by a shark in Texas?

[Eli Double Tap]

Shark needed braces.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, yes, the famous Austin land shark.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, dude, thank you.

[Griff]

So, yeah, it's been really cool to be out in Hawaii and have a. Have a teacher and, like, specifically a guy who is a historian. You can ask him all the questions because everybody ask me, like, oh, Hawaiian gun laws and weapons and everything else. I tell you, like, Hawaiians, they have a very rebellious culture. They love their Guns. And if you disrespect them, they will always throw hands and like. So if you go to the islands, be very kind to everybody you meet. Do not mistake the aloha for weakness.

[Brandon Herrera]

That was something you said yesterday that kind of stuck with me. That's. That's really cool.

[Griff]

Yeah, I like that. Yeah, that's good.

[Eli Double Tap]

My, my new judgment hammer.

[Brandon Herrera]

Your judgment hammer. That's like shadow box worthy.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, dude, that is so gangster. Thank you.

[Griff]

So, yeah, if you ever have daughters, that's the one to club somebody with because not like they're going to be. Identify the tool and see us. I like what Clubbed him like get killed by a swordfish. What is that?

[Cody]

Just dropped.

[Eli Double Tap]

He fell into the swordfish pool.

[Brandon Herrera]

Just drop him off in the ocean.

[Griff]

Oh, he got fucking stuck by a marlin.

[Brandon Herrera]

I guess he was an avid swimmer.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

We have cover stories already. Take your daughter's boyfriend deep sea fishing.

[Cody]

Oh, no.

[Brandon Herrera]

All right. Steve Irwin.

[Eli Double Tap]

Dude. So we've had the honor actually doing talking months ago, like almost a year now. Months. We got speed tracked kind of essentially for like, hey, we're going to do this known you're probably been wearing it for a long, long, long time. And that's combat flip flops. We'll go more into you starting that, that entire business venture, which is a wild story. But I remember you were the only guys. It's like, hey, it's built for as a better combat flip flops.

[Griff]

Bad for running worse, worse for fighting.

[Eli Double Tap]

There it is. Bad for. I think worse for fighting. I would wear them no matter what. And I got, I can, I can run a mile in your guys's foot flush every day.

[Brandon Herrera]

I have like, I've been wearing you guys stuff for maybe five years.

[Griff]

I'm so tired of people hitting us up with our AKs. Like, oh, you should have Brandon hero wear your stuff. Like, yeah, I know it. I feel like Leonardo DiCaprio in your videos. And like he's wearing. It's like.

[Brandon Herrera]

I've been wearing that like before I knew. I just saw like your mission statement was, was really cool. I didn't know anybody in our crew knew you guys. I just thought like, oh, that's. That's just really neat and like you make a great product. So I, I bought my first one, ran it through until my, my dog several years ago chewed it up.

[Eli Double Tap]

I remember that.

[Brandon Herrera]

And I was very upset because it was my favorite pair of flip flops ever. But she was too cute. I couldn't be mad at her. But I just, you know, I've been wearing your stuff. I probably bought three or four pairs.

[Griff]

Yeah, I know, I see it. I kind of stalk you on the backside, but you don't want to be. That guy is like, hey, Brandon. Because like, it's, it's so weird because you guys are, you know, famous, right?

[Eli Double Tap]

And it's Z list celebrities.

[Griff]

Yeah, yeah. But it's Walmart.

[Eli Double Tap]

We might get recognized one time.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'll go like X minus.

[Griff]

You know, you just never want to be like, hey, you want to collab and do this and do that? And I'm just thankful you guys were great. I know people will see it. I'm like, all right, that's cool.

[Brandon Herrera]

You guys have a great company. It's a great product.

[Griff]

Well, thank you. Yeah, dude, we.

[Eli Double Tap]

I think I had a couple pair of AKs and I might be. I think I was like, brian, you ever seen these?

[Brandon Herrera]

I think you were the reason why I found out. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And then we started other people like, yo, these are fucking dope. I had the, I don't know if.

[Brandon Herrera]

You guys, I think was your birthday back in the day. The first trip to Texas.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, yeah. I was like, yo, you should check out these flip flops are really dope. And I also had a pair of the red. What was the red? Tuk Tuks, dude. I had Tuk Tuks.

[Griff]

So I make those every now and then. Those are fun.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yes. And people are like, what the are those ones? I was like, yo, these are dope. Look how vibrant they are.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

But then you guys released the black ones. It would introduce it to the friends and I would always wear. I'd beat the out of them. Brandon beat the out of them. So we knew you had this amazing product. I was like, oh. And then finally this year we actually talked. Me and Brandon and I have talked about doing chocolates for a long ass time.

[Brandon Herrera]

We're the two Mexicans.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, we need some chocolates. We need some chocolates.

[Griff]

You guys have some up close and personal experience with chocolates?

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, yeah, it's called, it's called childhood.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

White people had wooden spoons, so we had chocolates.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm never unarmed.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, exactly. So, and then Cody was into shoes. And so we were like, okay. Cody loves shoes. Nick does the shoe thing. Not much of a shoe guy. We're like, reach out to you. We started actually talking for the first time this year, like more in actual talks. And we hopped on a call. It was like, hey, you know what, maybe we combine forces and do something together. And we hopped on a Call and it went extremely easy. That's when I knew I wanted to work with you is everything. The product's really good, but then you're just positive as fuck, which is a rare thing. And you were talking about Brandon and him running for election.

[Griff]

Yep.

[Eli Double Tap]

That was during. When you were running for election. Because he was super positive about that.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, no, yeah. I remember taking. It was very, very strange to live that dual life because it was part of, you know, I had a lot of my life focused on, you know, running for office and everything that came with that. Which was most of the time like living life on the road like throughout the district. Especially since it was the biggest district in Texas.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's like I could massive.

[Brandon Herrera]

I could leave my house in the morning for an event at the end of my district that wasn't, you know, until 6:30 in the afternoon and barely get there on time.

[Griff]

You need a plane.

[Brandon Herrera]

A plane would have been very helpful during that. But I mean, it was just like so much of our time was spent on that. But I remember like showing up to lunch meetings and taking time out of it and us talking about the shoe thing while we were. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Building the idea. And then it was watching that, having that conversation. And then you and Andy streamlined that process for us. We all hopped on a call. We were like, hey, we want to do shoes. Flip flops and then shoes. Because Cody had a really good idea. It's like, oh, man, this is what police officers. Leo wants this. This would help a lot of us with just an easy product that lasts. That you can beat the out of plane, but looks cool if you just want to wear on casual footwear.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And then we're adding on to those as we expand into that. He's like, next. And God bless. Working with you guys and how fast we can implement something. It's like something's wrong or we need to change something. It's like, oh, this, this. And we get to experience this new thing, footwear, which we've never done, but making that as easy as possible.

[Brandon Herrera]

And I think that's one of the benefits of working with a company whose founders are still involved in the process. Because as soon as in my. In my experience anyway, and I'm sure you've got the same experience, like just in the business sense, as soon as you lose the founder, the, the original driving force behind something, everything just goes to shit.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like people. You will never find somebody who believes in your product or your mission statement more than you do.

[Griff]

And you see that. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

You guys still stand by it. And then it was like, hey, this, this. And then months and months of like headache getting through everything, fighting through it. And then we finally the headache is.

[Griff]

Chasing you to get done. That is really it. That's the headache.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is here handed off. And then I know Andy buses because I'm like doing whatever it is live show what, whatever aspect. I'm like trying to jump to the next one. Pepper Box was a terrible idea to launch at the same time as everything else. So we're like, hey, we should do like eight businesses at once. That sounds like a great, great plan.

[Griff]

It's like, just cram it all in, dude. Just get it all over with.

[Brandon Herrera]

Irons in the fire. I like irons in the fire. Let's throw eight more irons in the fire.

[Eli Double Tap]

This sound great. And then you're talking scrambling.

[Griff]

What is it? Eckhart Tolle? The Power of now, right? You can have too much of that if you're. If you're not conscious of conscious of it. Oh, yeah, Power now. I'm just going to do this right now. And then you, you don't finish it right now. You start it right now, but then you committed to finish it. So you have 18 different things in the fire at once.

[Brandon Herrera]

And that's the Power of Now is the side product of Adderall is what it is.

[Eli Double Tap]

Because it is one of the few times I'm pretty good at like having a decent sized workload. It's like meeting folks, okay, we can structure this out. And then finally you do hit that point where it's like, oh. Oh, fuck. You have plates on plates on plates. And then you're thankfully a great team to action on each one. Andy, you have been fantastic to work with because it is like, here's this. Andy knows. I'll send a picture and then we'll go from that. Okay.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean, Eli, we spent a lot of time talking about it. Let's just show people what we're talking about.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's a great idea.

[Cody]

Are you ready, babe? Let's bring out Big Daddy.

[Eli Double Tap]

Love that idea.

[Donut Operator]

Who wants better sex?

[Eli Double Tap]

What'd you do with my wife? Don't worry about that.

[Griff]

She's fine.

[Donut Operator]

The best way to get started is by going to AdamandEve.com Adam and Eve is offering 50% off just about every item. And that includes free shipping plus brush processing.

[Eli Double Tap]

Where is she?

[Donut Operator]

Didn't I already tell you that she's fine? Adam and Eve wants to make your life easy, plus 100% free shipping and rush processing on your entire order. It doesn't matter how much you spend or what you buy. All of it will be sent discreetly.

[Eli Double Tap]

Fast and to you for free. Why do you keep doing this?

[Donut Operator]

Bring more pleasure and satisfaction into your bedroom. Just go to AdamAndEve.com and select any one item. It could be an adventurous new toy or anything you desire. Just enter offer code unsub at checkout.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's unsub U n S u [e-mail].

[Donut Operator]

This discount is specific to this podcast, so be sure to use code unsub at checkout.

[Eli Double Tap]

100% off free shipping and get it fast with rush processing code unsub.

[Griff]

So I have yet to see these.

[Eli Double Tap]

Okay, so these are still a prototype box. They're on their almost final iteration. We're just getting all the baselines done. I am. Dude. Fucking stuff. Most gangster, like, all this little work that has went into this.

[Brandon Herrera]

We put a lot of work in the box.

[Griff]

I mean, like, goddamn right it matters, right? It does. Like, it's the. It's the experience.

[Brandon Herrera]

The paper smells good.

[Eli Double Tap]

I know. I'm, like, trying to do it service.

[Griff]

Without, like, okay, give us Savannah. Come on now.

[Eli Double Tap]

Boom. Yes.

[Brandon Herrera]

The Vanna White.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Griff]

I couldn't be more proud of the team. And just, like, the amount of people. Because I've seen. I've been to the factories. I know the people that are working on them is the volume of people that get employed, the number of families fed.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, I know, because you were edging them the whole time. Like, let's show them the fucking shoe, dude. This is the.

[Eli Double Tap]

So this is the tiger stripes.

[Cody]

There's abus.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's that new smell, dude. Your team's, like, insane. Everyone.

[Cody]

Everyone's smelling before they.

[Brandon Herrera]

With the unsub on the rib unsub on the bottom of the shoe. Like it. I'm so the unsub tag.

[Griff]

Yeah. The laces look tight.

[Eli Double Tap]

What do you think of the boxing? I know when you were saying that, you're like. You're like, holy shit. Okay.

[Griff]

I couldn't be happier. The sublimation, because that's the thing is people don't get it is we had to buy when you're printing on a fabric. Like, oh, so we did. So we were licensed to make cock a flash. So we have a multicam pattern that looks like dick's.

[Brandon Herrera]

I ran a competition using your cock a flash shoes, by the way.

[Griff]

Thank you.

[Brandon Herrera]

Just this weekend.

[Griff]

Yeah, Appreciate that. And the very first run we did, we worked with a sublimator and they came up pink. So we had pink dick shoes that we paid for and shipped all the way up. And so sublimation. I just never understood how complicated it was to actually print something on a shoe. But those came out Chef's Kiss. Oh, my God.

[Eli Double Tap]

Dude, I love tiger stripe. Like S tier camo pattern. It's one of my favorites. That's why this was one of the first ones. And what's crazy is we have Rhodesian. We have.

[Brandon Herrera]

Are we doing roadie prints? The first one?

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, we got roadies coming in. Yeah. So those are all during the December launch when it actually goes live. But we also have that's hot cockaflaw shoes.

[Griff]

How do you like those slip ons?

[Brandon Herrera]

They were really nice, actually. I was surprised I went the entire competition. I thought I was gonna have to swap shoes at the end. But they were very good.

[Cody]

How happy you were mom took you in a pay list to get new shoes every year for school.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is Payless. I know, dude. You want to smell some Payless? Get them. Get in there. Get that Payless. Get that Payless.

[Donut Operator]

The BTS on Patreon was just me.

[Eli Double Tap]

Huffing shoes because it reminds me exactly like Cody said. It's like mom taking you back to.

[Donut Operator]

Payless to go buy shoes before school.

[Brandon Herrera]

You get that one Serotonin.

[Griff]

Also like I am.

[Eli Double Tap]

We got spaldings. You have $10 limit.

[Cody]

Yeah, I just want Chucks mom.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, so Chucks at home.

[Griff]

Speaking of which.

[Eli Double Tap]

Right?

[Griff]

Oh, you guys just redesigned Chucks. Fuck you, right? I wish Nick was here to throw the helmet on and throw the keyboard over the side. Because if you knew how fut were made, you know, Chucks are just like glued on the outside. And guys who have worn them in our environment, they blow out the sides and they fall apart often. Like, ours are different. We use actual real rubber on our outsoles, so they're super sticky. And that's the one thing I've noticed, like when you wear these shoes when you. You gotta be careful when you walk up to people because they're really quiet and you're going to freak people out. And then you get really good grip on stuff. But our outsoles are actually stitched onto the uppers so that prevents that blowout that you have. So they're just built better. And I hate to say it, but a shoe is a shoe is a shoe. And like, it may look similar. This is way better. And it has zero communism.

[Eli Double Tap]

Zero communism.

[Cody]

Calling Nick right now Nicoparism.

[Griff]

These are the ones that I want. I want these. I'm gonna get a set or two of those.

[Brandon Herrera]

Camo. I think that's literally what it's called on the box.

[Eli Double Tap]

Unsub camo. Yep.

[Griff]

All right. Got it. Understood.

[Eli Double Tap]

Have you heard it?

[Griff]

If you heard that beat, you'd be like, all right.

[Eli Double Tap]

I definitely heard that song.

[Griff]

You want to see it?

[Cody]

So I love those so much, dude.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is my circle.

[Griff]

The contrast of it. I don't know if the colors are coming through just right, but, like, when you throw them on your foot, look behind you.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's literally those two. The two lights at the base. And you look at that side and.

[Griff]

I mean, look at it.

[Brandon Herrera]

Look at the sign.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, it's. It's just unsub colors. We're like, let's make bright, vibrant fucking shoes with a dark. I did not realize this is that dark blue leather. Andy chose that.

[Brandon Herrera]

These shoes are the first shoes I've seen Eli actually wear in a long time. Like, unless it was a formal event.

[Eli Double Tap]

And then I try not to wear shoes. I wear my nicest pair of flip flops.

[Griff]

I really like the unsubbed down the back. That's the first time I've seen this detail.

[Eli Double Tap]

We changed that with this print.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah. Because I think the prototypes had them up here. We changed them down to the bottom. They show.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's your blacks.

[Cody]

Oh, my blacks.

[Eli Double Tap]

Show the box we this. So these are still prototypes. So can I actually say that in Spanish? Something beans.

[Brandon Herrera]

That'S blooming. I fuck. I can't remember the word for shoes. It's super simple. Zapato. Zapatos, negras.

[Eli Double Tap]

Boom. The black shoes. But that's like, if you look at the camera, like that reflection and then open the other side, show the inside so they spot those negroes.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

There you go.

[Eli Double Tap]

All right.

[Griff]

Yeah. That is a limited run box. That's like a defect collection card because the unsub is upside down.

[Eli Double Tap]

Those are literally the. Those are one time as we learned how to print those or they did. So they're magnet clothes. And you're going to have felt on the interior. So we're doing this limited rum box. You guys will know if you get those. There's 100 going out. They'll have an autograph, a challenge coin, all this stuff with these hundred autographed photo challenge coin. Maybe a couple other things just as a way to thank you. And it's going out to a hundred of y'all, just random randomly. You might get one of those boxes, and then one of you are getting a gold ticket to win a trip to with all of us. We're flying you out, you're gonna do dinner, hang out with the guys, probably brunch the next day. And just, just a good experience. We'll be putting you in a hotel paying for your flight. Just want you guys to have a great experience or have an opportunity to come hang out with our because we're.

[Brandon Herrera]

Part of such a great what now Eli community.

[Cody]

I personally love these because they're great jump out boy shoes.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh yeah.

[Cody]

So you know if you're a copy and you're wearing them with the bottom of your pants over them, they still look like nice shoes because you can still polish the ends of them. But in the meantime they're very comfy and you can still chase people down.

[Brandon Herrera]

I think we specifically designed these for that purpose. Yeah, yeah. It's because it's a good police shoe.

[Cody]

It's a good police shoe and your command doesn't have to know that like you know when your pants are over that it's, you know, it's, it's one.

[Eli Double Tap]

Of our shoes and we can't minimal.

[Brandon Herrera]

You can chase down bad people while leaving the unsettled.

[Eli Double Tap]

And we took so and and just for just for reference with when Cody built that it was really cool to see his he wanted to do for all of you. So we took off all badging like most companies and they allow us like you have combat flip flops, you have Andy, you have Griff helping with this process. And then Cody's idea, it's like hey, let's actually let it where they can wear it during work and not get in trouble. So we removed all marking show like all the tags. We have tags like this. Like this. That's not on those.

[Cody]

Nothing on these.

[Griff]

Yeah, and that's what we want to see because I like I have two brothers that are cops. You know I have great relationship with a lot of cops in my hometown and everything else. And you seem to they're just wearing a hefty boot. That's just unnecessary. It's not breathable. It's not good for their feet. And we just wanted something that they could wear, be comfortable, lightweight and just affordable. Candidly, you know that that actually works for them. And last and you guys, dude, they're.

[Cody]

Smooth on the inside. You're not going to get a bunch of blisters or anything. Thick soul like dude, these are wide toe box. Yep.

[Griff]

All super wide toe box.

[Cody]

And they don't come on awesome for police work. They're just light as hell.

[Eli Double Tap]

You can beat the shit out of them. And then what Brand. Even my favorite thing, the chocolate. It's not having to break them in.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Times you don't have to break in a chocolate.

[Brandon Herrera]

I got mine last night and I have been weari wearing it since. And it immediately broke in. Like I. I didn't have to do the. The typical, like wear it out for a week and it, you know, it then it feels like you. It belongs to you. This actually, this felt great from the. The first minute I put them on. Also, we put so many details on the. The flip flops tell them like. So the. The AK47 has the 7.62 x 39 casing on it, which is one of the reasons I always fucking loved it. You know that. And the AK leather on it. But these we. I wanted to keep the shell casing, but I wanted to put like an unsubbed twist on it. So we have. We actually built a proprietary caliber for these shoes.

[Eli Double Tap]

What was the caliber?

[Brandon Herrera]

We decided to go with 6.9 by 420 millimeters, which is included on every single shoe.

[Eli Double Tap]

Did you know that?

[Griff]

Nope.

[Brandon Herrera]

Did you not?

[Griff]

I am so happy right now.

[Eli Double Tap]

I just need to discipline.

[Griff]

No, I'm not disappointed. I'm like, oh, yes.

[Brandon Herrera]

Six, nine by 420.

[Griff]

I'm just mad that I didn't think of it first. That's awesome. That makes me so happy. Clean. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And we changed the emblem. We talked about even, like, stuff like that where it was like, shrink it by 2 centimeters. All those little things. He was so easy to work with. And working with good graphic designers or business partners so they. You guys understand the back end and what people already expect. And then being able to just bounce ideas was so fucking nice. Like, so nice to deal with in the business world. So not used to that.

[Griff]

We just like, we try to be the easiest company to work with. I just. That's it. When somebody, like when I always think about being an entrepreneur or a business owner, when somebody calls you and you see the number on your caller id, if your first reaction is to pick it up or do like, oh, do I have to answer this call right? As a small business owner, you want to be the guy that, when they see your caller id, they're like, this guy is going to solve a problem for me. They're going to make life easier on me. And that's what we always aim for. So I'm glad that this. These things are. They turned out spectacular way beyond anything. Like our whole team down in Bogota that put these all together, they've really been stretching their legs to make this all happen. And these look phenomenal.

[Eli Double Tap]

Did you guys kill that? We're so thankful. And you guys, I promise you with all these, when you start putting them on and everything, it is we wear them. I have not a bit. Just wearing the ones for the last few months. I actually wear the shoes to the range now because they're actually comfortable.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Cody]

You and Brandon been wearing these for years now.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, I mean that's the even more for the testament. And you guys keep adapting and making them better and better because this is the ones we bought originally. And my favorite part is you guys have a very good return policy which that is a testament to how well you stand by your own product. Because you guys like people beat them up.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's an amazing return policy because you could just return any shoe at any time and they'll keep it.

[Griff]

No, it's like if our shit falls apart, we'll make it right with you. That's it. Which is wild. I just want to make it right with you. Which is why, because again, there's zero communism involved. You go to any other fucking manufacturer, all their made in communist countries and we're like, no, we're veteran owned company working with rag companies. We're putting people to work, we're putting girls in school, we're clearing landmines, we're helping veterans like anytime you buy our product good happens.

[Eli Double Tap]

Which is another reason we literally, it was the it the nonprofits that also are benefited from you guys doing shoes. It's like, yes, we're helping put Afghan children, females in school, little girls in school, and actually having an education. Up till when it was an issue. But you were doing that up.

[Griff]

Still doing it.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. See? So fucking dope, like. And then you're out there on when you got your first pair of shoes from combat flip flops going on that journey we were talking about. It's like riding in a bus. This is what, 20, 17, 18. When you were in the bus, you were talking about like it's ISIS is a problem. And you're still.

[Griff]

Oh yeah, yeah, 17. Yeah, yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Wild to be doing that. And you're like, no, we're good.

[Brandon Herrera]

How much more of a problem is that now in Afghanistan today than it was when you started.

[Griff]

It's big. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's really sad. Yeah. We were really like on the come up in Afghanistan, like things were really turned in the corner and I don't think anybody thought how bad it could get that fast. And it really has turned the corner the country's really fallen apart. It's been with the pull out. With the pull out. It's been. It's been a secret struggle. But I will tell you that, like, our factory is still kicking ass. Like, it's been a struggle, but those guys are still working. We're still making chamaz. We're still making cashmere. We're still doing everything we can to put products together because we think that that's the best way to represent America. As we're going to go on with business, we're going to do it ethically. Nobody can tell us anything because I've taken 0.$0 from the US government. It's all been funded because of our customers and people like you to make all this good shit happen.

[Eli Double Tap]

Proper. That's awesome. Patriotism and then proper capitalism.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, the best parts. Yeah, the best parts of capitalism, exactly.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's like we get a benefit and through the individuals. Either that's the customer base or just the people that want to make a difference. They're the ones putting their money in it. And then you're actually making that possible and then sticking by. You're not like, quick payout. You're like, nope, we're going to do this for the long run. We want to see people succeed. Which is why I surround myself with all y'all is because it's one of the few times I'm like, oh, they actually care about others first and foremost. It's not their own selfish interests. It's like, how do we benefit the people that support us and make this possible? Yeah, it's fucking dope.

[Griff]

Well, thank you.

[Eli Double Tap]

All alone. Time to trim the old pubes.

[Donut Operator]

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[Eli Double Tap]

I don't have pants on.

[Griff]

Yeah, I noticed.

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Griff]

The worst part is the goddamn Internet, man. Everybody's like, oh, you're just making in China. Fuck you. Oh no.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's gotta hurt.

[Griff]

No. Yeah. Oh, it's Chinese knockoffs. Like stop. Like, oh yeah. And like the racist stuff that people like thr throw at us, you know, just like, oh, we're making Afghanistan. And like, like racial slur. Racial slur. Racial slur. It's like, come on man, like really?

[Eli Double Tap]

Like we're just.

[Brandon Herrera]

You're not even saying it to be funny.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, exactly.

[Griff]

Come on.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's the worst kind. We're helping people. You putting like a little kiddos, like. And that's a lot of people don't understand. They have the reference of America poverty. And you're like, no, no, no. That is. The poverty in America is completely different mindset than you are in a village. You do not have Internet access and you're trying to educate people. Unless you go to a third world or war ridden country, you will never know that difference.

[Griff]

Yeah. Then when anybody says the word poverty to me, I know right where I'm sitting, I'm in the back of a gun truck and I'm driving my first time south out of Agram through Kabul. And you, you drive down these roads and there are these women and they're sitting with like 6 month old babies in their arms and they're in the middle of the road and they're holding their hands up like this, begging for food or for water or for anything because their husbands, they got killed in the war or whatever and they have no employable skills and they need something. And you think to yourself, that woman probably hopes somebody's checking their cell phone.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yep.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like imagine like, well, it's just the contextualization of $20 US per day.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

What that means to you?

[Griff]

Oh, 2600 a year is the. As the sustainable. Like what you can do for a person, 600 per year.

[Brandon Herrera]

I mean it's crazy. It's the difference between here we're just like, oh my God, slave wages, that shouldn't even be legal. But there it's. That's, that's quite a lot.

[Eli Double Tap]

But a week of our slave laborers People are like, they balling, they, they're living. That's a different lifestyle.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's less than 3 hours minimum wage here. Yeah, yeah, there is.

[Eli Double Tap]

You're balling and that's like going into houses, a dirt floor, dude. I remember going like out in those country houses or little villages and you get to see that lifestyle where it is like dirt floors. They're still cooking. You non. They bring your tea. So they're so happy for what they have. And you're like this dope, you're super respectful. They make some of the best tea and still to this day best weed.

[Griff]

So good.

[Eli Double Tap]

Everything. Yeah, top tier.

[Griff]

Everything is good.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's what he said, everything.

[Eli Double Tap]

But you get to see that different level and I think that's a reality check for a lot of people. Even like Cody, you working in some of the bad areas, you're like. And then you see what people complaining about you like, I assure you water.

[Cody]

Ain'T got no taste.

[Eli Double Tap]

I don't even know what that means.

[Griff]

I was gonna ask you to explain that as well.

[Cody]

So. Would you like me to explain?

[Griff]

Yeah, love it. All right.

[Cody]

When I was a cop, we had a big snowstorm. Like, you know, most people will drive around hellcats and shit. They can't get around and.

[Griff]

That, that's not where I thought this was going. Please continue.

[Cody]

So we had four wheel drive police vehicles. They could get around. We were the only people that could drive through the city. Everything was, you know, it was a big snowstorm and everything. And so we were picking up people in communities and taking them to the only place that was open. Thank God we, we had the qt. The QT was open. It's the only place open. So we would take people there. It's like, hey, we, you know, like, well I ain't got money. And I'm like, okay, well we'll buy you some water. We'll buy you some, some like some cold cuts like you make some sandwiches for your family and stuff. The snow storm will be over like tomorrow, day after. Water ain't got no taste. Like no, we're going to buy you water. Well, water ain't got no taste. It's like we're trying to help people survive. And that was the response that we got.

[Eli Double Tap]

They didn't, oh, it was just because they didn't have a taste.

[Brandon Herrera]

They're offended. You're only gonna buy us water? Yeah, Water doesn't have any taste.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, that is, dude, when we would go, that's wild.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like the entitlement of that is Absurd. A stranger is going out of his way to help you. He doesn't have to.

[Cody]

You know, we were, we were, you know, the police department I worked for. It's like if you're a lower end guy, you just started, you're making like, you know, you're making like $16 an hour. Hopefully it's like where you're using. A lot of the times we're using our personal money to help people. And yeah, it's just like, no, I want coke. Water ain't got no taste.

[Eli Double Tap]

Like you can't do coke.

[Cody]

Yeah, I'm trying to keep your family alive right now.

[Griff]

Yeah. So it's like, yeah, we can cut.

[Eli Double Tap]

Based off of kind of where a lot. Even the idea of you guys would roll into town with a bunch of money and they would give all their food away because they're like, oh, someone will run to town. And then if, but if something happens where that person can't run to town and get some supplies, like, oh wait, we fucked up. We used to, we were warning the people for a month ahead of time. It's like, yo, there's gonna be a very big drought. Please stop washing your cars. Do not wash your cars. Stop washing your goddamn cars. Still washing the cars. Like, hey, you got like a week and there's going to be a massive drought. Like there's going to be no water in this area, the Diallo river province, up to that day. Then drought happens and then it's like, hey, we don't have water. Like, damn it guys, how many a month? What did we tell all of you not to do? And then you continue to do this. We started bringing water out and trying to offset the problem, but it's, it's those different mindsets depending on where you're raised, what your culture is, what your day to day lifestyle. And that's something like water. You, your idea of worth or a product that keeps you alive is based off of taste and flavor. Water doesn't got no taste. Like it doesn't keep me alive.

[Cody]

Yeah, like, like he was saying, you spend a couple hundred dollars a year, you can keep a person alive. Can keep a family alive. Yeah, it's like, you know, just sometimes you deal with people, they're like, yeah, well water ain't got no taste. I don't want water. Like, damn, you have no idea how good you have.

[Brandon Herrera]

We, we have things so good.

[Griff]

Yeah, it's so you. We, we hit this one area is again on that winter strike deployment and we're all freezing and our CMO Lee, you know, you've met him. So he was on an outpost and he got dysentery like after he hit the ground, right. So he's like shitting himself like in his pants as we're clearing an objective. And platoon sergeant's like, hey man, just like, just go rest. We're gonna like go overnight. And he's like, oh, there's this like shelter, like the overhang. And so he goes and he lays down and he doesn't realize that's the Afghan toilet because it's like the, the overhang where all the guys can. So now he goes and lays down and just passes out. And he wakes up and he's like covered in human fecal matter. And so he's like, now we're freezing in a morning and he's sick and he's like shitting himself and he's covered in crap. He's so mad and he's like pulling security and doing his thing. And this little eight year old girl walks out with this tray with chai and some jelly filled crackers and gives it to him. And that was the best. To this day he's like, that's the best gift anybody's ever given me. He's like, clean water and warmth and like a shelter and that's all that we need as human beings. And he was just so thankful for that. And it's really disappointing to me to hear that like that's the way that cops get treated or you know, when you're trying to help somebody. Like water ain't got no taste is like, man, we're trying.

[Brandon Herrera]

I think everything's about intent.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's like, you know, I. You're going through a tough time. I'm trying to help you. And to be spitting your face like that, it's like, that's supremely disappointing.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, that's what's. It's. We are blessed a lot. The majority of time. I wish a lot of people could experience a lot of a deployment as you're saying. It's like it's earning that lifestyle or earning. Who are you talking about? It's earned.

[Brandon Herrera]

We were just talking adversity builds character.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. Oh, no, it was actually your. The book. Sci fi movie. God dang it.

[Griff]

We just talked about Heinlein. Starship Troopers.

[Eli Double Tap]

Starship Troopers. It's. It's earned.

[Griff]

Yep. Service, equal citizenship.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yes. And so everything is earned at that point. And that's your reference point because you did the service, now you have citizenship and you're going to appreciate A lot more. Because you went through that and you've seen what other people go through. Cody has a different mindset.

[Brandon Herrera]

You know what?

[Cody]

This bitch, the one that said that to me.

[Griff]

How.

[Cody]

How nice people are treated here in the United States. This dude, the one that said that water ain't got no taste. We raided her nephew's apartment probably a week earlier. Section 8 apartment. Apartment is paid for, food stamps everywhere. So, like, food was paid for. There was like, fucking 60 grand in cash sitting on the couch from when they had been selling crack for the past month. And like. Like, you're like, water ain't got no taste. We want more, Mr. Cop Man. So your nephew has 60 grand in cash. This is a free apartment. Section 8 housing. You get fucking welfare every month. Like, you got your food stamps. It's like, you. This never. It's never enough.

[Griff]

And then.

[Cody]

And then, you know, you got that girl bringing up tea and, like, fresh water for your boy who got shit on. That was. That was awesome. And they were happy with that. It drives me a little bit crazy. Sorry. I'll stop now.

[Griff]

I'm glad that you freaking chimed up here. Good. I like it when you're animated.

[Brandon Herrera]

I don't think anyone, any of us are gonna argue with that. Just. It's annoying.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's having that difference. It's. And it's a weird mindset. That's why I like the Afghan. All those people even, like, you can even tell whoever, it's like, oh, man, they suck. Because X, Y, and Z, it's like they're. They fought hard. It's like, yeah, they fought hard. And that is actually. If you were in the same situation, you would have done the same fucking thing.

[Griff]

We all watch Star wars and we vote for the Jedi. Like, the Jedi versus Empire. Like, did we not see the irony?

[Eli Double Tap]

Exactly. Like, everyone at the end of the day is just, like, fighting for what you believe in. They have very high beliefs in that they were defending something that they held value in or their property. War and just culture make a huge difference at the end of the day.

[Griff]

Yeah. I think the one thing I really wish is that we would go back to the days where we would shit on military generals.

[Eli Double Tap]

The ones that no.

[Griff]

And they like. I'm like, no. Literally, if you were not a good general and you were not winning a war and you were not doing the right things, you were reported in the public to not serving your country correctly. And somehow after Vietnam that something happened in America where we don't question military leadership. And if you question them for not doing their job appropriately, for not using your resources appropriately and not accomplishing your objectives appropriately. Somehow you're not patriotic.

[Brandon Herrera]

I feel like we stopped linking the results with the people in charge.

[Griff]

Agreed.

[Eli Double Tap]

I think.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

I just got the phone with old tart major last week. He was the first art major that said, I've heard like, leadership from higher up say this. And he was like, man. He was complaining about somebody else, like, taking. Writing books. And it was a sergeant major writing books and claiming the army. Like, how he led his troops and everything. He's like, I hate those dudes. You know why? Cuevas. I was like, why? It's like, that was your guys's war. It wasn't ours. We were SAR majors. We didn't have. We weren't at the front line. We were just telling you guys what to do. We don't get to write books about that. You guys do because you were at the front line fighting those fights. Never heard a sergeant major say that before. I was like, that's why you're a good leader, Sergeant Major. Have you said that alone? Separated you from everyone else that I have talked to in that stuff. Status. You were the first one. It's like, I didn't do a thing. I had you guys walled around me. I was protected no matter what. SAR majors aren't at the front line getting shot, dying, getting blown up. That's all the younger generation leading that front. He's like, why the. Do we have a right to write a book about that? Good leadership right there. Like true good leadership from that.

[Griff]

Yeah, but I. I really wish we would go back to criticizing our military the way that we used to During World War II, Korean War in Vietnam. Like our. We spend so much money as a country on our military to not have it go right.

[Eli Double Tap]

Anyone else CEOs would have been held accountable for that. Yeah, if it was a normal job, they would have been fired. Like you would have fired. What is that?

[Griff]

Pentagon audit. They lost the Pentagon audit. They lost $6 trillion. It's unaccounted for with a T. A T since 2001.

[Cody]

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Cody]

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Eli Double Tap]

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[Cody]

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[Griff]

Now I'm going.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's wild. You are one of those dudes. It's a phenomenal lifestyle, a crazy lifestyle because you're an individual that for reference, like going into combat, you've done the combat thing. You got out of war from Afghanistan and then you went back for your company to just go like find shoes.

[Griff]

At the time a little bit more complicated than that, which we'll get into it. But yeah, like, I like living adventurously. I like traveling to far off and distant places and meeting new people, shooting.

[Eli Double Tap]

Them and shooting them.

[Griff]

It gets old, you know? You know, or you can just like go to dinner and have a beer with them. What are the other ways?

[Cody]

So that's the right thing to do.

[Griff]

That is the right thing to do.

[Eli Double Tap]

Dinner and then shoot him.

[Brandon Herrera]

Remind me never to go to dinner with you guys.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's just. It's awesome hearing your entire experience and then starting it off. I like. So you are the owner of Combat Flip Flops. You started that venture in 2016, 2017, 29, 2009. Jeez. Oh, my God.

[Griff]

Which is when it first started. Yeah, yeah. That was like the. I got out in 2006. I did the standard thing that most veterans do. You get out and you get a regular job and try to be a human being. Fail miserably, lose your job, fall back into like, contracting because you need to make money to support your family and they send you back overseas. It's basically my story. And I need money. I need money.

[Eli Double Tap]

I'm really good at this one thing.

[Griff]

Yeah, send me back. And I ended up being over there and in my job, I was responsible for putting in clinics and contracting doctors to agencies, different other government agencies who needed people to Provide medical care and equipment. So when I showed up, I had a smile and a backpack and some cash and I had to be alive when I, you know, got back on the plane, right. So what do you do? And I, I'm a map guy because I was an artillery guy in the regiment. And every night they have this briefing of where all the bombs were off on the previous day. Like, all right, here's where all the attacks went off. And then they overlay it. Here's it over a month. Here's what it's like over three months. And you see nodes. And the nodes are around the US Embassy, military compounds and convoys and reporters. Those are where the three in combat zones. That's where all the shit happens around those three areas. Well, if you're smart, like I'm just not going to go to those places. And where you go is where there's a local small business flourishing because the local small business owners don't let happen on their corner. So you just stay there. And there was one time I was getting ready to like walk out of my hotel in the morning and the Concierge says, hey, Mr. Griffin, you need to go upstairs and have another cup of coffee. And like, noted, heard, got it. And so I went upstairs, rooftop place. And this is where all the Russian stewardesses and like pilots would stay in this little hotel kind of on the outskirts of Kabul. I'm upstairs having a drink of coffee, just kind of rescheduling a few meetings for the morning. All of a sudden, IED goes off, coffee shakes, rumbles, take the last sip of it, walk back downstairs. Am I good to go now? He's like, oh yeah, Mr. Griffin, you're good to go. Have a great day.

[Brandon Herrera]

Holy shit.

[Griff]

So it just goes to show like the local business owners, they know when shit goes down versus our intelligence agency is in our military. So my thought was, is like, why aren't we encouraging more business for the cost of one mrap? We could turn around entire square blocks of cities.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's why the CIA started opening coffee shops.

[Griff]

I wish they would. I wish they would. That would be the more ethical thing for them to do. So, but that's how I got started is I was looking for a cup of coffee. So I was at a, I was at a conference for the Afghan National Army. I'm a weird looking guy and I'm in dirty secret. I'm an officer, right? So boo boo boo. Yeah. And I was at this conference and it's all the old sergeant majors and the good old boys and they're selling stuff to the Afghan National Army. And I had long hair and a beard, and nobody's talking to me. And I look across the conference way and there's somebody like you, long hair and a beard. Nobody's talking to him. And I'm like, hey, man, weird. Knows weird. Like, what's up? And he was a Marine captain, his name is John Boyer. And he got hired to run an Afghan combat boot factory. Because a lot of people don't know this, but the US military, the US government, US taxpayer, paid for a 340,000 person police force and military force in Afghanistan from 1700 to 340,000 in a couple years. So using the same mentality that we use in America, where you want to create jobs and stability. So they need to make the boots in country, needed backpacks, but they don't have those factories. So they had a program called Afghan First, Afghan Made. The U.S. government's like, hey, Afghan business owners, if you build a factory, we're going to give these contracts heavy incentives.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's fucking hilarious that the American government is putting forward Afghanistan first policies because they know they work in countries. That's crazy.

[Griff]

Isn't that right?

[Brandon Herrera]

Isn't it weird to think about? Right?

[Griff]

So they built these huge factories, like the private business owners paid to build these factors, factories on the bets that they're going to get government contracts to build product. And then they were taking people who didn't know how to do anything and training to be cobblers and tailors to make boots and uniforms for the Afghan national military. Each one of those people supported five to 13 family members. So the social impact of a factory was just massive. And I met John. He's like, dude, I built this factory and I bought the most badass espresso machine in Afghanistan. Because when you're there in country, it's Nest Cafe or it's tea, and you're ready to shoot a motherfucker for a good cup of coffee. Like, after a week, I'm like, dude, I'll be there tomorrow morning. And I walked into that factory and it changed my life. Yeah, I saw all of these people working and they were from the. They took me on the tour and the guys learning to like, feed a sewing machine to sewing a straight line. And by the time you get to the end of it, there's hundreds of guys in a room knocking out badass combat boots that could withstand the rigors of Afghanistan, which our boot manufacturers couldn't do for years. And it was really impressive. And I asked him, I Was like, hey man, what are you going to do when the war ends? And he's like, nothing, we're not going to do anything. Everybody here is going to go out of work. Nobody's going to want to buy anything in Afghanistan. And I went from inspiration to fury, like pretty quickly. And I look down on this table and there's this combat boot sole with a flip flop thong punched through it. I was like, that's ugly and cool. Americans will buy that shit.

[Eli Double Tap]

If I put combat on there.

[Griff]

They'll buy it. And the longer story of it is that we built this huge multi hundred thousand person military out of, I think the number was like 60 plus percent of them were illiterate. And they also grew up in a culture without shoelaces. So now you're taking these kids and you're training them to be a soldier and you're making them wear these combat boots, but they're also Islamic, so they have to take their shoes on and off five times a day. So if you can imagine taking your combat boots on and off five times a day, it's kind of a pain in the dick. And then if you don't know how to tie shoelaces, it kind of complicates things.

[Brandon Herrera]

And you can't read the instructions to do it.

[Griff]

Yeah. So they were losing tens of thousands of man hours per day because of fucking shoelaces. Think about that. And so he's like, hey, I'm gonna solve this problem. I'm gonna make a Garrison style combat flip flop. And like, you guys can wear, yeah, you got in the field wear boots, but hey, just wear these around. Garrison never took off, but except for us. And then we just started and that was it.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's wild. Yeah, I love how businesses can be made like that, yours and like lead even leading up to that moment, because you can rewind go into for the people that. What year did you join the military?

[Griff]

2001.

[Eli Double Tap]

2001. Was it after or was it right before?

[Griff]

Right before, so.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, so were you in RIP during?

[Griff]

I was in artillery like training course. I was doing a fire support course. And the instructor comes in, slams the back door, says, everybody shut the fuck up. We're like, what do we do? And he turns on the TV right in time for the second plane to run into the tower. And we're like, oh shit, I guess we're going to war now, huh? And my girlfriend at the time worked in Manhattan. And then I heard about the Pentagon. And my mom worked at a naval dental clinic. She was a dental Hygienist. And she worked right near the Pentagon. Gone. And I'm like, mother. So now I'm in the dark in Oklahoma. Like, while this is going on. And this is like back from when we had the old 12 digit, like, cell phones. Yeah. This is back in the day. You're trying to get a hold of people and you're getting nothing. Yeah. And that was just scary. Like, they were both fine, but you didn't know. Didn't know.

[Eli Double Tap]

And then that was during. For a lot of people that don't realize a lot. Phone lines were down, calling out. You're on like mostly landlines at that time. You'd call and it was just outages because the influx of everyone calling. Yes, dude, that would have been so fucking wild. Joining. You're there, close that. And is that when you seen a shift in training and basic or during your schooling at that time and how everyone was the standard.

[Griff]

I think people took it a lot more seriously then. I always wanted to go to the regime. Like, I. That's where I wanted to go. I fight. Like, when I graduated school, I want to be a Ranger fire support officer, period. That was my aim. So I was already in pre Ranger training. I was ready to go. But then that just ramped it up, you know, Went through Ranger school, got to my first conventional unit, and I just walked in and told my first battalion commander was like, I will do whatever you want me to do, but as soon as I can, I'm gonna drop my packet to Ranger regiment and I just would like your signature. And he's like, all right, cool. Here's what I expect of you. And nine months later, I dropped my packet.

[Cody]

And what year was that?

[Griff]

2001.

[Cody]

Okay.

[Griff]

Yeah. And. And it was cool. Like, everybody supported the mission. Like, if you're a motivated guy in the military, you're all creaky over there.

[Cody]

You like tisming right now doing it. When I see you do this more than like three times a minute and like, all right, something's bothering you, Eli, right now.

[Eli Double Tap]

Okay, wait.

[Griff]

Okay.

[Eli Double Tap]

I can live with that one. I can live with that one.

[Brandon Herrera]

I can live with that.

[Eli Double Tap]

So you did what, 2009 or. Sorry, 2001.

[Griff]

2001. Graduated from college, went through officer basic course, went to Ranger school. Winter phase, like early 2002. Got to my first. I knew is what it is, man. I went into £190 pounds. The best shape of my life. I came out at £150. Two months later, it's. It like I. And then I went to 215 in two weeks. Oh, you bloated, right? £65 in two weeks.

[Brandon Herrera]

Jesus Christ.

[Eli Double Tap]

Dude, I. You went during winter, so you at least got two meals.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And then. But it's. You're just freezing. A lot of people don't understand. I can stand out in the cold. We. I think we talked. Talked about that the other day. Because cold weather gear is a big no no for a lot of the time. So people didn't understand. It's like, oh, you just adjust to the cold. There is no. They have cold weather gear. You're not allowed to wear it. And then you just stand there and like, I'm fine.

[Griff]

No, I will spoon another man in a heartbeat. I got. No, I got another man so that.

[Cody]

We can both have warmth.

[Griff]

Yeah. Come here, Cody.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's 90 degrees.

[Griff]

Stop.

[Brandon Herrera]

No.

[Eli Double Tap]

You looked cold. I sweat.

[Griff]

But it's funny because, you know, you're an artillery guy, and people kind of expect you to not be in shape and to be kind of like, round because you're artillery. Right. You just don't. You're not infantry. And I shot up my first unit, and I was over. I was 20 pounds heavier than I am now. And I finally started running and I started losing my Ranger baby weight. And my commander and the. They pulled me in. They're like, hey, we need to send you to the doc, like, because do you have cancer or something? I was like, no, man, I'm good. I'm just getting back down to it. So I lost 35 pounds, like, in my first couple months in my unit. And they were just surprised.

[Brandon Herrera]

You had that Christian Bale career of weight loss.

[Griff]

It was interesting. And then as soon as I could, I went to the. I put down my packet and my first battalion commander. You got to imagine, like, this is right after the invasion of Iraq. So we Afghanistan and then we go to a convention unit. So now we're creeping into 2003. Then they did Iraq and spring of 2003, and just. Things are just going off in the army now. It's like everybody is going to war.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Griff]

It's not just Green Berets and the Rangers are going to go do a deployment for a year a little bit. It's like everybody is going. And my first battalion commander, he came out of the regiment. He was really good dude. And we had a change of command. And, you know, when the new colonel comes in, they want to go out and smoke all the lieutenants and approve their. So, like, the new colonel comes in and they. We're Gonna have like officer PT in the morning. And then he trains up and they go run you five miles at some like break dick pace. And then they give you some motivational huro speech. And his huro speech is like, we're going to combat this summer. If any of you guys are thinking to go into the regiment, none of you are going to go. Don't even think about doing this. You're staying here. And I was kind of shocked. I like, that was his first comment to me. Well, our change of command ceremony was that afternoon. And Colonel Rob Choppa guy's the man. If you're watching this, Rob, you're fucking awesome. So we're literally. You go through the change of command ceremony and I'm shaking his hand. I'm like. Grabbed his hands, like, hey, sir. He said, like, we're not going to the regiment. Like, what's going on? He's like, meet me in my office in 15 minutes. He left his change of command ceremony, drove across base, backdated my orders, sent me to the regiment.

[Eli Double Tap]

No shit. That's baller ass leader right there.

[Griff]

Cool. That is a good leader. That was the way the army used to be.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's dope to actually do. It's like, hey, I'm going to put this thing. Because I made a promise to one of my guys. I'm going to make this happen. Because you would have. For reference, you would have been fucked. You would have just been like three more years, just locked in.

[Griff]

Locked in. Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's not to make a pop culture reference this early, but it kind of reminds me of the beginning of Starship Troopers where he's trying to quit and then the attack happens on Buenos Aires and he's just like, is this your signature?

[Griff]

Yeah. I love that movie.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's a great fucking movie, that book.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

I wanted to get around to reading the book because I know it's radically different because like the movie space, basically satire. But I've never, never had the chance.

[Eli Double Tap]

It goes hard.

[Griff]

All right. My favorite part about that book is service equals citizenship.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, all right.

[Griff]

I like.

[Cody]

We gotta ask Riff, though, which girl?

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, yeah, that's a good question.

[Cody]

In Starship Troopers.

[Brandon Herrera]

Dizzy or Dizzy or Carmen?

[Cody]

Carmen.

[Griff]

Carmen.

[Cody]

Carmen.

[Brandon Herrera]

Really?

[Cody]

Really?

[Eli Double Tap]

You just like the permanent proper?

[Griff]

Yeah, don't judge.

[Eli Double Tap]

You're like, Dizzy's too much. Gonna be combative. She puts out on day one, though.

[Griff]

It's too much. It's too much. Other guys, you guys are used to it.

[Brandon Herrera]

So the fact that Carmen. Other guys is not while you're away. The first time you go away, that's not a problem for you.

[Griff]

It's a problem for me. I'm just saying that my first response would have been like young guy. That's what I probably would.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, I guarantee at bar it's when you get older, you're like, okay, young, especially dizzy. Like, yeah, def or not dizzy. Carmen, she's gorgeous. She's gonna have my back. She just cheated on me. She's hot. It's fine. It's the red ticket or the, the red flag just how hot she is.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, you're a pilot, you make more money. Oh, okay.

[Cody]

Yeah, Dizzy. She liked Rico the entire time right up until.

[Brandon Herrera]

Well, something kind of spoiler for a.

[Griff]

30 year old movie, right?

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, that's close to 30 years old now. I hate that.

[Cody]

I hate that too.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is when.

[Cody]

Look, Brandon, fucking 28 years old over here.

[Brandon Herrera]

I saw something.

[Eli Double Tap]

Being older.

[Brandon Herrera]

I saw something this morning where it was like, it is. It has now been as much time between current day and the early 2000s for music as the early 2000s to the 80s. So like you listening to Nickelback is the same as your dad listening to Death Leopard.

[Eli Double Tap]

You're almost listening Michael Jackson.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like, I listen to Def Leppard, man.

[Cody]

I. I found this radio station on Spotify. It's like bands that you listen to. And it put on Lincoln park and it was a female singing. And I was like, this is. This is Lincoln Park.

[Eli Double Tap]

They switched. Yeah, well, they.

[Brandon Herrera]

They didn't really have a choice on switching.

[Eli Double Tap]

No, that's very true.

[Brandon Herrera]

It was.

[Eli Double Tap]

He kind of.

[Brandon Herrera]

Something uncool happened there. We should have seen that 15 year cry for help.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, I know. You're just reading everything. You're like, ah, there was where there signs. Well, but he made good music. That's all that matters.

[Brandon Herrera]

Keep singing, sad man.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, yeah. They recite.

[Brandon Herrera]

We got a little sidetracked on that one.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's the point of the podcast. So you're like, okay, boom. Him actually had a good leader. Didn't get locked in with the suck for dude a conventional mil, just conventional for three more years. You would have.

[Griff]

I would have lost my mind. All right. I. I would have lost it because.

[Eli Double Tap]

You guys like, I've seen like how even for you guys at Ranger bet, it was always awesome to see you get to see the different echelons being like 2id or anything like that is down the road. But it's like, oh man, you still had like to deal with some. But at least you got nice stuff. I remember like that 2004. 5. You got the new barracks. We're like, holy, those are dope. These World War II barracks, though, really good. They have lead and poison.

[Cody]

Yeah, dude, asbestos.

[Eli Double Tap]

But. And then the. You watching you guys run all the time or adhere to your standards, like, but you still. Once you made it past that suck period. The first. I don't know for officer side. I remember. Remember one of my buddies, he got in and we ran into each other at Best Buy. And I was like, dude, Campbell, how are you doing, man? He's like, they hate me. They hate me.

[Griff]

We're at.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is the second bet.

[Griff]

Oh, yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

He was brand new private. He just got there. He's like, they hate me. I think they want me dead.

[Brandon Herrera]

Because wasn't he there getting supplies for them?

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, they just.

[Brandon Herrera]

They told him to go do the work.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. So he's just like. I was like. He's like, how's your.

[Griff]

You know.

[Eli Double Tap]

I was like, dope. We're. I. We just got our first. First art. It was an E4 that was standing up and acting as a first art for my battalion. Dude. We had no. It was just brand new people just setting up a battalion.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And then finally we had like, first Sergeant Jones, who was your second bat, right?

[Griff]

Yep, yep.

[Eli Double Tap]

So Jones came in, he was the first aren't because he needed to get. To get a first aren't position and hold it. And then he went to cag. But, yeah, just remember all that. And then watching the flip side of how much you guys went through, I was like, fucking crazy. Godspeed.

[Griff]

Well, it's just nuts to you because I landed there in July of 2003. So second bat had just gotten back from the invasion of Iraq. So we got privates walking in with scrolls and stereo scrolls on Beau's shoulder. Lee, my business partner, Bird won Chalk One on the Baghdad International Airport. He was literally my CMO was on the first helicopter on to buy up.

[Eli Double Tap]

No.

[Griff]

Yeah. Like the invasion force. Like the. Like when you think about that, like, we are invading. They're on the first helicopter. First humans landing in there and taking it over. Am I.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is them, like, landing in. On the airport, like you're securing it. And then I think Italian once. 170. Or I forget the one they.

[Griff]

170. 173rd jumped into Northern Iraq.

[Eli Double Tap]

Okay. Northern Iraq.

[Brandon Herrera]

So you kind of don't know if it's going to be Normandy or, you know, just holding a gun to a secretary. That's sort of like just. Could be anything.

[Griff]

So I'M only repeating the story from hearsay because obviously I wasn't there from it. But what I do know is I got to drink a lot of Johnny Walker Blue Label. Because the first thing the Rangers did, it was they secured all of the bars in the airport. They smart. They stole a truck.

[Eli Double Tap]

Acquired.

[Griff]

Acquired.

[Brandon Herrera]

What's. What's next term, strategically transfer equipment to an alternative location.

[Griff]

Yeah. And they raided every bar and bag because, you know, Saddam was actually good with Christians. You could drink, you could go to church, you could do all that other stuff. So they were stuck with all the high end liquors and Alpha companies. 2nd Ranger Battalion went into Baghdad International Airport after they had cleared it, and they stole all the smokes, all the booze, and we kept it and we fucking drove it around in a truck with us for months. He protected that truck at all. And they brought it all the way back to our company. We had a bar and it was stocked.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, you had the company bar.

[Griff]

Yeah, the company bar. Right. And the first sergeant had a jump light switch in his office. And, like, when it flipped on, the jump light next to the bar door would go from red to green and everybody could roll in and just drink. So that's how you keep young guys from not getting DUIs is just have the bar and the barracks instead of having guys roll out into town and spend all their money, you know, and that was just it. But we drank a lot of, like, Blue Label for a better part of a year.

[Eli Double Tap]

Dude, those stories must have been wild, seeing that side where it's like, they're the ones. They're like, where'd you get all this amazing stuff? We'll talk about that later. Offline. And they just bring it back because they didn't have as many rules. This is like war. War. So they're just cycling chalks out?

[Griff]

Yes. Like, and all they're doing is they're just pushing those little green square containers that roll onto the back of C17. Just plane lands, couple guys get off their boxes, roll out. Ours just get pushed back on. Guys get back in the bird and we fly home. You're home 72 hours later, and like, it gets pushed off. They pick up the trucks from the battalion, they drive it back and like. Right, cool. We got it all the way back. Sweet. Good.

[Brandon Herrera]

Holy shit.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, wild.

[Griff]

It's funny.

[Brandon Herrera]

Saddam was cool with all that stuff, but not the gold standard. So we killed him.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. They have dd. I forget one. Maybe Evan. I forget who. But they had the photos of them with the dump trucks of gold Bars like that they would find.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And they would just have, like, pictures of, like. And while conventional army would rotate afterwards. And everything was already, like, picked clean at that point.

[Cody]

That's how to say, sir, I remember that. 300 gold bars. Oh, you found 200 gold bars?

[Griff]

Yes.

[Cody]

Or we found 50 gold bars.

[Eli Double Tap]

Such a shame.

[Brandon Herrera]

What are you gonna do with 30 gold bars?

[Griff]

I could probably only get 15. You know, the market, you know, this is wild time.

[Eli Double Tap]

So you got back, you're prepped for. I do. That would have been a wild fucking time. Because you're like, well, this is going to be my first war. What, four months train up for you, and then you're out.

[Griff]

Yeah, we're out. So the. In somebody's infinite wisdom, they figured out that Taliban fighters had a methodology. Because fighting in the cold sucks. Like, I don't know if you've read any military history, but, like, nobody likes to fight when it's cold out. And the Taliban fighters, what they would do is they would retreat to these high altitude mountain villages on the PAC border. So 10,000, 11,000ft of elevation. They would just go hang out all winter. And somebody decided they were going to send three Ranger battalions from sea level to fucking 10,000ft of elevation in the middle of winter to go run these guys down out of their safe havens. Like, no winter break for you guys. So it's called Operation Winter Strike, and it's one of two times in history where all three Ranger battalions were deployed to the same area at the same time. And we did real Rangering. Like, we drove the trucks as far as they would go. The Hiluxes and everything else. Before armor, we didn't have any armor. We had gun troubles. Zero. We had had. We had gun trucks, which were pretty cool Hummers with, you know, roll cages on it, but they look like porcupines because we had a 3, 2 40s and a mark 19 or a 50 cal up top. And then everybody was armed with, like, there was usually a couple saws on them. So it was just. It was like. What was that movie, the Last Starfighter? If you hit the button, it just spins around and shoots everything. That's what our vehicles were like. If somebody, like, came at us, like, the whole thing just erupted in fire. And you're like, ah, we're good.

[Donut Operator]

Left side.

[Griff]

Yeah, yeah, contact left.

[Brandon Herrera]

What was your experience of the mark 19? Did you like it or hate it?

[Griff]

I loved it.

[Brandon Herrera]

There's no in between. I found from guys who have used it, they either love it or they hate it.

[Griff]

Even though I was a fire supporter. And the reason I like them is because like hey, you're rolling in an A10 or a AC130 or a couple of helicopters and that thing makes a huge cloud. So if somebody is like having a sad face take because they're getting hit with Mark 19 shells but what they really don't understand is that they're going to have a whole bunch of like chain machine gun fire and or 2.75 rockets and or a 500 pound bomb or a thousand pound bomb or a 2000 pound bomb or 105 millimeter cannon fired from the sky like right up following that. And that was the reason why I liked this because it was just such a good marking instrument. I could just create such a big dust cloud that everybody could see get up to 15,000ft. We're like, oh yeah, that's where we're gonna fuck up right there. Let's do it.

[Eli Double Tap]

God, you're a death Chem X or a Kim light. It's marking your target. Oh, thank God they missed. And then head. Yeah, like the hand of God is coming down after you and just obliterating that entire grid. Square.

[Brandon Herrera]

Hypothetically speaking, because I know they probably didn't do it like this, but it just imagined being in a fighting position. One round lands 50ft away, 15ft away.

[Eli Double Tap]

They are really bad.

[Brandon Herrera]

And it's just like wow, okay, we're all good. Why was the round blue full of blue chalk? Oh man.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

2000 pound JDM is crazy. We did 500, we did like two five, hundreds I think. Never dropped it to.

[Griff]

What most people don't understand is when those things go off, it's not the shock and explosion that's gonna fuck you up, it's all the shit falling down from the sky afterwards. It's so much energy, it blows shit like cars, straps of metal, windows, glass, everything like thousands of feet into the sky. And you're standing there after it goes off, you're like oh wow, that was really cool. And all of a sudden you start hearing dink dink, dink dink dink. Oh, tired stuff's coming down around you. It is a big boom.

[Eli Double Tap]

Damn, big wild dude. And then so yeah, the third range, all three Ranger bass deployed to a. Which is wild to go from that, that much elevation change. You cannot train your body because it takes a week, two weeks to really climatize to a situation.

[Brandon Herrera]

And you guys was it sea level.

[Griff]

To 11,000 seal sea level. And within 72 hours I was at 6,000ft. In another, like, four days after that.

[Eli Double Tap]

We were at 11 walking. And this is how many feet, like, for reference, how far were you guys walking? When you dismount?

[Griff]

It would be anywhere between. Like, we would do anywhere between, like, 5 to 12 miles a day in the mountains. And then in the snow. It was snowing at that elevation. And so I remember we got to. We drove from Bagram to Assadabad, and then. And then we drove to Nongalam, which is now fog blessing. And we're there like, oh, dude, these mountains are big. And me and my jtac, Sandy Lopez, we were sitting there looking at the terrain of where we're going. Like, dude, this is steep. Like, I think it's like, neither one of us are going to be both asleep at the same time. So, like, let's just. We're going to ditch one of our sleeping bags because we had to carry all of our batteries for the week, and we had to have all of our radios to talk to aircraft, and it's like, okay, how are we going to shake weight between the two of us? So that way we can walk up and down these hills and. And we ended up getting driving going up this mountain, and it dumped, like, feet of snow on us. And we found this goat hut right at, like, 11,000ft and literally 6 inches of goat shit on the bottom of it. The things, like, we're creeping to get in there, and we're like, I guess we're staying in the goat hut for the next day or two until, like, things are good. And, you know, we lay out the sleeping bag. And he's sleeping, and I'm sleeping, and we're just freezing. And somebody goes like, dude, the commanders said, let's start a fire. And so we. All right. So we're like, oh, fuck. Yeah. So somebody goes out. We're, like, getting the snow off all the wood. We're finding dry pieces of wood. And somebody starts a small fire in this little goat hut. The smoke floats up, hits the lid, and you know, like, when you're inside an enclosed space and you can see a layer of smoke. 10,000 spiders minimum, descending out of the roof of the goat hut. Oh, fuck. Platoon of screaming Rangers.

[Brandon Herrera]

One single mark 19 round.

[Griff]

Then we're all outside, like, oh, we're good. And they're all like little teeny spiders. And we're like, what's worse, the cold or the spiders and the shit? Like, the cold is worse. So we went and we endured the spiders in this for, like, the next day.

[Brandon Herrera]

God.

[Griff]

So we could get out of there. Oh, it's so horrible. Yeah, that was a, that was a good one.

[Eli Double Tap]

And then for like you're walking this much distance as you're saying like cutting weight, you're still walking with how much, how many pounds on you? The combat was 35 pounds, like give or take. But if you're doing multiple days, that, that increases.

[Griff]

I had two embitters and a, and a117. So I was carrying 40 pounds of radius radio and battery and 40 pounds of radio just alone before my weapon and ammo and my cold weather gear and my sleeping stuff. Like that's just radios. Do my job.

[Eli Double Tap]

There's ammo, guns. All those little things start stacking up so fast.

[Griff]

And this was before like all the Gucci gear. You gotta remember we were still in like we were wearing BDU tops. So the green BDU top and we were in chocolate chip bottoms because that was the best color combo. This is prior to multicam. Yeah, this is, this is pre multicam. Because you look like a bush when you wear like the desert bottom with a jungle top, you, you actually kind of blend in better. It really works.

[Eli Double Tap]

I've never thought about that.

[Brandon Herrera]

Interesting.

[Eli Double Tap]

It, it, it literally would look like a Christmas tree or tree or a bush because it's green up top and then ground bark.

[Griff]

Yeah, it works, right? And so that was the camo that we were using at the time. And like this is the best we had was like Daner cold weather boots. And I'll never fucking forget. Like we were up there freezing. We had the wool, the old green wool inserts inside the leather fast rub gloves. And that was all that we had. That was it. And we landed on a helicopter one night and we cleared this valet and I remember like sleeping in this barn on a big pile of shuck corn. And I am cuddled next to my jtac. I am like pulling him in. I am hemorrhaging. I am so cold.

[Eli Double Tap]

Hemorrhaging, like just releasing.

[Griff]

I say hemorrhaging, I'm seizing. Whatever.

[Eli Double Tap]

I, I'm like leasing inside my jtag.

[Griff]

You're so cold that your back hurts because you're shivering so hard. And the next morning this 47 comes rolling up the valley and we're like, oh, what are they going to bring? What are they going to bring? What are they going to bring? And they rolled in and they kicked out a couple duffel bags. And this is back in the day when like guys would call up with a credit card and they go, hey man, we need like 200 pairs of fucking gloves from the local REI, and we need them driven to this airfield right now. And they would put them on a C17, and they would be on their way to country immediately. That's what happened is they bought or gaiters and. Or gloves from Outdoor Research.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. Or was huge at that.

[Griff]

Well, they still are.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. Massive, massive.

[Griff]

Best glove manufacturers. And if we actually could move our fingers during the day to actually work our radios and move our weapons and do our job. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's why they're an uber. Ditching everything and then bouncing.

[Griff]

Well, we were so high elevation, the helicopters couldn't land. They had to keep a Ford momentum, you know, to get in and get out of the valley and then turn around and get back out. And they were just, like, kicking it off as they rolled.

[Brandon Herrera]

Why couldn't they land?

[Griff]

We were at so high elevation, I think we were, like, 11,500ft.

[Brandon Herrera]

I just had a guide, because I don't know what about the elevation. Prohibited that from landing.

[Griff]

It's the thin air.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, Thin air. And I think how the gas, like, the motor, it's that it's, like, very rich, or it starts.

[Griff]

The air is thinner. So you got a. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And so it starts running leaner. And after you hit that point where then it just will.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like, taking off is not a thing you can do once you land.

[Eli Double Tap]

Gas is firing how it's firing. Everything is just fucked at that point. So do, like, come in.

[Griff]

And we were at the range limitation, where they would stop and get fuel. They would climb to elevation, fly out, and they were like. We're, like, right at the fringes of where they could get to us. They drop it and turn back around and fly out.

[Eli Double Tap]

It was a wild time.

[Brandon Herrera]

So what did they drop off?

[Griff]

Outdoor research gloves and gators.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Griff]

And then. Yeah. Oh, my God. This is the best thing ever.

[Eli Double Tap]

Put some on my feet, dude. Yeah. It was weird when I got back. Jordan Wong, one of my racing buddies, he was CMO of outdoor research. When I said, I was like, oh, your gears. Thank you. Overseas, we use the. Out of. We're allowed to. He was like, oh, cool, man.

[Griff]

Cool.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Griff]

Yeah. But we were so far out that we were buying all of a village's winter rations from them. So we would roll. You have a platoon of rangers rolling into an Afghan village with like, 50 or 60 people in it, and they've got all of their rice and stuff stored for the winter. And we're like, all right, here, dude. Here's a few thousand dollars. Oh. And they're selling immediately they're selling it to you. But you realize, like, they don't have food for backup.

[Eli Double Tap]

They don't have backup.

[Griff]

That's what's wild. But they don't care because they know how much they can go into town. They'll just send somebody in, like, in a week, right? And they'll go get more, which is fine. But I'll never forget, we came back from patrol one day, and we walked into the hut that we were staying in, and there was a sheep, like, running around, like, oh, super cute, right? And I just pick it up, and I got this photo of me, like, holding this sheep next to my buddy.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, God.

[Griff]

And I set it down, and it runs around the corner, and the guy's hot. It was. We called him Grizzly Adams. And he looked like Grizzly Adams an Afghan Grizzly Adams. And he had this Christmas knit sweater that probably got donated by somebody in America at a Goodwill. And he grabbed the sheep, opened the front door, 18 inches past the front step, slit the sheep's throat. Blood everywhere. Cuts its head off, drags it back inside the house. And I've never seen an animal skin this way. But he cut around the butthole. And then he took his hand, and he shoved his hand between the finger and the meat, and he, like, worked his way all the way around, and then he, like, pulled it out like a sock. And then, like, hands it to his wife to cook. No soap, no clean water anywhere, didn't clip his fingernails, whatever. Right. And then, like, that's what we're eating with him for dinner that night.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Griff]

And, like. Nah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And that's how you got your first case of dysentery. How many times have you had.

[Griff]

I've had it twice now. That trip I got my. I thought I was going to die. I. We were coming back. We were. We were actually going home. So this is at the very tail end of the deployment. We made it all the way back from all of these, like, harrowing adventures up in the mountains. Yay. Fun. So we're in Assadabad. It's kind of warm, and I'm, like, walking back to the truck, and there's my JTAC bustle, like, on the ground in the fetal position with his pants around his knees and a pool of behind him on the ground, and he's. I can't stop shooting.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's just Eli Anytime. Anytime. He eats cheese.

[Eli Double Tap]

Every time we're on Cody's cooking show, he's like, today we're eating dairy plus more dairy.

[Cody]

I Don't do that on purpose.

[Brandon Herrera]

We need to have an explosion. Exclusive episode of Let Him Cook. Where it's just the. The after action where it's just Eli and Cody's backyard just behind a tree profusely.

[Eli Double Tap]

Brand is throwing you.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm so glad toilet paper is so that you know it turns red when you know you're done.

[Griff]

Down and out, down and out. I call the medic and I'm like, hey, what are we gonna do? So we load them full of like, like Fenrin and Imodium, right? We get him to stop crapping himself, we give him the anti nausea pills and. And he was our driver in our truck. So it was, so it was the jtac, the commander, the RTO and myself. The four of us in a Hilux and we were driving from Assadabad to Bagram and this is like the trip we gotta make to go home for Christmas.

[Brandon Herrera]

You fit four guys in a Hilux?

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Nice.

[Cody]

How long of a drive was that?

[Griff]

Oh, 12 hours.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's wild you're doing that. It's not up on anything.

[Griff]

Nothing.

[Eli Double Tap]

Cody, imagine you're in a war zone in your Hilux. He has a high leg to the 50 cal.

[Cody]

I got an 81 Hilux.

[Griff]

Attaboy. So, so I'm like, all right, fuck it, I'll drive, you know. And so we leave a soda bad. And then we're driving and then I'm starting to feel like a little bit not. Well, the tingle, the tingle, right? And I'm starting to feel like in the back of my jaw and I'm like right. We have one of those before we pull into Jalabad. Anytime you pull into a city, you're automatically, you're going to stop outside the outskirts, you're going to make sure all the drivers are secure, you're going to check all the weapons. You're going to do everything else before you go into an area where you might make contact. And I look at my commander, I'm like sir, like I'm going to tell you like I think I'm about to be non mission capable. I don't think that I'm going to be able to drive this vehicle. And my commander at the time, he was an like he's the worst commander I've ever had in my entire life. Was my first company commander in the rage regiment. He was dick.

[Eli Double Tap]

They fell up.

[Griff]

Yeah. And like this guy was so bad. He used to like we'd be on patrol and he'd just sit there and like tell me shit about Me that he hated about me. Like, he was, he was just not a good person.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's motivating.

[Griff]

Yeah, really. Like, he's not a good dude. And he almost got cleaned off the side of a mountain by like this rock. When somebody goes, oh, yeah, rock. And it's falling like, no, there was a huge boulder falling, like, big, right? I'm watching this come down the hill and it's about to hit my commander. And I'm like, yes.

[Brandon Herrera]

Dude, this is awesome.

[Eli Double Tap]

You're like, I am not yelling out to say, watch out.

[Brandon Herrera]

He does love me.

[Griff]

And like the commander, like, turns to the side and the rock sails between me and the rto and the RTO and I both hated this guy. And like the fucking sails between us. And the only thing that was like, there's a 1500 pound rock that just sailed past us at 40 miles an hour. And we're just disappointed it didn't clean our commander off the side of the mountain. And so he starts yelling at me and I'm like, sir, like, I'm telling you, I'm not gonna make it. Like, not a good drive. And so he's got to drive, right? So a commander driving.

[Cody]

Gross.

[Griff]

Yeah, gross. And so I'm riding a shotgun. The RTO is behind me, the JTAC is in the back corner. And he's just finally starting to like, wake up, you know, from his issues. And when you drive into Jalalabad from Assadabad, the first place you hit is the meat market. It's where they hang the meat, like on the side of the road for days. And there's that smell, fly and everything.

[Eli Double Tap]

And you still buy the meat.

[Griff]

You still buy. And there's that smell. It's just that it's like the, like they throw the intestines out in the back and you got all the fucking skin and all the stuff rotting. And I realize the first section of town that you hit on your way in, that hits me. And I am out to my waist, out of the hilux, heaving, doing everything that I can to keep myself from myself. And my RTO has got the window, he's got his window down too. And I'm heaving and I'm looking at him and he's just laughing at me. And I'm like, you. And I get to Jalalabad, we pull into the air base, they load me full of Fennegrin and Imodium too. They throw me in the back. And I don't remember the most of that drive on the way back, but we finally, we made it to. To Bagram. I think we went through the. God, what is that? Pass between Bam and jvad. But it's one of those, like, weird, like, switch backy ones.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. Snake Roads Death.

[Griff]

I kind of woke up in the middle of there and I'm looking over like, I don't want to go off that. And I.

[Eli Double Tap]

What's the Jake Gyllenhaal movie that just came out with the Terp.

[Brandon Herrera]

The. The guy starts on Guy Ritchie movie?

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, the Covenant.

[Griff]

Covenant.

[Eli Double Tap]

Covenant.

[Griff]

That's what you were.

[Eli Double Tap]

You were the Covenant. Or you're like coming in and out of consciousness as they're driving you. It's like. It's okay. You're gonna make it.

[Cody]

Dang it.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

I hurt so bad though.

[Griff]

God.

[Eli Double Tap]

Wild.

[Griff]

Yeah. So then like we were home and it's that back in then. It's just so weird because this is before post traumatic stress disorder or TBI.

[Eli Double Tap]

Or any of that.

[Griff]

All of those things. And, you know, we literally drove the trucks in, cleaned them up, did our ar, hand it off to a different battalion, got in our C17, and literally I was sitting on my couch 24 hours later, man.

[Eli Double Tap]

Do that. Fuck.

[Cody]

Fuck.

[Brandon Herrera]

The guy who invented ptsd, it was.

[Griff]

So much better, man.

[Eli Double Tap]

Why did he create that thing? And that's what's wild. It is that fast of a turnaround where you're. There is no decompression or like, let me normalize myself. So you're just there at home on your couch with family. Not with family, with friends. And you're like, I think we talked.

[Brandon Herrera]

About this on the podcast before. We're talking about just like the. The Roman wars and things where like people would go to war, they'd see a lot of death, they'd see their friends die, and then they would have a several week walk home, several months where they are walking home with their boys and kind of like coming down from that before they get home versus just stepping off a plane.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. You get to connect with your friends. You get that decompression period for months. You get to talk to your buddies, you get to mourn the death together. And then you get to celebrate. You have like that entire process through months of walking home from like a bloody battle. And this is go get the. Go get the milk. And you're like, I don't trust anyone. Right.

[Brandon Herrera]

Technology accidentally makes our lives worse in unseen ways before. That's crazy.

[Cody]

There's a guy that talked about that, that one time revolution. It was a giant mistake or something like that.

[Brandon Herrera]

He was A big fan of voting by mail.

[Eli Double Tap]

How was that? Like, that's a really good. Bringing up that. Was that so weird out the gate, trying to explain or relate to your girlfriend or family at the time?

[Griff]

You like, it was my fiance. And then we learned that I'm not allowed to drive for the first two weeks when I get home.

[Eli Double Tap]

Fucking aggressive. Watching for sire.

[Griff]

You go underneath an overpass and you immediately yank a lane over so nobody hooks a grenade down on top of you. You pull up in front of stoplights and somebody pulls up beside you. I'm reaching for a gun that you don't have, that you don't have, and you're just reaching for it. I mean, it just. It's an automatic thing. They were like, I need to not drive.

[Eli Double Tap]

And you go into. It's weird having that mind because you're like, where is it? And it takes. Takes. You have to. It's a process of like, oh, yeah, I don't have that. And you don't need that.

[Brandon Herrera]

Except I don't need that. Taper down almost. Or does it just kind of slowly goes away?

[Griff]

Yeah, it slowly goes away. Yeah, yeah, it just. It just takes you a while because you're just so into. Anytime you roll outside the gate, you're just hyper focused on everything. You can't let it go. You're in a vehicle, you might die any second.

[Eli Double Tap]

Hyper vigilant.

[Griff]

Hyper vigilant, yeah. And you get home, it's like, okay, I can let this go. I can let this go. And it just. It gets there over time. But that was the first deployment where I learned that I'm not allowed to drive for the first two weeks when I get home.

[Eli Double Tap]

And what's crazy is you're like, I'm comfortable and I've healed. And then back into war immediately. They're like, the second you're like, I'm better.

[Brandon Herrera]

Bom, bom, bom, bom, bom.

[Eli Double Tap]

A cute army commercial.

[Brandon Herrera]

Was she at least understanding through that?

[Griff]

Yeah, she was. I was. She was in the army as well.

[Brandon Herrera]

Okay.

[Griff]

Yeah. So she understood. But it's like, again, this is early on in the war where, you know, I knew I was deploying and we couldn't say anything to anybody, right? So, you know, we went to a Halloween party. You know, we dressed up and everything else. I tucked her into bed drunk at night and everything else. And then I got up at 2 in the morning and I went to the unit and I was gone.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, that. Oh, yeah. That was during. Like, there is no heads up because.

[Griff]

You don't talk to anybody about it. You know, you're going, you can't tell anybody what you're doing.

[Eli Double Tap]

Girlfriend. Imagine you can't tell your girlfriend that you're going to be gone when you.

[Brandon Herrera]

Straight up, couldn't you.

[Griff]

Oh, like you can't mention anything like, hey guys, we're leaving in a month. You're doing all your train ups, you're getting all your briefs, you can't say anything to anybody.

[Brandon Herrera]

Got even day before nothing you ever.

[Eli Double Tap]

Got, hey, I got to go to work or hey, good night because that was that time. It was like OPSEC was the most important thing. Well, with higher tier echelon, you like they actually treated it proper. It wasn't Joe Schmo be like, well, me and suck it back. Flying out tonight because big.

[Brandon Herrera]

No, no, we're flying out of this airport. Into this airport.

[Griff]

Yeah, yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Which is wild. You just get a good night family. Dude, that's wild to me.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's great. I've never even heard of that level of OPSEC for I mean, because everybody that I know that at least has talked about it it in that, I guess context, they knew when it was happening and they could tell their families and stuff.

[Griff]

I mean that's just later on because like we're always in the war. There's always a special operations unit there. It doesn't matter because there's always one there. But before there wasn't. And so which units went where mattered because we thought the enemy cared.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. And then that was when you like have the covering patches, anything like that.

[Griff]

We didn't wear unit patches.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's wild. This is that time because it is adapting to that military and it takes you especially for the army takes years to start adopting. He's like, oh, this doesn't matter as much as we thought OPSEC for this. Like the mount the tribes, they're not.

[Brandon Herrera]

Because you're implementing like you're implementing near pure OPSEC for somebody who is not near modern.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, yeah, modern. Like a modern fight against China versus that where it's like, no, they, they're just going to live their tribal life to defend the out of that. But you don't know that at that time you're just like, hey, I'm out. And then you're overseas in what, 72 hours?

[Griff]

72 hours later. Yeah. So I was home on ground. Yeah. So when I got home from that deployment, my fiance at the time told me that she got orders to go to Iraq for a year. So that was like Christmas. And then she Deployed the first week of January.

[Cody]

What was her.

[Griff]

She was in intelligence.

[Cody]

Okay.

[Griff]

Yeah. And, you know, she comes back, like, three weeks later, pregnant. So it's like, so like, holidays, everything else. So it's just like, you, my kid, you know, everything else. So she came back, like, immediately, and I was like, well, hate to tell you this, but, like, I'm leaving again.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Griff]

So it's like we got to get married real quick. We got married and I left like, three days later. And I was gone for another three months. You know, we were down in the coast district on Salerno, and so we were doing like, the whole, like, pack border security against the Taliban creeping across and everything else. And that was like, the first time we were really understanding how. I think we kind of understood before, but now we're really thinking about how Pakistan was with us and, like, funding guys back and forth across the border. So we were doing a lot of, like, cross border work, and that was a high adventure deployment. That was a. That was a good time.

[Eli Double Tap]

What was one of the craziest things that happened during that one?

[Griff]

We had this one objective that had, like, a tower on it, and they told us that there was a dishka in the tower. And if people who don't know a Dishka is a 12.7 millimeter, like, fuck you up gun. I've always wanted to fire one. I've never gotten to fire one. I always wanted to fire one.

[Brandon Herrera]

Do you want to?

[Griff]

I've always wanted to fire a dishka. Can we do that in December?

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, dude, please. We just need to. I need to finish repairing mine, but I've got one. I've never shot it. Whoever rebuilt it was just a shithead.

[Griff]

But I've always wanted to fire one. When I got FU money and I can go back to Afghanistan, I'm like, we're getting a dish, right?

[Eli Double Tap]

And we're gonna get back to Afghanistan.

[Griff]

We're gonna get, like, a valley, and I'm gonna go have fun for a day. Like, as much ammo as I can buy. I'm gonna put some goats out there. Give me a cow. Let's go. And I've always wanted to fight because I've seen them lined up against us. We've captured tons of them. And I'm like, that looks like a badass gun.

[Brandon Herrera]

And especially when you realize it's like a World War II thing.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Cody]

Don't we?

[Griff]

But they work. It doesn't matter.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Cody]

I was about to say. Yeah, we know a guy used a disco one time.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. He's like, what, you've never killed somebody with the disco? Like, no dog. What?

[Griff]

How the.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh, has he sold that publicly?

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, I wasn't sure about that.

[Eli Double Tap]

Just in case superhero names always like.

[Brandon Herrera]

Ah, oh, we're using our made up names.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, yeah. That's how I know the level of friendship with. It's like they used his superhero name. Okay.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

If you're gonna. If you come down. Yeah, you come back in December.

[Griff]

Oh, yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, dude, I'll try the dish. Get back up for you, please. You know what? You want to know my favorite part about the dishka?

[Griff]

Please.

[Brandon Herrera]

At least owning one in the United States, the one of the only types of ammo that's available for that. Because 12. 7 by 108 is just. It's barely not 50 cal.

[Griff]

We're like.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's just not interchangeable. But it's almost identical. One of the only brands where you can still get it is just old stuff. I think it's like Tula made. But the brand that. That actually sold it commercially to the public was Chris Kyle commemorative ammunition. I swear to fucking God, hand on the bible, that is 100% a fact. So all of my 12, 7ammo comes in 10 round boxes with Chris Kyle's face on it.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's wild. That's the only ammo they brought to this.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm like, did you guys not think about this when you did it? Or just. All right, whatever, man, here's your money.

[Griff]

So. So we're looking at this tower. We're looking at it. And again, I'm not an infantry guy. I'm an artillery guy. So my whole thing is, if you shoot at my guys, I'm just gonna fuck your whole world up. I will bring everything that the DoD has to offer to bear, and I will give you generational fucking pain. I will make sure your grandkids feel this. And so I had fucking AC132 8 10s. I had Cobras on standby. I'm like, if this thing lights up, I am going to decimate this grid square. And we got dogs and everything else. And we fast rope on top of this compound to get the guy. And like, literally we come off the rope and there's a guy sleeping on a cot right outside of his home. We run up and we just grab the dude and we pick him up and we're like, this is him. Like, it's the guy. And like is. There's a 47. There's still guys dropping off a rope 100ft above him.

[Eli Double Tap]

And you cut to first. The guy.

[Griff]

The guy was like, right there. And the first sergeant grabs him, and he's like, this is the dude. But we're still securing the objective. And now all I'm worried about is this tower, right? And I'm just, like, creeping around the building. I'm getting eyes on it, and, like, all the aircraft are looking at it all. Like, the gunshot chips are just ready to launch this thing into, like, the next dimension. And there's no activity, like, no thermal, no nothing. We're like, fuck, send the dog, right? Dog rolls in, dog's in there for a bit. Dog comes out with a hand in his mouth. A hand. It was a mausoleum for all of, like, their dead family members and stuff.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, shit. Uh.

[Griff]

Oh. Oh, it found. And the dog went in there and ripped a freaking hand off a skeleton and brought it back out. We're all standing there, like, staring at the dog. We're like, good job, boy. Good boy. Like, like, all right, guys, sorry. Like, call. No, like, the older aircraft. Like, all right, I guess we're good here. Like, the rest of you guys can go home. Like, stand by for exfil. Like, we're good to go there.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's why dude there.

[Griff]

Now, there was a couple other family members and everything else, but he was the top dog that we were after, and he just. And these guys, they just. They're asleep. They literally land a helicopter, like, on top of their house, and they don't hear it. It's so weird. It's crazy.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's why.

[Griff]

And catch him sleeping.

[Eli Double Tap]

For reference to half the first aren't one on hands on. Be like, hey, this is the guy. It's wild. That's wild. You. No clearing of the little village or anything.

[Griff]

You just know.

[Eli Double Tap]

You're, like, grabbing.

[Griff]

You, like, oh, shit, literally off the rope. You turn and you see a guy sleeping right there. Like, 10 steps, grabs him, pulls him up, is like, oh, crap, this is the guy, right? And rangers are going past him into the house and everything else, getting everything else done. And the. We're still clearing the outbuildings. There's a camel, like, floating around somewhere, you know, just a good time. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

God, that is what. I just love the stories. It's the most interesting part we're talking about. I mean, you've lived a crazy life. I always like hearing the different experiences because you guys did a lot more direct action rates.

[Griff]

Like, that's all we did.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, Nick, that is. Here is. We only did a handful of those, or we would be attached to Like SAS or something. We ran with them a couple times and Green Berets, but very rarely it was like, hey, here's the guy. We'd pull up, grab, snag, bounce. That's all you guys did. And a lot of times you did what vehicles did. How many times were you in like little birds or.

[Griff]

All the time. All the time. Like, I didn't, we didn't do the little bird stuff until we were interact. So I came back from that deployment and that was, that was. We lost a dude during that deployment was pretty traumatic. And came back, I was home for a month, had my honeymoon. Right. My wife was six months pregnant. Right. And then like I'm gone again and they were back to Afghanistan and we were in the TST mission, which is the time sensitive target. So we were at Bagram with all of like the gunships and the fighter pilots and everything else. And we were like, if there's any top tier bad dude that picks up in country that we like get signal on where they're at, doesn't matter where they're at, we're the crew to go get them. And that was a really cool mission because a lot of times we just sit around for a week and like all a sudden somebody pops and then you're all the assets, all the A10 pilots, all the gunship crew, you're all standing next to one another, which is a much different experience than most other guys get because you get to know the navigator, you get to talk to them when they pull up on the radio. You now have a relationship with them because you eat dinner with them every night. It's, it's much, there's, there's rapport being built. Yeah. And it's the guys in the sky and they know you and now they care about you on the ground because they, they know you by voice. And it's, it's much different. And they know, oh, hey, this is the younger fire, you know, fo. So they're, they work with them on the ground because younger guys, it's complicated. You're dealing with a slow moving AC130 gun trip hanging left hand circles. And then you get an A10 that might check out and then you got an F16. And they have different capabilities and the young guys just don't know what the pilots are. So they pull them in and like we'll go sit in the aircraft. And the, the pilot's sitting is like, hey man, when you tell me this, I'm literally flying 400 miles an hour and I'M looking at this screen, and it gives the young guy a reference to go, okay, now I need to know how. I need to describe it to the pilot in order to be able to do my job better, which is really cool. That was an environment that I was really thankful to be in because it was the best team effort in special operations that I'd ever been in.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Griff]

And so we. We get this one objective, and it's like, north of Cal. It's near the PAC border. And my JTAC that. So the JTAC is the. The Air Force guy. Because this is before army guys are allowed to drop bombs off of Air Force planes. So I was in the first wave of guys that was actually certified for that. And then GWAT before, you always had to have an Air Force guy with you to say it. Like, the jtac to say, yeah, Air Force plane. This is cool. This army guy is calling in this bomb and cast at your hip. Yeah. So, like, his name's Sandy. He's my daughter's godfather. Like, thick as he's been. Friends, like, forever.

[Eli Double Tap]

Close rapport.

[Griff]

And we always used to think, like, you know, what snacks are we gonna bring for the way back? So every night, like, it was his job or my job, his job or my job. And my thing on deployments is, like, his wife always sent him candy, so I'd always, like, raid his hooch and steal all those jelly bellies.

[Cody]

Hell, yeah. One team, one fight, motherfucker.

[Griff]

And so we hit the subjective, and it's a really steep terrain. And, you know, the Rangers and the. I think it's fine now, but, like, back then, it was, you know, you always have Rangers working with, like, a tier one group, so it's either the Navy guys or the army guys. And on this deployment, we were working with the Navy guys. And there's always animosity between army and Navy. And so this is one of those things where we go in and we're going to do an objective, but we're going to plant a listening device right on the objective. And so we put, you know, 100 guys at risk to go, you know, faux hit an objective to go plant a listening device. Well, if an Afghan guy's got seven things, if there's eight, he's going to notice kind of deal.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Griff]

Right. And then you got to go in, like, a couple weeks later to go recover it. It to hear what it's got to say. Because this is before, like, all of the.

[Eli Double Tap]

Muhammad, when we get flat screen.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

She's trying to Plant an extra object, like.

[Brandon Herrera]

And again, left on the goat.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Griff]

Stranger. These Americans are so nice. And so this is one of the missions where we went in to, like, go recover a listening device. And we fly in, we go hit the objective, we grab the guys, we grab the listening device. But it's so steep, we had to fast rope in because the helicopters can't land. And then, like, now we're kind of scrambling around the objective because sometimes you just got to chase guys between houses. And the units are kind of spread out, and you got to tell a helicopter where to come in at. And we were the last group of dudes to get picked up because we were on the steepest terrain and the black Sea. Platoon sergeant Brian Stover, total badass, former RRD guy came in, was our platoon sergeant. And he runs up to me. He's this just huge dude, and he's like, I'm gonna bring this helicopter in. And he's like, you got him on the radio? Like, yeah, I got him on the radio. And he pulls my mic out of the. Like, he pulls my mic from my headset out, and he plugs his in, and he keys my mic. So he's talking to the helicopter on his radio, and I'm not hearing what's going on. And all of a sudden, I see this 47 coming at me. And then it turns around, slides backwards, and then the tailgate ramp lands on top of this ledge I'm standing against. And he, like, unplugs it. He's like, sir. And he grabs me, and he throws me up the wall. He's like, get on the fucking helicopter. All right. So I scramble into the back of the bird, and there's the. The two minigun guys out of the side door. There's an ATV in the center, and you're piling a bunch of dudes in there. So I go and I jump. And I'm sitting on the atv, like, holding the handlebars.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. Cause everyone's stacking around.

[Griff]

Stacking around, right? So, like, I'm between the minigunners, and then under night vision, when those rotors are going around, there's a lot of ferrous material in the dirt, and the rotors hit them, and you can see that flash sparkles under your knobs. And I'm looking out the side, and I'm, like, going, oh, yeah, there's the sparkles. And then I looked down the back, and the crew chief of the freaking helicopter. The pilot's name is Andy. I know that for sure. But the crew Chief was, like, hanging out the back, and he's like, yeah, a little more, A little more. Because as more guys get in it, the helicopter starts, like, weighing down, so he's got to apply more throttle to get it back up. And the rear rotor of this freaking 47 was like. Like, this is the ledge. This is the rotor. They had, like, literally a foot and a half a distance off the rock wall. And I'm changing, and it's changing because rangers are just jumping in. He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Little and, like, pilot, cucumber. Cool. A little bit more. He can't see what's going on. He's like, yep. Like, that's it. A little more. Yeah. And then as soon as everybody's good, the sweet hops on, we got everybody. The whole helicopter, like, falls off the side of the mountain, and one of those, like, I'm so glad that I'm hanging on to the freaking, like, the atv.

[Brandon Herrera]

You're the only person there who's got.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, shit handles.

[Griff]

Yeah, that was a. That was a moment for sure. And then Brandon's face during that story is like.

[Eli Double Tap]

Like, he's worried.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah, dude, that was spoiler alert. I know. Fine.

[Eli Double Tap]

But, like, it's still. Dude, it's like a movie. You're like, that.

[Brandon Herrera]

That's crazy, man.

[Griff]

I was like. I swear, like, that was one of the, like, the. I could. I had to unclench and, like, let go of the seat out of my Kulo after that because I was like. I was pinched into that seat. And I love how you use one.

[Brandon Herrera]

Word in Spanish and you look straight at me.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. Hello, Mexican man.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's very inclusive. I appreciate it.

[Eli Double Tap]

You speak Spanish.

[Griff]

Dude? No. So that. That was great. And then we got, like, six months off, right? And that was the first time, like, after that deployment. So you do three on, three off, three on, one off, three on. And we had just a weird rotation where we were always just, like, cycling through. But by this time, our fourth deployment, I had really realized that the Rangers were just professional fucking kidnappers. Like, Nick does this. He's got that Army Rangers, you know, like, oh, if you're gonna decide to be a problem, you're not going to be a problem. That could not be any more true. And so now they sent us to northern Iraq.

[Eli Double Tap]

How do you describe it?

[Griff]

It's like the sharpest blunt object. Yeah.

[Cody]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's the sharpest blunt object ever.

[Griff]

Yeah. When people ask me about, like, Rangers or versus Navy seals, like, dude, seals are great. I got a lot of great SEAL friends. They're awesome. Like, their mission set is tremendous. You know what they do is they're like a surgical. Like a surgeon's role of tools. If you need something very specific done in, out, reconnaissance, all these types of jobs, they're great Rangers. We're like a dump truck full of sledgehammers. That's.

[Cody]

I've always heard Rangers can unroll ball bearings.

[Griff]

If you give a ranger two ball bearings and tell him to cross the street before he gets to the other side, he'll eat one and break the other. That is fucking true. It's just.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's a hell of a mission statement.

[Griff]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Me hungry. Me broke. Other.

[Griff]

And so then we get to Iraq, and this is the first time that we got to work with the army tier one guys. And I will have to say that was a world of difference.

[Eli Double Tap]

What was the biggest shift for you?

[Griff]

The biggest shift is they actually talk to us.

[Eli Double Tap]

You build a good rapport.

[Griff]

Yeah. And it was, you know, Kyle Lamb, Viking tactics. So he was the Kyle I love.

[Eli Double Tap]

Kyle is one of my favorite humans. Kyle, love you, buddy. Did he make you throw a rock with left hand? No, it's one of his favorite things. Is now part of his Viking tactical. And we go hang out with anyone, he's like, oh, yeah. Hey. But especially, like, tier one guys, like, oh, yeah. By the way, I'm gonna record this video. I need you to throw something cool. He puts in the left hand. It's like you're left right handed. Yeah, no, yeah, I'm right handed. Okay. Throw it with your left. No matter what. You look like a. Like, he has this compilation, like, the hardest dudes trying to throw at their left hand. He's like, thank you. That's all I wanted.

[Griff]

And. And like, Kyle was amazing. Like, we got to interact with him, and he was just a tremendous leader. You know, a lot of those guys come that army unit. They come out of the Rangers, and so they have a lot of rapport. They know. Sometimes they know guys and they like, yep. Look, young Rangers, you don't know this. You get like, I will never forget because I remember Rangers hitting objectives. I. We're fast. And he goes, you guys are so slow. Rangers, younger, you guys are doing things right, but you're just so slow. But they would take us out during the day and they would work with us. And that was a huge difference. What the Navy guys never did. And we up northern Iraq, earned that deployment. If there was anything in northern Iraq, you were gone. They pointed us. You. You Done up son wake. We crushed northern Iraq for that period. And this was that time when YouTube really started taking off, right? The videos and being uploaded to the Internet. So I don't know if you guys remember that. That contractor little bird that went down where was in the glades where they the al Qaeda capture that dude and then they stood him up, right? And then they gunned him down right in front of everybody. And then they displayed that to the world that would. That happened like on our deployment. Deployment, no. And we're like, okay, now really up. You're around, you're going to find out. And we did not around that deployment. And like, like the, the assets that we had on station, the team that we had, the leadership that we had. We got a new ranger battalion commander. And he was just phenomenal. And this is how phenomenal the guy is. And like I, I wrote this down. I put a star next to it as the skull. PowerPoint.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is a PowerPoint I'd actually stay tuned into.

[Brandon Herrera]

So, you know, Bill Gates did not have this in mind when he was creating Microsoft PowerPoint.

[Griff]

Not at all. So you have a talk, a tactical operations center and the commander sits at the center and then you have his right and left hand man. Then it goes around in a circle and you have all the displays with the UAV feeds on it and stuff. And. Can you grab, grab me one while you're up there please? Yes. What would you like? A beer.

[Eli Double Tap]

A beer?

[Griff]

Yeah. And we were, we were just kind of getting our rhythm with this new battalion commander of like how things were working and with Kyle and thank you sir. But you know, we're now getting to meet all of the different, the units. So we're working with different pilots now. And so we're working with a, ah, six pilots which are the MD5 hundreds with the miniguns and the rockets on the side of them. All right, so we had. That's the Alpha company 1 60th. And then we have the MH6 pilots which are the ones you were wearing in your shirt earlier with the platforms on the side. So those are the B company guys that fly us around to chase squirters. And then we had. We have to have maneuver helicopters. You guys know what a DAP is? No, it's a direct action penetrator.

[Cody]

So. Me?

[Griff]

Yeah, yeah, you. Yes. Okay, so it's a, it's a. It's the U. S. Military's most badass blackhawk. So what they do, it's like just imagine Skywolf on steroids. Or whatever that show was from the 80s. So it's a Blackhawk with big wings on it and it's got two 19 shot rocket pods, a Mark 19 grenade launcher, and usually like a couple miniguns, like a triple barrel. And the purpose of that plot platform is when you invade a country, these things fly like 15ft off the ground and they roll in and they look out all of the surface to air missile sites, all the SAM sites, all the radars. So these guys like skim and low to the ground and they're loaded for bear. And if you're popping a radar or you get a SAM missile, they're gonna your up.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's bothering me, I don't know the name you're talking about. Airwolf or something like that.

[Griff]

Airwolf.

[Brandon Herrera]

Okay.

[Griff]

I didn't remember. You're gonna have to.

[Cody]

How long have the daps been used? Like since the start of the invasion?

[Griff]

They were, yeah, they've been around since the late 90s, I guess.

[Cody]

No shit.

[Griff]

Maybe, maybe even older.

[Cody]

That sounds rad as dude, I didn't know what that was.

[Griff]

Yeah, and like the first time like I had no idea I was a brainer fire supporters like oh, we get like little birds and gun chips. And then we showed up for to the 160th to do a training down there and do our familiarization and get to meet all the pilots and the platforms and they're like this thing rolls in. I'm like, oh my God. Like that is a fucking sad face day for somebody. And I would have to steal that.

[Brandon Herrera]

A sad face day.

[Griff]

Sad face day.

[Brandon Herrera]

And I just reckon I'm not feeling very live laugh love today.

[Griff]

Yeah, not, not very much. And but they didn't have enough helicopters because now it's now we're like late 2005 and so now we got both wars like rolling at speed. And now all the special operations units, all the Navy SEALs, all the Raiders, all of the special Forces group were all like rotating at speed and there's only so many helicopters and pilots trained at that level. So now we're, we're getting really stressed out. And unfortunately what they had to do is we needed lift helicopters to move us around. So what they did is they neutered the DAPs, they made them transport for us. So they took the wings and the guns off of them. And that is the most emasculating thing you could do to a DAP pilot is to take their guns off because they had to carry us for weight.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh mad now.

[Griff]

Now they're mad. And are they just kind of like.

[Brandon Herrera]

Taking it out on you guys?

[Griff]

No, no inter rivalry between the pilots because now the ah, six pilots, a little bird pilots are like ever the fucking badass ones. Those guys kill more people than cancer. Little bird pilots, they're the done. And so we're going around and when a new battalion comes in, like you got all the new staff officers and everybody else, but usually they don't rotate all the units over at once. So that way you get some sort of like overlap. And the first night you get There, there's a PowerPoint brief and it's like, hey, sir, you know, we've got this many little birds. Here's what we're carrying for ordnance. Here's our flight time, here's this, here's our pilots, here's everything that we can do and you know, just basic capabilities briefly. And the little bird chief, Chief Meehan, his name was Meat is what we called him. This big freaking dude. You could barely cram him into a little bird. But he was the best pilot I have ever seen. And he gave the brief, very professional, sits down and then the dap pilot gets up. Captain Brown, Matt Brown was his name. And he stands up and he gives the brief and he thinks he's going to be funny and he's like, you know, I just want to say on behalf of the 160th and the mighty little bird, you want to say thank you. And do you guys remember that ringtone from the 90s? Like.

[Eli Double Tap]

What is it called?

[Cody]

Blue Frog.

[Griff]

Blue Frog.

[Eli Double Tap]

Crazy frog.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Crazy frog. Yeah.

[Griff]

And so that's like, everybody makes fun of the little bird because it just sounds like me.

[Eli Double Tap]

It's the go kart of the skyward.

[Griff]

Yeah, it's the sky, right? And so everybody kind of giggles and laugh at Chief Meehan. Just quietly like sits there right on, carries on. So every night everybody's got to give like their capabilities or status. You've got something down, you got to work on it, like what your priorities are, blah, blah. And so Chief Meehan says, hey, yes, I want to just say like, I want to thank, you know, Captain Brown for inspiring us and getting, just getting a little bit of, you know, respect for one another and which is why we just wanted to say what we think of Daps and. And it fires up at the same PowerPoint. Bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing, bing. Then all of a sudden it fades into this girl. Absolutely getting skull makeup running down the face, whole Ms. Pac man. And this guy pulls this Monster dong out, waps her across the face, comes on her face, and then it fades in. Daps suck. And here you have this CW5 standing there, just completely professional, big pilot mustache, big dude. He just sits down and everybody in the talk is just commander cool as a cucumber. Next slide. Let's go. This story gets better. So like, as you know, one team.

[Eli Double Tap]

Won'T fight, like, nope.

[Griff]

Moving on, right? And that was back in the day. That's how the army used to be. You could joke about shit, nobody cared, right? It was fun. You guys were killing people on a nightly basis. You could have some liberties with how you're gonna live life and everything else. And so war was proper. War was proper back then. So as a Ranger fire supporter, you're always bringing in new privates, right? There are always new fire supporters coming in. And they've like, you got some kid coming in from California or Oregon or Tennessee or whatever, and you're having to explain to them, hey, man, here's what a little bird is. And they're like, huh? And they just got out of rasp and they just don't know what they're doing. They're basic artillery fire support. And you go, hey, dude, here's what a dap is, here's what a gun chip is. And so then you have all these PowerPoint slides before you go work with them, and they have to memorize all the stats and statistics and all these other things. So you're always, whenever you're on these deployments and you get to meet the guys, you download the briefs. And so I just downloaded the little bird brief and I just had it on my like unclassified drive. Get out of the army. A couple years later, my wife, or now my ex wife at the time, she went to work for a outdoor company that was supplying stuff to the military. And they were going down to the special operations conference down in t Tampa, and there's a company out of Seattle and she's got her assistant whether who's like this really good dude, but he's just not into the military. He doesn't know stuff. And they're on a plane flying between Seattle and Tampa. And she's like, okay, we're gonna meet with green berets, we're gonna meet with the rangers, we're gonna meet with the 160th. Here's what they do. And so she opens, does all these slides and she rolls through the fucking little bird slide and they're in a plane, side by side, laptop up, volume on High.

[Brandon Herrera]

Like next, next slide.

[Griff]

The entire plane looks at her like her co workers. Dude. The call that I got when she got off that airplane, Gold.

[Eli Double Tap]

She's an ex now.

[Griff]

Yeah, yeah, okay.

[Eli Double Tap]

Sorry, babe. Those military guys, boys will be boys.

[Griff]

Boys will be boys.

[Eli Double Tap]

This is the stories I love because it is showing like even in war, even like in direct action missions or things like that. How wars at that time, they still took it like we made the best of it. They made. Made the best of it. You made the best of it because you made. That's how a lot of it. Saving your mindset or saving your depression, ptsd, that's how you got through that stuff is because you're like, man, we can take this serious. And it would destroy everyone if everyone just focused on all the negative instead. It's like, let's put a skull fucking video on during this time. Let's get home, let's joke about it.

[Brandon Herrera]

It might be a little bit of a chicken and egg problem there.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

I don't know if that was the intent, but it certainly was the outcome.

[Eli Double Tap]

That's all right, dude. It's. It's awesome and always refreshing. Like hang out with you guys because that in a. Speaking for individuals out there, it is that different mindset. It's like, hey, look, you have a bunch of trauma. This is how we handled it. And look, if successful business owners you're happy. Oh, no one would knew running into you on a day to day basis. It's like, oh yeah, not the dude to fuck with. But it is something because how you carry yourself like the positivity you bring with it and still you went through like some of the worst somebody could go through. But you and the people around you made it a, a positive experience of humor, laughter and then making the best of it.

[Griff]

Yeah, the, the dark humor, it gets us through. People just don't understand it unless you've been there. Like cops get it.

[Cody]

Like gallows humor is the best thing ever.

[Griff]

Yeah. Because that's the only way you could. You can make it levity. Like you walk into a situation and that would traumatize most people. And everybody's staring at it, but all of a sudden you hear somebody crack a joke and you're like, okay, we can get through this, right? We can, we can find, we can, we can get centered and make. And make this right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Everyone makes the joke. It's like it starts with one and then you get to watch expand. When we had. Oh dang it. Jody on. When we had Jody on That was. Yeah. When we had Jody Plushe on watching how we went. And we're like, what? And then he is the one that led the forefront on.

[Brandon Herrera]

We didn't know what joke said.

[Cody]

Well, yeah, we were trying to be gentle with like whatever the, you know, the traumatic experience he went through. And then he just off the bat started being gallows as fuck with it.

[Eli Double Tap]

So we were like, okay, if homeboy that's went through all this can make these jokes. Bah. And then we start lighting as soon.

[Brandon Herrera]

As you realize, like, all right, you're the one who's willing to make the joke. All right, well, we'll. We'll pile on. But it's. You don't know how to handle that very early on because you want to be as respectful as possible. Because, like, the guy had gone through a lot.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Clearly, you know, from a young age. But the minute he ripped those first couple jokes, like the discomfort in the room immediately went away.

[Griff]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

And this. That's what's always. And you see how positive they are and what they're doing in life, which is that you could be the. Like you could have this. It could be what holds you back or soul crushing experience. And then seeing him turn it into a light and laughter about it. Same for like these stories that a lot of people. You flip side of somebody's PTSD version of the helicopter's blades. Like the rear rotor is almost touching. Like, it's almost touching. We almost died. And instead you're laughing about that fucking thing.

[Griff]

Like, all right. Like, I'm alive. Like everything.

[Eli Double Tap]

You look at the pilot and he's like, yep, it's fine. Cool. Cool. Okay. I don't.

[Griff]

Okay.

[Eli Double Tap]

He ain't stressed.

[Griff]

I'm not stressed. Yeah.

[Brandon Herrera]

Meanwhile, in 20, 24, people would be talking about their PTSD experience from sitting next to the person watching the PowerPoint on their laptop on a plane. Like, I just wasn't prepared to see.

[Eli Double Tap]

That someone got skull fucked.

[Griff]

People need a hard.

[Cody]

It's called fun.

[Brandon Herrera]

They look like they're having a great time. At least one of them is. 9 out of 10.

[Cody]

9 out of 10.

[Eli Double Tap]

9Out of 10.

[Cody]

9 out of 10 people. Enjoy gang bangs.

[Griff]

I gotta use the restroom.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yes. Get it, get it.

[Brandon Herrera]

Oh my God.

[Eli Double Tap]

I love just like the stories. Just carrot. How Griffin. Like good people.

[Brandon Herrera]

No. What is it? Like, don't take life so seriously because nobody gets out a lot life.

[Cody]

Yep.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

You can make the worst of a situation or you can make the best. And then I guarantee people look up to you when you you went through that. Whether it's Cody, whether it's you, whether it's Griff. They look up to those experiences and then they see this is a competition.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'm battling out.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah, but it's still you. It's making the best of stressful situations and how you guys handle it or approach it. It's refreshing as instead of the victim mindset, it's like, this is really hard.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah.

[Eli Double Tap]

Laughter then overcoming that. And then people are like, holy fuck, that's a dude I want to listen to. Follow.

[Brandon Herrera]

You can very easily. Maybe this is a thing to say, but in my opinion, you can very easily judge somebody by what they consider to be traumatic.

[Eli Double Tap]

I don't think it's. I agree completely on that because we are.

[Brandon Herrera]

I know you don't. It's the whole thing. You're not supposed to compare trauma. But when I hear people talk about certain traumatic things, it's like, oh youh were. You were misgendered.

[Eli Double Tap]

What is that? I stare into, like, oblivion. You're like that stretched.

[Brandon Herrera]

I'll put that one out of ten. I'll put that at maybe a one and a half.

[Eli Double Tap]

We'll pump it up a half point for you. I don't think you should be crying about it.

[Cody]

You said gay. That traumatized me.

[Brandon Herrera]

You know, it's not your trauma to joke about Cody.

[Cody]

My trauma.

[Brandon Herrera]

It's like, it's just if. How. How weak do you have to be that words can hurt.

[Eli Double Tap]

Yeah. You're like, oh, you heard from somebody you don't know. Still hilarious to hear out loud.

[Brandon Herrera]

Yeah. I gotta bounce out of here, though. Oh, I'm like, I'm 50. I'm 15 minutes past where I gotta leave.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, well, here. Yeah. We'll close out with this and we'll do after show with Mr. Trout. Cody, can you close. Close this out. We'll ask you where we can find.

[Cody]

Bye, everyone. Thanks for joining us here on the Unsubscribe podcast. I was joined today by Eli Double Tap Griff from Combat Flip Flops, our boy Brandon Herrera, myself, donut operator. If you want to join the app show, we'll be on Patreon. In the meantime, where can we find.

[Griff]

You at Combat Flip Flops. That's it.

[Eli Double Tap]

Combat Flip Flops. One word.

[Griff]

That's it. Combat Flip Flops. One word. Easy.

[Eli Double Tap]

We'll put it right here and then you can check out Unsub Shoes or whatever. Here, I'll just give you all. All the credits. Mr. Brandon has to go. He has a political thingy to do. Are we allowed to say that?

[Brandon Herrera]

You could say that. We'll see where that goes.

[Eli Double Tap]

Now stab him with it, Cody.

[Cody]

He just say he's a politician now.

[Griff]

That will pass a metal detector, by the way.

[Cody]

I know our next plane ride is going to be the funniest one ever.

[Eli Double Tap]

Oh, God.

[Griff]

Will be.