The Grey NATO – 222 – Jumping Out Of Helicopters To Fight Fires With Asha Wagner

Published on Thu, 12 Jan 2023 06:00:00 -0500

Synopsis

Jason and James host a special guest, Asha Wagner, who is a fire department captain, hazmat specialist, and adventurer with a passion for watches. They discuss Asha's journey into firefighting and her fascination with tool watches that can withstand the demands of her job. Asha shares stories from her experiences as a helicopter rappel firefighter, her approach to selecting durable watches, and her diverse collection that includes brands like Sinn, Omega, and vintage pieces. The conversation also touches on Asha's other hobbies like rock climbing, mountain biking, and her knife collection.

Jason mentions some recent museum visits in Toronto to see exhibits like the Wildlife Photographer of the Year and a Canadian modern design showcase. James talks about finding a fascinating documentary on raising the safe from the Andrea Doria wreck, while Jason brings up the quirky online baseball simulation game Blaseball as his final note.

Transcript

Speaker
Jason Heaton Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Graynado. It's a loose discussion of travel, adventure, diving, driving gear, and most certainly watches. This is episode 222, and it's proudly brought to you by the ever-growing TGN supporter crew. We thank you all so much for your continued support. And if you're listening and not supporting the show, but you're interested, please visit thegraynado.com for more details. Hey Jason, how we doing?
James Hanging in there. Yeah, we're, I guess we're halfway through the meteorological winter and, uh, yeah, it kind of feels like it. I feel like it's, uh, all, uh, all downhill. Uh, if you want to look at it that way until spring comes, but it's been a challenge, but we haven't had a winter like this in years. So I guess, uh, I guess I've gotten off easy.
Jason Heaton I feel like you're getting your normal winter plus Toronto's because there's no snow on the ground here. I think it's, it's about zero today. Um, it's not at all what I was expecting from January. Yeah. Especially because I thought, you know, coming back around Christmas with the huge storm that ripped through the Midwest and the lakes and such, uh, I thought that we were, that was going to be the start of real winter. Yeah. I thought the other day, like I was considering putting some air in my bike tires and making, you know, just bundling up and going for a bike ride. Cause it was like five or six Celsius. Like as long as your ears and your fingers are covered, you're probably going to be okay.
James Right. Right. No, no risk of ice in the, in the shade where you're going to slip or something. Yeah.
Jason Heaton I mean, it could change tomorrow. Yeah. By the time this episode comes out, I could be under two feet of snow. Yeah. Yeah.
James Who knows? You know, I feel like once you get to mid January, you're kind of on the upswing. So I'm, I'm optimistic. We've got a, we've got a warm week ahead and whatever, but I've, I've been trying to make the most of it. I get out cross country skiing a fair amount. Um, but it's a lot of shoveling and then our roof started leaking from the ice buildup around the, the soffits and the gutters. And so we had to have a guy come and steam all the ice off the roof a couple days ago. And it's, you know, it's just been full on. So all that's missing is like a, you know, furnace problem or a car trouble or something, but you know, knock on, knock on wood. It's, uh, so far so good.
Jason Heaton That's great. Yeah, for sure.
James Yeah. I've been kind of hunkered down last night. I'm, I'm working my way through, you know, I talked about, um, SAS rogue heroes and I know you, you gave that a try as well. And that's so good. The author who originally wrote the book that that was based on has written a number of other books, including Operation Mincemeat, which was made into a great film with... And was a final notes a little while ago. Yeah. There's another series on in the UK on ITV called A Spy Among Friends, which is based on another Ben McIntyre book. And it stars Damian Lewis and Guy Pearce. It's kind of a real life, you know, based on true events version of Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy, because it's about the exposure of Kim Philby as the uh, the Russian spy that he was back in the sixties and, um, right. Kind of the hunt for, for the Cambridge five, you know, the guys that were recruited by the KGB back in the 1940s and fifties. And, um, it's really well done. It's, it's kind of done in the same way as Tinker Taylor. It has that kind of moody, dark sort of, uh, desaturated seventies feel to it with sort of a jazzy soundtrack. It's, uh, it's really quite good. So I've been watching that through. through my VPN on ITV. And that's been kind of a good diversion while I'm sitting by the fire with a whiskey kind of brooding.
Jason Heaton Oh man, I'm, we're what? It's the January 10th. I'm nine, 10 days into dry January. Yeah.
James Don't talk about whiskey.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Uh, yeah. Well, you know, dry January, not my favorite necessarily, but, uh, something that's probably smart, a nice way to, to, uh, to start the year. Yeah. And I, you know, I mean, other than that, talk about, uh, breaking into addiction. I'm, I'm only, only deeper into Call of Duty mobile.
James Oh my gosh. And as predicted, I saw a lot of people on Slack saying, Hey, James, me too.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Yeah. But like a couple of those guys like put their screenshots up and they're like very high level players. Oh yeah. I got to work on it. I got to, I got to rank up a little bit and then, and then kind of get in there. I haven't, I haven't cracked level a hundred yet, but I do find it very, very, very, very entertaining and a nice way to like blow off some steam.
James Oh, sure.
Jason Heaton a heavier weights for the deadlift. I went with the lighter, lighter bit to get back into it, but I'm pretty thrilled. And I think I have a line on a water rower, which I'm pumped for. We got some suggestions on the Slack not to go water rower, to go concept or concept two, something like that. And I've definitely read that they're better, but there's a certain element of my lifestyle where the work, the reason I'm going with the rowing is because I don't like the way exercise bikes look in my space. And the reason I'm going with a water rower is because it goes full vertical to get out of the way. And they're just simply not that ugly. They're wood. And I don't have any space for a dedicated workout area. So when we do weights, we have a little bench that tucks away and like a workout mat. And that's kind of like ugly enough to have in the background of a Zoom call or whatever. Yeah, I'm sure the concept two ones are absolutely the best. They absolutely review that way and they're available. They look great. Yeah. And if I had a garage with a you know, a weight rack and right and maybe a treadmill and sure, I get it. Absolutely. Yeah. But otherwise, they look very much like HRG gear. Yeah, yeah, you know, workout equipment and I'm looking for something a little bit more acceptable in a in rooms full of sort of wood and yeah and you know it's a it's a century-old home and that sort of thing so I think that's why we're leaning water or but I found an s4 like yours or my wife did to be fair I found an s4 like yours available not too far away for a fair price so good we've got a feeler out for them maybe I'll have that this evening or maybe they'll ignore what I think was a very fair offer huh nice well fingers crossed I mean I yeah I've
James I've enjoyed having mine and my criteria was the same. I mean, the concept twos are great and I wasn't able to find any that, um, pre-owned that were. As affordable as, as even a new water rower and, and yeah, the looks and kind of the lack of the ability to kind of tuck it away against a wall. It's amazing what a small footprint they have when you put them vertically and, um, and they become kind of a conversation piece with the water tanks and it's sitting vertically. So yeah, I hope you get that. That'd be great.
Jason Heaton Yeah, me too. So fingers crossed on that. And then the only other thing we got up to recently is actually over the course of the last, say, month or so, we've gone to the Royal Ontario Museum twice. Nice. So if you're a Toronto local and you're never really sure if it's worth a membership or not, I haven't bothered buying a membership at this point, I should have. But we went for two specific exhibits, which is the Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2022. So they have a full exhibit going on. It feels like the better part of 100 images, but it might even be more than that. And they're all huge and backlit and in different categories and they tell you the settings and what camera was used and where it was shot and some details of what you're looking at. You can really slow down and walk through that exhibit and enjoy it. I absolutely loved it. It's the second time that we've gone and checked it out. We saw the 2021 as well. And then just recently, I want to say that the start of January or like mid towards the end of December, they started this Canadian modern exhibit, which is modern design from Canadian manufacturers and Canadian heritage. Yeah. And it's a little bit smaller, so I would... And it's not one that you pay extra ticket for, you pay extra on the ticket for the wildlife photographer and it's worth it. But if you're going to the museum anyways, I found this one to be quite interesting and it had some really cool stuff. I joked, I put it on our Slack that I think this is the first time I had ever come across something I owned when it was new in an exhibit. So in the Canadian Modern Exhibit, one of the newer things, to be fair, was like a 7820 Blackberry, a Blueberry, if you remember. Yeah. Yeah. You know, before they had, you know, there's like a digital dot digital screen with the Indiglo style backlight and thumb wheel and the full keyboard. And I had one of those towards the end of my stint in university, and it was an absolute game changer. But there's some pretty cool stuff in there including some great like furniture and some incredible stereos, claretone stuff. And I highly recommend it. And then there's a third one in there and it's like a mineral rock gem mineral exhibit. And I didn't really know it and it's like extensive. Like you could just sit there and I don't know, we were there for 30 minutes, 40 minutes looking at various stuff and it's really beautiful. And if you get a chance, if you're visiting Toronto and any of these exhibits are still going, It's 30 or 40 bucks a head probably to check this out. Certainly the wildlife photographer of the year was excellent.
James Huh. Nice. What a great time of year to go to museums. I always forget to do that.
Jason Heaton Yeah. If you've got an afternoon and it's that time of year when you're not going to spend the afternoon at a brewery or that sort of thing, then we like the museums. And certainly we spend a lot of time at the aquarium and the zoo and the science center because of the kids. But it's nice when you have the opportunity to go and check out something that's like Not necessarily designed exclusively for children. Right, right. I'm looking forward to getting back to the zoo. They had closed it because of that storm. Oh. So I didn't get there over the winter break. Otherwise, the zoo's open 365 days a year in Toronto.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton And so I'd like to get back there in the next little while, because you probably get a different sort of activity from some of the mammals in the cold weather. But yeah, I think that's about all I got up to, really. So if you want to, we can always jump right into some wrist check. Yeah, let's do that. What do you have on? I'm wearing the Apple Watch Ultra. I have an exceedingly busy week coming back because it's LVMH Watch Week now. By the time you listen to this, it'll actually be kind of over or into its... I think it goes till Friday or something like that. But the launches come out the evening of when we're recording this. And so we're doing a ton of prep on that kind of thing. And there's a lot of meetings and phone calls and this and that and the rest of it. And then we're also now in pre-planning for Watches and Wonders, which is at the end of March. And the sort of added plus of having that isn't just for the notifications and keeping me on time and the rest of it, but also I glanced down and I, it reminds me I should do something active and not just sit in front of my screen or, or change screens and play call of duty. So yeah, right. How about you? What have you got on?
James I'm kind of, kind of going boring. I've, I've got, uh, two weeks in a row here now with the, uh, the 2254 Seamaster. So just, I haven't taken it off yet. I've had it on since late December and, um, I've actually started the process of thinning down the collection. I sold a couple watches in the past couple of days. It's funny because last January, if you'll recall, I did an entire month only wearing the white dial Seamaster. So there's something about January and Seamasters that kind of keeps them on my wrist. So we'll see if that follows suit this month. It's just, it's an easy watch to wear. And I think that's what it comes down to. I think that's what I'm realizing with a lot of my watches, whether it's a Scurfa or, you know, a CWC or something. It's, you know, thin, comfortable, works on a number of straps. I just, I kind of don't even think about it anymore. I just get up in the morning and I'm already wearing it and I just don't take it off.
Jason Heaton Yeah, that's great. Those are such sweet watches. I'm curious, are you keeping it on the rubber or are you moving it around? I always found I was constantly changing straps on that watch because it works on so many different options.
James I'm so tempted to, to put it on the bracelet or it looks great on a NATO, but I, I just love this rubber strap and it's super comfy. So I haven't taken it off the rubber. Every time I look down, I'm just kind of brings a smile. Cause I love the, I love the look of this kind of burly black rubber. I think it's a, you know, Omega does rubber really well. I was thinking if there's a, if there's a themed episode or, or many, you know, topic or something we ever do, it could be on like the best rubber straps, because I feel like Omega is really at the, at the you know, head of the pack when it comes to OEM rubber. They just do such a good job and they've done it for so long.
Jason Heaton And this one's no exception. Absolutely. Yeah, no, it's a great stuff and a super wearable watch. I'm glad that you're getting a kick out of it.
James Well, we got a cool main topic today. We're really excited about this. It's been in the works for quite a while.
Jason Heaton Yeah, absolutely. So we have a special guest today. It's our friend Asha Wagner. And Asha kind of defies a simple explanation. She's one of the most remarkable people I've ever met. I've had a Uh, the pleasure of spending some time with her in the past, uh, doing some scuba diving or attempted scuba diving. I'm sure we'll get to that in the chat, but she's a huge watch nerd, a, uh, a consummate adventurer. And also a hazmat team leader, a fire department captain, uh, has a past doing things like, uh, for service helicopter repeller, just a genuinely interesting person. And it's a chat that I'm so excited to get into. So on behalf of Jason and myself, a huge pleasure to, uh, have Asha Wagner on the show. Let's get to that tape. All right. Welcome to the show. Asha Wagner. How are you?
Asha Wagner I'm doing wonderful. How about you?
Jason Heaton I couldn't be better. This is such a treat for Jason and I. We've been excited about this. I feel like we've been talking about this for a while. You've met Jason and I through different scenarios and we've had some fun out in the wild, but I'd love to kind of dig in. So I guess at an official level, you are a fire department captain and a hazmat specialist. Yep. And, and we can get into all of that. But I wanted to start the chat on kind of maybe a weird position. I'm curious, because I never asked you, how did you, how did you find TGN? Or how did TGN find you?
Asha Wagner Well, you know, I'm a longtime listener, first time caller. I've been listening to you guys since the beginning. I had followed both of your your articles on Hodinkee for a really long time, because I love tool watches. And I love seeing watches working and You know, being in the environment that they were meant to be in. So once you guys started a podcast, I was right there from the beginning.
Jason Heaton Yeah. And you have an excellent, uh, Instagram, which we'll be sure to share and have in the show notes, which I really enjoy. And then recently you and I got to hang out in, uh, the sort of Carmel by the sea, uh, Monterey area, one of my favorite places in all of North America. And I would do a little diving attempted diving on my part, but do a little diving. And we got to sit down and look at some watches. And hopefully that video will come out at some point. Because we shot a whole video for it with Hodinke. But I'd be curious, maybe we start with the high level stuff. Where did you you have a very specific taste for watches? And you also live the sort of life that would destroy a watch occasionally?
Asha Wagner Yes.
Jason Heaton And I find it interesting that you didn't you came to watches literally as them being almost forced upon you as a tool. Why don't we start there? How did you come to interface with watches from the tool watch perspective?
Asha Wagner Actually, when I was in elementary school, I liked watches from just a mechanical standpoint. I'm sure it probably frustrated my parents a little bit, but I would always take my toys apart. I wanted to find out how they worked. And so I remember having a watch in, I think it was third grade. Where you can see the movements inside and absolutely love that one. And unfortunately that watch got destroyed through the course of me using it. But, um, but, um, later on, I became very active in volleyball. I played volleyball all the way through college. And of course you can't have anything on your wrist, not even like a little fabric bracelet. So I wouldn't wear a watch. And then I took up rock climbing and again, rock climbing. Especially if you have to wedge your hand into cracks or just the abrasiveness of the rocks that you're on, that's also not conducive to wearing a watch. So I was almost anti-watch for a pretty long time. When I started working for the forest service, right on the Big Sur coast, just South of where we were in Monterey, we had to wear a watch for both taking vital signs when we would go on medical calls on patients, and then Also just coordinating our operations, especially when I start working on the helicopter as a helicopter repel firefighter on a helitack crew out of the Sierras down on Sequoia National Forest. After we would fly in and do what's called an initial attack on the fire, the crew from the helicopter would then go and establish a helibase and we would go into support operations. And then we had to have a watch there to coordinate different missions that we'd send the helicopters out on, whether it was a specific time that we had to change out the helicopters for water drops, send supplies out to the field, personnel, if we were going to be sending them out there. So we used our watches to coordinate all those operations, but at the same time, still didn't like wearing a watch.
Jason Heaton And at the time, just to fill in a blank, what sort of watch would you have been wearing?
Asha Wagner Timex Ironman, when I was working on the helicopter. It had a decent water resistance on it and decently durable. I still didn't like wearing watches. I actually remember one instance when I was working on the Big Sur coast, because we used to joke that the poison oak out there was genetically engineered by the military base next door, because it just Especially potent nasty stuff, eh? Oh yeah. It just, and it likes to hide in other plants and it's like, it's just waiting to ambush us. But I had a captain with forest service who didn't want us hesitating when we got to a fire. So on our training hikes and our, um, wildland fire training, he would hike us right through the biggest thick, thicket of poison oak that he could find. That way, you know, when the time came. We would just go and not even think about it. And poison oak is generally fine as long as you're able to wash it off within four hours or so. But it can stay on clothing and surfaces for up to a year if you don't wash it off. I believe it was my assistant captain came into work one day and he said that his wife had a strip of poison oak right in the middle of her back because he hugged her while he was wearing a, while she was wearing a sundress and he had his watch on and they realized that She got poison oak from his watch band.
Jason Heaton Goodness sakes.
Asha Wagner And so from that, it was just like, I just wanted to take off my watch as soon as possible and not even worry about that.
Jason Heaton In that line of work, what was the trick for cleaning poison oak off? Where I have the cottage, it's a lot of poison ivy. Similar concept, I believe, and a little bit less nasty, in my experience, poison ivy. But typically, if you take that heavy Dawn dish soap and just... scrub the heck out of your arms or whatever you think might have the oils on it. That seems to do it, but I wasn't sure if that was the official recommended remedy.
Asha Wagner That's what we started out with, especially dish soap, because that's really good at cutting the oils and getting those off. But then while I was doing Wildland, Teknu hit the market and they have both a Teknu block that you can put on your skin before you go in that keeps the oils from bonding with your skin. but it's still sitting there. So you have to make sure that you wash it off. And they also have a, um, a cleanser to help get it off too.
James Interesting. Very cool. So did the, um, did, did the wildland firefighting that obviously came before, I'm not sure what to call the other kind of firefighting, the kind that you do more commonly, is it more urban firefighting? Would you call it or?
Asha Wagner Yeah. Structural firefighting.
James What was the transition point, um, for you to move from one to the other? You started with the forest service and then you moved into more urban firefighting.
Asha Wagner So I started with Forest Service and then I spent one season with Cal Fire, which at the time that I worked for them was CDF, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. And Forest Service is more in the backcountry, really more remote areas. And CDF is what generally operates in what we call the interface, which is where the houses meet the the wildland areas. And, um, working for CDF, I got more exposure to structural firefighting. And then after that I was, um, picked up by my current department.
Jason Heaton And you've had a pretty long tenure as a firefighter. Correct. How did you get your start? Was that something that you, you had an interest in as a, as a child or something that came to you later on?
Asha Wagner Um, actually the first job that I ever remember wanting to be was a firefighter. And, you know, those back when I was in preschool and then somewhere along the line, well, the, the long story of it is somewhere along the line, I really wanted to become an astronaut. And from that, I fell in love with just all things that fly and figured, you know, well, if I'm going to be up there, I'm going to have some fun when I'm flying. I don't want to just go from point A to point B. So I found out about aerial tanker pilots that We'll do the water drops and the retardant drops on fires. And that seemed like an amazing job. And I was sit on that for a while. And then during the 91 Oakland Hills fire, the fire came within three quarters of a mile of my house, which we didn't know it at the time. We're looking at another landmark that was two miles away. And that was our landmark to evacuate for that. And I got to see up close and personal the tankers doing drops over, you know, flying over my house, going in to fight the fire. And I was, I believe I was about 15 or 16 at the time. So my parents were understandably keeping me pretty close. My, one of my neighbors hopped on his bike and went up into the hills right when it started to go fight the fire. And, you know, I just, I really did not like that feeling of just one waiting for the fire to come to me and also watching my friend's houses burn up because I went to school with a lot of kids that lived in the Oakland Hills. And, you know, some of them were actually ended up, I found out later that they were running down the hillside away from the fire.
Jason Heaton Goodness.
Asha Wagner I mean, luckily all of them survived, but their houses were completely gone. And so then in there, I decided, you know, I wanted to be in a position where I could do something about them. at the time was like, Okay, well, I either want to be flying planes or jumping out of them. I want to make sure that I can affect some sort of positive change in this environment. And years later, I was able to become a helicopter repeller. And that was definitely a dream come true for me.
Jason Heaton That sounds Yeah, I want to dig into that because fighting fires seems especially if you're not If you don't know a firefighter or the rest, it just seems like all out stress, very dangerous, very scary. But really it's like a lot of it is about. Practice and training and mitigating risk and preparing for things and all of this. And especially at your level, you sent me your CV, your resume, and it's a long one. You've got a lot of skills, but the definitely the one that sticks out at the like casual video game action movie level is repelling out of a helicopter. Did you seek that job out or did it kind of come to you as an option, um, in your career?
Asha Wagner I was definitely seeking it out and I was either wanting to be a repeller or a smoke jumper. So parachuting out of planes and the opportunity came up for me to go down to the Sequoia national forest and, um, and train and join that crew. So it was just, that was absolutely incredible.
Jason Heaton Let me make some assumptions here and you can correct them. There's a nearby base that has a helicopter and a bunch of people who can rappel out of it and the helicopter gets called to various locations, puts you guys on site and then you go fight a fire and get picked up later on. Yeah. How long might you be in the woods in the wild?
Asha Wagner Um, you know, there was no real definite limit on it. Um, generally 21 days and then we would get two days off.
Jason Heaton But like, would you frequently be dropped off and stay overnight in an area and kind of track along? And what are you doing at that point? Like trying to gauge the fire, understand where it's moving or is it active fighting or both?
Asha Wagner All of it. We could either be dropped off and be spotters on a high point to help direct other operations, or we could be dropped off, go in and with hand tools, start fighting the fire. Matter of fact, one of my very favorite fires was. It, it sounds like pretty minor fire by, you know, the standards of what we see on TV and especially stuff going on the past couple of years, but it was a lightning strike that came in on the top of a mountain about anywhere about 9,000 feet up. And it came in right in the evening time. So the helicopter flew us out. They found a spot to land a little while, little ways away. We hiked an hour and a half into it. There was maybe a approximate 30 foot by 30 foot fire that was burning in the underbrush. We used hand tools to cut a fire break around it, cut a line around it. And we stayed there all night to make sure that nothing flared up, that it didn't spread. The helicopter came back in the morning. They dropped off some food for us, dropped off water backpacks to help us, um, make sure that it was completely out. Then we hiked back out and a helicopter picked us up. And afterwards, when I was thinking about it, like the U S government just. Paid me time in three quarters to take a scenic helicopter ride at sunset. Then they paid me to take an hour and a half nature hike, had a campfire waiting for me when I got there, pretty much gave me breakfast in bed as they were flying the MREs into us and paid me for another hour and a half hike out and then another scenic helicopter ride. When we were up there, I couldn't see a sign of another human. We had a 360 degree view and we were just, you know, deep in the high country and it was just absolutely gorgeous. And I was up there just wondering like how many people had ever set foot in that spot before?
Jason Heaton That's an interesting question for sure. Yeah.
Asha Wagner Oh, when we were out there, it was just me and one other crew member. They only dropped off two of us to fight that fire. And so we were completely responsible for it. I mean, if it flared up, it was on us. And if we did our job and put it out, no, no one really know about it. And it was great.
Jason Heaton Yeah. All right. And then when it comes to the MREs, what was your favorite? What's the one you look forward to?
Asha Wagner Being a vegetarian. Um, I would seek out the one that had ham slice because that had potatoes au gratin in it. These were like the older MREs that came in the dark brown case that those are just overall horrible. Little bottles of Tabasco sauce and the ham slice was probably the most foul thing. Maybe next to tuna a la King. They didn't have expiration dates on them.
Jason Heaton There's some of those fantastic YouTube channels of the folks like opening up old MREs and trying them. I don't know if you've seen any of those. I have not. I'll send you a couple, but it might be, there might be some PTSD tied to that, uh, those experiences.
James Asha, I'm curious, you know, um, when it comes to firefighting, it's, it's one of those professions that I think is often overlooked. Um, I think things like you mentioned astronaut or we talk, you know, people talk a lot about commercial diving or the military when it comes to equipment and gear and watches specifically. And. I know one other firefighter locally here who's also a watch nerd. And it just sounds like it's such an equipment intensive job. And there are some crossover similarities with diving, right? You have an SCBA, which is the self-contained breathing apparatus. There's no underwater part of it. Did the use of all of that equipment tie into your childhood love of kind of taking stuff apart and like equipment and did that then feed well into the use of watches? And is that something you kind of geek out about?
Asha Wagner Oh, definitely. Uh, I, I love gear. I love tools to my wife's dismay. I probably have more gear and tools. I just, I love trying out different things. Um, and like you mentioned with firefighting and scuba diving, I think there's a huge crossover between them. I actually. Learned how to scuba dive before I was a really comfortable swimmer, but I was able to relax in the water because of my experience with firefighting, I'm using I'm used to breathing air off of a tank. I'm used to being in challenging environments.
Jason Heaton Yeah, and the isolation of the gear.
Asha Wagner Yeah. And having to stay calm in those challenging environments. So that made picking up scuba diving a lot easier.
James And when it comes to the watch element, I hadn't really thought about how watches play a part in firefighting. there must be very specific needs in terms of a watch. You said you wore a Timex Ironman, but I also think in firefighting, a watch would need to be water resistant for obvious reasons, but also, I mean, is there a heat resistance or a burn, um, a burn, uh, risk as well? Like, you know, we, we, we hear the story about the origins of the bund strap being something that is worn as a, you know, a pad of leather that protects a wrist from if the watch in a, in a fiery crash or something, the watch wouldn't then burn the wrist or something like that. Is that something that you consider?
Asha Wagner Um, it is generally in most of the environments that I go to. I mean, I would say that the watch has to be tougher than my skin. So as long as I'm in an area where I'm not getting burned, it's the watch is generally fine. But one of the things that I do think about is if a get into a much harsher environment or something happens where maybe the fire flashes over where we're going to be exposed to a lot of heat all at once. And that's one of the things that ends up with firefighters getting burn injuries is, you know, the strap and the material that the watch is made out of itself. So if I can have a watch that doesn't conduct a whole lot of heat. And if I can have a strap that's not going to melt, that's going to be ideal. Because, you know, in some of those situations, I remember, um, going to a seminar of two firefighters that, that were burned over and they talked about wearing synthetic underwear, how, um, you know, synthetic shirts and underwear, how that later had to be depleted out of their skin because it melted in that environment. And So that's, that is something that I consider with a watch strap.
James Yeah. What is preferred for next to skin clothing then? Is it more like wool or cotton, I suppose, or?
Asha Wagner Yeah, wool and cotton.
Jason Heaton I'm curious in your time fighting fires, I have several, like many questions. This is one of them. What's the weirdest thing you've ever seen burn or melt?
Asha Wagner Generally on fires, you know, they teach us to stay low to the ground because of course heat rises. And as long as we can stay low, we're going to have much better time game there, it still gets pretty warm. But I remember, um, one fire that I went to and the interior crews were slipping and they didn't realize until afterwards that the fire was so hot that it melted the carpet.
Jason Heaton Into like a slime, like a goo of some sort. Yeah. Wow. That's wild for sure. We touched on your start with watches, with some timexes, with stuff that you didn't want to get, you know, poison oak on and then transfer to some poor soul in a hug that didn't deserve said poison oak. I'm curious when you got into, like when you actually got into watches, like what the sort of kickoff was.
Asha Wagner Well, before I promoted to captain, I had done what was called higher classing. So I was a firefighter, but I was serving in the role of fire captain when needed for seven years before I promoted. And this is before we had iPads on the rigs, we were documenting things on paper sheets. And one of the key elements of my job was that I had to document all of our interventions, all of our actions, all the events of the call, and also medication administration for our paramedics, because we have some medications that need to be given at certain intervals, like maybe every three to five minutes. And so I need one that would go in the dark at nighttime is I don't like to touch my wrist or anything else if, especially if I end up like blood or other bodily fluids on my hands and try to not spread that around. So I wanted something that would glow on its own. And of course it had to be durable because I mean, if you look at my hands, I have scars all over my hands. So anything that's on my wrist. is going to get scars too. So it's got to be durable as well. And then, um, it had to be legible. And so those are the main things. So dive watches just suited that perfectly.
Jason Heaton And then from there, uh, you know, you mentioned the scars on your hands and, and that you're, uh, an impact prone individual. Definitely. Have you managed to destroy a watch, lose a watch, you know, break a watch beyond repair. And if so, and is it several at this point is that the zone we're in?
Asha Wagner There's, there's a couple, there was, um, There was one watch that had tritium tubes on it. And I dropped that one three feet on the asphalt and a tube popped and broke. And I think that was the main one. I think with the Ironman, the strap eventually gave out on me.
Jason Heaton Yeah, that's what's happened to mine. Yeah.
Asha Wagner Yeah.
Jason Heaton So outside of those, in today's context, what are you into when it comes to watches? What kind of brands do you like to wear to work? What brands do you like to wear when you're kick them back after, uh, after, uh, you know, a long stint of work.
Asha Wagner Yeah. I, I have a bunch, but, um, at work, I generally, where am I? I sang in dark professional. I just absolutely love that watch. Um, love that it has the GMT functionality on it. And at work, I just said that to, um, to serve as like a 24 hour time indicator is we operate in military time and it's got amazing lume on it. It has a lume bezel. Um, as a hazmat specialist, um, we will do, um, entries into different environments. And that means that we will send a team of people inside a hazardous atmosphere. And we have to do air checks to make sure that they're, they have enough air in their tank for the operation, as well as to get back out. And if they have to go through decontamination, I have to make sure they have enough air in their tank. for that as well. So we use a stopwatch for, for that, but I'd still use the timing bezel on my dive watch as a backup timer because I like backups to my backups. Just the more safety measures in place, the better.
Jason Heaton And so the dark professional that was there, that was Sangin's collaboration with triple out design, right?
Asha Wagner Correct.
Jason Heaton Yeah. That's a pretty cool watch.
Asha Wagner Yeah. Every once in a while I'll wear my, um,
Jason Heaton My ZRC North Adventure at work. It was so much fun to see that watch in person when we hung out. It's absolutely charming. They won't respond to my Instagram DMs, but I do really like those watches and that ZRC, especially the one that you had and on the Erica's strap. It was just perfect. That's such a cool watch.
Asha Wagner I'll get a U1 Pro that I'll wear at work every once in a while. And Jason, your article sold me on that one.
James I love that watch. It's a great watch. Such a limited edition as well. And, uh, yeah, I kind of wish I had bought one of those when they were available.
Asha Wagner I think they only made a hundred of them.
James Yeah. I'm curious, like what you think I I'm speaking of Zinn. Um, do you remember a few years back they made a watch that, and James, maybe you'll remember the exact name. It was, it was targeted towards first responders because it had certain functionality that was geared towards response time. And then it also had a quick release strap that could be sanitized easily. Do you remember this watch? I do. The EZM7.
Asha Wagner EZM7. EZM7. Wasn't that the firefighter watch?
Jason Heaton The EZM7 was the firefighter and then the EZM12 was the one that you could remove the strap and sanitize it really easily.
Unknown Yeah.
Asha Wagner Yeah. That's a great watch. I love that one too.
James I mean, I guess when I think about, you know, to my point earlier about firefighting being sort of an unsung watch nerd profession or, or, or something to be considered. I remember when we were at wind up in Chicago chatting with, um, the guy who, who started, um, William Wood watches out of the UK. And that's a firefighter themed watch that, that makes use of repurposed, um, old, I believe it must be copper helmets. And, and then the straps are made out of, uh, the material that the hoses are made of. And, um, it was kind of neat to see that because it's, it is a very niche profession that I think deserves, That level of recognition and and I can't think of a job. Well, I can think of a few maybe but that would be harder on a watch than than what you do.
Asha Wagner So yeah, it's you know, just a lot of Bumps and bruises. Yeah when I'm in a fire, it's covered up under my turnout coat But just throughout the course of the day and there other activities other calls we go on It's it's gonna get banged up a little bit, but I do have a William Wood valiant that I've worn at work, too Okay Nice. It's just, it's such a charming watch. It's so much fun. Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. It's a, it's a cool piece for sure. It was a treat to see them and, and get kind of a breakdown and then he can, they had a bunch of watches there on the table at wind up and he could point to each one and say what, which, you know, fire outfit they had gotten the hose from for the various strap on that watch or this one or that. So it's a, it's definitely a niche thing, but a very cool thing in general. And then I know recently we were chatting and you, you had said that you had, uh, you had your eye on, on a watch that I'm very much a fan of. Were you able to, uh, to put that watch on your wrist?
Asha Wagner I was being a hazmat specialist. Um, oftentimes we'll work with a lot of different, um, different, both federal, local and state governmental agencies. And, um, at a training last year, last spring, we were, um, working with our local bomb squad. And we also had the FBI and the DOE out there. And I noticed a Tudor Pelagos FXD on the wrist of one of the FBI WMD bomb techs. And so I asked him about it, and he said he loved it. And we ended up swapping watches for the training. So I was wearing the FXD, and he was wearing my Sengen Dark Pro, which he also loved. We just kept in touch ever since then. At training, we were working on dirty bomb containment. And so a dirty bomb is an explosive device that has a radiological component in it. So it's not what you'd think of as like a nuclear explosion. So it's just like a regular explosion, but it just kind of spreads radioactive material all over the place. And so we were working on something on different methods for containing that. So we've kept in touch ever since then, because he's a big watch nerd too. And that actually ended up with me getting one of my favorite watches. So it turned out really cool.
Jason Heaton And that's the new Pelagos FXD.
Asha Wagner Well, the new Pelagos and then also another watch that's called the Lost Navigator.
Jason Heaton The FXD is largely a known quantity. I think that suits really well. What strap do you prefer to wear it on of the ones that it came with?
Asha Wagner Um, I, I like the, not Velcro, but the fabric, self closing, however they term it. Sure. The blue and gray strap. That one's my favorite, the fabric strap.
James And, and does the countdown bezel lend itself to work or can you, do you, do you even need to justify that? Or, or do you wear it for work?
Asha Wagner I do wear it for work. Um, I generally prefer a count up bezel for my purposes, but the countdown bezel still works.
Jason Heaton Yeah. And then tell us about the Lost Navigator.
Asha Wagner When my buddy that I swapped the FXD and the Sagan IV, he was over in Europe and he just randomly went into a consignment shop and found two watches there. Both of them were RAF issued watches. There was the Lost Navigator, which is a W10 style watch. And then there was an IWC from the fifties. And he sent me a picture. I'm like, Both of these watches need to come back to California. And he was really interested in the IWC. And I started looking up about the Lost Navigator because I'd never heard of it before. And it turns out that it is a completely unbranded issued watch. So it was right in the transition period between CWC and Hamilton. And it looks like both of them, but there's slight differences. The movement has been modified so that it has hacking. I mean, even Even the interior of the case, there's no idea who makes it. There's subtle differences. The three on it has a flat top versus being curved. But other than that, it looks very similar to the other two. But they call it the lost navigator because they said nobody knows who the manufacturer is. And it turns out that there was only about 2,000 of them made. And it was only made and issued during my birth year of 1976. Cool. Yeah. I've been searching for a birth year watch for a pretty long time and this one just seemed perfect. So with the lost navigator, when my buddy got from the consignment store and we're going back and forth and he decided that he was going to go ahead and get him, I asked him since it was on consignment, is there any way that he can talk to the guy that consigned him? And he talked to the shop owner. Turned out that the guy that can sign them was ex 82nd Airborne, now part of the SAS. Oh, wow. And he wore the lost navigator during the cold war while he was intercepting messages from, um, coded messages from the Russians. And so my buddy was able to sit and talk with him for an hour and find out the history of the watches. And then, um, just chat in general about, you know, both of their service and just had a great time. So that's so cool. Another thing that just makes that watch even more special to me.
Jason Heaton Very cool. That's a great, great background for that watch. Definitely.
James Now that that watch, it's such a cool watch, by the way, I love that. It seems like a bit of an anomaly in your collection, given that you tend to have mostly kind of rugged, modern dive style watches. piece, would you say? Or do you own others as well? I've got a couple others. You have an old Aquadive, if I remember right.
Asha Wagner Yes, I actually have my original TGN Big Watch Saturday, Aquadive watch, my timed up. Oh, yeah. Nice. I have another vintage Aquadive of 503305, which is more of a skin diver type watch with a moaning case. And that's a super fun one, too. That one still has, we tested out like 70 meters of water resistance. So it's really rugged. Yeah, I wear that one a decent amount in my off time. The bold colors of the dial and just the how well it wears are just all awesome. The Elgin scaffold graph. See that one?
Jason Heaton Oh, that's very cool. Yeah. Yeah, like red, orange markers in the steel bezel.
Asha Wagner I love orange on on dive watches. And oh, yeah, just that whole 70s aesthetic that Looks like it's straight out of Star Wars.
Unknown Yeah.
Asha Wagner Let's see. There was the, well, the Nevada Antarctic. Oh, okay.
James A vintage one or the, or the re-release version?
Asha Wagner Oh, two vintage ones. Oh, okay. Wow. The original one, that's the same model as the one that actually went on Operation Deep Freeze. And then I have the commemorative one with the medallion on the back that was released a few years later. I have a couple other vintage ones. I don't wear them as much because again, impact prone, but yeah, I love the history behind them.
Jason Heaton So I get the, I get the vibe that you have many other hobbies. What else are you into? What do you like to do when you've got a few days when you don't have a bunch of errands to run or work to respond to?
Asha Wagner I love mountain biking. I'm really fortunate where I live. There's mountain bike trails, three quarters of a mile away from my house. So I just ride out my front door and into the hills, rock climbing, pretty much anything outdoorsy, hiking. I tried e-foiling over the summer, which is, you know, powered standup paddleboarding on like a board. You name an outdoorsy thing, I'm pretty much there. Like I either want to try it or probably have tried it.
Jason Heaton And do you, do you collect anything else beyond watches? Are you into knives or maybe vintage stamps?
Asha Wagner I started collecting knives way before, um, way for watches back in college, as on my college logging team. So I know if you've ever seen timber sports on ESPN, where they're just, um, competitions with chainsaws.
Jason Heaton Um, Oh yeah, for sure.
Asha Wagner One of my favorite events was the double buck saw, which think about like Disney cartoons or, um, old timey lumberjack, um, films where you have the super long saw with the two handles on either side. I absolutely loved racing with that. I had so much fun with it. My logging team was very into knives and we would use them for all sorts of different things. So it was almost a requirement to have a knife for logging team. And so I started collecting knives then and we've got a decent collection. And once I focused on watches, I didn't keep up with knife collecting so much. And so I think that's been about 10 years. And the advancement in knives in the past 10 years has just been absolutely insane.
Jason Heaton Yeah. Kind of like, like with micro brand watches, you can buy anything you can imagine in a knife from an aesthetic standpoint, a metal, um, you know, materials for the handle, like all of it are possible. It is really impressive to see where it's gone. It was something that I was like very entry level nerdy about, yeah, like about 10 years ago. And then every two or three years I touch down, I buy something new, it scratches the itch. And it hasn't taken me the way that watches do, but it's definitely a fascinating thing for sure.
Asha Wagner Yeah, definitely. Oh, comic books. Growing up, I've drawn for pretty much as long as I could hold a pencil. And so just absolutely loved comic books and was huge into those for many, many years. Matter of fact, The comic books and that style of art influences my photography now because I don't draw as much but photography is more my creative outlet.
Jason Heaton That's another great and talk about a deep hobby for collectors like comic books. A very well established you know group of enthusiasts to rely upon and to dig into. Yes. That's great. Speaking of something more on the pop culture side, this is admittedly not exactly a hard hitting question, but which one did you like more? 2017's Only the Brave or 2021's Those Who Wish Me Dead? Those two firefighting themed movies.
Asha Wagner I actually haven't seen either of those yet.
Jason Heaton Only the Brave was the fire jumper, the smoke jumper one with Josh Brolin. So yeah, that was directed by Joseph Kaczynski. And then the other one was the Taylor Sheridan one with Angelina Jolie. She's a fire spotter, like in one of those elevated towers.
Asha Wagner I do remember hearing about those, but I just haven't seen them yet.
Jason Heaton Yeah. All right.
Asha Wagner Well, fair enough. One of my favorites is this old black and white movie called Red Skies Over Montana. Okay.
Jason Heaton Put that in the show notes for sure.
Asha Wagner It's been a long time since I've seen it, but just remember one of the scenes where you have a plane that's flying over the fire and he's talking on a radio that's like the size of a 1980s cell phone, just radioing down to the crews on the ground. That was, that was a fun one.
James Asha, you know, I'm curious, like in terms of firefighting, it feels like, and I'm not making any commentary about your age, but it does seem like it's a young person's game in terms of the actual boots on the ground, like carrying heavy equipment and et cetera, et cetera. Definitely. What is the career path and what, where do you see yourself going if you continue in this career for, I don't know, 10, 20 more years, whatever.
Asha Wagner Let's see. I've been with my current department for 21 years now and then did six seasons combined with forest service and CDF before then. So right now I, I spent a lot of time just focusing on staying in shape. I'm a kettlebell instructor in my off time. Um, the job is a repetitive stress injury. It's cumulative. There's lots of, um, different things where we're constantly lifting in awkward positions, working on unstable surfaces. So it takes a lot to stay in shape. Well, I'm doing a little bit of hazmat instruction and evaluation on the side. So I will continue with that. And I'm also a member of a federal disaster response task force. As a hazmat specialist looking at going into rescue in particular water rescue as a secondary specialty is in California is flooding right now. So I think that that's going to. The floods nationwide are going to continue between hurricanes and different storms. So I'm looking to get into water rescue. And then later down the line, I've always had an interest in the planning section. So. There's different branches on major incidents. There's the operations, which is the boots on the ground planning, which is information gathering and figuring out the best courses of action. And there's a logistics section, which gets all of all of the support for the operation, whether that's, you know, getting food into the into the camps to feed the crews, getting radios and communications. And then, of course, there's the finance section. And I've always had a big interest in plans. And that ties in perfectly with being a hazmat specialist, because a big part of what we do is researching the incident and all the ins and outs of it to determine the best course of action.
Jason Heaton Hmm. Well, look, I think that's probably the bulk of the questions we had. Jason, anything else you wanted to get to?
James Yeah. I mean, Asha, you know, in terms of your, your Instagram account, you actually have two or three. Is there one that you prefer that people kind of find you at or follow?
Asha Wagner Oh, for watches, the Wildlander six one. the best one. Cool.
Jason Heaton Yeah. And do you want to tell the story behind the title?
Asha Wagner Oh, so Wildlander, of course, with my time being a wildland firefighter, and then the number six was the number that I was assigned when I was a helicopter repeller. So they gave each of us numbers because every time that we were to go out on the helicopter, if something were to happen to the helicopter, if it were to have a hard landing or something else, that way they could notify our families before the media got ahold of and release our names. And helicopters do go down from time to time. The helicopter on the, at my station before I got there, it actually crashed. And then, um, when I was out on a fire learning radio operations, there was another helicopter that crashed as well. The first one on the season before I got there, that helicopter was dipping water with, uh, what's called a Bambi bucket. You've seen those orange buckets that hang off the line on the bottom of the helicopters and they'll fly over, drop water. So he was dipping water out of a lake and speeding to get back to the fire. The bucket hit a tree, looped up over his tail rotor, or over the tail boom, sheared the tail rotor off, and then the weight of the water in the bucket yanked the helicopter pretty much out of the sky. Luckily he survived.
Unknown Wow.
Asha Wagner Yeah. He's got some decent injuries from it, but Luckily survived. And then the other incident where I was in my first day learning radio operations and had a Mayday call come in, that pilot was dipping water also out of another pond. And he had a fixed belly tank on the bottom of his helicopter. So it didn't have a long line. He had to get like right over the surface of the water. When he came up out of the lake, got a little turned around and flew into two sets of power lines. He survived as well. Luckily. Wow. Yeah, when we were repelling, we'd have a spotter in the helicopter who would make sure that everything was okay with the repellers as we were going down because we didn't have radio communications. So he could let the captain, the pilot know, you know, when we were on the ground, would unhook the ropes after we were done. But the spotter also had another job. He'd carry a hook knife on his chest harness. If anything went wrong with the helicopter, his first job would be to cut our lines. Because if the helicopter is going down, if they have to make a quick landing, they don't want our line snagging on something. So it's basically sacrifice the repellers to save the helicopter. So they always told us, like, if we looked up and saw smoke coming out of the helicopter, just get to the ground as quick as we could. Minimize that. You know, my spotter would always like to joke with us a little bit. We started mouthing off to him, like, This knife is just slipping right out of its harness. I'm trying to put that back. Oh, no, there it goes again.
Jason Heaton Well, Akasha, this has been incredible to have you on the show and to chat about watches and your incredible career and your bevy of hobbies and small injuries, some larger than others. I do hope we get to do a proper dive sometime in the future, but thank you so much, really, from Jason and I for being on the show.
Asha Wagner This was awesome. Thank you.
James Thanks so much Asha for joining us on TGN. That was such a pleasure. I can't wait to get this episode live and get people's reactions. I think she's such an interesting person, such a nice person and just kind of lives the TGN lifestyle. I just can't get enough of talking to her and kind of hearing about her exploits and such a great background in kind of watch nerdery too, the way she came to it, what her interests are and why. So thanks again, Asha for joining us and I hope everyone enjoys the episode.
Jason Heaton Yeah, absolutely. A huge treat to have Asha on the show. And it's been even more so it's been kind of an extended pleasure of the last couple of years to get to know her a little bit better and to do a bit of adventuring. I'm looking forward to, you know, whatever we've got in the future for some fun stuff. But she's an inspiring personality for sure. So what do you say we dig into some final notes?
James Yeah, sure. I stumbled upon something this past week on YouTube, and it was based on the fact that Bob Hollis died. Bob Hollis was the founder of Oceanic, the dive gear, dive equipment company. Hollis Dive, you know, they make a lot of BCs and dive equipment as well. But before all of that, he was kind of a groundbreaking underwater cameraman and he was part of Peter Gimbel's big expedition back in the early eighties to raise the safe from the Andrea Doria. This was, this was kind of a big sensation back in, I think it was about 1980. Peter Gimbel, who, you know, from our past TGN discussions, was the guy behind Blue Water, White Death, that great 1971 documentary about the hunt for the great white shark, one of our favorites. And Gimbel happened to also be the person, the first person, to dive the Andrea Doria when it sank in 1956. So, I mean, this guy's just got tremendous history. And he tapped Bob Hollis to come up with a saturation diving scheme for diving the Andrea Doria to raise the safe. So, you know, Doria obviously is a very famous wreck and has drawn a lot of tech divers over the years, but to undertake that type of expedition to actually cut into it, find the safe and then raise it to the surface required long dives without lots of, you know, decompression time and, and just, you know, boats to and from the mainland. And, um, so Hollis, uh, figured out a way to, to put a diving bell, um, down on the wreck, um, for divers to, to use and then, uh, a habitat back up on the support ship. Incredible. And they spent a month diving the Doria to, to raise the safe. And it was part of a documentary called Andrea Doria, the final chapter. I kind of hunted around for this and I found it on YouTube and it was split into four parts on a, uh, a YouTube channel run by a Dutch person. So there's, there's at the beginning of part one, as you watch it, it may be a little confusing because it's kind of this announcer speaking in Dutch for quite a while for about the first 12 or 15 minutes. And then it segues into the main video, but then the other three chapters, cause it's in four parts are all in English and it's just the actual documentary with, with Gimbel narrating. And it's fascinating. It feels a bit like a bookend to Blue Water White Death. You get the same. banter, the same kind of narration style from Gimbel. He's much older at this point than he was in the early 70s. And in fact, he was near the end of his life. He died of cancer, actually, in the late 80s, which is quite sad, given all that he had done. It's just a great glimpse into what's really a rollicking adventure with these sat divers in fairly dangerous conditions, penetrating the Andrea Doria to find the safe. And so I was able to find that. I think, overall, between the four sections, it's maybe about an hour of viewing. Yeah. So we'll, we'll put up the link for the first part of this four part YouTube video set. Um, and then you, you can just continue on and watch the subsequent three parts, but it's really a fascinating look and, and a, and a fun watch for, for people that are into diving and, and kind of the history of the Andrea Doria.
Jason Heaton Man, I'm pumped for this. This looks awesome. I clicked into the link there, which is the second one. And, uh, and it immediately is, is, you know, right into the action. And, uh, you know, this is a story that they briefly touch on in shadow divers.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton Gimbel's history with the Andrea Doria and to have a little bit on tape and be able to have the visuals and that from the era is super special. So this immediately went into pocket for some viewing later today.
James Yeah. Awesome. How about you? What do you have?
Jason Heaton Yeah. So mine is actually a follow-up to a final note I made. I want to say it was 2020. It might have been 2019, but I think it was 2020. A new season of Blaseball has started. Oh, yeah. This is that. fictional kind of silly baseball simulation by the numbers played through a website. So it's not real, and it's also not especially complicated. It's a little bit wacky, a little bit zany. It's a fake betting game based on a surreal and entirely fictional baseball season that's played out through the numbers. So there's no like, it's the same graphics that you might be used to in the lower left of a baseball game. Oh, sure. You know, it'll tell you balls, strikes, runs up, bottom of the eighth, what bases are loaded, that kind of stuff.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton Um, but other than that, and that's only if you watch live, otherwise you have a game happens at, uh, several games happen every hour and you can bet on each one with fake money. There's no real money involved. And, uh, and then with your accrued value, you can, you can use your credits either to bet on more games, which of course, or to use them as votes to kind of shape the way the game is played.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton uh, and it gets kind of progressively wackier throughout the season. So I really enjoy this. I kind of track it along with, I know which team my brother supports. I know which team I support. That's the, uh, uh, Mexico city wild wings. And, uh, it's, uh, it's, it's, it's super fun. It's really, you just kind of leave it off in a browser and every now and then usually on the hour, I'll go back in and see, see the results, see how many bets I won or loss and, and maybe bet out on, on a few more games in the future. Uh, but it happens every hour on the hour from something like I don't know, pretty early in the morning until 11 p.m. at night. So there's a bunch of games to get in on. It's light, it's kind of silly, but if you like some of the numbers side of sports or, you know, a very, you know, zero stakes betting game, it's a lot of fun.
James I remember when you first talked about this, I don't know, it was probably a couple of years ago now, and it seemed like such a low-tech almost kind of just bit of, you know, diversion.
Jason Heaton Yeah, it's almost passive. Yeah, yeah. But you can you can it's fun like I'll go in and see my team is playing my brother's team And then I'll just start spamming him for 15 minutes of all the game plays out. Oh, yeah Yeah, you know just kind of heckling him and trash-talking and that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's a good time But it's it's a specific type of good time. You'll either really dig it or be like why why would I do this? There's no there's nothing actually happening here.
James There are no like game sound effects Are there like the crack of the bat or the crowd?
Jason Heaton No, there's no game. Okay, like even even if you're watching the live panel Yeah, you're basically looking at numbers changing and so there's a little running tally that's that'll say like so-and-so Takes a crack at it in the left field and then there'll be a pause. It'll say like so-and-so caught it. Oh sure Yeah, so if you want to sit there and actually read the play-by-play you can but a lot of it kind of happens in Betting and then results and then betting and the results and that kind of thing.
Unknown Yeah.
Jason Heaton Yeah. No, that's fun Yeah, good silly fun. I enjoy it quite a bit
James All right. Well, that's another episode. We thank, uh, Asha so much for joining us on this episode and hope everybody enjoyed it. And as always, thanks so much for listening. If you want to subscribe to the show notes, get into the comments for each episode or consider supporting the show directly and maybe grab a new TGN sign NATO and join our very lively Slack community. Please visit thegraynado.com. Music throughout is Siesta by Jazzar via the free music archive.
Jason Heaton And we leave you with this quote from Yogi Berra, who said, you better cut the pizza into four pieces. Because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.