Dirty Water Don

Eric Girouard  0:00  

This is Bucket Talk, a weekly podcast for people who work in the trades and construction that aren't just trying to survive, but have the ambition and desire to thrive. The opportunity in the trades and construction is absolutely ridiculous right now. So if you're hungry, it's time to eat. We discuss what it takes to rise from the bottom to the top with people who are well on their way and roll up their sleeves every single day.

Jeremy Perkins  0:28  

All right, on this episode of Bucket Talk, we're here with dirty water. Don, Don, welcome to the podcast.

Donald Gann  0:35  

Thanks for having me

Jeremy Perkins  0:36  

So Don, you're a diver by trade, correct? Yes,

Donald Gann  0:40  

I am a certified underwater welder. I went to school for diving, and then once, I got into a local 1556 which, those who don't know, is the New York City dock builders and timber men, pile drivers and divers. From there, I did take any class they offered me, and they eventually I was certified as a commercial diver, but as underwater welder, a lot of divers can weld underwater. Not going to say they can't, but there's not many that are actually certified. Okay, so that was one little notch in the belt that I got throughout the union. And you know, of course, your rigging certs and all your other certifications you can get just makes you cooler. But the I can actually say I'm an actual underwater welder, because the paperwork says it.

Jeremy Perkins  1:23  

So how'd you get into it?

Donald Gann  1:26  

Well, I diving was never really on my radar. When I graduated high school, I went to school for aeronautical engineering. So before you, before you see all this cool, collected kid in front of you, I was little nerdy kid who was in the Young Astronauts club, and I just the thought of space travel really intrigued me. So I thought I Okay. I couldn't do military thing. So I figured I go to school for aeronautical engineering. Get real good acts. I was a good mechanic. Go to my hands. I figured I'll just, you know, scoop my way in there and work for NASA eventually. Um, that didn't happen. I graduated, and I found out if you have any kind of misdemeanors or felonies, anything in your background, you can't touch aircrafts. Now, that should be in the brochure. That's where I take your money, yep. So from there, I worked for I went and worked for the railroad for a little bit, doing freight. I did a lot of odd dense jobs. Did a bunch of everything, and then I started hooked up with this company in international tank services. Its at Lima, Ohio, right? They built storage tanks for jet fuel, kerosene, diesel, tar, you name it. They built storage facilities to house these things. So I was working out there, and my foreman, Augie, never get this guy. He talked real. He talked like he was dumb. That man would do quantum physics with some soaps and a piece of steel. Man was sharp as a nail, and he really, I said to him, hey, you know, being this job is so dangerous, you should pay me more. And he laughed. He's like, sweetheart, it's not even top 10. So I Googled my own by the time my ex wife, she Googled world's most dangerous job. So I was intrigued now to see what was so dangerous out there. And commercial diving, underwater welding came up on the list. So I figured, well, I can't be an astronaut because I can't allow touch airplanes or spaceships, but maybe there's an Armageddon moment. You know, the earth needs me. I'm cheaper than an astronaut. I'll go be an aqua not and then maybe back door NASA that way, yeah. And then I, you know, went to school and became a commercial diver, and, wow, the rest is history.

Jeremy Perkins  3:33  

Hey, some say we never went to the moon. They actually went down into the ocean. So technically, if that's true, you are an astronaut.

Donald Gann  3:41  

Technically and listen, technicalities have kept me out of prison, so I love a good technicality.

Jeremy Perkins  3:49  

There you go. There you go. So you've done some pretty freaking cool stuff. I don't know. Some of our listeners may have may know of you. May have seen you on TV, may have seen you in in collaborations, but you're all over the place. And yeah, I'm like, I mean, the first time I really got a taste of you was you're working with heavy D and diesel Dave on this mammoth hunt in New York Harbor, and you guys, you guys, intrigued me with the clip. You know, I had the Coast Guard coming in. I'm Coast Guard y'all, but that was, that was a super cool thing. Like, how'd you get involved with that? Like, was that? Was this something?

Donald Gann  4:41  

It wasn't really my idea to do that my so I was, we were on a press tour for Discovery Channel. We we our show sewer divers aired that, in of itself, was an amazing experience, but we were supposed to shoot a television show that was supposed to debut on the Discovery plus platform. Right was. Supposed to go anywhere more than that, and then they're supposed to air january 1 of 2023 on december 27 they called us and they say, Listen, you're not going on Discovery plus platform. And we were like, well, what do you mean? You're going to go straight to Discovery Channel. You're going to go at nine o'clock right after dirty jobs, which was crazy. He was like, what I thought that's prime time for the type of television we were shooting. We were just flabbergasted, just the fact that we were, you know, following up with Mike Rowe, by the way, Mike Rowe, you're an awesome guy. I love you. And we, we did that. And I'm currently on a press tour in the month of January, doing a couple news stations and a couple newspapers, and we're just doing the doing the ropes there. And Joe Rogan had John reeds on his podcast. Now, my brother John is a huge Joe Rogan fan. So John, so John reeds has a piece of property in Alaska, and for some reason, scientists can't confirm on why this is but there's millions of specimens or prehistoric animals that ended up in this small claim of land, and no one knows why they're there. Anytime he digs, he finds something, whether it be camel remains, mammoth remains, Steve, bison remains or Rhino remains, he he finds it right? So my brother, our premier party. My brother's telling me about this episode of Rogan. He's like, bro, it's East River. That's your backyard. That's that's what you do, and where. That is where they where they supposedly they dump these things. It was the real treacherous diving. So I was like, what I gotta lose? I'll go out there. So the next day, we strap up, throw our gear in the boat, we go out there, and we dove 276 times before we found anything. We found three specimens. After we were told by countless naysayers and newspapers and news stations, there's nothing there. We find three specimens. So doing this search, we hooked up with the diesel brothers, because they're always down for the down for the cause. They're down, they're down for whatever. Just have a good time. Let's break, you know, kind of guys. And we were talking back and forth, you know, they're also alumni from the discovery platform, so the line of communication from us to them wasn't that difficult, you know. And we're like, Hey, watch. Come out here. I'll strap you in a helmet, throw you bomb these River. What do you say? And they were all about it, Dave, diesel. Dave dove like, seven times. He loved it. Yeah, real tape. They got up. The bug bit him. And, you know, we had a really good time with him. We were down for three days, uh, like I said, you said the Coast Guard board and our vessel because some I'll give a little, yeah, give a little background on why they so. Somebody called the New York City Police Department, the NYPD, and said that there is this vessel out here, and a person, occupant on the vessel was brandishing a rifle. Now, nothing we had that day remotely even looked like a firearm, let alone was a firearm. There was even like a flare gun on the boat that came in misconstrued. There was nothing. And so NYPD comes, they they pull up to us. They ask for who's in charge of the radio? I get on the radio, I tell who I am, what we're doing, and he's kind of suggested we were too close to a ferry slip. But I had one of those digital tapes to tell you how far you are, and I was exactly 101 feet away. I'm like, my man, I'm 101 feet away. I'm I'm within the tolerance of where I'm allowed to be. And he's like, Okay, you have a good day. And he left. Then three minutes later, after our lawyer left, because he had to catch a flight. So our lawyer, while the diesel brothers lawyer gets on a boat and leaves, right? Because we're winding the day down. He leaves diesel. Dave's like, leave you one more dive. I'm like, Fine, one more dive. He puts the hat on. He gets in as he's coming out of the water, 10 Coast Guard boats surround us, and they tell us, now you can't leave. And they had us there. Got two hours. They had us there. They they boarded our vessel, checked all of our paperwork. You know, everyone was wearing PPE we, uh, our boat that we use. We got from Madeline marine construction. Now the owner, Randy King, there. He's like, buy the book, right? Everything he does, he's by the book with it. And we had one of his captains shout out to Chevy, best captain I know. And he had everything in order. It wasn't some like, fly by night operation, which I think the cops expected. And then Heavy D gets on the radio, like, Listen, guys, you can't keep us here. You better give us a reason to detain us or let us go. And, you know, everything ended very friendly, and they were just doing a job. You know, I understand that someone called it in, and they were doing a job, and they were very respectful. We were respectful, and we partied friends, yeah, but it was about two, two and a half hours of our lives were detained, therefore, all in the pursuit of mammoth bones. You. Uh,

Jeremy Perkins  10:01  

not only mammoth bones, but mammoth bones in the East River. I mean, you You figure you'd find that'd be the last thing you're looking for in the East River,

Donald Gann  10:10  

the same thing you're never going to find anything out there. And if you look back right, like 2012 I think it was like the year could be wrong, but a fisherman found the Tusk in the middle of the East River fishing by accident and turns over New York City Parks Department when they were digging out by Battery Park, a contracting company found a femur bone and a tusk over by Battery Park in the East River. So specimens have been found now, if the story is true, 50 tons of bones is a lot. It's a boxcar worth, and they're scattered all over these river now,

Jeremy Perkins  10:49  

but they're buried in sand and silt. And, I mean, it's murky down there our

Donald Gann  10:55  

our steep bison femur bone we found was under three and a half feet of mud.

Jeremy Perkins  11:01  

Oh, yeah, it was, it

Donald Gann  11:02  

was buried. It I go down there with a probe, and I have a grid system, and I probe the mud vine, because you're not going to find them sitting on top. It's going to be buried. And I'm probing. I hit something, I dig, okay, a bottle, a railroad tie, a piece of timber, and you just keep moving along in your grid system. And our 276 dive, we found the lower jaw bone to a steep bison. And then 200 and what? 90th dive, we found the femur bone. And then in between that, we found a piece of ivory. Yeah, what did, what

Jeremy Perkins  11:33  

did you end up doing with them? Because I'm looking at, I'm online right now, looking at mammoth tusk price and a 68 inch mammoth tusk is like 3030 grand.

Donald Gann  11:44  

They're a little pricey. Yep, yep, uh, well, the femur bone is our, our nicest, most pristine specimen of all the stuff. Yeah, and we promised that bone to Rogan.

Jeremy Perkins  11:56  

Oh, cool. Yes.

Donald Gann  11:59  

We that one got all all gift wrapped and all ready to go. And when we go on Rogan, we're gifting it to him.

Jeremy Perkins  12:05  

Oh, sweet. No, that's awesome. Yeah, he was, he was the grandfather to

Donald Gann  12:09  

make all this happen, yeah. So it's going to be gifted to him.

Jeremy Perkins  12:13  

Nice. And then tell me more about what was the what was the show? Sewer, sewer, sewer, sewer, divers.

Donald Gann  12:23  

It was funny. When we first they, when they first called us to the show, I thought it was, like, fake, right? Yeah, so this woman kept emailing me and calling me to do a TV show, and I'm like, I'm busy looking for the Prince of Persia gold, right now you're next on my email chain. You know, I'll take care of your TV show but I'm done with Prince Persia. She didn't find my antic funny. And, you know, she emailed me a few times right throughout the six months, like 10 times. So finally I responded. I'm like, Oh, what do you want to do? They want to do a show of us diving in human instrument and sewers, and call the show tough. So we filmed this six episode mini mini series with the the observation that was going to be called tough at the very last minute, they changed the name to sewer divers. So basically, the problems of the show is the underbelly of major cities in our area and how they deal with the waste. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  13:18  

it's pretty cool. I mean, you got, you know, working in reservoirs to to sewer base or backed up basements. I mean, this, this is pretty cool stuff ran, yeah, the

Donald Gann  13:30  

ratings were crazy. We didn't expect the ratings, yeah, like we had really good ratings with that show is which really threw us for a loop. Because, I mean, who wants to watch a show about

Jeremy Perkins  13:41  

dude, what happened with so it's meet me in Massachusetts. What rancid meat, covid. That

Donald Gann  13:48  

episode was with another company called shoreline diving with this game, Ricky. Rick Yeah, he had a clean a, I don't really call the thing, but it's what they call it a grease trap, a giant underground grease trap full of meat and debris.

Jeremy Perkins  14:06  

Oh, was it like a packing plan or like a hot dog plan? Oh,

Donald Gann  14:11  

I don't watch any of the episodes. I don't know. Well, you know what happened was we watched the first episode, and my whole family came over to watch the first episode right, and my they left, and they're doing a rerun that night, so I wanted to sit down and watch this thing. And my wife tells me, you know, people act like you been here before. People don't watch their own shit. Yeah, like, made fun of me for wanting to see myself on TV. So after that, I never watched a single episode because she made

Jeremy Perkins  14:39  

fun of me, no shit. So what are you up to now? I mean, you came down to the brunt garage not too long ago. You were up here doing some some work with the with the guys from Jersey, uh, shout out, yeah, boy. I was

Donald Gann  14:52  

helping my friend down. He owns aerobic transport. It's a demolition company and garbage company. I had some down time, so I helped him up in mass. He was demoing mobile trailers for William Scott me. So I went up there and operated one of the machines for him, helped him out go operate the cutting torch for the frames. And that was only a little helping a friend, but primarily I do diving. Today I was in a water plant. I don't only do sewage, I also do drinkable water. So I got a whole different set of gear and everything. Don't, don't, you know, I don't cross contaminate. Don't get scared. I don't jump in a sewage tank the next day, same suit dump into a water tank. I have a whole different spread for that. But I was at American Water for the last couple days dealing with their intakes were clogged, so I cleared six feet of soot inside their intake pipes. Wow. So I had to clean those out. That's all I was doing last couple days. And then before that, I ordered over in Bellville.

Jeremy Perkins  15:49  

Was that No, no, go ahead. What were you doing over that was over

Donald Gann  15:52  

in Belleville. It was a interesting job. I'm not I'm gonna leave out the names of the people who messed up. But a company was building something, and they were digging, and they hit an 18 inch sewer main. Whoops. So the town had to come in, and they had to plug up the main off of the sewer, the 36 inch main that went off to a 18 inch, 18 inch pipe. They shattered that pipe. Went everywhere, a real I wrote my own jokes. And so they came and they clogged up that 18 inch main to fix the crack. So they go to deflate the ball. They had to clog the main up. It wouldn't deflate. So now that main line is backing up out of the sewer holes and covering everything at shit. So I get a phone call at what was it? 10 o'clock, and I got a text message 10 o'clock at night. Hey, you busy? I'm like, no, what do you need? I dropped my I lost my bag in the sewer, and I wrote back, I'm not diving in the sewer to get your drugs. That's I thought he was busting my balls. He lost his bag in the sewer, and I started laughing. I'm like, I'm not diving the sewer for your drugs, but you can't afford me buy your own, buy new drugs. I made a little joke, and he's like, no, no, I lost a sewer bag. I was like, oh, that's that's terrible. And this the day before Christmas Eve. Oh, it's on Christmas Eve. And he goes, I go. I'll come get it, but it's expensive. First of all, I'm already in my pajamas. It's number one. I gotta change. I gotta get my gear. I gotta go over here. I gotta dive in at 1030 at night. No, thank you. It's gonna cost you. So I gave him an outrageous price, thinking those cost somebody else. No, they agreed. Like, outrageous price. So I did that. Dude did that recently. That sewer died was that I had to go down there to plate the ball and bring it out.

Jeremy Perkins  17:41  

It's actually wild that you say that too, because I've been talking with a a number of people in the trades and and in our industry, we call it the you price, and because you don't want to do it or or whatever. And I'm hearing more and more that people, there's not, there's not a ton of people out there to do these jobs. So that fuck you price actually isn't high enough. People are out

Donald Gann  18:07  

the baseline. Listen, I'll come do it for 10 G's. They're like, okay, like, what?

Jeremy Perkins  18:14  

Okay. Yeah, you'll have that. We gotta reassess our you prices, right?

Donald Gann  18:21  

Yeah, it is like, I'm gonna start getting like 100,000 I'll do 400 grand. What I want your I want your vet you have in the garage. I'll do it for your Corvette.

Jeremy Perkins  18:33  

So the company that you work for now is this your own company? Yeah,

Donald Gann  18:39  

so I'm the owner and operator of siren marine solutions. Mm, hmm. We established in what, 2017 Wow. Very, very Thank you. It's, it's funny, people say, Oh, start your own vision. Make your own hours. No, you wake up and you work until you're exhausted. Then you work some more, and then you the last one to get paid. You know, everything is your problem. People come in. They break your shit, they mismanage your equipment, and then they say, Oh, they don't even say sorry. They're saying, Ah, it broke, you know, you just did a 12 hour day diving. Now you're fixing up, you know, a piece of equipment, so there's no downtime. So it's, it's good and bad. People like, Oh, congratulations. I'm always like, is it

Jeremy Perkins  19:24  

how much, how much, how much time and maintenance goes into, upkeep of your suit, upkeep of your helmet, upkeep of the lines? Oh,

Donald Gann  19:33  

it's a daily it's a daily to daily occurrence. So it's not a thing. For example, today, what I do today. Today, my the tip on my hot water machine burned up. It's my emperor got clogged, so I had to take out the the oil burner around my hot water machine. And I don't fix that. And then halfway through the afternoon, my brother, he has a long history of this. He rips the pull cords out of ship. I. Uh, like, constantly. It's like a thing he does, yeah? So he ripped the pull cord out of the pressure washer, so I had to come fix that. Yeah. You know, it's when it comes to diving. It's not if it's going to break, but when, yeah, and it's every day, something is going to break. Now, your your helmet, you have to do a yearly, a yearly inspection on it. But you have your general maintenance, cleaning your snoopies out, clean the oral, nasal what goes here, you know, upkeeping your comms, making sure it works. Just I call the general douching of it, because you're diving, you know, if you're diving in shit that day, you really got to do a good job decoming IT. You know, that's time consuming. And then just the overall maintenance alone, just keeping your stuff clean, keeping it organized. You know, you have six or seven, eight guys working before you that day. No one's putting the stuff back where it needs to go. You know, no one cares about your stuff like you do, yeah? And you, you, you finish the day out, and all of a sudden you're, you're cleaning the drills, you know, you're putting the batteries in the chargers, just simple stuff like that. It's time consuming. Yeah, you go through all the tool boxes, gather all the batteries that weren't stolen, and then you gotta plug them all in, and anything that broken or damaged or stolen that day you gotta replace. So I would say, out of my average work week, I'd probably do about 15 hours of maintenance. Yeah,

Jeremy Perkins  21:16  

yeah. And it's, it's kind of funny, because, like, I used to do a lot of welding, and early on, when I was learning to weld, the welder that was teaching me would would always have me do so much prep work ahead of time, right? Yeah, cutting, fitting, cleaning, you know, doing all that stuff. And then afterwards, I would do grinding or whatever, to clean it up and put it all back together. Put the welder back up, welding blankets, jack stands, you name it, right? And it's funny, because sometimes the customer only sees the time it takes to do the job right. But there's so much setup ahead of time and so much setup, or, sorry, break down after the fact that that's all got to be factored into your pricing and what you do on a daily basis. A lot of

Donald Gann  22:07  

people don't understand that. So like that job I was talking about, where I had to go get the sewer ball out, my total dive from the time I left surface the time I came back, was under a minute, was under one minute long. But I now, I'm done. I leave. Now you're looking at six to seven hours of decomming, everything. You gotta scrub the rigs down, the helmets, the suits, the trailer, because you have guys going in and out to get stuff and set up and break down cross contamination, right? And then you give them a bill for that, and they're like, whoa. What is this? You're here for one minute. Okay, did I do your job? Yo, you're paying for the end result, not for how long it took. You know, a lot of people don't see that. Yeah.

Jeremy Perkins  22:51  

I mean, obviously diving in piss and shit and, you know, all the other contaminants that you're in, the lacunas exactly, I'm sure that that, you know, that obviously tedious, clean, all that stuff. It's also, you know, a worry in your in the back of your mind, of like, coming in contact with the shit, you know, and and having to deal with it. So no, I mean, definitely happy to you. I really want to ask this question. Give me a time that you thought you were completely fucked.

Donald Gann  23:27  

I had a couple of this. Yeah, I had a couple. I'm sure you have. I had one time I was digging in the center of the East River, no, Hudson River, and the hole I dug collapsed on top me, really. So every breath you take, it gets tighter and tighter and tighter. And I had a guy come down, and had to come get me out of the hole. That was a pretty that was a good one I had. I was in a sewer pipe. I was about maybe 40 feet in, and it was a tight suit, like shooting my fat ass through. And I got there, and I went to go forward, and my rig got fouled on something, so I couldn't go forward, so I knew how to back up to get to where I needed to go to, back up. And my rig on this side of me kind of looped over here, so I couldn't go forward, and I couldn't come backwards, and no one could fit come get me, because I'm already in the hole, so that the front rig you couldn't get to it, so I don't have to come to him behind me, like, undo my my tangle fucking match to get, you know, get out of the spot I was in. I was like, This is bullshit. They have to dig the street up to come get me. I was able to to rock back and forth. I think it was a branch or something. By the opening of where I was in, it broke free, and I was able to unfold myself and continue on. But it was like a good 10 seconds, which in sewer pipe, 10 seconds might as well be a fucking hour where you're like, This is it. This is where I die. This is this. Just me now,

Jeremy Perkins  25:02  

dude, and you still, and you continue to do it like, is this adrenaline rush? Is this a love for

Donald Gann  25:08  

the pipe? I was diving in a, I was a, what was it? It was a fresh water pipe. And I was 60 feet in a 54 inch pipe.

Jeremy Perkins  25:30  

I keep cutting it out there. Yeah, you broke up there for a minute. So you were in a pipe today.

Donald Gann  25:36  

So, yeah, so I wasn't in the water plant today. I was, I was 54 inch pipe, and I was about 6070, feet in. It just, I don't even it's diving, those things where I get the water, my heart rate goes down. So the guy with those watches and tells your heart rate and everything. And I'll be sitting on my couch watching TV, and my heart rate take 110 just, just sitting there. But I'll get in the water and I'll be diving and doing whatever I'm doing, excuse me, and my heart rate goes down to like, 6870 cool. So I don't think it's an adrenaline thing for me. Yeah, I think it's more of an ego thing, because I can brag that I'll, I'll go where you don't go. Yeah, a lot of guys like, all do it. I'll hand the helm and be like, have fun. And they're like, I'm only getting they won't do it. Nah,

Jeremy Perkins  26:23  

this is, I mean, even watching, again, you know, back to your East River dive, watching Heavy D and diesel Dave, just like, dive in there, and, like, zero fucks given, and, and I don't know if I could do it, like, I mean, there's certain things I could do, but, like, I personally am afraid of heights, um, confined spaces. I used to do a lot of work in, like ship halls and stuff like that. And I was one of the smaller guys at the time. I'm not anymore, but I was one of the smaller guys at the time. And there was a time where you're, you're crawling through bilges, so you're crawling through bilge plates, and they got, you know, and to your point, like, when you were talking about them having to dig up the street, I was like, they're gonna have to get cutting torches in here to get me the fuck out. And you got a big reduction gear over your head. And like, you would die before, before anything like of that nature would happen, and I don't know that's when it started to fucking hit me that, like, I don't actually like putting myself in situations like this, and I don't like now I have this preservation mode versus, like, that sense of adventure or like, conquering something. You know what I mean?

Donald Gann  27:37  

Do I love the fact that 90% of my work is never seen. So I absolutely love that my daughter, she has special needs. And those who know anything about raising a child special needs, you deal with IEPs. So I'm in an IEP meeting, and this woman has all these degrees on her wall, yeah? And I'm sitting there and she's telling me about what we need to do and how we need to do things. I'm like, well, we need to do we need to do your job. Yeah? Like, because when you're an advocate for your child, you're fighting for for certain services that the school doesn't want to pay for, right? And she's like, How dare you tell me how to do my job? Like, how do you justify those degrees in your wall all that time and energy? I gotta tell you what. I do my job so well that when you drive over the bridge to get to this town every day of the school, you think nothing of it. Now, I want you to do your job that well, that I can just say yes, she's doing the best for my child. You're doing great. She's like, I do every day. I'm like, You go over this bridge, right? She's again, like, do you think about who worked on it? She's like, No, I don't think about that stuff. So I think pride in the fact that noone thinks about the men and women that are building these bridges, the dams, the digging the tunnels out and the the ones are down in the trenches that do it effortlessly, give up their mind, their bodies, their lives, to make it happen so everyone else can just go about their business and not think about it.

Jeremy Perkins  28:59  

I mean, look at, look at the, look at the poor bastards on the bridge in Baltimore. Right road crew of what? Six or seven? Yeah, all lost lives. You, you, you drive over any bridge on a daily basis, or any highway on a daily basis, you

Donald Gann  29:14  

think nothing of it, or

Jeremy Perkins  29:16  

you're pissed off that they're there.

Donald Gann  29:22  

Lots. Lot, especially in sewer work, we get that a lot, because they see three guys standing around a manhole, right? They don't know that a guy's down there working on it, because it's leeching into the ground. Yeah, we're patching it up so your soil isn't contaminated, and you're yelling at us,

Jeremy Perkins  29:38  

right? And, and and the take there too is, is like, you know, unfortunately, you know, there was an accident in in the Baltimore Harbor. And, you know, these, these guys lost their lives. And now you're now, you're saying, now they're getting the recognition, right. It takes, takes loss of life sometimes, for people to actually. Realize what some of these men and women go through during the, you know, during their day in the trades, just to keep the infrastructure up right, just to keep America going, right? And it's, it's wild, um, yeah, I mean, like Silent warriors, or sometimes you're out there jackhammering, and you're not so silent,

Donald Gann  30:18  

yeah, sometimes, sometimes you're an asshole, jackhammer at

Unknown Speaker  30:21  

7am oh boy,

Donald Gann  30:23  

open my window. Yup, those guys get a real job.

Jeremy Perkins  30:29  

Be a hard hat diver. Do

Donald Gann  30:30  

I love going past construction crews on strike? Yeah, I love picket lines. I'm always like, get a job, you bum. They never laugh. I'm like, I'm in the Union too. The first one I give them is, get a job.

Jeremy Perkins  30:45  

Get a job. Get a job. No. And to be honest with you, those are the, those are the guys that you know, if they ever lose their job, they're, they're right back out there trying to get another job. You know what I mean, and and fighting the good fight. But dude, this has been unbelievable. Hard Hat diving is honestly one of the coolest trades that I look up to, and I don't know, but before we go, I want to ask you another question, and what's, what does don want to do in life? Like, what's the next step for Don? Is it

Donald Gann  31:25  

so for us? I think one or two things would be nice. I would like our podcast and just us goofing around, doing dumb shit to get to almost like a bar stool sports level, the dirty where we can just go out and do dumb shit and film it now, everyone just appreciates our content of showing up. Or I think we would also like to revamp the TV presence, and we would like to just be New York City like treasure hunters, and just spend our days diving in all the celestial bodies of water around New York and New Jersey and just chase all those ghost ship stories and see if they're true. Like, who was it? LaGuardia, back in the day, dumped all these slot machines in Long Island Sound because he deemed him to be bad, right? I want to go find those slot machines. I want to bring up those slot machines and then refurb them. I want to find captain, Captain kids, treasure. I want to go into New York Harbor. Yeah, remember it's, you're talking 200 years of it being a navigable waterway that we think of today. All anything you can imagine is the bottom of that river,

Unknown Speaker  32:37  

right? You know? I

Donald Gann  32:39  

mean, yeah, just spend my days just looking for treasure. Yeah, but I don't want that measure like you think of like the Caribbean treasure. I want the treasure with that comes with the story.

Jeremy Perkins  32:49  

Yeah, well, the Caribbean treasure wouldn't be bad either. That'd

Donald Gann  32:54  

be cool too. But I was, what, about six years ago, I was diving in Long Island. Said, No, I'm sorry. I was in Hudson River and I was airlifting. I was moving mode and airlift, and something clogged my Airlift. So I took it out, I put up my pocket. I come up to land when I was all done for the day, and I opened up this aluminum foil wrapped object. I'm like, Oh, it's a kilo. I'm rich. I open it up, and it was two champagne glasses from 1991 saying, will you marry me on it with the names? Mm, hmm. I tracked down the owner of those glasses, the husband. Now they live on Worcester Street in Manhattan. They he proposed to her on the spirit of New York. And those the champagne glasses, they were they were leaving the vessel the end of the night. And they dropped them overboard in 1991 and in 2020 I returned them to him like, yeah, get the gold coin. Is cool and everything like that. But to be able to reconnect lost history, that thing is gone forever, you know, I mean, and now they're celebrating their whatever year anniversary they can reach out to those classes that they got engaged with. Yeah, I gotta watch. The guy gave me a little little something for finding them, but reconnecting with his stuff. There

Jeremy Perkins  34:10  

you go. There you go. Awesome. So, you know, Don, this has been, this has been great. You've been a huge supporter of Braun, um, huge advocate for the trades you're out in the trade schools, you know, telling your story, teaching the kids about what you do and and you know what it takes to be a tradesman or woman. Trades. I appreciate trades person or I appreciate you coming on the the podcast, and if anybody wanted to reach out to you about hard hat diving or anything that you do, where can they find

Donald Gann  34:45  

primarily, they hit me up on my social media platforms. Dirty water done. I answer everybody. I get a lot of weird messages, but I always, I make it a point to answer everyone that messages you. Feel free reach out any questions, concerns, and if you want to come hang out, let me know. You know, if you ever want to go put a hat on. Well, guys, hell yeah. I say Come on, let's go do it.

Jeremy Perkins  35:12  

That's awesome. That's awesome. Good stuff. Always looking for good, hard working people. And yeah, if you, if you have the inkling to do what Don does, reach out. And as a special thanks to our loyal listeners, we're giving $10 off your next purchase of $60 or more at bruntworkwear.com Use Discount Code bucket talk 10. That's bucket talk 10. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai