2 October 2011, Dane’s House, 125 Reeser Road

Lincoln was sitting in Dane’s lap drinking from a bottle when I walked in the door. He was only born on August 23, and he and Caitlin (sp?) are teaching him to drink from it so she can go back to work in January.

I sat on the couch and set my computer on the coffee table, not really sure how to start this interview, even though it was just a chat with one of my best friends. So I just started chatting. I did not want to intefere with Lincoln, so we kept it casual for a while, talking about his brother Brooks and the new farm he bought (83 acres) in Newport, PA, where Nate Bauer is from. He has been learning how to make specialty pork (Lebanese cured, for example), and selling it at high prices in farmer’s markets as far a field as Washington DC and New York City. This was actually a perfect place to start, because Brooks is also doing what he loves, and I am positive that he has influenced Dane.

The chicken my dad and I ate on Saturday night was not butchered by Dane. He packs them up in crates, loads them into the pickup and drives them to a Mennonite who does it for them, then cleans the carcasses and packages them for sale. Dane is not even sure of the legality of him butchering his own (it is a grey area in PA), so for the time being he will continue having them butchered. In Newport, at Brooks’ farm, the practice of butchering on the farm is decidedly illegal. They consider it a ‘commercial’ practice (whereas farming is agricultural).

I remained on Dane’s sofa for over an hour, scratching his little white dog Anton’s head. Every time I stopped, he would lean back and push his head into my hands, asking would I please continue. Dane says Anton is good with Lincoln. At one point, Caitlin laid Lincoln on his back on the floor and Anton sprawled out next to him, curious.

Dane re-told me the story of his road trip to Kamloops and back, and again about his time spent out there training with Dr. B, where he says he had the first serious inclinations of opening his own gym and training people for a living. Dylan Armstrong, the guy who initially put that all together, remains out there getting ready for the 2012 Olympics in London. He was third in Beijing.

Dane was in Kamloops from fall 2007 until the summer of 2008, ironically abroad during the same period that I first moved to Sweden. I had not realized this, but he and Caitlin were also in the midst of a long-distance relationship, obviously ultimately successful. We stopped the interview when Dane got to the part about him coming home and opening the first gym in his parent’s house, hence the name. I want to keep it going another time.

Dane did mention that Kamloops would be, in essence, his ‘grad school’. He was a paper boy and bouncer at a bar to pay for it all.

Questions:

Oct 2:

- How did you meet Caitlin and how did you two handle the long-distance?

- Where do you get your training methods? Solely Dr. B? Mr. Yoder?

- Are you still training yourself? Do you have any ideas of another US Trials bid?

- What happened in college when you got your teeth kicked in?

- How did studying religion affect your views on it?

- Why did you study history and religion in the first place?

- How many hours do you work on a normal day?