From curling aficionado to safety officer at Hotchkiss, Phil West brings a unique perspective shaped by his years at ESPN and a deep family history in the region. In this episode, he shares stories of his adventures in sports media, his love for Cornwall, Connecticut, and the surprising parallels between curling and life.
Hi, I’ m Teo, and I’ m Dwyer, and welcome to the HotchPod. Today, we’ re talking with Phil West, safety and security officer at Hodgkiss. You may know him for his luscious beard and cheerful yet nonchalant demeanor. As a past ESPN employee, Phil is a devoted fan of curling and recently got back from helping with a movie about the sport. You know him, you love him, and you’ re about to get to know him better. We hope you enjoy.
Welcome to the HotchPod, Phil. Could you please introduce yourself and your general role at Hodgkiss? Sure. My name is Phil West, and I am working with security and safety at Hodgkiss. Originally, I was hired for the crossing guard station during the construction of the new dining hall. How long have you worked here? I’ ve been here since January of last year. Okay. Could you give us a brief rundown of your life story? Sure. I was born in Denver, Colorado. I lived there until I was nine. And then when my parents got divorced, we moved to Cornwall, Connecticut, which is one of the next towns over. And I lived with my mom there, and I’ ve been in Cornwall since I was nine. So almost 47 years about that, that I’ ve lived in Cornwall.
And my family’ s lived in that town since the town was there, since the 1730s. How far is Cornwall from here? Ten miles to my house. Ten miles. Cornwall is less far, but it’ s right down the road. You know where the covered bridge is on Route 7? That’ s Cornwall. No, I don’ t know where that is. It’ s right nearby. I trust you. It’ s right nearby. We believe you. So your mom’ s side of the family has been in the area since, what did you say, 1730s? 1730s. The town was established in 1730s. And my family’ s been there the whole time around. And that’ s probably why my grandfather went here in 1920, and my uncle went here in, I think he graduated in 1954.
Can you talk a little bit about your childhood in Denver? Oh, sure. I mean, I was only nine when we left, so there was less childhood there than here. But I was born there. I learned how to ski. I learned how to ski in Colorado when I was two. I think I got first put on skis in Colorado. We lived right in the city, so, you know, we would walk several blocks to the school and back. But I was pretty young. We went camping and stuff like that in Colorado. But Denver, you gotta remember, is a city. Sounds like it’ s in the mountains, but it’ s flat. And you can see the mountains, but it’ s not in the mountains. But we used to go up there.
We used to go up there for, you know, trips and stuff. Do you like Denver or Connecticut more? I love the town. I love Cornwall. Where we live now is great. It’ s a great town. You know, it’ s really small, like here, Lakeville’ s small also, but Lakeville-Salisbury. Cornwall is the second smallest of the six towns that are in Region 1, Falls Village being the one that’ s smaller. I love the family, the history that my family has there. And, you know, there’ s just all sorts of stuff. There’ s, you know, we have a ski area in town, we have a lake in town, lots of farm stuff, and it’ s a good place. It’ s only two hours from New York, three hours from Boston.
So do you still ski to this day? I haven’ t skied in the last two years, two years, maybe last year. I haven’ t skied as much lately, mostly because I’ ve taken on curling as my new winter sport. But all through grade school, the Cornwall grade school, we used to go there every week as part of the gym program to go skiing for half a day. And then we used to spend every other moment of time that we could skiing at Maw. You know, every Saturday, that’ s where we would all go and go skiing and hang out with our friends all day. And our parents would come pick us up at the end of the day when the ski area closed.
So you told us when we were emailing you that you spent a while working for ESPN. So can you tell us about what you did there? Sure. I first started doing work for ESPN. I was doing computer consulting in Cornwall. And then, during that time, I spent five and a half years consulting to ESPN. My boss had set up a consulting gig to build ESPN on Prodigy. And you guys probably don’ t know, but Prodigy is sort of a predecessor to the Internet. It was sort of when AOL came out. It was AOL and Prodigy. And so my boss and I helped build ESPN on Prodigy, which was their first sort of online experience. And we did that for five and a half years. And during that time, they transitioned from just being Prodigy to ESPN.
com. And I got to help out with some remote events for the dot com news people. So I got to go to all the first X games. We got to go to New Orleans during the Super Bowl. I didn’ t get to go to the game, but I went to New Orleans for this during the Super Bowl. I got to go to World Series games at Jacobs Field in Cleveland. And the Yankee Stadium and walk around on the field with the person that was doing the reporting during the World Series. That was really cool. This this stadium looks really different from the grass. Bigger. It does. It looks somewhat, you know, it’ s sort of it changes a little bit as you’ re looking around. And sometimes it feels big.
And sometimes all of a sudden you realize, like, this is just a baseball field. It’ s not huge. You know, it is a whole lot of stadium outside it. Yeah. Yeah. If you walk down on this field, you’ re just you’ re on a field. It’ s a very nice field, but it’ s just a field. It’ s not like it’ s bigger. Yeah. What were the first X games? I don’ t think the very first X games were in Newport, Rhode Island. It was a summer X Games and they did skateboarding, street luge. I can’ t remember what all the events were, but that was the first X Games was in Newport, Rhode Island. And they did.
I think they did two of the summer ones there and then and I can’ t remember the exact order, but they went to San Francisco, San Diego, San Francisco, San Diego. Those were the I think the six that I worked on during the summers. And then we did Big Bear, California and Crested Butte for the winter ones. The first ones were in Crested Butte, the first winter ones. But I got to see people like Tony Hawk do their first. Like 540 when like that was a big deal to do a 540 instead of like, you know, multiples of 540s in the 80s and 720s and stuff like that. And so he was, you know, he was he was a lot younger then and just sort of all of a sudden building this new sport into, you know.
Something big that eventually ended up in the Olympics, you know. Yeah. The BMX biking, Travis Pastrana, I saw him ride his motorcycle. On on a pier in San Francisco and in the X Games. And what were you? I was supporting the the folks that were posting articles and stuff on to ESPN dot com. And what I would do often is I would find an audio clip or a video clip, usually in a really small postage- stamp size like video clip because the Internet was slow back then because you had to do dial- up. But. I would capture that clip from the Betamax tapes or the VHS tape that we would roll on the internal feed, and I would turn it into a digital, I would digitize it, and then put it up on the website for, or give it to the folks that were posting the stories,
you know, so that we would just sort of add a little video clip or a little audio clip to a story that one of the writers was writing for dot com, to sort of make it, you know, a little bit more. Yeah. You find people weren’ t interested in these kinds of niche sports like skateboarding and BMX. They certainly were that. I mean, USA Today had all the, you know, the listing of who won what medals in the X Games and stuff. And it was a brand new thing. You know, there weren’ t it wasn’ It’ s like Red Bull was doing all the things that it’ s doing and all these other, you know, people that are sort of media. Sort of more around this environment of these extreme sports or what was then extreme sports.
So. It was really it was a it was a new thing that ESPN was doing back then. So that was why I was consulting to them. Then I took five years and did tree work, climbing trees with a chainsaw. And then I went I got offered a job after I had my first daughter to work at ESPN regularly in their in their technology engineering group. And so I took that because it was a good opportunity. And I ended up staying there for. 17 more years doing doing IT work, but IT work mostly that supported the broadcast side of the business. So helping build out edit machines or graphics machines or integrating them with other machines. And during the pandemic, I was helping make all those machines, the editors and stuff use available to them at home remotely through Citrix.
And so that all the highlight clips and stuff, because all the media lived on servers. At ESPN, they needed to be able to access them at home because they couldn’ t go to ESPN and have everybody there. Right. They had some people in the studios, but that was about it. And then all the edits and editing and clips were done at home through a remote connection into computers at ESPN. Was it cool to watch the Internet evolve so much during your time working there? It sounds like it has been. It’ s you know, it’ s it’ s it’ s you know, that was before iPhones. And, you know, I carried a pager when I first worked there. So, yeah, if I was on call for something, you know, I had a cell phone that was mounted in my car.
You know, that was it. It was all new stuff. There was no smartphone. You know, at one point we had, you know, these sorts of Palm Pilot, there was a Palm Pilot type thing that, you know, you could keep reminders in or something, but you had to sync it with your computer to get data on and off of it. You know, you could put things into a calendar or have a list or something in there, but it wasn’ t like you could just get to the Internet and find out anything you need, you know. So it’ s I mean, it certainly has changed a lot. I have two kids and who are one in high school and one in college, and the way they grew up and the way you guys have grown up with technology is so different than the way I grew up, you know, without like.
When I went to college, we had computers sort of, but they didn’ t connect anything right. We could type our papers on them and do that kind of stuff, write some really basic programs. But but that’ s all we had. You know, it was just starting to evolve then. And so now, you know, I think it’ s changed education some right. Like there’ s less stuff that you necessarily have to memorize. But, you know. I have to know how to find it. Yeah. You know, there’ s a lot more importance on being able to understand the language so that when you search for something in your search, you’ re going to find the right thing, you know, because if you just throw terms out there, you’ re not necessarily going to find what you’ re looking for when you’ re searching on the Internet.
It s getting better and better at sort of understanding whatever you say. But it knowing the language of things is really important so that you. If you search for something, you end up finding the results that you want without having to spend hours at it. Yeah. How do you think scores have evolved with the Yannick? This at all. So I mean, that’ s that’ s a big thing with ESPN, right, is. With media the way it is, you can watch whatever show you want whenever you want, more or less. Right. But with sports, there’ s still. There’ s still that desire to know what’ s happening when it’ s live, you know, like otherwise somebody’ s going to tell you what’ s happened, what happened in the game.
And then you’ re like, yeah, I kind of want to watch it, but it’ s not as exciting if I know they won. Yeah. You know, so there’ s still that there’ s still that drive to watch sports live. Now, that being said, you can watch, you know, Hotchkiss. Football or Hotchkiss, whatever on the Internet now. Right. Yeah. You never would have been able to see that. Before the Internet, you never would have been able to see high school sports being played unless you’ re like a massive high school. Right. You never would have seen, you know. If you have like a turn like so I’ ll go back to curling just because I watch that a lot. But in curling sheets, they often have like four sheets going at the same time, like in the Olympics.
They have four sheets of ice that they’ re playing on. Now, in a regular broadcast, you would only be watching one of those sheets. But nowadays with the Internet, you can have you can log in and watch the other three sheets. You may not have commentators on it, but you can watch the other games. Like if you’ re more interested in another game with football, you know, there’ s a whole bunch of games happening at the same time. You can choose which game to watch, you know, because of the Internet. Right. Yeah. You can watch just the highlights, though, when they get to the red zone, give me an alert so I can watch, you know, when they’ re within 15 yards of the touchdown, you know.
So it’ s, you know, there’ s a whole bunch of stuff that’ s sort of changed around it. But I think as far as sports, I think the big thing is the access to being able to watch more things. When you compare your childhood with your kids’ childhood, do you think the change in the Internet has been good for them? I think, I think it’ s a mixed bag. I think that it’ s important to realize that the whole world isn’ t in the Internet. Like there As a lot of things outside the Internet that I like, you can go watch everybody do everything. But that’ s not going to let you know how to do those things.
I think getting out there and trying all a bunch of different sports, trying all a bunch of different experiences, whether it’ s trying rock climbing or trying flying a plane or trying, you know, whatever these things are. I think it’ s really important to go out there and try all these things. And so if you get sucked to spending too much time on the Internet, that can be bad. That being said, if you’ re doing a project and you’ re like, oh, it’ d be cool to do something like this. I wonder how they do that. You can look up how to make Paper mache or how to do some woodworking project and get some get some quick and instant like tutoring on how to do something.
But the important thing is not to just watch the tutoring on how they do it. It’ s to take that and go do it yourself, too, you know, and get out there and try a whole bunch of different things. So one of the ways that Hosh just encouraged us to, like, go out there and do things. And you’ ve mentioned a few times that you’ re really into curling. Yep. And you told us that you were gone for four days filming a curling movie. So can you talk about the movie and your passion for curling? Sure. Just quick. I’ ll go back. I, I started curling about seven years ago. I took both my daughters with me and made them go to junior’ s curling every Saturday morning.
For one of them, it was a big hit. And the other one, it sort of faded over time. You know. Um, so one of them is, is completely hooked like myself. Love the sport. Love to watch it. Think everybody should try it. Um, cause half of them will get hooked on it. Mostly if you mentioned curling, they’ re say, yeah, that’ s the thing with the rocks and the sweeping, sweeping thing. And like, like, yeah, I watched that every four years on the Olympics. I love watching it. And then people will watch it for like days on the Olympics during the Olympics. And then they won’ t think about it again until. Like somebody mentions it, which is rare or the next Olympics, the next winter Olympics. Right.
Um, so, so I’ ve, I got hooked, um, and my, and a few couple of years ago, I started, I got interested in how they prepare the ice and helping prepare the ice for curling. Cause it’ s different than hockey ice. And, uh, the guy that is the head ice maker in the, in the curling club. That’ s near here. Got an offer to make some ice for a curling movie that’ s, that they’re making. And he put it out to a few of us to help him with the ice. Do you want to come help do this? You know, cause he can’ t do it by himself. So, um, we’ re like, sure. Oh, let’ s go do it.
Um, so we went, Oh, last week, Monday after work, I went down to Cranston, Rhode Island to a hockey rink. And we started painting over the logo with, with hockey ice. I, the white, the white jet ice hockey ice painting over the, um, the logo in the center and some of the lines and measuring out a sheet of, of curling ice, which is 145 feet long by 15 feet wide. And then we measured it out and put the houses in and put all the lines in the houses or the round circles at the ends, all the lines in and a border, a foam border around the whole thing. And then filled it, put another. There’ s maybe inch of ice in on top of the hockey ice inside that foam border.
And in 36 hours, we created a sheet of curling ice for these guys to use in a movie they’ re shooting, um, which is going to be a comedy movie. Um, and then, and there, uh, and so that was the last three or four days of shooting for this movie. So now it’ s going to be going into editing and vending. Um, eventually distribution. So hopefully maybe next year they’ ll have it out there. Um, we had a lot of fun. It was a lot of work. We worked from like 9 AM to like two or three AM every day. Um, the last day I was there, we also had to rip all the circles and stuff out that we had put in the ice.
So we chipped it out with that ice breaking tool and then pulled the vinyl pieces out. And then the Zamboni drove over it all a bunch of times. So we finished that about four in the morning um on Saturday morning, and then it was a two-and-a-half- hour drive home. Do you think it’ ll be a good movie? Uh, I think that it suspends the reality of what curling really is, but I think it’ ll be funny. Um, there’ s some good, there’ s some good names some people in there, um, that there’ s some good actors, there’ s guy from that’ s in uh uh what’ s the blue mountain state or something like there’ s a there’ s a tv show or something um and uh a couple other big actors one of them wasn’ t there um but uh because his his all his scenes were shot before the ice
but the on ice part will the ice will look good you know it’ s it’ s it’ s uh yeah it should be fun i think it’ ll be funny, um, the crew we worked with was the the film crew and the director, uh, they were a lot of fun to work with and it was a neat experience to, you know, go help out on that, you know, sort of decent- sized budget movie and, you know, make ice for him and clean it up, and hopefully share a little bit about actual curling, yeah, those guys, and get them maybe a couple of them will get interested in it so, yeah, it was a lot of fun. How this some kind of technical question but I’ m just curious so what goes into like ice making and peeling?
How is that different from hockey? So first off, um, curling ice really, really flat if you got on a hockey rink if you had a laser across it it’ s not going to be perfectly flat all the way across. Curling ice is really flat. We take a lot of time of putting thin layers of water down and then scraping it flat to get it really symmetrically flat because as you’ re sliding down, if it As a little off- canter or a little down here, a little uphill or, or there’ s an arc in it in the middle or something, the stone will tend towards that direction and you want to be able to control where you’ re putting it.
Um, also the surface is not smooth like hockey ice, you know if there weren’ t any skate marks in it um it’ s not smooth it’ s more like the surface of a basketball or an orange because we take a uh basically a sprayer and put down water droplets onto the ice that freeze so there’ s little there’ s little um frozen water droplets on the surface and then you sort of nip those off at a uniform height and that’ s and so it’ s it’ s a it’ s not a flat, flat surface and that. What makes the stone sort of make a rumble as they slide down, and they’ re hitting all those little bumps? Why do we sweep in front of it?
You sweep in front of it to make it slow down less quickly and to go straighter. So you can’ t speed a rock up once you’ ve thrown it; that’ s a physics thing, you can ask the teachers um but you can make it slow down less quickly so by sweeping it you Re melting a really microscopic layer of water in front of it and creating that sort of water- ice layer in front of the stone, which makes it go a little bit further than with with a little less friction or a less resistance. The stone will travel a little further; you turn the stone as you throw it, that’ s what you call it when you slide it out it’ s throwing.
You give it a turn one way or the other, counterclockwise or clockwise, and the stone will tend to curl one direction or the other depending on how you throw it, but it curls more as it’ s going slower. So if you’ re aiming for there um and it’ s going over here or it’ s starting to curl too much and it’ s going to miss the target, then you would sweep it to keep it going straighter to keep it on target. So why don’ t people just throw it straight with no spin? Maybe that’ s because then you can You’ ll control it, it will spin eventually because it’ s a rock, it’ s a 42- pound rock
with a slightly sanded surface like an 80- grit sanded surface, that’ s normal as long as that kind to pivot you will begin to spin by on the bottom of a ring that’ s about you know four inches in diameter so you have this ring sliding this ring of granite sliding down a sheet of ice that has random pebbles on it, you know, random bumps on it; you will not make it go straight eventually it will go one way or the other, so what you want to do is control how much that’ s going; you want to control which way it will spin. s going to go when it gets to the other end
so do you have separate athletes that uh sweet and separate separate athletes that throw it regardless of what the movie shows you no um everybody so there’ s you do have some definitions you have the the lead the second device and the skip the skip stands at the opposite end of the ice and says i want you to throw it here turning it this direction and this hard when he’ s down there and the lead is going the second and the vice do the sweeping you each the two teams alternate shots so like red throws one yellow or blue or whatever the other color is stone throws one then the lead would throw their second one the other lead would throw their second one and then you’ D switch positions around a little bit, the second would go in and start throwing their two stones, and the first and third person would start sweeping.
When it’ s the skip’ s turn to come throw, the vice usually goes down to tell the ice so he sweeps two stones less, so but the first and second guy they sweep everybody’ s stones except their own, so everybody gets to do some sweeping. The skip does a little bit less; um, and everybody throws two stones for each end. You really we play eight ends; um, sometimes in like the Olympics and some of the Neck world championships or other championships it. s still gonna be so remote and championships they play 10 10 ends and um takes an eight end game takes roughly two hours um to play and if you’ re if you’ re sweeping the whole time the amount you would sweep in a whole game you’ re sweeping as hard as you can and as fast as you can with this much weight on the broom um for about two city blocks
so you’ re burning a lot, you’ re, yeah, like if it’ s if it’ s a heavy sweeping game and you know that sort of depends on the thrower then by the end of that game your your shoulders and your and your core are kind of like whipped, especially like you know up in your shoulder if you’ re just pushing as hard as you can who Is the Olympic gold medalist right now for current? Ah, who did win I think… um, I believe Brad Gushue. Um, it was the skip of the team from Canada that won the last Olympics, we won it several seven-ish years ago, I think. Now, um, the U. S. had a team that won the gold in the Olympics.
There are also there’ s in the Olympics; there’ s men’ s, there’ s women’ s, and there’ s mixed doubles, which you play with two people on each team, and a few… um, less rocks. There’ s some other little rules, and you know, you have one person sweeping because there’ s only two of you on the team, um, there Some slightly different rules and the game takes about an hour and a half instead of two hours, um, but uh, and then in club curling we also have mixed which is two women and two men on a team, um, and then there’ s open competitions where it can be any combination of whatever, and
one of the great things about currently is I’ ve played in games where there’ s an eight-year-old and an 80-year-old playing, and all the ages in between, and they might be comparable in ability, you know, you do it’ s not a strictly age-dependent thing, now a healthy young 20-year-old might be a lot better at sweeping but the 80-year-old or 60-year-old might have a little bit of a problem with that so it As a little bit of a challenge, more knowledge around the the sort of strategy of the game or the the fine muscle of you know repeated, it’ s kind of like you know when you throw horseshoes, the way to win horseshoes is to have a really consistent throw or or um, Cornwall right, it’ s having that consistency and building that consistency in curling is the same thing as being able to throw it each time.
And since the ice changes how fast it is and how much it curls every time, and sometimes during the game, being able to make those fine adjustments in your delivery is really key. So last question about curling, yeah are you in a curling league, does that exist? I am uh, we have there. A curling club over in Norfolk, which is another town’ s two two towns over um, and I play in a men’ s league and I play in a Friday night league. Um, and the night league, I play with my 16-year- old daughter; she and I are on the same team together, which is a great fun experience to have sort of a competitive relationship where we talk strategy and play together.
Um, and last year, we won our Friday night league, which was pretty cool! Yeah, hopefully, we’ ll see you in the yeah, I think, she’ So, I’ ve got a better chance of that than you do, but you know, yeah, um, so we want to ask, what do you enjoy doing as your hobbies besides curling? What is kind of a day in the life of Phil after um Hoshika security look like after I leave here? Um, I do a lot of things; I’ m on a few boards; I’ m on the board of the cemetery; I’ m on the board of uh planning and zoning for my town. I think it’ s important to do some volunteer work and give back to the town, you know, and to help make town a good place.
I also like doing some woodworking; I have a sawmill there; I like to make um boards out of trees with um, I still have some friends that do tree work um, so I can get the logs pretty cheap or free and uh, and then to do some woodworking in my own time at all, it’ s fun to make stuff you know. Occasionally, I think we’ Re- gearing up to pick some apples and make some apple cider, we have a cider press at home. Um, you know, spending time with my family and my kids, what’ s your favorite thing you’ ve made out of wood? Oh geez, you would think I’ d make something out of wood maybe it’ s mean to pick favorites, but something you like, oh that’ s tough.
Um, so I made a trophy base that turned out pretty well, um, that was kind of cool, I just built for my daughter; I built a shelving unit thing with two like cubby holes in it to put at the end of her bed to hold her TV up higher, um, I’ ve also made some cutting boards and stuff the shape of the town of Cornwall and and some other stuff, yeah, a lot of it. Just like you know, there are probably there’ s some things. My wife and I just finished building a house about a year ago, and between she and I, we just finished building a house, and I just finished building a house, and I, and my daughters – um, we built all the kitchen and bathroom cabinets in it, and all the wood around that goes around the window trim and the door trim, and put all that in.
Um, so yeah, you know, a bunch of stuff sort of like you know, projects here or there, like this would be useful. I could make it out of wood, yeah, so let’ s make it out of wood, and then, and then and then it’ Just being able to like like i want a shelf for it, or a table for something, and then being able to go into the woodshop and be able to make that so that I’ ve made something useful for myself, um, that’ s kind of a you know it’ s cool skill to have and uh some I highly encourage people to know how to use some power tools and understand how to do that because in real life it’ s awfully helpful if you can fix some of your own stuff, yeah, um, so as a Hoshka security guard, I’ m kind of curious, I sometimes see some of you like watching videos or listening to music, how do you kind of keep yourself entertained while you’ re on?
For me, I’ m usually if I if the crosswalk’ s slow and there’ s nobody coming i’ ll put one earbud in and, um, I’ ll listen to podcasts or books, uh, some recurring podcasts, other ones are news podcasts, um, some are just some random podcast somebody suggested. But I also listen to, uh, a bunch of books. Um, I’ ve been listening to books not on tape but through my phone since like 99 and you know something like that. I’ ve had an Audible subscription since I think ‘ 98. So, you give us a list of some of your favorite books and favorite podcasts. Oh, I mean for podcast it’ s kind of inside curling they they go about a lot of the curling world, what’ s happening, what you know, what’ s going on, what’ s going on, what’ s going on.
Going on how changes are happening, um, the as far as books I like; I really do like sort of the um, the sort of suspenseful mystery, you know, espionage type fictional books. Um, there’ s a ton of them out there, you know, um, I don’ t know if I could nail it down to one, there’ s a lot of good books out there, um, that I’ ve listened; I mean, that I’ ve listened to over time. I mean, the Monkey Wrench Gang was great book by Edward Abbey, um, there’ s another book called The Drifters that was really good, book, um, and when they Re: big long books like that, it can take a while to listen to, but I had a longer commute when I worked at ESPN; I had an hour each way instead of 15 minutes each way.
Um, did you tell the listeners a little bit about your family now? Sure, uh, so as far as my immediate family, it’ s me and my wife. My wife is a school teacher; she taught middle school um in Cornwall for 19 years, I believe it was. Now, she’ s working in another town doing um teacher coaching, so she’ s coaching science teachers how to use a new science curriculum which is much more based on student-led learning, like you the students you guys sort of have to figure out, like, well, why is that? I don’ t know what can we do to figure out, like, what sort of theories do we have around why that happens and then what tests can we do to see if that’ What it is, um, so she’ s she’ s doing that and uh, I have one daughter that’ s a sophomore at Wheaton College
and wants to do computer science, and my other daughter is a junior in high school at Westover School, um, and she’ s going to be, she gets to be a proctor this year and she’ s uh, she’ s going to be going on an exchange program in March hopefully to Jordan for five weeks, so then I have endless numbers of cousins and step- siblings and others all around. Yeah, we don’ t need to get into that, I’ ve got lots of that they. re everywhere so yeah well thank you so much phil hopefully this will encourage some people to check out curling and um thank you for keeping us safe every day at the crosswalk no problem it was really nice talking to you it was a pleasure talking to you guys yeah thank you so much yep.