Gore-Tex

And the bigger you get, the harder it gets.

And I remember talking to Frank about there's a business model, the Gore-Tex model, where they have a company and it grows to up to 300 people.

And the minute they get to 300, they start a parallel company.

So a particular product will become a separate entity.

You can't do that with Formula One.

This is what we discussed.

Can you do that with Formula One? Can you use the Gore-Tex model and have aerodynamics as a separate entity? The answer is no, you can't.

But you can have it as an entity within the bigger entity whereby there's an element of independence but not totally separate.

What else? That's another big one that stuck out to me.

I think even my time with like Jim Ellis with Gore-Tex, seeing the passion that those guys have, we all play a part in the ecosystem.

And I think that, when you get to get into a really, really tight knit, nuanced piece of the equation that the consumer or the technician or the worker doesn't understand or doesn't have, maybe doesn't have to think about it to that extent.

I think when you look at textile manufacturing, that's another thing that is kind of a lost art that's kind of troubling at this point.

The one with the neoprene neck gasket, that was very important for me to have neoprene neck gasket, so I will not, like, you know, the latex, I think I would have to replace it at some point and it will just scratch my skin a lot and...

so i i wanted to have like neoprene neck gasket and uh the idea was that it should be gore-tex so the only the only dry suit out there that fit all those both of these things is nrs and it worked great i um yeah i uh i had some uh kind of Under the armpits, just because of paddling for 100 plus days, the membrane started to wear out a little bit.

But I did some patches, the Gore-Tex patches and AquaSeal, and then it was sealed again.

It was not an issue at all.

So it worked well.

And so we could be eating the wrong foods and we could be drinking unclean water or water that has contaminants.

And nowadays, even in the state of Colorado, which is where I live, most of the water supplies that have been tested are have already been contaminated with levels that are higher than allowed for PFAs, which are polyfluorinated compounds, Teflon, Gore-Tex.

Those are forever chemicals, David, which means we don't even know.

We can't even calculate how long they stay there, let alone we don't even know what to do to get rid of them.

I remember hearing this word and didn't know what it was when I was a kid.

but Gore-Tex in 1976.

Now, I was born in 1979.

That tells you all my age right there.

And I don't remember hearing about it that early on.

I was too young to remember it.

And I was surprised to find that Gore-Tex material, the technology of Gore-Tex itself, had been around that long.

I didn't think it had been around that long.

And when you think about things that we use in our everyday life, stuff that is water repellent or no stick pans, firefighting foams, anything that is kind of, again, that water repellent-ness- Like fancy

Gore-Tex.

Fancy Gore-Tex, exactly.

Those all are sort of PFAS related compounds.

And the reason that we've been talking about them is because even though they've been in use for about 50, 60 years, it's only relatively recently that we've started to understand their kind of proliferation in the environment and what that means for, you know, not just the health of the environment, but human health.

Oh, for sure.

Hey, look, I had my Gore-Tex.

I was ready.

I was ready to go.

So the sneaks that you walk in in the summer, as we get into the winter, the colder, messier months, you still want to get out there.

Like I've got a pair of Gore-Tex New Balance Fresh Foams.

Yeah.

I think that makes a big difference.