Dana Bartus: Concussions and Recovery: Navigating the Long Road Back

Links:
 Concussion Repair Manual

Glenn Zelensky at Northwest Functional Neurology

This podcast episode delves into the extraordinary life of Dana, as she shares her journey of living in a van and embracing a nomadic lifestyle. 

From building her own camper van to overcoming challenges on the road, Dana's story is one of resilience and determination. 

She talks about the support she received from loved ones and the lessons she learned along the way. 

Through her experiences, Dana inspires listeners to pursue their passions and live life on their terms.

Subscribe to the Women of the Northwest podcast for inspiring stories and adventures.
Find me on my website: jan-johnson.com

Transcript

[00:22] Jan: Welcome, Dana, to Women of the Northwest. Glad you could be here with us today.

[00:27] Dana: Thanks for having me. It was so nice to meet you.

[00:30] Jan: Just happened to pick you up on the side of the road…. No.

[00:34] Dana: Pretty much. Basically, yeah.

[00:37] Jan: I'm in Bend this weekend visiting my daughter Emily at her school, where she's teaching ceramics in high school, and just happened upon Dana. And we got to chatting, and I thought, well, there's an extraordinary woman right there.

[00:51] Dana: Oh, that's so kind of you.

[00:54] Jan: So, here we are. Well, one of the extraordinary items, things that you do is live in your vehicle. Tell us about that.

[01:03] Dana: Yeah. I bought a Dodge Promaster in 2020. It was the last of the old, before the pandemic manufacturing, and they were trying to get them off the lot, and I got it for a good price, and I built it out, and I did everything, almost everything myself. I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know how to use a jigsaw. My boyfriend said he would help me, and he took the phone and said, here's YouTube. And then he pointed to his father's garage that had all of his tools in it. He's a contractor and was a contractor flipping houses at the time. And so, he had all his tools, all his father's tools, and all his grandfather's tools. Sweet. God help me if I could find any of them. And to this day, it's still the same, but I think that's any good. Workman's shop.

[02:02] Jan: Yeah.

[02:03] Dana: So, he said, there's the tools. There's the YouTube. You can do it. And I'm glad he did, because now I have ownership of it. It really feels like mine.

[02:15] Jan: Yeah.

[02:16] Dana: And if something goes wrong, I can fix it.

[02:20] Jan: And he had a man that supported you that way, encouraged you.

[02:24] Dana: Yes. Sometimes I cried and I yelled at him. That's okay, because I wanted him to help me instead of doing whatever he was doing. But I did have help. His dad helped me a lot. He's my, you know, Hunter, my boyfriend, he helped me so much. He helped me when I really, really needed. He also. Yeah, taught me that I needed to do it on my own.

[02:49] Jan: That's awesome.

[02:50] Dana: Yeah.

[02:50] Jan: So describe what you have inside of it.

[02:53] Dana: Oh, it's great. A lot of people build a wall right behind the driver's seat, and I wanted to be able to have that open space. So if I'm parked in a beautiful spot, I can have the view through the windshield. So I have one swivel seat on the passenger side, the heater. Underneath the passenger seat, a Wabasto heater. I built a little step, because there's a natural step that goes up from the base floor up into the cab. And so I built an extra little. I measured my shoes, the length of my shoe, and I said, well, that's how long the step is going to be. And all my shoes will tuck right underneath that. And then I have a sink that is halfway through the slider door and a folding counter that goes up. So the seat swivels around. The passenger seat swivels around the table, folds up, and that's extra cook space and drawing and dining. And next to the fridge, next to the sink, I have the fridge, and I have a full size bed. I have a full cabinet for my clothes, a full closet. I have my toilet that there's no drain going right out. I have to take it out and go to the sandy dump. But if I'm out in the woods, I'm not using the toilet. But if I'm somewhere where I need it, then I use it, and it's good for emergencies. And being a single female, well, I'm not single anymore, but being a female, I don't want to have to rush to go to the coffee shop or pool or park. I used to do that when I lived in my Honda element. I didn't have a toilet in there. I was single then. That's when I met Hunter. I was living in my Honda parking.

[04:47] Jan: Where were you staying when you were living in your car?

[04:51] Dana: Primarily at Smith Rock. Then I was guiding and working at Red Point Climber Supply. Jan: And you actually got sleep at night in your car? 

Dana: Oh, yeah. I lived in that thing for four years.

[05:03] Jan: Really?

[05:04] Dana: Well, two of them, I guess. It was like three years.

[05:08] Jan: Did you consider yourself homeless or just a wanderer?

[05:12] Dana: Well, technically, I suppose I'm homeless, but if your home is where your heart is, then I have more homes than a lot of people I could count.

[05:24] Jan: Yeah.

[05:25] Dana: I have a strong network of friends in Bend. I lived in Bend for six years before I moved into the van. Yeah, or into the element. Well, four, I guess. Four years because I came out from New Jersey in 2010 in my Honda Civic. And then I was in Ashland for a little bit and I traveled around. I had a job guiding mountain biking trips for teenagers and traveled all over Colorado and did some training in Wyoming and Salt Lake City.

[06:02] Jan: And you couldn't have been tied down to the house?

[06:04] Dana: No.

[06:05] Jan: Right.

[06:06] Dana: Yeah. So because of jobs like that, because of wanting to work seasonally and utilizing that lifestyle to travel, you don't get paid that much, but you get to do some really cool stuff.

[06:21] Jan: Yeah.

[06:23] Dana: Why do you need to pay rent if you're gone? So I didn't.

[06:27] Jan: And where do you shower?

[06:29] Dana: The gym? Yeah. I would be at the climbing gym when I was climbing, and now I go to one of those all 24 hours fitness places. And it's good. It helps me work out, helps me stay healthy. Sometimes I just go in and shower. A lot of times I just go in and use the bathroom.

[06:54] Jan: Just passing through?

[06:55] Dana: Yeah.

[06:56] Jan: Hi. Don't mind me.

[06:59] Dana: Some people are completely oblivious. Other people are like, give you a little look, like, what's with this lady?

[07:09] Jan: And so now you're subbing? Doing a little subbing. Are you doing other kinds of jobs too, or what are you doing?

[07:15] Dana: Pretty much just subbing right now? In 2018, I had a car accident with the Honda element. I hit black ice on my way to school in Terrabonne, and my car fishtailed, and then I slid off the side of the road, and the car, I thought I was going to roll, but I just landed on the passenger side.

[07:38] Jan: Not a little scary?

[07:39] Dana: Oh, it was terrifying. It was terrifying. I mean, I just kind of kept myself breathing, doing yoga and finding that meditation in the breath, but it was scary.

[07:56] Jan: And then somebody found you.

[07:58] Dana: Oh, God. Every person on the road stopped except for my friend.

[08:03] Jan: My friend was driving. He took his dogs out for a walk.

[08:07] Dana: Franklin, God love him, he took his dogs out for a walk and then was headed home, and he was like, oh, that looks like Dana's element, laying on the side of the road. And there was a million people there. It was know kind of chaos, which is nice. But also his dogs, like, he didn't want it. I just joke about it, but it was nice. I thought I was fine. I got out of the car. I didn't even want to get out of the car because I was used to being in my car so much. And so I'm, like, standing on the passenger window because it was on its side. So I'm crouched down in there and looking for my coffee, looking for my phone, which, thank God, my coffee didn't spill. I was very happy.

[08:57] Jan: How did that happen?

[08:58] Dana: I don't know. I maybe lost a little bit, but it was fine. And I found my phone, and I'm like, well, now I have to call the secretary. And tell her I'm not going to make it to school.

[09:05] Jan: Well, I had a little delay here.

[09:08] Dana: When I sent her the picture, she was, like, mortified. Oh, my gosh. But it felt like everything was brighter and louder. But that's not something you notice in the, like, yeah, it's not until later. And had all this adrenaline. I was just ready to stay in the car because it was below freezing, and I didn't want to get out.

[09:35] Jan: Yeah.

[09:36] Dana: But then all these people are surrounding the vehicle. I'm like, you guys, I guess I have to get out. I'm like, maybe it's probably smart. The gas tank might blow up. I'm not really sure I should get out. I'm thinking, oh, where's my propane tank? Anyway, so they're trying to get me out, and the door is really heavy on those elements. They're, like, long. And so the guy couldn't get it open. And I didn't really, like, standing where I was. I couldn't push because I'm so short. So somebody opened the back hatch, and all my stuff fell out, and they're like, whoa, what is going on here? Because my whole entire life, I had no storage unit. I had just emptied out my roof box. Everything I owned, I pared down to fit in that car. And I had one plywood platform that sat on just piping, and everything was in there. So it's all, like, just everywhere. And of course, as I'm sitting there looking at all of this stuff before the people came over the car, I'm, like, looking at things back there, like, oh, God, this is such a mess. Like, I have to clean up my whole life right now. And if the car is totaled, it has to go somewhere. And then where am I sleeping? And how am I getting track of all of these things mean. And my little brain just zeros in on this one. I don't even remember what it was. It's like, I've been looking for that thing for weeks. I just figured it was gone. And now my life is turned upside down. And this thing that I have driven myself nuts digging the van apart looking for is, like, clear as day, just on the top of the pile. So one of my friends picked me up from the auto body shop. Well, I guess I'm fast forwarding. So then I got out of the car, and I got all the people to go home. I convinced them that I was fine. I talked to the sheriff. There was this one woman that stayed with me, and I was, like, frantic. I was just like, kind of. I'm a know from New Jersey. I'm Italian. Like, when I'm upset, I yell. And I don't really mean, like, I'm up here and everybody's like, no, you're like, way up here. And this one lady, I'm like, you've been standing out here for, like, an hour. Not to be rude, but don't you have a life? Don't you have something you need to go do? She's like, I just got out of work. I'm a nurse. My husband's at home. I checked in with him. He's fine. You just seem like you needed somebody stood by you.

[12:09] Jan: How amazing.

[12:11] Dana: She's a little angel, that woman.

[12:12] Jan: Yeah, for sure.

[12:16] Dana: And it was funny because she was from Philly or she lived in Philly. And where I went to college was like 20 minutes from Philadelphia.

[12:25] Jan: That's cool.

[12:26] Dana: Yeah.

[12:27] Jan: So being up in the hospital, what happened?

[12:29] Dana: I never went to the hospital. I got in the tow truck. That tow truck driver.

[12:34] Jan: Amazing that you didn't break any bones.

[12:37] Dana: No, that's when I was like, I checked. I had my wilderness first responder, and there was nothing wrong with me. But in my head, in my brain, is where the problems were. So later I got all. My friend picked me up from the auto body shop where they towed me, put all my stuff in her Subaru, unloaded it in her garage, and I went through it and packed it up and went to my best friend's house in bend, which I thought I was renting for the winter anyway. And she was like, I didn't remember that. That's all right. She's like my sister. And she took care of me. She took care of me. And it didn't really hit me until that night that something was wrong, that I was like, oh, I have a headache. And then later, the next day or two days later, I started getting these electric pulsations. When you go to OMc or, like, the science center and there's that glass sphere that has a thing in the middle, and when you touch it, it zaps out. When there was a flash of light or any kind of. At that point, really any bright light or any sudden light or sound or loud sound or even, like, mechanical worrying and low buzzing fans, dishwashers, all of those kinds of machines and sounds and lights, I would feel that zap electrically from my eyes through the back of my brain to the base behind my neck where your skull meets your neck, or from my ears inward to where you would think all of those wires and nerves meet in your brain somewhere. And I felt that very strongly.

[14:35] Jan: So let's just say you probably weren't working then.

[14:39] Dana: I actually went to work the next day because I was worried about having to pay for the fence I just broke on that guy's farm. And then after two days of going to work, I realized that was probably not a good idea. And Hunter and I had just started dating. We were maybe a month. Two months into dating, and he's gone now.

[15:00] Jan: What did I get myself into?

[15:02] Dana: He stuck with me the whole way. And my dad said, don't you mess it up. Oh, gosh. A month after the car accident, my dad's like, he's still with you. Do not let him go.

[15:13] Jan: Here we are. Good thing.

[15:15] Dana: Yeah. Five years later, we're still together.

[15:17] Jan: So how long did it take for you to get to where you were? Felt beyond that?

[15:24] Dana: Well, I went to my primary doctor on that third day when I finally skipped school, and she was like, rest. That's all you can do. And she's like, you have a mild concussion. They did a ct scan, and they didn't see any bleeding or any hemorrhaging or anything major, thank God. Which was good. Well, I didn't hit my head right. So when the car landed on its side, I just had this side to side whiplash, and it jolted like if you whack a doll's head and it kind of bounces. That's what happened. And then the back window, when I landed, it exploded. So there was a pressure change. So after months of just being in a dark room, I didn't go out into the daylight. The light probably, it was just too much.

[16:19] Jan: Pulverized you?

[16:20] Dana: Yeah, it did. It did pulverize me. I did go out for, like, I went to see a chiropractor because I thought maybe with the insurance, because I woke up and realized, oh, you have car insurance. Your personal injury protection will cover this. Yeah. So I was using it to cover my massage, acupuncture, and chiropractic.

[16:52] Jan: Wow. I want to have massage under insurance.

[16:57] Dana: Well, with the car insurance, you don't need a referral. You don't need anything. You just use whatever you want for whatever you want.

[17:04] Jan: Getting into an accident.

[17:06] Dana: I know, right? It's like, this is how insurance should be. Little did I know that that was all aggravating my symptoms at the time because the massage was messing with the nerves in my neck, and the acupuncturist wasn't really trained in the neural end of it with my. So I felt better initially afterward, but later I felt worse. So it's hard to tell.

[17:31] Jan: Yeah.

[17:32] Dana: And with that kind of stuff, it's hard to tell anyway.

[17:34] Jan: Yeah.

[17:37] Dana: Then it was December 18 that the accident happened. And going through the holidays, the first holidays at my boyfriend's family's house, was like, God love them, they are such good people.

[17:50] Jan: Whatever, too. But, yeah, that'd be hard.

[17:55] Dana: Yeah. But they understood that I needed to go lay down, and they welcomed me and were just amazing and are still. They're my family. So by January, I was like, there is something I need to get fixed. If this is the rest of my life. We're moving into dark spaces mentally, because nobody should live like this.

[18:18] Jan: Right.

[18:19] Dana: So I found books at the library. I did. Started researching because I couldn't read. Like, my eyes, when I would try.

[18:26] Jan: And read, trying to track was that.

[18:28] Dana: No, I couldn't track. My eyes would, like, jump and kind of jump off the page and jump back to different words and just nothing I've ever experienced. I couldn't listen to anything. The sound of the tv was too much, so I wasn't listening to music. The only thing I could do to pass the time was, like, stare at the pictures on the wall. And it was tiresome. It was tiresome to depression. Oh, I was way in depression. Yeah, I was way understandably. Yeah. Very isolated in pain. Initially, I couldn't sit up. Right. So I had to roll over onto my side and push up with my. Like, if I rolled over onto my left side, I have to push up with my right hand while I was holding my head with my left hand to get up and then sit there for a minute because I would get vertigo. So going through daily life was really slow, and I couldn't process. So I was hungry. This one time, I was, like, going to make myself lunch, and I'd wake up in the morning. I'd wake up in the morning and I'd go feed the fire, say good morning to my best friend Tabrisha, and then she would go to work. I'd throw the ball once I got good enough to throw the ball for the dog, and that was like, work because the hand eye coordination was like getting the ball. I move very slowly because if I moved too fast, it wasn't really as good as it used to be. It wasn't that it was that bad. It just wasn't as good as it was walking at night down the hall. I'd have to hold the wall. Yeah. Because I wouldn't know where I was in space. I would fall into the wall.

[20:24] Jan: How long a period was that before you started feeling semi normal?

[20:29] Dana: Well, I had to go to the doctor to get better, so I went to a functional neurologist I found through the books at the library. I think it's like the Concussion Repair Manual was the one. And he know, you got to go to the doctors. Like, not all neurologists will do all of these tests, and you have to get these certain lists of tests. And so I found this guy in Lake Oswego, Glenn Zelensky at Northwest Functional Neurology. He's pricey, but he works, and he knows what he's doing. And, I mean, there's all this controversy because in neurology, he's technically not a neurologist. He's a chiropractor that studied neurology. And it's like a new. No insurance covers it because it's experimental, quote unquote. But with the personal injury protection, they covered it. So if you get a car accident, you can go to them, but if you have regular health insurance, you can't. You have to pay out of pocket.

[21:35] Jan: So that was a blessing.

[21:37] Dana: Yeah. So I went through all of that. He was like, your eyes and your ears are not aligned. They're both telling your brain different things. So he gave me eye exercises. I did a whole week boot camp with him in July. And initially, we thought it was, like, an inner ear issue, that I had a semicircular canal dehys. And I went through radiology, and it showed thinning on my bone. But I don't know. It's hard to tell. And the ENT was like, you're already trending better, so let's not have this surgery because it's a gruesome surgery.

[22:21] Jan: Thank you.

[22:22] Dana: Yeah, the surgery is like, you cut for that. They cut your skull behind your ear. It's like four inches, and it's like, oh, thanks. Oh, it's treacherous.

[22:33] Jan: Yeah.

[22:33] Dana: And they only started doing it in 98, so it's like, well, the reason why I was trending better at that point was because when I initially saw Glenn in the beginning of. I guess I booked the appointment in February, so I had to wait till March. So in the beginning of March, he did all the tests on me, shaking my head, seeing how my eyes would react with the vestibular system stimulated. They had me look at this big tv with watching tracking dots, and I'd have goggles on, watching my eyes and see what my eyes would do. The balance, just standing with my eyes closed, standing with my eyes open, turning my head, eyes open and closed, looking up, looking down, and they have, like, a little. It looks like a scale, but it's like tracking where my feet positioning are. And it tells you where my weight goes.

[23:27] Jan: Yeah.

[23:28] Dana: And at that point, I was falling or not balanced. Well, because your feet actually have. I learned then your feet have a lot to do with where your connections, they connect to your brain, and they tell your brain what's happening. If you're sitting, if you're standing, if you're laying down, your feet actually can tell more what's happening. So they'll put a cushion in between the scale thing, and I'll stand on the cushion. And so then there's no input from the feet. It's all the inner ear.

[24:09] Jan: Interesting.

[24:09] Dana: Yeah. So that's where you can really tell. That's when I was falling over.

[24:13] Jan: That is really interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating.

[24:16] Dana: Well, the vestibular system is remarkable. It doesn't just tell you if you're an elevator moving up and down or if you're laying down or how you're moving, if you're doing gymnastics or just turning around in the kitchen to get something out of the fridge. It is like awareness of where you are in space, like in the universe. We're on this rock, hurtling through space. It understands that we don't comprehend that the body is remarkable.

[24:43] Jan: What percentage back to normal do you feel?

[24:47] Dana: I feel probably like 90%.

[24:52] Jan: Yeah.

[24:52] Dana: I would say I was closer to 100 a month ago, but I've been slacking off on my exercises, and it's been a long journey. I've tried many things over the past five years. And then he put me in this machine, and I went back because I stopped seeing him because I was like, I can't afford $350 for a consultation. And so then finally I was seeing other doctors and doing other things. And so I call this thing the whirly gig.

[25:29] Jan: It's essentially a big metal wheel that you sit in or strapped into.

[25:37] Dana: Yeah, they strap me into the seat, and I wear goggles that cover my eyes with the camera. So they're watching my eyes, and it kind of looks like. I describe it like the da Vinci, like the body, arms sticking out. So it kind of looks like that.

[25:53] Jan: But then it rotates you all the way around.

[25:55] Dana: Yeah, like a carnival ride. But really slowly. When he tilted me forward, I thought I was up. Like, the second time it moved, I was like, I'm upside down. I was not upside down. I was horizontal. My body. And so it wears you out. I slept a lot over the past.

[26:14] Jan: I would think so because it almost is, because it's messing with your balance and your brain.

[26:20] Dana: I mean, even just taking role as a substitute, looking down at the kids names and then looking up to see if they're. Because not everybody says here, some of them say here for a kid that's at McDonald's. So you got to look and looking down and looking up. It's just. That's enough movement in the head to make me dizzy. Doing that treatment really helped, and doing the eye exercises really help. And then he's given me balanced stuff. And what happens with. They've found with brain injuries is a lot of times, the more severe hemorrhaging ones, people have more full recoveries from. And the milder ones are the ones that, like me, that have these residual. Interesting. Yeah.

[27:09] Jan: So you're a musician, too. What do you play?

[27:13] Dana: Oh, I play the guitar and the keyboard and I sing.

[27:17] Jan: And you sing?

[27:18] Dana: Yeah.

[27:19] Jan: I mean, music, it's all about the soul, right? Feeds the soul.

[27:25] Dana: It does. Oh, my gosh. I look forward to playing with my friends more than I do anything else. Even when I was climbing all the time, I'd be as stoked to go play with my friends and jam as I was to go climb.

[27:41] Jan: What kind of music do you play? What do you like? What makes your heart sing?

[27:47] Dana: Well, when I play with my friends, it's like we're rocking. It's all about the rock and roll. By myself, I'm not that good of a guitar player. Well, I don't know if I'll ever be that good of a guitar player. My fingers aren't that big. I definitely do some strength exercise. I do, like, more singer songwriter style songs on the guitar by. Yeah, I mean, I'll play jewel songs and simple versions of, like, Simon and Garfunkle songs. John Prine. Yeah. And we'll play some pearl jam. And I think there's an STP song on the list and Weezer and old stuff from Motown era Van Morrison. Yeah. We got a lot of eclectic mix.

[28:46] Jan: It's fun.

[28:47] Dana: Cake.

[28:47] Jan: Couldn't live without music. Yeah.

[28:49] Dana: No, I just joined the symphony.

[28:53] Jan: I haven't played since I was in college, which was 50 some years ago. I played flu, and it's been so fun. It's just really neat.

[29:05] Dana: Yeah. So you joined the symphony? I don't really know what that means. Like, you're playing with the symphony.

[29:11] Jan: Yeah. So does it look cool when it has story?

[29:14] Dana: And so I see.

[29:16] Jan: Join that. So this season we're doing Broadway tunes. So that's just fun.

[29:21] Dana: Oh, that's fun.

[29:22] Jan: Yeah. Just having the whole group. There's, like, 65 people in there or whatever.

[29:28] Dana: That's wonderful. Could I imagine playing with 65 people?

[29:33] Jan: Yeah, it's just really. It's like the percussion trumpets are right behind me.

[29:41] Dana: Yeah, it's the vibration.

[29:43] Jan: So what's your vision? You got something in your mind that you'd like to learn to do?

[29:50] Dana: Well, I'm working on songwriting, so that's a journey, I think. I'm working on my musicianship as well, so I think the songwriting, hopefully will come as I just need to practice more. Yeah. But since I haven't been climbing because my brain is still just, like, leaving the ground, weird things happen for me. Yeah. So I'm really trying to heal that and just moving on to different bucket list things, and sailing is one of them, so I want to learn how to sail.

[30:27] Jan: What makes you want to do that? What sparked that?

[30:31] Dana: Well. Oh, my God. I don't even know. I grew up closer to the Atlantic and 45 minutes away from the ocean when I was a kid, and I always just wanted to sail to Italy. I don't know why I had this idea of, like, that sounds like fun. Well, my great grandfather came across on a boat and came to this country for, you know, it just sounds like such a cool thing. Very romantic. I grew up watching my dad commute to Manhattan, and it was just, like, tiresome to watch his soul just kind of got lost in this whole rat race. And I never wanted to be part of that, but he raised me with. I don't know who I am is very much part of. Comes from my family. I mean, everybody comes from their family. And he's always like, the future, technology, all of these things. And I'm like, yeah, but I started doing pottery when I was in high school. I want to be out in the dirt, in the nature. The idea of being able to move across the world and not burn any fossil fuels and not have any assisted power, just be able to do it naturally with the wind, because somebody figured that out. I'm not smart enough to figure out an airfoil and how these things work, and it's really intriguing because there's so much history, there's so much of life that happened during the era of sailing, before airplanes, before cars. So it just seems really cool to me. If I had a hot air balloon, maybe we could go have a hot air balloon around the world. I don't know if I could do that.

[32:23] Jan: I don't know if I'd go in.

[32:24] Dana: The world with it, but it would.

[32:26] Jan: Be fun to go up.

[32:27] Dana: Maybe that's a good place to start going up in one. I was supposed to go up in one on my birthday a couple years ago, but the weather was bad. Well, Hunter is a skydiver, and at the place where we were skydiving, he was going to jump out of the hot air balloon. Really? Yeah. The guy that owned the hot air balloon was like, you could go with us.

[32:49] Jan: Is it high enough? The hot air balloon goes high enough to skydive on.

[32:54] Dana: There's a really cool movie about that. It's like, in the 18 hundreds, these people. And it was like a woman that was weighing being the aeronauts. She was an aeronaut, and that's what the movie is. And she was the one that was piloting it. And there was a scientist that wanted to go and take all of his instruments and do the readings at the altitude and all of that. So it's gripping. I love that movie. Yeah.

[33:22] Jan: Interesting.

[33:22] Dana: I watched it in school, and I was subbing.

[33:25] Jan: Okay. Things that I'd never done before. Let's try this.

[33:30] Dana: Wouldn't that be cool?

[33:32] Jan: Yeah.

[33:33] Dana: Sailing. I'm going to start small. I'm going to learn on Puget Sound. And then, who knows?

[33:40] Jan: Maybe you'll go from living in your van to living in your sailboat.

[33:43] Dana: I don't think that's a bad idea.

[33:47] Jan: As long as the weather's good.

[33:48] Dana: Yeah. And we take the boat to the good weather. Right? Is the thing. We can go down to Baja for the winter.

[33:55] Jan: Yeah.

[33:56] Dana: Doesn't seem like a bad thing.

[33:58] Jan: Well, Dana, thank you. This has been really fun and interesting.

[34:03] Dana: Thank you for talking with me. I'm honored to be on your podcast.

[34:07] Jan: This is fun. All right.

[34:10] Dana singing: It's it. She like her. I like. She looks down my face. I never gonna let it go. You sight of our window, we're down to fly. I know. Actually, you think so much of corny Calvin. She, like, got never gonna let her go never gonna let it go in spite of our fear let us won't be nothing but a bit of.

[37:36] Dana: One.

[37:36] Dana : More time won't be nothing but a bit of Firebox drum.

[37:45] Jan:. That's all for today. Did you know it's easy to share an episode with your friends when the podcast is open? Look for three dots, click on them, and you'll see various options. You can download the episode, play it next or last, go to the show, save the episode, or copy the link. Isn't technology amazing? Hey, I'm looking forward to you joining me next time. I hope you have a great week.