In this episode of Combat Vet Vision, Chief Aaron Seibert welcomes U.S. Air Force veteran Ed McLean, founder of Warriors2Racers (W2R). Ed shares how his nonprofit is helping veterans rediscover purpose, camaraderie, and teamwork through organized motorsports. Rather than simply offering race experiences, Warriors2Racers develops veterans into drivers, pit crew members, race engineers, and team volunteers while creating a mission-focused community that mirrors the bonds formed during military service.

Ed McLean is a U.S. Air Force veteran with more than 35 years of motorsports experience. A certified Motorsport Safety Foundation High Performance Driving Instructor, he founded Warriors2Racers to provide veterans with opportunities to reconnect through teamwork, leadership, and technical skills in organized racing. Warriors2Racers operates under the Resilience Racing Foundation and is entirely volunteer-driven.

Takeaways:

• Combat Vet Vision serves as a vital platform connecting veterans, sponsors, and volunteers to foster community engagement.
• The podcast features Ed McLean, a distinguished Air Force veteran who discusses his transition to motorsports.
• Ed's Warriors Racers program aims to integrate veterans into motorsport through structured training and support networks.
• The importance of camaraderie among veterans in high-pressure environments, such as endurance racing, is emphasized throughout the discussion.
• Ed McLean shares personal experiences that inspired him to create programs aiding veterans facing similar challenges.
• The episode outlines the processes and opportunities available for veterans interested in pursuing careers in motorsports.

Resources & Links

Warriors2Racers

https://www.warriors2racers.org

Resilience Racing Foundation

https://www.resilienceracingfoundation.org

Track Heroes

https://trackheroes.org

Grace After Fire

https://graceafterfire.org

The Follow-On Mission

https://thefollowonmission.org

Combat Vet Vision Team

Host

Chief Aaron Q. Seibert, USN (Ret.)

Purple Heart Recipient • Combat Corpsman • Veteran Advocate

https://linktr.ee/aqseibert

Co-Host

Chef James "J.B." Brown

U.S. Coast Guard Veteran

Producer

Brian Colburn

https://linktr.ee/Bcolburn

Hey, welcome to Combat Vet Vision.

This is a platform for our veterans, our sponsors, our sporters, our volunteers, our combat vets, and those that just really want to be involved, businesses that have been involved.

And there's like always some really incredible things going on.

Chef JB is not here with us today.

Apologize for that because it's always good to have him on deck.

We do have Brian with feed drops in the background here.

Coming, coming at the end of the show to kind of analyze and decide what I need to do to change up and, and make some changes to make things happen.

And I got Ed McLean on deck today.

United States Air Force vet race car extraordinaire.

Racing is, is his life and doing a whole bunch of things.

Uh, he spent some time in the Air Force and we're going to get into a story, we're going to talk about his transition and a whole bunch of other things and his programs too.

He's got some really amazing programs.

And like I said, if you're a non profit organization, get on this, this show, talk about what you're doing and some other things that are super important for a veteran community.

I think that's important.

Ed, welcome to the show, brother.

Hey, thanks very much.

Coming all the way from the east coast where there might be a storm.

So if we lose him, it's because the storm cut out the electricity and he's on battery, so we'll lose sound, but he'll still have some capability.

We'll see how that works out.

Ed, thanks for, thanks for being here.

Thanks for, you know, being a veteran, it's just trying to make some things happen.

You obviously have some really awesome programs behind your belt and you're doing a lot of really good things for our veteran community in so many different ways.

But let's dive into the beginning of your story, why you joined and before you joined and talk about what, what inspired you and all the inspiration between that and getting into the Air Force.

Yeah, I, I actually grew up in Maine in the southern, southern part of Maine.

And my to go tight in the, the motorsport piece.

I grew up in a racing family.

My dad, my grandfather, my uncles all race British sports cars, did a lot of hill climbs, did track racing, did autocrossing, you name it, they had their hand in it.

And so that, you know, obviously trickled down to me and what I wanted to get involved in.

So I also growing up, my first of all, my dad told me flat out, you're not gonna race until you graduate high school.

He thought it would be too much Of a distraction.

So I did a lot of, a lot of scouting growing up.

Did the whole, you know, Eagle Scout thing.

And after that I transitioned over to the Civil Air Patrol and did that for a number of years with the local squadron and that kind of gave me the taste for, for the Air Force at least what, a little bit about what, what it might be like.

So went, went to college locally.

Actually entered the.

Well this was, you know, about the time for the Iraq war and that kind of thing.

91 Is when I came in in November of 91 and went actually enlisted.

I was, I was gullible enough to listen to a recruiter who said it was easier to become an officer from the inside.

And so I, I enlisted and I tell you, it probably was one of the best things I ever did.

Showed me what it was like.

I, I think, you know, later on when I got my commission, I think it made me a better officer because I knew what it was like to be lower enlisted and I, I absolutely fell in love with the job though.

I was a cryptologic linguist, airborne cryptologic linguist.

Loved that job.

Really got into the computers and that kind of thing and, and, and controlling that side of it.

They ended up sharing me out to E3 AWACS crew that ended up over in Southern Watch and so ended up flying for flying over there.

That was a eye opening experience just seeing that the culture we were, that's back when we were out of Escon village over there just outside of Riyadh.

So that was, you know, really if you're going to be deployed, that's where you want to be.

I guess so.

Right.

And so yeah, did that not long after that.

Ended up doing bootstrap and got my commission.

Came out of, out of that as a intel officer.

Did a total of 10 years.

Started to have some health issues and I felt like I wanted to leave on my own terms.

So I resigned my commission and ended up becoming an Air Force civilian as a fed.

And it was my getting the, the fed position was kind of mixed emotion I guess because I, when I first was coming, getting ready to come off of active duty, I was struggling to find anything.

It was extremely difficult, you know, just trying to make the translation between what I was, what my training was in and what it was in the civilian world was really, really difficult.

I had some instructor time when I was an officer, so I had the teaching practicum and everything.

And so I'd found a position where I would be really good fit, but it just couldn't make the translation across between what, what I was doing on active duty and that civilian world.

And so it was, that was difficult.

And then I was actually scheduled to get out in october.

2001.

So you know, 9, 11 happens and I got stopped, lost for a year.

And that actually, you know, despite it being a horrible situation, that kind of saved me because it gave me an extra year to find a position.

And that's how I ended up becoming a Air Force Fed, was because of, of that to rewind a little bit.

By the way, when I was still enlisted, a friend of mine had transitioned out and he went through the same issues.

He couldn't find a position.

He had plans to become a pilot, I want to be an airline pilot.

Transitioned out, tried to get into the schools and whatnot and found it extremely difficult.

Couldn't get into the schools that he wanted to.

Ended up having marital problems, none of which he was conveying to me.

And he ended up taking his own life.

And that's really probably one of the biggest reasons why I created the Warriors Racers program was I was kind of fast forward here now to.

November of 21.

I had actually been working with a couple of different veteran organizations trying to get veterans involved with motorsport and had gotten some crew members or some veterans involved as crew on some endurance race teams.

And they were attracting a lot of attention because all the crews needed help and we were bringing them in, we were training them up and they were good, one guy in particular.

And so In November of 21 a team owner approached me and said, hey, let's, I'd like to set up an all veteran team.

What do you think?

And I was like, hey, that's a great idea.

So put out the feeler to four people to join as drivers and crew and quickly realized that there were a lot of people who wanted to do it.

Nobody had any experience or training to do it.

And so not wanting to turn anybody away, that's when I decided that I would take, you know, I've had all these years of experience with racing, you know, because I've been racing since 87 at this point, that I would take all those years of experience of learning how to go through the, the different types of racing and.

How to get involved and my contacts with the sport to help these veterans who wanted to do that and need but would also have a support network of the fellow veteran brothers and sisters on the same team so we could all work together, support each other and learn the skills to drive and to be on crew.

And I feel I'm Being very eloquent with this.

Hey, you know what, it's, it's good because I, I know how important it is to have a, you know, the camaraderie there and being able to talk about the issues.

And like you said, your buddy didn't explain to you anything that was going on in his life and he took his life.

So you're inspired to take on this challenge of, you know, forming an awesome organization and, and start moving forward with these guys.

You took your experience and helped train these guys, did some incredible things and you know, and how is that going now?

And do you have a formal type of training for these guys at this point?

And obviously so many tracks, right.

When you talk about racing so many races across the United States and like you talked to me before, you have guys that want to get involved in the off road stuff and you know, Warrior Built, it's not about winning the race for Warrior Build.

It's about finishing the mission or handing the car off to the next person because the experience isn't there.

We don't have a lot of experience and, but it's, it's great.

It, it's another, it's like a field op.

You're going to go do this mission so it gives you that too.

And go ahead, continue your story.

You're doing great, man.

Yeah, there's actually warriors racers originally started off as a driver development program and a crew development program.

Veterans could do either or both.

The driver development program starts folks off, you know, with really easy stuff with not much expense involved at all because you know, you only need a motorsport helmet to do the type of stuff we're talking about, which is we start off with autocrossing to learn how to handle the car.

Then we progress to what's called track cross which is usually like about half of a lap of a racetrack that's set up to with a timer so you have a little bit wider line that you can go through.

Then we do what's called the high performance Driver education or hpde which is the only non competitive part of the program.

We use that for situational awareness because there are different cars on the track at the same time.

Need to be able to know because when we, we get to endurance racing there is always different classes that you're running against.

So not only the class you're in, but other classes as well.

And where we're a training platform, we target the slowest class because we figure that it's fast enough to get in there and learn how to drive and that kind of thing and have some fun at it.

But it's also not so fast.

You're going to get into, you know, big trouble.

But that being said, you need to really know what's going on around you so you don't get swallowed by, you know, a class car that's four classes above you.

You don't want to, you don't want to become a bug on their windshield on the way by.

That's right.

That's why the way that this way Baja is set up, you know, the motorcycles go, you know, then you got, you know, all these different classes that go.

And the last class is the trophy trucks.

And those trophy trucks are coming to hunt you down.

And you know, you know, when, when you're on that, on that road and you're like, hey, you know, you know, 20, you know, almost halfway through it, you start looking in your back for the, the trophy trucks.

They, they were released maybe hours and hours after, but they're coming.

And so that's why he's talking about the classes.

Multiple different things on the track, but they're, they're released at different times.

It's all timed.

But some of these classes are going to catch up to you.

Yeah.

And you have to have that situational awareness so that you don't hit somebody that's in front of you.

You got to be aware.

And for the classes that are slow, you got to look behind you to make sure you're not going to get a Bug.

A Bug on a windshield kind of deal.

Yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, so after they go through the HPDE part, it's straight into the endurance racing level.

Obviously at the amateur level, we, we do focus on endurance racing primarily because it does require a team.

You, you have to have, you have to have crew, you have to have, you know, at least two drivers.

We, we try to target about four drivers at least for an event.

And about the shortest actual race that we're doing is eight hours.

And we're doing that over our two eight hour events plus a usually a two to three hour qualifying race.

So you're talking about basically 18, 19 hours worth of racing on over the course of a weekend split between three to four individuals driving it.

And then of course you have the failures and stuff that you're relying on the crew to repair the car and, and that kind of thing just to survive.

And so there's a lot of reliance on each other during the event.

And so yeah, it, it really, that camaraderie of the, from the veterans, really, it helps in that situation because, you know, we're all used to operating under a stressful environment.

And you can, you can tell when, when the veterans are, are running, it's.

They, they behave differently than the other crews.

It.

It's like a switch is thrown and they are, you know, back on that team and, and, and making sure the, the mission gets done.

And our last race that we had was American endurance racing event at Summit Point, West Virginia.

We actually only had a team of three drivers for that, and we ended up qualifying third.

And then we didn't do very well on Saturday, but on Sunday we came in second.

And based on the points for the weekend, we ended up taking second overall for our class, which was, which was really great.

And it's.

These guys are coming together for the first time.

It's not like we've been, you know, racing with each other for a long time.

This is a group of people.

This is the first time working together, and they're able to pull together a result like that.

When you talk about your class, I mean, how many classes of, of possibilities for these veterans is there and, you know, your specific class?

Which, which class is that?

The.

In American endurance racing?

For, for that particular weekend, there was five classes.

I think they didn't have any Class 5 cars, if I remember right.

So really four classes.

So the early Miata with the smaller engine handles amazing.

The.

All the drivers were just thinking it was great to be out there with it, but it just didn't.

Didn't have any go, so.

Right, right.

That's like the Class 11 for war, Bill.

And we went with that.

We went with that because it's kind of like the safest class.

Right, right.

So, yeah, exactly.

When you got veterans, they'll.

They'll take it to its maximum capability.

Yeah.

Not know, you know, because we're.

We're geared for that and it's.

Yeah, you know, so it's good that you start off with class one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But we do have other teams that we work with if they want to progress to a faster team.

After a veteran gets all the way through our driver development program and they want to drive for a faster team, we vet them so that they can go, okay, I want to go to Class 2.

Now there's a couple of different Class 2 teams that we work with a lot, and I actually go to the team owners and go, hey, look, this veteran has this experience.

They're pretty darn good.

These are maybe some faults to watch for, but overall they, you know, you can't go wrong by bringing them onto your team for an event and, and that's really the way it progresses.

One of the things too that I do have people ask, you know, do we run the.

I don't know if you're familiar with the 24 hours of lemons.

Right, right.

We, we attempted that once and we won, won't go back.

Mainly because that is a, A lot of people who aren't very experienced in racing go there and they don't.

I'm not saying universally, but at least the crew that we were with at that particular event, you could tell the Racecraft wasn't there.

And when you're trying to instruct, you know, proper Racecraft, proper line, you know, where you need to position yourself during an overtake and that kind of thing, a lot of the crazier things that happened on in that Lemons event made it so it was not a good environment to teach.

And so we will, we'll do Champ Car and we'll do American endurance racing.

I've heard good things about the, the Lucky Dog series as well as the Northeast GT series.

So those are the series that would, we would be running in in addition to, you know, Champ Car and aer, but for the most part we're trying to find the, the series where the racers are a bit more serious, if you will.

And, and so we can, you know, actually train someone to, to drive.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

I mean, because you can develop.

And that's the thing, you can develop some really bad habits.

Racing and races that aren't, aren't very controlled.

And it's so important.

Do you guys, you know, for a veteran to be involved, what's, what's the cost?

And do they start as pit crew developers and then move into the seat eventually, if that's where they want to go.

You don't just put somebody in the seat right away, is that correct?

Not, Not.

Well, it depends on.

Honestly, everything is done on a case by case basis.

Because I've, I have, I've had guys come in that have been to race schools.

They've got, you know, some races under their belt already and so we're able to put them right in the seat.

That makes sense.

But if it's someone that comes in with, with zero experience, it starts off more as a coaching piece unless they happen to be in the, the, you know, the Virginia area or surrounding states area.

We do have warrior racer vehicles that we can bring out so that they don't have to worry about, you know, damaging their own car or whatnot.

But we start them off with autocrossing which is very inexpensive.

It's usually 50 to $65 entry fee and you need to have a Snell approved motorsport helmet which can be pretty pricey.

Yeah, could be.

But you know, I, you can get them usually down around 250 all the way up to two grand.

So it's correct.

Y.

It just really depends on what the individual wants.

And then in those events you can use your own street vehicle without modification.

There's no, nothing that's special that's needed.

So that's kind of where we start off.

We do for the, for to participate in the, to kind of get back to what you're saying.

They don't have to crew if they don't want to.

Crewing is a lot easier because there's always a demand signal there from the, from the teams that they need people.

And we, what we do is we take the first day of the event and we train the crew right there on site.

So it is, you're at the track, you learn everything you need to do for the day, run through it a few times and you're pretty much good to go.

The actual turning of the wrenches and stuff I'll get to here in a little bit with the Veterans Motorsport Training center.

But the two drive because that's kind of more the, the shiny candy like button that everybody wants to push and so yeah, if you, if you don't want to crew, you don't have to it.

Once you get up to the endurance race level, we usually will train the drivers to how to refuel the car because there's actually a, a way to do it.

We, we on the, we have two cars that are prepared.

One's a BMW 325is.

The other one is the, is the Miata.

Miata's got a dry brake system on it so you need to know how to actually use the dry brake and that kind of thing.

So,.

So yeah, they need to know that in case we're, we're running short on crew we can fall back on that.

But yeah, they don't, they don't have to learn crewing but it's helpful.

The Veteran Motorsport Training center, which I alluded to, that's a brand new program that Warriors Racers is setting up with Josh White racing out of Cabin Creek, West Virginia.

Josh and we had, we had Josh White out on, on the show last week.

So if you need to Refer to him and see his, his program stuff.

You know, check out last week's show which was episode 301.

He had actually reached out to me after we formed our partnership and said hey, I got an idea about setting up a school.

And I was like, well you know, instructional system and development dude here I can do that.

And so the Veterans Motorsport Training center is actually being set up as a separate entity.

So it is going to be its own thing.

The I've set up the Initially it was going to be kind of just a straight partnership between the two organizations, but it was becoming too cumbersome.

That's why we decided to make it its own thing.

But basically we wrote all the lesson plans and everything for ASC certification at the maintenance and light repair level and we're working with Josh White Racing on some race car fabrication and setup classes.

So hopefully we'll have some welding certifications brought on board.

The all the classroom stuff is handled online for that as well as there's also some online portions of the, the Warrior Racer driver development program that's on there.

And so yeah, basically if you want, if you want to go into the career field and veterans are given the priority and discounts to attend this school and we're working with a, we actually have a VA administrator that is helping us to set up the program to make sure that we're hitting all the VA wickets so that once for a full up round we'll, we'll be able to accept things like GI Bill and stuff so it doesn't cost the veteran anything to attend.

The hands on facility is going to be initially at the Josh White Racing headquarters in Cabin Creek, West Virginia with a focus on NASCAR and ARCA cars.

We're already in talks with two other locations, ones in Western New York focusing on rally cars with in a larger facility and then a third facility that we're looking at that we're talking in talks with is in eastern Ohio with a focus on motorcycles.

So where there'll be motorcycle mechanic certifications that come out of that.

If all goes well, probably talking in another three years or so, we'd really like to open a another facility here in Virginia.

And mainly because there's so many veterans and military members in this area, Northern Virginia.

So it's just a good, good area to have something like that.

We're also because of the relationship with the race teams and other veteran organizations that we have in place and even tracks we're already starting to set up internships and apprenticeships to help, you know, pad that Resume so that if a veteran wants to come out to transition into being an automotive technician or go work on a race team, they'll be able to go come in, go through the mechanics training, the SE certification training and then go into an internship or an apprenticeship at a track or with a race team or at a, you know, an OEM shop, what have you.

And it's kind of like a try before you buy type of a situation for these organizations so they can see how that individual is and they're very likely apt to get a job coming right out of that internship.

Particularly where right now there is a very high demand signal right now for ASE certified mechanics, mechanics in general.

It's becoming a real issue to get these positions filled.

So it's kind of a, a good time to make a move into that area.

Definitely.

Definitely.

So when you, when you have these, these guys come, are most of them local around the area or do you, do you, do you have a program that, that funds them to come in for the races or do they have to come in with their own money hotel wise and whatnot?

What, what is, what does that look like?

Yeah, the unfortunate thing is is that well Worries Racers isn't as a completely all volunteer organization and we don't usually get a whole lot of funding.

So the unfortunate thing is a lot of the travel expenses in particular are borne by the veteran when they come in with us.

I'd love to have that not be the case.

There are a couple of our partner programs where they are able to you know, pay for the racing for the veteran 100 then it's just travel coming in.

We do have another partner program that has a three day race camp called a veterans trust out of Florida that we're working with basically as a follow on program to their race camp.

They'll come into warriors races if they want to continue on.

Their program is a focused on guys and gals that have pts.

First day is on a race simulator, second day is a ride along and then the third day is that HPDE or high performance driver education piece and then if they're again interested then they'd come into the Warrior racer program and continue on their development.

That program actually they put on like biosensors and that kind of thing so the counselors can sit down and watch the veteran and say okay, you're that feeling that you're Getting that concentration you're getting all your stress levels have dropped because you're concentrating on this and help them leverage that to handle their PTS symptoms in the future.

We're actually trying to get the same simulators brought out to one out to the facility at Josh White Racing and another one that we would like to get in a, in a trailer platform so that we can hit multiple veteran organizations and counselors in the, in the Virginia area and, and West Virginia and local states so they can leverage that as well.

In addition, the, one of the cool things about the cars that we have is we have live broadcast capability from the car.

So, and we're not using all of the bandwidth so we, what we'd like to do is get the, those biofeedback sensors in the car so that a counselor could be at the track and actually see what the veteran is going through live in, in the race car and see what's going on.

One thing I forgot to mention too.

If endurance racing is not where they want to end their, their progression in motorsport because of the relationships with other veteran organizations and that whole vetting process that we have, we're starting to get that relationship going of okay, this person has gone through.

They've got, you know, however many events wheel to wheel racing and endurance, let's see if they could transition maybe over to maybe dirt oval with NASCAR or ARCA or do an off road event or go to a, a rally and, and at co drive or drive and, and see, you know, where, where it can progress.

I have, I didn't get into it before, but once upon a time I had a pro license and was running formula cars and stuff when I was over in Europe.

But so I know the process of how to get fully licensed if you, if you want to get to that point.

So if you want to continue on beyond, you know, the American endurance racing level or, or get licensed to do another program, I can usually guide you pretty well as to, as to where you need to go to get a license to do whatever you want.

So a lot of it is really just understanding and knowing what to do when and what you really need to spend money on and what you don't.

I've seen an awful lot of people come in and go, I'm gonna go racing.

And then they, you know, go out and they buy the racing suit and the gloves and the shoes and the helmet and, and they set up their car and they put in a roll cage only to find out that a roll cage does not meet the specifications for the series they were gonna run and you know, or they decide that, you know, they're, they want to just dive into this event and they're not qualified to do it.

They need to go back and do more training.

And it's just when in, in reality, to get your feet wet in motorsport.

It's a helmet.

It's a helmet.

And, and you know, you could use your daily driver if you, if you really wanted to do it.

It's.

It.

It is not.

I'm not, I'm not saying that racing is not expensive because racing is expensive.

When you get, when you actually start doing wheel.

The wheel and you have to have the full kit and all that, yes, it's, it's expensive.

But when you are just getting started, no, you don't need to shell out a whole ton of money to get started.

And that, that's really been what a lot of the Warrior Racer program has been, has been just telling guys, don't spend that money yet.

Don't.

Right.

Don't go buy all that safety equipment because that safety equipment is perishable that, you know, some of them have and it expires.

Yeah.

There's an expiration date on it.

Yeah.

So don't buy it till you have to.

And, you know, and just kind of guiding them that way as to where they need to go.

Well, I, I think this is such an important part that you're talking about is, you know, understanding that if you want to get into racing, you know, Ed McLean has a way to do it.

He's, he's got the, the expertise.

And I know you didn't get into it too much in your transition, but I think you were going to, you know, you finally got to the point where you started this on your own and you wanted to have a racing deal and.

But, you know, it's so hard during the transition to find what, what direction you want to go.

Obviously what we do in the military doesn't always translate into civilian life the.

Way that we would think it would.

Or, you know, it's not as easy as everyone thinks from a, from a.

Looking from a thousand miles away.

But when you get down into the nitty gritty, the connecting points usually have to be somebody you know from who you know and the directions that you want to go.

And like you're saying, don't spend a lot of money, but, you know, warriors to racers will help you navigate that, that step into the racing industry that you want to go.

You know, getting into Miata maybe doesn't sound as cool as you Think it is at a 1.2 liter.

Okay, 1.6.

1.6 Liter.

All right.

I'm not going to slow down any more than it has to.

But, you know, you're talking about or the class 11 bug that warrior build does.

These things are just stepping stones into get your feet wet, get, get a taste of it, feel what you want to do, and then figure out the direction.

But it's guys like, like you, Ed, that's going to have the, the expertise to kind of navigate the systems, you know, and that's, and that's where you're at in these programs.

And then the class developmental thing, you know, with Josh White racing, that's going to be a super important part.

He's in with nascar.

I know they got some NASCAR teams, they're put together a 10, 10, you know, racers into NASCAR and doing all these things.

But it's like finding the right fit for you on your pathway.

And I think that's the biggest important thing because we don't want to end up losing any more vests than we have to.

But you might as well.

If you wanna, if you wanna isolate, you might as well isolate in the focus of helping put this car together, get behind the wheel.

And like you said, the sensors are monitoring that for specific purposes.

I think those are super awesome.

And, and your thought process on it is, is super cool.

Obviously, there's a lot of things to map out here, and there's a lot of, There's a lot of questions that could form.

There's a lot of vets that may be interested in wanting to find you, and we'll get into that too.

But, you know, just any, any final words on, on this and, and I'd love to bring you back, Ed.

Talk about, you know, throw your foundations out there, throw your information out there.

You know, vets that want to race.

I mean, this is so cool.

And he's a vet and he's dealt with stuff.

He lost his buddy, he.

He's dealt with his own pts and, and trying to navigate the systems of, you know, transition into what he wants to do.

And I think, I think you, you know, when you find your, your niche, it really feels good to be able to help others.

And like you said, you want to do it safely and you don't want to go to the lemons.

The lemons race and, you know, just watch a bunch of guys fumble and bubble around and push the car as fast as they can and then hit.

You know, it's.

It's not a safe environment necessarily.

It's not a, and it's not a place where you could really teach and learn something but in your, in your environment you, you've already navigated that out, you got the map and I think that's really cool.

You know, I, I do so much with, with, with racing on a whole, whole bunch of different levels, but it's great to know these connecting pieces and feel free to add, add any final words and add some stuff to it.

Yeah, well, you don't have to be know, big into cars or want to drive the car or want to work on the car or anything to, to participate either.

The main thing is getting together with the team.

You're going to find, you know, particularly when we get together it becomes a pretty high speed, low drag group of individuals and if say you don't want to touch the car, come on, help out and you know, shuttle stuff back and forth between the paddock and the pit.

For us we, that's really needed it or you know, say you like to grill, come out and grill and cook the food for, for these veterans.

We, we need that.

It is not just, you know, coming out and wrenching on the car or driving the car or whatever.

There's a very large support network there as well.

So if, if you have, if you just want to come out and be with a bunch of, you know, your brothers and sisters, come on out.

There's, even if you're not a veteran, we have a volunteer membership too.

You can just volunteer, get your name on the list and you can see everything that's going on, what's coming up and you can, you can come out as a volunteer even if you're not a veteran.

So yeah, just get involved if you, if you, and get to that point if, if you want to participate in the driver and crew development, driver and, or crew development program or just come out and support these veterans at the track.

Our website is warriors the number two racers.org or you can reach out to me directly at infoarriorstoracers.org and then the Veterans Motorsport Training center.

If you want to go there and sign up.

There's a bunch of free courses that are available out there.

Anyone can, can sign up for those courses too.

Online there's, there's paid and free courses that are open to anybody.

That's VMTC, that's Victor Mike, Tango, [email protected] and that, you know, opens a lot of doors for, on mechanical side and that kind of thing.

You know, you can kind of try before you, you buy the, the full thing at least.

If you're a veteran though, please don't go straight to VMTC and buy those programs because we have discounts and a whole bunch of other things through warriors to racers that are built in the vmtc.

So the, the prices that you're seeing, that's the general public price.

So if you, if you're a veteran, you know, reach out and we can get you the discounted price for the ASE certification programs.

The, all the driver stuff is free to worry to race or full members.

And so, you know, reach out before you go there.

Start signing up for courses, in other words.

But, but yeah, there's just lots there to, to offer if you're interested in becoming a mechanic, you know, full blown mechanic, the certification program is there and the cool thing is we can get you in with these racers, these race teams too, so you can actually get hands on to the race cars and work on some pretty interesting vehicles other than, you know, the Corolla that you see rolling down the street.

So.

That's right.

And let's not forget the paddock build.

Sometimes we need guys to build the paddock and that, that takes some time.

So you, laying down the, the, the, the Swiss track and all the other stuff that we got to do.

So it's, it's always an important part.

Building the tent off the semi trucks.

So that's always a big pro, it's always a big project.

Everybody, all hands are used for that.

But then you get to get into the car stuff and there's so many other cool things that, to be involved.

Ed, thanks a lot for being on the show.

Any last words?

No.

Thanks for having me.

It's been a pleasure.

I hope I didn't ramble too much.

Hey, hey, Great information.

One thing I, I just, I just want to say, you know, your program is developed in a way that you, you can develop it.

Right?

You're on this pathway.

I know I asked you, you know, how much does it cost for the vet?

Obviously, you know, 60 to $80.

To get in behind a car for a couple laps is pretty amazing price.

Right.

And I know, I know the organization is probably not big enough to handle, you know, taking, you know, where can we get funding to, you know, put these guys up in hotels and this, this and that.

If, if you're an organization that's providing that.

I think it's really a, I think these are kind of the, the, the next step of evolvements that you want to get involved in.

It sounds like you would like to go there at some point.

But I just want to say, hey, you know, even, even with that, you know, if you're already gonna go down and hey, I'm gonna race a car, you might as, you know, if you're a veteran, hit, you know, warriors to racers so that you can, you can, you can get these discounts and these, these things and then find out from there.

And, and obviously the program's growing so much.

I mean, you know, Josh racing just came into effect because, you know, he finally got a shop and all this stuff.

There's a lot of things that are, that are moving parts, a lot of dreams and, and things.

But at least touch basis and find out the route for you.

The best path that you can go is by contacting these organizations and these great things.

So any last things you want to add to that, Ed?

I love it.

Yeah, just one, one last thing.

We are working to, to get grants and that kind of thing and so that, you know, the travel piece and we can at least discount the cost of entry fees and that kind of thing.

The one thing that we're kind of committed not to do is to buy the, buy the veteran all the safety equipment.

And that's because there's so much large variety of what personal preferences are and stuff for, for the safety equipment that we're like, it's too complicated.

So.

But we are working on getting those grants put in place to help defer the travel costs and the, the entry fees and that kind of stuff so that hopefully in not too distant future, you know, a veteran might just be able to, to race for, for free or for a highly discounted price with, with us, so.

Well, that's awesome.

Hey, thanks a lot for being on the show, sharing this information.

As things progress, come back on the show, let's talk about it.

Throw some cool word out there.

Anything that sounds, you know, if you want to share something on this show at another time, you know, that's just coming up.

That's really cool.

Let's, let's do it.

Because I, I love bringing this veteran support wherever it might be and whatever you're dealing with as a veteran, you know, that's.

This is one of those things that are just going to help you along the way.

Great.

Thanks very much.

Really appreciate you having me on.

Thanks, brother.

Appreciate you.

Well, hey, you know, it's interesting to me that, that, you know, you could be doing whatever you want to be doing in life and things can be not going your way, but you can still have hopes and dreams and Doing some really incredible things, you know, Thanks a lot, Gary, for the shout out.

Appreciate that.

It's good.

And you know, when I think about all the different modalities and, you know, just different things that, you know.

Thanks a lot for the shout out, Shannon.

There's a lot of shout outs going on right now, but it, it's, it's cool that there's so many modalities out there that are going to steer you in a direction that you yourself are kind of maybe on the verge of.

Hey, I maybe need to get out there and do something, but I just don't know where to do, where to do that.

You know, it's a great time for you to kind of reach out, figure out where you are in your life and you might be all tore up and you might need some help and support in other directions.

And that's why, that's why there's so many packages here.

That's why I have to thank, you know, the PTSD foundation of America, Warrior Bill Foundation Recon Chief incorporated, another race industry thing piece that is going, going, going in different directions.

And then the Veterans Transition Resource center right here.

This is where the show is being produced.

This is where it's coming out of.

Brian Colburn, I got to thank him all the time because he's behind the button, behind the scene, pushing the buttons, making things happen, Sitch, Radio.

Org and you know, just, just so many other cool things that are always going on.

And, and of course the podcast Combat Bed Vision.

Thanks for making this even possible, Brian, for, for all that good stuff.

And here we're gonna come on right now, Feed Drops here in a sec.

Brian's gonna come down here and analyze the show.

But you know, it's incredible to have these non profit orgs come on, talk about why they're doing things.

And mostly these are veteran driven organizations that, you know, just, just really want to get it on.

But some of them aren't, some of them are, you know, and it's a business too, obviously.

You know, they're, they're trying to make some money so that they can, you know, support the elements.

But most of all, the motivation is to support the veteran with a discounted way of living their life in a.

More.

Adventurous, you know, stimulating way that's, that's taken away from your pts in some way, shape or form.

So that's, that's, that's all I got for this show.

And I'm gonna bring Brian on for Feed Drops, which obviously he's got his own podcast called Feed Drops, if you check it out, he hasn't done a lot with it lately, but there's a couple shows in there.

They're built in, and you can listen on how to better improve your podcast.

If you're a podcaster or if you want to be a podcaster, this is a great way to kind of do that.

He's got a whole bunch of other podcasts that go out.

Like, I'd podcast that if you want to look that up.

But Brian.

Brian Colburn is the reason why I do this, and he's to.

You know, he's always trying to tune me up.

I'm only as fast as I can be.

Is like, making things better.

But.

But Brian, Go ahead, brother.

Come on, Deck.

What's going on?

Chief?

Good to hear from you.

Good to see you.

Thanks for being in the shop with me in the same shop doing.

Doing some stuff this lately.

Just a wall separates us.

That's right.

Hey, man, you know, good job today.

You know, I know the backstory, and it's good.

I. I coach everybody to have one or three evergreen episodes ready to go, so if a guest falls through or something happens, you're not scrambling to put something together.

You can pull an evergreen episode out of the can and.

And get some valuable content out for your audience.

I'm glad you didn't have to burn one, because as I understand, this guest came online last night, which was.

Which is awesome.

So not being able to guide them through a story with questions is completely understandable.

And Ed was a great storyteller, man.

He.

It progressed on its own really, really well.

Not every guest is as organized in thought.

And what a great organization, man.

They're doing some awesome things for our vets.

So I really don't have much to say today.

Chief.

Hey, you know, that's always good.

It's always good to see the advice.

Not many times.

And like you said, not many people will take, you know, take a.

A critical element and add it to their show.

But I. I love it that we get to kind of do this feed drops because the public gets to see, you know, who it is that's pushing the buttons behind the screen.

And it also gets to see why this podcast can get better and how it's going to get better over time.

And.

And on that note, I mean, in the service, we critiqued after action reports.

We had our stuff torn apart in front of our peers day after day after day, mission after mission, training off, after training up.

So it's not strange that you're bringing this element to your show.

The majority of the public, you know, it would be.

Be very fearful for them to, you know, have a live critique at the end of an episode.

But, you know, and I mean, I'm not overly harsh, but I'm honest with you, and I love it when you take that criticism and you put it into practice and put it into play and your show gets a little better or, you know, a future episode is going to benefit from that.

And, and, you know, I often refer to episode benefiting, but it's your audience that's benefiting.

You know, the more time and.

And preparation we put into an episode, the more the audience is going to benefit from it, the more they're going to be able to take away, apply to their own life, find that resource they've been missing, looking for, needing, you know, and to help help them in whatever trials and tribulations they're experiencing in life.

So it's awesome, man.

Keep it up.

Yeah, it has been great.

And even though, you know, I do the, you know, the feed drops on the show behind, you know, outside of the show, we, Brian and I, we spend a lot of time developing me and my skills and his skills.

I mean, he learns, you know, just by reading and doing some stuff, but I learned from actually learning from him standing by and being like, hey, we need to do this and this and that.

So there's a.

There's a lot more that goes behind the scenes still throughout the week and sometimes, you know, weeks ago, you know, like this week, we didn't spend much time talking, so things didn't develop as much as they could have, but we're both busy and, and we're doing our thing.

But, Brian, thanks for being here.

Thanks for making this a possibility and awesome.

Obviously, you know, taking the time to teach me some other things outside of this.

And, you know, if.

If you don't think you still have the opportunity to learn.

And I thought I was done with learning when I got out of high school and I said, hey, I'm just going to join the Navy and call it a.

Call it a day.

Because school was hard for me.

I had dyslexia.

It was.

It was difficult.

I was thrown right back into school.

You're right there in front of a desk learning a whole bunch of stuff again.

You're never going to stop learning.

So it's important to take on those learning capabilities and, and just see where they go and, and where they feel good on your pathway and your journey, wherever that might be.

But thanks a lot, brother.

Absolutely no worries chief.

We'll see you next week.

Next week.

So this, this is, this is just a great example of another great organization that's out there turning and burning.

It's all the way on the east coast.

I'm so glad to get some, some, some organizations that are all over the country on the show to talk about whatever they want to talk about.

Thanks to qrfup.org for, for suggesting Ed McLean come on my show and do this and all the stuff that they put out.

They put out a lot of information about a lot another of, of organizations that are doing, doing awesome things.

A lot of things.

I'm heading to California this week to do a golf tournament for Graystar that's uh, raising funds for the PTSD foundation of America.

Another guitar build.

I'm wearing the guitar build for American Patriot Music project shirt back a couple, couple months ago when we were at Warrior built building guitars for I think it was 12 or 14 vets, maybe 16 vets.

But it was such a great organization doing that.

They're going to have another guitar build.

October, November time frame.

And speaking of food, you know that, that the racing organizations need.

I'm looking forward to recon Chief incorporated Mike deleon, he's known as the food bender.

He's working on a food truck and putting together this whole off road food truck that's really going to be able to be fully capable of all kinds of different things.

And I think it's going to have like six smokers on.

I got, I don't know, three, three smokers that can handle all kinds of smoking so that barbecue developments in, in the works.

So there's just so many cool things.

So when I hear about racing, when I hear about food, when I hear about you know, all these different opportunities, a lot of things go in hand in hand.

So until next time, we'll talk to you later.

Strength and honor out the only way.

And we need nothing more.

The only way Together forever that's for sure.