Charge Forward Podcast

From a Flaming TV to a Debt-Free Life: How We Built a Marriage That Lasts with Emily Cripps (Part 1)

• Jim Cripps • Season 3 • Episode 12

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 đź”Ą A flaming TV on date two. A honeymoon where it rained inside our room. A Hill Climb that demanded total trust.

 Some couples bond over dinner… we bonded over chaos.
 And honestly? We wouldn’t change a thing. 

In this episode, Emily and I finally sit down together to pull back the curtain on 15 years of marriage, mistakes, miracles, and momentum. This isn’t a highlight reel. It’s the real stuff—the moments that built us, broke us, and pushed us to charge forward when quitting would’ve been easier. 

đź’™ We talk relationships:
How a polite Match rejection turned into a partnership built on calm, curiosity, communication, and choosing each other on the days it’s toughest. 

đź’¸ We talk money + marriage:
Why we went full Dave Ramsey when everyone laughed at us, how we paid off a house and built the next one debt-free, and what it really feels like when life delays pile up and you’re staring at a bulldozer in the yard. 

đź’Š We talk purpose:
Emily breaks down clinical trials in a way that actually makes sense—how treatments move from an idea on paper to something that saves lives, why data integrity matters, and how COVID changed the entire industry overnight. Zero jargon, all clarity. 

🌄 We talk adventure:
From flipping stereotypes on a dune buggy trail in Curaçao to climbing the toughest line on day one at Windrock, our best memories usually started with “Are you sure this is a good idea?” 

If you’re navigating a career pivot, building your finances, strengthening your marriage, or simply trying to keep moving when life throws a curveball, this episode will meet you right where you are. 

Hit follow, share it with someone who needs a push today, and drop a comment with the bold step you are taking next. 

Let’s charge forward together. 🚀🔥 

If one story, one insight, or one spark made you better this year—mission accomplished. 

New episodes every Thursday / Friday
Subscribe, review, and keep charging forward with us.

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Special Thanks to Our Sponsors: 

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Emily Cripps:

I was like, um, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not gonna do this anymore. It wasn't anything you said. You were perfect. And I turned you down. About I had a hard time with the vision of exactly what this podcast would come to be.

Jim Cripps:

Hey team, Jim Cripps here with the ChargeFord Podcast coming to you from HitLab Studios here in Nashville, Tennessee. Now I have a fantastic guest for you today. This one is absolutely near and near near and dear to my heart. It is my lovely wife, Miss Emily Cripps.

Emily Cripps:

Hello, dear.

Jim Cripps:

Hello. Welcome to the studio.

Emily Cripps:

Thank you very much.

Jim Cripps:

Now, this is absolutely your element.

Emily Cripps:

It is so far from my element, I don't even know what direction my element is in currently.

Jim Cripps:

I understand. Well, I appreciate you joining me in the studio. Um, just as a as a an easy one off the bat, um, obviously, we have an amazing life together. We're raising amazing sun. And about a year ago, I started doing this podcast. What are your thoughts on the podcast?

Emily Cripps:

I had mixed feelings about it. I knew from the beginning that you would have plenty to talk about. I had a hard time with the vision of exactly what this podcast would come to be. Was it gonna be sports related, finance related, uh, business related? And then it ended up being all of those things and so much more.

Jim Cripps:

Yeah, and you know, the guest lineup. I th there's no I'm not gonna say there's not a rhyme or reason, but because the undertone of it is people who default to charging forward when other people would give up, it does allow us to have uh guests from all different walks of life. Do you have a favorite guest?

Emily Cripps:

Ooh, um I think I have favorite moments from your guest. Um, I loved Valerie. I mean, Valerie was, I think Valerie was your first guest.

Jim Cripps:

Valerie was the second guest.

Emily Cripps:

Valerie's second guest. And I think there was just something about Valerie coming in and just being cool and calm and as if you were sitting on the couch next to Valerie and she's telling you whatever you needed to know. Then there were stories that were more in depth that were interesting or that pulled on your heartstrings or that caught you off guard. There were humorous moments with other guests. Um, of course, I have a soft spot for Anna. Like she's gonna be one of my favorite guests no matter what.

Jim Cripps:

I thought that was just gonna be a given. Yeah.

Emily Cripps:

Sure, we'll put her at the first of the list. Sorry, Valerie. Let's put Anna at the top of the list. Um, but I think there's something unique. And to be completely honest, I haven't listened to every episode. It's sometimes tricky for me to find a quiet moment to listen to a podcast. But because I hear snippets or I hear stories post the actual um recording of the podcast, and I'm thinking okay, that's one I know I've got to listen to. I've got to listen to that snippet.

Jim Cripps:

And so for anybody that hasn't seen the Anna DiCarlo episode, give listeners a little bit about Anna.

Emily Cripps:

Oh Lord, so this is great because when you start talking about what Anna provides for our family, what she has done for you and I, I think you lose some of your audience because they probably think, oh, this is crazy. This is this is a little outside the norm. But it's really one of those things that until you sit down with Anna and you have an experience, whether it's the Reiki, the lymphatic, the massage, her products, it's sometimes hard to put into words. So when you say, oh, it's a Reiki session, I think people automatically kind of go to something, maybe a little sort of crystals and moonlight and voodoo. And it's maybe that's like it is for some people, but for me, it's it's an opportunity to just reconnect. It's an opportunity for me to decompress. Um, and you know, Anna and I share a lot of humorous moments in our Reiki sessions as well.

Jim Cripps:

Well, and I met Anna first, and I was like, Oh my gosh, my wife has to come see you. And she goes, That's not how this works. You can't force your wife to come see me. And so I think the first time you came to see her, she was trying to make sure that I didn't like forcibly send you there.

Emily Cripps:

That was exactly as we started talking, and that was within the first easy first 10 minutes. It was in her very special way asking, Do you even want to be here? And now having you know gone through however a lot, maybe it's been a year now, and I can understand why she would be asking that. And I did have to give her some reassurance. I was like, Oh, no, no, no, I really want to be here. I'm glad that you accosted my husband in the parking lot. Not really, but y'all had a y'all had a mini Reiki session in the parking lot, because I think it for me, sometimes I have to have more than a gentle push into doing something, which I think you know that about me, that it requires a uh, you know, hey, you're gonna, we're gonna go and talk to Anna and you're gonna have a session. And so I was definitely willing to be there and she made sure of that. Because if you go and your heart's not in it, then you're not going to glean anything positive from that experience. You're not gonna be able to fully embrace having an experience with, in my case, a Reiki session or a lymphatic massage or any of the other services that she offers.

Jim Cripps:

Yeah. And so for anybody out there that is not familiar with Miss Anita Carlo, check her out. Uh, she owns La Belle Naturelle, and she also on the kind of Reiki and uh lymphatic drainage and those types of things, uh, it's called Unseen Harmony. But check her out, she's absolutely fantastic. If I I mean, I don't even know how to put it into words, but she does amazing work and uh does uh an amazing service for our family, and I can say that we are we're absolutely better because of her.

Emily Cripps:

Absolutely.

Jim Cripps:

Um, and then uh along the way, there've been there have been other guests and it's um that that have actually gone to see Anna. So you know, and that's always an interesting conversation because I don't really give them a whole lot to go on, and I'm just like you've got to experience it for yourself. I can't tell you what to expect. And for some of them, it takes them a couple days to get over it, yeah, but then they're like, I can't wait for my next one. And so um, I really think in a lot of ways, that's what that's how I look at our relationship. Like, uh, I kind of had to talk you into it.

Emily Cripps:

I knew that there was there was no not gonna be any way that I was going to escape this podcast and us at some point not talking about how we have two very different views on how our relationship started.

Jim Cripps:

So I won't I won't tell my story. You you you tell yours.

Emily Cripps:

I okay, I don't even know where to start. So I am terrible at dating. I never wanted to actually date. That's that's my I never wanted to learn how to drive a car, just want to get in the car and drive it. I never wanted to learn how to date, just wanted to like skip ahead to like date three or four. I don't have to go through the whole process of getting to know someone that's very uncomfortable. I don't like it. So long it comes, you know, you reach out through match.com. We are one of those couples that met on the interweb successfully. And I turned you down. I was like, um, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not gonna do this anymore. It wasn't anything you said, you were perfectly nice. I don't even remember at that point if we'd even spoken on the phone. We had we had spoken on the phone, and then I said thanks, but no thanks. And you know, my match.com subscription was done. And I like to tell people you were persistent yet not creepy. There's a big difference because someone can be persistent and creepy, and you were not the least bit creepy, but you were able to locate me in other social media platforms. We're really gonna date ourselves because at the time it was my space.

Speaker 2:

Oh, yeah.

Emily Cripps:

And then it was Facebook. So lo and behold, we reconnected and went on a date that was so far out of my comfort zone. I just threw the comfort zone completely out of the window. And we went on a six-hour motorcycle ride, which I remember my mom kind of maybe sort of freaked out a little bit about that. And I was like, it's fine. He's been riding motorcycles since he was like four. It's totally fine. I had convinced myself it was totally fine. Um, which, you know, probably was a slightly reckless. But I in that moment I knew that you were an honest, trustworthy person. I mean, I obviously I felt something because I was willing to get on the back of your motorcycle and ride around for six hours.

Jim Cripps:

There you go.

Emily Cripps:

Okay, now you tell you tell your side of the story.

Jim Cripps:

Well, I we will leave it at we will leave it as your story. It's close enough to the truth. And then uh the second date, I think, is uh borderline hilarious. And for any of you that that don't want to hear this, you're totally fine. You can skip ahead. But um, I can tell you that uh something catches fire on date two, and it was not our relationship. So date two, uh, we're talking about what to go do, that kind of thing. And you said, This is a little crazy, but I've been putting off buying a TV for like five years. In fact, I have the Arnois, I know where it's supposed to go, and I have a 13-inch TV in a big piece of furniture.

Emily Cripps:

A 13-inch TV that a physician that I was working with was cleaning out his house and was like, Hey, do you want this? And I thought, sure, that's fine. I didn't even go out and buy at that point. I hadn't even actually ever bought a TV. It was a bit of a daunting task to figure out what kind of TV would actually work.

Jim Cripps:

Yeah. And so my background is I had worked at Circuit City for uh five years and um in my previous life. So this is while Circuit City was still around. So for that'll that'll date us as well. And so we went to Circuit City, we went to Best Buy, we went to HH Gregg, and uh we we finally settled on a TV at HH Gregg. We get it, we bring it back to the apartment, and you were on the third floor, second floor, okay, second floor, and we get up there and we get it inside the armoire, which it had to kind of angle and kind of go in uh in a very precarious manner, and within the first two minutes, smoke starts coming out of the TV and it's on fire. We have to unplug it. And you kept your cool, you did not lose your mind. You did excuse yourself to the other room. Um, we very quickly got the TV out. I called the called HH Greg. We took it over there. It was a Sunday. This was at like 5 58 p.m. is when we pulled into the parking lot. They swapped out the TV, we brought it back, got it in there, and this one did not catch on fire.

Emily Cripps:

The the other piece to that, I mean, visualizing the two of us, like I think you were wearing like a nice shirt and slack, and this was July, August?

Speaker 2:

July, yeah.

Emily Cripps:

July. So it's hot as you know what. You're hauling a TV, trying to be so cool about it, hauling a TV up sta up two flights of stairs, and then having to haul said TV back down two flights of stairs, shimmying it into the back of your scion, all the while I am trying so hard to stay cool. And I'm like, I would think I was a I apologize 17 different times. You're like, it's fine. So I was like, how is it fine? No guy wants to walk around and hang out with a girl who can't pick out a TV, and then when she does pick out, blows up. So we go, we get it swapped out, we go to dinner and we leave dinner. We were like the last people at the restaurant.

Jim Cripps:

Restaurant that doesn't exist anymore. Actually, our first two dates, neither one of those neither one of those restaurants exist anymore.

Emily Cripps:

That should not, let's not put that out there.

Jim Cripps:

Well, our love outlasts those.

Emily Cripps:

Thank goodness.

Jim Cripps:

There you go.

Emily Cripps:

Um, and I think was that one at the parking lot when you said I'm exactly where I want to be.

Jim Cripps:

Yeah.

Emily Cripps:

Yeah. Um I said I I think I said something like, you know, I'm so sorry that this kind of went a little sideways, and you said, I'm exactly where I want to be. Yeah. I was like, oh.

Jim Cripps:

And especially for the guys out there, so you know, after the TV has caught on fire, and uh we've spent we've spent the afternoon, we because we started lunch, then we spent the afternoon looking for the TV. Um I was prepared for this, so I even had an extra shirt, so I threw on a different shirt to to get dirty, putting the TV in, all that. And then um we go to dinner, and at this point, now that I've not lost my mind, we got the TV swapped out, the the the TV didn't catch the rest of the apartment on fire. I figure I've got just a little bit of leadway here. So on the way to dinner, I said, What do you think about going to the lake next weekend? And she was like, Yeah, that sounds great. So, third date, we went to the lake with some friends, and um she got to meet the people that are important in my life that uh we were hanging out with, and of course, everybody gave their approval in as nonchalant a way as they could. Uh, I think Dana lost her mind, was like, oh my god, she's awesome.

Emily Cripps:

Thanks to Dana Lee.

Jim Cripps:

Thanks to Dana Lee. And so we sp spent the weekend at the lake and we've been together ever since.

Emily Cripps:

Yep.

Jim Cripps:

She tr strategically left her ID in my possession when we got back from the lake, so I had to return it.

Emily Cripps:

Obviously, I was so strategic about that, I didn't know I even did that.

Jim Cripps:

Um now, when we started talking, you had you have a very different job. And I think you have always struggled with how to tell people what that job is. And I explained what you do as soon as you told me what kind of job you had. And so what is it that you do?

Emily Cripps:

So my official job title is a senior clinical trial manager, and I work for a company that in this case, uh for what I do right now, we specialize in neuromuscular disorders. So, say in my case, uh treatment muscular dystrophy, we are in the process of creating treatment options for one particular treatment option for a particular type of muscular dystrophy in the hopes that, well, the goal overall is for it to be approved by the FDA so that a physician can provide it to their patient. Now, before I got to where I am now, I was doing a lot of travel. So there's multiple layers to this world of clinical research. There's people who are at the clinic, there's people who are traveling to the clinic, there's the physicians, there's regulatory agencies like the FDA, there are things that happen all across the globe. So when I would try to explain to someone that I am a, when we started dating, I was a clinical research, or I was, I guess I was a clinical research associate at the time. And I think I kind of blew it off. And you were like, that's what my sister does. And never met anybody who I could say what my job title was and knew exactly what that meant, um, which was a breath of fresh air, because to try and explain it to my parents or my friends. Actually, I have a friend who uh I think it was when I started traveling as a as a CRA, they call it a monitor, a clinical research associate CRA. And she equated it to Chandler from the TV show Friends. Because if you think back, nobody ever really understood what Chandler did. Nobody could explain it. And she was like, You're like Chandler. And I was like, that's not really that far. I mean, we don't have the same job, but it's not a at the time it wasn't well known. Now, with with COVID and the COVID vaccine, a lot more conversations happened about what are clinical trials, who participates in them, what do they mean? What's the outcome of them? And that's a unique for that particular disease, but the concept exists. Now, I would stumble over it and and we would be in hanging out with your friends or hanging out with with family or whatever, and I would try to explain it, and then they would just kind of look at you and you would give your explanation, which was And my explanation is very simple.

Jim Cripps:

She's like in-house FDA, so that when drugs are going through the approval process, all the I's are dotted, the T's are crossed, so that when they submit that to the FDA, all the guidelines have already been followed, so that there's no penalties, there's no red marks, and it there's nothing to keep them out of uh being marketable.

Emily Cripps:

Yeah. And that's really, I mean, it is. There's a it it there's moments where it it seems a lot more glamorous, but I have worked from home now. I counted this up. It's I'm on year 13. This is my 13th year of working from home. So I was pre-COVID working from home. There was a couple of other stints, but I'd always, you know, that was before working from home was even a concept. So I have a home office and I was traveling. I travel some, but not nearly as much as when we first started dating.

Jim Cripps:

Yeah, I mean, that first couple of years, which you know, it's funny because some people are like, oh, well, that's how you make four years seem like two. And that's really kind of how it was, because the first four years roughly that we were together, for the most part, you worked in Canada four days a week.

Emily Cripps:

Yeah, I was in Canada a lot. So I'd leave on Monday, come home on Thursday or Friday. The weekends are spent catching up on everything, laundry and house cleaning and visiting with friends and dating you. And even once we got married, right? I was still traveling.

Jim Cripps:

Um, and it that and that really worked out because you know, I was in retail and so I worked a lot of hours. And one of the challenges that I always had with dating is somebody was always tapping their foot, like, when are you gonna be home? And you were in an another country, so you weren't tapping your foot as to when I was gonna be home.

Emily Cripps:

And plus, that was the time when we really started looking at our finances. So I take comfort in knowing that because I wasn't at home, because we weren't at home, it's not like we were going out to dinner multiple times during the week. I wasn't running off like I do now to like, I'm gonna pop over to Target and spend some money. So I'm in I'm constantly at work, I'm constantly traveling, or I'm in a foreign country and I don't have an opportunity to pop over to. So we naturally just found ourselves able to save a lot of money during that time. I don't know that it would have worked had we if if I'd had more of a traditional job. Um, because then I think it's much easier to say, let's pop out and get something to eat, let's go out and hang out with friends for this event where you find yourself struggling with do we go do this thing or do we save money?

Jim Cripps:

Well, and I think it all lined up because around that same time as when we we started following the Dave Ramsey path. And I never will forget we had so many friends, and don't get me wrong, we we made decent money, but it's not like we made hundreds of thousands of dollars, especially back then. We were talking about uh 16 years ago. And so we had good jobs, but we weren't raking it in. And I we had so many people that were like, Oh, you're doing Dave Ramsey, and they're like, Oh, I didn't know you were broke. And it was for a while, it was almost like we were trying to re-educate people, like, no, we're not broke. We just we want to have money later in life. And so we we really did do every program that Dave Ramsey has, uh, all the way up to just a few years ago.

Emily Cripps:

Uh we did uh the money and marriage uh when on that's the best time because you know that your spouse really loves you a whole lot when he takes you to a money and marriage on Valentine's Day.

Jim Cripps:

Oh yeah. On Valentine's Day.

Emily Cripps:

On Valentine's Day, nothing says romance like learning about it. It was a good event. I mean, we joke about that. It was humorous to say that hey, what y'all do for Valentine's Day? We went to a money and marriage seminar with, oh, what's her name?

Jim Cripps:

Rachel Cruz.

Emily Cripps:

Rachel Cruz, thank you. Um and it was, it was great, it was it was good. It was a it was a fun evening. It's humorous because you think about uh Valentine's Day with, you know, hearts and roses and this terribly romantic moment. And ours was enjoyable and we were learning about how to manage our finances.

Jim Cripps:

But in a lot of ways it's paid off. Um, you know, think back to like when we paid our house off. You know, what a great day that was. Yeah. Um, and then building the new house with no debt. You know, there's there's not many people that can say that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Jim Cripps:

And and we built our forever home, Halkinwood, hopefully. Yeah. You know? And that was a that was a trying process.

Emily Cripps:

We were just talking to friends about when it was all said and done, we just didn't like our house. We moved in, we were so over it. You know, we were over all the decision making, all the delays, all the frustrating moments, all the aggravations that it puts a black cloud over this monumental occasion that it took us several months before we were like, all right, I love this place. I love my front porch, I love my kitchen, like I love my crazy tall ceilings, right?

Jim Cripps:

Well, so some of the things uh, you know, just they came together with no, no, no hiccups whatsoever. I think of the penny tile on the backsplashes.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Jim Cripps:

Like we walked in, we were in the tile store all of like eight minutes, and we're like, that one. Yep, that one. Okay, great. And then it's out of stock. It's like, well, how do we get it? Well, we don't they don't make that one anymore. What stores can we get it from? You know, yeah, it's a um that was a trying process. You know, I was the contractor, and I think a lot of people they start out with a smaller house and then go up to bigger one and a bigger one and a bigger one. And the by by the time they build one like we built, um, they've built five or six already and we didn't we didn't have any practice houses.

Emily Cripps:

No, your middle name is persistent. We weren't gonna go with something we're like, no, we're just gonna go. We're gonna dive in the deep end on this one.

Jim Cripps:

All right, so I don't think I've ever asked you this, so this is gonna be a fun one. Uh-huh. What did you think when I bought the bulldozer to start digging the hole?

Emily Cripps:

Oh, I thought you were crazy. Hands down. The rest of my family, I think, pretty all of my friends, if you were to ask Shauna Percival, Shauna Percival would tell you she was crazy you were crazy. It was it was a moment of like, this is crazy, but there's always a a fraction of that crazy that I'm like, he knows what he's doing. I don't know what he's doing. And I don't always have to know what he's doing. I am supportive in his decisions, the crazy ones, the sane ones, and everything in between. But there was a part of me was like, I'm nervous about this, but I took comfort in knowing that within your circle, there are people that could say, Jim Crips, this is what you need to do. Jim Crips, this is this is how this is how this is gonna play out. And I had, although it I struggled, I knew that if I waited long enough, you would come to the realization of I'm gonna need some help. You didn't need for me to tell you, honey, you're gonna need some help. That's I have to have the patience. And you either you recognize I need the help or I've got this figured out. And that that doesn't, there's nothing, there's no that's not a dig towards you at all. I think that's where you you have to you have to find where your comfort level is. And I'm just kind of along for the ride, you know, to say, all right, he's he's gonna be getting close. But the you know, it's a lovely piece of yard art at this point. So I'm I'm excited for it to go live in its next home, whatever that may be.

Jim Cripps:

Um I think it's getting closer. It's getting closer. Um, so one of the things that we did uh on our honeymoon, we had an eventful honeymoon.

Emily Cripps:

Um You may want to clarify that for your listeners.

Jim Cripps:

Jill Reidelberger would say we had an eventful honeymoon. How's that? Um but in we also had experiences on our honeymoon that uh make for great stories that are uh PG. And so one of the ones is uh one, because Emily booked everything before we left, um everybody thought I was Mr. Burkett.

Emily Cripps:

Which is my maiden name. Yeah, yeah.

Jim Cripps:

And then the the next uh fun piece to that was we had uh a great resort that we were at, and the room that we were in, every day when it rained, it rained inside of our room. And when we changed hotels, when we checked in and we shared that story, the the the clerk or the the guy knew what room we were in. Because it was well known on the island of Curacao that in room, I think it was 210, it rained. Whenever it rained outside, it rained inside the room, which blew my mind. Um, but we did. We had a we had a fantastic time, and one of the things that we did was we took a doom buggy tour. And that doom buggy tour was was pretty comical, just for the sheer fact that on the island of Curacao, they don't really like Americans, and they're very upfront about the fact that they don't like Americans. They tell you to your face, uh, they're not rude about it, they just say, Oh, you're the Americans. We don't really care for Americans, but you paid your money, so we're gonna let you do this. And we went on a doom buggy tour. And they talk down to us, like, we know that you're gonna not pay attention to us, you're not gonna do the right things, all these things, don't do this, don't do that, don't do this. And we get about an hour into the tour, and all of his countrymen, the people from there or from their uh sister country, had done the wrong things. And he goes, I apologize. You're the only group that can drive, so I'm not gonna cut your tour short. Your tour continues on. I have no doubt that you're going to be able to do it with no problem. I've got to tow these people back to home base. So we get to the end of the tour, and it ends at this uh the owner's home. And she comes out and she goes, Oh, you must be the good Americans. And we're just floored. We're like, I guess so. She offers us a beer. Hey, we'll take you back to your hotel, blah, blah, blah. Uh, but that is when I decided I wanted us to get a razor. Now, in true Dave Ramsey fashion, this was 2010, and we saved until November of 2015. 2015, we bought a razor, and my lovely wife was willing to go off-roading in the woods.

Emily Cripps:

Yes.

Jim Cripps:

Please share your your side of that.

Emily Cripps:

Well, before that, let's not let's not leave out the nugget of information of what day you went and bought the razor. Was that the first razor?

Jim Cripps:

Oh no, that's the second razor. Oh, okay.

Emily Cripps:

Okay, my bad. My bad. All right, we'll come back to that. So there's the first razor and it's red, right? It's red two-seater. And I was not thankfully, having sat in one on the honeymoon, honeymoon, I kind of have an idea of what this was. So then, you know, there's a whole there's a whole subculture, I guess, of razor life. Um, and you know, I think what made me kind of nervous about it was oh gosh, is this gonna be cold, wet, and muddy, right? Which all things that just didn't sound really enjoyable. Thankfully, you were not one to sleep in a tent in the woods. So we lucked out because we had the cabins that we stayed at, which were nice and warm and comfortable. Um, and I guess the I was the first time when we went up that crazy hill. Okay, yeah. It's not gonna be just a little jaunt in the woods, right? No.

Jim Cripps:

Well, to tee it up, so uh we had friends that had bought razors. So uh Elle and Jen Laguten, they had razors, and we bought uh we bought ours, and then uh a couple of Elle's friends had razors, and then later your your sister and and uh brother-in-law, they they bought a razor. So we are in in that scene. We are in it, but on the first day that I take Emily for real riding, not just around the property, but for real.

Emily Cripps:

Yeah, we were so what I remember is because there was also some gentlemen that were riding with us that had dirt bikes. Is that am I you motor, but what do we call them? Dirt bikes? Okay, and so we were at the base of a significant hill with lots of ruts in it, and I am, you know, again, I take comfort in my husband, does crazy things, but he knows his limit. He knows my limit. Um, surely he knows my limit, but he knows his limit. And and he's had some adventures on things with tires and motors. Um, and so the guys on the dirt bike couldn't get up it. And I think you were just like, let's try it. And there was just I think there was a collective kind of like, are you sure about this, Jim Kripps?

Jim Cripps:

Like, are we are you well what we didn't know because you know, to paint some color to this story, is L and the rest of the guys got there the day before and they were unable to climb this hill. So, number one, this is the first day out in this razor. So this razor is the razor that we still own today, and uh the razor that I'll pay for for the rest of my life because I went to get it in the middle of an ice storm on Valentine's Day.

Emily Cripps:

Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Valentine's Day.

Jim Cripps:

So Valentine's Day around our house is just a little bit different than it is anywhere else. So we might be at a Dave Ramsey event or we might be doing the opposite of Dave Ramsey. We're out buying a razor in the middle of an ice storm, 22 hours away round trip. And uh big shout out to my dad, James Cripps, for uh going on that road trip with me. That was a that was an interesting jump. But we get back and I get this razor ready to go. We go to Windrock. Windrock is our favorite place to go ride, and uh, it's our first time there as a couple. I've been there one other time. And Elle knows that I like to lead. Even if it's a place I've never been before, I like to, I don't want to watch somebody else do it, I want to go do it. Well, they thought I would get to the bottom of this hill and decide not to go up it. So they let me lead. And the previous day they spent an hour trying to get up it and couldn't get up it. So when we get to the bottom, I know that I can't stop. I need to go on. So I literally I said, hold on to your skirt, this one's gonna get real. And we go up it. And right before you get to the top of it, there's a large rock and two deep ruts. And and literally you launch yourself over the top of it. So we land and we're at the top, and we wait for everybody else.

Emily Cripps:

And I had my eyes closed the whole time, but I did somehow manage to break a fingernail, which that's that's the picture that I remember as I'm holding up my finger. But I I just I closed my eyes and thought, oh gosh, he knows what he's doing. That's what I kept telling myself. He knows what he's doing. So I didn't even, I have no visual of what it actually looked like to get up this in my mind mountain because that's what it felt like. But I do recall us kind of coming around the corner, the, you know, coming around the bin and waiting because we had perfect line of sight to see everybody else come across, waiting, waiting, waiting. And I I think they ended up going, didn't they go around it?

Jim Cripps:

No, they ended up coming up it, but uh they had to winch up it. And then they shared the story that they didn't think that we would attempt it. We they really didn't think that we would go up it and surely not actually get to the top. Um, so anyway, it was it was a lot of fun, and uh just uh I'm appreciative that you're you're willing to go on some of these crazy adventures with me. And uh, you know, one of the crazy adventures that we have is is raising an an amazing son.

Emily Cripps:

Yes, very much.

Jim Cripps:

And so what would if if I'm gonna say what is uh what is one of your favorite moments about raising castle or a story about castle, what would you say? Ooh. Team is Jim Cripps here with the Charge Forward Podcast. I just want to tell you I love you. I appreciate you listening, I appreciate you for subscribing and sharing the Charge Forward Podcast with people you know and you love because that's what we're here for. We are here to share the amazing stories, the things that people have been through, the ways that they were able to improve their life so that you can take little nuggets from theirs and help improve your story and be better tomorrow than you were today. I hope that this is the tool you needed at the right time and that you find value in the amazing guests that we bring each and every week. Thanks so much, and don't forget new episodes drop every Thursday.