Steve Eubanks Oral History Interview, Part 2, January 9, 1998

Steve Eubanks: Synergy. That's how I characterize the whole, as synergetic, a synergistic process that together accomplishes a lot more than either of these things would accomplish alone. You know, making changes and doing these things. It was just a partnership between research and management. That is what it is all about. The collaboration, working together. That kind of thing was really neat. Two other things that I listed, and one of them was passion. That's what made an awful lot of things work, some people who had chemistry, that passion for our work. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever, that ecosystem management 00:01:00in the Forest Service and as a national paradigm, would not have happened if it had not been for that period of time, three to four years, things really working together on the Andrews. There's not one iota of doubt in my mind that'd never have surfaced if we had not been working together. I'm sure that you'd find some people who would disagree with that, maybe even among the Andrews group, but because of the visibility of the process, what we were doing to bring it about, and the results of the real and visible things that brought about this national movement to ecosystem management.

This included a lot of articles and discussions from Jerry Franklin. He had great visibility in regards to New Forestry, and many articles on the subject in 00:02:00major publications. Jerry had an awful lot of visibility in 1988, '89, and '90, even on Capitol Hill. He gave a lot of presentations there, and had a lot of visibility with the Forest Service at the national level. The reason that the Forest Service, from my perspective, chartered a "new perspectives" team, an ecosystem team at the national level, is because of Jerry Franklin and the work that was done on the Andrews. Jerry was building on all that. I mean, it wasn't just Jerry alone, it was all the stuff going on. Jerry was a focal point for that, the spokesperson, and I give him credit for that. The importance of the work during that several-year period, and I may sound arrogant, but I don't mean to be that way.

I just really believe that all that spawned the national movement of ecosystem 00:03:00management, and there wasn't visibility of that issue anywhere else in the country. I do know that's what caused the major emphasis of that at the national level of the Forest Service. I had a really interesting perspective of moving from Blue River to the Washington Office right during that transition period. So I was able to see all that was happening in the Washington office. And it was being driven from this effort. It was not a Forest Service national level, "Gee, this is an new thing and we ought to push it kind of thing." It was pushed on the Forest Service at the national level. Congress and other people pushed the Forest Service into doing something at the national level. Which is how things happen frequently, most often not a top end driven change. Change is not driven top end, this kind of change. It came from the ground up.

Max Geier: Who in Congress did you see pushing that?

Eubanks: Guys like Peter DeFazio. Peter was a very strong supporter of what we 00:04:00were doing, and I spent time with him personally talking about it. After I moved to D.C., he asked me to come and put on a presentation on Capitol Hill for a number of staffers. He was certainly a supporter, and he was a critic of the Forest Service nationally, pushing things like that. But, there was just a general emphasis there, an interest in things, and we were getting so much visibility that the Forest Service was sort of getting, and if we don't do something at the national level to capture this initiative, we are going to be left behind. Again, this is my perspective, but I think that's how it happened. The last word that I had was risk. To me, the folks that have the biggest risk were the research folks. And some of them may have suffered because of things 00:05:00that they did at the Andrews, in a little bit different way. That was because of this publish or perish mentality in research, and it's really there. I mean it's real, and I'm sure the researchers have talked about this. The risk that they were taking, they were spending more of their effort in direct technology transfer than they were in writing books and writing publications. Every hour that they spent out on a tour was an hour that they weren't writing. And I give them a tremendous amount of credit for that commitment. Because to me, because of my experiences on the Andrews, I have a personal philosophy that the only effective way, the most effective way of transferring technology in dealing with 00:06:00issues like we were dealing with, is on the ground, person-to-person. It's not through writing a publication.

And the reason is we were out on the ground, doing the kinds of things we were talking about, talking about the kinds of things we were talking about, everybody there comes away with a common picture of what we were talking about. When you're pointing to these wildlife trees, pointing to these practices, they are seeing the same thing. When you're sitting in a conference or you're reading a publication or whatever, you're getting a piece of the picture, and everybody is forming a different picture in their minds of what is being talked about. Even if you're showing slides, it's not the same as a 3-D sweeping panorama. You're giving just a piece of the whole picture. Certainly when you're reading a publication you're not getting the whole picture. So, tours reach a much smaller 00:07:00group at any given time than other kinds of media or technology transfer, but it's a lasting thing. Everybody there has a common reference point from that point on for further discussion. So, I am a strong believer in doing things on the ground, in-person, because of my experiences there. And that's what I believe the researchers felt as well. They felt like they were having a much larger effect, long-term effects, by putting their efforts there, but they don't get credit for that. I don't think the Andrews folks have ever gotten full credit for the kinds of things that went on there. In fact, there is almost a certain level of professional jealousy with the Andrews effort. Again, my 00:08:00perspective. But, you know, the kind of risks that they were taking, career-wise, I have great respect for them, you know the risk and the time commitment.

Geier: I think you've answered my question, I think we should transition here, ask you about the most significant legacy here. I take it you see that as an ecosystem management initiative?

Eubanks: Yeah, I really can't say it enough times. I believe that was the epicenter of the movement, the recent movement to ecosystem management. I don't know. There are lots of people who say [Aldo Leopold talked about ecosystems], there are a number of other people that talked about ecosystem management a long time ago. And I agree with that. I'm not trying to replace those kinds of things. In terms of this recent, emphasis, recent movement in the ecosystem 00:09:00arena, I believe the Andrews was at the center of that.

Geier: From what you've said, you had a strong personal attachment for the people and the process you were engaged in there. You did leave in '89. Maybe you could talk a little bit about your decision to leave and what attracted you to Washington.

Eubanks: Well, that's the toughest decision I've ever made in the Forest Service. It was kind of an interesting process. I was in D.C. on a training session, this was in the fall of '88, and about a year prior to that I had applied for a job in Washington, D.C., and different things had happened and they hadn't filled the job. I had lost track of it, and was in D.C. for a training session, and got a call from Mike Kerrick, he said we have got a job 00:10:00offer for you in D.C. I didn't even know the job had been re-advertised, but unbeknownst to me, it had been re-advertised and my name had been placed in the pool. I figured if they wanted me the first time, they would have hired me. So, my name had been put back into the application pool automatically, because I had applied the first time. So, here I was in Washington D.C., and I walked around, went and talked to some of the folks in the western office, in this position, who would be my supervisors and people I would be working with. Then I just spent hours walking around on the Washington mall, thinking to myself, "Is this what I really want to do?" Because I was having a heck of a good time, lots of 00:11:00things were going on, and I wanted to be a forest supervisor. I knew at that point that I did. But I also knew that I was really enjoying what I was doing. Boy, it was a tough decision. I didn't want to leave what I was doing, but one of the things that I had hoped to do was be able to take the lessons learned there [Blue River/Andrews] to a higher level. I believed that as a district, we had significantly influenced things at a much higher level. At that point, the Forest Service had still not moved to a new perspective in ecosystem management, and I didn't know that was going to happen, but my intent was to take those lessons to a forest level somewhere. I didn't know which forest, but I believed 00:12:00that if I could help make a difference at the district ranger level, I thought I could certainly help make a difference at a forest supervisor level, maybe even a little bigger difference. And that's what ultimately drove me to make that decision.

For a long time after I made that decision, I wondered if it was the right decision. You know, because one thing I was giving up was all those close relationships. I still have a personal friendship with a lot of those people. Art McKee and Chris Maser, those are the folks that I have maintained the closest relationship with. But, giving up the almost day-to-day dialogue and interaction, was something that I immediately missed. The ability to have the 00:13:00intellectual discussions that we had about ecosystems, and research folks are fascinating people. The kinds of intellectual discussions you can have about all these topics on ecosystem management, and you know, what's the ultimate effect on the earth, and what's the future and all those kind of things. Those are the kind of things that really inspire me. That's something that I missed immediately, not that other people can't be intellectual, but a specific kind of discussions dealing with ecosystems. And these are people are really sharp individuals. Even years after I came here, I still wondered if I made the right 00:14:00decision. I really love the job I'm doing now, and believe we've made some real differences here, but I will always wonder if that was the right decision, and what would have happened if I'd stayed, and what would I be doing now.

Geier: I think I'm a little bit confused. The D.C. position you didn't take. Is that right?

Eubanks: No, I did take it.

Geier: You did take it. And what was that?

Eubanks: That was as the National Recreational Strategy Coordinator [Forest Service]. I was there a little over two years.

Geier: Your reasons for going from there to Chippewa? [National Forest-Minnesota]

Eubanks: The reason I went to D.C., was really as a sort of stepping stone to a forest supervisor job. And so, after two years in a Washington office, why, 00:15:00forest supervisor jobs started coming open. And this was actually, believe it or not, the first one I applied for. I applied for two or three at the same time, or about the same time, but this was the first one that I had actually applied for. And this looked like an interesting area, and you know, a good spot.

Geier: I'm curious if there were any adaptive management ideas you had for Chippewa?"

Eubanks: Before I came?

Geier: Before you came. Is that what attracted you here?

Eubanks: No. I didn't really know that much about what were the specifics of management. I knew more just about the general area. I checked it out, and when I did get the job, one of the first things I checked was the proximity of research individuals. And there is a research lab just on the other edge of the 00:16:00forest at Grand Rapids. And so I started, pretty much when I first came, I started making contacts with the research community, and there was a fair amount of turnover in the lab the first few years. But some individuals and I began talking about the possibility of doing something like an LTER site here, and that looked like it would not happen, because the funding from NSF wasn't there. So we said we would do something LTER-like here in the area. We will try and duplicate the function of the Andrews, not necessarily as an LTER site, but in terms of how things operate. And the last year-and-a-half or so, things have really begun to develop, really exciting in terms of the commitment to the North 00:17:00Central Station, the interest and the people involved and that kind of thing. It's beginning to build to the point where you can see some things now that I believe we now can duplicate from. The Andrews is one of a kind and always will be, because of not only the individuals but the number of individuals. You have a large number of people in one spot, Corvallis. Here we have a small lab, relatively speaking, and some people in Duluth, from the University of Minnesota. So we have a much smaller area, number of people to begin with, but we are going to create somewhat similar in terms of critical mass, and get some things going, and it's going to operate similarly, but not to the scale.

Geier: You mentioned earlier that Jim Caswell kind of brought you up to speed on what was going on in the district. How would you characterize your role in the 00:18:00search for a replacement at Blue River when you were leaving?

Eubanks: There wasn't any. No, I had left the area. I don't know that Jim Caswell had any role in my selection either, but I had left the area and did not have any opportunity for transition other than a few notes I left for my successor [Lynn Burditt], saying "good luck," and if you ever want to talk about things, let me know.

Geier: If you could, maybe you could identify some of the key components of your effort to jump start an LTER-like process here, or to replicate to some degree what happened on the Andrews. What kinds of things do you look for to do that here?

Eubanks: Developing communication, first of all. Maintaining reasonably close 00:19:00contacts, personally, encouragement and discussions at the station level and the lab level, knowing the people involved, something that I should normally do in my job anyway, but I think of it in a higher level. Also, involving a fair number of people here on the forest, getting them involved in discussions with me and interchanges, so that it's not just me, but it becomes institutionalized. Just last month, we had our first joint meeting with the lab, and what I'm hoping to do is set that up on a regular basis, so that we meet periodically. 00:20:00Something like the LTER meetings in Corvallis, but obviously it's not LTER in this case. Just to get together and talk about what are they learning, how can we help, what are we finding out, that kind of stuff. Because of the interest that I have shown, I've been asked to participate in a number of discussions at the North Central Station. And I believe that some shifts in emphasis have occurred even in terms of helping the Grand Rapids, several years after most of the scientists had left, you know, retired. They [lab] were way down and now 00:21:00there's this resurgence of interest. They are actually adding on to the lab, wanting and needing more space, and adding scientists.

Geier: It must be rare in the Forest Service right now?

Eubanks: Yes, research has had some tough times. But this lab is doing pretty well now. And they've actually moved some people up from St. Paul, some project people, so I'm really excited about the commitment that's being made and the possibilities of what we can do together, and the kind of communications that we have. We have three experimental forests on the national forest [Chippewa], and none of them are as large or of the same significance as the Andrews but there are three of them. But what I've tried to portray is, let's not worry about 00:22:00doing stuff just on experimental forests, but the whole forest is open. We are starting to do studies around the forest, it's just real exciting, and we've got really good people to work with.

Geier: One of my questions of you about how you might perceive the role of the experimental forests now, compared with when you started working at the Andrews? Is it functioning more?

Eubank: Yeah. I mean the experimental forests on this national forest, and there's been research on some of these experimental forests for many decades. Some growth and yield studies on pine, some by Bob Buckman [PNW Station Director], and they actually did burning here back in the '50's. This is where he [Buckman] started his research career. Some really neat work has been done here, so there's a long history of good work, mostly silviculture-related. The focus of the lab at Grand Rapids has shifted to riparian and aquatic research, 00:23:00which, from our perspective is pretty appropriate given that the Chippewa National Forest has more water than any other national forest. The two Minnesota national forests [Chippewa and Superior] together have 20-25 percent of the water in the national forest system. So we have lots of aquatic-riparian kinds of issues. There's a silviculture element to that John Zasada was involved in. You've probably heard John's name in your work. John was part of the Andrews group when I was out there. John is the silviculture researcher our of Rheinlander, Wisconsin, but he's now he's assigned to the Grand Rapids lab part-time. Really neat opportunities.

In terms of the role of the experimental forest, the experimental forest still has a role. It's a place where there are specific management objectives and 00:24:00specific management guidelines and specific protections, and I believe they are every bit as important as always. But in terms of general management and general application of management strategies, I believe the whole forest ought to be an experimental forest in that sense, or at least open to it. Other than the specific role of experimental forests, there is no reason why we can't do that [experiment] on the whole forest. It doesn't violate our mission, doesn't violate the intent of the presence of national forests, and it doesn't compromise the role of the experimental forest for research either.

Geier: How would you characterize the way in which technology transfer takes 00:25:00place in the 1990's as opposed to the 1980's?

Eubanks: We were talking about, let's see, the role of the experimental forests -

Geier: I think we covered it pretty well. I was asking about technology transfer.

Eubanks: Yeah, the role or the method.

Geier: Yeah, or how effective it is now in comparison with earlier?

Eubanks: Interestingly enough, I was part of this report in which we talk about research and management and how they should and need to work together. I believe, what I've talked about earlier, that the most effective way for technology transfer to occur is more true today, as things begin to evolve 00:26:00faster, the need for good communication, personal communications is even more important. The role of adaptive management is even more important because the kinds of things that we're finding out. I don't think we can either afford to be waiting three or four years for a publication to come out. That's my personal belief. I mean, the kind of stuff that we're finding is the kind of stuff we ought to be communicating on an immediate basis, and adapting our management to account for the new information. I don't know any other way to describe it. To 00:27:00me, that's more important today than it ever has been. We get in this mode nowadays that everything has to be electronic, and it's just not as effective as person-to-person communications down on the ground. We lose the human touch, you know, the low-tech, the technology transfer is to me, the model or the paradigm, even the preferred paradigm.

Geier: I'm curious, you've been talking a lot about communications and person-to-person interactions. Are there obstacles to that in the Forest Service, institutionally or personally?

Eubanks: Both. We have a lot of people working in the Forest Service that didn't join forestry to take up communications. If you're familiar with Myers-Briggs, 00:28:00you know personality type mapping [test], and the Forest Service has a much higher percentage of people, I believe, on the introverted end of the scale. People tend to take natural resource management, get out there in the woods, and be alone. We've always talked about that, and I believe to some extent, it is true. But it is probably less true today than it was ten years ago, but I still think it is true. So that is part of the personal aspect, and institutional part of it has several facets. There isn't anybody who's advocating not talking to one another, but again, there still is to some extent, a "publish or perish" philosophy in the research community that hasn't changed. You know, one of the 00:29:00things that we talked about in the national forests, is how research and management work together. There really are very few incentives for people to operate as the Andrews group operates, very few incentives for researchers to get together in a collaborative mode amongst themselves, let alone in a collaborative mode with management. So that is partly institutional.

Another element of the institutional situation, is the fact that we are going to downsize to the point where we aren't going to have people who have time for reading and communicating. It is becoming more and more difficult during a time when it's becoming more and more critical. Here on the Chippewa, we've lost 00:30:00twenty five percent of our employees. We obviously do not have the same amount of time to coordinate, for example, the meeting I had last month with researchers in Grand Rapids, in which I had a lot of interest. I had many fewer takers than I had people interested, just because of the press of business. I mean, we've got forest planning going on, we've got all the other things going on, and people are saying, "God, I wish I could make it but I just can't." That's the situation we're in, and it's not like the institution is driving that, but the framework of the institution is, funding-wise. That makes it much more difficult.

And again, during a time where it is becoming more and more political. The debates and controversy over resource management are becoming more intense everywhere. Things are starting to pop out here in Minnesota that we hadn't 00:31:00dealt with in the past. And as those things pop out, the importance of research and management being together, working together in the collaborative mode, are more and more important because of the credibility I talked about earlier; the synergistic credibility we have with research and management being on the same page. You have to have that in order to effectively answer the critics. We have an awful lot of critics who, well, their criticisms are "out-to-lunch" from my perspective. They're posturing, but in order to deal with those kinds of criticisms, you have to have sound research and management.

Geier: Yeah, Lynn Burditt [Blue River Ranger] said they cut back from, I think 00:32:00it's down to 440 employees, from 750 or something [Willamette National Forest].

Eubank: Well, they still got 440, we've got 120, and we're harvesting about the same amount on this forest [HJA/adjacent region] as the Willamette [as a whole]. So, there are more complexities on the Willamette than we have here, but not enough to justify three times or four times the number of employees. So, I mean that's the kind of difficulties we are facing.

Geier: That brings me my next question. It has to do with issues of the relevance of the work done at the H.J. Andrews compared to your work here in the Midwest. How well does what's being done on the Andrews extrapolate to other regions, other forests than the Willamette?

Eubanks: The same kinds of questions, the same kinds of general relationships 00:33:00that are being dealt with on the Andrews, apply in any forested ecosystem. I've had the good fortune to be able to travel around to different parts of the world. Also, in other studies and readings and those kinds of things, I think some of the same basic ecosystem elements that we talked about, coarse woody debris, fragmentation, standing dead and live trees as legacy to the next generation of forest, and all kinds of stuff; I don't know of any forested ecosystem where that doesn't apply. Those same elements and general principles, now obviously, you're talking about different magnitudes. You're talking about different decomposition rates, you're talking about different species, you're talking about all kinds of different ramifications. But those general overriding 00:34:00principles apply. I mean, you're not going to find any forest where it doesn't have some kind of disturbance regime, doesn't have some kind of coarse woody debris at some time in the cycle. You are not going to find any kind of an aquatic ecosystem that doesn't have some kind of coarse woody debris element to it, you know, those kinds of things. That kind of worked, I mean, folks like Mark Harmon are tied into the international network dealing with log decomposition. He was and I'm sure, he still is. They are looking for partner sites all over the world for dealing with these kinds of things. I could not take the Blue River coarse woody debris guidelines and say we're going to apply 00:35:00them here on the Chippewa Forest. That wouldn't make any sense. It is a totally different context here. But I could take the principles of the coarse woody debris guidelines of the Blue River, and say, "We need to develop something like that here." And I mean, you know, we have class one, two, three, four and five logs here on the Chippewa, just like out there. But they're different species, they have different decomposition rates, there's a different sort of context here. But the principles all apply.

Regarding forest fragmentation here on the Chippewa, we have begun to implement large patch cutting. We've done some ecosystem studies here in an area where we found that the natural disturbance pattern was very large patches related to fire, so we're beginning to harvest six and seven hundred acre areas, which means we are saving larger patches in other areas. Same principles, different 00:36:00species, different context, but same principles in terms of disturbance patterns. The relevance is that the Andrews, on a number of different facets, it has been on the cutting edge of asking different kinds of questions about forest ecosystems. That has people reading and encouraged to ask the same kinds of questions in other forests ecosystems because of the similarities of principles. The kinds of things that Tim Schowalter was finding out about insects in the old-growth stands of the Andrews, can drive people to ask the same kinds of questions about the kinds of insects and the kinds of relationships, in a forest 00:37:00back here. The species are different, the answers are going to be a little bit different, but the relevance of understanding that particular piece of the ecosystem is just as important here.

Geier: The only question I wanted to deal with regards a session on Lookout Creek with a number of people who had been there for a long period of time. And we were talking about just the general concept of long-term research and what that entailed. I was curious from a forest manager's standpoint, what some of the benefits and setbacks might be for ongoing long-term research? You mentioned that you have studies here going back to the 50's.

Eubanks: Well, long-term research provides historical contact. There are some things you can find out in a short period of time, and there are other things you can't. Obviously, the whole premise of log decomposition was looking at what 00:38:00happens over a long period of time. Now, as I mentioned earlier, there are some things they've began finding out with in the first year, the second year, the first five years, of log decomp study. They found out some amazing things. But there is some other stuff that they won't know the answers to, for fifty, one hundred, two hundred years, because some logs last that long in the forest, so you can't answer that question until that period of time. But they were finding out things in the first couple of years that you can project ahead to make some best guesses about what probably will happen. The other part of long-term research we're finding here on the Chippewa, is that there is some stuff that 00:39:00was done forty years ago, that, we've kind of gone full-cycle. We've made some changes, we've come back to the point of what they were talking about then, and what is actually relevant today. And they've got answers for some of the things we would like to pursue.

It is not that in the intervening years, people were either dumb or not paying attention to what happened before. There were just different philosophies and for some, the philosophical focus has come full circle. So personally, I have a high level of support for long-term, theoretical research, and some of the long-term practical research or even basic research, and also have high levels of support for short-term theoretical research and practical research, but 00:40:00long-term certainly has a strong role. We just need to do that and the difficulty is getting people to commit to long-term. Chris Maser has talked about the western mentality of not having a long-term focus, but a short-term focus, usually a year or so, or one based on profit; what do we gain from what we are doing today, rather than looking at the implications and gains in the long run. And we need to take that into account, and understand that we can't learn everything there is to know in the short-run. It's not all short-term focus, and it shouldn't be.

Geier: One of the questions they respond to is the question of viability of long-term research. Roy Silen and Mike Kerrick and others talked about the 00:41:00phenoma at the Andrews where research has been carried on the same studies, or same measurement period over a long period of time, but Roy and some other people have the studied opinion that long-term research can't survive the life of the researcher, or in other words, the personal passion that you talked about earlier.

Eubanks: To some extent that's evident on some of the work that was done back in the '50's by Bob Buckman. When he left, there wasn't anyone to carry it on, you know, that had burning for that kind of research. But on the other hand, the fact that he did it for then, and the fact that we now have people again with passion for the same interest, maybe there is a missing link in between, but some of the work he did then, you can pick up on it again. So, yeah, Mark Harmon, ain't going to live 200 years, so who's going to take on the log decomp study when he's gone? Who's going to have the passion for it? I don't know, but 00:42:00I would say that nothing has been lost during this time period that Mark has been carrying out log decomp. Just because he's not going to be around, and maybe nobody will carry it forward. If that is the case, so be it. Take a look at how much has been gained in the interim. Again, I'm just fascinated by all the information that they've found out in the first few years. And obviously, they've found out a lot of stuff since then that I'm not even aware of. I'd probably be dumbfounded, does that mean if Mark isn't around, all of that has been lost. Hopefully, what will happen is that somebody will be inspired by what he's found out, what he and others have found out in the first few years, and somebody will grab onto a piece of that and run with it, and continue on.

Geier: Do you think, one of the things I'm getting at here is, is there anything 00:43:00in the structure of the Forest Service, the institutional culture of the Forest Service, that would either continue or halt the long-term research?

Eubanks: I don't know. I think researchers in general have more of a tolerance for the long- term viewpoint than western society in general, at least that has been my experience. People are willing to take a little longer look at it. In fact, if anything, there's more of a reluctance to make any short-term guesses or pronouncements based on what has been learned, than there is to wait for more data. I think that's the traditional outlook and research. I think the Andrews 00:44:00group is probably a little less predisposed to that approach than other groups, but I think, in general, my experience with researchers has been, "Geez, I don't know; I think I have to wait a few more years before I really say what I've learned." Although, I think to some extent, that has maybe changed a little bit, too. I don't know if there is anything institutional. It's a tough question for me. I don't know if I have that perspective. I don't see anything institutional that would be opposed to the long-term viewpoint. The long-term research other 00:45:00than, one of the issues that we are getting into now days is funding. That is one of the unhealthier things I see coming, and it has sort of shown its head recently, and is voiced by some people in in Congress, and also I think some people in industry, is that if you can't show immediate results - don't fund it. That kind of utilitarian view of research, if you will, if you can't from your research show what the implications are on timber yield next year, then forget it, we don't want it. I think there's a little bit of that element out there, 00:46:00which I think is very unhealthy.

Geier: I wanted to give you an opportunity if you had anything else you wanted to pitch in here. I've kind of held you up against the wall here for three hours.

Eubanks: No, I feel like I've totally rambled on. I don't know if there is anything else I could say right now.

Geier: We should probably end it then. You've been real helpful.