The Powerful Influence of Humility in Life and in Business with Dr. Derrick J. Hinkle, DDS

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Dental Up Podcast, brought to you by Keating Dental Lab, a full service, award winning dental laboratory. Each week, you’ll learn tips and techniques from real world dentists. Bringing you in depth interviews, motivating stories, current events and sports. Here’s your host, Shaun Keating.

Shaun Keating: Welcome to another episode of the Dental Up Podcast. Our guest this week is a graduate from West Virginia University School of Dentistry, practicing from Craigsville, West Virginia, please welcome Dr. Derrick J. Hinkle, DDS. How’s it going, Dr. Hinkle?

Dr. Hinkle: Keats, what up man. Just call me Shanks. I don’t deal with that other stuff.

Shaun Keating: Shanks. What’s up, baby? How you doing?

Dr. Hinkle: Not much. No, I’m pretty good, I’m pretty good. How’re you doing?

Shaun Keating: I’m doing great, man. Thank you so much. I know how busy you are. I heard the suction going in that back room here a second ago and you just shut it down. We got a patient numbing up. We’re going to let him sit back there for about 45 minutes or so.

Dr. Hinkle: I’m done, Big Daddy. I canceled out after this big shindig we got going on here, man. So, we can go as long as you want, Big Daddy.

Shaun Keating: Ah, that’s so cool, dude. Well thank you so much. I can’t thank you for all the work, all the years, and all the memories on dental time. You guys are legends, you and your brother, man. I just fricking love it, dude. That’s so cool. Hey, I’d like to start off talking a little bit about sports now, man. I know you guys are big wrestlers and stuff, but what about the end of the NBA? NBA started last night, man, and a couple basketball games. Celtics beat the 76ers. The Warriors are world champions, beat the Oklahoma Thunder. What about you? You into any basketball at all? Or football?

Dr. Hinkle: Oh man, well here’s the big deal. I knew you were going to get into that, so I’m a Mountaineer fan, that’s our pro sport here, okay? Mountaineer football. Now, pro sports, I think those guys should just get a job. Maybe they should drill on teeth, or maybe make some crown and bridge. Maybe they could work for you, man. I don’t think we should pay these guys this ridiculous amount of money to play a game. You know what I’m saying?

Shaun Keating: I’m hearing that. I mean, way too much money. I did Dick Butkis teeth and some other football players, but Dick was telling me that the most he ever got back in his day, and he was the star of the league, was $100,000. He said what these guys are getting paid nowadays are ridiculous. It’s a trip, man. It’s kind of crazy.

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah. I hear you. You know, you’re right. But anyways, no big deal I’m not poo-pooing it or anything, it’s just I’m just some hillbilly in West Virginia so we … our pro team’s the Mountaineers, and then after that, we just shut our brains off.

Shaun Keating: Wasn’t West Virginia, man … they were like five and oh and then they lost to Iowa State, man. Now they’re five and one. What happened to that?

Dr. Hinkle: Here’s the deal, Man. We are always overrated, and we always stink, Man. The only thing we do is get all the rejects from all these other great programs and try to slop together a team and do the best we can. And then our schedule’s always easy, and then when the hype builds and builds and then we just … we’ll play somebody that’s good, and we just get throttled, and basically … my whole weekend depends on how the Mountaineers did, so my weekend sucked.

Shaun Keating: Yeah. Iowa State. They’re three and three, dude, they’re kind of sucky.

Dr. Hinkle: They don’t suck, man. Listen up! Here’s the deal.

Shaun Keating: They’re pretty good? I didn’t see the game.

Dr. Hinkle: The Big 12’s the best conference in football. Everybody knows it. End of story.

Shaun Keating: Hey, we got the PAC-12 where we’re at. We ain’t big, but we got the PAC.

Dr. Hinkle: They’re a bunch of chumps, man. The Big 12’s where it’s at, just because West Virginia’s in the Big 12, you know what I’m saying?

Shaun Keating: I remember Michael Vick played at West Virginia, man. You guys were hot…

Dr. Hinkle: No, no, no, no, no, no. He was a Virginia Tech Chokie.

Shaun Keating: Oh, VT. That was it.

Dr. Hinkle: I hated that dude. Nah, he was great. I loved watching him play. He was unbelievable.

Shaun Keating: Ah, man, he was the best running back and he was quarterback. And yet, he could run that ball.

Dr. Hinkle: When I was in school, man, we don’t play Tech anymore, which is an atrocity. But, man, when I was in school, when Tech came to town, it was on. Boy, we had them on the ropes. We had Tech beat and Michael Vick, I think he was freshman. He orchestrated this drive, got them within field goal range and stole the game from us, man. I’ll tell you. He was unreal.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome. And then he started doing that stuff with the dogs. It’s like, dude, don’t be a knucklehead.

Dr. Hinkle: That probably made him better. He went to prison and he’s like, man, this sucks and he probably just did like body weight exercises for like two and half straight years. And he’s like, when I get out of this joint, I’m going to kill it and he did. He got out and he was good.

Shaun Keating: He knew what it was like behind bars. Man, let’s be free and go run, make touchdowns. Well, dude, that’s awesome. But we had a big thing here. We got LeBron here with the Lakers. Lakers have been sucking for the last several years. After years and year of dominance, but it’s been a long time since we’ve done anything good. But we got LeBron. We open tomorrow night against the Portland Trailblazers at Portland. That’ll be a good game and hats off to Paul Allen. He’s the owner of the Trailblazers. He died couple days ago. Dude’s 65 years old, man. That’s young in my book.

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah, I agree. I think it’s pretty young.

Shaun Keating: It just goes to show you, man, you can have $20 billion in the bank and you can’t buy life, man. So just love the lord and tomorrow is not a guarantee. Yesterday’s history and tomorrow’s a mystery, man. So live for today, because you don’t know what’s in your… That’s what I do. I just say, honey, I gotta have fun today, because I might not be here tomorrow. She goes, Shaun…

Dr. Hinkle: I say that every day.
Shaun Keating: I do, too.

Dr. Hinkle: I’m a fun hog, man. The only thing I talk about is fun hogging. I just hog all the fun. I take it all.
Shaun Keating: I’ve been on the pursuit of happiness since I came out of Mama, man. Everyday I’m trying to figure out what I can do to keep happy. It’s kind of tough. Well, dude, that’s awesome, man. Let’s dental up now. Why did you get into dentistry and at what point did you think I want to be a dentist?

Dr. Hinkle: Okay, this is easy. I remember when I probably was a freshman in high school, my mom was married to this dude I didn’t like very well. This dude had a brother who was a dentist and I was around all the time. He was kind of like my step uncle. I was like a poor hillbilly, lived with grandma and junk, so I would go hangout with this dentist guy and I’d go golfing with him and he gave me a bag of clubs. And then, I went to the arcade with him one time and he gave me a whole roll of quarters. And I was like, oh, my god. I’m going to be a dentist. So there it was.

Shaun Keating: He didn’t make you want to play tickle game with him or nothing, did he?

Dr. Hinkle: No, no. He’s still around, man. He’s a good friend of mine still, man, he’s still a dentist. Because we never retire, you know, we’re too broke to retire. So anyways, he’s still going at it. He’s still a good friend of mine. I stop in every once in a while. He chain smokes cigarettes, he’s tough, man. He ain’t that type.

Shaun Keating: That’s awesome. Did he get you into wrestling? You guys are big wrestlers, man. Weren’t you a collegiate big time wrestler?

Dr. Hinkle: I wasn’t a big time wrestler. But I wrestled in college. I always tell everybody I was an All American, but I was an academic All American.

Shaun Keating: That’s neat, though. So the dude got you into dentistry and tell me a little bit about where you went to school for dental school.

Dr. Hinkle: Well, I just went to West Virginia University and I didn’t apply anywhere else.

Shaun Keating: How was that? Any exciting stories, any instructors that you want to…

Dr. Hinkle: I’ll tell you, I always tell people, you know everyone have these horror stories at dental school, but I loved it. I absolutely enjoyed dental school. For me, it was cake. I got in there when I was 21 and I lived in a trailer with my best friend. Well, that’s simple. You just go to school and afterwards, you fun hog. And I had all these student loans. I had money for the first time in my life. It was insane. When I was in my senior year, I begged them to keep me. I wanted to stay, I wanted remediation. They always threw that remediation word around. They’d be like, you know, you’re behind on this, you’re behind on this. I’m like, this is great! I was like, can you keep me for two more years? And they looked into my eyes and knew I was serious. So then they got me the crap out of there.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, because when you graduated, you actually went and spent a year there working there, didn’t you?
Dr. Hinkle: Ah, man. I’ve been everywhere and done everything because I don’t know. I got out and I spent a year in West Virginia. I did a little bit of work for the federal prisons and did a little bit of work with my brother who’s a dentist and then I moved out to Montana like an idiot and I spent a year in Montana getting ripped off out there.

Shaun Keating: What part of Montana were you in?

Dr. Hinkle: We’ll just call it the center of the state. I was in Charlie Russel country.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr. Hinkle: And then I got to this little town. Of course, I’m a dumb hillbilly from West Virginia, like, I’m going to Montana. You know, like I’m an idiot, right? I load up my cheap, little truck and I moved out to Montana and I’m supposed to associate to buy into this practice. And this practice was an absolute bomb. I got there day one and I was like, dude, I’m not buying this dump. And then it’s bad because every dentoid that’s a hippie wants to go to Montana after they graduate. But here’s the deal with Montucky. It’s a good place to starve. This town had, like, I knew I was in trouble. I went to this high school basketball game in this town and I looked around and every other person sitting in the stands was a dentist.

Shaun Keating: Oh, you’re kidding.

Dr. Hinkle: And I was like, I’m out of here. But the problem is I met a woman out there, of course, because I was lonely. And then I had to start getting serious and I started looking for a practice to buy. And I actually bought a practice in middle of nowhere Wyoming. I spent nine years in Wyoming, trying to pretend I was a cowboy. I never could pull it off very well. And whitewater kayaking just brought me back home to West Virginia. I just missed my whitewater and Wyoming was a little too dry. I wasn’t tough enough to handle it. So I moved back home.

Shaun Keating: And the rest is history. You work with your brother pretty much, or no?

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah, I’m just an associate. I just work for him. I have a prison gig, too. I work at prison two days a week.

Shaun Keating: No kidding. How’s that? Where’s that at? Tell me a little bit about that if you could.

Dr. Hinkle: It’s down in, I don’t know why I did this because I’m insane. There’s definitely not enough work in my brother’s office because there just isn’t. So I worked three days here and I pull two down in a prison down in Welch, West Virginia. It’s the poorest community in the poorest state in the country. So, it’s pretty crazy down there, man. I drive two hours down there and work. I stay all night down there. It’s my little escape from life to go down there and work in this prison. I love it. I love working it. I love it. Actually…

Shaun Keating: I bet it’s rewarding. I got a few doctors that work in different prison across the United States and it’s rewarding as heck for them. Because a lot of these guys are down and out on their luck and to restore teeth and stuff like that. They actually send me the work. I’m doing their work there. It’s kind of a neat thing. What about some of the guys, tough dudes or what, man? Just nice guys caught in the wrong place?

Dr. Hinkle: I get along with inmates so well because I belong in there with them. It just goes so smooth all day long and the only thing I do is just shoot the crap with them. All day long. You know, first off, I just ask them where they’re from and that interests me. They’re mainly West Virginia inmates and I have my PhD in West Virginia history and all that junk. So wherever they’re from I can relate to it and start talking to them about it. I can get really crazy in there. I have crazy conversations with these guys. It’s fun. It’s really fun.

Shaun Keating: What kind of dentistry you doing in there? Just a lot of extractions?

Dr. Hinkle: At this place is so hard to get to and you’d have to be out of your mind to take the job. They actually hadn’t had a dentist for two and half years. So when I first got there, I was just catching them up. But now I’ve gotten them caught up now. I’m only contracted for 16 hours a week down there. I’m getting to the point now where you just go in and take care of sick call and then after that, I have these guys treatment planned and I bring them in and try to do comprehensive care on them. We don’t do root canals or we don’t do crowns on these guys. It’s just amalgams, composites and extractions and everyone of them, if they’re missing a tooth, they want a partial or a flipper or whatever. Dentures, partials, amalgams, composites, extractions and that’s about it.

Shaun Keating: No kidding. I think we did a big case recently, didn’t we? Was that on a person from there? Or someone you knew? What about that?

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah, okay. We should talk about that. Thanks for bailing me out, bro.

Shaun Keating: Nah, that was so cool. You called me up and you’re like, Shaun, this dude’s, I think it was a female. She’s goes on her back, doesn’t have two nickels to rub together and we kind of donated our services as you guys did. Man, I love that stuff. Especially when the people can’t afford it and the people that need it and deserve it. That was awesome.

Dr. Hinkle: That was the most rewarding case of my career. She’s actually my dental assistant down there and she only works 16 works a week. Her teeth were in terrible shape. And every time she would talk to me, I had to work with her 16 hours a week and she’s always covering up her mouth. It was the elephant in the room every week. And then she would mention to me how she was going to go Affordable Dentures and get an upper denture. And I said, get in the chair. We were in the joint and I put her in the chair and I looked at her case. And it was really challenging. It was multiple extractions, root canals and it was going to be 12 or 13 units in the maxillary arch, two bridges and four crowns. And her lower arch wasn’t as bad, but I just told her, I said, you know what? Let me just do your case for free. Who cares. But she had to travel two hours to come up here and get the work done. It took several visits and I shouldn’t run my mouth because I was expecting my brother to absorb the costs into his practice and he got all pissed off about it. And then his wife got involved with it. They were taking money out of my lowly paycheck for this case. And then my wife caught wind of it and then she was pissed off about it. And I’m two grand deep in on this thing. And then the staff in my office here, they’re all weirded out about the whole thing. It was like this case was going to cause me a divorce. And I thought to myself, I was like, you know what? I’m going to have to pay a couple grand more to finish this case off and I said, I’m probably going to get a divorce. I said, I’m going to call Keats. I gotta write him a letter. I told my brother, I said, I’m writing Keats and I’m going to see if he can get me an Obama bailout, man. Because this is getting crazy, man. This case was stressing me out and so I wrote you the letter, man and then you said you’d the case. And I don’t know what you did. I think you put your ace guy on it because it was sick. And when I go down there, she smiles. It changed her life, man.

Shaun Keating: I bet. Don’t let your wife and other people see her now because she’s probably hotter than heck with those teeth.

Dr. Hinkle: Oh, that’s what happened, man.

Shaun Keating: Nah, when I got a letter from you, man, and it kind of broke it all down. I was almost in tears. You did, you went through a lot at your practice and everything else. You’re just trying to do a good deed. You’re trying to help someone out and especially when you work with them all day.

Dr. Hinkle: I wasn’t going to sit in there and not do anything about it when I had the capabilities of restoring the thing, you know. And then your guys knocked it out of the park and made me look good. It was ridiculous, I’m telling you.

Shaun Keating: I can’t wait to see some pics, man. I want to see some pics of that.

Dr. Hinkle: I didn’t take too many pics, man. Because she’s like embarrassed to even get the pics and then I’m like, not Mr. Cosmetic Guru. Here I am taking pictures with cell phone and junk.

Shaun Keating: Nah, hey. All you need is one before and one after. And that’s all you need.

Dr. Hinkle: I can scratch together some and do a halfway decent case presentation with it. It was really neat.

Shaun Keating: That’s so cool. I was so worried about the case. You were saying how tough it was and when we got it, man, it looked good. It was a couple of posterior bridges and some single anteriors and we just brought it all together. It was a real quick case. Done it in like a day or two and I was just thinking, it was going to be a nightmare. And for that lady, that poor woman, she was just going to get everything extracted and go with a denture and a lot of people do that and that’s just sad.

Dr. Hinkle: But in reality, she didn’t have the finances to even do that. She was just going to be in that condition for a long time. We beat it up. But it was awesome, man.

Shaun Keating: Hey, you sowed a seed there, baby. You’re going to reap rewards off that. That’s awesome. Everything happens for a reason. We did her teeth and she’s been covering up her mouth for years and now look at her, her confidence. And I just love that when I do a lot of my friends’ teeth. And I haven’t seen them in 30, 40 years since junior high or elementary school. And they’re like, Shaun, and I don’t look the same. A lot of us don’t look the same. I’m like the same height about 100 pounds more. And I got silver hair. They’re like what happened to you? It’s called 34 years in the dental lab business and two boys that are 34 and 32. Those are little kids, little problems, big kids, big… You just never end as a parent. You’ll find out. I get such a rewarding feeling when I’m doing my buddies’ grills and my friends at, you know, and they truly don’t and a lot of my friend, they don’t have, a lot of people don’t have that extra cash to go and spend ten, fifteen grand or whatever on getting your grill dialed in and done right. So I just love it, man. I get off just with the responses I get it. It just makes me want to cry when I see these people. And I get dentists that tell me all the time, Shaun changed their life, Shaun changed their life. Your staff and techs, my techs are really awesome. A lot of posterior stuff we do, onesies, twosies, you need that and your quads to chew and stuff. But I’m a big 6 through 11 or four to 13 type guy. You give me that downstairs. You’re not seeing those lowers too much, we’ll bleach the heck out of them. They’re a little crooked, that’s called characterization. But at least that upper, let’s get it dialed in. More so than not, we’ll do ten up top ten below. But it’s just something. God, it’s such a neat thing.

Dr. Hinkle: That was fun for me because I live in, I think it’s one of the poorest states in the country. I don’t get to do that very often. It was fun just to be able to do it.

Shaun Keating: Oh, absolutely. Well, you got to tell Eric, too. Man, tell him that we’ll do a gift for one of the down and out patients that he has down the line, too.

Dr. Hinkle: Hey, listen. We’re not going to make a habit of this or anything you know what I’m saying.

Shaun Keating: I probably got to have 30 doctors. Hey, Shaun, I got a problem. Well…

Dr. Hinkle: You should have heard my brother when I told him I was going to write. Because he’s a very prideful person. And I said, listen up, I’m writing Keats up. I’m writing him a letter. And he’s like, no, you’re not, that’s fricking ridiculous. And I was like, dude, I’m at the bottom, I got nowhere else to go. So, thanks for the bailout, brother.
Shaun Keating: Ah, I love that, man. So who’s the older brother, you or him? Who came out first?

Dr. Hinkle: Me six minutes.

Shaun Keating: No kidding. Ah, that’s amazing. Yeah, your brother came out and visited us here with his daughter, little daughter I think she’s five or six. Just got you guys are just so built and ripped. He had a Captain America shirt on, toured the lab, and just such a nice guy. Humble and I took him out for a ride in one of my cars and scared the crap out of him. He was like waaaaah! But, nah, you guys are great, man. I just love your enthusiasm and your energy. For dentists, most dentists are kind of quiet and introverted and don’t talk a lot and they’re just real smart, real smart guys. You guys are real smart and everything else, but you’re total athletes. Your hearts on your sleeve, man. I like it. It’s a good thing. I love working with you guys. So man, thanks for all the work and really appreciate it.

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah, you’ve been good for years. You guys are good. When you’re good, you’re good.

Shaun Keating: Well, I appreciate it. Because I know you could send it to some cheaper places out there or anywhere. But I appreciate it you sending it to us. We’ll help you in anyway we can for sure. What kind of advice can you give some of these newer dentists starting out? Do’s and don’ts? Anything? Like starting off an associate, pretty smart, going into your own practice? What kind of advice can you give out to some of our younger dentists that listen?

Dr. Hinkle: Well, looking back on my career, I literally have done it all from associate to prison dentistry to practice owner. My recommendation is first I think you need to do a residency, that’s what I think. I think that’s critical. And then I think you need to get into practice ownership as quickly as possible for financial reasons. The only time I made money in dentistry was when I owned a practice, but that wasn’t for me. But I’m fine. I didn’t have a huge amount of student loans. I had a little over 100 thousand, wiped that out a long time ago. I’ve been a dentist for 17 years now. Yeah, my recommendations is just buy a practice as quick as possible, as quick as you feel comfortable and just digging in and taking no for an answer.

Shaun Keating: Go for it.

Dr. Hinkle: Treat people as good as you can. I think one of the mistakes I did make early when I was a practice owner was I probably bit off a little more than I could chew. What I mean, I probably should have referred a little more. I probably shouldn’t done that molar endo here and there, thinking I was He-Man. You can’t solve the world’s problems. You just gotta do what’s the best for the patient. And eventually, you’ll be as busy as you want to be and successful as you want to be.

Shaun Keating: Absolutely. I think what you said, too, with I worked for someone right out of high school and got into the field and I worked for someone for 17 years. You always get by and stuff like that. But it’s just America was built. When you work for somebody, you’ll have your paychecks. If you make really good money at a company, you move up the ranks. You might make a couple hundred grand or something, but still, you’re never going to get ahead unless you own your own business. And you know, you got the big risk, big reward, but it’s big failures can happen, but you just got to really want it. And I always think, if I knew it then, I got my experience, I worked for somebody, for sure. But to work for yourself, man, there’s just nothing better in life and I just think if you put your time in and really treat people right and just try to do the right thing and just work hard, you’ll get it, you’ll get it. And I don’t care what field you’re in, but to be your own boss, if you could ever do that… Some guys, well, I don’t like certain aspects of it. Well, you do what you do best and then, you know, like me, I’m not good with numbers and stuff. My biggest hire was to get a CFO and to have someone that run the books. The collections and all that stuff, I mean, I knew how to make teeth, I knew how to work with doctors and I knew how to work with techs. But the whole practice management of the business, that’s the hardest part. But you get people for that and stuff.

Dr. Hinkle: That’s where most dentists fail. I was terrible at owning a dental practice, I mean terrible. My employees ran me over. You still there? Well, anyway, my employees ran me over. I did too much free junk all the time. I got this disease where like, love me, please, god, love me, everybody love me. It’s ridiculous.

Shaun Keating: Well, that’ll, they kind of tell me that with me. They say, Shaun, you got to stay away from talking to these doctors because you’re going to give the store away. And I’m like, yeah, I really feel for these people. But yeah, you gotta know when to say no. I don’t know, it’s a tough thing sometimes.

Dr. Hinkle: It’s getting tighter. My career started in 2001. It’s definitely not as easy as it used to be. I mean, we can go on and on about that. But, that’s just a fact.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, I’ve seen it go. I mean, I started in ’84 and then I left in 2002 and started my own lab, right about the time you started. But it was tough times back in ’01, ’02 it was tough. And that was going through a semi-recession then. And then, the whole bottom fell out 2007, 2008, and ’09.

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah, 2008 was bad.

Shaun Keating: All my dentists, man. I did more work back then than I do now and I had more volume.

Dr. Hinkle: Well, sure, I’m sure you did.

Shaun Keating: But everyone, all my big cosmetic guys that I was doing a couple of round houses a week from each practice, now they’re doing one a month if that. And a lot of these guys, all the veneers, the big thing, let’s cut them down, do 3/4 crown preps for veneers. I did so many. I do a thousand veneers a week, now I might do 200. Because it was just free flowing money with all the equity in the homes and it was just a different time back then. You just practice good dentistry, lots of onesie, twosies, you know and you treatment plan some bigger stuff when it calls for it. But it’s just not the old days of the gold rush. It’s tough and I have so many dentists tell me in our 50s and 60s been doing it a while, that back in the day, you didn’t have to market. You didn’t have to do anything. It was just word of mouth, kind of like it is still to this day, but doctors didn’t have to worry about patients and they did the work that they wanted to do basically. And they could kind of make all the calls. And now there’s so many dentists, like in this area here and a lot of different places, there’s so many different options for these patients. Now everyone’s going for the coupon and the price and this and that. Everyone’s so frugal. And they want to the dentist to do it for this price. Hey, will you do it for what my insurance covers? No, that’s just covering…

Dr. Hinkle: The consumer changed, too. Get as cheap as you can. They don’t really care about credentials or value or anything like that. Boo, hoo, who cares? Water’s still wet and I make enough money to go down the river, so who cares?

Shaun Keating: Exactly. So tell me some of the things you do outside of work, man. So, what’s the river rafting? Is that kind of one of those canoe things? Or what are you doing there? Big rubber raft?

Dr. Hinkle: Lord knows. See, that’s very offensive to whitewater kayaker when you state do you raft? It’s like, no, a raft is a piece of rubber that has no edges, okay? And you get into the thing, stoned and drunk and you don’t need to know what you’re doing and you go down the river. But when you put yourself down into a coffin, it’s plastic and you strap a skirt over it and you wear the boat, you have to actually know what you’re doing. Anyways, I just love the whitewater kayaking. It’s like ridiculous, but my problem is I stay injured because I try to hang with these pros around here. I’ve torn out rib cartilage. I tore my labrum completely out. I had a global tear of my labrum two years ago. So I’ve got an Andrew Luck shoulder.

Shaun Keating: Oh, jeez.

Dr. Hinkle: They repaired it eleven months ago and I’m back in business again, baby. Back on the river. That’s what we do.

Shaun Keating: That’s so crazy. When you go upside down, where your head’s underneath the water, and then they pop up. I would like panic and I would drown in like five seconds because I want to suck in the air.

Dr. Hinkle: Nah, it’s just technique. If you do that roll 30,000 times, it’s nothing. But I don’t know. Don’t get me started about this stuff, I could talk about it forever. We have the goods though. It’s unreal. This is the best state in the country for whitewater.

Shaun Keating: No kidding.

Dr. Hinkle: I have the Gauley 15 minutes from my house and I have the New River about 30 minutes away. And the Meadow River’s about 25 minutes away. I’ve got three of the best rivers in the world just right out my backdoor. You can get as crazy as you want. Depends on levels, you know. You can go on epic, pray to god you’re going to live journeys down high water and you can go down to boney and the characteristics change at all levels. And at different levels, different [inaudible 00:30:37] features come in it and there’s different styles of kayaking. There’s plain boating and you can just river run and these steep creeks are a whole different ballgame. We’ve got Manns Creek nearby us. It’s one of the best class V creeks in the world. But the problem is you almost can’t have a job to do the sport. It’s so intense. My friends that are good, that’s all they do.

Shaun Keating: That’s amazing. We have a place called the Kern River by us, about five, six hours away. I tell you, man, once it’s season, there’s several people die every weekend. It’s so dangerous and these are knuckleheads that are drinking and going down in inner tubes. They get their legs caught or their head caught in a rock formation underwater. It’s just so dangerous. But kind of crazy.

Dr. Hinkle: Foot entrapment’s what kills those guys. You get a foot trapped and the current will blow them over and strainers are the second worst. They’ll get caught in a strainer, like a log or some get pinned under a log or something like that. But out in your guys’ rivers, people flush drown out there. Basically die due to hypothermia. Man, California unbelievable. All my hippie friends have worshiped the California granite and they’ve all had seasons out there and it pisses me off because I never go. And now I’m old as piss and it’s never going to happen.

Shaun Keating: You’re near 30, good god.

Dr. Hinkle: Nah, no, I’m 42.

Shaun Keating: Well, still. I got underwear older than you, my man. No, I’m just kidding. My underwear’s a lot bigger than it used to be.

Dr. Hinkle: But not, I did cheat it for a long time. I would have friends, I boated at a high level with the good guys for a while. About 40, my arrogance started to leave. I started breaking.

Shaun Keating: Oh, man, wait until you turn in your 50s. You start seeing… What’s that called, creep or crepe or creep? My guns are not the guns anymore. Suns out guns out. My guns are getting little weak. I gotta start lifting those things and working out like I used to. As you get older, it’s just kind like you bust your ass all your life, it’s kind to live a little bit. But then you can go down that rabbit hole too much because you’re not going to be able to get out of that hole if you don’t take care of yourself a little bit.

Dr. Hinkle: Back in the day, I used to be a big gym guy and now I see it as a total waste of time. I’d rather get my workout on the river. I’m a rock climber now. So I like climbing and I like boating. Actually my brother, he’s almost quit kayaking now. He bought a KTM motorcycle and that’s all he does now. I can’t get him off the motorcycle long enough to go to the river with me.

Shaun Keating: No kidding. That’s fun. I’ve got bikes, too. I love riding the bikes, dirt bikes, and street bikes.

Dr. Hinkle: But I’m in poor man’s Colorado. So it’s hard to even go to work. I mean, it’s so fun here. I’ve world class rock climbing and kayaking right out my door. And I can get on my brother’s motorcycle and just go and go and go. Who cares about the law or this or that? Just hit whatever you want.

Shaun Keating: Do you guys have to wear helmets out there?

Dr. Hinkle: Well, yeah, we do.

Shaun Keating: A lot of states, some states still have it. I can’t believe it. I remember in California, we didn’t have to motorcycle helmet and we never did. And now it’s like second nature. You just always have to put it on. But you get used to it now kind of.

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah, it would be pretty stupid to ride a KTM Enduro bike through the woods without a helmet. So yeah, definitely put one of those babies on.

Shaun Keating: Oh, man, that’s so crazy. I got my little neighborhood, I got this little Honda Grom and a Honda, what’s the other one, a Ruckus. And these are little Hondas, 125cc and I take those things out every night. I’m like, honey, I’m going to go through the hills. Because I live in these hills. And these people just look out. There goes that dude in the white silver hair down the road, half-lit. And the old Dana Point police guy, hey, Shaun, you out riding a bike, huh? Yeah. Kind of neat. But yeah, I love the motorcycles. I got me a hog, too. I got me a Street Glide and I just love getting on that. We have a little thing called Ortega Highway up by us and it’s all these zip turns and my wife will do that every once in a while as long as we’re not stopping up at Cook’s Corner, and I get to have me a couple of beers. And she’s like, no, not going with you anymore. You go too fast, you turn the music up too loud.

Dr. Hinkle: I’ll tell you one thing I have learned about motorcycles. Man, even like two or three beers will screw you up on a motorcycle.
Shaun Keating: It just makes you wanna go a little faster. Yeah, it’s not a good thing. I thank the lord for letting me get through it all these years. So now I don’t ride it as much. I try to be safe. Because the big thing on the bikes, man, is I’m a really good rider. I’ve been riding, I’m 56, I’ve been riding for 50 years basically. I started with a mini bike when I was 5 years old, riding them and my older brothers. I remember I had broke my leg at 6 years old, had a full leg cast on my left leg. And my brothers got me on my mini bike after about a month. I kept saying, I want to drive. I want to drive it. And so they put me on the mini bike and had my leg hanging out. And I got on it and I gave it the full throttle because I was so excited and the throttle stuck and I went into the side of this house next door and I broke my cast like in half, like the plaster broke. And my mom came home from work. She was, what the heck’s going on here? I was just sitting there on the couch kind of crying and my brothers were all scared. He goes, yeah, he got on the mini bike and he broke his cast. But it’s like, you gotta just be careful of the people that are out in front of you. Because I think 90% of the people that crash on a motorcycle is when someone pulls in front of them. They don’t see it compare to a car. So you just gotta be so defensive on them. And especially with the public. Every car out there just think that that car is going to hit you and you gotta be so alert of what they’re doing especially in front of you. And then also when you come to stoplights, when your lights are just sitting there, so many guys get rear ended, too. They’re not seeing the little bike. It kind of blends in or something. So getting rear ended or where you get t-boned or you t-bone the car that pulls left in front of you into a driveway.

Dr. Hinkle: Well, everyone screwing with the phone, I’m sure that has effect.

Shaun Keating: I hate it when I go by people and they’re weaving in and out the lanes. I’m like, what’s going? You go there and their head’s buried down in their phone and it’s like, you’re on the freeway, dude. Everyone’s going 65, 70 miles an hour. You’re going 45 in a fast lane.

Dr. Hinkle: Yeah, but it’s never going to stop now.

Shaun Keating: Nah, I don’t think so. And it’s like it’s worse than drinking and driving. Or just the exactly the same, man. And it’s so ridiculous that it’s just scary. They have it now, i just got a new iPhone now or whatever it is. And they have this new thing where it says it won’t bother you when you’re driving. And it’s like, yeah, don’t tempt me. But it’s just these younger kids and even the older ones that are doing it. Man, they should fine the hell out of you. Here in Irvine, I’m leaving work and stuff, the cops go in between the lanes on their motorcycles because there’s so much traffic always. They look inside and outside of every car and they will ticket you and I think it’s $200-300 for the first one and it goes up. I hope they keep doing that.

Dr. Hinkle: Well, good.

Shaun Keating: It’s illegal here. You gotta have the handless ones, whatever. You get Bluetooth in some of the newer cars and you just talk out in space. And that’s kind of neat, you know. Yeah, kind of nuts with the phones and traffic and the accidents. I think so many of the accidents probably when they get the results in, they probably got them in already and bunch of them are from people texting and lost lives. I think they’re doing a lot in the high school and everything else. These kids that, they don’t realize it how heavy these cars are and what the damage can do to you. Well, hey, dude. I thank you so much. I can’t thank you for all the work and I know you’re a busy man and I just thank you for the time and whatever I can do, man, please let us know. And send me some pictures of that little girl, I want to see what she looks like and how that grill turned out.

Dr. Hinkle: Alright, man, I’ll get on it.

Shaun Keating: Yeah, you’re the man, Dr. Hinkle.

Dr. Hinkle: And thanks for helping us out all these years. You’re the man.

Shaun Keating: Ah, no problem. Anytime and tell your brother Eric I love him and Shanks a lot. You guys are the best and we’ll talk to you real soon.

Dr. Hinkle: Okay. See you, Shaun.

Shaun Keating: Alright, dude. Later, man.

Announcer: Thanks for joining us on the Dental Up podcast show this week. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and twitter or search the Dental Up podcast on iTunes for our weekly feed. Don’t forget to visit keatingdentallab.com/promo for exclusive offers. Keating Dental Lab is a full service dental laboratory and we’re nationwide. We’d love for you to send us a case so we can show you the Keating difference. If you dig what you heard, please leave a review on iTunes and we’ll be back next week.