Dave Evans

And on the other side of that thing, there's a little post sticking out.

That's actually the valve that opens and closes the hydrant.

And if you look at it, it's in the shape of a pentagon.

It's in the shape of a five-sided pentagon.

And the reason is because we don't want people opening fire hydrants who don't know what they're doing.

And so when I went into mechanical engineering and went into the PRL, the Product Realization Lab,

which you might call the machine shop.

I walked in there with a great big chunk of brass and the idea was to mill that thing into a fire hydrant wrench that had one of those pentagon things on it on the one hand and a kind of special curvy thing on the other to take the cover off because you need one of those if you're fighting a fire.

It went very unsmoothly because I didn't know what I was doing.

I'd never done anything like that before.

I didn't know how to use a mill or a lathe or a high-speed metal bandsaw.

I'd never worked with anything that heavy before.

I was completely inexperienced.

I broke tools.

I had to get more materials.

And I had this idea in my head about this perfect wrench that I'd seen that was, you know, bought from a very expensive supplier.

And then I finally realized what I was doing was, which is a metaphor for the rest of real life, is I'm trying to make a real thing.

I'm trying to bring it into being.

I'm trying to take something and allow something real, something finite, something limited, something constrained, something even with flaws in it to come into being.

And all that struggle with breaking parts and what have you proved to me that this thing was going to be a compromise.