From IRONMAN to Identity: Reimagining the Tri Cities with Kevin Lewis

What defines a place and who gets to decide? In this episode, Scott sits down with Kevin Lewis, CEO of Visit Tri-Cities, to explore how one region is reimagining its identity.

From hosting a world-class IRONMAN competition to strengthening its brand through local storytelling and unified vision, the Tri-Cities is leaning into what makes it truly unique.

Kevin shares lessons from his years in tourism, the power of partnerships, and what happens when a community stops chasing comparisons and starts owning its narrative.

Whether you’re in the Tri-Cities or any corner of Washington State, this conversation offers a look at what it means to build momentum, one story at a time.

Kevin Lewis Visit Tri Cities Transcript

Welcome to the Exploring Washington State podcast. My name is Scott Cowan and I’m the host of the show. Each episode I have a conversation with an interesting guest who is living in or from Washington state. These are casual conversations with real and interesting people. I think you’re going to like the show. So let’s jump right in with today’s guest. All right, well, my guest this. While I’m recording in the afternoon, everyone.

Scott Cowan:
My guest this afternoon is Kevin Lewis with Visit Tri Cities. Kevin is the president and CEO. Kevin, I hate to tell you this, but your PR company said you drew the short straw and you had to talk to me. So I apologize in advance, but I.

Kevin Lewis:
Always get the short straw and often it’s the best straw, so.

Scott Cowan:
Oh, hey, there we go. But Kevin, we’re going to talk all about Tri Cities today, but first we’re just gonna, you know, we’re gonna jump to the big topic, then we’re gonna come back to it, but we’re gonna be talking about the, the Tri Cities Ironman that’s coming up.

Kevin Lewis:
Awesome. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
And tell me if I am wrong here, but I thought I read there’s like 3,000 participants gonna be participating in the Ironman.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah, you’re pretty much on track. So we hosted this for the first time last year, last September 2024 and had a sold out race. About 3,000 people registered and they des community with all of their friends and supporters and it was awesome.

Scott Cowan:
All right, well, we’re gonna come back to that. Okay, we’re gonna. But that’s, that’s how we got introduced was over, over the Tri Cities Ironman thing. And I could make all sorts of humorous comments about how they’ve lost their mind doing the 70 mile race in one day. But you know, we’ll, we’ll let that.

Kevin Lewis:
We’Ll come back to that.

Scott Cowan:
We’ll come back to that. So Kevin, when I talk to you on the phone. Yeah, you are. You’ve moved up to the Tri Cities a few years ago and you were in Utah, in southern Utah. So yeah, I’m going to put you on the spot.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay.

Scott Cowan:
Right off the bat. That’s your whole background. That’s all people need to know about you. Do you want to go back or do you like Tri Cities? Do you want to go back to Utah? Do you miss Utah?

Kevin Lewis:
You know, I’ll be, I’m going to be flat out honest with you. I love Utah. We raised our family there. I was raised in northern Utah in the Salt Lake area. Okay. I raised my family after I got married and got settled and whatever. We went to St. George, which is in the south end of the state, and spent 30 plus years there.

Kevin Lewis:
And it’s a beautiful area, wonderful place, great people. We love it. But we were ready for some. Something new. You know, you spend 30 years in a place and maybe there’s something else out there.

Scott Cowan:
I’m totally teasing you. I’ve never been. I’ve heard St. George.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
This has nothing to do with Washington state, but for, for a few seconds.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
What is St. George like, what’s going on there from a, let’s just say from a tourism standpoint because you were involved in tourism there. So what was. Yeah, what’s the tourism act like in St. George?

Kevin Lewis:
Really, really booming there. So when I started with the destination marketing organization down there about 18 years ago, St. George was known, had a great reputation as a retirement and golf community. Okay. And it was great. It was, you know, that’s a great reputation to have. People love to go there. The weather’s good.

Kevin Lewis:
It does get a little hot in the summer, but most of the year is really nice. Sunny blue skies and you’re surrounded by this incredible red rock desert country. And so, yeah, it’s a, it’s a fantastic place. We loved it there and so raised the family and then the kids moved off and. But, but you know, in the, in the course of that interesting thing about St. George is the weather patterns are very similar to what they are in the Tri Cities. We don’t get quite as hot here in the Tri cities as St George will in the summertime. We get maybe just a little bit colder in the two winter months here, but, but the pattern is exactly the same.

Kevin Lewis:
And so that was one of the things that attracted me to this position. I, I was recruited to come up here. That was, I hadn’t hear Tri Cities. And so, you know, maybe that’s why I’m here. More, more people will know about it. And we can do some things here that will help people understand the gem of a place this is.

Scott Cowan:
Well, like I told you before, I have to, I have to go down to Tri Cities a couple times a month. Three times a month sometimes. I’ll be going down there. I’ll be going down there later this week.

Kevin Lewis:
Let’s just put that making your Costco run is that.

Scott Cowan:
Well, no, no, we have Costco and Wenatchee. We’re, we’re a big, We’re a big, We’re a big town now. We got Cost. East Winch has Costco. That’s like saying, you know, well, we have Costco in Kennewick, but I’m in, in, in Richland, you know, it’s the same.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. Anyway, I go down there and.

Kevin Lewis:
I.

Scott Cowan:
Travel a lot of the state and I, I grew up on the west side. I lived on the west side up until eight years ago and moved over here to central Washington. There’s one big difference to me about Tri Cities than anywhere else in the state that I’ve seen, and that is it seems like you guys have the highway infrastructure for the, the amount of people that you have. I’ve never now watched. I’ve been stuck on the bridge one time when there was repairs and I didn’t realize that the bridge was, that was, that’s on me. Yeah, but getting around Tri City seems pretty easy.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, it’s. Everybody says it’s like, you know, 10 minutes to anywhere, basically. Right. And you know, and, and so three cities, four really, with West Richland. But yeah, you know, I live in Pasco. I work in Kennewick right next to Richland. I probably am in every city every day and don’t really know the difference other than you cross a bridge like you said, you know, you cross a bridge and you’re there, but we go out to dinner and in different cities we, we explore and adventure. We love the people that we live by and with in Pasco.

Kevin Lewis:
So. Yeah, it’s just like, it’s kind of a unique place that way. Three kind of smaller communities that combine give you some of the benefits of, of a larger destination.

Scott Cowan:
Approximately about 300, 000 people in the, in the area, correct?

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, I think it just went. The latest information came in. I think it’s 3:30 now. Okay.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah, you guys are, it’s, it’s deceptively large to me it seems, you know, we don’t. Yeah, it’s just there’s a lot of things about Tri Cities that I think get overlooked by people. Maybe not overlooked, they’re just not aware of. And so when they find out about it, you know. So like I told you when we talked on the phone as a kid growing up now you were, you were down in Utah. When I was a kid growing up here, the only time I ever heard of Tri Cities was when they had the hydro races there. Because they were either the week before, I can never remember the week before, the week after the, the hydro races in Seattle. That’s the only time I heard of Tri Cities.

Scott Cowan:
I go to college in Ellensburg and I met people from the Tri Cities and We’re like, what’s going on down there? And I went down there for a weekend one time in the early 80s, and it was. I don’t remember it very well, but I don’t remember a lot of my weekends in the early 80s going to Spokane or Seattle or wherever. But when I go down there now, I always find an interesting place to eat. You know, I prepped you on this. You know, I prepped you. I was going to ask you about coffee, but, you know, I always find coffee shops and all this. So there’s a lot of things going on there. So let’s approach it from this angle.

Scott Cowan:
Visit Tri Cities. What is your organization’s purpose and goal and how does it differ from, say, a chamber of commerce?

Kevin Lewis:
Okay, good question. Yeah. So Visit Tri Cities is the destination marketing organization for the region. So we, we represent the three cities, the four cities, we represent the two counties, Benton county and Franklin county, and essentially any of the destinations, the communities, activities within those regions. So there’s, you know, multiple cities, multiple ports, multiple activities and adventures. But really what we feel like, I think the, probably the best phrase I can use is a catalyst for community vitality is what we are. We, we. We market and brand the destination.

Kevin Lewis:
We tell people from outside of the area what’s here and why it’s cool to come, what, you know, what, what kind of discovery they can make in themselves and, you know, in the destination. We facilitate and coordinate activities and events and. And bring in groups to the area. And, you know, we collaborate with the Chamber of Comm. Development organizations. We’re actually in the same building as those two organizations here, and so we collaborate with them, you know, extensively on just marketing this destination and telling people what it’s all about. I think that’s one of the things if, you know, I circle back in. When you look at the Ironman event last year, that was purposeful.

Kevin Lewis:
I came from a destination where started an Ironman event in St. George in 2010, was the first, first race we had down there. And I think I mentioned, you know, at that point, St. George was a retirement and golf community. And you brought an Ironman event in and all of a sudden people said, well, there is something else going on down here. There is. This is different. And, you know, with the proliferation of social media and Instagram and all of that, people start to see what you have in your destination.

Kevin Lewis:
So when I moved up here, I had left just right after hosting three Ironman World Championships in St. George. Oh, wow. That was sort of unheard of in the Ironman space. But we had some good and complicated kind of circumstances where we had won the bid to host a world championship there. And then Covid hit and other communities who were planning to host world championships were unable to do it. And Ironman came to us and said, well, what would you think? Could you pull this off? And so we, you know, buckled down and made it happen. It was a pretty, pretty intense year, as you can imagine, coming through Covid and into three races in 13 months that were, you know, brought in people from everywhere.

Kevin Lewis:
These are the best of the best Ironman athletes. But anyway, I only say that because it led to this. When I left there, the folks at Ironman said, hey, when you get settled up there, you know, give us a call and let’s see if there’s anything, any possibilities, right? And so it took me a couple of months. I came up in December of 22. It was pretty cold that month. January, you know, I was a little in shock. January was kind of dreary and you know, as winters can be, but you know, February, I started to get out and about a little bit and I went down to the river and went, what in the world? This is an incredible destination. This is a venue that could host a world class Ironman.

Kevin Lewis:
Um, it’s, it’s really neat. The park system there and the amenities right there by the river and. And so we went to work and you know, within a year we had, we had an event and. Which is kind of fast in that space. You know, having, having been around major events like that before, it usually takes a while, but, but we had a community that was ready. They, they were prepared, they wanted to showcase what is here. Because just like you say, most people see this from the freeway they’re, they’re driving through, they’re coming in to town to pick something up or whatever. They don’t really get out in the community.

Kevin Lewis:
And, and so an Ironman event brings, you know, 2500 people right into your community to do an event that they’ve put their blood, sweat and tears into. They’ve been preparing for this maybe for life, you know, or maybe it’s been a life changing preparation or something happened in their life where, you know, they’re trying to regroup from some tragedy or something and everybody’s got a story and you bring all of those kind of people into your community, they bring their passion and they connect to your passions and your community’s passions. They see your beauty, they see the landscapes, they see the activities and you get to showcase your destination. In a way that is so natural because they’re just swimming, biking and running throughout the community and engaging with everybody that’s here and they go, wow, I had no idea. And we heard that over and over and over again. You know, this is such a friendly community and it’s, there’s so many great things here and we loved it, you know, and so that was, you know, it was strategic. Having, having had the experience before and the relationships before, it was like, yeah, this is, what, this is. What the Tri Cities needs is, is a few things like this that people, people pull off the freeway and go, oh, my gosh.

Scott Cowan:
Well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about there in a minute. I have some, I have some questions that, for that, on doubt about event planning and the whole.

Kevin Lewis:
Sure.

Scott Cowan:
It probably takes you a couple hours to throw the event together and it’s super easy.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. But I’m going to paint a picture and I’m going to ask you to fill it in for me. So I live in Seattle. I like to golf. It’s May, it’s not quite regular, consistent golf. I’m a fair weather golfer. Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
So it’s a little still.

Scott Cowan:
It can be a little, you know. So I want to come down to Tri Cities, but my buddies are saying, hey, let’s go down Tri Cities. So we’re going to come down for a weekend. What would you have us do? Yeah, give me, give me some ideas. Like, you know, we’re gonna come down for the weekend. What, what, I can go, I can look on TripAdvisor. You know that. But, but from a, from your standpoint, what are we overlooking?

Kevin Lewis:
I think the thing, I had to do this when I came up here too. And so this is why I kind of start with this angle. It’s like, okay, what, what is this community? You step back and say, what makes this community what it is? And we came up, we did sort of a deep dive and came up with really five kind of experience categories, if you will, that make the Tri Cities what it is. And you kind of top it off with wineries and vineyards. We’re in wine country and we got 200 wineries within 50 miles, 50 mile radius. You can get the 200 wineries. So that is big. That’s a big component of it.

Kevin Lewis:
Right? And it’s an important one. You know, it’s a unique landscape that way. You try, you drive around, you see the vineyards, you can go in and you can have a great time there, Grab a bite, grab some wine, have Some fun that way. So wineries and vineyards second. And I don’t put this in any particular order, but this is, you know, just, just a number. River recreation. And I think the story of the river here, man, it leads into so many conversations and some of them are complicated, you know, but we have the Columbia river that runs through here. It’s the last free flowing stretch of the Columbia as part of a national monument, now the Hanford Reach national monument.

Kevin Lewis:
So 51 miles of free flowing non dammed section. So you get kind of that wilderness and still the natural kind of a feel. But you know, the river story is it really bleeds into every story that’s here. Kick back to Grand Coulee Dam and if they hadn’t built that dam in the 1930s, there wouldn’t be electricity, there wouldn’t be irrigation, there wouldn’t be the cooling agents and the, the water necessary for the Manhattan Project National Park. You just, you just weave that story. It goes through all of the industry, all of the settlement of this area and in an interesting way, all of that is sort of related to jobs and you know, making a living. And it’s not really related to recreation so much originally, but, but what’s, you know, I think, I think in some ways the Tri Cities may have missed the point early on from my perspective and said, you know, they sort of turned their back to the river and used it for all of these production facilities and needs, you know, energy uses and all that kind of stuff and didn’t think of it so much as, as recreation. And, and today what’s happening in the Tri Cities is it’s been turned to recreation, you know, venue.

Kevin Lewis:
Right. And so, and you know, I don’t mean to, I’m generalizing really broadly here, but, but the river is a huge part of it. And so, so when you come to the Tri Cities, you’ve got parks that line the river, you’ve got restaurants, you’ve got paved trails, 26 miles of paved trails that go along around it, over the bridges and onto the other side into parks and things on the other side. And, and just, you know, just a number of really interesting things along that when one of the first things that I tell people to, if I’m bringing somebody up, you know, my kids had never been up here either. Right. So, okay, kids, you got to come up and they’re, they’re older, they’re families, you know, whatever. So what do we do? We jump on e bikes and ride the trail system. And I think that’s the first the first thing to do, because it.

Kevin Lewis:
Now you get that sense of what this community is wrapped around and coming from. Coming from St. George, Utah, desert country, not much water down there. And I flew up here and looked out the window of the plane and saw this massive river system. And it’s actually three rivers. The Columbia, the Yakima, and the Snake all come together right here. So it’s really interesting how the water, you know, Seattle side, you got plenty of water over there, but here we’re. We’re in the middle of that, you know, rain shadow.

Kevin Lewis:
And yet you have these three massive water systems that come together here. The first time I went across one of the bridges, you know, I just was like, this river is so big, Columbia. And I’m going to be honest with you, Scott. The longer I’ve been here, the smaller the river’s gotten. Isn’t that weird?

Scott Cowan:
It’s not weird because. Okay, Wenatchee’s on the Columbia too. Right. So we’re upstream from you. Yep. And I go across the Columbia two or three times a week, and I kind of take it for granted.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
But then I also go up. So. So how. Okay, so I go up to Omac and Oroville and Tenasket, and I. So I go up along the Columbia that way. But when I come to Tri Cities, the route that I usually take is I go from Wenatchee, I go to Quincy, I get on 90, I go up to Moses Lake, and I come down through Othell in that way.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay.

Scott Cowan:
But when I come home, I tend to come up through the Reach and come up along the Columbia. And so I’m. I’m around the Columbia a lot, and I’m. If I’m being really honest with you, not that we’re not being honest with each other, but if I’m just being open.

Kevin Lewis:
Right. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Is that. Yeah. Most of the time I just kind of take it for granted. But every now and then I catch myself going, that’s a lot of water.

Kevin Lewis:
A lot of water.

Scott Cowan:
That’s a lot. That thing’s huge. And then I start to realize it’s like, what, 1200, 1300 miles long? The economic impact that it has for not just Tri Cities, but, you know, the whole North Central, just central Washington. Like you said, we wouldn’t have the electricity that we have. We wouldn’t have. We wouldn’t be growing the potatoes, we wouldn’t be growing the grapes, we wouldn’t be doing the apples, we wouldn’t be doing a lot of things as easily.

Kevin Lewis:
With transportation system to get all of that stuff from here to Asia. Right, right.

Scott Cowan:
You, your communities there are just, you know, your. Right on that. That it’s, you know, it’s vital.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah. And, and the stories that are connected to that, I’ve been sort of just fascinated as I’ve gone down the rabbit holes one at a time because there’s so many stories that are connected to it. And, you know, some of them are. Yeah, there’s multiple sides to these stories, you know, and trying to understand the who’s and what’s and whys of it and how do we get to this point. But, but I see the river, you know, again, a desert boy coming up. And I see the river as just a, just a playground, you know, and with this, this trail system along it and some neat shops and facilities and some great parks, some, you know, ref. Wildlife refuges that you can connect to all of that. So that’s, that’s a definite.

Kevin Lewis:
In my list of. Yeah, if you’re coming to Tri Cities, you know, get out of the car, get on the bike or take a walk along the path.

Scott Cowan:
So I’m going to put you on the spot. So are there, are there places I could rent an E bike near the river? Okay, so we’ve got vendors down there that I can go rent an E bike.

Kevin Lewis:
Yep. Okay. Yep. And that’s what I do. I’ve got a regular bike that I ride. I’m a mountain bike kind of guy. But. But when I bring people to town, it’s like, let’s go get the E bikes.

Kevin Lewis:
We’ll cruise. And it’s just fun. You’re like a dog with its head out the window. You. All right, push the button and just go, you know. Yeah. And, you know, so along the river, you know, some interesting, fun little things. And this is, again, maybe, maybe it’s not you and your golfing buddies are as interested in some of this stuff, but there are some cool, cool little things along the way.

Kevin Lewis:
They did some historical stuff. There’s these little placards, not placards, they’re almost like stones that are positioned about every quarter miles along there called Pompey’s Lessons. And Pompey was one of the kids of Sacagawea. Lewis and Clark and Sacagawea. And I don’t know why they named him Pompey’s Lessons. But you, you can just do some interpretive, educational stuff along the route if you want. If you’re walking or riding or whatever or teaching about Lewis and Clark and the history there, there’s Another, there’s another. A guy and I forget his name.

Kevin Lewis:
Thomas. Oh, slipped my mind right now. But he started a project where. At the Reach Museum, which is another great place to stop into. Again, one of your kind of first things if you’re trying to understand this area. The Reach Museum gives you the story of the land and it gives you the story of the Manhattan Project. And those two things are sort of this duality of story. Right, right.

Kevin Lewis:
But right there at the Reach there’s this big sundial type monument that represents the sun in the solar system. And this, the strategy was that they were going to do a scaled model of the solar system with this. There’s the orbits, okay. And so you go about a mile out on the river trail and there’s a marker, monument marker there that represents the Earth and it’s to scale of where the Earth would be in comparison to the sun. And you’ve got the planets aligned along the way there, which just gives you again some perspective. So for instance, and this, you’ll find this funny, I think. Well, Jupiter ends up in Howard Amen Park. The trail doesn’t go clear to Benton City, but Benton City happens to be in where the orbit would be for Uranus.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
And so they, they opted in to put the Uranus marker in Benton City. Now a lot of people like to pronounce that a different way, right?

Scott Cowan:
Yes, that’s true.

Kevin Lewis:
There are T shirts that are out there that I saw Uranus in Breton City. So anyway. But there’s there’s some, just some fun and interesting things like that that make that experience even more immersive. Right. When you’re, when you’re down there, some, some just interesting things have gone along. You can, you can ride the bike all the way out to the, the USS Triton sale, which is a nuclear submarine. It’s powered by two, I think it was two nuclear reactors that powered it. And, and it went.

Kevin Lewis:
Circumvented the globe completely underwater. Wow. Never, never came up and circumvented the globe. So there’s a, there’s a submarine sale that you can actually schedule a tour and go inside of it and look through the periscope and you know, and all that stuff. Okay. So some, just some interesting things. So, so that kind of leads me to the maybe third category of, of what the Tri Cities is about. And it’s sort of that history and science, right? So much history, Lewis and Clark, the core of discovery, you know, of course, all the indigenous and all of that.

Kevin Lewis:
We even have the Kennewick man. Which was. Right, you know.

Scott Cowan:
Right. I forgot about that until you said.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, right. Yeah. A skeleton that was found along the Columbia river that’s dated back to perhaps the earliest known human beings.

Scott Cowan:
Think that’s still. I think they still consider that the oldest skeleton that they’ve uncovered.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
You know.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, that. That whole story. So. So our history is. Is pretty interesting. Lots of, Lots of connections.

Kevin Lewis:
You know, the Triton sail, the. The Manhattan Project. We have the National Lab PNNL here that is making all kinds of incredible discovery that makes our life better and things that we use like the airport scanners that you go through, that was invented.

Scott Cowan:
I don’t know. That’s making my life better. I got to be honest.

Kevin Lewis:
Well, at least you don’t have to take your clothes off. Right?

Scott Cowan:
And now we don’t have to take our shoes off because you don’t take.

Kevin Lewis:
The shoes off anymore. You know, so. So lots of that. So that’s kind of third category of. Of experiences that you can have here. The fourth one, events and entertainment. And you know, you brought up Waterfall a 60 years this year of waterfalls that, you know, I’m trying to go back and think of events that have been going on much longer than that, you know, anywhere.

Scott Cowan:
There are, but there’s not a lot of them. Let’s just put it that way.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah. So. So the track record there and of course it’s been through, you know, different waves of, you know, what happens when you’re down there and all of that. But it’s. They got a great show. They put a air show with it, you know, for. For a nice hangout with some family and friends. Go play some cornhole and, you know, barbecue, watch the races in the air show and have a great time at the park.

Kevin Lewis:
Right. That’s a good one. And then, you know, everything from that to, you know, we. We just brought in an Ironman event and you can get involved in something like that.

Scott Cowan:
All right, I gotta. I’m gonna. Well, I’m gonna say a couple things. I know. Then I’m gonna put you on the spot with the tough one. But the thing. The thing that struck me surprised me was the airport. I didn’t realize and I don’t know that I’m completely accurate right now, so.

Scott Cowan:
But I believe that you can fly from Pasco to San Francisco, Denver, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. I don’t know if Chicago’s on that list yet.

Kevin Lewis:
Chicago’s not on it yet. Salt Lake City is.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah, I. When I Heard that I could not have to go to SeaTac and not have to go over and just the chaos of the west side to me and no shade. Sorry, folks. You know, people listen to us, know how I feel. But if I can just basically from where I live, it’s just about the same mileage actually shorter to drive to Pasco to fly. And those places that I just named off are kind of places I go. Yeah, it’s like. And.

Scott Cowan:
Or if I don’t go there, Minneapolis and Denver, I can connect to anywhere from those two airports or Los Angeles. I mean, you know, I mean, boom. So it’s. I don’t think I didn’t realize that.

Kevin Lewis:
Had this asset kind of a hidden, another hidden gem. Right. In some respects, it’s like little Pasco has direct flights to 10 different destinations and you can one hop just about anywhere globally.

Scott Cowan:
Right.

Kevin Lewis:
You know, one, one stop in your, you know, Phoenix to Mexico, Denver to wherever. Minneapolis to where it’s la. Like you said, boom. Yeah. Really remarkable. And you know, again, part of that, the, the advantage that we have of all of those other things that we talk about, you know, PNNL and you know, the Hanford site and agriculture and everything else. There’s a lot of industry here, there’s a lot of business that takes place here and people need to get here to, to coordinate that.

Scott Cowan:
And so, yeah, I just.

Kevin Lewis:
We’re one of the, we’re one of the growing airports in a time when airports have been cutting back, especially recently. You know, we’re. We’re still on the adding flights because we’re filling flights here.

Scott Cowan:
I can think of three airlines that fly in there. I think it’s Alaska flies in. I want to say United flies in United. And then there’s, okay, Delta and then there’s another, a brand that I’m not familiar with alliance or something to that effect.

Kevin Lewis:
A couple of small ones. Allegiant. And we also added American last year. See, American Phoenix.

Scott Cowan:
That’s to Phoenix.

Kevin Lewis:
To Phoenix. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
See, I mean, for me, selfishly, that’s. I’m gonna, I’m gonna fly out of there.

Kevin Lewis:
Come this way. Yeah, yeah, I, I would do the same thing. I mean, I’ve. I’ve flown enough in my life that if I can find a. An easy on, easy off rather than going through a major, you know, you know, again, you do what you have to do. But. But it is a, it’s a great alternative. And you know, interestingly enough, I said it’s like 10 minutes to everywhere.

Kevin Lewis:
I can get to the airport in 10 minutes from my house. I. I know that because one time I got out of the car and was walking to the terminal and realized I had left my phone at home. Of course, all my ticket and everything is on there, you know, So I jumped back. Jumped back in the car, drove home, got the phone, drove back to the airport and made my flight.

Scott Cowan:
See, I. Yeah, you couldn’t do that. The only. The only. The only. Okay, I’ve got. I got a story kind of. Kind of.

Scott Cowan:
All right. So I had to go to a conference in Spokane, and I was living in the west side at that time. So, you know, Seattle, Sea, Texas, Spokane is like taking a, you know, a bike ride. I mean, it’s like you get in, you take off your landing. I mean, I think you spend more time taxiing.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
So the event happened in Spokane, and I’m sitting in the terminal and I’m talking to this individual from one of the companies that I work with, and we were in this conversation and they said, Alaska Flight number 123 is now boarding for SeaTac Airport. And he goes up, that’s me. I go, yeah, that’s me, too. So I get up and this was pre phone stuff. Handed the gate attendant my ticket and she inserted and goes, oh. I’m like, what? She goes, you’re not on this flight. You were on the flight that just left.

Kevin Lewis:
I go, what?

Scott Cowan:
You mean there’s more than one flight going to Seattle? Luckily for me. Luckily for me. They go, well, we’ll get you on this flight. But we were just sitting there. I didn’t think they had two flights going to Seattle in an hour.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Anyway, so I could have been trapped in Spokane for a night or something, but anyway, I could not have imagined leaving my phone and having to go back and get it at SeaTac. Or.

Kevin Lewis:
Right.

Scott Cowan:
Any. Any.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. Kind of unheard of, but. Right. Yeah, that was my. Okay, you know, I’m sorry. My experience with it.

Scott Cowan:
So I’m going to put you on the spot because you gave me kind of this spring thing here, and we’ve talked about summer and the river. The river and the wine and all that goes with this. But when you started this conversation with me, you said you came up in January and it was a little. I think you used the word dreary. Putting you on the spot. What’s there to do in Tri Cities during those dreary winter months? What’s going on there for activities, off season, if you will.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah. You know, December is obviously a lot of holiday activity. You know, things, things around the holiday. Right. All of that, that kind of stuff. January, to be honest, is a little bit of people re. Regroup and reset.

Scott Cowan:
Nothing wrong with that, by the way. There’s nothing wrong with that. Having, having a month off is pretty good year enough.

Kevin Lewis:
But, but you’re kind of hitting on. You know, one of the things I talk about a lot is, and this is that fifth category that we talked about is sunshine and open spaces. And, and so, you know, when I, when I say dreary, it’s because I came from a place that had sunshine and open spaces as well. And so it was a little bit of. This is a little different because you get, you get some cloud cover here those two months. What I, what I’ve noticed though is temperature wise, you’re still in a lot of cases, you’re still pretty good. You’re gonna, you’re not gonna be able to play golf some days, but other days you can. It just might be overcast.

Kevin Lewis:
Right?

Scott Cowan:
I’m not a golfer, but. Yeah, but you can’t do that in Wenatchee. We’ve got.

Kevin Lewis:
You can’t. No, we’ve got. No, you’re. Sit down. Yeah, we, we do have availability. Again, you’re gonna have a couple of days here and there throughout those two months that you might get some freeze or something. Then you know, a little bit of weather, but overcast gray. So you’re getting a little bit more of the west coast feel.

Kevin Lewis:
Temperatures are cooler but, but you can still get out. You can. I mean, the, the waterfowl, if you like, bird watching, if you like any of that kind of stuff. Man, there’s just tons of that going on. The, the waterfowl that are coming through that time of year. Incredible. So the wildlife refuges, the, the hiking along the trails and things like that. You know, I went for a hike on Christmas Eve, I think.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, I think it was the 23rd, 24th of December just south of here at a place called Twin, the Twin Sisters Twins at the Wallula Gap and took my little dog. We hiked up to these like incredible, like basalt pillars that have Indian legend with them or whatever. Looking over the Columbia river down there and all across the field, you saw green. Oh, wow. Like, it’s like something is popping at that time of year. It surprised me, really surprised me because I thought everything was just kind of gray and brown then, but it was already starting to pop a little bit, so. So you can get out. You know, you just dress a little differently, you prepare for a little differently or, yeah, you look for some of those indoor, indoor activities.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah, but you. I like. I like. Okay. What I like about Wenatches, we get all four seasons, right? But I will also say that by the end of each season. Well, that’s not true. By the end of summer, I’m ready for fall, and by the end of winter, I’m ready for spring. I’m always sad to see fall and spring leave because I know what’s coming, but it’s not.

Scott Cowan:
What I think is that 13 months of overcast and drizzle of the west side. And I mean, facetious, but that’s kind of.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. How. How long are your winters in Menachee? How. What’s the. Two or three. Okay. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. So we. Since I’ve been here for eight years, the earliest I think we received snow was mid October. And that was early.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
And then my wife threw my 60th birthday party, and my birthday is April 12th, and on the 13th, it snowed a foot.

Kevin Lewis:
Oh, wow.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay. So you can get it.

Scott Cowan:
We could almost get six, you know, four. Four solid months, you know, of legitimate. I mean, November, December, January and February are. Can be.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, can. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Can be rough. October’s in. April’s a little, like, abnormal.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
But our summers, kind of like yours. I mean, we’re having kind of a mild summer this year. I don’t think we’ve hit 100 yet.

Kevin Lewis:
We. We did get 100. A couple of days, but only a couple of days. Really nice.

Scott Cowan:
In fact, if I look at my phone, I’m going to cheat and look at my phone. So just so that people. I don’t know when this episode’s going live, but we’re recording this in July.

Kevin Lewis:
And Saturday.

Scott Cowan:
They’Re saying the high will be 79 degrees in the middle of July.

Kevin Lewis:
I think it’s. We looked out Today, it was 85.

Scott Cowan:
It’s 88 right now, according to my.

Kevin Lewis:

88. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
I mean, it’s pleasant.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
All things considered.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay, so we’re loving that. One other thing I thought about in the. In the winter months that it’s kind of fun here. We’ve got the Tri City Americans, the hockey team.

Scott Cowan:
They play against the Wenatchee Wild.

Kevin Lewis:
Exactly. So, you know, again, another little piece of, you know, entertainment, nightlife, whatever. Get down and have a fun time with a hockey game. And I’m going to be. I might be a little off here, but I grew up watching hockey in Salt Lake. I was. I had season tickets to the Salt Lake Golden Eagles in Minor league hockey. Chl, way back in the day, and they won the Adams cup or whatever it was.

Kevin Lewis:
And so, you know, I was a big fan. But I love minor league hockey. There’s something raw about it that makes it really entertaining. I went to see a Kraken game when I was in town for a conference, and it was almost like Symphony. They were skating so perfectly. And I’m not to try and come down on the NHL. I love the NHL, you know, but. But I just.

Kevin Lewis:
The difference in the, you know, the. It was just like almost too pretty at times for that, you know, rugged, raw hockey experience.

Scott Cowan:
Well, no, no, no. I tend to say things and then people give me feedback like, oh, you’re so negative. And I’m not trying to be negative, but you said minor league hockey. So if I think about what I’m aware of. So Everett, Seattle, Spokane, Tri Cities, Wenatchee are all in the whl.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay.

Scott Cowan:
Those. That league also has teams up in Vancouver. So Vancouver has a WHL team and an NHL team, Victoria. But Pen Dicton, which is just north of the border, they’re getting. They’re moving up to the WHL for this upcoming season. Okay, so these are young men who are. Many of them, the good ones, are getting drafted to go to the NHL. All right, well, we have.

Scott Cowan:
I’m a baseball nut. So you have the Tri City Americans, Right, Or Dust Devils.

Kevin Lewis:
The Dust Devils, yeah.

Scott Cowan:
And they play in the same. Same league as the Everett Aqua Sox and the Spokane Indians. Those are the only three teams in Washington.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay.

Scott Cowan:
We have the Tacoma Rainiers and we have the Seattle Mariners. Right, those. The Rainiers and the Mariners get the. But then there’s the West Coast League, which is collegiate short. It’s the first time a lot of these kids play with wooden bats. And so there’s 17 or 18 teams in that league now in Washington, Oregon, British Columbia, and one in Alberta. I think Edmonton’s in Alberta. So Major League Baseball just had a draft, and I think 42 players from the WCL that had played at the.

Scott Cowan:
The West Coast League at some point were drafted in this. This upcoming Major League Baseball draft. So you can go to these cities. So those teams are in Walla Walla, Yakima, Wenatchee, Bellingham, Port Angeles, Cole, Not Colfax, Ridgefield. And Cowlets. It’s Cowlets. Black Bears.

Kevin Lewis:
Oh, wow.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. So there’s a lot of things we can do sports wise to watch. These young kids who are. They’re not polished yet.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, they’re not coming.

Scott Cowan:
They’re up and coming and you can go see, you can go see the stars of tomorrow at a Tri City Americans hockey game or a Dust Devils game or a Wenatchee Wild hockey match. I’ve been to one wild game.

Kevin Lewis:
That’s.

Scott Cowan:
That’s all I’ve been to.

Kevin Lewis:
And, and it’s, it’s up close and personal. It’s. It’s raw and fun. The fans, you know, we sat. The last time I went to a Americans game, we sat on the third row and the guys on the front row, so much fun. They were as entertaining as the game was. Cowbells and banging on the glass every time somebody was checked on it. And it was just, it was just the night of just fun.

Kevin Lewis:
They got up to go get something to, you know, at the concessions. I said, you guys, you can’t leave. You’re part of the show. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
And, and, and I, I kept saying I was going to go to some this last season and I didn’t because this was when I. His first year in the whl. And I will go to some this coming season because it’s. And I probably will go to, you know, the games against Washington State opponents just because of the whole. My whole explore Washington State thing. But my wife and I were up in Pen Dicton for a concert a couple weeks ago. I. Boy, Canadians are crazy for hockey.

Kevin Lewis:
Man. I lived in Canada for a little while.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. So I, I’m in this little town. Have you ever been to Penticton?

Kevin Lewis:
I haven’t been to Penticton.

Scott Cowan:
Oh, nice. Little nice from a touristy standpoint. Well, we shouldn’t talk about other places, but it’s, it’s. I was really like, wow. It’s sandwiched in between two lakes. The, the south end of town is on. Is bordered by a lake and the north end of town is bordered by another lake. The Okanagan river flows through it.

Scott Cowan:
It’s. It’s pretty cool.

Kevin Lewis:
Beautiful.

Scott Cowan:
It’s in British Columbia’s wine. Wine country.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. Et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, so the concert we went to was at their ice arena, which is about the size of the Toyota or the town center here in Wenatchee. I don’t know how big this facility is in Tri Cities for your, Your team.

Kevin Lewis:
Probably similar about.

Scott Cowan:
Probably. So, you know, this place held about 5,000.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
And the entire ring around it was covered with banners of the Penticton V’s. For years. For years. And I mentioned hockey to somebody and I, I had to pull myself away because they. I could have been. I still could have been there. They were that. That passionate about hockey.

Scott Cowan:
It was. And everywhere in that town is. We support the V’s. We support the. It’s just kind of nice to see.

Kevin Lewis:
That kind of fun.

Scott Cowan:
And I hope that our junior sports, minor league sports in Washington State, I hope we can develop some of that, because I think it’s great for the community. I think it’s. I think it’s really great for the community.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
I didn’t think we’d talk sports at all. Oh, interesting.

Kevin Lewis:
I told you.

Scott Cowan:
I warned you. This is going to go off the rails at some point. We went to sports. All right, but we gotta. I gotta. I gotta put you on the spot here. I gotta ask you my questions, and then we’re gonna cover the Ironman thing. So here’s my questions for you.

Scott Cowan:
And I know you’re not a coffee drinker, but I’m gonna come down to Tri Cities this week.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay.

Scott Cowan:
Where should I go for coffee or, you know, a pastry or something like that? What do you got for me?

Kevin Lewis:
I did some research.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
I love it. So I gotta tell you, though, you know, I’m not a coffee drinker, as you said, but my. My dad used to buy. Do you remember the Nips coffee? Yes. Oh, hard candies. Yes. So every time I smell coffee, I just go nostalgic because I used to eat those like, you know, like candy. Yeah, that’s what they were.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. So. So even though I don’t drink it, I still kind of crave it.

Scott Cowan:
Right, okay.

Kevin Lewis:
All right. Right. But. But I asked. I, I, you know, I asked around the office, and we got a lot of coffee drinkers, and I got some good feedback. So I’m going to put number one on the list is. Is rockabilly roasting. Where’s that at? I’ve never heard of that.

Kevin Lewis:
Kennewick. And it’s in downtown, in the. In the market area. The old town. Kennewick.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
Really neat guy started it. He’s passed away, but he was just a really neat guy, really helpful to the community, and just everybody supported him. When he passed away, the other coffee shops were like, oh, my gosh. You know, they were fundraising and all that stuff. It was kind of a story. But they. They roast their own coffee beans there. They have this great location downtown, Kennewick, in the heart of that old kind of Kennewick feel.

Kevin Lewis:
And this is what this is, a quote. And their cold brew is super smooth and tasty. So there’s. There’s your recommendation. New spot. Okay. Want to go to rockabilly. There’s several others that I could name off.

Kevin Lewis:
You know, some honorable mentions. Caffeine Bar. Caffeine Bar. Caffeine Bar. And the feedback there was the Frou Frou Sweet coffees. And the customer service are great. So even if you don’t like coffee, the Frou Frou Sweet coffees are really great.

Scott Cowan:
I’m a coffee guy.

Kevin Lewis:
You’re a traditional.

Scott Cowan:
I don’t. The fufu ones. Yeah. That doesn’t. I mean, no.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. So rockabilly.

Kevin Lewis:
All right.

Scott Cowan:
I have not heard of that.

Kevin Lewis:
All right. Caffeine Bar. There’s one called. I got to tell you about this one. There’s one called cafe con arte.

Scott Cowan:
Been there.

Kevin Lewis:
Have you been there? What did you think? What did you think of that?

Scott Cowan:
I think what they are doing there, I wish them great success. I really like what the owner, and I can’t think of his name. I had a quick conversation with him. I. I asked him to be on the show. And we’ve just never re this inspiring me to reconnect with him.

Kevin Lewis:
There you go. I really.

Scott Cowan:
I really like what they’re doing. Their coffee art. Community space.

Kevin Lewis:
Community.

Scott Cowan:
Right across the street from the farmers market.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. Put you in that. That Latinx kind of culture and environment. And so that’s. That’s another one to throw out there. There’s a bunch of more I could. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
No shade to anybody. We didn’t mention. But yeah, those are okay. All right, now it’s gonna be lunchtime, and I’m, you know, I gotta grab lunch. And I think of. I asked the question of lunch to my guests because I think it’s easier on. So where’s a great place for lunch in the tri Cities?

Kevin Lewis:
So I’m going to throw out a random one that’s kind of interesting. I mean, most you might go to, like, oh, favorite restaurant or whatever. But we have this really cool food truck hub called Summer’s hub. And it’s in Kennewick. And it’s right. Well, my office. It’s about five minutes from my office. So that’s what I think of it.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay. So what they did is they built a. There’s a building, a main building that has tables and stuff inside. And there’s a place called Brady’s bratz and burgers inside the building. The building is wide open and then surrounded. That is a lot of food trucks.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
Like a parking lot that’s fenced and, you know. You know, safe space with tables and, you know, cornhole and a few things like that. So you’ve got 20 food trucks, what, inside this court? And you can wander in there and anybody can get whatever they want. Now I’m gonna, I’m gonna go back to the, the Brady’s Brats and Burgers. The Brady burger is delicious. And the French fries, the real potato kind of French fries. Right. Really, really good.

Kevin Lewis:
So there’s a solid. But you got your choice of tacos or sushi or.

Scott Cowan:
And there’s that many trucks.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, I think there’s probably, there’s probably close to 20.

Scott Cowan:
That’s almost too many choices. I, I mean, I’d be there for lunch and dinner. I wouldn’t, I would, I would just. I’d be frozen in action.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, that’s.

Scott Cowan:
I, I did not.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay, well, so a different one. I mean, that’s a, that’s a different.

Scott Cowan:
That’s awesome.

Kevin Lewis:
You know, and again, I could, I could pin down a number of different restaurants that I love.

Scott Cowan:
That’s. Now this is all for my recognizance. For me personally, that was.

Kevin Lewis:
There you go.

Scott Cowan:
Done. Anything better? All right, I’m gonna, gonna go out of order. I’m gonna hit you with that third question that I told you I wouldn’t ask you about because we’re gonna wrap this up with the Ironman. Because that’s, that’s what. So here’s the question I told you, Remember I said, and you agreed to play along.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
So it’s simple, you know, I’m going to ask you, you know something or something and then you have to tell me why.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay? Okay.

Scott Cowan:
All right, so here’s the question. Cake or pie? And why.

Kevin Lewis:
Pie? Because I like berries and crust. Okay. Yeah, Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
I keep asking this question, this follow up question because I keep thinking if I ask it enough, it’s going to prove me right. Lately it’s proven me wrong. So I’m throwing it out there. So when you were a kid growing up, did you have more cakes or more pies?

Kevin Lewis:
Gosh, probably more cake, actually.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah, See, I came up with this hypothesis that your answer, not your specific answer, but the answer of the guest is based on what they grew up with. And now what I’m almost coming up with is the exact opposite. Almost everybody goes, well, they say cake. Well, we had pie. I mean, cake’s always kind of like the birthday thing. But if they think, think about it. No, Grandma always brought pie or, you know, whatever the recollection of childhood is. I kept thinking was going to reinforce my thing.

Scott Cowan:
And it’s not.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay, you’re not proving it out I’m not. Everybody’s not proven out. So now you got to come up with another hypothesis.

Scott Cowan:
All right, Iron man, this is what I know about the Sport. It’s approximately 3,000 crazy people gonna do something for about 70 miles, biking, swimming and running. And I could make fun of this just because I can’t see myself doing any of the three. But what we have here is about 3,000 participants coming to the Tri Cities and in one day they’re going to do this.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Questions I have is, well, I’m not going to ask you to get into Iron man because I have a couple of guests on that are actually participants in this. We’ll let them talk about the, the nuts and bolts of the sport. But as part of the organization of this thing, what goes on behind the scenes to bring in 3,000 people and have them go from point A to point B successfully in a day?

Kevin Lewis:
How do you guys pull that off? Great question. I’m going to start this off with a little story, if it’s all right.

Scott Cowan:
Sure.

Kevin Lewis:
So, yeah, we get this first one here and it’s first, first time. The whole, every, it’s new to everybody in the community but Ironman organizations in town, everybody’s there, all of these things have come together. So, you know, 4:30, 5:00 in the morning, I’m out, you know, and look, checking out, how did this all come together? Is it, is it, you know, because there’s an energy there. So now you, you really have, you know, 2500 bikes in a lot racked up and these are, these are like, you know, average, probably ten thousand dollar bikes. Right, right. I mean they’re, they’re not cheap. This isn’t a cheap sport. It’s quite an investment.

Kevin Lewis:
And this is, you know, we had it down at Columbia Point Marina and so the lights are on, the big stadium lights at the park are on and you know, we’ve got drone shots that just like. But I walked up on the hill, I had to look at it for myself. You know, I went up on the, on the freeway bridge, looked down at it and just saw the buzz and everything happening. And then I walked down the path to where the swim starts going to happen. And you got all these athletes and they’re getting their gear and they’re all intense and whatever and there’s all this kind of energy right there on the shore. And the sun is just barely starting to show light over the horizon of the river. And I looked out to, to look at the sunrise and I saw this little Trail of single lights that were weaving their way along the river. It was the kayak, it was the water safety crew.

Kevin Lewis:
And to me, that was this surreal moment that said that just kind of brought this whole thing together. Because what you have is a group of people who are invested in the back end of this, and nobody really even knows they’re there, but they just silently stream their way out to the river so that we can have a safe swim. And you have thousands of others who are doing the same thing across 73 miles of the course that have come to volunteer to be part of this crazy event and support some people who are doing something that they may never do themselves. Right. And it’s. That’s the essence of the event is it’s just like, man, my heart just kind of. I get emotional when I think about it because it. Because that’s what it takes.

Kevin Lewis:
It takes a community of people who are willing to. To just do something outside of themselves, to help somebody do something outside of themselves. Right.

Scott Cowan:
So about how many people does it take volunteers and staff to. To put on this event?

Kevin Lewis:
So we had. This year, we had about 1300 volunteers that were there for the day. When you think about staff and agencies that are involved, you start adding another, you know, few hundred people. They’re in the back end. The Ironman organization, they brought, you know, gosh, I can’t remember. I think we had close to 200, 250 rooms that they brought people in to put this thing on. It’s a massive undertaking, and it just doesn’t happen unless you can connect the dots and get people inspired by, why would we do this? Why are we closing roads and making traffic make things difficult for our residents and whatever, but there’s so much more to it than just an event where somebody goes off and does, you know.

Scott Cowan:
Does something cool really make it difficult? I mean, if we’re being honest, I mean, is it for the day? Is it. Is it kind of a. It’s a burden on getting around the area. Right? I mean, that’s okay.

Kevin Lewis:
It. Yeah, it is in some locations. And we, you know, we learned some things this year. There are a few pinch points that we. Okay, we can address that better this way. And so we’ve made some adjustments to the course. The reality is, you think of it, you’re in a car and you have to drive 10 minutes further. How hard is that, really? Right.

Kevin Lewis:
But we have this kind of. I get it. If I hadn’t paid attention to all of the literature that was sent out and all the social Media and all the regular media that said, hey, this is coming and plan your day a little differently this day. If I hadn’t paid attention to that, and I probably wouldn’t, if I wasn’t in that space, I might ignore it until that day. All of a sudden I’m stuck in some traffic now. It’s a big deal now.

Scott Cowan:
Not a good day to leave your cell phone at home.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, so it can be. Okay. So, so the, the thing that I just encourage people to do is, is just kind of pay attention, take a minute and say, okay, this day is going to be a little different. I’m going to be able to get where I need to go, but I may need to go a different route this day and then I can get there, or there might be a 10 minute delay while I wait for some of the bikes to go by and get an opening. Because that’s what it is. You’re taking 2,500 athletes across 73 miles. You don’t, you can’t, you know it is logistically challenging.

Scott Cowan:
Do you? I don’t know that you’re going to know the answer to this. So I, you know, I’m not trying to set you up for a tough question, but the winner. How many divisions are there? There’s, there’s obviously men’s and women and they break it down by age group, right?

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay. Yep, that’s it.

Scott Cowan:
Do you, off the top of your head, remember the fastest time of any of those groups?

Kevin Lewis:
I do. I can, actually, if I think hard enough. So the winner of our race was Luke Tasker. He’s from Vancouver, Washington.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
And he did it in three hours and 53 minutes. And he’s not a pro, he’s an amateur athlete.

Scott Cowan:
Oh, well, yeah, because he would have done it much faster. I’m just kidding.

Kevin Lewis:
Well, not much faster.

Scott Cowan:
Don’t take me seriously.

Kevin Lewis:
But less than four hours to do.

Scott Cowan:
74 hours plus miles.

Kevin Lewis:
73 miles. Yeah. Running, biking, 1.2 miles, bike 56 and run a half marathon. 13.

Scott Cowan:
I just.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
No. All parts of my body say no to that. I think it’s amazing. Personally, for me. No. But I think it’s amazing, number one, that people are willing to endure the level because it’s not just like you decide to go run the Ironman on Saturday. You’re training for it for months.

Kevin Lewis:
Probably.

Scott Cowan:
I’m just going to speculate. Months? You’re not. You just don’t get up on Friday night and go, you know, I’m going to do better Man, Tomorrow. Yeah, let’s go down to no. So the commitment to the sport, the commitment to completing such a. To me, that’s grueling sound.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
And I don’t know which of the three sounds more daunting, to be honest with you.

Kevin Lewis:
Well, I think that’s the reality is it’s like you really, I mean, that’s how Iron man really started too, was back in the island of Hawaii. There were a couple of army guys that were like, you know, one was a swimmer, one was a biker and one was a runner. And they just challenge each other. Which is, which is the most difficult discipline, you know, hey, why don’t we put these together and see what happened?

Scott Cowan:
What could go wrong.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, exactly. Okay. I started an event that was. They took three existing events, I’ll get the names of them wrong. But there were. On the island of Hawaii, there was the, there was a swim, there was a bike event, around the island bike event, and there was a run, a marathon. And they said, okay, we’ll take those three events, we’ll combine them together into one. And that’s how the full Ironman distance came up.

Kevin Lewis:
Came to be 112 miles because the Oahu swim, the around the island bike and the. What was the run? I had Honolulu Marathon, I think.

Scott Cowan:
So what was your time last year when you completed?

Kevin Lewis:
What did you, you know, I, I tell people, I say, you know, I’ve been around this sport for so long, I can, I can talk the talk, but I, I don’t necessarily walk the walk, but I, I’m pretty sure I put in my 70.3 miles in one way or another that day. I was everywhere, you know, so I’m.

Scott Cowan:
Going to guess because you mentioned earlier, mountain biking would be. Of the three would be. The biking would be the thing. You would probably go. That’s what I would do that if copy.

Kevin Lewis:
Just because I have ridden. But, you know, 56 miles, it’s a ways but yeah, I could probably pull that off. I’d have to, I’d have to work on the swim and open water swim’s a different thing now we’re, we’ve got an advantage here because we do swim in a river. So it’s down river swim. Right. But still it’s still mile, you know, mile, 1.2 miles.

Scott Cowan:
So how fast are they doing the mile?

Kevin Lewis:
Oh my gosh, the swim times, I think the slowest swim time we had last year was like 27, 28 minutes, 30 minutes, something like that. They’re doing the, the fast, fast ones were coming in at 15. That’s fast.

Scott Cowan:
That’s fast.

Kevin Lewis:
That’s very, really fast. Yeah, the river was rivers of it and you know, interesting in the Ironman space people, people come to learn that this one’s a nice one to get, cut your teeth on, but you might wake up, you know, if you went and did a race like St. George right after this one, it would be, it’s a whole different story. Right? Yeah. Right.

Scott Cowan:
Now, from a, from a, from a viewing standpoint, I know, you know.

Kevin Lewis:
Are.

Scott Cowan:
There good places for a spectator to take and you’re not going to be able to stand it. You’re not going to stand in one spot and see all three things. But are there good, are there good locations and are they relatively easy to go from the here to here to here?

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. So on the spectator side, you know, in triathlon, I had, I had eight. An eight time world champion Ironman athlete tell me, you know, it’s kind of like watching paint dry. Paul Anubi Frazier told me that when I was first getting involved in this in the sport. That’s pretty, I only say that because she said it. If, if, you know, somebody involved in the event, it’s pretty energizing. And there are some places the, you know, some of the best places to go. So the swim start is really fun.

Kevin Lewis:
You get down, you see all the energy of people going in. And in our race, that is upstream, you know, essentially a mile from where they come out, right to the bike transition. So you can walk down that mile, you can go see the swim start, you can walk down that mile, and if you hustle, you can, you can see your same athlete enter and come out of the water.

Scott Cowan:
No, I think those guys are gonna, I’m gonna walk the mile slower than they’re gonna swim, it sounds like, but.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay, and, but that’s a neat place because they’re coming out of the water, they’re ripping off the sweatsuits, they’re throwing on their gear, they grab their bike and they head out into, into the ride. Right. So there’s a lot of energy there. And then in our course, they, they do 56 miles and they come back and they drop the bike right there again. So after the riders are coming in and out for a bit, you, you’ve got them at both ends. You can, you can walk not too far and see them coming in. You can see them going out, you can see all that kind of, that’s kind of a fun area. We have another area on our course that goes up around.

Kevin Lewis:
I Say I told somebody it goes over Badger Mountain. And they, they went, what? Yeah, it doesn’t go over Badger Mountain, but the, the roads that go up Badger Mountain and around. We had one of the coolest things for the athletes. The, the locals came out from those neighborhoods and, and watched and cheered them as they went up the road. And it was a little bit Tour de France ish. Okay, maybe not quite, maybe. Maybe not quite as rabid as the Tour de France fans are, but, but you had people lying in the streets bringing bells, cheering them on, whatever. And the athletes just really love that, you know, to watch them go up that hill and then over down the other side.

Kevin Lewis:
So those, those are a couple areas where, you know, and we’ll put out a local event guide that will, that will help you navigate that. It’s like, where do you, if you live in this area, come over and watch here for a little while or go down here. So we’ve got some things like that. We’ll have a website that you go to visit tricities.comironman where all of.

Scott Cowan:
I’ll put a link in the show notes for people to. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, they can get all the information. They can also go in there and find out about the traffic impacts and look at a map and go, I live here and I need to get to here. How do I get out of this area? And, and so we’re trying to make that as convenient and as easy as possible for people. They can see the times when the, when the roads are going to be closed and try and navigate that again. Last year, if, if, if people didn’t, you know, didn’t catch it last year, or if they did, we’ve made, we’re making improvements. We, we went back and analyzed it all and we’ll try to, we’re trying to dial in those things so that it. You’ve got the information you need to get around and, you know, make your day, make your day fun. But this is, you know, it’s an event that, like I say, it’s.

Kevin Lewis:
There’s the economic impact, which is really a big piece of it. I mean, we, we had seven, seven and a half million dollars come into the community that weekend. People spent that money here.

Scott Cowan:
That’s a big impact to the region.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, that’s good. And, you know, people coming from 45 states, 20 different countries to participate in the race. We see those benefits in so many different ways. The media surge was huge. I think we saw 161% increase in our positive media about the Area. Oh, wow. Relating, you know, in. That was for the year, but, but a bulk of that was surrounding this, this event.

Kevin Lewis:
We, you know, a lot of the, like the, the race video that we produced and put out right after the race, highlighting the event in, in less than two weeks, I think 40, 45,000 people had watched that video. You know, they share it. They’re, they’re, like I said, these are kind of type A personalities that participate in these events and they’re going to tell everybody about it. And so a way to showcase our destination in a, in a really natural and beautiful way with a lot of positive energy about it. I think that’s good. The other piece of it though, that I think the event like that brings that I really, it’s, it’s hard to quantify this, but you’ve created an energy in your community. Thousand people came out to volunteer. People, people saw the videos.

Kevin Lewis:
People saw. I got in the action. You brought these passionate people into your community. They saw what you brought, your passion and they left here and they take it with them. And they’re gonna, you know, they’re gonna talk about this event. They’ve, they’ve accomplished something really significant in their life by accomplishing this event. They’re gonna talk about it for the rest of their life. And that connection to what they did and where they did it is really important in telling the story of the Tri Cities and how great it is.

Kevin Lewis:
And so it’s worth a little sacrifice, you know, a little bit of detail.

Scott Cowan:
Totally, totally agree. I do have a couple more questions about the event. What time does it start?

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, racers go in the water at 6:30. Starting at 6:30 on Sunday morning.

Scott Cowan:
Can we push? I’m going to come down for this. Can we push it to 7 because 6:30.

Kevin Lewis:
I got to get my coffee. You got to get down to Rockefeller.

Scott Cowan:
I got to get to Rock. Get my coffee. So racers go in the water at 6:30, and you said just under four hours was the fastest time. So this is wrapping up, not wrapping up, but people will start crossing the finish line. Let’s say 10. Yeah, 10:30. I don’t want to say 10:30 because somebody will be earlier, but somewhere between 10 and 10:30. So a couple questions.

Scott Cowan:
Who is the last person to complete the race?

Kevin Lewis:
How long did they take? I don’t have the name of the last person. I probably should just jot that down for fun. But they come across roughly about 7:30. I’m sorry, not 7:30. 4:30.

Scott Cowan:
4:30.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
So they really, it was A much longer time, but they completed it. That’s awesome. Do you know off the top of your head, the youngest and the oldest participants?

Kevin Lewis:
I think 18 was our youngest and I think, if I remember right, our oldest. Gosh, I can’t remember it. I think it was in the 70s. Okay. Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah. Because we. You don’t. I, I think I’m making an assumption here. We probably don’t let kids do this. So you got to be at least an adult.

Kevin Lewis:
Right. You have to be 18. 18’s the youngest to do an Ironman. And you know, and I’ve seen racers up as high as 84, 85 finishing it. Right.

Scott Cowan:
That’s awesome.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
I mean even just, even just participating, give. Trying it at 80 any age. That’s. That’s amazing. So this is coming up. What’s the date for this for the 2025?

Kevin Lewis:
2025 is September 21st. Okay.

Scott Cowan:
And starts about 6:30 in the morning. So get your, get out there, get.

Kevin Lewis:
Your coffee, get out there a little early. Feel that buzz and energy as people are gearing up and getting ready. We’ll do the national anthem and boom, the cannon goes off and away they go.

Scott Cowan:
So It’s a canon. 2500 people racing into the water.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, they do them in, you know, about five at a time. Right.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. I was gonna say that I could see people getting injured in the, the melee of that many arms and legs.

Kevin Lewis:
Iron man used to do a mass start. I’ve, I’ve been involved in those. And it’s, it’s a sight when you have 2500 people and they go boom. And that’s there. It’s just like, you know, salmon spawning coming up the waterfalls right now.

Scott Cowan:
Last question or last statement and ask you to validate. So my recollection is the Trises is going to. Has got a three year. This is year two of a three. So you’re going to be. The plan is to do it again in 2026.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
If you’re forecasting. If I’m, if I’m asking you to look in the crystal ball. Do you think Tri Cities will be a regular on the ironman circuit beyond 26?

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, I think if, if it’s up to Ironman, there’s no question they’re. They were thrilled with the way our community came together and put this off. The feedback from the race. This is really fun to talk about. Do you know what a net promoter score is?

Scott Cowan:
I do, yeah.

Kevin Lewis:
So you get it. It’s a, it’s a ranking of whether people would would rate your event or would recommend it to, to a friend. Right, right. Anything over 50 in the way their scoring system works is a, is a really good score. If you score above 50, that’s a great score. And the average Ironman race from their athletes is ranked at 52. That’s their, that’s their global average.

Scott Cowan:
That’s the athletes that participated ranking it. Okay, great. Where did your race come in last year?

Kevin Lewis:
Tri Cities race scored 80 last year. I mean we killed it.

Scott Cowan:
That’s, that’s impressive. That’s a huge, yeah, huge change.

Kevin Lewis:
Just, you know, so that tells you what the athletes thought of our community, of the way the event was put together, of the reception they had from the people. That’s what that’s all based on. You know, how did it all come together? And would you recommend this? And it was phenomenal. So yeah, 93% positive feedback in their survey when you just ranking from 1 to whatever, 80 net promoter score. The event was selected by the athletes as the second best swimming in North America of an Ironman event.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
And I think it was the third most recommended race of all the races they do in North America. So yeah, so they’re, they’re gonna say right now they’re just thrilled with. Yeah, the reception. It came off great. A first year event to get those kind of scores. We improve on that. We do even better. You know, so the, the, the question is up in the air is, does the Tri Cities want to host it? That’s really, really what it comes down to.

Kevin Lewis:
And so far we’re all in, right?

Scott Cowan:
Well, yeah, I mean, it’s easy for me not living there to say. I think, you know, if you, if your community has the opportunity to bring an event like this back annually or every, you know, every other year type thing, I, the way you’ve described it, the way I’m thinking about it, it is a great showcase for the Tri Cities. Your area seems like it’s a good, the sport is a good fit for what you have to offer, I. E. The race, it’s relatively level, you know, it’s not, you know, these are all things that would probably make it desirable as a course. I touched on the airport earlier. I mean, if you said 45 different states, okay, Tracy is pretty easy to get to.

Kevin Lewis:
Pretty easy to get to.

Scott Cowan:
You know, it’s shockingly easy to get to if you think about it. And you know, it’s right. Okay. Yeah, I can see a lot of reasons why this would be a great reoccurring addition to your community.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah, I think it could become a staple event. And, you know, maybe we’re sitting here in 10 years and still just, just loving. You know, there’s, there’s, there’s a lot of factors, you know, growth plays into it and roads and availability and things like that. But, but yeah, what a, what a great way to start. Have a, have this go off the way it did. And, you know, I think we’re pretty excited about it. And, you know, everything I’ve heard so far from the community leaders is, is they’re, they’re, they’re thrilled with what, what happened, and let’s keep going. Right.

Kevin Lewis:
And then, you know, then the next question is, is, I mean, the one I get all the time is, what’s next? Right. Okay. What else have you got? And so we’re working on what have.

Scott Cowan:
You done for me lately?

Kevin Lewis:
Come on. We’re working on some things, you know, you try to find in our role as a destination marketing organization. We are constantly seeking out those things that fit. Right. And just as you kind of recap there, this one works for our community. I think it works really well. So is there another event that would do a similar benefit? Maybe a different time of year? Right. So we got it.

Kevin Lewis:
Let’s say we got a downtime in the end of May or something. What could we slide into that window that would, that would then bring some positive attention and create people into the community and then they go out and they share their story. And from my experience, my St. George experience changed the dynamic and the fabric of the community, changed the perspective of the world outside and opened up all kinds of opportunity. And now that destination, different destination, but that destination is like, it’s incredible what’s going on down there in terms of growth and opportunity down there.

Scott Cowan:
This is very interesting. Yeah. Over the last five years, I’d say for me, I’ve, I’ve become more, more exposed to the Tri Cities region. And, and I’m not just saying this because you and I are, you know, talking. I am saying this genuinely that it’s interesting down there. I, I, it’s. I, I have curiosity when I go down there. I’m not on autopilot when I go down there.

Scott Cowan:
Okay. There’s, there’s places that I go that I’m kind of on autopilot. Yeah.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay. I go here, I go here.

Scott Cowan:
But when I go to Tri Cities and I drive down there and I’ve got a project and, well, I’ve had projects in Kennewick and Pasco and Richland and West Richland and Benton City. And, you know, I’m going to. I’m going to all the. The various communities. Right. Driving through them. And I always tend to. The first few times, I tend to go explore and then pretty.

Scott Cowan:
I’ll be honest with you, sometimes, like, okay, I just want to hurry up and get this.

Kevin Lewis:
This. Go.

Scott Cowan:
Go get this checked off and get.

Kevin Lewis:
Moved to the next one.

Scott Cowan:
Because it’s a long day. Because I try to make the drive in a day, and so that’s a long day. But I found some really cool stuff, and I can’t think of the name of the place right now that. But they’re. The donut place. That’s the potato flower.

Kevin Lewis:
Oh, spud nuts.

Scott Cowan:
Yeah, Spud nuts.

Kevin Lewis:
I mean, that’s. That’s.

Scott Cowan:
I had to check that out. That was pretty interesting, you know.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah. And it’s kind of. It’s kind of amazing what, you know, like, oh, how did that get here? What did. Why did this one start? I. I don’t want to. I don’t say this to. You know, sometimes you say things like this, and it’s like, well, well, we were great before. Right.

Kevin Lewis:
You know, but it feels to me like the Tri Cities is. Is. You’re. You’re on a platform of really, really good, and your time has come. Right? There’s. There’s opportunity to do some really neat things here. Not again, not. Not to say anything about where it was, because you built this great platform.

Kevin Lewis:
You’ve got this. This. But. But there’s. There’s opportunity here. And I think. I think over the next few years, we’re. We’re going to continue to see those kinds of things pop up, those unique things that make you go, why.

Kevin Lewis:
Why are you. Why have you got so many flights going into Tri Cities? You know? Well, just.

Scott Cowan:
Just that, you know, and then, you know, okay, I’ve said this many, many times, but the Space Needle doesn’t need my talking about it to help it.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay?

Scott Cowan:
Space Neil is going to get its traffic no matter if you never mentioned the word Space Needle again, right. In Seattle, Pike Place Market. There are so many other things going on around Washington state in places like the Tri Cities, like. Like Spokane, like Ellensburg. Like Vancouver, Bellingham. Many, many. I could keep going. I think that the entire state’s kind of in the same general boat as Tri Cities is that it’s.

Scott Cowan:
This platform’s been built.

Kevin Lewis:
Yeah.

Scott Cowan:
No disrespect to any place 20 years ago, but right now, I think tourism is up, I believe, statewide. I mean, I know Covid through things. But I think we’ve rebounded. Okay. I think we’re getting people from outside of the Northwest coming here to check it out. I’m going to suggest that they fly into Pasco and start their journey in Pasco and then go to Seattle. I mean, yeah, just like flip the script, Tri Cities and then go to Seattle for an afternoon.

Kevin Lewis:
That’s a great idea. Let’s work on that concept, I think, because again, the experience from here to there is pretty unique. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Scott Cowan:
That drive is pretty amazing. And there’s many ways you can get from the Tri Cities to the west side that you can go to the Columbia Gorge. You can do. We could continue on this conversation for hours, but that’s okay.

Kevin Lewis:
Pretty amazing state.

Scott Cowan:
So, Kevin, I’m going to recap this. You want people to come to Tri Cities?

Kevin Lewis:
We do.

Scott Cowan:
You have a big Ironman race coming up and you want people to know about it. You told me a great coffee place that I have to go try. We have a big airport. Not a big airport. We have a well connected airport.

Kevin Lewis:
Okay.

Scott Cowan:
That you can forget your phone and get. Get back to it. I know you live 10 minutes away. You know, it’s like you can’t do that at SeaTac. If you got to SeaTac and realized you lost your phone, if you got to Salt Lake International, whatever Salt Lake Airport’s called, if you were in the parking garage at Salt Lake, you couldn’t get back out even if you live 10 minutes away.

Kevin Lewis:
So you. You couldn’t get to the garage. Exactly.

Scott Cowan:
So there’s all these things going on in Tri Cities and, and visit Tri Cities. We’ll put a link in the show notes. It’s got all sorts of stuff and we did not even begin to scratch the surface. But I thank you for your time. Yeah, I’m glad you’re a pie guy. By the way. I’m kind of Camp Pie. There’s no wrong answer, but.

Scott Cowan:
Well, the other is pumpkin pie is wrong. That’s just wrong. You can’t convince me of that. But thank you for being on the show and I’m looking forward to. Our paths will probably cross at the Ironman. I’ll probably say hello to you as you go running off to some other station.

Kevin Lewis:
Absolutely. We’ll. We’ll get together for sure.

Scott Cowan:
Okay.

Kevin Lewis:
Thank you for the time. I appreciate it.