Episode Details

Wendy Corr:

Hey there folks, welcome to The Roundup! We are a Cowboy State Daily podcast, and we focus on interesting people in the Cowboy State. And this, this guest that we're going to be talking to today, his job, his work, the people he oversees, they are relevant to all of us, to everyone's everyday life.

If you use the roads, if you fly in an airplane out of the state of Wyoming, if you are concerned about anything regarding transportation, public safety, this is the guy that we need to talk to, and that we need to get to know.

This is Darin Westby. Darin is the head of WYDOT, THE Wyoming Department of Transportation. He is the director of that agency. He has a broad, broad purview, but he has years of experience of being the director of a very broad agency, and he's got years of experience in being the director of a very small agency, and we're going to talk about that here in just a little bit.

But I'm going to say Hello, Darin Westby, we're so glad to have you on the Roundup today. How are you today?

Darin Westby:

I'm doing well, it's legislature, so it's fast and furious, but thank you, Wendy for having me on and thanks for listeners.

Wendy Corr:

We are so glad that you are able to take time away from all of those duties and just take a little bit of time to talk to us about the Wyoming Department of Transportation. But of course, The Roundup is about personalities, and so we want to know about you. Who is it that's directing the Wyoming Department of Transportation?

And Darin, you've got a great story. You are a Wyoming native. You're a Casper native. Tell us about growing up in Casper Wyoming.

Darin Westby:

Well, thanks, Wendy. You know, growing up in Casper, raised by a single mother, Casper is the epitome of the best place to grow up as a kid. You had outdoor recreation at your fingertips. You can get on your bike and ride to the river. You can get on your bike and ride to the mountain and hike and fish and ride your, you know, motorcycle. It was just a great place to grow up and have the ability to just learn life lessons as you need.

Wendy Corr:

The hard way sometimes, I'm sure.

Darin Westby:

Well, mostly, yeah, mostly the hard ways, yeah, but yeah. Had a great, great schooling, public school. I am the product of public school, so I appreciate everything that everybody did. I have some great mentors, you know, teaching mentors that I still stay in contact with up there.

But yeah, no. Growing up there gave me a good base. I was fortunate enough to have some good math teachers that didn't scare math away from me, and so it pushed me into the science world, and I was always really good with my hands and mechanically inclined to be able to take things apart and put them back together again. So I figured, well, let's, let's go into mechanical engineering.

I always wanted to build cars, and that was kind of my passion. And so mechanical engineering at the time at the University of Wyoming was very strong in machine and component design. At the time we were in the country, probably even the world, at that point, the leading in composite materials, carbon fiber.

I'm not sure exactly why we had the materials here, but there was, I was taught by some of the world's leading experts. They all did sabbaticals when I was going through the mechanical engineering world. And so we really focused on carbon fiber and building things. I chose to go the car route.

And so I gathered a group of my classmates, and for our senior design, we built, designed and built a Formula One race car.

Wendy Corr:

Oh, wow