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Former South Island musterer Ed Mumm had a big idea sitting in a bulldozer shifting tonnes of dirt and rocks around his Colorado spread.
Why not let others have a go and let them pay for the pleasure?
So Dig This was born, a sandpit for adults who pay close to $ 1000 for a full day to drive very big machines - 10-tonne bulldozers and 15-tonne excavators.
"I hadn't been in any diggers before and to be honest with you I was having a bloody ball," said Mumm, Dunedin born and raised.
"Putting in this pipeline to a well it occurred to me if I was having this much of a good time, imagine what people who don't have the opportunity to this kind of thing would think."
He did some customer research, marketing, arranged insurance after a struggle and set up what he says is the first heavy equipment playground in the United States.
Set up costs have been enormous for the near new Caterpillar machines but Mumm reckons business is booming since its launch last November.
Wall St executives, farmers familiar with tractors but desperate for a session in a big machine and locals from neighbouring Steamboat Springs have turned up.
"At first I thought it would be all men but the women are really into all this. Our market is for the people who want to come out and play - executives or someone who wants to buy something for their partners or firms who buy appreciation gifts," the 42-year-old father of two said.
Mumm is looking to solve marriage difficulties by having warring couples drive around together on heavy machinery. He's working on a programme with a marriage counsellor at the moment.
"It's all about team building - driving these is a great way of building trust."
The minimum age is 14 and he has had an 86-year-old from Steamboat take a ride. "She was awesome - she didn't hear a thing we told her but we kept her in a certain area where she couldn't get in any trouble."
Drivers get a classroom session using models, then are let loose on the 4ha site. It takes about 20 minutes to become fairly adept at using the joystick controls to dig trenches, rip earth, build ramps and shift boulders.
"Once they get in those machines they're a bit overwhelmed because they're surrounded by yellow metal but at the end of the course there's such a huge sense of achievement. As soon as they unleash that horsepower their eyes get wide and they're off."
The machines move at walking speed and external kill switches allow instructors to shut them off if necessary.
"It's safer than riding a horse, there's no way you can fall out of a cab, really the only danger is to the instructors but they're well back.
Mumm was involved in the rodeo scene in Omarama when he decided to decided to tour the United States with a group of riders in 1992.
'I've always had a passion for the West I grew up with Bonanza. We were only supposed to be here for three months I fell in love with the place - I met a woman (now his wife, Carla) and that was that."
He worked as a fencing contractor for 15 years around Steamboat, a ski town of 10,000 residents two and half hours west of Denver. While Colorado's home, he gets back to New Zealand regularly but a trip early last year was nearly his last.
During a deep dive off the Otago coast he had problems with his gear and he was pulled into a mate's boat nearly dead, blue and not breathing.
His friend applied CPR and later joked his bad breath brought Mumm back to life.
Mumm said the experience was sobering and an added spur to make his mark. He's now looking to expand out of Colorado.
