This is Dispatches from Myrtle Beach with Charles Neal and my son, Link, from Good Mythical Morning. How you doing, son? Well, I’ve been better, Dad. You know, we’ve been dealing with these fires and, uh, this is the episode where we talk about it. Um, but, um, I’m mostly exhausted, like, I think just mentally and emotionally just exhausted, you know, I’m still living, uh, got up this morning at the place we’re staying at in Long Beach and, um, I don’t know, we’re looking at maybe going home tonight. Of course, as of the recording of this, it’s like, uh, I don’t even know what day of the week it is. Tuesday, so the Tuesday before the Monday, this comes out. So by the time this comes out, I was 21st. I will be back back at back at well, well, well, see, I can’t even talk, Dad. I got a little bit too much, uh, too much going on my brain to keep it all straight, but it’s been, it’s been wild, you know, uh, we’re fortunate because, uh, our, our home is safe and of course, you know, we got. We’ve got friends, close friends who, who lost everything, you know, so that’s, that’s been said there, um, you know, they’re making their arrangements and figuring out everything. And we’ve been making all of our type of arrangements and where we’ve been staying and now trying to get back home. But yeah, it’s just the, the way that it just continues. And there’s such a question about the fire, like, is there going to be, is all the winds going to pick up, is the fire going to pick up and you have to have this. Like level of vigilance that I think it, you know, I kind of underestimate how much energy it takes. Oh yeah. Well, I, well, you know, I, I, I, I ain’t never been in a fire like you are dealing with, but you know, I, I had my house to burn down and I know how, um, it just makes you, where you’re, uh, kind of like you’re walking around in a different world. Yeah. Uh, it’s, it’s, well, it’s kind of, it takes a little while for, it’s gonna take longer for y’all, for reality to sink in. Yeah. Yeah, for the, for the people who lost stuff, it was like the first few days, it was like them remembering something else that they didn’t have anymore. You know? So at least for us, it’s, it’s just the challenge and inconvenience of not being at home and not, not feeling completely safe, but. And you know, turns out that we’ve been, we’ve made choices to be in safe places so we can like literally so we can sleep at night. Um, Oh yeah. But yeah, like, uh, for, yeah, so our hearts just go out to people who’ve lost everything like, like what you went through. You know what, you know what it feels like to just all of a sudden show up and you don’t. You just don’t have anything anymore. You know, you got what you got on your back. Yup, and people, you know, I know a lot of people came out of the woodwork to, to help you kind of to rebuild, rebuild your life and a lot of people are doing that. And it’s, it’s on such a grand scale that there’s so much like. Competition for figuring out where people gonna find rental homes or, you know, there’s all these, it’s still early. So there’s like lots of stuff being donated, but people not knowing exactly how to get it, how to get it. Or, yeah, it’s just, um, yeah, it’s, it’s really been, uh, a wild. Uh, experience, but, um, mostly I’m just, I’m just tired at this point, you know, being in somebody else’s house and, uh, you know, I, I like to be, be occupied doing things and then there’s a lot of like, okay, there’s not a lot I can do here. My hands are kind of tied. I’m not even at home, you know, so it’s like Christie’s. Talking about ways that she wants to volunteer and start to help. It’s like, yeah, we got to get back. We got to get back home. So you can even think about starting to do that type of stuff. So it’s, uh, that’s the stage we’re at now, just trying to still make the right. Logistic decisions to get back in the house and stuff, Well, you know, you’ll know that sounds like after tonight and tomorrow is supposed to calm back down some out there. So you can make you’ve made some good decisions so far. So, you know, I ain’t worried about what you’re going to make a decision about now. So, but I’ll tell you living with this. The cat, like, taking a cat, traveling with a cat is not, is not a thing. That’s not, that should never be done. I mean, I see people, I’ve seen people, I’ve seen footage of people, like, hiking with their cats, dad. You ever seen footage of this? A cat on a, on like a leash and a harness? Like a dog out in like, just gallivanting around? I will say, yes, he peed in his crate when we first evacuated. And then it was just like, what, every time we would get in the car, because of course we went, we were trying to find, we ended up going to like, we stayed in four different places trying to find, trying to find a place to settle down. And every time we’re moving this cat, the first few times like Lando would be like, guys stinks so bad. There’s still cat pee somewhere. You’d think he’d get rid of something like he peed in the crate. And so then we’re like, all right, so now we’re going to put him in the dog’s crate so we can get rid of this. Cat pee crate and then he’s like, oh it still stinks when we were like driving down to the next place we were finding to stay at and I’m like, well, we put him in the new crate, where else did he pee? And it’s like well the old crate’s still in here I’m, like what it was like well, what are we driving around with the crate that we just because we took the cat out of it? They’re still peeing the crate. What’s that? I thought we were getting rid of that at the last place and then like so we’re keeping stuff that has cat pee yet we like at one point earlier on, we made a run home to get more stuff, like I got more, a couple more toiletries, I got some more clothing, cause I, and then we, you know, it’s like, alright, are we going to be gone for four days? Are we going to be gone for a week? We did have the ability to get more stuff. But then we, and we took the other two cars, and we left the house, and then we parked two of the cars here at the studio, and we all got back in one car, and we went to, like, the Airbnb we were staying in. Of course, we left all the stuff that we needed in the cars that we didn’t take. So here we are, no better off. I still got a, I mean, we’re halfway down to Anaheim where we were saying, we’re like, we got to eat something. So they pull off. We’re like going through a drive thru eating somewhere. And that’s when I realized we still have this carrier with pee in it. So we’re like shoving this in like a fast food trash can, trying to get rid of it. And then we’re realizing that oh, yeah, I don’t all that stuff that I grabbed I put in my car, but I don’t have my car so it’s just a lot of that a lot of that a lot of um My, my kids wearing my underwear because I’m the only one who brought multiple I grabbed like a big stack of underwear and not just like one additional pair of underwear. So now if they’re communal underwear in the Neal house, like Lincoln, we sent Lincoln to target to go get underwear down there and he comes back and like the underwear that he’s bought is two. He bought some for Lando that were too small and he bought some for himself that were also too small. So then they’re still wearing my underwear. So it’s a learning experience. It’s a, it’s a learning experience. Trying to figure all of this out. And it just, I mean, for a while there, I don’t know how it felt like, how did it feel from your vantage point across the country? Cause the first time that you texted me, I was like, Oh yeah, you know, fires aren’t near us. Which, over the years, I’ve received concerned texts from family members and that’s what I’ve always been able to say. We’re not going to have to evacuate, this is not near us. What was the perspective like being over there, seeing the news and trying to figure out what we were going through? Well, I was trying to figure out, looking stuff up on the map and seeing where the fires were and kind of correlate and see where y’all’s houses were and if it was close and figuring all that out. And then when you told me, you said, well, we had to leave because we ain’t got no power. I said, that ain’t good. Yeah. So, you know, it’s just. It won’t, you know, the night that we called you one night, Nancy come in there and grabbed me by the shirt collar and said, I was down in the bed asleep and, uh, cause I had talked to you a little bit and y’all were all right. And she said, right, things ain’t as good as they were a while ago. You need to call Link again. And woke me up. And so, and this was about, about 11 o’clock our time. So that was eight o’clock for y’all. So we called and I think we got Christy and talked to her and y’all told her where you were at and that everything was still all right. So, um, women do, women handle things different than men. Oh, I’m definitely leaning on Christy to like be, she is, she’s got a gift for vigilance and an intimate understanding of worst case scenarios. So it’s like, I just defer to her and the main thing for me has been like, whenever her instinct said, we got to go, we got to do this. We need to stay for a little bit longer. I’m like, all right, you know what? I’m not going to try to minimize too much. And I’m not going to, I’m not going to try to oppose this. I’m going to, I’m going to try to make everyone as comfortable as possible, which is why we have stayed away as long as we have. So we could, you know, sleep at night. Um, but I will say, right. Well, you know what? We’ve, we’ve taken care of each other and we’ve taken care of close friends and we’ve had, we’ve had company, we’ve had good support structure, and it’s been nice to, it’s nice to come in here and talk to you and like it came in, we recorded, Rhett and I recorded a podcast, uh, you and I are able to do this, this is all helpful to me to just kind of like, yeah. Channel some of the energy and, and talk about it and process it is, um, is helpful. So I think, um, you know, we’re, it is a lot of kind of feeling like not knowing what to do or feeling kind of numb and just like tired, but I will say that Sokka the cat has settled down. Like he’s gotten used to being in new places. We just give him a new room and as long as he has his food, his water, and his litter box, he’s doing pretty good. He’s not throwing tantrums, because you know this, the cat. If you, if you change anything at home, like if you put a rug down that wasn’t normally there, Oh, he’ll, he’ll throw a fit and pee on the rug and start to try to destroy something. He’s very opinionated, but I think he’s learned. I think he’s learned something in this, uh, debacle as well to be a little bit more flexible. Orange cat getting some flexibility. So that’s good. The dogs are fine. As long as they’re with us, they’re fine. They’re used to moving around. But I did learn that like, as, as much as we’ve had to change locations, the first thing I need to do is I put the dogs in the car and then they feel like, all right. I’m not being left as they’re packing the car, we’re packing everything, we pack them first and then everything else after them because I made the mistake at the last place we moved from, we left the dogs in our bedroom and then Jasper gets up in the middle of the bed and just pees on the pile of sheets of bedspread up there. And I think he’s just like. He was just so nervous about us leaving him. You know, Gypsy did that with us when we were packing up to go somewhere. You got to, you got to put her in the, in the, we got to pack her first, even if she’s not really going, make it, make her think she’s going. Yeah. So we’re learning all types of things that, uh, how many records I can fit in, how many boxes and how, how quickly I can get it out of the house. Um, what else have I learned? I’ve learned that, uh, chocolate milk and raisin. Nut brand is quite a treat. You just have to find the little things to treat yourself. So for me at night, we, we’ve had, we don’t keep chocolate milk in the fridge at home, but like you just got to have a little, a little pick me up at night, a little something to look forward to. And that’s been not only a jug of chocolate milk, but you, you just pour their cereal instead of, instead of that vanilla milk, you go with the chocolate milk. That’s a treat. Yeah. And I’m not going to keep doing that. Once I get back home. I’m not gonna keep doing that every night, but that’s helped get me through. Well, you need to have a little indulgence with everything you’re going through. So that’s it. Yeah, I Switched out my vanilla milk for chocolate milk in my cereal. You should try that dad. No, I don’t know about that, but we’ll, that probably ain’t gonna happen. I mean once you Once you knew that we had moved, you, I mean, you weren’t, you weren’t worried too sick about us, were you, once we, you knew we were out of there? No, but you know, I mean, I wasn’t worried about y’all, but, uh, I didn’t know what was going on with some of the, you know, like with Logan and trying to talk to her and keep up with her and make sure she was all right. And some of the other people I’ve met at, Uh, mythical and make sure hoping that everything was all right with them. So, you know, and everybody, everybody is, um, is doing good and everybody’s in a safe spot, but yeah, plenty of people to worry about. That’s for sure. We’re getting into a new year. I’m not going to use the big R word resolutions, but you might be thinking about learning a new language because you’re traveling this year or. You know, career advancement, you know? That might, language might be a path to that. Expand your horizons. In comes Rosetta Stone, the most trusted language learning program, available on desktop or as an app. It truly immerses you in the language that you want to learn. Rosetta Stone has been a trusted expert for 30 years with millions of users and 25 languages offered. Rosetta Stone immerses you in many ways. There are no English translations, so you really learn to speak, listen, and think in that language. Plus, their built in True Accent feature gives you feedback on your pronunciations. It’s like having a personal trainer for your accent. Don’t put off learning that language. There’s no better time than right now to get started. Dispatches for Myrtle Beach listeners can get Rosetta Stone Lifetime Membership for 50 percent off. Visit rosettastone. com slash dispatches. That’s 50 percent off unlimited access to 25 language courses for the rest of your life. Redeem your 50 percent off at rosettastone. com slash dispatches today. Well, David, one thing I wanted to ask you about. Like, so before the, this whole fire fiasco hit, we were coming, we’re coming out of the holidays and apparently you got some sort of digital picture frame. You’re trying to send me text so that I can remotely upload pictures to your picture frame. Is that, is that, is that the train you’ve gotten on? Uh, that ain’t my train. Okay. But it is on my phone where I can send. Okay. But then. So somebody gave you a, a picture frame though. Uh, Brandy and Candace and them, I think, they give it to us for Christmas. Okay. I can tell you right now, I know y’all have had a lot going on, but Nancy’s pissed off at y’all because y’all ain’t sent her no picture. Well, you said, you, I mean, you said there’s like cryptic message that was like, it was a picture of a picture frame. I don’t know what it was. With a code in it. I’m like. Yep. What, okay. Hey. Hey. I’ll have Nancy take care of that where she’ll send you something where it won’t be, I don’t think it’ll be as complicated. Okay. So you, so you want us to surprise you with pictures in your picture frame. Well, I mean, you can just send a picture and it’ll automatically go in and then when we’re sitting and watching it every day, they slide back and forth and it’s pretty nice seeing like when you, when you, like when you went on your ski trip and different things you did, and then just like when you’re sitting around the house after all this stuff’s over with and you say, Are you sitting on the couch with the dogs and you take a picture and you send it to us? So we see how you’re doing. It ain’t gotta be just because you went on a trip. Okay. It can be you standing, taking a picture with, uh, Christie and sending us another picture of that. So could it be like the before pictures for before and after weight loss? Oh, yeah. All right. I might send you some of those. Why do you think you’ve No, just random people I could find on the internet who are like. No, I don’t. I’m not going to send you the after picture. I’m just going to send you the before. I don’t, I don’t, hey, we want pictures of people that we know and are. Okay. I, I, we, we don’t want them pictures of Tom and Joe and Harry. We want pictures of y’all. Okay. Tom and Joe and Harry are, are, are, are trying to get fit though? I don’t know if they’re getting fit or not, but I don’t want no pictures on that screen. Hey, but you send them, Nancy knows how to delete them. All right, all right. It sounds to me like it’s Facebook, but just in a picture frame. Well, I couldn’t tell you about that because I don’t do Facebook. All right. So what you want pictures of me and the dogs. You want pictures of me pre weight loss, what else do you want? Well just send, I mean, just send us some pictures of when you go do stuff and like when you go on trips and different things like that. Just send us those pictures, some of them. Alright, awesome. All right. We’ll see if we can get that right. Was that, so that’s like the biggest lasting impression from the holidays, huh? Well, Nancy likes this thing. Yes, that’s her. All right. She’s, yeah. As a matter of fact, she gave Brandy one for her birthday this month. And she’s carrying it to her office where she can have pictures and watch them on her desk. All right, so it doesn’t sound like she’s to get one and just have a big picture of me on one, there where you’re at. Maybe that’s what, of course these pictures of me right now anyway. Yeah, I see, I see you plenty. I see you plenty. I mean, if you want to send me a picture, you could text me the picture and it’ll show up on my phone. But I do understand the appeal of having the picture frame and all that. But I just can’t make any long term commitments to this picture frame. Well I, hey listen, when y’all get back settled at home, I’ll let Nancy talk to Christy and she’ll send us some pictures. Okay. How about it? I’ll just let you off the, get you off the spot to start with. Maybe I’ll just start real strong sending all types of random pictures, you know, that I find on the internet and I’ll make you regret, I’ll make her regret. Giving me the link. You might not do that. All right. I’m not. I won’t do it. I’m not gonna cross. She hadn’t done anything. Hey, that’d be one of the special things. I might have to get a plane ticket and come out there then. You go to doing that. I’m telling. To what? What are you gonna do? You’re gonna give me a A whooping? Yes, that might be what happened. You gonna fly out here to give me a whooping? Just cause I put some humorous pictures in the, in the frame? Humorous. I probably ain’t gonna do that, but you know. I need a pick me up. You gotta tell me about you going to Kauai because you never told me about that. It’s time for another edition of Shaggin Around the World. You know, you took us to Hawaii, and Nancy and I went to the big island. We were in Maui. Yeah, we went to Maui, and then, but, if we, if we’d ever get to go back to Hawaii again, if we were just going, now if you want to take us any other time, we’ll go to any island you want to go to. Okay. But, but, we love Kauai. I mean, it was, it was beautiful. I mean, it’s like the most jungly throughout, I would say one of the least developed that you can still find a place to stay at. So where did you stay? Were you in like a house or a resort or what? No, we’re in a, uh, Uh, in a resort with Marriott, so the people that invited us had a, uh, text Nancy on the phone on Halloween night and asked Nancy said, do you want to go to Hawaii with us? We got a spare bedroom. All you got to do is buy a plane ticket. She just texted her back yes, and then she looked over at me and said, do you want to go to Hawaii with me? Because I’m already going. I’m going. I said, well, if you’re going, baby, I’m going. That’s right. You made the right choice. What was so good about it for you? I know it’s beautiful. Well, I mean, I carried my snorkeling stuff and when we had been snorkeling, I, I got this, uh, when we went to Maui, you know, we want a whole lot of stuff that, you know, I got to see, but I got to see some pretty fish and the rocks and the coral and all that stuff and then, um, we went to a luau again and did that. Did you do a hike? There’s some like really good hikes, but it might be a little strenuous. Yeah, that, that’s a little above my pay grade, but we did go. Went to the water, seen several waterfalls, and looked at those, and they were beautiful. But I guess to top it all off, we went on Sunday, and Nancy kept saying, we got to take a helicopter ride. We got to take a helicopter. She woke up on Friday morning at quarter after seven, and called a couple of different places, and we went and took us a helicopter ride home. Friday morning. Did they play like a soundtrack in your headphones when you were going over all of the beautiful scenery? They did do that. Yes, like from Jurassic Park? One of, they, they did that too on some of the things when we were, because they had filmed something with Jurassic Park. One of them, right there in where we were at. Oh. Have you seen Jurassic Park? What do you, what do you think about it? Uh, I have not seen it. Okay, well, what do you know about it? Uh, there’s a lot of prehistoric animals in it. Okay, alright, that’s good. Do you know how, what, is it set in, uh, in dinosaur times, or when is it set? Yeah, well, no, it was set in, like, it could happen today, in somebody took a, Egg and started regenerating and making these and making these one making uh, I’m trying to think of the word, uh, having, uh, where you could having dinosaurs give birth or and helping it along. So that’s how it kind of got got started on the island somewhere in it. I think it kind of got out of hand and some of them didn’t like humans. And so, Oh, well, it got out of hand. They made like six of them, six movies. They’re not, the dinosaurs didn’t get out of hand as much as the transformers have gotten out of hand. But yeah, you’re right. It’s gotten out of hand. Okay. But you didn’t need to actually know more than that to enjoy the helicopter ride. No. I think because, of course, when we, after we got the ticket, we went. To start to get on the helicopter and the, where we had to, we had to get in the golf court to ride to where the helicopter was at. And Cassie come running up to me and said, Oh my God, I know who you are, you’re Charles Neal from Dispatches from Myrtle Beach and you’re Link’s dad. Holler out to Cassie. And Vincent too, but she said, uh, we’re going to fix you up. So Steve was our helicopter pilot and she told him something about the, uh, podcast. So he said. Instead of it being a, like a, an hour helicopter ride, and I mean, it was nice, he, he gave us about 15 minutes extra and carried us to different places. Look at that, a little perk. Yep. So. All right. He decided, he decided to let you land safely too. He’s taking good care of you. Well, he’d been flying, he’d been flying helicopters for 33 years. Okay. And he’d been flying them there for. I think about 25 or 26 years, when he got out of the service flying helicopters, that’s where he came back to and lived and got a job flying these helicopters. So we got, we had a good pilot. And you went around to like the Nepali coast where like you, there’s, it’s inaccessible. Oh, yeah. Like, like the sheer cliffs. Back before I didn’t do helicopter rides, because you know, I don’t do helicopter rides anymore. Yep. I did, I’m just not, I’m too risk averse for that. But, um. We took that, the first time we went to Kauai, we took that helicopter ride before I didn’t do it anymore. And I gotta tell you, it was pretty great, you know, there’s nothing like swooping down and hearing like this amazing Jurassic Park score while you’re going in into these valleys and then you’re like seeing the waterfalls, it was pretty amazing. And all that was, you know, that was a neat thing all about that link, but when you, when he said, he takes you and kind of like where the rainforest is at, where it rains like 500 inches of rain a year there. Uh huh. And he goes up over that cliff. And then it’s just nothing but dry mountains, dry terrain, all that. It’s like the island just transforms from, from one place to a next, to the next. I mean, and that was, that was amazing that you could just come over the top of that hill and it’s all green and the other side is, and then, then go. Yeah, because the islands, it’s amazing how they create their own weather. Like, and when you, I learned that when you deforest. Like a mountain side, it will, it will alter the weather of that. Um, this is what I learned in Maui of, of the, of the entire island. When you do that pretty wild. Oh, I’ll definitely go back. I love it there. So I like, I like it that you like it. That means, uh, the chances are increasing. That I could find my way back there one way or another. You know what I’m saying? One way or the other. Yeah. So I was somewhere it was warm. Mm-hmm. Y’all went somewhere where it was cold. That’s right. We went, we went to Canada, we went, we went skiing at Whistler. And, um, it wasn’t, I mean, it was, it was nice. It was nice. I mean, largest, largest ski resort I’ll probably ever go to, unless I, I mean, it’s the largest one outside of Europe. Um, it’s just, it’s wild how that was so recent yet. It feels like so long ago because we come back and, uh, but yeah, we did have a good time. We had it. No, no helicopters. You can take a helicopter. Like do heli skiing, where they like take you up to this place and then you would ski from an otherwise inaccessible location. I don’t know if I’m good enough of a snowboarder to do that though. Yeah, I just don’t. I’m more of a stick to the groomers kind of a guy. Yeah, you need to remember, you know, you did have an accident one time snowboarding, so you need to be a little careful. Well, those, I mean, we did four days in a row, and on the end of the third day, I started falling. Because I was tired. And that’s when it got ugly. And then I had the fourth day, and I was fine, but then I started falling a little bit earlier. And then I was like, I gotta take it easy. So I’m, I pushed a little too hard, but then I pulled back. Just in the nick of time. No, so no, no lasting injuries, but yeah, you got to know your limits and that means no helicopters or skiing for four days in a row anymore for me, but apparently I can take my cat anywhere once it pees once he’s good. And you learn to put the dogs in the car first. That’s right. These are all things that will stick with me. You know, I’m, I’m not glad to have gone through, uh, the fires, you know, we made it out so much better than, than, than others. So we feel very fortunate, but yes, one of those things that sticks with you. I, I’m, I’m curious how, like how our relationship with, uh, Los Angeles is, is gonna shift. You know, I don’t think Christie is too happy with Los Angeles at this point, you know, once the whole town seems to want to burn, that was just, it was a bit traumatic to be driving around, trying to find a place and having to turn around due to fires. It was a bit much, but it was kind of amazing Link, that when we went, when I came out there. And the end of September and October, and then you carried us down right where all that stuff, the, I’m trying to think of the name, the, was it in Malibu? Yep. Where you carried us and we went out to eat on the pier, and I mean, if I’m not, most of that’s gone. Well, the pier, all of that’s still there right there, I believe, but like, around it, like, a lot of those houses that are like, right on the beach, like, the Palisades, it burned, Malibu burned, and then the Palisades burned all the way down. Yeah. So, yeah, I saw where the restaurant we ate, that, part of the pier and all that, it was all right, but the stuff where we rode up and down, and where you bought those clothes and stuff, I don’t know if that place is there or not anymore. I think that is that south, but. I haven’t been back up there, but I guess at this point I’m just saying I’m grateful. I’m grateful to be here. I’m grateful to be safe and, um, you know, I’m grateful to be talking to you. And I’m grateful too, I’m telling you. Yeah. Well Link, it’s been a pretty trying day, but it was fun having you here and me and you get to talk today and all you. Uh, Myrtle Beast, it was good to be able to get back on and, uh, do another podcast with you. And we’re going to be back next week for another one. And don’t forget to follow and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts on YouTube. And while you’re at it, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. And if you’ve got a question, comment, or story you’d like to share with me. Email me at ratherbeshaggin53@aol.com and y’all have a great rest of the week, and we’ll see y’all again next time. Love you. Love you, Dad. Thank you.