(upbeat music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Link. – And I’m Rhett. This week at the round table of dim lighting, A, we’re actually doing a podcast. I heard, ya know, but I did hear, – We did a podcast last week. I did a little more of it than you did. – I heard, I didn’t listen. I don’t listen. I’m not an Ear Biscuiteer, I just make the ear biscuits. – Well, we, – But I heard about it – It comes out of our mouth and goes into our ears. We listen to it like through these headphones while we’re doing it. – But, yeah, but, – Don’t listen to it later. – Once in a life time experience so far for me was an Ear Biscuit happening and I wasn’t present for it. I heard lots of good positive things about your performance. I don’t know what you said, what you did, but I heard good things about it. So congratulations on that. – I’ve heard, I’ve heard positive feedback. I appreciate that. I was just reading a few hours ago that they know, some, a few mythical beasts said they know what it would be like to have a podcast with just me and they would be okay with that. – How many minutes did you go? – They’d be okay. – How many minutes did you go? – It kinda faded off to where I forgot they were there and I was just talking to myself like I do around the house. – Are we talking single digit minutes? – Yeah, it might have ended up ya know between the ad read and then at the very end which kinda trailed off, I’d say about 30 minutes. – No way. – (chuckles) Nah, I don’t know, like eight minutes or so. – Okay, so you know what an eight minute podcast with just Link would be like. Which it may be, hey, I don’t know. – Are you threatened? – That could be what the future’s all about. – Are you threatened? Or you know what, I could walk out of this one early. I got things I could do. I got litigation I could try to sidestep. – Yeah, but after uh, you drove me here so, – That’s true. Yeah, so you’d have to figure out a ride home. I do wanna hear about the update. ‘Cause you really left us hanging. Like you literally ditched us in the middle of, – That was great, that was great production. – This ear biscuit. – Great production was to leave you guys hanging. Ya had to come back and hear the rest of the story. – Lots of unanswered questions so I do wanna get into that. We have not taken the time to fully process our vacations that we had separately. – Mmhmm. – And we need to do that as friends and as, and for you Ear Biscuiteer, you need the update on how our vacations went. We each had an entire week apart from each other over the Thanksgiving week a few weeks back. And you went to Hawaii and I went to Mexico and we haven’t fully downloaded that so, – Yeah, we’ll do that. – I wanna get into all that. And ’cause the operative question is who made the right choice because last year we both went to Hawaii together and it was, the question was did we make the right choice together? And we did, we made a good, well, we can get into that. – Yeah, we’ll talk about that in a second. – But let’s see, so where did we leave off with– – I was leaving to go meet, I was leaving to go meet with my neighbor. – Your neighbor. And even as you were going out, like the details of how you were meeting started to stress me out. You know, you were meeting at a public place in order to smooth over your relationship so that he would not litigate. – No, that wasn’t, I mean, my motivation in meeting was to get, was to establish a neighborly relationship. Which, you know, – But he also threatened to sue you. I mean his lawyer, – The net effect of that well, he didn’t threaten to sue me. They said they would take, they would do everything, they would do everything possible, ya know, there was no, it was just, it was a little bit of a threatening letter. When a lawyer gets involved, yes, it’s threatening. – Yeah, lawyers just don’t send letters in order to just, you know, to just talk to somebody. – So lemme tell you what happened. – Like if they’re lonely or something. – I originally was going to meet my wife there, and meet him there. And that was complicated. But as I got close to where we were gonna be meeting which is relatively near my house, I was like I have like eight minutes to get to my house and get back to this place and so I called Jessie and I was like hey, I’m coming all the way to the house, I’m gonna pick you up and let’s just go so we can get there together, ’cause it’s one less variable. – Did you take Shepherd? ‘Cause that was, – No. – Okay and you decided not to take a child. – And that wasn’t a decision that I made, it was that someone was already watching Shepherd. – Your neighbor? – Had been watching, one of the ladies who watches our kids from time to time was watching him already so she just kept watching him. – You didn’t say like hey Shepherd, why don’t you stay at home and just start throwing garden refuse into our neighbors yard while we’re meeting with someone. – That would have been counter productive. So, I pick Jessie up and we get there, – And my, this is my first concern, this is where we left off, it’s like, when you get there, – None of your concerns came to fruition. Because when I got there, I was getting out of the car and he and his wife and his kids, who are like high school aged were all getting out of the car. – That’s my worst fear for you! Was that you were gonna have a pre-meeting. Because I said, you don’t wanna meet in line. – But see, I think the thing that you don’t understand is that– – You wanna sit down and get to business. – Once a person has made the decision to have a quote, unquote friendly meeting with you, because you know the pretense here is that we’re gonna meet at a coffee shop. This is not confrontational. This is a scheduled thing, – You weren’t meeting at a dojo. – Right. And so as soon as I saw him get out of, actually I met his kids first. Was like hello, introduced myself, and then Jessie meets the wife, and then he gets out of the car, and it was all just, it was right from the beginning, it was all smiles. Everybody was, everybody was like – Which is weird, I mean, – Well, I know, see I don’t think, I think that’s part of the dynamic. I think the dynamic is there was a heated exchange that escalated very quickly and now that we’ve all had time to think about it and there’s been a meeting that has been requested, I think everyone has emotionally prepared for this moment. – Well, yeah, maybe I can understand that, – It’s not as much drama as you want there to be, is the bottom line. You want there to be drama for the sake of entertainment, I’m telling ya that there, it was, there was no drama, it was just like hello, – Hold on, to me this is dramatic. The fact that there was such, that the first thing that happened was it was like two old friends meeting. So I give credit to your letter for having a disarming element, I mean, because all intents, the last thing you heard from him was that he was on the spectrum of happiness and unhappiness, he was leaning towards the latter. I mean so to show up and ya know be hey we’re friends is a little premature. That’s the point of the meeting. But, I guess your letter was so disarming, – I’m not saying that we’re friends. I’m just saying that it is not unusual for two people who are negotiating something that is even heated to once they set a time, think about two world leaders. Right? Think about two world leaders whose countries are fighting. And they agreed to a meeting. Do you walk into the meeting with guns ablazing? No. Give me an example of that happening. It doesn’t happen. When two, they meet and there’s pleasantries. – Well, you, – Meetings begin with pleasantries, and this was no different. – I get it. Unless this is the second meeting and the first one was guns blazing from the moment that you– – But that wasn’t a meeting. That was an altercation, there’s a difference. – Yeah it was. – It was an unplanned altercation. So it was a planned meeting. This was a summit of sorts. – In your analogy I’m a little, I’m a little surprised because it was like, it was two countries who were in like a battle, a war, let’s say a skirmish. – But there was one country, me, me, who does not feel that this is a skirmish or battle. One country that feels that this is just a misunderstanding and we will soon get to peace. We will return to peace. – So you’re telling me that you got in line together? – Well, not only that. There was a scramble for who was gonna pay for all the beverages. I got my credit card out, he’s got his cash out. He actually beat me to it. We were both trying to pay for each other. That’s how friendly it was right from the get-go. – Man, I think you guys are both over compensating. – No. – You’re missing, – Again, I expected all this. I knew that he was gonna wanna pay and I was gonna wanna pay. I went in know that this is how most humans behave. But he really got his cash in there. ‘Cause the cash, you know, I don’t know if the dollars are bigger than credit cards, I don’t know what it was. There was also, now a couple of interesting things happened. – So you knew at this point that the tree was staying there. Nothing was, you’re like all right, this is over, before it even started? – I knew that the day that I was sitting there arguing with him that this was gonna be the outcome. (Link laughing) I mean honestly, I did. I just didn’t know how it was gonna get there. – Did you know you were gonna get a free tea out of it? – No, that was an unexpected thing. – That’s nice! – Couple of things, if you’ve been following this story that are interesting to know. – I wonder if he’ll come down your chimney. – First thing is that they had no, this was just me being egotistical because they had absolutely no idea who I was. Kids had no idea, wife had no idea, he had no idea. So the whole thing that he said about you think you’re a special person or whatever was just me reading into the fact that I’m somewhat well known on the internet. – Who’s the bad guy now? – And so that was just me being a jerk, ya know and assuming, Assuming things. It’s like one of those, it’s like when somebody comes up and says, uh excuse me, and I think oh well you want a picture with me, right? And really they just want to like borrow a pencil or something. – This is a plot twist in the whole story. I think, I think what we’re all experiencing right now is that he was a good guy all along. – Well, okay, well lemme keep telling the story. Now the second piece of information is that the person, the barista if you will, it’s not exactly a coffee shop, but we’ll call her a barista because we ordered tea and coffees, she was a fan. So that was a bit awkward. – Oh ’cause he’s paying for you and she’s what? Asking for a selfie? – She’s like I love you, I love the show, can I get a picture with you? Which this is completely out, he didn’t know how to take this, right, because he thought that she wanted a picture with him at first. He was like what? Picture, what? – Really? – Yeah it was like I, ya know, that was an awkward situation, but of course I was nice, I took the picture. – You’re like get my neighbor in here! We’re good friends. – So then, his kids actually stayed in the car. They were there because they had to be taken to tutoring or something like that. So it was, what it was was me and Jessie and then him and his wife sitting across from each other. And the way that they, they actually sat down at a four person table, they sat across from each other which then meant that I sat next to him and she sat next, my wife sat next to his wife. So already it was just like men on one side, women, we weren’t even there was no confrontational posturing. You understand what I’m saying? – You were shoulder to shoulder with that guy? – There was no battle line drawn, I was sitting next to him. I actually touched him several times during the conversation. – Like reached out and touched him or grazed him? – Like this, like a shoulder touch, ya know? – Seriously? – Totally serious. – I can’t, – That’s how it got. – I can’t believe you. Because I can’t, I can’t picture, I’ve never seen you, – You’ve never seen me in this, in peace-making mode. – Like you grabbed his, – I didn’t grab it, I just touched him gently like this. – You rested your hand on his shoulder? – Yeah. – If I was there, I would have just felt horrible for you. – You’ve never seen me work like this before. – Yeah, this is a different mode. This is like waking up from anesthesia Rhett or something. – Yeah but lemme, I don’t want this to get too long, because I wanna talk about our vacations. Lemme just sum, basically what ended up happening was, – How long did you talk to him before you even got to fighting? – We spent five to seven minutes just catching up, finding out where their kids went to school, where our kids went to school and how long they’d been at the house and that kinda thing. Like we were just meeting neighbors for the first time. – I feel threatened in our level of friendship now. It’s like is he gonna replace me? – Uh no, that’s probably not gonna happen. But very quickly we did get to the issue at hand, and– – How was that transitioned into? – I started it, I said, listen, I’m glad you guys are willing to get together and talk to us and I think we basically just got this whole thing, this whole relationship started off on the wrong foot. – Is that when you touched his shoulder? – I don’t, no, not at that moment, that’s too early. I waited about 15 minutes in before the touching started. – When that happens tell me. – And then I said, first of all I want to apologize again about the situation with the, not the tree in question, but the tree that started, the bush. Call it a bush, call it a tree, what-have-you. I think he probably considers it a tree. I’m sorry about the limbs that were cut without asking. And then the placement of the refuse in your yard without asking although it was temporary in my mind the entire time. – You led with an apology which is, – And then he– – powerful. – He countered with an apology and he’s like, you know, I’m sorry about the way I reacted, this is paraphrasing, I’m sorry about the way I reacted, you caught me at a bad time. I was just sitting down there and looking at the refuse in the yard getting mad about it and then you walked right down the driveway and it was just like– – You stepped right in it. – Perfect, just perfect storm and I apologize for the things that I said. – You were getting in like a black SUV which might be misconstrued as a limo. And that’s why he’s like– – Yeah it was a pretentious thing. – Ahh, I get it. – It was a little pretentious, that’s why I seemed like a special person I guess. – It was just a black SUV. – But then he did go on to inform me that, – You both apologized, great move, by the way. – Truthfully, from a legal standpoint, if now that there’s a tree in his yard, that I planted and there’s lighting and sprinklers that are going to the tree, it could be, I could have a legal case, I don’t know exactly, even though my dad teaches this subject, property, or did at one point. It might be eminent domain or something like that. I don’t know what it is, but basically if you’re treating a portion of someone else’s yard as your yard for a certain amount of time and no one says anything about it, it could be the case that now that’s basically your yard. And so he’s like I don’t want there to be any permitting. I don’t want the boundaries between our yards to be construed. If I try to sell the house, you try to sell the house or whatever, so what I would like is a letter from you that says that you are giving me the tree, giving me the tree. The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein, – Are you, hold on, are you telling me that the, okay and then you said what? – I said I would gladly give you the tree. – You are going to give him the tree that this whole fight is over? The whole thing that was like this tree is the center of the entire conflict is now a gift to him? – Yeah, Link, you don’t understand how well this in, – This is so poetic. – He now owns the tree, it is a gift, it is a peace offering to him but it’s exactly in the same place, ’cause it’s a frigging tree. And I have gifted him the tree legally. I’ve also stated, – You should say I’d like to give it to you by chopping it down and throwing it across the driveway in the next 24 hours. – I have also, I have also stated in this letter that the lighting and the sprinklers are temporary and can be removed at his discretion and that it does not constitute a construence of the current property boundary. – So you’ve written the letter and already sent it? – Yeah. – And you used the word construence? – And I used words like that. I don’t think I used that word ’cause I’m not sure it’s a word. I just made it up on the spot now, but I did use the word constitute. I think I said constitute a departure from the currently legally established boundaries between our properties. – Boundaries, blurred lines. Did you, you know, that’s ironic. You know the song blurred lines, – I’m familiar with it. – Was the subject of a long and aggressive litigation. – And that’s not what’s happening. So, yeah, I wrote that letter just a couple of days after our meeting, I sent it through his lawyer to him. – You coulda just hung it on his tree. – Nope, completely legal, I wanna be completely legal. – Like an ornament. – And now I have, what has happened here is that everyone’s happy. I have gifted, you know, I have never given anyone a tree, this is the first time, maybe the last time. – I’ve given you some trees. – You’ve given me like a whole herd of trees. – And you know what it feels like. – In northern California. – Yeah, a Redwood patch. – Yeah, and now the idea that he feels like one onehundredth as good as I felt when you gave me these trees just warms my heart. And I think that we’re well on our way to having a great relationship. – We should bring him in here. – It’s, okay, well, you know I’ll talk to him about that. That’s a possibility. – Send him another letter through his lawyer. It’s called a summons. Summons him to the podcast. – Now we got each other’s numbers. We’ve talked about how we’re gonna look out for each other’s properties when we’re out of town. I feel like we’ve actually, this has gotten it to a great place. – Wow. – And you know, I told you from the beginning as soon as this happened and I knew that it was just misunderstanding, I just couldn’t live with the fact that I was in this kind of dispute. It makes me uncomfortable. And I wanted two things to happen. A, I wanted to not have to do anything about that tree, other than potentially give it to him, which I didn’t even know was an option. And two, I wanted to be able to have a neighborly relationship and that’s where we’re at. That’s where we’re at today. – And three, you wanted to make some good clean podcast entertainment. – Yeah, I mean of course this whole thing is just a big made up story just for your guys entertainment. – No it’s not. At what point did you touch his shoulder? – When he said I’m sorry for what I said, I was like (laughs) I get it, I get it. – Oh it was more finger tippy? – It was like this. – Was it grabby? – I get, it wasn’t grabby it was just like, hey, you don’t even have to apologize, I totally get it, we’ve all been there. – But your shoulders, you could have put your arm around him? – I was a lot closer to him than I am to you. I mean we were really like, I may have actually had some incidental contact throughout the entire meeting. – Oh wow, like thigh to thigh situation? – I’m sure there was knee to knee, I’m sure there was. – Oh wow. Wow. – Unintentional. – Okay, so what have we learned here? We’ve learned that lead with an apology, follow up with a shoulder grab and when in doubt, touch thighs. – Uh no. – Consensually. – That’s, scratch that last part. That was not anything that I did. There was no thigh touching. – Knee touching. – And it was knee to knee which is different than hand to knee. – Right. – Very different. – Well, I’m really really happy that it turned out this way. I in no way was hoping that you’d get punched in the face. – That was never gonna happen. That coulda happened that day. That coulda happened that day if I had to escalate it, but you know me, I don’t escalate. – Yeah you should have let me out of that SUV. – I don’t escalate. – I was about to burst out of it like, – I pacify. – Like a banshee. – Yeah, so all is good. – What a fizzle. – You wanted it, you wanted it to continue. (Link laughing) Well, I don’t know, I mean I’m gonna, – Let’s bring him on him, I bet you I can rile him up again. – He’s really into wine and I’m gonna get him some of that for Christmas. – Wow. – Yeah, I’m just, yeah, I’m just being neighborly man. Just trying to set an example. – Wine in the left hand, a hand full of his shoulder in the right. – I’ll touch his shoulder when I given him the wine. – Wow. – Okay, but speaking of shoulders, I’ve touched your shoulder a few times and I’ve really enjoyed the softness. Not only of your shoulder muscle, but just of the wonderful new Good Mythical Morning, – My delt is taut, but. – The Good Mythical Morning sweater which I was just telling you before started this, – Sweat shirt. I wouldn’t call it a sweater. – Sweatshirt. – Truth in advertising. Mythical.store get yourself a good Mythical sweatshirt. If you– – It’s one of my favorite pieces of merch that we’ve ever released because I think it’s just, – If you’re just listening, – an incredible, incredibly tasteful design. – If you’re just listening to my sweatshirt right now you can probably tell that it’s very silent. – I don’t even know what color I would call that. It’s not quite blue, not quite, what is that? It’s not quite teal, it’s like, it’s a light blue, but it’s got a little bit of, it’s just beautiful is what it is. – Check it out guys. Mythical.store support internetainment and rep your boys. Rep your boys. – Rep your boys. – Last Thanksgiving, I’m not talking about a few weeks ago, I’m talking about a year and a few weeks ago. – 2016. – We went to, on vacation to Kauai, that’s in Hawaii. Had never been to Hawaii and we took our families. And we all went to Hawaii. It was, – Had a great time. It rained quite a bit. – Had a great time, it rained a lot and the whole time we were there, you were very, you were up in arms about the rain. I mean ’cause it’s like, I mean that can really define, – My wife was and that, that translated to me. – But to your credit, I mean, even while we were there you were like I wonder if, you were like, I don’t wanna make this mistake again. This time next year we’re gonna be on vacation again. And I appreciate the fact that I didn’t have to lift a finger or a thought ’cause you were like, well, this is not, it’s not sunny, it’s not hot enough. Thanksgiving night we went to like the big luau with like the Hawaiian pig, we’re eating all of that stuff, and then it’s time for the show. And then I go to the bathroom, this is outdoors, and so I went in to go to the bathroom, I come back out and I thought that there was an emergency. People were running every which way. – Tsunami. – And I realize it was a downpour and by the time I got back to the family nobody was there and people were like handing out ponchos. It was a cataclysmic downpour. And soaked to the bone was our Thanksgiving night. – Got a refund. – On the show, but not on the food which we ate. So then you’re like thinking are the other islands better if we would have gone there? You know, and we kinda knew that Kauai was the rainiest of all the islands. Like one of the rainiest places on earth. – However I will say that the south side, which they call the dry side of Kauai, typically does not have a lot of rain in November, but it did last year. – It did and it kind of, that kinda put a, it kinda made our vacation soggy. You know, we’re like zip lining and doing some stuff with the, you know, with everybody and here comes another downpour and it’s frigid. – Yeah, it’s cold rain. – Cold rain. And so in the aftermath of that, Rhett’s like, man, we should go to Mexico. You are not gonna get rained on in Puerto Vallarta or Tulum or what’s the other place? – Really the west coast. – Cabo. – I don’t know much about the east coast, but definitely the west coast in November you’re not, – You’re not gonna get rained on in Thanksgiving. – Right. – And I’m like you’re right, I’m gonna do that. And then we start figuring out where we’re gonna go. And we decided that we’re gonna have separate vacations. – Well, you decided that. – Yeah. (Rhett laughing) – So I will say that so before you throw me under the bus for – I’m not throwing you under, okay, – For how I did the switcheroo at the last minute. Which I believe is, I can explain but, – The next point, yeah the point was, – I was ready, – We’re going to Mexico. – I was ready for a dual family vacation again. – You picked out a resort for all of us in Mexico. – We were ready. – And then I was like, I think we should just you know vacation separately this year. – Which was fine with me too. I’m fine either way. I’m a peace maker, I give trees to people. That’s what I do. – Yeah, ya know I know your feelings weren’t hurt by that but I think you, ya know, we know each other long enough to know that like me and Christy too, we’re like sensitive to our, to our space. And we are, of the families we are much more opinionated. And I will own that. So like, you’re judging things like the weather and is this the vacation that you hoped it would be for everybody, we are also assessing lots of things. And it’s not worth getting into because it’s mostly just things that like, – Assessing things. – I’m a picky eater. I’m picky about a lot of things. – This is true. – And it, ya know, in no way should, I would hope that you guys would take it personally. I think the big clincher for me was, A, since that point we hadn’t had any family vacation time and like as a neo-family and that’s something that mattered to us at that moment. Plus, I anticipated how much time we were gonna be spending together even over weekends, – That’s true. – With the tour. So I’m like I think that I will want to be separate from Rhett, and I think that he’s gonna wanna be separate from me, even if you wouldn’t say it. And you may not, you may not have thought that. But I think it a little, like weekends apart is a healthy thing. Like if we had to spend Saturday and Sunday every weekend together. – I completely agree with that I was fine with it. – And that’s what the tour did so I broached the subject to you and I’m like, and I know that you picked the place in Mexico that we were all gonna go so I’m like, you know what? I don’t wanna take the first pick. We’ll pick a second resort. We’ll both go to Mexico, and this is where it got a little weird. And I don’t know if this is what went into your choice to go to Hawaii, but it was like, we’ll just go, we’ll both be in Mexico, but we’ll be in separate resorts. – Well but before that, I think what really set this off was the place that I had chosen, when I looked at the resort, when I was making the decision over the summer, I was like oh this is, Okay this is not, this isn’t bad. This is a pretty affordable place. – Yeah. – But then once we got around to actually booking for Thanksgiving the price had literally tripled. The price per night had tripled. And we get two rooms per family. – Right. – And so, – Put a hurtin’, it’d put a hurtin’ on ya. – It was just suddenly the place that I wanted to go I could not justify – Compared to how much we paid for Hawaii. – Yeah, I could not justify spending that much money. And so at that point we started looking at other options. – In Mexico. – And then, but those options were still pretty expensive. – Yeah. – So my whole thing was not only did I want sun, but I was like, but Mexico’s a shorter flight, it’s gonna be over all less expensive. And then we started looking at these different places. And you ended up deciding, well both of the places we were looking at were all inclusive. And Jessie and I have had not so great experiences with all inclusive. I’m less picky than she is, and so I’m like, okay maybe the food gets old after a little bit, but I’m fine with that but, – And service might not be as good. And we had that same experience. – But because I make the decisions about this kinda thing, usually just because I’m really interested in doing that, and like deciding on the places, I thought it’s gonna come back on me if we go down to this all inclusive place and she doesn’t like it. So I was like, well, lemme look into Hawaii and lemme see if there’s a place in Hawaii that’s supposed to not rain. And that’s where I landed on the left side, the left side, the west side of the Big Island which is the driest part of all Hawaii, only supposed to rain like two days in November on average. And then I found out the price was essentially the same as if we were gonna go to Mexico. So I was like let’s go back to Hawaii since we’re going by ourselves anyway. Let’s do that. That’s how we ended up going to separate places. – And I think, you know, we’ve talked about it and I think the main thing that I didn’t have access to, was an active volcano. ‘Cause I know that you had the opportunity to go to an active volcano and I wanna hear about that. I think the thing, I had a great time in Mexico. We did some Puerto Vallarta. We did some, did a zip lining day with the kids. Christy does not dig on zip line. – Did she go zip line? – She did not go. Her and Lando stayed behind because Lando was too small. They would not let him do it. So I took Lily and Lincoln and they loved it. And we had a great time at this one place. Now, I’ve actually done a lot of zip lining ’cause we did zip lining in Hawaii and except for the rain that was amazing. And that was with like, we did kayaking, hiking, zip lining. – All in one day. – All in one trip. This was just a zip lining thing. I’ll tell you, the most amazing zip lining I’ve ever done was in Northern California in the canopy of the Redwood forest. They had built these – When’d you do that? – That was three, that was two summers ago when we went to Santa Cruz as a family. So there’s a place outside of Santa Cruz where you can zip line in the tree tops. And it looks like the Ewok village. It looks like indoor Ewok town. Think is what it’s called. So this zip line was not as great as that. That is the best zip lining. You can’t top it. But we still had a great time. We did another day where it was like some snorkeling and we took a boat trip and, we had a lot of fun, but I looked everywhere for an active volcano, – They don’t have those there. – And I did not find one. And then I had a couple of very negative experiences at this resort. – Really? – Yeah, and, – How was the food though? – I’m gonna tell you about it now because, I wanna, I think your experience with the volcano, there might have been some, I don’t know, I really wanna hear how it went. So I’d like to get this negativity out of the way. – Okay, – Very quickly. Because I’m not gonna leave like a Trip Advisor, this is my version of a Trip Advisor report. – You don’t leave the reviews, you just take, but you don’t give. – I really needed to but I just, I can’t justify taking the time to write a review. I take but I don’t give. The food was great. It really was, it was surprisingly great. Like you can get food by the pool which was really good. – Food is the best part. – That’s a great experience when you’re by the pool and you can order food and drinks and you’re just hanging out. But the food is not normally fabulous. And it was surprisingly fabulous. And in the restaurants. – Multiple different kinds of restaurants, right? – Yeah the restaurants were really good too. So, and that’s why we chose this place. ‘Cause it was reviewed very highly, but the thing they did not say was that over the first three days they are going to try everything in their power to get you to go to a time share presentation, – Seminar. – Seminar meeting. And I knew, having never done it, I knew, and we talked to some other families there that had done it before at other places. And they will, they’ll say it’s 30 minutes and then they’ll say we’ll give you all these discounts for zip lining and all this different stuff. 40% off! All you gotta do is eat breakfast with one of our representatives and then they’ll take you on a 30 minute tour of the place that they want you to buy a condo in like a time share capacity. And the fact is, it ends up lasting a couple of hours. – How do they, but you didn’t go? – I did not go. But by the end of it, ’cause I talked to some other people there at the resort. By the end of it you’ve got fathers and mothers almost ripping their hair out to try to get out of this situation without having to be pressured into buying something. And it makes me more angry than, it makes, well, it’s not, I can think of things that would make me more angry. But it makes me livid. I went, we’d go to breakfast, – How do they come up? They come up to you just out of the blue? – When we check in they’re like and if you want 40%, well at the airport! Even before I left the airport a representative came up and tried to trick me into saying that they were the ones who were gonna take me to the hotel. And then for 20 minutes I end up talking to the guy. Even though I knew what could happen and I was trying to bypass it, I still talked to the guy for 20 minutes about all this stuff that I could do, the zip line and all that stuff. And then, oh and by the way, I can give you a discount, all you gotta do is meet me in the morning at your hotel for a presentation. I’m like no. And he’s like, well, I’ll give you this discount. I was like, no, I want to pay full price. I do not, no matter what you, this is what I said. No matter what you tell me, I am going to say no right now. (Rhett laughing) That’s literally what I, and he said, and then he said, you know I’m actually trying to go back to college. – Yeah, that’s in the manual. – And I need you to, – He just flipped to the next page of his script when you said that. Oh I’ve got a no-fer. – His eyes started to water a little bit. – Of course. – And then my face turned red and my eyes started to water a little bit. And Lando’s like grabbing at my arm and like Daddy, can we go? And I’m like, I am, I am only going to say no to you. – This is why, and listen. – And then I get to the, I get to the freaking reception and – They do it too. – They did the same thing! – This is why I hate multilevel marketing. – I hate it! – For the same reason. Because it’s sales under false pretense. It’s this I’m trying to be your friend, or it’s, multilevel marketing’s probably even worse because it takes advantage of a friendship and turns it into a transaction relationship which is just a horrible thing to do, I think. – It’s distasteful. – I know a lot of people are in difficult positions and they feel like they have to do it, but I just feel like there’s a better way. I feel like there’s a better way. But, it’s the same thing. It’s a similar dynamic when it’s just like, I’ve already paid. I paid for this vacation, I’m here to enjoy it. I’m not here to be marketed to. – It was, yeah. And it was a resort that then next door was like a sister resort with more of the restaurants that we had access to. And when we walked, you have to walk on the beach to go around to get to it. And when I go on the beach for the first time, a guy comes up on the beach and starts, strikes up a conversation. Hello, welcome to the resort, can I interest you, and I’m like no. I do not want to meet you. And then after that they, I think they finally caught wind of my scent and it was stinky to them. They stayed away. But I would go to breakfast, – They wrote you off. – They were setting appointments for the rest of the week with people and they, and when I would go to breakfast with my family, they would, at every other table it would be a family and a representative with a name tag on, like wining and dining them for the same breakfast I had. And I just felt so sorry for those people. They didn’t even know they should be angry. I didn’t get it. Like there was an old couple that enjoyed the attention of some super bubbly sales person. – And maybe there are people who don’t mind it. And do appreciate the attention and actually are interested in it. – I could have murdered somebody. – But it’s obviously a business that works because it exists. – And I can’t believe that the Trip Advisor reviews of this place, – Didn’t mention that. – (speaking foreign language) Screw you guys! (Rhett laughing) And your marketing! You almost ruined my freaking vacation. And you know what? – You don’t feel strongly about it do you? – After they laid off, it was great, it was great. The food was great, the people that we interacted with out there were great. But boy I’m getting a little hot under the collar. Cheer me up with some volcano talk. – Well this is actually, well lemme, I’ll commiserate a little bit with you. I definitely was not, nobody tried to sell me a time share. But the conclusion I’ve come to after going to Hawaii twice is that, and again, I know I live in Los Angeles I have access to the best foods. Some of the best food in the world really. I mean L.A. just has so many options. I’ve become a food snob is what I’ve become. And you remember how Hawaii was, it was like we went to these nice restaurants and they were like Hawaiian restaurants which meant like fresh seafood and some, the third or fourth night of that gets a little old. And the Big Island is a lot like Kauai in that there’s not, I mean the whole west side of the island is just like raw volcanic rock. I mean there’s just some places that it’s just like black landscape for as far as the eye can see. Most of it has already, has gotten some ya know, it’s like, I don’t know how many years ago this lava flow was but less than a hundred. And it’s like black but then there’s some grass is like growing in it, but it’s just like the newest earth I’ve ever been on, super barren. And just this, the west coast is just this long slope with nothing on it at all. And then there’s these resorts along the coast. And so like you’d go eat at like another resort. And then they’ll be like a little, like shopping area that’ll have some restaurants but, Just, I just, I coulda used more variety in the food. That was the one thing that I kinda like noted twice now about Hawaii. I think if you go to Oahu or Maui there’s more food options if you’re into that kinda thing. But, we did make the decision because of the lack of rain, which incidentally it did not rain once at the resort. But we did travel to the east side of the island where it’s very rainy, it did. But of course, the other big thing that we were excited about was seeing an active volcano. And so I was super super excited about this. I had a certain day set out, planned to do this. I think we were gonna do it on Wednesday which is right in the middle of the vacation but on Tuesday while snorkeling in the little cove area next to the resort, which incidentally was amazing, we saw like multiple sea turtles. – Wow. – Like you’d go out and there’d be like five sea turtles amongst all this other fish and stuff too. – Like, could you reach out and touch their shoulder like a neighbor? – You were not supposed to get within 10 feet of them. So let’s just say hypothetically I may have gotten closer than 10 feet and I may have just for a moment pet the back of one of them. – Whoa. – But that’s just hypothetical, I didn’t actually do that. I stayed 10 feet away like they say you should. But it was absolutely phenomenal. And but then, Locke and Shepherd and I were pretty far out, – That turtle’s lawyer is gonna send you a letter. – And then Locke says, Dad, I got a cut on my leg, you think I should go back in? And I was like yeah you probably should. But I wasn’t trying to instill panic. I was just yeah, just cut you’re cut. He was thinking because sharks. And I didn’t even realize that. – That’s immediately what I just thought. Blood in the water man. – And so he’s like, turns out what happened is he started freaking out and then he’s swimming back in, and his mask comes off and then now he can’t see into the water and so he just holds his mask, and he’s swimming like crazy and he swims right into a rock. – Oh! – And he cuts his knee, it was, I wouldn’t even call it a cut, it was like taking a chunk, like a divot out of his knee. – Ugh! – I didn’t know about this, I continued to snorkel with Shepherd, we saw some more turtles. We came back in and I’m like where’s Locke? And I see the EMT, like the beach doctor has got him sitting down over there and he’s like cleaning this wound. And I go over there and I’m like what happened? Locke tells me the story that I just told you. And then he’s like, Locke’s like, oh I was like, do you think he needs stitches? ‘Cause I was thinking like oh man, we gotta go to like a hospital, this is such a vacation downer. And the guy’s like oh no. No no, I cleaned it up, just put this wrap on it. – You know what’ll fix it? – What? – A time share. – Yeah. – Ya know, just spend a couple minutes with the representative inside and that thing’ll heal right up. – But what this did is first of all A, this guy should have told us to get stitches because it still hasn’t completely healed. In fact, since then, I’ve been like treating this wound. And there was like, because it like took a chunk of the flesh out but then left like this cover of flesh on top of this hole. – Oh god. – It was a full two weeks later that Locke calls me when we’re on tour and he’s like Dad, that piece of skin that was kinda sitting on top of my wound, I cut it with scissors, is that cool? (both laughing) And I’m like uhhhh, – You should usually ask before you do something like that. – Yeah, and I’m like well, how’s it feel? He was like, it’s better. So it was like, okay, whatever. But so, it is kinda healing up now, but we should have definitely gotten stitches. But what this, the net effect of this is that he couldn’t really bend his knee that great. He couldn’t get in the water the rest of the time. – [Link] Oh no. – And the very next day we had planned to go to the volcano and he didn’t need to be bending his knee that much. So we pushed the volcano trip to the very last day. Which had a high wind forecast. So it takes like two hours to drive from the resort to Hawaii National, Volcanoes National Park is what they call it. And there is basically an active volcano that looks more like a giant crater, like a huge crater that you’re like standing on the outside of. – Does it, I mean it’s a cone like it goes up, right? – No cone. – Oh it’s just, it feels flat? – I think it’s like collapsed or something. – Okay. – But basically you go up to this, and it feels like this giant crater that’s completely flat and then in the middle of the giant crater, like somebody literally like came and took like a cookie cutter and just like took some earth out. – Or kinda like Locke’s knee, huh? – And then, well it wasn’t that clean. In the middle of that giant crater, there’s another giant cookie cutter circle and that’s filled with lava. Now you cannot see the lava. Well you can see the glow of the lava at night, but the lava level fluctuates. And sometimes it’ll be ya know, a hundred feet from the surface and sometimes it’ll be like 2000 feet below or whatever, it just goes up and down. But at this point it was well below, so you could see it at night. So I had planned this whole thing out. – And this is not, is that you getting to it or is that people describing it to you? – You can’t, well you can stand on the edge of the exterior crater but you cannot go out into the other crater, it’s against the law. Because there’s some noxious fumes that are coming out of there and it can incapacitate you. And so for a while now you haven’t been able to get next to the volcano unless you’re like a trained scientist with the proper equipment. But my whole plan was we’re gonna go up there, there’s a lot of really cool stuff to see in the park, like lava tubes and steam vents. And you take this road all the way down to the beach and you see like places where this lava flow happened in this year and right next to this forest that, all these cool features. But when I asked the person at the, well, first of all, couple of shout outs I’m gonna give that tie into this story. First thing, we get to the entrance, the gate, and there’s a girl working there in like a National Park Ranger outfit and I like hand her my 25 bucks to get into the park and she’s like, Rhett? I’m like, yes. She’s like I listen to Ear Biscuits. That’s the first thing she said. She didn’t say I love GMM, she didn’t say I like Buddy System, she said I listen to Ear Biscuits and I wish I could remember her name. I was kinda shocked when she told me. And of course I was in a line of cars. So I didn’t have time to process it, but shout out to the girl who let me in the gate of the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. And thanks for being an Ear Biscuiteer. But the Ear Biscuits, – She give you your 25 back? – No she didn’t. No discounts, I didn’t expect it. – Well, it’s the government. They gotta do it right. – But the Ear Biscuits shout outs are going to continue. So I go to the main area, the visitor’s center. – ‘Cause this usually doesn’t happen. – Right, yeah yeah. Go to the visitor’s center and I wait in this line, – No I mean nobody’s listening right now. – That’s right. – It’s just me and you. – Yeah, and that girl from the park. – Yeah. It’s a shame we don’t know her name because she’s the only one listening. – No, there’s at least two. So then I go to, I get in line ’cause I wanted to talk to them about the possibility of seeing the lava flow. And I’d met a guy at the hotel who basically said oh no, you can’t see the lava flow with small kids. It’s like an eight mile hike and stuff like that. It changes from time to time, but right now it’s like a huge hike, you’re not gonna actually be able to see live lava so forget that. – But you were like maybe, – No no I, – Sweet talk someone. – I had resigned myself to this. I wait in the line, I hear the woman basically, this park ranger confirm that. And she’s like now in order to see the lava flow it’s going to be an eight to 12 mile round trip hike. – What? – And I’m like well dang, I wasn’t even planning on being here all day. So I heard her say that to somebody else so I was just like okay, guys we’re not gonna be able to see the lava, we’re gonna stay here. We’re gonna see all this cool stuff in the park and then at night we’re gonna stay and we’re gonna like see the lava from a distance, it’ll be cool. But, we go to the first, the first like cool stop, which is these steam vents. Which you kinda get next to the crater and then there’s like these places right there on the side of the road and there’s just steam coming out. And I’m standing there, the wind is incredible. The wind is like blowing like crazy. Like blowing you over almost. And then this park ranger kinda walks up behind us and he’s like Rhett? – What? – And like hey man, he’s like, he comes up he says, I listen to Ear Biscuits. I’m not kidding! I’m not making this up. Another park ranger who listens to Ear Biscuits. They’re just eating up Ear Biscuits left and right at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park man! It’s what they do there. – They must be on the move and they like to listen to things. – And I said, the girl at the front gate said that. – You don’t wanna, but you can’t watch GMM because you might walk into a steam vent. – You gotta be listening to us. – Or a volcano. Just gotta listen and be vigilant. – And I do remember, I do remember this guy’s name. Because I talked to him for a while, his name is Pono. And shout out to Pono because Pono, you changed my life man. I’m about to tell you how you changed my life. – How did Pono change your life? – Because, – Time share? Please tell me it’s a time share. – He sold me a time share. Yes, exactly, how’d you know that’s where I was gonna go? – Screw you Pono! – So Pono says, – Lay off! – No, I said, after I talked to him a while about the fact that he listens to Ear Biscuits, – And did he, did the other person introduce him to, – No, I said the girl at the front gate listens to Ear Biscuits too, and he didn’t say like yeah, she’s the one who told me. I think it was just like, the look on his face was like we all listen to Ear Biscuits (laughs) I mean, he didn’t, he didn’t explain himself. – Well dang! – So I, ya know, there’s a big staff there. So then I’m like, he’s like so you guys just get here? I was like yeah we literally just came through the gate. This is our first stop, we’re gonna be here all day. I really wanted to see the lava flow, but yeah I heard it’s a real long hike. He says, oh no no, you can see the lava flow. – Ooo! – And then he’s like, – He’s gonna get in his helicopter. – He said, they tend to discourage that at the vistor’s center because it is, you know, it’s not actually inside the park and it’s a little bit of a trek to get there. But you can definitely see it. He says, what you gotta do is you gotta go out of the park, you gotta drive for an hour, and you go drive all the way out of the park and then down to this little town, back down to the coast and then you drive along the coast until the road stops, because lava has taken over the road. – What? – And there will be several, not several, dozens of companies who will sell you a, rent you a bike. And then you guys can bike four miles on this road, and then you can walk to the lava. He was like it’ll take you half an hour. Like once you get, it’ll take you an hour to get down there, rent the bikes, you can get a tandem bike to put your youngest son on there, and then you can just ride your bikes right up to this place and then you’ll hike on the lava for between half an hour and an hour and you’ll find some people looking at lava. It’ll be great. You should be there approximately four o’clock, it’ll be perfect. – Well he kinda made it sound like an Ironman competition but you said, yes? – I said yes enthusiastically. We stuck around the park for a little bit more. – That’s some sweet insider info! – Yeah to see a couple of the other things. He’s like ya definitely should see the lava tube, and you should go down, so we did a couple of those things and then we get in the car, we drive down there. We get to the place where you get the bikes, we get the bikes, first of all, they actually have a shuttle that can take you like two miles. But I was like we are McLaughlins, we’re gonna do this, let’s ride the fricking bikes, it’s just flat. I put Shepherd on the back of this tandem bike. It’s one of those things where it’s not a two man bike, it’s a normal bike that then has this other like just wheel and handlebars, kinda seat, handlebars and wheel and pedals. – Behind it? – Half bike that kinda like is behind it. Which made it kinda like I was a donkey pulling a load. – Were you, so if you said lava came over the road, and that’s where you parked and got the bike, were you riding a bike on lava? – Yeah. – What? Really? – They basically had, – Like a bike path? – It is a road, but as far as the eye can see, it’s just raw, black volcanic rock. That’s all it is. – Raw, black volcanic rock. Nothing growing? Too fresh for that. – Nothing growing. – And how hot was it when you getting the bike? Was it, was there any heat? – No no, it’s been, I mean the portion is, – They built a whole bike area. – Well, yeah but that’s right where, that’s right where the road ends, because that’s like a lava flow from years and years ago, right? So basically what we do is we take our bikes, It actually wasn’t that easy, but it took half an hour to get to the like four mile mark. Going pretty fast. And they basically have created like this gravel road on top of the volcanic rock. So they probably got some bulldozers out there and just kinda like crushed it down. And then we get to this place where everybody was getting off their bikes and just starting to just walk. – What? – And they’re like just walk towards the steam. – Walk towards the steam. So the road ended, you could not have ridden the bike further? – No, I could have, but they were like, sometimes people get off at this mile marker, sometimes people get off at this mile marker and you should just go to like the third one I think, and then that’s where most people are getting to the flow faster today. Like they tell ya that at the bike thing. So I guess I only went three miles. So, then we just start walking. And it’s just walking over this just black rock that almost like crumbles, some of it like crumbles under your foot and then some of it’s really really hard. And it just looks like a bunch of rock, just kinda just (blows raspberries) and then just hardened up ’cause that’s exactly what happened. – Fart, fart, fart, harden, harden, harden. – A lot of this lava is like flowing kind of underneath the ground but then kinda coming up to the surface in a couple of places. And then historically it’s just going into the ocean you know, basically creating the island. And so that’s when you can see those like dramatic pictures of like lava flowing into the ocean and the steam and that kinda thing. Like you have to take like either a helicopter or like a boat to see that. And that wasn’t happening the day that I was there. They were like, but it’s a surface flow. You’ll be able to see lava. We hiked for what felt like, it had to be an hour. – Oh. – Shepherd fell one time. I mean my family, I’m surprised we survived. Because my wife and I got in so many arguments because I wanted to get to the frigging lava flow before the sun went down so I could see it in daylight and at sun down. And she’s like just stopping and taking pictures. Like literally like she walks like four steps and then takes another picture. And I’m like it’s just the same thing! Over and over again, you’ve got the picture! – You’re like saying that to her. – So we’re mad at each other. She’s way way behind me. She’s just like go on then! Just go on! And I’m like we’ll get lost. We can’t, there’s no, – There’s a path. – There’s no path. There’s no way, there’s no points of reference. You’ll die out here. – Are there other people that are hearing this argument? – Yeah, yeah yeah yeah. – And they’re coming up, they’re like Rhett? – No, I listen to your arguments. – No one would have come up to our family in the state that we were in about half a mile into this thing. So then and then, – An hour of hiking arguing about pictures, huh? – And then Shepherd is like, all the sudden Shepherd falls. And then I got over to him, he’s bleeding in like 17 places. Because this is volcanic rock. And he’s bleeding from his knee, he’s bleeding from his elbows, he’s bleeding from his hand, and he’s not crying, he’s just, he skinned himself up, and he’s just like welp, what’re ya gonna do? And they had given me this first aid kit, the bike people because I guess they knew this was gonna happen, huh? So I start putting band aids on him and stuff. – They gave you a wad of band aids? – And then, they gave me like a first aid kit in my little pack. – That’s got to tell you something. – And then we keep walking, I keep stopping and letting Jessie take pictures. Eventually we see this like group of people gathered, – When you get off your bike, make sure you, when you fall, make sure you use the tourniquet. Here’s the tourniquet and here’s the IV. – It wasn’t that serious, but it could have been very serious. We get up to this group of people, and they’re all looking and I’m like those people look like they’re looking at lava. – Mmhmm, you could see it on their posture. – And as we began to walk towards them, as they came into view I started noticing there was this immense heat emitting from the rock that we were on, and then we got a little bit closer and I touched the rock that I’m walking on and it was hot. Like a hot pan. Like couldn’t keep my hand on it. – Oh, like a grill? – Yeah. And then I started noticing in the cracks in the earth beneath me, it was glowing like the pits of hell. – In the cracks? How big of a crack. – Just like, just small little cracks. Like little crack like that and you look down into it and you see just like red hot glow. – What? – And then another, ya know dozen yards or so, and we arrive at the place. And it’s just this, there it is. Like there was this, I think I put this, I think I Instagram storied this. I know that’s not relevant now ’cause the Instagram story’s gone, but basically, you’ve seen videos like this before, but it was essentially just these big globs of lava kind of really really moving very very slowly. Like people were getting out like two feet from it and taking a pictures. And it would like be moving like this. It wasn’t like about to overtake anybody. It was the kinda thing that, you could easily get out of the way of it if you’re not a tree or a house. – Were you tempted to touch it? – No, but I was tempted to throw things at it. And so was Shepherd. And Shepherd was like can I throw a rock at it? Can I throw a rock at it? – What’d you say? – And then somebody else threw a rock at it, and it was amazing what happened, because they threw a rock at the molten rock and it just bounced off the molten rock because it’s so dense. It didn’t just like go into it like (clucks tongue). It just like bounced off of it, ’cause it’s still rock. – But if you would have placed the rock, like if the rock settled on the red hot lava, would it have gone down into it like the ring in Mordor? – I don’t think so. I honestly don’t think so. I honestly think that if you ran fast enough, your foot would catch on fire, but your foot would not sink into it, because the density of this rock is so much more than you, you know what I’m saying? You float on top of lava because the rock is so dense. – Did you think about peeing on it? – I would have if there was not a large gathering of people. – So you not only thought about it, you knew you would have done it? – Oh yeah, I definitely would have done it. But what we did do is we went to one of those molten hot cracks and poured water into it. – You know what would happen if you peed on it, the heat from the lava would travel up the stream and burn your weaner. – That’s not true. That’s not how science works. I will say one thing though, if I hada done that. – It would make you hot a little bit. – Peeing on the lava would be like some violation of some sacred Hawaiian understandings of lava. – Well that’s a bigger point. – So I think that would be very very, it’d be like peeing on the Hawaiian people and their traditions. So I did not want to, even though I thought about it, I actually did not consider it. But what I ended up doing was, – I was gonna say I think you can pee on things in a loving way, but I’m not gonna say that. We’re not gonna explore that. – But we took some rad pictures. And we went to another one, it got dark it was the only thing that was glowing was the lava. – Were you afraid? I mean you’ve, there’s a pattern here of your boys injuring themselves, I mean weren’t you afraid that they were gonna fall in this lava? – Well, – Jessie’s taking pictures. – A lot of people saw the pictures that I posted and Jessie posted, and there was lots of comments like did you guys have a guide? Because this is, this is really dangerous. And I was like hm, didn’t think about that. But I– – You had band aids. – I honestly think that, especially once it got dark, even before it got dark, it’s very very easy to see where the lava is. And again, it’s molten rock. It’s not like an eggshell that’s hardened on top and then if you step on the wrong place, you’re gonna go through the ice all of the sudden and burn yourself. I know ice is a bad analogy, but you know what I’m saying? It’s not like an egg. Where there’s hot yolk underneath it. That’s not what’s happening at all. So, I don’t know anything about what I’m saying right now, but I’m just using intuition, but I don’t think that it’s super super dangerous because I don’t think they would let like dozens of just randos, you know random tourists go out there and just start walking around with their kids. No one seemed alarmed when we were all taking pictures really close to it. – Well the park person didn’t wanna tell you about it. – But the person who was selling you a bike ride did. So what do they have to gain? – But then we had to, we had to go back. And this is when we had, yeah this is when the family, – Yeah you can’t stay in hell forever. – The family almost fell completely apart on the way back to the bikes because now we’re hiking in the dark. And so what I said from the beginning is I said okay guys, here’s the plan. Daddy is gonna take the lead, Daddy’s gonna go first, followed by Locke, then Shepherd then Mom. And we’re all gonna be in a single file line. And I’m gonna be finding the best possible path over this rock, because it’s crazy and we can’t see. Locke and, – It’s in the dark, I mean, – Locke and Jessie had head lamps because they gave us two head lamps. – Oh that’s good. – Shepherd had this little light that he bought at the gift shop and then I had my phone. – Oh what. – That’s how we’re lighting our way. – They give you two head lamps and there were four of you? – Yeah, they did not fully equip us. But I looked back and– – They’d already gotten your money man. – Locke and Jessie are holding the head lamps in their hands. (Link laughing) I’m like guys, put them on and they’re like we don’t wanna put them on. And then it began to dawn on me just how individualistic my entire family is and how everyone wants to do a thing their own way. And there’s no way they’re gonna be in a single file line. I can’t tell you how many times I looked back and my little single file line has completely disintegrated they’re all over the place, everybody’s choosing their own path, and everyone’s arguing. And then Jessie’s like you’re going too fast! And I’m like, I’m literally going so slow you cannot believe how slow I’m going. (Link laughing) And so I’m going so slow that now Shepherd and Locke are passing me, I’m like you guys are missing the fricking point! – Oh you know what would have made it better? If I had brought my family there. – Oh god! – (laughs) You see, I mean, I’m just, I don’t, I’m just saying, I mean, I’m glad to hear this part of the story because I’d really love to see that lava but I would not, we would not have contributed positively to that experience. – It would have been, there would have been a very similar dynamic. – And it doesn’t sound like something I needed to be there for. – But then we finally, eventually made it back, there was a couple of families who, in fact, there was, I’m sitting there, I’m having one of my Daddy talks. And I’m like guys, you have got to listen to me. I am picking the good path. And there’s another family coming up, and the dad’s he’s in front, he’s like, there are no good paths. He like called me out in front of my family. And then, so then the rest of the time I’m like stay with me and Locke’s like there are no good paths. He’s just quoting this random dad. And it’s, well the guy just totally threw me under the bus. – Vote of confidence. – We eventually make it back to the bikes. – He was miserable too, wasn’t he? – He seemed happy actually. His family seemed like they were following him. They were all, everyone seemed happy and compliant. No one was going slow, no one was falling. He seemed like he had his family completely under control. Unlike me. – Who’s the problem? – And so we make it back to where we dropped the bikes off and there is a thing, a little, a place to get coffee. Get some coffee at this place, and the girl selling coffee says, I listen to Ear Biscuits. No she didn’t say that, but she did say my sister is a big fan. I was like of Ear Biscuits? And she was, no I didn’t say that, she was a GMM fan. And then there was a place called, the Hot Dog Lady? They called her the Hot Dog Lady. And this lady had, – Shoulda been Lava Dogs or something. – This lady had this food cart down there that had like 17 different types of hot dogs. – That made it all better? – Bore, and elk and venison and all kinds of things, it was like GMM basically. It was like our meat man somehow has made his way down there and he’s selling his weird meats. – They cook it over lava? – No, it’s not that cool, but I had a hot dog and it tasted so good, because I had been arguing with my family, and then we got back into the car and had a debrief and everyone apologized and we were a family once again. – The family that hikes together, fights together. – Yeah. – Is really what happened. – That’s a good T-shirt. – Yeah, that would work, the family that fights together hikes, nope, the other way I said it. – But shout out to Pono for giving me an experience of a lifetime and almost tearing my family apart. That last part’s not your fault, I mean it literally was one of the coolest experiences of my life. Seeing the earth being formed. You just, you can’t even appreciate it. – I guess I’ll do it next year. – You should. I’m gonna go to Mexico. (Link laughing) – But can you plan it for me? – Sure, yeah. – All right. – It can be arranged. – No time shares. All right, yeah, I’ll need to look at those pictures. You still got ’em? – I think I deleted most of ’em. – Okay, I’ll have to imagine it. – I was ashamed. – That was a vivid thing. All right guys, next, we’re gearing up for another vacation, it’s called the holidays but it’s going home to the fam, that’s happen, I mean well that’s not, that’s not immediate but that’s happening at the end of the year, so gearing up for that. Totally different experience than the resort life. – You could say that. – I’m looking forward to a reunion with the loved ones and thanks for hanging with us. And for taking the hike to the hotness which is another piping hot Ear Biscuit in your ear hole. – Don’t burn your ears. – Talk at you next week. – [Link] To hear this Ear Biscuit in its entirety, so you don’t miss a thing, follow the links in the description to art19 Apple podcast, Spotify and anywhere else podcasts are available. To watch more Ear Biscuits click the video on the left. – [Rhett] To watch more from This is Mythical click the video on the right. – [Link] And don’t forget to subscribe by clicking the circular icon. – [Rhett] Thanks for being your mythical best.