Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the lifelong podcast. Are you joking? No. I was always fixated on the word lifelong. You want this to be a lifelong podcast? Yeah, man. Hey, we’re gonna do it forever. Yeah, we’re gonna do this forever. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong best friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. I’m Rhett. You added best again, which I don’t, I don’t have any problem anytime you add best because we are best friends. Yeah, it feels good. I just, the reason I don’t add it is because it feels like it messes up like the flow a little bit, but it is true, so you might as well say it. I did say it and I’m not taking it back and I don’t need your approval. I’m Rhett, I’m Link’s best friend. And this week at the round table of dim lighting we’re gonna be talking about my camping trip. Your solo excursion into, I mean, I have all these pictures in my mind of this bearded tall man in loincloth out in the deserts of Nevada. Pretty much got it right. Except no loincloth. We had this whole buildup about how this was for you and it’s not necessarily for me or for anyone listening. So we need to get into all that. But I hope you can tell us enough because– I’ll tell you enough. I’ve been picturing a lot and I needed to, I need it. You might be building things up too much. How do you want to do this? Slowly, methodically. No, eh, I have a lot to say about my experience. I do want to say upfront, and we talked about, you know, the build up to this was like this is about me kind of going out and having this time with myself, it’s about self discovery. And I was very, especially because my mission was to not have a mission. My agenda was to have no agenda, right? And my sort of approach was to separate the trip from it needing to be translated into an entertaining story. Right, because again, that just kind of brings the focus back onto me in a negative way, not in like an enriching way, but in a selfish, hey, here’s what I got to say. Here’s what I’m gonna bring back from the mountain top, kind of way. And I didn’t want that. I tried really hard the entire time I was out there to make sure that I’m not making decisions or writing things down with an audience in mind because I live my life in a lot of ways with an audience in mind, it’s part of the job, right? And this whole trip was not about the audience, it was about me. So I am going to, I’m gonna talk more about, I’m gonna talk about some of the fun and practical things that happened, some of the, you know, I am gonna talk about one update that I have based on the conversation that we had, the argument podcast, we had a couple episodes ago. The sports, sportsmanship. Sportsmanship. I thought you were such a good sportsman. I insisted that you were a great sportsman. And I didn’t believe I was a good sportsman. Am I competitive or not. When I tried to prove to you over the course of an hour, that you were competitive, we’re gonna talk about an updated perspective that I have on that. But I will say up top that what I would say are some very significant emotional, and dare I say, spiritual things occurred that I will not be talking about. Okay, yeah, I respect that. ‘Cause if you went into those things, then I would be like, well, that really hits it on the head of what you said you didn’t want to do. So you’re going to talk around the thing that was most meaningful for you. The only reason I’m saying that is because again, I went into the desert for, I would say for spiritual reasons. Yeah, I mean, for emotional slash spiritual reasons and it was an incredibly enriching, incredibly fruitful time. From the very beginning, I thought that I was gonna to have to wait until day three or something but even the first morning of camping, it was just a very enriching time. But again, I almost feel like it sells it short to talk about, it also makes it about me trying to, it’s not about me having anything to share and any wisdom or anything like that. It was just something that happened with me, that I might talk about at some point in my life or on this podcast, I don’t know, but that’s not what this is gonna be about. I get it, I get it. I think that’s a good choice. I don’t want to cheapen anything that happened by making it into a podcast. Can I cheapen it? Yeah, you can cheapen it all you want. No, but seriously, there are some things in my mind, I’ll just throw out some questions now that you can answer at any point you want. Okay. Because I did find myself thinking, especially in the first two nights of me camping, I found myself thinking about, I wonder what Rhett’s situation is, because like I said, I was out, Christy and I were camping in the most isolated situations I’ve ever been in. I mean, ’cause even when I did my solo trip to slab city, there was like someone renting out this abandoned RV to me and I had contact with people and I was on the edge of a city, I was never this alone. And I was assuming you were that alone and I knew that last time, and again, you wrote about it in the Book of Mythicality, you got really scared that one night. That’s one thing that I found myself, like just being swallowed by the darkness. You know, and the stars. Does your wife being there making you less scared? Oh, of course. And then I’m like, ’cause what I would tell Christy, I was like, I wonder what Rhett’s doing? She was like, why do you keep talking about Rhett? It’s like, because he doesn’t have you or Jessie there. Like, I have you, I’m like, you know, it’s. I think that’s my main question is like, how scared did you get? You don’t have to start there. And then I’m curious about the hot springs and like, I was concerned that like you didn’t, I knew you were gonna, you wanted to be at a hot spring alone. I don’t know how easy that is so I was, but I was hopeful for you. So that was the, so again, the idea of the trip just from a practical standpoint was, I’ve got my old FJ Cruiser, 2007 FJ Cruiser, it’s only got 100,000 miles on it but I recently just got some work on it. Took it in to get the— That’s an understatement based on the price tag you told me. I basically bought a new car by restoring this car. Did I technically own half of that car at one point? Yeah, but I bought it from you. Okay. And you bought the Scion from me. I got the FJ Cruiser, you got he Scion. But it wasn’t the same amount of money, was it? Don’t worry about it, go ahead. No, actually we probably, we paid more for the Scion than I paid for the FJ Cruiser. But I’m kinda glad I got the FJ Cruiser. Anyway, so I just put this new rooftop tent on the FJ Cruiser and again, like I said, got a bunch of work done because when I took it and I was like, I’m taking this thing across the country. They were like, well you need new blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, blank, lots of money went into this thing. You don’t want to get stranded. But it’s basically like, do I want to continue to use this vehicle as my off-roading vehicle indefinitely Or do I wanna get like the new Bronco or something like that when it comes out? And so I decided to throw the money at the old car, which is less than a new car, anyway. I mean, I spent weeks getting ready for this trip and like I’ve got these like drawers, not like the cool, nicely installed, you know, you can get like– It’s not a sprinter van, I mean. But you can get custom made, pull out rollout drawers that go in the back of SUVs. And they’re made specifically for the different SUVs, ’cause I had all this, you know, all these tools and all this stuff to be able to survive on my own indefinitely, or for six days. But I ended up just getting like $25 plastic Sterilite drawers that faced each other in the back. This is where we’re starting, we’re talking about plastic drawers. I put everything in there to be ready and I was super excited about this rooftop tent and the idea being that you literally can drive anywhere that’s public land or national forest land and as long as you find a spot off of the road, you can just camp, right? And most of the, we call it disperse camping and there’s, you know, Oh, there’s a fire ring, somebody’s been here. And I use the same app that you did, the eye Overlander app, early recommendation, I guess, because you can find some places that people have been, whatever. So the idea was to loosely follow this route, that would take me to some hot springs that had been recommended to me but also some that I kind of just found on another app, there’s a hot springs app that shows you every thermal springs in the entire United States and the temperature and a little bit of information, but basically it shows you the coordinates and then you can kind of just navigate to it and check it out. And there’s a lot of ’em in California and Nevada, it turns out. But, and the day before my, two days before the trip, all the national forests in California closed. Closed down, yeah, ’cause of so many fires. And they’re like, the forest are closed, no camping, no hiking, you can’t go in there. And I’m like, well damn it, my route is taking me up through all these national forests and what am I gonna do? Am I gonna just go somewhere else? And I was like, screw it, I’ll just go that way. And first of all, there’s the BLM land, The Bureau of Land Management, we talked about in your episode, which surrounds, mostly it’s like corridors of interstates and stuff like that. These kind of before you get further off the highway into national forest, and that wasn’t closed. It had all the fire restrictions in place, you couldn’t have a campfire, but you could have a stove. So I head up north and I just had this loose idea that I wasn’t gonna make it, I wasn’t gonna make myself have to make it to a hot spring on the first day. Because I felt like making it to a hot spring on the first day was to accomplishment oriented. You know what I’m saying? Like, having to get to a place and do the thing that’s a thing. And then if you don’t then you failed. Right, take it a little bit slow. And so I stopped at a place, you may have seen this sign before going up to Mammoth, Alabama Hills. Nu-uh. First of all, when I sent the text from my satellite device to my wife I said, I’m camping in the Alabama Hills. I mean, she was like, how the hell did you get to Alabama in five hours? But that’s just the name of ’em, they’re in California. And it’s like, you know how Joshua Tree has these crazy rock formations and just giant boulders stacked on top of each other that have, you know, kind of everything’s eroded away. And they’re these crazy like almost car to small house sized rocks that are stacked on top of each other that are super easy to climb. Same exact material, same exact process that happened in Joshua Tree has happened in this little place right outside of a Lone Pine. Okay. Lone Pine, California is like, if you believe, there’s like the film museum there because they’ve shot so many things in Lone Pine because the mountains can look like the Himalayas. So they’ve shot the mountains in California, right there next to Lone Pine as the Himalayas in all kinds of movies. Oh. Talkin’ about like Mount Whitney and all that? Yeah, and if you go by, you know, ’cause we go to Mammoth to ski and as you take that trip, a lot of times you’re like, man, that looks like the Himalayas. Somebody who doesn’t know what the Himalayas look like. Right. But there’s just so many movies that have been shot there. And this Alabama Hills, a bunch of movies have been shot there ’cause it has like a Martian kind of, you know, just sort of this different sort of landscape sort of feel to it. Anyway, so I get there and it was one of those remote, but not completely remote. Like the park is, you know, it’s a few square miles or whatever, but there’s just a bunch of dirt roads that go up to these big boulders and there’ll be a fire ring there. And I’m like driving around like, ah, somebody there. I’m gonna keep going. Oh, somebody at this one. And eventually I found one that somebody wasn’t at and it was like a giant sort of cul-de-sac with this big rock and then this rock wall, kind of U shaped rock wall that had like a name on the map, it was like for rock climbers. I think it was called like the Loaf or something like that. It’s like seven, eight stories tall of these giant rocks. And so I was like, okay, I’m here. Like I can, like, if the person at the camp site next to me, turns their car on, I can hear that. And if they yell, I can hear that, but I can’t see them because they’re over this like rock sort of facade. That’s good. No line of sight, that’s what you want. And I can like play music at my campsite and they can’t really hear it, like it’d have to be pretty loud. Yeah. So I was like, it turns out that that is the sweet spot as I will get to when you are too close to somebody or when you’re too far away from somebody, you get a whole different problem. Which I did for two nights, I’ll talk about that. But that first day I like parked the car, get the rooftop tent opened up, get everything set up, put my little table out. And then I just, like, I’m gonna climb these rocks. Why not, right? And I just start, I go up to the rocks and I just, first of all, I’m thinking about snakes constantly. It’s amazing how the older you get, the more you think about all the things that could go wrong. When I was a child– You’re gettin’ an enema from a snake. Well, that’s not how it works. As a child, you know, as a kid growing up we’re just like swimming in the Cape Fear River, stepping on water moccasins, not thinking about anything. And I’m like walking along and like clapping. I’m like, they can hear clapping, right? Stamping really hard, if somebody was to see me, like, what is he trying to do? I think they hear heat. No they hear vibrations, so I’m trying to make vibrations. ‘Cause I know it’s gonna be a rattlesnake probably if I see one. And I’m like, are they still out this time of year? I think so, it’s still pretty hot. But eventually I climb up, I get to the almost freaking top of this thing and there’s a little place to pass through. And I pass through and come into this other valley of, there was nothing but these giant rocks and I was like, this is wonderful. What? This is like a cathedral. And I just sat down on a rock. You passed through to the other side. And I just sat there and I was like, this is going to be a good trip. But it doesn’t have to be, ’cause I don’t want an agenda. Did you have water? I’d have been thinking, I need water. I mean, I was still, I was 200 yards from my car at that point. Like it was, I had just gone up the rocks so I didn’t have anything, I had my camera. Were you talking to yourself yet? A little bit, whispering maybe. Oh. Because I thought people might be able to hear me. Okay. But I go back down, I cook myself some dinner. My food situation was a lot of those pre-packaged, just add water. Okay. Because I was like, the cleanup is minimal and you’re really hungry and everything tastes good when you’re camping so maybe I’ll be able to get away with this. Survival packs. And what I did is before the trip I was like, I’m gonna try a bunch of different brands. So I got, you know, Mountain House, that’s the one everybody knows about, right, that’s that’s the super popular one. And then there’s another one that I ended up liking the most, just if you’re interested. I think it’s called Packet Gourmet or something, it’s got the story of like the couple that started it in the 70s and now they’ve got kids and they all work there. They make some really good grits. You know, when you put water in something that’s has got meat in it sometimes it’s like, man, this is like meat that could have been around until 2050. Yeah. That can’t be great for you and it definitely isn’t great tasting, but the grits, man. They got a grit, they got multiple grits. Packet, Packet People, Packet House? Yeah, yeah, Packet Gourmet, I don’t know. Anyway, I had one of those, I was like, Hmm, it’s pretty good. And then the sun’s about to set at this point. Sun’s going down, I take out my journal and I decided I’m gonna do the handwritten thing even though I’m probably gonna get hand cramps, ’cause that happens to me. Rattlesnakes and hand cramps. I Don’t wanna be using– How’s he gonna survive? Or the computer because it just feels, it doesn’t feel natural enough, right. So I got my journal and I was starting to write and just kind of making some observations. Dear journal, day one. Quick review, I’ll give a quick review of the rooftop tent and then we’ll take a little break and we’ll come back and I’ll tell you about the first morning and how that kind of set the stage. Rooftop tent, definitely an improvement over a regular tent, in terms of like sleep quality. And also just like feeling of safety. Like you’re on top of this car and there’s a ladder. I mean, I guess like a bear could climb a ladder but. You just feel like, you feel a little bit safer and you’re literally elevated. In the circus they do a lot of things. They gotta be trained to do a ladder, I think they do a tree naturally but you gotta train ’em for a ladder. It’s quick, you open that thing up. It’s not as quick as I wanted it to be. So it’s actually pretty quick to set up. ‘Cause you’ve got this big leather cover basically, rubber slash leather, whatever it is, and it’s completely zipped around three edges and you have to unzip it, fold it down. Then you got to open it up, stick the ladder in there. And then you gotta, if you want like airflow, which the first night it was kind of hot, you gotta like put these supports, like these metal supports that go into the side of the thing and then they kind of like make the awnings taught. And I was like, I think this took as long as a regular tent. Like I think that the way they make tents now, which are like, blurp, and they’re basically up, I think this didn’t take any less time. But there’s a mattress on the whole bottom of it. There’s a mattress on the bottom of it, plus I added an air mattress on top of that mattress. That’s stored in there or are you added it? Yeah, I mean you leave it in there and it’s a self-inflating mattress and then I just kind of deflate it every morning and then just fold it back up in the tent, no problem. But definitely, I mean, I definitely recommend that. But you gotta get it level. And like I was saying, I took those RV blocks and made sure it got level every single night. Did you have a level? I thought about it. Like a bubble level? I just used my intuition. Does this feel level, does this look level? Is this level? And it ended up being level, by that. Am I self-inflating? I overinflated the first night. You don’t wanna over inflate. I wanted it to be hard because when you get an air mattress that’s soft and you wake up in the middle night and your booty or your hip bone is like touching the bottom. You went too hard yet then. I went too hard. I was like, man, I didn’t think I could go this hard, but I went way too hard and overinflated. But I pretty much got it right the second day. Okay, I’ll get into talking about– You didn’t get scared that night? Didn’t get scared that first night, again, because I kind of knew that there was somebody close by, there was a person close by and I want to talk about that. Okay. In a little bit about why is it that that brings so much comfort. But first, let’s talk about these mugs here. Mythical.com has everything you could want that has anything to do with us and you, because that’s what this is about. It’s about you and me and him having the same stuff. You wanna drink like us? Having the same stuff. Then drink out of this. It’s a Good Mythical Morning mug, there’s different, there’s a third color. Yeah, there’s a third color that’s blue I believe that we don’t even have right now, but you could have it. You could be drinking out of your blue mug while we drink out of our green and orange mugs. Connect with us. We’d be a trilogy. It makes you feel like we’re just over the ridge. You can’t see us but if we cranked up our car, you could hear us. Right. If we slurped on our mugs. I wasn’t that close, slurping woulda not come through. You would have felt it. It would have to have been like a slurp and a choke and a cough. Only if you also own one of these. You have to slurp, choke, and cough and then I would be able to hear you. Mythical.com Almost dropped it. Okay, so first morning, again, I wake up and I’m like, I don’t know exactly where I’m gonna go tonight because of the spring that I had designated as my potential first stop for a hot spring is in the national forest, is deep in the Inyo national forest, which is closed. So I mean, are they really enforcing this? Like, what, am I gonna get fined or am I gonna get arrested, what is it stake here? But I was like, you know what. It’s not the right thing to do. Let’s set that aside right now and I’m just going to sit here and I’ll tell you, the most wonderful moments for me on this trip was waking up, and first of all, waking up pretty early because I went to bed early. Like you get out there, especially when you’re by yourself. I mean, it gets dark and you’re kind of like, well, I guess I’ll go to sleep, you know? It’s like, you’re just like a farmer in the old days. It’s like every human before electricity. You get dark and you’re like, well, what do you do now, George? You go to sleep! Did you have the stars like I was talking about? Oh yeah. You told me you got a special star gazing tent, I mean seat. I did. That was the main thing that I said. I told Christy, I was like, we’ve gotta invest in some camp chairs that are actually good. Because those like, those cheap ones that you get from Dick’s Sporting Goods and they just wrap up, they’re the worst for your posture. And you definitely can’t see the stars. Let me tell you about these anti-gravity chairs, as they call it. It’s fricking huge. And I was like, I could take this by myself, but I couldn’t take another person. It couldn’t take two of these. You couldn’t take, oh gosh. It was by far, it was the biggest thing in my truck was that damn chair. I had convinced myself that it was worth it. I think it might be and I’ll talk about that because I think night four is when I really used it to full effect to try to connect with aliens. Go ahead. But that first morning, had my breakfast, got my coffee. That Starbucks instant coffee. The Via. I mean, I tell ya, it’s good, man. We got some of that. You don’t even really know that you’re drinking instant coffee. Yeah, it’s good. So I’m having a little coffee and then I’m full, you know, I’m full in my belly. And again, I go back to the journal and I just start, again, I’m not going to talk about what I was thinking about, but again, my theme, my goal on the trip was to be like water, right? To go with the flow, to let go, to not be this guy that has to like analyze and differentiate and categorize and analyze every single thing that encountering and know exactly where I’m gonna go. It was, be like water, you know, you face an obstacle and you, you just go around it. That’s the sound of water. Yeah. I feel that. I had this really intense sort of sense that that was happening even that first morning, like it was pretty powerful. ‘Cause you gave yourself permission to not just get on with anything. It wasn’t about getting to the next thing. Yeah, you sat there and like, I have space right here right now. But the whole time, and this was a challenge throughout the whole trip. When you’re somebody who’s not like water but you’re trying to be like water the consistent challenge when every single, every single aspect of your trip is TBD every single day. Am I gonna run out of gas, am I gonna get a flat tire? Am I gonna really be able to change the tire? You know, like, am I gonna be out of service, am I gonna? When I get to this hot spring, are there gonna be people there, are they gonna have COVID? You know, and this is how my brain works. I’m actually considerably more anxious than I ever realized or even sort of put off to people, you know what I mean? I’m constantly in the future, I’m constantly thinking about all possible options, decisions that can be made. And the whole point of the trip was to just be present. The first thing that I wrote in my journal, which I just did digitally. You know, some people, whatever it takes. On the first night– You probably didn’t get hand cramps. First night, the thing that I wrote down, it might’ve been the only thing I wrote down was, it is hard not to think about the future because even five minutes from now is the future. So including that, I just, that was the first thing I was over overwhelmed with. The first thought was, it’s really hard to not think about the future. I was, and exactly for that reason, because we were in control of our trips and there’s always a decision to be made and you can make a better decision if you anticipate, or if you have a plan or even if you’re letting go of, of checking certain boxes or achieving something or realizing the perfect trip that you’ve visualized in your mind, you know. Even if you let go of all that, your mind still goes to something else and it’s, for me too, it was in the future. Maybe for some people it’s in the past if they’re dealing with something, but for, we’re very alike in that way. Yeah, so that was a constant challenge, but it also was very evident to me ’cause I started thinking things like, maybe next time I’ll just go to a cabin. I’ll just drive to a cabin and I’ll be in the same place the whole time. But then it was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, don’t lose the opportunity here. It’s just starting. The opportunity is to embrace the fact that you don’t know where you’re gonna sleep. Like that’s why you’re here, man. That’s how you get out of the future and get into the present, is by actually being faced with– The feeling of not knowing and not going to know. So one of the first unknowns was, okay, if I can’t go to this hot spring that I wanted to go to, where can I go? Because there’s another one that I could go to, but I’ve already been told basically by the internet that it’s gonna be busy, there’s gonna be people there. But I was like, screw it, I mean, it’s a hot spring, let’s just go check it out. So I went to this hot spring. I’m not gonna name the names because I can’t remember all the names and also the whole problem is that too many people know about ’em. So I’m not gonna talk about where I was. Fine, tell me later. So I go to this hot spring that is, you know, north of the Alabama Hills in California, I know it’s confusing, but you can hang on. And it’s in the middle of a giant, like there’s just so many just open valleys that are just filled with grazing cattle. Like, it’s just throughout all of California and all of Nevada it’s just a bunch of cattle grazing in the middle of nowhere, is what it seems like. Way more cattle than people as far as I can tell. And there’s a hot spring out in the middle of this cow field, like there’s like a walkway that they’ve built over the cow pasture to kind of keep you from like walking through cow crap and mud. And then it just comes to this spring in the middle of the field. And there’s literally like cow shit around the spring and also cows like looking at you as you’re bathing. Well, did they get in it? The cows don’t, it’s too hot for the cows. So there’s two springs. One is the one that obviously is preferred because there’s like nine people in it. And there’s no room for another person. I mean, maybe I could get awkward and get in there but again, I’m thinking about COVID and nobody’s got a mask on. It’s dirt, this is a natural spring. This is natural. ‘Cause most of the ones that we’ve both experienced before now have been– Like a tub. Cement lined. Well, they’ll redirect the water into a tub or a pool. But this was natural. But I see that there’s like another thing down there that’s even more, I think it actually the one that everybody was in, they may have reinforced it with rocks, but the other one is just like, the cow pasture just kind of opens up and it’s like a foot and a half of water, but it’s like 20 feet across. And there was just one woman laying in there and it was so shallow that like, she’s kind of laying against the side and like most of her body is out of the water, but she’s still in the water. I’m like, well, I’m gonna do what she does and I was like, hey. Was she naked? No, nobody’s naked, she was fully bathing suited. Okay. And I sit down and I’m like, this is pretty nice. Like I’m sitting in this 18 inches of water, you know, my legs are under the water and maybe up to my belly button and then the rest of me is out and then I’m kind of like laying up against the side of the thing on the grass and it’s pretty hot. And it’s also pretty hot inside the spring, it’s hot outside and inside. But I’m like, this is cool, this is not me connecting with anything, this is me thinking about this woman that’s across, you know what I’m saying? Like, not being able to disconnect from the reality that there’s another person here and like, am I sitting in a weird way? You know, like just being self conscious in general, right? Yeah. But also thinking about how these people over in this other hot tub are really loud and like laughing and it’s kind of boisterous. And then all of a sudden like, oh crap, here they come. Three or four families come over the horizon and they descend on this spring that I’m in. And like there’s kids saying like, mom, it stinks! Like one kid’s like going like, , gagging because of the sulfur, yeah. And then everybody’s like it’s pretty hot, is it hot? How hot is it, is it clean, it’s pretty clean! Like, this is not enjoyable. And they all kind of just sort of descend on this area and then I can just kind of get up. I’m like, I don’t want this. Yeah. I get up and I begin to walk over to– Funny thing is, they didn’t want it either. Yeah, but just like water, you present me with an obstacle and instead of trying to go through it I just go around it. and I go over to the other, I start walking towards the hot spring and all those other people are, turns out, leaving. And there’s just one dude in there and I just go and get into the spring. First of all, it’s like three feet deep, it’s deep enough to sit down. But he’s, the guy says, what’s up, duder. What’s up, duder. Duder. Yeah, you add the R on the end of dude and you’re not conversation material. And then the woman who was on the other side walks over and he’s like, hey babe. And then I’m like, oh, they’re a couple. They’re a couple. They’re a married couple. And boy, let me tell ya, I know everything there is to know about them because he would not stop talking. He was one of those guys who is just constantly saying things, but not necessarily anything that you need to hear. Oh no. Talking a lot and saying nothing, you know what I’m saying? Which is why she was all alone over there in two inches of water. Nice guys, making conversation but not the vibe that I’m after, you know? And I’m not talkative in those situations. I’m more like, right, yeah, uh huh, yeah. You were givin’ all the signals to shut up. But I knew it was pointless. So I was like, Oh, and then eventually they were like, duder, we gotta leave? They had to go on. And I did get some time to myself in this, but again, you know, there’s like a family over there and I was just like, isn’t what I wanted it to be, but I need to just embrace, I need to embrace what it is. But then I was like, okay, all right, let’s leave. Let’s go to the next place. And I was like, I’m just gonna kind of just go and just see where I feel led to stop and camp. Because with this rig I can basically just go off and go. There’s all these dirt roads off the side of the road, the whole way. And it’s all public land, you can just go find a spot. So I drive off, I drive up into, I get to a place I’m like, this is a cool like forest. This isn’t a desert, this is more like forest. I like forest, I’ll drive into forest. Would you? So I drove into the forest and started seeing like campsites, the road started getting rougher and I was like, I would not be able to do this without a four wheel drive vehicle. Drove around, found a couple of spots. And then eventually kind of settle in a place. And first of all I was like, I haven’t really seen any fires yet. Like, I’m not really close to the fires, but haven’t really experienced a lot of smoke. But at that moment a wall of smoke began to like roll through the forest. Really? And I was like, oh, I’m at the perimeter of the smoke cloud. Either that or you’re at a fire. No, but I was looking on the map and I knew that I wasn’t near an actual fire. This was smoke coming from the fire that’s in the Inyo national forest but not where I was. And it wasn’t one of these situations where like, it smells like a campfire. It was like, no, I am in a campfire. Like I cannot breathe normally, everything began to smell like smoke. I’m breathing in smoke and I know that’s not healthy. So I’m like, okay, the universe is telling me to move on. Flow right to the next place. You’re doing it different than me. I’m gonna start doing it your way. It’s not in the lips, it’s in the mouth. And so I go to the next thing and I actually ended up crossing over, into Nevada, not like, you thought I was gonna cross over into the supernatural realm, but no, just into Nevada. To the smoke monster. And started working my way towards another hot spring. And this is, again, this is one that’s relatively popular on the internet. So I was like, well, we’ll see. But it’s starting to get dark so I had to find a spot. And I get to this spring and you can’t camp next to the spring. I mean, this is one that has a parking lot, it’s popular. And then outside of the parking lot, like half a mile from the entrance, there’s a bunch of places to camp. And I kind of drove over a hill and found a place that I couldn’t see anybody else and I was like, all right, I’m gonna set up shop here. But I’m like a mile walk at this point from the spring. But I’m like, you know what? I’m gonna wait until it gets dark and I’m gonna walk to the spring and enjoy it. Of course, this is not an original idea, everyone’s thinking the same thing, apparently. So I walked to the spring and yes, it is filled with people. Jumping. But this spring, most of the springs have like the hot water source coming into them and then there’s a pool and then like an overflow to a second pool and overflow to a third pool, each pool getting cooler. The first pool, which is the one you want to be in is clean and it’s not run off and it’s hot, everyone’s in that. I didn’t want to get right next to everybody but also there was no room. So I go to the second pool. So the first pool has like five dudes, middle-aged dudes. No women. And then the second pool has an old man in it. I was like, is this old man with the dudes? I don’t think so ’cause he seems, his energy is very different. Was nakedness happening at this one. No nakedness, it was also very dark, but everybody had on trunks as far as I could tell. So I’m like, I’m gonna get into this hot tub with this old man and I walk up there, first of all, they’re like, how you doing? Come on in, the water’s fine. No duder this time? No duder but very much like a lot of dad joke energy. And this is coming from a dad who makes jokes. But like, not like this guy, that I’ll talk about in a second. But the second hot tub with the old man in it, the old man says, this one’s taken. What? And he’s like, just kidding. He got you, ’cause you’re you’re susceptible. Anyone says, this one’s taken, you’re like, oh, sorry, I’ll go to the third one. Oh yeah, and I’ll talk about that in a second, hot spring etiquette. Well, I get in with the old man now. It’s not a big, hot tub. I mean, there’s enough room for me and this old man and the old man is on his all fours and like putting one leg up in the air really high and then bringing it down and putting the other leg, he’s doing, what do you call it? Calisthenics. Calisthenics. And then he gets on his back and he’s doing all this other stuff and I’m like, this guy is alone. He’s not with the other guys, clearly. This dude was a character, he started talking about, he liked traveled around with that Rainbow Society thing, you know what I’m talking about? Like, there’s a group called I don’t– A vacuum cleaner salesman? It’s like a, I think it’s some kind of cult. They like travel around in buses. Like a Rainbow Society or something, I don’t know what it is, but I mean, it’s like a bunch of hippies. And he had spent some time with them. He matches the profile. But then dad, number one I’ll call him, this is what he would be in the script, is sitting and the he’s the guy who’s very loud. They’re drinking the Coors Light, they’re very drunk. Oh gosh. And the guy says, you guys know anybody who’s got COVID? What? You guys know, like anybody in your inner circle got COVID? And of course, I’m not gonna engage with this guy so I don’t say anything and nobody says has anything. He’s like, yeah, that’s what I thought. I mean, I think it’s a conspiracy. It’s better than him saying, well, I do. You’re looking at one, I’m in your circle. And so I’m like, is this what hot tubs are? Hot tubs are coming down and sharing your space with a very flexible old man, by the way, very flexible, very flexible hippie. The heat just really, it makes you ligaments just plyable. And then a COVID denier. And he’s like, yeah, you know hospitals get $37,000 for every COVID patient. I mean, they’re just doing it for the money. They’re doing it for the money, yes. And I’m just like, do I have to put, do I have to listen to this bullshit? Do I have to listen to it, I guess I do. I guess I do because the water feels good. It did feel good, didn’t it? And I was not in a– How hot was it? I could tell that the main, based on the temperature of the second tub the main tub would have been hotter than a hot tub. Like 110? No, probably 120. Oh. Like, could scald yourself if you’re not careful. Like you can’t go in up to your neck and just stay there unless you just really are going for it. But they can take it and they can reroute it so it cools down a little bit. Anyway, I was like, I’m not in a, ’cause you know me, I’ve got the tendency to be like, well, let me tell you why it’s not a conspiracy and you’re full of crap. Let’s, you know, but I don’t typically do that with strangers. Strangers. So, but I was like, I’m definitely not gonna say anything to this guy. He’s not interested in the truth anyway. So I kind of stick around for a little bit and then I kind of walked the mile back to my campsite. And as I was walking back, I was just like, I don’t know, I don’t know about hot Springs. It’s like, am I gonna find one that I can have to myself? Now, bear in mind that the next morning I had my time, my coffee, I’m listening to multiple books as I travel these distances and some of those books are really, I’ll talk about one of ’em, one of the ones that was more of the fun listens, I listened to like three books throughout the trip. But I’m listening to ones that are a little bit more serious, a little bit more about spiritual things, contemplative things and again, I’m still having a really good time in my soul. But the expectation of what hot Springs, I mean, I’m beginning to think that this is a lesson that I’m being taught a lesson that like you’re going around looking for these hot springs, that ain’t where it’s at, you’re not gonna find what you want. You cannot place this expectation on these hot springs ’cause there’s gonna be old, flexible old men and COVID deniers and et cetera, you know. But I head onto the next one. Again, my destination is determined by where the next hot spring is. So I get to one that is supposed to be one of the best ones and I get to it and I’m like, is that it? It’s a cow tub, it’s like something you would put feed or water in for cows, like a circle. A metal tub, something we would get to like bathe in on the show but much bigger. And dirty. And of course the water kind of stinks ’cause it’s like sulfur and I kind of parked next to it and I realized there’s all these people, there are all these campsites that, we all have a line of sight to the spring and I’m like, maybe it’s just bad etiquette to like park right next to the spring because they’re all saying, we all use the spring, you can’t just like set your campsite out right next to the spring even though there’s a fire ring. I didn’t really know the etiquette. But I did, as I looked around, had my first encounter with full nakedness. There we go. But I’m also thinking like, they’re gonna come to this cow tub. I’m gonna be here. Question mark? And then I’m like, listen and not to, I have a hot tub at home, okay. It took you three days to come to that realization. You went all the way across the country looking for something that you had at home. Ooh, that. That’s an analogy that I’ll talk about in a little bit, but I have a hot tub at home that is, A, clean, B, I can dial in the temperature on my phone. Yeah, yeah. C, I determine who goes in it. Right, and how much clothes they have on. Right, these people that I choose, it’s my property. Yeah, you’re the king of the castle. No cows, no algae, it doesn’t smell like sulfur, it’s filtered, it’s right out my backyard. Now I know that’s a privileged thing to have, to be able to have a hot tub at your house. I’m blessed, I’m privileged. But I also am looking for hot tubs throughout the nation. Yeah. Hot springs. And I got a hot tub at home. This is interesting, yes. That’s better, and it hit me at that point. So I was like, you know what I’m gonna do? Sounds like an opportunity to journal. You know what I’m gonna do, I’m gonna bypass this, I’m gonna get back in my truck and I’m just gonna go up into the woods and find a parking space, a camping space because the thing that I’m after is solitude and reflection, and contemplation. Yes, there you go! I go up way into the woods, to the point where I’m like, there’s only one way outta here, what if there’s a forest fire here, right? But I’m like, screw it. Or a dude with photos, I don’t know. I’m setting up here. Who knew what you had to fear. And this was the first night that I set up in a place where, I had my map and I’ve gotten, I had no service but I’ve got my satellite phone deal. So I’m still safe and connected in some way. And I know where I’m at, I can get out of here. But this is when as it’s starting to get dark, I start to think about bears, mountain lions, killers, you know? Funny thing is, I didn’t think about any of that until I met one. Well, okay. But I wasn’t alone, you know, I think that makes a big difference. And it gets to the point where it gets dark and your eyes adjust to the light in your immediate vicinity, and it was a new moon. So the Moonlight on our trip, and you probably noticed this, this star light was incredible, there was no moon. There was very little moon. I think the beginning of the trip was the new moon. It was up during the day, but then it set before night. So no moonlight so when it gets dark you’ve got your little lantern there and your headlamp, you can’t see anything and it’s just every direction is just pitch black. And what could be in that dark really started to kind of freak me out. And I told the story a long time ago about the time I went down to like burn some stuff when I was working for my father in law. In the woods, yeah. Yeah, and we were like burning, it was back when they had to keep everybody’s, you know. Medical records. You had to keep everybody’s records as paper. And then I think it was just like old patients who had left or had died or whatever and so you could shred ’em or you could just burn them or whatever. I don’t know exactly how it works 20 years ago. But I would be out there burning and then, and I had recently watched “The Ring” and so I think that the little girl from “The Ring” is gonna like come up out of nowhere and I started getting this image in my mind. Well, one of the reasons that in The Lost Causes of Bleak Creek that the, not villain, if you will, but like one of the scary things in there is, spoiler alert, the little girl, Ruby. ‘Cause the idea of a little girl that’s sorta got something demonic inside her is the thing that is one of the most scary things for me and when I get out there alone. You think about her? I begin think that like, I’m gonna turn around and there’s gonna be like a little possessed girl like on all fours turned over backwards like crab crawling at me, like. And then the moment I think about it I’m like, you’re an idiot, you’re a 42 year old man out here scared of the dark and you’re thinking about things you’ve seen in horror movies. Yeah, yeah. And then I like laugh it off and then I like, you know, start like making my dinner and then I’m like. Looking over your shoulder! I turn around, yeah, I hear something and like, is she here now? Wow. And, and then I’m like, man, this is, if I knew that there was somebody 100 yards away, I wouldn’t be thinking about this. Like just the proximity to another person. And I was like, isn’t that, I was like, what does that say about me? That I want to be isolated, but I want to know where other people are. And when I don’t know how far I am from other people I began to imagine that there’s possessed people who are close. It’s like, what’s going on with me? So eventually after it gets too dark I get up in my tent and I go to sleep. But then that morning I woke up and again, same thing, once the morning comes the little girl can’t come. It’s how physics works. She hates it, she’s down in the well. She’s all, I cannot come out into the light. So I drove, so I had a nice morning, I drove down, I drove to a cave that had pictographs from thousands of years ago. Wow. And it also had metal bars that they had put on the full face of the cave. So you can’t get in there and screw ’em up. ‘Cause people. Why people gotta be like that? Why can’t you just not screw with the pictographs? Why you gotta put metal gates on the front of it? Because even the most well meaning people are gonna touch it. They’re gonna just reach out and touch it and rub it before they’ve thought about if they should do that or not. You rub a pictograph for thousands of years, it’s just a rock. Yeah, but it was pretty cool, took some pictures of that. Write that in your journal. Toquima Cave, I think it’s called. That sounds right. I mean, I took pictures and I was like, man, why were they trying to say. It looks like just circles and lines. Maybe they were just like, let’s draw circles and lines. Yeah. Probably. Or maybe this is like representative of some sort of contact they made with aliens, which I’m gonna try to do tonight. I mean, it could have been a football coach, like doing the offensive play. Ancient football. So then, again I’ve got, the cool thing is is I’ve got this, I’ve got my app, the Gaia app and I’ve pre downloaded all the maps for this area, for all the places I’m gonna go. And it’s got layers that you could turn on. Like, this is a US forest service, this is the topography, whatever. Possessed girl layer. This is your cell phone service coverage. Like you can see where you’re gonna get into cell phone service by carrier. I needed that. So, super easy, and then you can download all the maps at anytime, anyway. So I saw that there was a ghost town down, like an hour down. I mean, it’s only like 15 miles away but because of the crazy roads and stuff, it would take me an hour to get there, but a ghost town that had a hot spring. Oh. And I’m like, okay, all right, this sounds fine. Double cool. So there’s this part of Nevada near that Toquima Cave. I know where duder’s going now. There’s these sort of the hills that have all the trees on them that are like conifer trees of some kind, like, you know, some kind of pine tree. And it’s really awesome because they’re like not super thick and they just have this sort of like fairytale quality to them. But then when you get to the base of them it just turns into just field, and there’s usually cattle and the people have made ranches out of all this stuff. But dirt roads would just go forever. And so I go down this dirt road and I get to a place called Pots Ranch, I think it was. And it’s just an old house, an old farmhouse and like a barn that looked like they’d been abandoned for many, many generations. That’s cool. Or many, many decades. But probably been around since like, you know, 1800s or whatever. Could you walk through it? Yeah, I took some pictures and walked in a little bit, but it was like the floor was falling apart. I’ll share some of those pictures. I bet you weren’t thinking, I’m gonna camp here tonight. No, ’cause I wasn’t far enough, I hadn’t moved far enough. I needed to keep moving in order to kind of get back to a place where I could be close to home by the end of the trip. And this is, and I’m almost at my furthest point away from home, I’m kind of in the middle of Nevada at this point. But I am like, okay, but there’s a hot spring here. Here’s where it’s at on the map and I kind of went past the house and went down this dirt road and I get down and I’m like, Oh yes, this is gonna be awesome, there’s nobody around for miles. And I get down there, and I’d seen a picture of the hot spring on the internet ’cause I had service for a second. And it was the same deal, it was like, there’s a creek and they they’ve run the Creek through a pipe into a tub. I get down there, the tub’s gone. The pipe literally just is there and just goes onto the ground. They’ve removed the tub. The tub, a ghost. There’s just a little pool there that they’ve kind of dammed up that’s about six inches deep. So I just like sat there and stuck my feet in there. Like a poor little boy. It felt great, but I was like, how would this be if the tub was here? why you gotta take the tub! You should’ve brought your own tub. Next time, man. I thought about it, I was like, could you have a baby pool that you inflate? Like a mobile hot tub? It’s gotta be like made a Kevlar. They make those for like really rambunctious children. I did have my first shower there. I had been in a couple of hot tubs, but I had my solar shower, like heated the water up with the sun. You talking about a SAC with a tube coming out of it? Yeah, basically, solar showers sounds more sophisticated. I shower myself, I use soap, I wash my parts. It feels good, doesn’t it? It feels great. If you haven’t washed your parts in a few days. You gotta wash your parts. And I had a, I was naked in the middle of a field. Yeah, that’s nice. With mountains on both sides and just valley as far as I could see both ways. And I was like, this is pretty awesome. I mean, I wish that the tub was here, but this is pretty awesome. And I began, it’s funny, the moment that my whole perspective began to shift from like, are you learning your lesson yet? You come with these expectations. Drop your expectations, man. That’s the whole point of this, you gotta drop the expectations. The tub may not be there, it doesn’t matter. Take a shower, wash your parts. It’s not something you can just reflect on. The way you say it it does seem like it’s like, I should’ve known this, I should’ve just realized this. You have to experience it. But actually, I think that, that’s the thing that I’m learning and what I was saying in the last one too, was like, it made sense when people talked about connecting with nature or connecting with themselves in nature, connecting with God in nature, you know, whatever your intention is, it makes sense. But it’s different to actually experience it. And I think, I guess that’s true for just lessons in life is that like, the strongest lessons you learn are the ones that you experience. And which is comforting as a parent, and you to think about it in terms of your kids too, that like you can’t protect them from everything. And it’s like, that’s the most powerful way to change who you are as a person is to go through things. And so, but maybe I’m hearing too much in what you’re saying that it almost feels like, I had to go through this in order to learn it. But it’s like, I went through this and I was able to learn it. That’s very much what was happening. I had my therapy appointment last night to kind of follow up from my trip. And of course I ended up sharing everything that happened to me internally. Which even that morning when I’m taking my shower and sitting next to this hot creek and stuff, there was a lot of things that I was just sort of realizing and more than just the surface level of, this trip represents my life in a lot of ways and the way that I live and the things that I seek. It’s not just something you can write down. It’s not something that just happens in your brain, is what I think we’re saying. Yeah, and that was a big, I’ll share a little bit of that because I think that was one of the biggest realizations on the trip is that I, you know, I’ve talked about how I live in my mind and I’m a victim of my thoughts, which is a very normal thing, but that, you know, heart knowledge, experiencing things, something just being true because it is, not because you can rationalize it, explain it, analyze it, break it down, and present it to someone else. But something that you can just experience and sort of know intrinsically, like access inside yourself. Was something that was just very visceral and very powerful that was continuing to happen throughout the trip. But that day now, you know I brought the special chair. I had intentions to try to connect with aliens. Now, the thing I didn’t talk about as I had listened to the 30 minute guided meditation from Dr. Steven Greer in the CE5, I think it is app. Again, this is from that Netflix documentary which I was fascinated by. Again, I don’t believe it, I don’t– “Close Enounters of the Fifth Kind”, is what it’s called. And basically the fifth kind representing essentially a cosmic connection to aliens. Not like just seeing them physically, but. Receiving a signal from them. It’s based on the fact that if there is something to the idea of a collective consciousness of the universe then other intelligent life out there is a part of that. And we can, if we get into that sort of, what do you want to call it, metaphysical, spiritual plane there is some way to have a connection. Now, again, the rational part of my brain which is very dominant in my mind, in my personality, is like, this is almost bullshit, right? Like, I would be flummoxed if this were to be true, right? If you really could connect with aliens in this way. But also, why the hell not try? Who am I going to hurt if I try? And wouldn’t it be cool if it could happen? So tonight I’m gonna try. ‘Cause I finally listened to like the way he kind of talks about the meditation process and how you’re supposed to like basically broadcast where you’re at so they’ll find you. Oh, right. But I see this hot spring on the map that I’m not too far from and I’m like, well, let’s go there, maybe there’ll be a tub. And it was funny, the moment that my expectations completely evaporated is the moment that I found the best hot spring experience. This is the next to last night. I stop at a place that I’m not going to tell you where it’s at because I hope to return to it. But I go there and there is two large families with two large trailers who are camped right next to the spring. And I’m like, ah, crap. And they’re getting out of the spring like they’ve been bathing, like they’ve taken a little break or whatever. And I kind of just drive up to the spring ’cause I’m like, I’ll just, you know, I wasn’t planning on camping there. I was like, I’m just going to take a dip, take a soak. And I’m like, oh, you guys got a good spot. And he’s like, well, we’re leaving. And you’re like, you do that. And he was like, and I just cleaned the hot tub. So basically it was a heart shaped stone tub. That the way it works is, again, they all work the same way, you’ve got the hot water source from the spring that somebody has piped into this thing. It fills up and then it kind of goes out over a spillway but there’s a plug in the bottom of a lot of these that you can pull, so it’ll drain it and then you can scrub it. And the dude, because they had been there for a few days, antelope hunting, didn’t know that was something that happened, they had two antelopes already. Like draped over their trailers or something? Butchered or something? I didn’t see ’em, he just said, we’ve killed two. Huh? He drained and scrubbed the thing. He had drained and scrubbed it and he had just filled it up and he like showed me how it worked. That’s cool. And then they left and I was like. Oh yes. Am I about to have a heart shaped tub all to myself? No, I’m not. Oh. Because, now this is like two o’clock, I was like, there’s no way no one’s gonna show up. But I was like, you know what, I’m gonna stay here, I’m gonna camp here. So I go ahead and I take my rooftop tent out, I set it up. I’m probably, I don’t know what the etiquette is but I’m probably closer to the hot spring than I should be. But I was like, I wanna get in it. Not that nobody else was gonna get in it but I’m probably 100 feet from it, so it was pretty close. And then up rolls two cars, two older couples get out and they walk up to me and they’re like, so, is that the spring? And then it hits me, I’m like, they think I’m an authority. Yes. Because I’m here and because I’m close to the spring they assume that I have some sort of intrinsic authority here. This is how people’s brains work. You can use it against them. And I was like– You could say no. Yeah, it’s just been cleaned. Oh no. Shoulda said it’s dirty. No, no, no. I played it like this. I’m gonna be generous with this spring. Okay. I’m the keeper of the spring, That’s what these people believe, I’m gonna be generous. And I said, it’s just been cleaned, it should be warmed up for ya. And that, and they’re like, well, we’re just gonna stay for a little bit. I mean, if you don’t mind. I was like, this is working. And I’m like, take all the time you want. As if I have any authority at all, but I’m just going with it ’cause they seem to be going with it. Okay. But you coulda also tell ’em, take 10 minutes. No, ’cause if you give somebody a limit they naturally want to exceed it. Don’t give ’em a limit, just be generous. Be nice and then they’re like, I’ma give him his space. He lives here, look at his beard. They were from Ohio. I said, you know, Chuck Testa? And they were like, oh yeah, the commercial. I was like, I made that commercial. Really? And boy, that got me some brownie points. Seriously? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re like, he keeps the spring and he makes commercials. How does he do it all? ‘Cause that is all. And so I talked to them for a while. You were in the spring? No, no, no. You were standing over it keeping it. I was sitting in my alien chair next to my truck, on this side where you had to walk past me to get to the spring. That couple ended up leaving, another couple showed up, a younger couple. That was the #vanlife couple where they were taking the pictures that I told you about during your story. Yeah, priorities out of whack. They ended up being really cool. They stayed the night and an older man stayed the night. Now, not really close to me and the way it ends up working is you ended up spending, you can spend about 10 or 15 minutes in a really hot, hot tub. This one, the temperature of the water was 130 degrees coming out of the pipe so you’d have to like, fill it up and then divert it or put a restrictor in the pipe. The engineering behind these things is pretty cool. Put a restrictor in it so it’s not quite filling up fast enough and it slowly losing temperature so it probably gets down to like 110. And so that night I just got into the hot tub by myself for 20, 30 minutes, looked at the stars. Everyone was completely quiet, they were both gone, they were in their van and in their camper asleep, not talking, and I’m just out there and I’m like, man, this is awesome, I get it. Like, I’m in this heart shaped hot tub. And then it hit me like, oh, I need to reach out to the aliens. Yeah. So I began the meditative process, I went through the steps, which ended with me. I’m in the heart shaped hot tub. You know the one. Oh yeah, ’cause you start. You start with a galaxy, you move to the solar system. You funnel your signal down. You move to the North America, you move into America, you move to Nevada, bomba, bomba, bomba down to there. And let me tell you. That was the moment, right? You’re like, I’m right here. I’m here, I’m like, you can’t miss me. Heart shaped hot tub. And the thing I can see most closely relate it to is the time I tried to speak in tongues in New York. When I was trying to share the gospel with the man on the bench who couldn’t speak English. And I was like, Lord, this is when, this is when I speak in tongues, this is it. And I was like, almost, going to open my mouth and just see what happens, you know. Because I was under the understanding that speaking in tongues was sort of angelic purposes, not for the edification of the body. That’s the theological stuff that no one cares about unless you’re one of those people who cares about it. Anyway, they didn’t come, they didn’t show up. I did it twice. And I was so, I was so committed. I was like, I am willing to believe this. Like, if you just show up, I am here, I am ready. There’s also other people here, but they’re sleeping. It didn’t happen, it didn’t happen. I’m not saying I’ll never try again, but I tried so hard that night. I can’t imagine trying harder, but Dr. Steven Greer suggest doing it in a group. They were there. You were in the leadership position. You have to have commitment from everybody. I think you gotta have buy in, that would have been a lot to ask. I was gonna say sorry, but you know what, water. I was fine, I was like, I wasn’t supposed to meet the aliens on this trip. Now I know I’m getting a little bit long, there’s something significant I gotta talk about. Sure. Before the last night, I’m like, okay, I gotta find a place to stop here. I was kind of doing the game that you were doing which is, I want to get kind of close to Vegas ’cause that’s gonna be close to home, that’s like four hours from home. But it’s hot down there so where am I gonna go? So I stopped about an hour outside of Vegas, north of Vegas in some sort of higher mountainy areas. It’s still kind of deserty, but about 10 degrees cooler because of the elevation. And as I was looking for my campsite, I passed by this sign, It said, Trilobite Fossil Area. Oh. And I was like, oh wow. I’ve always wanted to find a fossil, it’s one of my dreams. I’ve never found one, I’ve searched the world over. Well, I’ve looked on the side of the road a few times. So I’m like, well, let me find my campsite first and then I’ll come back to this area because I want to kind of know where I’m gonna sleep. 10 minutes down the road I find a spot way down in this dirt road next to this pile of rocks where I did end up camping. But I go back to the Trilobite Fossil Area. You park your car and you walk up this path. And I like hear a kid’s voice and I hadn’t seen another car and it felt like I was in the middle of nowhere so I was like, oh, is that the aliens here in the form of a child? They have kids too. It was just a family, a human family. And they were getting the fossils. There’s the shale deposit out there where there’s this millions, you know of, trilobites, mostly just heads and some full bodies. Really? I didn’t see any of ’em yet. But like it’s this shale, it’s these very flat rocks that you pick up. And I was like, what do you do, just, I start talking to the family, I’m like, you just turn rocks over? And they’re like, well actually we have a hammer and you have to hit the rocks and they’ll split and then you see if there’s fossils in there. I’m like, ah, I’ve got an axe in my truck, I’ll go get it. It’s like, as I said it, I was like, I’m going to kill you is what they heard. Yes. That way you don’t run when I come at you with an axe. I’m going to get my axe, family. So I turn around, I go to get my little axe and I’m coming back down the path– And they’re running. And no, I get back and a little boy is crying. I’m like, I’m just gonna use it for the fossils, I’m not gonna kill you with it. The little boy is crying because he’s locked his keys, his parent’s keys in their car. And they’re like, can you help us? And I’m like, oh, I don’t know, I don’t really want to help anyone right now. I’m about to get a fossil. I mean, I can bust your window. It’s getting dark, you know, I’m here for my fossil. But I’m like, sure, what happened? They’re like, he locked the keys in the car. Our campsite where our camper’s at is just a couple miles down the road, could you take us? I was like, well, I got room for one, which sounds like something a serial killer would say, I realize that now, but I only had room for one. Did you have pictures that you wanted them to vote on? Because you are becoming that guy. I showed them all my pictures. You want to sell them. So I took the dad and he got the key and came back and they were like super appreciative, whatever. That was my biggest fear, by the way, I only had one key to the sprinter van. I think it’s smart enough not to let you lock it when the keys are in it, but I was very anxious about that. Yeah, I had an extra for that reason. You rescued them. It was a give and take. I saved the day for them, they would probably be dead without me. Sure. But the thing that they provided is– They would have killed the kid out of anger. The thing that they provided is the method how to get fossils. I would have been out there turning rocks over, and let me tell you, I would have never found anything ’cause you have to split the rocks ’cause everyone’s turned the rocks over. They had found three of these things so I was confident that I was gonna find one. But I was like, it’s getting dark, but I’m going to find my first ever fossil. And then I began to attach a lot of expectation to finding a fossil and the sun was going down and I’m frantically running around, hitting these rocks. And I’m like, I’ve never gonna find a fossil! I’m not a guy that finds fossils. You’re moving fast. I’m having a little bit of a pity party. And then I’m trying other things like, maybe if I close my eyes and walk and just set my hands down I will be directed to where the fossils are. You were sincerely thinking that? Oh, I did that. If you had to watch me, it would have been like, I was just laying back and then I was like, I sense the fossil and I would go down and touch it and try it, and nothing. That’s like, I mean, that’s like praying to win your recreation soccer game. Yeah, which I also used to do. Yeah, right. So then I was like, okay, well it’s getting dark. You know what, three more rocks. And then I do three and not find one. Okay, two more rocks. Two more. I kept doing that strategy until I finally found one. Now, I don’t have it with me because, the reason I didn’t bring it is because I’m afraid that if I showed it to you, you’d be like, that’s a fossil? You know what I’m saying, it’s like, it’s not impressive. It’s the head of a trilobite, it’s really small, it’s very clearly a fossil if you really look at it, but it’s not like, this thing ain’t going in the Smithsonian, you know what I’m saying? Like, and all the ones out there are like, oh, I can see the outline of where this thing died, but it’s not this even a discoloration as much as it’s an imprint of this ancient crustacean or whatever they are. But it’s special to you. It’s special to me and it’s sort of my, what is the word, talisman? Talisman. Amulet? For my trip, you know. Souvenir. Souvenir that I kind of hold on to, the significant life things that happened because I’ve got this thing to kind of hold on to, whatever. Keep it in your pocket at all times. So I found that, then the last night of camping, camping next to a rock pile, a big rock pile. And in the middle of this giant valley there’s this giant rock pile, kind of like the Joshua Tree tight rocks but a little bit different. And I get there as it’s getting dark, the sun has already gone down but I’m like, I gotta really set up really quickly. And I like to get out of the car and I’m like, whoa, what was that? A bat. You’re afraid of bats. I hate bats, and I have set up next to a bat cave. Oh. ‘Cause there’s multiple bats coming out of the giant rock pile. I’m like, I set up next to a bat cave. And I’m not Batman. You know how they see, they see by yelling at you. And they’re attracted to bugs and I’m the only source of light in this valley. What do bugs like? Lights. Lights. So I’m like, well, I’m gonna see if I can do everything in the dark. Seriously? I’m so afraid of bats that I was like I’m gonna cook my dinner in the dark. I’m gonna do everything in the dark. I kept lights off and I was able to do almost everything in the dark. There’s a few things you had to turn the lights on for. And at that point there were moths coming up to me and the bats were coming to the moths, like, it was a little freaky. They didn’t attack me. But I got in my tent that night and this is where, now I’m finally getting to these two realizations, one related to our conversation and another one sort of a larger scale thing, but also kind of related. 2:30 in the morning. I wake up and I’m like, this doesn’t happen to me. I wake up in the middle of the night, but take a wiz, back to sleep, whatever, you know? Yeah. But I can’t sleep and then I could not stop thinking. It is very weird because it was very vivid. I could not stop thinking about how polarized our country is. Like, it was very strange. And I think it had something to do with the fact that, you know, I had been thinking about these wildfires the whole time that I’m on this trip and I’d been trying to avoid the smoke and I knew I was about to go back into the smoke. And I had been on the internet a little bit. Like if I had service, I was like, checking in. You know, there was a few things happening. Like a few emails or whatever that I like looked at. I wasn’t completely disconnected, I tried not to set some unrealistic standard for myself, but I was like, I’m not gonna be on the internet very much but if I have service, I might check something. And I made the mistake of going on Twitter a couple of times and of course, when you go to Twitter, especially Twitter, I mean Facebook, which I don’t go to ’cause it’s even worse but, everyone has an opinion about these wildfires, right? And of course I had been around the COVID denier guy and I was like, I’m just like, I’m looking at what people are saying about the wildfires online and it’s, you know, what our president is saying about the wildfires and there’s this narrative that, oh, the problem with the West coast is forest mismanagement. Like that’s what’s causing these wildfires. It’s not climate change, climate change is a hoax. And I’m just like, this is so disheartening, right? It’s just so disheartening that we’re dealing with something so tragic, that we’re just beginning to deal with it. It’s gonna be just continued further tragedy for the coming decades. And it is related to climate change, but you know what, there is also an element of forest mismanagement and that contributes to it, right? It’s not one or the other. It actually, both contribute to it. But we’re so divided that– You can’t give an inch. You have to be on one side or the other. And if you believe that it’s forest mismanagement you have to believe that climate change is a hoax even though I’m not gonna give all the arguments for climate change, but it’s happening and it is almost assuredly caused by humans. And if you’re on that side of it, then you won’t listen to anybody who’s got anything to say that’s other than, this is just climate change. No, it has nothing to do with forest mismanagement. That’s you, it’s not California, those are national forests. I’m not gonna get into the details of it, but the thing that really just kind of like, I could not go back to sleep is I was like, and it was related to some of the stuff that I was reading about in the way that we dig in so deeply and identify with our position and we think of ourselves as Democrats and Republicans, Christians, atheists, whatever, and we get into our group and we just, we put these shields around us and those shields cannot be penetrated by anybody else’s ideas. Yeah. And I mean, I really think that it’s, it will be our downfall. The problems that we face as a species are so large and there’s so many of us that our level of division, it will be our downfall. Well, that’s the hopeful conclusion I was waiting for. Well, no, and I was just like, wow, I can’t stop thinking about this. But related to that, as I was driving back, and again, this is related to a book that I was reading which I’m not going to talk about what book I was reading and that kind of made me think about these things, ’cause maybe I’ll talk about that at a different time. But I thought about our conversation, the conversation that we had about me believing that you were as competitive as me. Now, I’ll say I have looked at what people have said about, a few people have talked about what they thought about the conversation and kind of analyzed, thank you for those of you who have contributed to that conversation. I mean, I definitely got the impression that a lot of people were like, why did you guys end up talking about that for an hour? And the reason we ended up talking about that for an hour is because of me, because I thought that it was gonna be, you know, I never intended for us to talk about, I thought I was gonna say, I think you’re just as competitive as me and we’d have a 10 minute conversation about it and it would be lighthearted and it would end somewhere where you’d be like, yeah, I am. But the moment that you were like, I don’t think so. I was like, okay, well, I do think so. And it became this hour long conversation about it. And basically what I realized is that, and this is, I mean, this is my tendency. My tendency is to have an opinion, have a perspective, and then be very invested in getting whoever I’m talking to to agree with my perspective, right. And one of the things that kind of clicked based on some stuff that I was reading is that all arguments, all debate, all sort of obsession with wanting to be right, is based in an overidentification with our mental position. In other words, I become invested in this opinion that I have, which by the way, is not even something that I really care about. Whether or not you’re competitive or whether or not you see how you are as competitive is not an important thing. This is not something that impacts my life, your life, this is just a conversation, almost a philosophical inconsequential debate of kind. But I was invested proving to you that you actually think the same way I do. And that’s based in ego. And it’s based in me identifying myself with my position, but also ultimately, my fear of death. And let me explain that. Okay. This is kind of mind blowing. But basically, you know, one of the humanity’s big problems is this overidentification with something that is a thought that you have and a way that you identify yourself. Like I talked about a second ago, like this division that is in our country. And by having, once you identify yourself with an opinion, you actually translate your own existence into that opinion being maintained and spread. And that’s where it gets into this like, trying to protect your own existence. So what I’m saying is, is that I identify myself with this argument, because I feel like if I can get you to agree with me, if I can get you to think like I do on this, then that kind of validates me, it validates my own existence. And if I’m not able to do that and I’ve identified, I’ve placed some of my own personal identity in that position, if that position isn’t true there’s a little bit less than me around. It’s a fascinating concept. You’re saying you discovered this about yourself more so than you’re saying, I discovered how everybody operates. I think I had this realization that both things were happening, because the first thing that happened is this overwhelming like sense of burden about how divided the country is. And being really mad about the country being divided. And also having a very interesting perspective that I bring to that because I’m somebody that’s been on both sides of the political spectrum in my adult life. So I feel like I have an appreciation for both sides, it’s like, I know how conservatives think and I know how liberals think because I’ve had very similar thought patterns to both of them. But then realizing that on a small scale, and maybe an inconsequential scale, I had demonstrated that I’m just as big a part of the problem, just in that little conversation we had. Now, I appreciate what people had to say when they were like, oh, I’m so glad you guys had that conversation. And you’re able to have like this conflict without being mad at each other and you kind of demonstrated how to have healthy conflict. And if that’s what came from it, then great, I’m glad we had the conversation. But I realize that not just that conversation, but the way that I think in general, even when I did my deconstruction story, as much as I was trying really hard, because I know my tendency, to be persuasive, but just to be expository and just tell my story. I know that I have a tendency, I want to justify myself. I want to validate my own position because I’ve got a big ego. And I want to perpetuate my own ideas because I have over identified with ideas as inconsequential as thinking that you need to realize how competitive you are and the details of the argument are kinda, they don’t even matter. It just becomes this. I just kinda like I dug in and said, let’s have this conversation and hopefully it will end with you agreeing with me. And I think that that is, it’s a small picture of what’s happening not just nationwide, but worldwide. It’s just a preoccupation with being right. You know what I’m saying? Identifying with an idea and then being validated in that idea. Because that validates you as a person, or people as people. And the way that ideology, identification with a particular political party, particular worldview, particular religion, whatever, it comes with a whole set of things that you have to embrace, right? Like how did it ever get to the point where identifying as a follower of Jesus went hand in hand with being extremely capitalist, right? How did, how did we get to a place where identifying yourself as a follower of Jesus meant denying that humans are causing climate change, right? I think we got there because it’s a package, you take the package. Listen, I’m not judging, what I’m saying is that I’m guilty of it as well. I’m beginning to try to explore, okay, well, where else has this manifested itself outside of just a dumb argument about how competitive you are. But ultimately what I’m saying is that, we had that conversation and it became this big thing, not even because I thought that it was important, but because I made the statement and then I felt like I had to defend it, I felt like I had to defend it for an hour worth of conversation. You know, I think that that’s not the typical, that’s not how things typically play out in our friendship dynamic. I think it wasn’t what you expected to happen. Again, it was like you thought there would be a little playful conversation and then an agreement. I think with a lot of things going through life together, there has been this dynamic of, you know, if we’re exploring an idea or, if you’re more intent on exploring an idea, then you can bounce it off of me and more often than not, I would explore it with you and validate that position. Mm-hmm. I do think that’s an interesting dynamic that, you know, I didn’t realize was happening. And it was like, if someone was looking at my life they might say, well, you just glom on to whatever Rhett believes or whatever. Or, you believe whatever he tells you, would be like a severe and non charitable way to put it, ’cause that’s not actually true. But what I never thought of is with you like talking about how this, ’cause I didn’t I didn’t know how this worked in your own mind, but if hearing that someone may say, Link fulfills a role in your life to validate that part of yourself that’s associated with ideas. Potentially. Potentially. Again, I don’t know, but it does, I do see, I mean, there is that pattern because I think, again, you’re exploring how you interact with ideas and identity and again, it’s like, I don’t have to say I have that exact same experience in order to validate your realization or your confession. Or me to say, I don’t relate to that. It’s like, this conversation’s not about me at all. It’s ’cause I mean, it’s one thing to be like, so are you saying you shouldn’t have opinions about things or you shouldn’t argue for things? It’s like, well, I mean, I think we’re in a place in our country where I think that there are principles and there are people that need to be advocated for and there are things that need to be stood for. So I think that being a person of principle, of character and integrity and standing for things, I’m not saying you shouldn’t have opinions and convictions. But we’ve talked about how we also value, I mean, with our deconstruction stories, how much we value open-mindedness and like not skipping from one entrenched thing, belief system, just to another one. But it’s less about where we’re entrenched, that’s a different conversation, than just talking about our value of open-mindedness and not ruling anything out in order to. Well, and I think that the challenge is finding a way to have an opinion, a belief, a conviction, to fight for something, but not to overly identify with it to the point that your self worth and your self identity is based in some position that you have, right? Because at that moment you become more committed to your position than you do to the human race, to the greater good. That’s a selfish, it actually becomes a selfish pursuit. And I just, in that podcast I demonstrated how that can happen with something so unimportant as me thinking that you’re competitive. Like, what if it was having an argument about abortion? You know, for God’s sake, right. But no, I wasn’t even talking about something that has any emotional weight to it, I was just talking about whether or not you’re competitive. It came from a conversation about board games, but yet even then I was willing to, and I was a very willing participant in identifying with that position and once I threw it out there and it encountered some resistant energy, I energized the side of my conversation to try to get my energy to beat your energy so I could be like my energy wins and I won this argument. And I just feel like that negative energy that’s happening on both sides, it’s happening on both sides of the spectrum at this point, is like, there’s just something that’s been lost. And I’m a part of it, I’m saying that I am a part of it. But I’m realizing that I want to be a part of the solution and not just contribute to the noise. I don’t really know what that looks like. I don’t have any application. And ultimately, I’m not encouraged, so I’m not gonna end it on a happy note. For me personally I’m encouraged with some of the things that have happened and that one of the things is like, oh man, you tend to want to debate or argue or you want to be right and that’s not about wanting people to understand the truth as much as it’s about you wanting to be right, your ego. I’m glad that I’m beginning to realize that. But the thing that is discouraging is our interconnectedness that we’ve been able to achieve given the proliferation of the internet has backfired. and we’re way less connected I think, than we’ve ever been. And it does not seem to be, there doesn’t seem to be any sort of resolution in sight. And instead of commenting on that I’ll take an aside and just say, since this is the time where we’re talking about, if this is the followup to the competition, I’ll just give like the concise way that I’ve processed it. I think for me, I didn’t read a lot of the comments. I had discussions with, you know, with Christy, I might’ve had a therapy discussion about it, I may not have. But one of the things that kinda, when I look back on the conversation now is the thing that I carry with me is, I realized that it was, you know, unpacking like the competitive, your competitive nature. You know, I very much internalized that as kind of, as a threat, right. And then what I, part of my process was kind of coming through that and saying, you know what? Analyzing that but then also realizing that if the thing that sticks with me, the positive thing from the conversation is that if there’s a competitive spirit between us and it doesn’t just go one way, and I’m not denying that, I’m not saying I’m not competitive at all. But I am asserting that I am not the same, I’m not the same as you in this way. That I think what it kind of hurt because I felt threatened by it. The turn was actually being honored by it. Like if you, you’re not competitive with everybody, if there is a competitive spirit from you towards me, then I can take, I honestly take that as a compliment. That is a level of respect that I didn’t immediately experience, but the more I thought about it and reflected on it, I was like, that’s my takeaway from it. So it’s, you know, I take it as a compliment. Okay, good. And yeah, I do find it fascinating that because there’s mics in front of us it changes the dynamic of the conversation a little bit, but the conversation that we had afterward for the next two hours, you know, there was a lot of good that came from that too, that, you know, didn’t need to be on mic and I think it was a milestone moment, and a good thing. I’m glad we had the conversation. I just have come to grips with why I push things the way that I did. And some people were really, you know, some people really, really picked up on that. And ironically, or I guess not so ironically, but fittingly, even my competitive nature in a lot of ways is based in the way that how I identify, what I identify with and what I find my worth in, right. And a lot of times I find my worth in winning at things. And again, that’s just another displacement of my identity into this performance, meeting some expectation, whether it’s set by me or set by somebody else. So even the argument that I was having was trying to get you to realize that you think about this in the same way that I do. The thing I was trying to get you to think about was also a symptom of my ego and the way I was doing it was a symptom of my ego. And none of this is like super revolutionary, it isn’t like if you had a told me that before that conversation, I probably would’ve been like, yeah, that’s true, wanting to be right and wanting to have an argument and kind of digging into your trench in an argument is based in ego, but I don’t feel like I had a, to get back what we’re talking about, an experiencial knowledge. A heart knowledge. I could agree with it intellectually. But now I’m like, oh, I can feel that. And I think I have just a little bit more sort of consciousness of that tendency. So when I go there, when I find myself going there, when I’m in and when I find myself suddenly in an argument being like, whoa, whoa, whoa, has this suddenly shifted? Do you care anymore about whether or not what the truth is? Or do you just care about being right? Because it feels like our culture has gotten to a place where the only thing anyone cares about is just being right. Well, I think that what you’re describing, sharing your experience is a source of hope, you know. At least we got this one data point, you know, and I want to be that person too, that’s like, I’m not gonna hold on to something so tightly that I lose myself, who I really want to be. And I think, so, I understand why you’re saying it’s like, I’m not really ending on a hopeful note, but at the same time, I think that there’s a hopeful takeaway. Well, I hope so. And we should go, you know, I’m sayin’, we should make sure we pick dates and that we go off again. Well, and that’s my recommendation, it’s very simple, it’s very general. Make time for yourself, we did the whole chapter and. Isolate yourself with yourself. Yeah, and, you know, it’s something that I knew was important. That, you know, my therapist is telling me, you need this. I’m believing that I need this, but it took me, I mean, I did my little trip to the place with the yoga thing and the hot tub back, you know, a couple of years ago. But it was different, it felt different. But just making that time for yourself, you may not be in a position, especially given the circumstances in the world, to travel right now. But like, there’s just something about giving yourself some space, releasing yourself of expectations, responsibilities, the need to accomplish something, and just letting yourself off the hook and really spending some time just discovering yourself. And for me it was helpful to get away and also to read a few books that had been recommended to me. Which again, I’m not gonna recommend those books. You don’t have to read what I read, it’s just, that was for me. But yeah, make some time for yourself, isolate yourself with yourself. That’s my rec. #EarBiscuits, let us know. We’ll speak at you next week. 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