EB 319: Rhett’s Father-Son Cross-Country Road Trip

Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time, I’m Rhett… And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, Rhett’s taking me on a cross-country road trip. Vroom, vroom. I’ve been waiting to hear… Ah, I bet you have. About this Road-trip. Well, the moment I heard, when I was back here in LA, you were still in North Carolina, your trip to Mexico was disintegrating right before your eyes and I was feeling sorry for you, and then all of a sudden, Christy’s like, because she’s reading the thread and I’m not because I’m in full vacation mode. She’s like “Rhett and Locke, they’re gonna drive back to LA.” they’re doing a cross-country road trip. Best idea ever. I’ve got admit… Jealous. Yeah, it’s like immediate jealousy. Like this sinking side, It’s like… Well, why didn’t they invite me? Just wait until you had all the story. If you invited me, that’s not how cross-country trips work, I was on the other coast already, that’s why you didn’t invite me. I could’ve picked you up and taken you to my house in the last like half mile or so. No, but like, the whole week after Christmas that we were all on break, I was like, “Let’s do something guys.” And I could always rent a van again, and we can do a couple of nights camping. There was like torrential… It was raining like crazy here. Pouring of rain here, it was depressing, didn’t want to go out, but it was relaxing. But I wanted to do something and they wanted it to just chill out. I respected that, but I was a little frustrated. And then on top of that, it’s like, man, he’s got this like father-son thing. Bonding. seeing places, I’ve only done one cross-country trip. And it wasn’t when my son… It was with me. Yeah, it was. Similar route that I took. So I want to hear all about it. You’ve been saving it to tell me on this podcast. Even a couple of times, we’ve been amongst friends who wanted to hear about the trip and you’ve been there and I had to say, I can’t talk about it because Link’s here. People are like, “These guys are so weird.” I can’t tell you about my trip because I have to wait until now. I mean, they understood. They laughed because I was like, “Listen, I don’t want to have to act not bored, hearing it a second time on my podcast.” That’s more important than us talking about it now, than our friendship. Hopefully, you’re the kind of Ear Biscuits here/Mythical Beast who listens to every episode of Ear Biscuits so you already know that COVID changed my plans to go to Mexico, and then I decided to go on a road trip. I’m not going to tell any more than that. But I wanted it… Why was it me and Locke? Like why was me and my 17-year-old son and not my 13-year-old son? Well, my 13-year-old son, very likely got COVID over the break and that’s why we just didn’t go to Mexico. And so Locke and I have been planning on taking a trip together, maybe during… We’ve been trying to get go… Can we close that loop? He’s fine. Yeah, yeah. Shepherd’s totally fine. Shepherd is double vaccinated so he experienced essentially a cold, he was down for a couple of days and he’s back. We never confirmed that that’s what he had because all we had was those at-home tests and so we’re just assuming that’s what he had. But if it’s me, and I’m not going to put these thoughts and words in your mouth and I don’t want to throw you under your family bus here, but if it were me and I was in your situation at that point, I would’ve been like, “This presents a unique opportunity for me and Lincoln to travel across the country, without the other siblings.” I mean, doing a cross-country road trip as a family is a totally different thing than just doing it with one son, it’s a different concept. We actually considered. It was on the table for us to all go because actually by the time we left Shepherd was essentially recovered, but Locke and I specifically, have been trying to plan a trip together. We were going to go to Japan and then we were going to go to, I don’t know, somewhere else. And then, COVID has changed our plans multiple times and so, this is a trip that’s been in the making, and he’s going to graduate high school this year… So it’s not about avoiding spending time with your whole family in one car, but that I had to think that was a little bit of a fringe benefit. Well, all it took, as Jessie and I discussed it for about 15 seconds, as I was like, “You know how our family is so intense, that there’s a chance that all four of us in a car could disintegrate really quickly?” I mean, there was a chance that me and Locke in car could disintegrate very quickly, but the chances were lower. Now, interestingly, I’ve talked a little bit about Locke and his tendency to be… He’s an Enneagram Eight, he’s a challenger, and so one of the things that I have found to be consistently true is when you have an idea, even if it’s a great idea, like a cross-country road trip, his initial reaction to it will be one of doubt and skepticism. It’s always instinctive. Oh yeah, and I knew that was going to happen. And lo and behold, when I pitched the idea of, “Hey, man, day after Christmas, let’s just drive back to Los Angeles.” It wasn’t an immediate, like, “This is a great idea.” It was like, “How many hours is that going to be in the car?” Like these were the questions, right? It’s a legit question. I don’t want to spend too much time on this point because obviously we ended up going but the way that I kind of went into a dad-pitch and Jessie was involved and we did a little bit of good cop, actually good cop, good cop. But I just said, listen, it’s very difficult for the future Locke to understand what is being proposed right now. And that is, cross-country trips of any kind… Well, future Locke is not here, he’s in the future. Right, you know what I mean? It is very difficult for your future-self to look… You can’t look back and appreciate what you are about to experience in a cross-country trip. And also as someone who has lived in adult life for some time, I know how hard it is to come by a cross-country trip. These aren’t things that just present themselves, but I’ve never met someone who was like, “I regret my cross-country trip. I really regret it.” Now, I’m sure there are people who do, but most people are like, when I think about some of the formative experiences, when I think about some of the things that I remember in my life, oh, that cross-country trip. Like these are formative experiences and memories and I was like, “You’re not going to regret going on this. You will regret saying no, potentially.” So you sold the experience in your future-self will thank you. Yeah, I’ve had to do that a number of times with him. I mean, did you say, “And you know what, we’re going to be announcing our location and meeting with fans of mine at rest stops off the interstate all across America…. All I did was… It will severely slow down our progress. As we stopped at multiple rest stops. During the first rest-stop stop I did say, there was a point in time about a decade ago where Link and I did a cross country trip and stopped and announced to our fans that we were stopping at various rest stops. And instead of thinking it was weird he was like, “That’s cool, man.” It was cool. It was. If you’re interested in that, you can just Google Mythical Road Trip. The videos are spread across two different channels. Of course this is pre-GMM, so, across the GMM channel and the main channel. Do some work to piece it together for yourself, maybe there’s a playlist. I’m going to be, I took a lot of video, took a lot of pictures, including we took a couple of those disposable film cameras that apparently take a week to develop, that’s why they’re not developed here. Oh, like a wedding. Yeah, but between all of that visual media, if you’re just listening to the podcast, just know that the YouTube version of this is going to have a lot of that visual stuff. I’ll show you some, if it’s needed for context, as we go. I’ll watch the video, Or you can just watch later. I’ll watch the YouTube video. But I don’t want to spend a lot of time on my phone. How much planning did you have? So, you sold him? Pick up where you left off here. He was like “I’ll do it, dad.” We were going to leave on the 26th. Did he have any stipulations, was he like… Well, one of the things that he had to do is he had, he had two things to do, he’s taking a German course that’s outside of his school because before he transferred high schools a long time ago he was he was in the German curriculum and so he needs to finish to like, get to like, think he’s doing it, AP German, I don’t know what it is. Was it like car manufacturing, what was it? It was just the language of Germany. Oh, just the language. And so he needed to do that because he’s got to finish it by like mid-January so he needed to spend some time doing homework. He’s also currently applying to more colleges than the ones he’s already applied to so we needed to do some essays and stuff like that. And I was like, “Listen, we’ve got this giant SUV that’s way too big for us, it’s super comfortable, it’s like a mobile classroom. It’s like one of those families that has a school bus that just takes their kids around doing homework all the time.” So, there’ll be plenty of opportunity for homework because I’m going to drive, it’s a rental car, you’re not allowed to drive this thing so, you’re going to be able to do a lot of homework. He was like, “Yeah, okay, okay, yeah, all right.” But this is like the 23rd or so, 22nd, 23rd when we made the call to cancel the Moscow trip and decided to do this. So in terms of preparation, I actually, I let Jenna know that I was doing this cross-country road trip and she was like, “Well, you should check out the website roadtrippers.com.” And I did, and that was actually, thank you for that, Jenna, that was very helpful because what you end up doing is you basically go on there and you set your destination, your origin and your destination, and then it creates a corridor around the route, like a 30 mile wide corridor, which in my case was on 40, because I was going to take 40 because I didn’t want to just go. I wanted to get home, but I wanted to be able to experience some stuff as well. But I didn’t want to do one of these things where you’re like going up north. Also, winter weather was happening and I’ll talk a little bit more about that, we actually had a divert our route because of that, but I wanted to stay 40 or south, I didn’t want to go too far to the north. I mean, it’s a cool site where you just, you see things organized by category and you click on them and you can just add them to your trip. Then it’s like, it automatically sends that navigation to your navigation app on your phone. So you’ve got the mobile app, you’ve got the computer and with the information and people’s reviews of these different places and things to do. Do I have to buy a subscription for this? Here’s how they get you, so, I’m sitting there planning my trip and I’m about like four or five destinations in or four or five stops in and then it was like, “To add a seventh destination or for unlimited destination adding, please sign up for subscription service.” And I was like, boy, I’ve spent an hour so far doing this and so it was genius system and so I ended up paying like the yearly fee to basically subscribe to the thing. But I don’t regret it. Even know the chances of using it again, they know are very low, even for you. Yeah, well, I’m going to not pay again or I’ll probably forget and pay again. Exactly. This is how they make their money and I have no regrets. Right. And so all we knew is that we wanted to get to LA by like New Year’s Eve. So if you go from the 26th to New Year’s Eve, that’s a total of six days. Me and you went pretty aggressively when we went with our Yu Ha, and I think we did five days or so. I think it was either four or five, it was not six. I’m 100% sure of it. How did we do that? Well, it’s not that hard as you’re about to find out, even when you take multiple stops, more stops than me and you did. The only stop we took for ourselves was the Grand Canyon, all the other ones were just to meet Mythical Beast. Yeah, so the Grand Canyon was on the itinerary, didn’t happen, for reasons I’ll explain in a second. Okay, so I’ll get into talking about the first stop in just one moment. First, we want to let you know about… Rubik’s Cube. We invented this thing called the Rubik’s Cube, and we thought it would be cool to put our face on it. No, we actually partnered with the official Rubik’s Cube company and we created a Rhett and Link mythical themed Rubik’s Cube. It’s got our faces making various faces on each face. And it is solvable, but just not by us right now, that’s why it’s not currently solved. It was solved. But it looks great… When it came in the mail. When you buy one available for a limited time, it will come to you solved. And then it’s up to you to keep it solved. Watch a YouTube video and figure out how to solve it. I’ve got to take this one home, Lincoln knows how to solve Rubik’s Cube. So you know what, it’s a good life skill. If somebody here in the office doesn’t so he can… It might be the only time it comes in really handy. And you mix it up and it makes funny looking faces that are a combination of parts of my face and your face, which is something I didn’t anticipate. Go to mythical.com, get yourself the official Rubik’s Cube Collab with Mythical. Okay, so based on the amount of hours that we needed to be on the road, I had an estimation of like, we need to kind of hit like an eight hours of driving per day or so to kind of keep the pace up. That’s a lot. I think for a leisurely pace, you don’t want to go much more than five, if you’re me. I disagree, and that’s what I thought going in. Your vehicle makes all the difference in the world. You know, when I took my solo trip and I took my FJ, 2007 FJ that’s got big tires on it, makes all kinds of noise and it’s just not a great car for going long distances, it’s a great car for getting over rocks and stuff, I was absolutely mesmerized at the size of the country. And all I did was go into like Nevada and then come back to California. This is not an ad for a Ford Expedition, but I was in like a new Ford Expedition and something about smooth the ride was made both Locke and I come to the conclusion that the United States isn’t that big. That’s actually how we, we were driving and be like… It’s sitting for eight hours, it’s a long time. It wasn’t that bad. I mean, and I’ll talk to you about some other ways that we killed time. Does it have a standing driving? Yes, it’s a standing desk situation. The top goes up and you just sort of like. That would be awesome, I mean… RVs and buses should have that. Sprinter vans should have that. But then it’s really hard to control the gas and brake pedals while standing. Right, that’s probably why that’s illegal. But no, it didn’t seem… I was thinking… I was preparing Locke… I told Locke, I was like, “Dude, mom and Shepherd get back on the second, you go back to school on the third, as long as we’re back before the second.” I set really, really low expectations for how much we needed to move and he was on board with that. But we did have a place that we wanted to get on night two, which I’ll explain in a second. So first off, we wanted to go and stop and stay the night in Nashville, which is about seven and a half, eight hours from Fuquay-Varina, which it was our point of origin. Would you have thought that all the way to Nashville, Tennessee, just like seven or eight hours? It’s not just, it’s pretty close. I would’ve said, “Yes, that’s pretty far.” Okay, yeah, I don’t need to be asking you how long things feel in mileage and time though, because things kind of break down pretty quickly, all I knew is that I wanted to stop, We wanted to get out on the road very early. So the night before, Locke wasn’t staying with us, he was staying with his cousins and I was staying with Jessie’s parents. And I was like, “Bro, I want you to just bring your stuff over, get your clothes washed.” And telling the 17-year-old the things at 17-year-olds need to know before they leave. And I was just like, “Be ready.” He basically wasn’t ready until very late that night. He went and hung out with his cousins, but he was ready, we woke up, no, well, right before, sorry. Right before we went to bed… I forgive you. I’m asleep, It’s 11:30, I’m going to get up at like 6:30. And we’re gonna get on the road at 7:00 AM, that’s the plan. He knocks on the door and wakes me up, he was like, “Dad, I broke my crown.” So, Locke has a crown on one of his front teeth right here on the, whatever that middle tooth, the incisor. Okay. And it had cracked right across the front. Now, thankfully, my father-in-law’s a dentist and we were staying at his home and he was still up. So he was like, “Okay, I can fix it tomorrow.” And then he was like, “Oh no, tomorrow, Sunday. I won’t have any assistants.” And then he’s like, “Let me look at it.” He looks at it, he was like, “Ah, you’re fine until you go to California.” At that point, I thought it was a crack. It was going to be delayed, but it wasn’t. It didn’t break off. The facing of it had cracked off, but it wasn’t like exposing the tooth, the root or anything like that or the nerve. So right off the bat, I was… A little intrigued. I was a little tense, but we did end up leaving at 7:00 AM. First stop was going to be in Asheville because if you’re going to Nashville, you should stop at a town that rhymes with it before you get there, that’s a rule of thumb. That the app told you that. Yeah, and I knew definitively that I wanted to eat at Biscuit Head for lunch. Okay, First stop Asheville, Biscuit Head. Love these. Filthy animals. All day, this going to be good. Biscuit Head, is a restaurant in Asheville, there’s actually three locations, I didn’t know that. This is a place that specializes in biscuits. Oh, my mouth is watering. I like those big, tall stack, fluffy buttermilk biscuits with like bacon, egg, and cheese inside. I’m going tell you exactly what we ordered. So, I was in large part, building the trip around food, you know? That’s what I think about most of the time. So I was like, we’re not going to have a bad meal on this trip. We did, which I’ll get to in a second, but the plan was to not have a bad meal on this trip. It was about the destinations and the sight seeing, but it was also about the food and we wanted to get started on the right foot. Now, I didn’t know this, but the whole Biscuit Head of it all, apparently there’s something called like a cat head biscuit, which is a Southern vernacular for essentially biscuits and gravy. Like when you take a biscuit and you put stuff over the top of it, I don’t know, it said something like that on the menu. I was like, “Oh, I didn’t know this, I’ve been at this place several times.” But we got the filthy animal. Which is a buttermilk biscuit with fried chicken on top of it, pimento cheese… Oh God. Bacon, scrambled eggs, all smothered in gravy. If you go there… Smothered in gravy? This is their specialty. You’ve got to eat it with a fork? You definitely gotta eat it with a fork. This is what I recommend, that you get to filthy the animal. Everything’s good though. So Locke’s… Keep the change. Already having a great time, you know? We’re spending a lot of time listening to music. I’ll talk about a little bit about some artists that I helped him discover along the way, but we’re having a good time and we were just very sort of like, “Man, we got here real fast.” It feels like we just got to Asheville real fast. We eat, but like, we want to get to Nashville because I’m like, not only are we going to Nashville to get some hot chicken, but I want to show him downtown Nashville and show him the honky tonks and all these stuff. So on to Nashville, which we ended up arriving in Nashville at like 3:30 PM. Oh, perfect. We got there with plenty of time to spare. Okay, it’s official stop number two, Nashville. Don’t look at yourself man, look at the camera, man. Now, you probably already know this if you live outside of some major areas like Los Angeles, but COVID does not exist in Nashville, Tennessee. Apparently, has not made it there, which is news to me. I think they completely eradicated it mentally. Exactly, it turns out that most of the country has eradicated COVID mentally. It does not exist in any of the states after Nashville until I got to like Phoenix. And again, as I kind of outlined a couple of podcasts ago, as someone who’s double vaxxed and boosted and we were both double vaxxed and boosted, I was kind of like, “Listen, I kinda got to just go along with the flow of America here on this trip or else I’m going to drive myself crazy.” So that’s essentially what we did. But we were going to do, the main thing I wanted to do in Nashville was to get hot chicken. So we took a little tour of downtown, stepped inside honky-tonk where the… I go into the places where… First of all, it’s a little bit mind blowing if you’ve never been there, for Locke it was really mind blowing to just walk up and down this street and literally every single restaurant has got a person, a band playing music, right? Yeah, including Taco Bell, seriously. Now, a lot of it is very bad. I would say the majority of the music that I heard coming out of those places is pretty bad. I’m not a huge fan of modern country in general. It gets better the later you stay. But you go to a place where there’s guys, somebody’s got gray hair and you’re like, “That’s a good sign.” There’s a dude who’s playing a pedal steel who looks like this may be his last time ever playing the pedal steel or he may die while on stage. Yeah. And also there’s hardly anybody in there watching except some other old people. I saw that place and I was like, “This is where we need to go.” We go inside, over the course of like five songs they played three Merle Haggard songs. Do you remember which one it was? I can’t remember the place that was our favorite from when we played at the Ryman. I don’t remember the name of the place, honestly. It is a woman’s name. But it was towards the river and pretty close to like the Glen Campbell Museum and a little road you go off to get to the Johnny Cash Museum, which I didn’t go into. We just kind of took a picture for Shepherd… And they would let Locke in there, under age? Dude, there’s no rules, man. Okay. In fact the waitress offered him a beer. I mean, he doesn’t look 17, he looks… No. And I was like, “Ah, let’s not do that.” So we did that but then it was all about the hot chicken. Yeah, I’m curious, where did you go? So my experience, the first time I ever had authentic Nashville hot chicken, which a lot of people are like, “You talking about spicy chicken?” Hopefully, if you’ve watched Good Mythical Morning, you know the hot chicken is not spicy chicken. It is his own category, it’s not like the spicy chicken sandwich you get at McDonald’s, okay? This is a very specific recipe and it’s very good and it’s one of my favorite things. The breading is very red. Yeah, it has a lot of spice mixed into the breading and then it’s got like a coating of like dry, but also a little bit wet, you’ve got to just have it. So the best I’ve ever had is Hattie B’s in Nashville but I had even heard that that Hattie B’s was not the originator of hot chicken. We were told, when we went there, that Bolton’s Hot Chicken and Fish was the originator and we went there and it was very, very good. Very down-home. But it turns out that that’s also not true. Bolton’s is not the first person to do it. The first place to do it is Prince’s Hot Chicken. I never even heard of Prince’s Hot Chicken, but I’m telling… I told you about Prince’s Hot Chicken. I thought you told me about Bolton’s. No, no, no, when I took the kids to the wedding in Nashville last year, we went to Prince’s. Did you go to the one in Assembly Hall or did you go to the original location? It was on, I think the original location after the fire, not the original, original, it was in a strip mall. We waited way too long for it. Well, I blocked that out of my mind and I probably about to tell you something that you already know, but just let me tell you. So Assembly Hall is like sort of like a food court on steroids, a mall. Oh, near downtown? Right across the street from the Ryman. Yeah. That’s where you went? There’s a Prince’s there? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s a Hattie B’s there. It’s new, there wasn’t when you went There wasn’t when I went. Okay, all right, so… But I went to the Hattie B’s there, which it must be right in the same place. The Prince’s is upstairs in the food court area, Hattie B’s is down in the outdoor mall. So, you went for Prince’s. Okay, Locke and I got into this discussion and I was like, “Listen, I’m going to tell you right now, I’ve never had better hot chicken than Hattie B’s, but I’ve also never had Prince’s and everyone is saying that princess is the original place.” And then we go online and we’re looking at all these lists of the places that you should have hot chicken and list after list is like, “Go to Prince’s Hot for the original. Everyone is just trying to imitate that, it’s true.” So I was like, “Well, okay, I mean, it’s not going to be a disappointing experience. I mean, it may not be as good as Hattie B’s, side-by-side comparison or whatever.” But the thing that Locke said, he was like, “Dad, but there’s a lot of people in line at Hattie B’s and there’s not a lot of people in line at Prince’s. And I was like, “well, that’s just because it’s like it’s upstairs in this place and Hattie B’s is a better location.” But I was also like, “Okay, you just tell me which one you want to do.” And he was like, “I think we should go to the place that has more people at it.” And I was like, “But what about the original?” I take full responsibility for this because I talked him into going to Prince’s. Dad said, “Do you want to get the best or do you want to get the original?” I said, “Let’s get the best.” He’s like, “We’ve got to get the original.” We got it, it pretty shit. It wasn’t bad. It was bad. It was bad. I can’t believe it, I did the same thing. But you got to rectify it. Yeah, I went to Hattie B’s the next day. Well, I wasn’t able to do that because I had to leave. Let me just tell you right now. Once I got up there and we put our order in, and by the way, we also got T-shirts that said Prince’s Hot Chicken because I’m working a T-shirt and I’ve got a hat at Biscuit Head, we’re getting memorabilia all over the place, this is just what the road trip’s all about. It’s a good idea. So, we order a couple of medium hot chicken sandwiches, so typically medium is like super hot, if you have any experience with hot chicken. The hot it’s like harder than anyone can handle and there’s two levels above that and it’s just kind of like comical to even think about typically. Yeah. So, I noticed that there’s a lot of people in line. There’s a lot of people waiting, not only people in line, but a lot of people waiting. And then at that point is when I go to the specific Yelp reviews, not for Prince’s, but for this Prince’s location, which is like not in the original location, it’s like the mall location, for lack of a better word. Yeah, it’s a tourist trap downtown. And I begin to get a sinking feeling because people are like, “This place is so poorly managed. It’s not going to be representative of hot chicken. It’s just a piece of chicken with some sauce, kind of dollops on it.” And then I’m there saying, these people are, “There’s no way it’s that bad.” There’s no way a place that has this reputation is letting this happen. I mean, it’s not going to be bad, I mean, the worst, it’s just going to be a good fried chicken sandwich. It was the most disappointing culinary experience I’ve ever had in my entire life. Man, I wish you would have gone just downstairs to the Hattie B’s right afterwards. Well, the line at Hattie B’s… Well, remember what I told you because it was so good. I wasn’t sure that you Prince’s. It’s touristy. I mean, everything in that area is for tourists, but Hattie B’s, they’ve optimized the tourist experience with some of the things that they offer. Well, but it’s also, it’s just good. It’s so good. It’s good and it’s consistent. And so lesson learned for me, first of all, I had to apologize profusely to Locke, we ended up getting like some Jennie’s ice cream after. I almost was like, “Let’s just go and get right back in line and just get Hattie B’s.” But that line was probably an hour long and we kind of were tired and wanted to go to bed. But, I can’t speak for the original Prince’s location but if the Prince’s enterprise is allowing any location to be as horrible as the one in Assembly Hall, then I’m never going. I will never go, you lost your opportunity to gain me as a fan. Hattie B’s is amazing, and Bolton’s is really good, but Hattie B’s is the standard. You shouldn’t go to the place that created it, you should go to the place that perfected it, and they have perfected it. At least for tourists, I totally agree. By the way, there’s a hip-hop theme pizza restaurant right across the way from it in that same thoroughfare and I recommend that place too. Well, if I had to spent multiple days. I mean, next time I come through I know what I’m doing. They’ve got cinnamon rolls. We stayed at the Graduate Hotel on Music Row, I don’t know if you know about this place, but it’s basically a country music themed hotel that has some awesome decor and like pictures of Dolly Parton in the lobby. Oh, that’s cool. And your key, cards for getting in and out of your room are like student IDs, I had like Waylon Jennings’ student ID and Johnny Cash’s student ID. It’s like what you have is your key to open your door. Student ID. It is made up, it’s not real. I don’t think they ever had student IDs. Emmylou Harris, a portrait of her was over my bed and I can’t remember who was Locke’s bed, I’ve got pictures, you’re probably seeing them at this point. But that was a fun experience. Also, shout out to the front desk, they’re Mythical Beast at the Graduate, at least those that I interacted with that night. But we got on the next morning. Did you get a chocolate on your pillow, a night chocolate? They don’t do that, it’s not a country music thing. I mean, for you. So next day we’re up and the goal is to get to Chester, Arkansas. Never heard of it. No reason to have heard of it until today. Hopefully, I’m going to give you a reason to hear about it. But we were going to go through Memphis. So we knew we were going to stop in Memphis and again, I’m thinking about two things. I’m thinking about- Ribs and ribs. I’m thinking about stopping at Central Barbecue, which has the best ribs we’ve ever had. If you remember the… I’m crying, man. On Memphis trip where we decided on what the best ribs were and it was clearly Central Barbecue? We wanted to stop there but the downtown location is directly across the street from the Civil Rights Museum, which is at the Lorraine Hotel, which is where MLK was shot and killed. And I’ve never been in there and I was like, “This’ll be a cool thing for father and son to do.” We get to have this incredible meal and then we get essentially some sobering US history in the middle of our trip, but it turns out that the Central Barbecue location was closed at that for some reason, it was closed. And I was like, well, I’ve got my heart set on this so I had to drive 15 minutes to the original Central Barbecue location, which is on Central Avenue, I didn’t know about this. So, now I’ve seen the other one, it’s a lot like the second one. So, you were at the MLK Museum, but since Central Barbecue was closed you didn’t go in the museum. Well, it was lunchtime, we were super hungry. You had get to Central Barbecue. And we wanted to spend a couple of hours at the museum, I wasn’t about to go in there, we were also, we weren’t eating breakfast, we were like getting a coffee when we woke up and it was like, we’re going to, and we eat lunch. I’ve been doing like an intermittent fasting thing and Locke is amenable to pretty much anything so that’s what we decided to do. It was also, you can kind of get on the road and just go. So go to the original Central Barbecue location. I got to say, I love Central Barbecue, but for me, the thing that shines is the ribs and everything else is kinda just like good barbecue, but not great barbecue. I don’t remember if that was your experience, if you remember. We were already so full when we got the spread from Central Barbecue when we went there. We were on a rib mission. So, did the ribs hold true? The ribs are so good. Great, okay. I got ribs, pulled pork and I ordered chicken, I thought I was ordering the smoked chicken, but they gave me the shredded chicken, like the pulled chicken, it is a little dry. And again, I think I said that the rendezvous beans were better, I got beans and they’re not bad, but it’s really, Just get the ribs. If you’re a rib person, get the ribs. But going back to the Civil Rights Museum, which, again… So, you did go back to the Civil Rights Museum? Oh yeah, That’s what I was asking. You seemed like you were just like, I have to make a choice and it’s going to be for ribs. No, no, no, I’m saying that… Okay, so you went back. we wanted to eat at Central Barbecue and then we were going go back to Civil Rights Museum. Oh, I didn’t know you went back. I mean, it’s still in the same town. I’m driving across the country, 15 minutes is not going to be that big a difference. You’re on an expedition. So, we go to the museum and, listen, I mean, you can imagine the sort of intensity of the experience of the Civil Rights Museum, but I can’t really say anything to communicate that. I just got to tell you if you’re in Memphis, you should go to it, right? And I think that the story of the hotel and how after he was killed there on the balcony the story of the thing falling into disrepair and then like local leaders coming together and saying, “We wanna save this hotel.” And then they literally built the museum around it and inside of it, but kept the two rooms right there, the one that he stayed in and the one that, I think they had a meeting in, or the one he was shot in front of, they kept them intact. And then they’ve added some things of like, this is what would have been on the table and here’s like the ashtray with cigarettes that they may have been smoking and stuff, it’s just a really well done museum that has so much information. I actually felt bad because there’s so much information to read and to digest and there’s so many cool things to watch and experience as you go through, but when you’re on a road trip and you’re kind of like, we have to get to Chester, for reasons I’ll get to in a second, so we actually only did like two thirds of the museum. There’s a whole other side, which kind of goes underground and I think it goes up to the place where the shot was fired or gets close to it. I didn’t go in, so I’m not sure, I’m speculating. But definitely recommend that, and it was very, just seeing the spot, hearing the story and then standing up there right next to where he was shot is just like, it’s a sobering experience for anyone. But then on to Chester, Arkansas. So that was what was kind of driving us to get to Nashville then to Memphis, then the Chester to spend the night. So we talked a lot about Lance and Lacey of Beard and Lady, some really good friends of mine and of ours. Bearded lady makes all the the mythical grooming products and also helped us kind of come up with the idea originally for beard oil and lip balm and all that stuff. Well, Lacey is from this area of Arkansas, which is right off of 40 as you’re coming through because most of our trip was on 40. I mean, they’re like literally like 15 minutes from 40. So as soon as I’m mapping through it, I’m like, “Hold on, this goes right through Arkansas.” And then I was like, “This is like right next to where they’ve got this hotel.” So they have bought this historic 100-year-old hotel in Chester, which is a very teeny, tiny town and they had… They built a museum around it? No, it’s not like the museum, they have restored it and it’s called the Beard and Lady Inn, and it has three components. Number one, it’s a hotel with 11 rooms, so it’s kind of like a boutique hotel. I’ll tell you about the rooms in a second, it also has a restaurant that serves local Arkansas wild game and stuff. By the time this goes out and you’re listening to this, it will be, basically they’re opening up the restaurant as we speak. All this information is at beardandladyinn.com, but there’s also a Mark and Tile. So like a store where they sell mythical products, but also a bunch of other stuff from like local vendors. If you’re like a Northwest Arkansas person and you’ve got something cool to sell, like there there’s so much room in this incredible facility they’ve set up that you can… And they’re doing all kinds of stuff there. I mean, I highly recommend it if you’re coming through, because it’s definitely the coolest place that we stayed. Even cooler than Graduate, just because of the history of this place. And also it’s haunted. Is it? Yeah, so it has a reputation, in fact, as they were, they bought this thing a couple years ago and then they slowly restored it and they said that locals would come by and be like, “You seen a ghost yet?” Basically, this place is notorious for being haunted. So, I think it also be a destination for paranormal seeking people. Doesn’t that play into the theme? Yeah, so the theme of the rooms it’s either fear of something or it’s just a general theme about a life experience. But it’s kind of funny in that, I stayed in the fear of commitment room, right? And so Lacey’s family history goes way, way back in that area and her grandparents were incredible collectors or archivers of their family history and pictures and stuff and so they’ve got these pictures in that room that I stayed in. There’s all these pictures of her grandparents and relatives in there, wedding portraits and pictures of them together throughout the years. All this old, like 10 type old school, black and white photography, and everything’s… Basically, it tells a story of commitment. Yeah, so it’s like, “Okay, if you’ve got fear of commitments, let’s see all these people around you that are committed to one another.” Interestingly, one of the rooms, which I think it might be fear of death, you can go on the website and see all the rooms, but her great-grandparents are the only people known on record, at least on record at the time, to request a dual coffin. What? They died within hours of each other and the dual coffin was made for them. And there’s pictures of them in the coffin, all in the room. What? It’s incredible. So is it, okay, first of all, how did they die so closely? Because I guess the first thing I thought was, okay, one of them dies, you bury them then you’ve got to dig them up and throw the other person in there? Yeah, I think it was… They were counting on dying at the same time? I think that the circumstances led to, she died or he, one of them died first, and the other one knew that they were about to die. I can’t remember, the story of the same disease or whatever. Throw us in the same coffin. I think it was like a last minute request like that and they totally did it, it was crazy. Was it a wider coffin? Yeah, it’s shaped like a square. It’s like a square coffin. What? Yeah and there’s pictures of them in it. Dead bodies in it? Yeah, but you don’t have to stay in that room, it’s all about your level of comfort. And there’s one room that is known as, the Haunted Room. First of all, the whole place is potentially haunted, right? But there’s one room that is right above the place where a guy once like froze to death in this little, I think this saloon that was attached to it. Again, all these stories in more detail are on the website, but I didn’t stay in that room, but we walked, they’re just opening and so there was one other couple that was staying there that night and then it was me and Locke and we stayed in enjoining rooms. Lance and Lacey’s history of traveling multiple times to the Middle East over the 20’s and 30’s and they’ve got all these like artifacts and like a camel saddle and all this stuff, that was connected to my room. So the Middle East room, which is not a fear of anything, it’s just a Middle East theme room, and then I was in the fear of commitment room, and then there’s a bathroom attached to that and so we were kind of had enjoining rooms. Okay. But it’s really hard for me to convey how cool and unusual of a space it is and the thing that they’re trying to do because it’s on the railroad and they’re currently basically lobbying to get it added as a stop so you can be in one of the major city centers that’s close by north and south and you can take a train and it will let you off. And they’ve also bought a church, this 100-year-old church in a nearby place that, the whole idea is that people, and I think this is already, they’ve had a couple of wedding parties, because it’s a really cool thing to run the whole hotel and have an event. And they bought this church and the idea is that in the future people will get married at this venue, And then dine in the hotel. and then go to the hotel. And again, if you’re into paranormal stuff, it’s great. If you’re not, there’s plenty of options and plenty of rooms to stay in that are not, but it was one of the coolest stops that we made. And then it kind of took us on a tour of the family land and some other stuff the next morning and we got to see some of Northwest Arkansas, which is a special place, special place. Special place, huh? Hilly? Yeah, actually it’s pretty mountainous. I would call it, it feels like you’re in the North Carolina mountains. And I mean, essentially I think it’s a different mountain range. because it’s like the Ozarks. But it has that feel of like very wooded mountains that you just feel like you get lost and lots of lakes and stuff. Lots of streams and rivers. That’s cool. But I didn’t see… That would be night two. Yeah, I didn’t see anything. No ghosts? I didn’t see any ghosts and I was very open to it. And I was like standing in there at night, sort of staring into the mirror waiting for things to happen. I was embracing it, I was like, if something’s going to happen, I want to be here for it but the ghosts left me alone. Again, beardandladyinn.com. That’s not my rec, but it is a rec, you should go and check it out. Next stop, Oklahoma City. Already in Oklahoma. I mean, you drive for two days and you’re in Oklahoma, basically. See, the country is not that big, Link. Oklahoma City, I don’t think I’ve ever been there. I had been in Oklahoma City, well, you have, because you went through on 40 with me. Well, we went through it, but I don’t think we stopped. We may have just stopped. I think you’ve been as a basketball player, I remember this. Yeah, the AAU National Championship in 1996 was in Oklahoma City and my team went to play in the National Championship. Did you lose? We didn’t win. Okay, you forfeited. What other option is there? No, we placed like 12th in the country. You weren’t personally in the National Championship? It was all the best AAU teams in the nation. You were in the tournament, but not in the… So, almost top 10, we’re pretty good, we’re pretty good. Okay, you’re in the top 10. One thing I remember when you came back was, I think that’s when you told me that you were sleeping in bunk beds and that your roommates, your teammates and roommates would bring back girls to sleep in there or do something precisely in their bunk beds. It wasn’t bunk beds, it was like a split level condominium and so we were all sleeping in like pull-out, there was bedrooms, but there was also a pull-out couches. And me and a guy were sleeping on a pullout bed together upstairs in the loft but then there were two of our other teammates who were downstairs in another bed in the middle of the living room and they were bringing girls into that bed and proceeding to make love to them. And there were lots of open, the first time I’d actually like been in a room with someone else making love. There were four of them in one bed? No, think the one guy would be like, “I’m going to go do something else while you bring your girl in here and make love and then we’ll switch.” I heard two different female sounds in different times. Yeah, but you stayed put. I wasn’t really planning on talking about this, but thanks for bringing it up. That, yes, that is my previous Oklahoma City story. Okay, top that. But of course, what I’m interested in, the first thing I’m interested in is food. I got what I came for. The first thing I’m interested in is food and we actually didn’t quite get there at the right time for a meal but the place that I wanted to eat… At your age, yeah, munch is in food then… Well, there’s two things, the first thing was food and… Sex, talk about sex. Okay, there’s a restaurant that I think is called 39, which is at the First Nations Museum. So there’s this incredible Native American museum that’s going up in Oklahoma. Of course, that was a lot of the Native American territory and reservations and stuff and COVID has like severely dampened the schedule for this thing but you can see it as you’re going by on 40, this incredible structure that’s going up, but it just wasn’t open yet. It’s not open yet, okay. But there’s a restaurant that’s going to be there that it made it seem like it was open. It’s called 39 because there’s like 39 tribes that are local to the state or to the region and there was going to be food from each one of those tribes on the menu and I was like, “This would be super cool.” But it wasn’t clear that it wasn’t open yet I think it opened sometime this year. And the way I figured out some of this is through Atlas Obscura. Not all of this was on roadtrippers.com so I had the roadtrippers.com up, but then I would like pull up Oklahoma City on Atlas Obscura, which is like a weird… A website that shows interesting… Weird stuff. And a weird things to do, weird things to see, weird things that exist that you can’t have access to, but also weird things to eat, like weird restaurants. Huh? You got pay for that? No, that’s all free. Oh, that’s free, I like that. But there was this thing called the Oklahoma City Underground, which they made seem cool. Okay. And this is essentially, okay, I love underground stuff, I’ve established this. I wrote a whole book about it, and I’ve always been obsessed with the underneath cities kind of thing and so I was thinking that this was going to be something like the Parisian Catacombs or something, but it’s Oklahoma City, I should have changed my expectations. Yeah, maybe it’s there’s a subway, and like a… All it is… A hardware store? Is, the downtown Oklahoma City has been connected via pathways that are underneath the ground. Let’s call those tunnels. Tunnels. Let’s call them underground walkways because you get too excited about tunnels. They feel like hallways though. And it was like, oh, it’s home to art galleries and stuff what they mean by that is that there’s a few places where all of a sudden there’ll be pictures on the wall and there’ll be like purple lighting or red lighting or yellow lighting. It’s all lit but then there’s these signs that say, progress energy building, so-and-so government building. It’s just like buildings that I’m not interested in going to and probably wouldn’t have access to connected via underground…. You know what? It reminds me of like the suspended walkways in Minneapolis. It’s the same exact principle. It was like above ground, the sky walks, so that you didn’t have to be out in the weather. Yeah, it’s similar to that and maybe it’s because it’s so hot. But it seemed like a maze and it wasn’t really a cool place because it’s kind of cramped. It’s exactly the same thing and I actually think there are some sky walks that are part of it once you get to some of the buildings that are close together. All I can say is it’s not very cool. Okay. I think we did take a dump in one of the bathrooms there. Skip that one there. It’s super isolated and there was nobody around. You were picturing like catacombs, I’m sorry, man. Well, I wasn’t picturing catacombs, I was picturing that this was something that existed in the past and had been commandeered for these purposes versus something that was built relatively recently as the way that it feels. It feels too sterile and just not cool enough. So we kind of walked probably like half a mile and realized it was all the same and walked back out. And that was it, that was Oklahoma City for us. Oklahoma city proved to be a disappointment. My first trip back when I listened to people have sex was definitely a better trip. So you didn’t top it, but let’s just move on. On to Amarillo. and of course, when you’re going into Amarillo, this is the perfect opportunity to introduce your son to the music of George Strait. Famously known for Amarillo by Morning and I think more, number one country hits than any country artists. That sounds right to me. Were you coming up from San Antonio? No, we were coming from the east of Oklahoma City. Was everything that you got, just what you got on? No, we had a whole truck full of things. You didn’t have a dime but what you had was mine? None of the song applied to us. In fact, we weren’t trying to get there by morning, we were trying to get there to sleep. What a good song though, did you play it? Oh, we played that and then proceeded to play, basically, you just go to Spotify and you just play the most popular stuff from George Strait and you just remember like, “Oh yeah, that one and that one.” And it’s not like my favorite country music of all time, but you immediately understand why he had so many number one hits because first of all, he had great songwriters and he was a great, great deliverer of… ♪ Baby blue ♪ Did you hear that one? Yeah, we went through a bunch of them. Yeah, Christy got me the George Strait CD box set when we were dating and that, I mean, that was special. There’s a lot of romance in there. Yeah, his most popular songs are the love songs. Even the whole string to the ’90s, like Check Yes or No and all that stuff, it gets a little cheesy. When I go back and listen to it now… And the ’80s is my sweet spot. I wasn’t to differentiate as a younging I wasn’t able to differentiate between how good like Amarillo by Morning was compared to Check Yes or No, you know what I mean? I’m sure that Check Yes or No was preferred in the ’90s, but yeah, I liked that old sound and we… The chair, did you play The Chair for him? Oh yeah, yeah. You didn’t tell him ahead of time? The Chair, I had played for him before, but not really as an introduction to George Strait and all his music. It was more just like, “Hey, this is one of the classic country songs.” Was he into it? He loved it, he loved it. And then he would do things like, he would take a picture of us and put it on his Instagram and then Amarillo in Morning would be like, on his story, would be like the music that was playing or whatever. Okay, okay. Locke was having the time of his life being introduced to some, he knows pretty much all the music that I’ve listened to, but I was digging a little bit deeper on this trip. Digging a lot deeper, that’s a Diamond Rio. That’s a different… Well, hang on for Diamond Rio. So one of the things that Locke wanted to do, I was like, “Okay, we’re going to get to Amarillo and we’re gonna spend the night and then there’s something we’re going to see in the morning in Amarillo.” But he was like, “Okay, we’re coming into Texas. This is like Friday Night, Lights dad. We’ve got to go to an ice cream place.” He wanted to do sit down at an ice cream place like they do on a Friday Night Lights. Okay, tasty frees time? Yeah, we go to this burger place and that’s when he’s like, and first of all, I can’t remember the name of the place, but it’s the number one rated restaurant in Amarillo, according to Yelp. And it’s like a hole in the wall burger place that also does rib-eyes and it wasn’t great. It just wasn’t great. I’ve had a lot of really good burgers, and people in on Yelp were like, “This is the best burger I ever had.” Well, I feel sorry for you because there’s much better burgers. But then we saw this place pretty close by called Braum’s. I don’t know if you’ve ever, this is a chain in Texas that Kikos… B-R-A-H-M? B-R-A-U-M’S, and it has like ice cream cone on it. So I was like, “Oh, an ice cream place, it’s open.” We go in there. It’s not just an ice cream place, it is a place that serves like burgers and stuff like that, milkshakes, but it also has ice cream. So it’s got a bunch of places to sit and it is a convenience store. All open together, it’s like a dairy themed convenience store. With like milk and yogurt and stuff. Gas station? Not a gas station, it is a restaurant. I’ve never been in a place like this in my life where you’ve got the restaurant over here and the convenience store over here and it’s all open, there’s no dividers, and there’s like a cashier up there with a menu in the ice cream. Sounds like a truck stop to me. It was unlike anything I’ve ever, it was not any of those things you’re saying. And this is the chain? Yes, very popular chain. And shout out to the staff of the Braum’s and Amarillo, many of whom are Mythical Beasts. Did they give you a chocolate? Well, I ordered my food. I am not looking for the freebies Got to get those perks. Locke wanted a banana split. Again, he was like in this Friday Night Lights, he’s like, he can get a banana.. So he got the banana split. And first of all, I was not hungry at all, but I got like a sundae and ate the whole thing. Of course you did. I came to regret that the next day. But then, at this point, we’re using hotel tonight and like staying at the holiday Inn that’s available. Last minute because I wasn’t exactly sure whether we would make it. That night was not a destination hotel, right? But we wake up in the morning and I don’t know if you remember this, we stopped there before, but right outside of Amarillo is the Cadillac Ranch, which again is basically a farmer who decided that he was gonna just plant Cadillacs. I guess he was trying to grow Cadillac trees. Oh, I’ve not been there, but I’ve seen potoes. You’ve seen potoes? It’s weird that we didn’t stop there because we literally drove past it. It’s like I’ve read the word potoes and I’ve never heard it before. How do you say potoes? So we stopped and got some potoes at the Cadillac Ranch. It was so cold that morning, but literally all it is is like a corn field or the crops were not currently planted and just Cadillacs. And of course… No entry fee? No entry fee and you can paint on them. Oh, you can? There’s a bunch of spray paint bottles and people are constantly tagging them to the point they’re like, the way that the pain is dripping off of them. It’s created a whole new entity of a painted Cadillac. Very cool, great photo up or potoe up. We did that, but the thing we were trying to get to that day was Albuquerque. How did you get to New Mexico? Again, I always have like a food thing in mind and then I’ve got like a sight seeing thing in mind. The food thing that I had in mind was getting some of that New Mexican, like green chili-type food, which we stopped at a place, I can’t remember the name of it, but it was good. We got like the authentic New Mexican cuisine, which is different than just regular Mexican food. There’s an emphasis on the green chili sauce. But of course, Albuquerque is known as the place where Breaking Bad was filmed, which is one of my favorite shows of all time and one of Locke’s favorite shows of all time. We didn’t watch it concurrently because I watched it a long time ago then he watched it on his own like two years ago. So, there are multiple… They still film it there. They filmed, any exterior scene in Breaking Bad is in Albuquerque. The carwash, Walter White’s house, Jesse’s house. Yeah, I remember the house. I guess the house was just like, I didn’t know if it was a cheat, they shot there a lot, I guess. Lots of outside shots, places where they got in fights on the road. So I think they either they shot, they shot a lot of it in Albuquerque. Like a lot of it. Not just exterior locations, there’s lots of things going on there. So, were are you going to do like a driving tour? Yeah, so there’s multiple sites that have put together the different stops and like, okay, this part of town you can see these things, this part of town you can see these things. Of course, the thing that we were most excited about was, Walter and Skyler’s house, the main house. Yeah. Now, I kind of heard that, because none of this is official and this is just somebody’s private residence that the people who live there are not exactly thrilled about this. And in fact, in the thing that I looked up, it said, “The people who live here are not happy about the fact that they own this historic house. And they kind of want you to take your pictures from across the street and get out of there.” So I was like, “Oh, okay, that’s fine. I’ll just take my picture from across the street and get out of there.” Just annoy the neighbors by being in front of their house. Well, I mean, how annoying is it for somebody to stop for a second? If there’s a constant stream, I get it. Well, let me tell you, saying that they’re not pleased with it or they don’t think it is ideal is the understatement of the year, okay? We pull up to the house. The first thing I noticed… It’s in the neighborhood, right? It’s in a neighborhood, it’s just like a suburb. There is a fence that has been erected around the house that completely changes the look of it and changes the view somewhat. Chain like fence? There’s a picture, I can’t remember. It’s not a chain-link kind of thing, but you can kind of see through it, but it doesn’t look the same. And then there’s multiple signs on the fence and on the house that says, this is a private residence, take your pictures from across the street and move on or something like that. So, we park across the street and then we get out. And then I see that there is an older lady who comes out of the front door Of the house? of the house. And she just looks at me, and this woman looks mad and she just stands there looking at me like this. Crosses her arms, sets up, and just makes eye contact with me. And I’m thinking like, okay, and I’m like, I’ve got to say something. I’m like, “Hey, how you doing? You mind if we get a picture?” And she said, “I do mind, this is a private residence. It has always been a private residence. And it will always be a private residence.” What, all these years later, the owner is having a face-to-face interaction with you about it and it’s this heated after all of this time? Her, I don’t know when she bought the house pre or post, but the thing is, listen, at that point I felt so sorry for her and the level of bitterness that is consuming her and her life that I was like, “Okay, no problem.” And instead of like being an asshole, and like taking a picture or talking back to her, which I’m sure a lot of people do, I was just like, “Okay.” And we got back in the car and Locke was like, “Dad, I told you that they didn’t like.” I was like, “You didn’t tell me that it was this serious of a thing.” He was like, “No, no, Micah, My nephew and his cousin. “Micah said, she really hates it.” I was like, “You didn’t tell me that.” Your nephews had visited it? No, they just knew because Locke said that we were going to do it and they like were talking, looked it up online. And I was just like, man, I couldn’t wrap my mind around the like, did this woman buy this house and then let them film there for a fee, never expecting that it would become this huge cultural phenomenon and now she just doesn’t sell the house or did she buy the house after the fact and didn’t fully know how popular it was? I mean, all these years later, I mean, I’m sure every year that passes less and less people visit. But as we were leaving, there was another person coming in. There was? Oh yeah, it is a constant stream of traffic. So I can only imagine how the neighbors feel. I don’t feel great about the fact that we did it, but we were not intrusive. And if she hadn’t said anything, we would just gotten out of the car in the middle of the road, taken a picture and just gone on. An annoyance, yes, so, I don’t really know what the way, if you’re going to be annoyed by it I think you have to sell the house to someone who would think it was cool or like Vince Gilligan should just buy the house from this woman and let people take all the pictures they want, I don’t know, I don’t know what the solution is. Yeah, you’ve ruined this person’s life unintentionally and then they can’t sell it at a price because of what it is that they would need to sell it for, so they just live there. Well, that’s the thing, Locke was like, “Wouldn’t the value go up?” I was like, “No, think about it, whenever the number of people who are interested in a place goes down, more people would be turned off by the idea of buying a landmark that people would come to. So if you lower the amount of people who are demanding of the house, then the price of the house goes down, ironically.” So Lance and Lacey should buy it. and turn it into an Airbnb. To a hotel. So, I don’t know what the history is, but I felt bad about it. Well, the rest of the neighborhood probably won’t let them turn it into an Airbnb, but that’s what should have happened. It should be a freaking, put Lance and Lacey on it. But that was just the beginning of the tour, because the next stop was the carwash, which I can’t remember the name of the carwash in the show, but this is where the carwash that Walt buys to launder the money. And it is still intact and still functioning as a carwash. And it’s just very iconic shape. So, we pull up to the carwash and there’s a giant open parking lot right next to it, which makes it easy to kind of stop and just get a picture. And like the guys watching the cars kind of look at you like, “Yeah, this happens all day every day.” But it’s the place of business. Yeah, it’s not a big deal. They don’t care probably. There’s a group of people who had just taken pictures in front of the carwash who were also on the self-guided tour, they’re getting back into their car and then Locke and I take a picture and like take a little video out there and then we see them get back out of their car and there’s a girl who has this look on her face. I’m like this, “She must be a giant Breaking Bad fan because she’s coming back for a more.” It turns out that she was a huge Mythical Beast, and it was crazy, she… Did you tell her, “Don’t go to Walt’s house.” I did, I said, we just had an interaction with a lady, because they had not been there yet, it was their next stop. I don’t know if they went, but yeah. So I can’t remember your name. You tweeted at me after the fact, and I’m sorry, I can’t remember your name, but you know who you are. We got some pictures out in front of the carwash, and then we continued on to… They should give you a chocolate. Jesse Pinkman’s house, which apparently they’re not too keen on it, but they weren’t there and there’s no signs. And again, as we stopped to take a picture another father and son in another car were stopping as we left. It’s a constant stream because Breaking Bad is such an iconic show, and so many points of reference for it. I mean, we’ve been to the Brady Bunch house and Toluca Lake… Well, in LA there’s houses all over the place that you can go. Like, the Jamie Lee Curtis’ Halloween house, Brady took me there. And they have a little sign that says take your picture, but keep your distance. Yeah. Actually, they had candy on their porch and they were like, “Feel free to take some candy, take a picture, and thank you for being nice about this.” Yeah, to me, it’s like the main difference is like, if you live in New York City and you live in the city, well, there’s all kinds of stuff going on right outside your front door constantly. It’s a different lifestyle than what you would get in suburban Albuquerque. But that would be my way of dealing with it, would be like, “Hey, listen, people are going to be constantly coming to our house and taking pictures, just to make sure they can’t see in the windows and then if they come by, we can greet them” It’s tough, it’s tough man. But, I didn’t sign up for it. I didn’t let him film there and I didn’t buy the house. Okay. So that was Albuquerque. The next stop was supposed to be, we were going to keep going west and then go up north to the Grand Canyon. We were actually going to go to Monument Valley that very famous drive in, I guess it’s Arizona, New Mexico or Arizona, but it’s like, you’ve seen it a million times. One of the most iconic drives in all of America. Then there was a horseshoe. Ben, which is that crazy horse you’ve seen on Instagram 1000 times and then the Grand Canyon. But the winter weather was really rolling in to the tune of, it was going to be a high of like 18° at the Grand Canyon and snowing. And I’m in a expedition, it’s not four wheel drive. Oh, it’s not, okay. So I was like, the idea of getting up there and trying to drive through this snow and also it being so cold, I just said, we’ve got to pull an audible, we’ve got to go south. We’re going to miss the Grand Canyon, this is going to be another time and place. Another time, same place, that we will see the Grand Canyon and all this other stuff. So I was scrambling that night, it was actually the night we stayed in Amarillo, I was trying to figure out like, okay, after we stopped in Albuquerque, where are we going. Phoenix? Well, what I determined was is there were two really cool things that I wanted to see if we were to go south towards Tucson, and yes, and then in the Phoenix. Okay. The first, if you head south of Albuquerque, if you’re heading towards Tucson, you can kind of divert off and kind of go through some crazy wilderness and see something called the Very Large Array. Now, I don’t know if you remember, but when we made the SETI song and we had like stock pictures of these satellites that are just all giant satellites, like pointing towards the sky, that’s the Very Large Array. It’s the largest array of radio telescopes. I think in, definitely North America, maybe the world. I said it’s 22 miles across and Locke thought I meant one satellite that was 22 miles across. So he was a little bit disappointed when I showed up there. It’s just 22 miles across a field, essentially, of these giant, once you get right up next to them, these giant telescopes that are making all these incredible discoveries of… You can drive through them? Well, COVID had closed down the visitor center, which also includes a self-guided tour where you can walk directly up to one without trespassing. We did walk pretty much up to one with a very minor trespassing. Because it’s just as middle of this field, literally there’s cows all around them. I mean, there’s like cattle grazing out there. That drive out there is so incredible, that part of the country is just beautiful and desolate, and, I mean, you drive and drive and drive and drive and you find like, oh, there’s giant satellites on these like basically railroad tracks. It’s how they kind of move them around or like do maintenance on them because there’s railroad tracks again next to it. It’s all operable, they’re still listening for aliens. Okay, so I thought that the whole purpose of the thing was listening for aliens, but no, it’s a government program where, it might be private. The government is involved, NASA is involved, because they’re using radio telescopes to discover black holes and all this information about the galaxy. So they’re constantly scanning the skies, using radio frequencies, essentially that’s how radio telescopes work, mapping and getting pictures of things using radio frequencies. And they’re incredibly sensitive and there’s a bunch of them. But SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial, whatever, that thing that people who are listening for extra terrestrial life out in the cosmos, they’ve partnered with them and so they basically have access to the stream of data that all these satellites are gathering. But it’s pretty crazy. I wish we could have gone in to the gift shop and gotten some souvenirs, but we just got some cool pictures. That was pretty much all we got. But the goal was to get to a place called Globe Arizona, which is in the mountains basically. Arizona has quite a landscape, I don’t know… I’ve never heard of globe. There’s no reason to, it was just a spot that kind of made sense for us to get to, to then be able to go to our next stop the next day. But the problem with this is even though I had, I was so thankful that we had gone south, but going through the mountains, the elevation got up to like five or 6,000 feet and we went through like blizzard conditions. Really? Multiple times at night trying to get to Globe. And I was like, we stopped and eight in this middle of nowhere town and then I’m like looking at the elevation of where we’re at and elevation of where we need to get and it’s down. So I’m like, okay, well it’s not going to be any worse than it is right now. I didn’t know that it was going to require me going up higher and then, so there was like multiple times where I kind of got to snow, just like blinding snow, down the side of a mountain and I’m freaking out, right? And Locke is like , “Dad, just relax.” I’m like, “I don’t want to get stuck.” Are there other cars driving in this? Very few, that kept scaring me too. There’s just very few other people who’ve made a decision to be on the road. And so I’m going pretty slow. It took us a while. We finally get low enough where we start seeing some cactus and we’re outside, it’s all dark, I can kind of see them with my headlights, but we stop and spend the night in Globe again, just like, we’re just going with whatever’s open at that point, just some hotel. You’re just ramblers at this point? It’s all blurring together. But, we were headed for Biosphere 2. I’ve got the T-shirt to proof it. Biosphere 2, I’ve watched a documentary all about Biosphere 2. And we talked about it pretty extensively on GMM a couple of years ago as well. Oh, I didn’t, okay, because I’ve watched this much more recently. It’s been years since we talked about it at GMM. Because it started in the ’70s, maybe earlier. No, it was in the ’90s. It was the ’90s? Well- No. It was maybe the late ’80s, early ’90s. Definitely, they were wearing like eighties clothes. I thought it was ’70s, definitely ’80s. It was definitely ’80s. It wasn’t any earlier than that. I mean, they may have started research earlier than that. But I remember this from when I was a kid. It’s a private-funded biosphere, self-contained human experiment of, well, an experiment of sending these humans into this, a team, it’s kind of like astronauts, but they’re going into his biosphere. And completely self-contained, so… And certifying that nothing’s going to go in or out. Including the air. So this was basically an experiment to see if human life can be sustained in one of these things. And the applications could be on another planet or at the end of the world, that kind of thing. So, the atmosphere was completely self-contained. The water that they used, completely self-contained, they grew their own food, nothing, for two years, nothing could come in or out. Except for the breaches. Then the press jumped all over, which is part of the, the documentary is pretty decent, I watched it on a plane. So, knowing a little bit about the history, I was like, “Who owns it?” “Oh, the university of Arizona owns it now.” I’m like, I wonder if they’ve like completely covered, it says they’re using it actively for research now. So I was just like, is this going to be a place that is embarrassed by the history of Biosphere? Because it was kind of a big embarrassment in a lot of ways, and a failure in a lot of ways. Are they going to be embarrassed by it or are they still like associated with the same people and so they’re like glossing over and trying to make it seem like it was better than it was? No, they fully embrace exactly what happened and they’ve left a lot of it intact, including like this is an apartment where one of the people lived and you can look inside and see this is the kitchen, it’s exactly how it was. So you took a tour inside? Yes, I went in every part of it. Oh, how long does that take? It took us about an hour and a half and we’re moving pretty fast. Okay, that’s pretty cool. But there’s like a rain forest. You could go outside and you could spectate, like you did the Breaking Bad house and like look through the glass. and the scientist’s working and stuff, but of course you couldn’t go inside because there were no breaches. But this was one of the highlights of the trip. That cool, because it’s huge, right? It looks huge, like a Puig greenhouse. Inside is four acres, which if you can imagine a house that’s four acres, that’s a giant house. People don’t… That’s smaller than I thought though. Well, but if you think about most lots, if you have an acre of land in Los Angeles, that’s like 10 times bigger than everybody else’s house. Oh, sure. And then if the whole thing is covered with a house and you do that times four, it’s massive, once you get inside. And it’s all still working and all still functional. They have an indoor ocean, which at the time they had gone and collected coral and stuff and created an active quote coral reef in there. The coral reef has died because at some point Columbia University owned it before University of Arizona and they kind of let the core coral reef die for whatever reason, but it’s still there actively studying some things and they’re actually going to try to make it a coral reef again. There’s just a number of like scientific elements of like the way that the energy was self-contained and then there was this giant, if you see the picture of Biosphere, there’s these giant domes. You can’t go inside those, but those are basically giant diaphragms, they’re called lungs, to allow, when the air pressure increases because of temperature changes, it expands. And like it’s like a bubble that fills up to allow the pressure of the air to not bust the windows out. Because it’s unusual to have something that’s so self-contained, you’ve got to have some way to let the pressure come and go. And I do remember from the documentary that the inhabitants started getting really sick because the oxygen levels were so low and that’s the first thing where they had to get some outside help for the oxygen. The oxygen level ended up going from like 21 to like 14, which makes you a little bit crazy, and it’s also dangerous. Yeah, so it didn’t quite work out, but highly, and this is right outside of Tucson, highly recommended stop, if you find yourself in that area. And to have a cool T-shirt. I would like to do that. Now, the trip is about to come to a close. Yeah, you’re getting close home. This is the 30th and the thought was, okay… Did you have the time to do the retrospective montage? No, you’ve seen quite a bit by this point, but we got to go through Phoenix and the idea was, okay, let’s just stop in Phoenix and then hang out in Phoenix and see what we can get into and then we’ll stay in Phoenix. But that was also when we looked and saw that Phoenix is only five and a half hours from LA. The classic, should we just get home conversation? Well, it wasn’t like we weren’t going to stop at Phoenix, it was like, do we need to stay in Phoenix? Let’s just get home late and just sleep in our own beds. So we kind of determined to do that, but there’s a couple of things about Phoenix. I don’t think I’ve ever been to Phoenix. I’ve been around it, they’ve got a big Belt line. Maybe we stopped there for a tour or something. I don’t remember everywhere we’ve been, but like fifth largest city in America. Did you know that? Could not have told you that. Behind like LA, New York, Chicago, and I guess Boston. You’re talking about square footage? People. People? Yes, and it’s also because it includes like Scottsdale and some other places that you may have heard of as a city, but it’s also really just… Fifth largest? It’s a giant. The thing I noticed about Phoenix is, nothing against any of the other places that I’ve visited, but Phoenix is the first place where I was like, began to recognize like… You’re searching for the diplomatic word to say this. What is it? I’ll just say hipsters. Okay. I wasn’t going to say cool people. But I started to feel that there was a proximity… A hipster contingent here not experienced after Nashville. Nashville has a hipster component but when you go to the downtown area of Nashville, it’s like going to Hollywood, California. It’s like Hollywood, Boulevard. No one’s from there, except maybe… So, you found that in Phoenix? Yeah. Some too good for their own good coffee shops? Yeah, we’re talking in coffee shops, breweries, we ate at this place called, I think it was The Wilderness Brewery and it was like a bunch of hipsters there and it felt very at home. So you might be eyeing Phoenix, huh? Well, the thing is, it was Roosevelt road, which is kind of like their arts district, and it was really cool, and then I was like, oh, Phoenix is like a cool place that we could come on for like a weekend. because it’s the same just driving to San Francisco, it’s not that bad. But then I started looking at the average daily temperature throughout the year and there’s like six or seven months where it’s like a hundred. It’s a hot place, you know? So I don’t know how they deal with that exactly besides just going inside. But it seems like there’s some good times to visit Phoenix. But one of the things that I skipped over in terms of music is somewhere at this part of the trip is when I’m beginning to think, like, I’ve got to introduce Locke to some other stuff. And that was when I was like, “Oh, you know what? I think you’ll like Diamond Rio.” After George Strait, yeah. Because I was like, speaking in ’90s country, I was like, there was these guys that Link and I were really, really into, and they kind of, I’m not going to call them a flash in the pan. They’re still together and they’re still making music, but the ’90s, they peaked pretty hard in the ’90s. They had three really solid albums. I don’t know, I would say four, had some really good hits. And they had a, I don’t know if they were number ones, they probably were because they had some incredible songs, right? Bluegrass infused ’90s country, lots of harmony. The vocal approach is the thing that is so notable about them. And I would say that yes, to the bluegrass niche of it all, but it doesn’t have that, it doesn’t get into bluegrass sort of chord structure and tempo. It’s like kind of country, rocky with this… Infused. This singing, and I could just look on Locke’s face as we were listening to Love a Little Stronger and then One More Day, wait, didn’t have One More Day play at your wedding? ♪ One more day♪ No, that’s talking about if Somebody died, Rhett. It’s, I Know How the River Feels. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But one more day, man… When you meet your soulmate and they’re still living. Okay, well, we’ll play it One More Day at your funeral. One More Day is a great song. So Locke… There’re so many great songs. So from that point in the trip, so this is like the last two days, he just kept wanting to go back to those four or five really amazing Diamond Rio songs. And then he’s like texting me recently and was like, “Dad, we’ve got to go to a Diamond Rio concert.” So he’s all in on Diamond Rio. Yeah, definitely top five country artists. I think I might have to put them in my top five of artists, not just, I mean, definitely groups and definitely, ’90s. Okay, so we’re on day five and we have driven quite a bit, but we’re also kind of saying let’s sleep in our own beds and we just go ahead and we make the trip. Power through. We get back to LA at like 10:30 at night and let me just say that Locke and I are very similar in a lot of ways, which is a recipe for fights, right? And we did not get into, and of course he’s 17. Like when we’re at home in our normal everyday lives where there’s things like, you didn’t take the trash out. There’s these lots of little things that could then turn into an argument, but we got through this trip without any sort of friction. We were having an incredible time together. Listening to music, seeing this stuff, we talked about pretty much everything. Philosophy, everything and where we were listening to one of my favorite books, Siddhartha, which I listened to on my solo trip and it was something that he had been wanting to listen to which is just short audio books, really easy to listen to. So, we were having this incredible time and then like 20 minutes from home is when we got into our first like argument. And it was like, it escalated really quickly, I don’t even remember what it was about, and then I was like, listen, there’s no reason for us to fight right now. Let’s just get home, let’s just get home and just forget about this and we did. First of all, multiple times throughout the trip, he was like, “I’m so glad I did this. I was wrong, I’m glad you talked me into this.” He’s telling everybody about it and how good of a time he had. It is the kind of thing that he’s going to remember forever. And I think is more likely to now lead to us doing another trip together, maybe for a spring break, we don’t know exactly what we’re going to do. But it was a success, a father-son success. Is there a point where you went like, “Okay, well, what’d you learn, son? What are you going to remember forever?” Well, one of the things that I’ve come to grips with is every dad, most dads, I think, have a tendency to dadify things, and to try to find the lesson or the moral in something and like my kids have become… To codify something to feel there is an impulse to like, let’s land this plane and I am doing a good job as a dad. It’s a question that you seek the answer, I think that drives that. Well, the thing that has become very clear to me is that that is for me only, that’s not for Locke. Yeah, right. That exercise is 100% for my own ego. And own sense of security or… Yeah, it could be. And I’m using ego broadly. So, and I actually made the decision, there’s no lecturing, there’s no trying to get him to see something a certain way on this trip. Now, what I found is that he actually is very interested in what I think about things, he’s very interested in my opinion. And when I don’t use every conversation as a jumping off point for some lesson or for giving him some perspective, he just naturally asks me or runs things by me in a way that it’s very clear that what he’s after is what I think about this. Now, I have to be really careful once I start talking about those things to not turn it into a lecture and to make it more a, well, I mean, one way to see that is this, or here’s one thing that I would think about. We really had some really great conversations about a lot of things that we kind of talk about from time to time but in the setting of this, where there’s no place to go, we’ve got to kill time, it lent itself to those kinds of conversations and he was very much all for it. I mean, it was great for our relationship. And now that we’re back in the swing of just regular life, yes, there’s been some arguments again, but I think that there’s a connection that already there, of course, but it was just strengthened and enhanced through this. So, I highly recommended if you have the opportunity to take a trip. With my son. That’s my trip. My rec is one other, is the album that we listened to more than any album that we both just fell in love with. I think I have told you about this guy, but I don’t know how much you’ve listened to him, Brent Cobb. Yeah. He’s got a song that’s really popular, like Keep Them on their Toes or something like that. Yeah. And like any artist, there are some albums or some songs that don’t really resonate, but he’s got an album from a few years back called Shine on a Rainy Day. And this is the one that we just centered in on and I like his most recent album as well, but he’s a south Georgia boy, who’s born very close to where I was born, he’s got a song about, I think called South of Atlanta, which is about going back to his hometown and I think he now lives, he was in Nashville for a while, but now he lives down there in South Georgia. It’s a laid back, this album? Yeah, that’s the thing, is that he’ll go a little bit rock in some places, which is why I don’t like as much, on this album is almost exclusively, just like thoughtful sort of soulful, good country. And again, this isn’t the kind of country you’re going to hear on country radio. This is way better than that. And it’s just so amazing to me that they don’t play this music on the radio, but Brent Cobb, Georgia boy, huge fan. Shine on a Rainy Day just starts off with a song about sitting on a porch and solving the problems of the world and he just goes on from there. So that’s my rec. Great road trip music, but also just great music in general. I’m glad he had him, glad he made it. Yeah, relationship didn’t fall off. Not only intact, but you’ve got some memories that will last his lifetime. Of course, you’re going to pass on at some point and then you’ll live on a little bit of how to live on in his memory. That’s true and in video form, for those of you who watched the video. There’s a lot to see, that Link didn’t even get to see. You’re going to have to watch this. You’ve got to watch this one. Oh yeah, I’ll watch it. All right, we’ll talk to you next week. #EarBiscuits weigh in. To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. To watch the previous episode of Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist to the left. And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your Mythical Best.