Yes? This episode is sponsored by, Auto Trader. See a car in that movie you just watched? Well, you can find it on Auto Trader. Shop millions of new and used cars on Auto Trader. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two life long friends talk about life for a long time. I’m Link. And I’m Rhett this week at the round table of dim lighting. We’re going to tell you about our recent nature excursion. Death defying. Oh yes. We got so close to falling into a boiling. Acidic pool that could have sloughed off our skin. Oh, how close did we get? Really? We could have gotten gored by a bison. That’s right. Yeah. Um, both of these things happen a lot in Yellowstone National Park, which is one stop we made in our annual college buddies trip. Look, I got a new t shirt link. And we’re going to tell you all about that. I like that shirt. I was like, Well, hold on. We didn’t go, we didn’t go souvenir shopping. Right. We didn’t. It’s kind of funny. You came home and bought a Yellowstone National Park shirt like off the internet. No. So you and Greg left early because you had an earlier flight. Had to move Lincoln back into college. Right. And so He’s a big old sophomore now. Greg took you to the airport and that means that Tim and Harm and I Basically went later, but what we did is they all, including, I’m including me in that day, we wanted some souvenirs. We wanted to take some stuff home for the fam, whatever, maybe get a t shirt. And so I don’t want any of that. One of them, um, Googled a gift shop in Bozeman, which is where we flew out. And then as we were driving, as we were following the directions. To the gift shop, we were like, Oh, this is just the airport gift shop. Ha ha ha ha ha. You googled, you googled gift shop. This is where we’re just going to the airport early for the gift shop. Ha ha ha ha. And I was already early because my flight was an hour after theirs. So I was like, I’m gonna have a lot of time in this Bozeman airport. Which, you know, it’s a nice airport, but it’s not a big airport. I should have wore my souvenir. I didn’t I didn’t remember that we were talking about the show and a matter of fact I tried on my souvenir this morning. I looked at myself in the mirror with it on damn. Yeah a cowboy hat I bought a cowboy cowboy hat is the silhouette of the hat. I would say it’s uh, right. It’s more of a It’s a light very light gray It’s fuzzy almost I think it’s called Unfinished felt or something like that? Yeah, the felt wasn’t trimmed so it was kind of fuzzy and it’s, it was a vintage hat that you found. I found and tried it on because it’s caught my eye. I was like, that’s a really, I’m not, I mean, I don’t wear cowboy hats. But if I’m going to wear one, it would be like, well, it needs to be something besides just like a guy who looks like a rancher. And I just put it on top of my head and it just. It’s set up on the top of my head. And then I didn’t even see you try it on. I don’t think, no. Well, then you were over on the, the wall of hats and I was like, well, that’s the best hat right there. I independently saw the hat and I tried it on. It fit your head. I’m sorry. Yeah. I’m a little jealous about the hat that I wanted. And, um, I mean, I don’t know when or how I would ever wear this hat, but, um, I had to wear it home because I couldn’t pack it and I was flying and I flew directly to meet, I didn’t fly to LA, I flew directly to meet Christy and Lando and Lincoln to move them into college. So here I am like wearing my normal outfit plus a cowboy hat. It’s the kind of cowboy hat that goes with a regular outfit though. Oh really? I wore it on the, well, when I, when I was wearing it down the street right after I bought it. Well, you don’t really have regular outfits. I didn’t mean to say that. So, I would just say, whatever you’re wearing at the time, adding a light gray, unfinished felt cowboy hat. Kind of just probably goes with it. Okay. Well, that’s the green light saying that I like that I mean, I was walking down the street having just bought it in downtown Bozeman Of course, I’m looking at my reflection in the store windows and I’m talking to my boys including you on my way What do you think of this hat and I asked harm and he’s like, well you do you look like an unserious man Yeah, right. He was like it I think he said that actually he said that in the store when I was thinking about buying it I was like, do you think I should buy this and he was like, well it it fits you But you look like an unserious man. I don’t think he said but I think he said it confirmed Oh, yeah, I said, well, I am an unserious man. So I wore there were ever any doubt I wore it on the plane I wore it in the airport. I wore it on the campus I wore it into the room to help Lincoln move in with his, um, his three suitemates and all of their families there helping him move in. And the first person who saw me was Lando, who like, looked at it and didn’t say anything. And then Christy is the second person to see it and she’s like, Take that off! You’re gonna, it’s embarrassing. I’m glad that there are other people in your life that don’t have to say the things that I want to say. I didn’t take it off. Bye bye. And then, uh, Lincoln and his, uh, roommate saw it, and Lincoln just looked at it and was like, Oh, that’s good. That’s good because he was, it’s really his opinion that matters in that scenario. He wasn’t embarrassed. You know, he’s, he’s the, uh, No, I’m happy that you found a hat. You know, I’m unhappy that it didn’t fit me. But, you know, I’m glad you, um, you have a fuzzy cowboy hat now. If your head gets smaller, I’ll let you borrow it. Which is a fat chance. Well, if I cut my hair, my hat size goes down by, uh, A quarter to a half inch. And you have a small head. Well the thing is, I thought I had a small head. I mean, look at all these pictures of me, of us growing up, when I had a shaved head and no beard. And everybody’s like, how is his head so small? Well this, I mean. But the circumference of my head. You don’t wear a big hat. When my hair is short, my hat size is seven and a half. And I don’t, I don’t know what, I don’t know if that’s average. I don’t. I think it’s below average. I don’t think it’s below average. I thought I had a small head, but I don’t think. Probably for your body. I think it’s just my body is so big. All right, and we’re going to get. Average. You look that up. Hat size. We’re going to tell you more about our Yellowstone adventures, but. I had something happen to me and Christy and Lando two days ago. Uh, and I got to tell you about this. I got to tell you what happened. I think you’re going to be really surprised at how I interacted with the emergency that I encountered. The average hat size for men is seven and three eights. So seven and a half is larger than average. And then with slightly. Yeah. Hold on. Okay. You said I had a small head. I have a larger than average head, which is, which is. That’s for your, for your size. It’s you ever think you still have a small head? And then with my hair, it’s all, it’s like seven and three quarters. A woman’s average head size is seven and a quarter. Okay. I think my head has grown though. I think as you get older, something happens. Well, your ears get bigger and your nose gets bigger. But I think something happens with your skull. I mean, this is a, this is a tight, this is a hard thing. This isn’t cartilage. This is not like what’s happening with your ears. I think something keeps, I think, I think maybe it’s just, I read so much. Okay. Yep, that’s it. It’s got, I mean, the information’s got to go somewhere, and so it’s like, well, we gotta get, we gotta push out on your skull. That’s why I also get headaches. Well, especially because you, it’s just audiobooks. I mean, when you take it in. It’s one part of my brain. When MP3s go in there, it really swells it. Right. Um, reminder, we’re doing it again this year, Good Mythical Evening. Um, this is the R rated, uh, Unfiltered experience where there’s inebriation, there’s adult concepts, languages. Concepts. And, um, it, we take the formats of Good Mythical Morning and we subvert them into trying to see if you can match my freak. Alright. And listen, it’s a live event. October 25th. And because it’s October 25th, well, you know. That gave us the opportunity to do something that I’m very excited about, which is to make it Halloween themed. Yes, it’s, it’s good. Mythical evening, sexy, scary, stupid, the two of us and all your favorite mythical folk will be different horror characters for the evening. Oh yeah. The key art, if you look at the poster for this thing, um, it’s going to get scary, man. What’s what’s like good mythical evening. com. You got to buy a ticket to see this live streaming event. There’s also a video on demand ticket so you can watch it for X number of days. If you can’t be there for the live event, and if you want to really go all the way and see it in a theater, we are partnering with Alamo draft house. There’s a handful of Alamo draft houses that are going to be showing it on the big screen. So you can go in there, you get exclusive mythical menu items. Yep. And you get to watch it with other mythical beasts, and um, that’s gonna be fun. Watching us embarrass ourselves in front of a jury of your peers, it’ll be fun. You know, it’s, doing it with friends and making friends. Those people who go to the Alamo, they get to make friends with other weird folk. Go early so you can eat all your food and get pre game a little bit. Ear Biscuits is brought to you by BetterHelp. One of our mottos here at Mythical is stay curious. It’s important for us to ask questions and then see what happens. It’s an ethos that has been very rewarding in terms of not only creating content, but keeping our lives fresh. Mythical. com We’re like grown up kids in a lot of ways. Mm hmm, and kids are always learning and growing, but as adults, sometimes we lose that curiosity. What’s something you’d like to learn? Gardening, a new language, or maybe how to finally beat your best friend in bowling? Hmm. Therapy can help you reconnect with your sense of wonder, because your back to school era can come at any age. I feel that. I actually talk about the development of our show Wonderhole a lot, and how Personally, I’ve wanted to make it a playground for creativity within therapy. We are huge advocates for therapy. So if you’re thinking of starting, give BetterHelp a try. It’s entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists at any time for no additional charge. Rediscover your curiosity with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp. com slash ear today to get 10 percent off your first month. That’s better help. H E L P. com slash ear. You know, there’s so many really good streaming television shows that aren’t in English, right? And you can turn on the subtitles or you can learn the language. Oh, okay. Lando is doing. Mm hmm. He is? Yep. Yep. To, to watch his anime. Well, if you would like that. Mm hmm. In comes Rosetta Stone, the most trusted language learning program available on desktop or as an app that truly immerses you in the language you want to learn. 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Redeem your 50 percent off at rosettastone. com slash ear today. Um, I was very happy when Lando asked me this past Sunday, If, uh, if we could go to Amoeba Records, Lando has started getting into buying records, you know, we have a record player there in the living room and like he’s, he’s really started develop his music tastes. He’s more of a R& B guy than, uh, you know, than a hip hop guy. So that it’s, it’s interesting. He likes the, he likes, he likes soul singers, soul singers. I mean, like, but modern day, like Brent Fayez. Victoria Monet, but also getting into some folk stuff. Like we both love Claro. Anyway, um, so I jumped at the chance. So the three of us hop in the car to go to Amoeba in Hollywood, which is, you know, world famous record store. It’s absolutely huge. Like I knew he was going to feel this way when he went in there and he was. Oh, this is his first time. What do I do? What do I do? It’s so big. It’s like the Virgin Mega Store in New York. Remember that one? No, not really. Like a tape store? It’s probably not as big as that one actually. But it’s very big. Um, of course it’s, it’s on Hollywood and Vine, I believe. Or one block off of that maybe? Anyway, um, we had to park in the parking garage behind it. And I was a little confused. So like, there’s two entrances and one says private and one’s public. And I’m like, sitting there trying to figure out which entrance to go into. And I’m pulling a little bit more into the private one, by accident. And as I’m rounding the corner, turning left to like pull in there, Christy kind of looks ahead and she’s like, Uh, uh, something’s happening! That’s what she said. Something’s happening. Oh, and I stopped the car right there I made sure that I was out of traffic, but I didn’t want to pull in further and have somebody I didn’t know what this something was that was happening. Where was she looking? She was looking straight ahead where I was about to drive like it’s kind of a ramp going you couldn’t see it I couldn’t see it because there was a pillar there that I was turning left around to go into the parking deck okay, and there was a little walkway on the left side of it and She’s like somebody’s Something’s happening and then she’s like, um, somebody’s hurt was the second thing she said But there was a beat there and i’ll come back to that what happened in between those two statements She gets out of the car. Somebody’s hurt. So then I put on the flashers and I get out of the car and Flashers good idea. It’s a it’s two women in their early 20s. One of them is laying on, laying on her back and the other one is like supporting her head. And what had happened was she had a seizure and had fallen and hit her head on the concrete and there was a pool of blood underneath her head. By the time I got up to her, she was, I did not see her seizing. Christy saw her. At the, um, at the tail end of her seizure, but she was still out and her, um, her friend was like on the phone on with 911. And then Christy and I were like, Clarifying what the address was so she could relay it to 9 1 1 and she’s like, she’s you know, she’s panicking um And I go up christy goes back to the car To look she goes back towards the car to look to to verify the address to make sure that we were saying We’re at the right place while I go up and like I kneel down beside the the girl and like The injured girl starts to come to and she’s like, what happened? And she like actually starts to smile a little bit. She was like, I don’t feel anything. I’m okay. But, and then she was like, started to get, we’re like, don’t get up. And then where was this blood coming from the back of her head? And I, Then I went back, me and Christy kept trading places, going back to the car, trying to find something to like, put under her head to like, stop the bleeding. And we couldn’t find anything in the car. I think, I thought y’all had all kinds of stuff. You certainly all have, you’re the most prepared family that I know. I know you’re in Christie’s car. I had, we’re in my car and I had a back, I Christie put a survival backpack in the back of my car, but I took it out when I, like, I got my car washed and I never put it back in there. And so I’m like looking for any type of napkins or towels or something. And then I’m, I’m telling Christie, I’m like a bunch of in and out napkins. I think I’m gonna have to take my shirt. I’m gonna take my shirt off and give for my shirt. To put on the back of her head to apply some pressure and And plus, I thought that would feel pretty, seem pretty heroic, you know, to like, cause I, I was of course thinking only about myself and how I seemed. Right, right, right. No, I wasn’t, but like, I’m like, do I need to take my shirt off? And at that point, Chris, you’re like. Maybe I would have used a sock first before I got to this. I wasn’t wearing socks. Ah. See? Can’t use your pants, that’s even worse. Right, you use your shirt before, and so, and then as I’m about to take my shirt off. Christy comes around with like a, um, a canvas Trader Joe’s shopping bag. Perfect. Just put. Just put the whole bag over her head I don’t want to make light of this. I know we’re obviously well, it was scary But the thing the woman’s okay, you will be telling the story when when I went back over there the main thing I was doing because the paramedics were on their way was like Try to make eye contact with her friend who was freaking out and be like it’s okay It’s gonna be okay. Yeah, help is on the way. So I was like, the best thing that I can do is find something to put in her hand under her head, which became a Trader Joe’s bag, um, to like, stop the bleeding. But I was able to tell her, I was like, I’m pretty sure the bleeding has stopped. I mean, there was a, there was a big puddle of blood, like, I’m talking like this big. Oh, my God. Under her head. But it, but she had stopped bleeding. It wasn’t like, Coming running off of her hand behind her head or was she now speaking more? She was speaking more She was able to tell me what her name was and like and I was just like I’m gonna keep a calm demeanor And I’m gonna try to make eye contact and say everything’s okay And I don’t know if if this is the right thing to do But I put a little bit of a smile on my face I don’t, in retrospect, I, I don’t know if I should have done that. Well, show me what you mean. You said the things you were saying? It’s going to be okay. Is it a little demented? Yeah, a little bit. With the smile? Yeah, yeah. I kind of felt when I was doing it, I was like, how, should I, should it be a smile? Should it? I’ll just say, the way I interpreted that was this guy kind of, he’s enjoying it a little bit. But aren’t you surprised that of all the people who would see, who would be misinterpreted as enjoying a pool of blood emergency, it would be me? Like, I was, I was really proud of myself for keeping my cool. It probably wasn’t as what you just did because with all that blood there, you had to be, I would think that your eyes showed a little bit of like, It’s gonna be okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you were smiling at the same time. Who knows how you came across? Well, the thing that I, I didn’t want to be the one cowboy hat on. I didn’t, I didn’t want to be able to put, I thought about it, not at that moment, but before I got in the car, I didn’t want to put my hand in the blood. So I gave her the bag and said, Hey, put this on her head and put your hand back under there. And what was the woman saying? Was she like, Oh, I have, I have seizures. I know my impression was this was a new thing. This was a new thing. It caught her friend totally off guard. There was also, at first I thought. There was a lot of misconceptions. Well, let me skip to the end and then I’ll tell you some of the misconceptions so that we can not have fun with this, but there’s some weirder points. The paramedics came. She was stabilized and they got her out of there. I mean, I think that she was no longer bleeding. She was conscious. There’s no way she didn’t have a concussion. So, I mean, it, it could be pretty serious still, but like she was stabilized. She was taken care of. There was nothing else for us to do as they were taking her off. We talked to her, her friend and we were like, you did great. She’s going to be taken care of. Everything’s okay. Do you need anything else? And then it was kind of like everything, everybody was able to take a breath and she was being cared for and. So then we just had to leave and go into the record store. But I mean, when, so I can’t say it was a happy ending, but it was the best ending that I can provide for this story. So then I can go back and say, when there was a big pool of blood, I was pretty confused when I walked up there. I was like, because there was a. Red pool of blood and then there was a green pool of blood and I was like, what the hell is going on? Is this vomit juice? And it yeah, they had smoothies. Smoothies, yeah. She had spilled her smoothie all over the place, but I was pretty damn confused for a second. But I wasn’t as confused as Christy was when she first Christy thought it might be a bodily fluid. No, when Christy first saw The, the thing going down, and she was like, Something’s happening! The reason why she didn’t say, Somebody’s hurt! She said, I asked her later, she was like, I was like, You said, Something’s happening! And she said, Well, when I first saw that there were two people there, I thought, Two people were having sex. And that’s a, and that’s a, something’s happening. I think she was like, something’s happening, don’t pull in here. I think she also said don’t pull in here. Oh yeah, don’t pull out either. Because, she didn’t, if, if, if people were having sex in the, in the exit to the parking lot, which, I mean, in fairness, this is Hollywood. Oh, I’ve seen sex on the street. It can, it can totally happen. Yeah. She, she didn’t want us to like, slowly have to drive next to it to get our, like parking, you know, parking ticket thing. Yeah. Because you can’t just drive through you. We would have to stop right next to this couple having sex. Um, but it, it, that’s not what it was. It wasn’t sex on second look. It was, uh, it was an emergency. It was one of the more unsexy things that could be happening actually. Yes. Yes. Talk about a turn. And then I go off and I’m like, GREEN! WHAT?! But I was pretty, um, I was glad that I was able to keep my cool and be that close to, um, some panic and a lot of blood. Yeah. I’m not trying to make this story about like, oh, look at, look at me. You want a badge or something? Yeah, I’m not asking for a badge. A patch? I don’t know is this the hero patch from the Cub Scouts that we never completed because we quit after the first day Chrissy told me not to tell this story probably get it on eBay is that is that should I not have told the story we’ll find out we’ll find out whether or not that was a good idea or not I think it’s fine you just you know. I mean, what choice do we have, Link? We have a podcast. Things happen. You gotta talk about it. And when you’re a hero, you really gotta talk about it. So, I mean, I have my own story, now that you’ve told that story, that I’ve remembered, before we get into Yellowstone. Something was happening to you too? Uh, I was dropping Shepard and his friends off, uh, at the public transportation that they use to get around town. And, uh, as I’m pulling in to the place to drop them off, there is a guy who is backing down. Was making another dude back down in a parking lot and he’s like kind of like he’s got his arms backing down Like there’s one guy backing away from another guy who’s coming at him, but it’s kind of slow like the beginning of a fight okay, and Like they’re squaring up, but one guy is backing away and the other guy And I thought at first the look on the guy’s face was I don’t know, just because I happen to be, at least I attempt to be a comedian of sorts for a living, when I saw this guy making this face, I thought they were playing around. Like, the look on his face was like the look on my face if I was acting like I was fighting you. Just a little slap boxing face? It was just like, oh. It was like very cartoonish. Okay. And the guy was backing away, but then he threw a haymaker. What? Caught the guy on the side of the head. The guy who was on the offensive? The guy on the offensive struck the guy on the defensive. Good God, with a roundhouse. Yeah, and uh, and then the guy like, kind of like, you know, it didn’t catch him clean, but he threw a couple more punches. And um, At that point, Shepard was like, Dad, don’t, don’t drop us off here. He basically, well, he still wanted to get on like the train at that part, but he was like, not right here. Yeah. Yeah. And so. But you had already stopped. So you’re like. No, I pulled into this parking lot and we kind of drove by it and it’s like, Oh, there it is. And so then there it is. The guy in the defensive, he crossed the street and then the other guy was still really mad. You He was still fired up making that face. Yeah. And, uh, and then another guy came up and started talking to him and was kind of laughing the things you see in these parts. And, uh, but then we kind of were never a dull moment, other end of the parking lot, and then, you know, they got on, they got on public transportation in Los Angeles. Sounds, it sounds like we’re both heroes, man. That’s right. It sounds like we’re both really combing the streets for things we can straighten out. Yep. I, I averted crisis with that fight, you know, who knows what could happen if I had to drop the kids off at that part of the parking lot. I left the bloody Trader Joe’s bag just where it lay. Ooh, you littered. Well, now you’re nutty. You gotta take that patch back. What am I supposed to do? I mean in the trash. Give it to the paramedics. You can’t leave a bloody bag on the ground. Well, it was on the other side of the, the cement wall and there were paramedics over there and Don’t they clean that stuff? Well, let’s just be honest though. This is not the only Bloody Trader Joe’s bag that’s somewhere on the streets of LA on that day. Exactly. You know, um, well at the opposite end of the urban Right. We found ourselves in Montana. This is the third time that we’ve gotten together with our college buddies from NC State University. Go Wolfpack! Go Pack! Uh, we, uh, you know, we were all really close in college. We reconnected during the pandemic and now three years in a row of getting together for a weekend out of the year to enjoy nature. To risk some life and limb, not too, not too much, just enough to have a story to tell. And we went to Montana first time in Montana for the two of us. They call it big sky. And I gotta say there is a lot of that there. Um, we flew into Bozeman, we stayed just outside of Big Sky, the town, which is right next to Big Sky, the resort, and, um, I gotta be honest, Big Sky, the town, was not really a town, you know, um, it’s, it’s like everything there was kind of built in the last ten years or less. You’re not a new construction kind of guy, huh? Around, like, around the fact that in the winter, this is where everybody comes to ski, and it’s probably a totally different vibe. But in the summer, it was kind of like, okay, this is like a new development. I guess I expected like a mining town, you know, like when we went to Durango, or like, Bozeman is like a historic town. Bozeman’s more like that. But Big Sky, the town, is I don’t think it was anything. It’s and it’s small. I didn’t mean to start off with some complaints, but let’s talk about it. We were so, um, having never been to Yellowstone, we’re trying to figure out the best way to see it and what we determined was e bikes. I love a good e bike. You know, you’re out there in it. I mean, but you’re, you’re not over exerting yourself. Let’s be real, and I’m doing a lot of work. Um, I booked us a tour. It just ended up being us like nobody else with, uh, Big Sky. Let me make sure I get this right. Big Sky e bike tours. Yeah, and it was amazing. Jay, the owner, was our, uh, guide. And, shout out to Jay. He was, he was awesome. Like, I would say, I, I said this afterward, of all the guided tours that I’ve been on of all types, over My life, I think he was the best tour guide i’ve ever had He like took an experience that was really good and he made it really great. Um, We could talk about some and he’s very he’s very knowledgeable of the park And also it was nice because you get to move around on the bike Well the e bike versus the part of it is great from parking lot to parking lot Yeah, you can just go right up and then you park your bike and then you see the thing and he had one of those You Microphones that he’s speaking into and you all have on headphones, which I know is not like a revolutionary thing for a tour, but it’s for an e bike tour. Yeah, it’s actually pretty necessary. So we’d be in this long line. You know, six of us total. He’s in the front. He’s telling stories the whole time. And listen, I asked him now, is this two way? Can you hear us talk back to you? And he was like, no. And I was like, well, I’m glad I was glad I asked because I thought you’ve been ignoring me the whole time because I would be talking to you the whole time. Oh, I thought you asked that late in the day. No early in the day. I knew the um It was, I don’t want to tell all J’s stories, so we’re not, because those are J’s stories to tell. There’s one story in particular that I, that I do want to tell. And I was going to say that we should give a warning that we were going to tell a, a story about A gross story? A gross story, but Link started off without a warning, so you’re probably already gone. So I’m going to tell another one at some point, but not yet. So, I’ve always wanted to go to Yellowstone, because I, I love geological things and there are more according to Jay thermo. Uh, what is the, uh, what is the word? I’m thermal features, geothermal features in Yellowstone than the rest of the world combined. It seems to be that I remember, but I’ll tell you, we showed up, we drive in and it was cold, it was 45 degrees, right. As we’re driving in. And so of course the temperature difference with all these. Geothermal features, and some of them are spring, some of them are pools, some of them are just a little fissure in the ground. There’s just like steam just coming up from everywhere. And of course, there’s geysers. Yeah, the geysers. But not just, oh, there’s Old Faithful. No. As you’re driving in, you just get to these places, and it’s just everywhere across supervolcano. A caldera, I think, is what they call it, right? Okay, yeah. It’s this giant under underwater, underground volcano that doesn’t have. A giant cone. Maybe it did at one point and it like blew up or something, but we saw Old Faithful first. It was nice to have a tour guide because these things are, they, they work on a schedule. That’s why it’s called Old Faithful. But not only that, the other, there’s other geysers that like within a margin of error, you can show up at the right time and see it. So we didn’t have to worry about any of that. But I think once we started going to a few pools and we were, we, when we’d get off the bikes and look at a pool, we, the questions we started to ask. Let him know that we wanted to go morbid. Oh yeah. I think he picked up on that signal very early on because Then he just started letting, letting us have the stories. So all these pools are, first of all, they’re all different, right? So the pH of the water is different depending on the pool. It’s like temperatures. Some of them are, I think we discovered that the boiling point for water at the elevation in this valley was 199 degrees Fahrenheit. And so there are some. That are basically at that and they’re just sitting boiling just you just walk up to this pool and now there’s like a there’s like a walkway you know at some point there wasn’t a walkway but now there’s a walkway with a little like fence or whatever some of them have fences some of them don’t but you can’t walk up to any of them. The only ones you can walk right up to are the ones that have walkways I guess if you like went into the backcountry but technically that’s illegal you’re not supposed to like just walk off because and they’re very you can die they’re very. Serious about you staying on the walkways because if you go off of the walkway, because it is tempting to like, Oh, I’m going to go just over here a little bit and get a picture. You know, I got to get the right selfie. If you post that on the Internet and, um, the FBI. Is scouring these for like the geotags And they will know they’ll see exactly where you are when you’re taking the picture And then they will come after you with a with a court summons and it’s like very legit. It’s very legit He told a story like pierce brosnan. Yeah, he got busted like within the last month James bond himself was Dinged with a fine. I had to come back into town to go to court. And they’re very serious about it. Because they’re very serious about it. And the way that, he told a story about this, uh, girl who, you know, basically, you go to Yellowstone, you take a bunch of selfies, you take video, and if you get too close to one of these things, you get off the path, or you get too close to a bison, or whatever. You might do these are all federal These are all park violations. It’s technically a federal I guess because it’s a national park and so They use the geotags The fbi is literally looking at the geotags of everything posted from yellowstone and seeing if there’s any And so what happened was, is once this woman was, she posted this stuff and they like messaged her or came after her or something. People were yelling at her because she was in a particular place and she was kind of being really obnoxious about it. Right. And people were upset about it. That and upset at her and then she got a little too close for comfort But then like ran back from a geyser or something, but she turned her social media off. Yeah for four months Yeah, it was like, okay, I guess i’m good and as soon as she came back online FBI knocking on the door That’s great. Um, Pierce Brasin needs to be doing some sort of like public service. So once I campaign for them now, you know, once he told us that I, I immediately stopped all my federal violations. Oh, we didn’t, we that I had done, we weren’t, we weren’t currently, no, I’m doing any federal. I wasn’t gonna get close. Let me, but we gotta tell this, we gotta tell this one story. Yeah. This is gnarly. Okay. You’ve heard the warning is gnarly. Well, there’s not pictures. I mean, it’s, I will paint a picture. Okay. Do it. Um, alright, so. The polls are mesmerizing. They look like the most amazing hot tubs that you could ever imagine. Because they are so hot and because they are so acidic. There’s only some, a few things that can grow in there. In fact, there are these, there’s this, you know, microbial life that only lives in these particular hot springs. Because nothing can grow. And basically the, the heat and the bacterial life, they create these amazing colors. So you’ll have concentric rings as you come out. Yep, and they’re so different bacteria different color. So it corresponds to the different temperature of water That they’re that they’re able to thrive in and it look the surface inside these things a lot of them Is this white mineral deposit? That looks like something that if you were building an incredible hot tub in your backyard, you would love a surface like this like a smooth Yeah silica surface of all these deposits and it’s Just white and then there’s some stuff on it, but there was one. There was one lip on the edge and it looked like God had carved a couch into the side of it. Yeah, and if there was an offense, we’d be talking about, Hey, go sit on that couch. Right? Hey, man, go sit on the couch. And the water is so turquoise, amazingly turquoise. And then the way that. The whatever’s coming out of the pools is interacting with whatever’s around them all around Is like this rusty orange color. So you take you know, if you’re a painter and you’re painting Uh, you love like mixing like a turquoise with an orange because they are opposite on the color spectrum and they’re very complementary Like this is happening naturally in these places where this incredible blue eye surrounded by this rusty color and it just looks like a painting. Everything looks like a painting. So if you’re a dog, say a golden retriever, you, you could see how you might impulsively want to take a dip. So there was a guy who was there with his friends. Who had a dog. Okay. The dog jumps into one of the pools and immediately without thinking, this guy sees his friend’s dog go into this pool. He takes his shirt off. He dives head first in after the dog. He immediately comes up and his head emerges from the water. First thing that they see is that his eyes are completely white because they’ve already got these chemical burns that have just burned the surface of his eye. And he says, that was stupid. They proceed. He perceived that somehow he like gets to the edge and they’re able to get him out. This is going to get bad. Okay. They get him out. And as he puts his hands on the ground, the skin of his arms just sloughs off like a glove. It was that acidic and it was already doing that to him. And then you want to talk about what happened to his foot? I don’t remember, I think I stopped listening, I was like, blah blah blah blah blah. Oh, you didn’t see this, they were telling you this story? Oh, you saw this. I thought you saw, oh my god. No Jenna, no Jenna, we weren’t there. This is a, this is a tour guide story. I’m sorry. Hold on, but, hold on. She thought, Jamie thought the same thing. We both thought y’all were there witnessing it. If both of y’all thought that, that means that a lot of people are gonna think that, cause there’s something about the way we set it up. So let me just say, That’s so true. And go back and insert this in. No don’t! The story we’re about to tell is a story that didn’t happen to us, it was told to us. Hey, if that’s what’s gonna keep you listening, we’ll clarify right now. I’m feeling a little faint. Anyway. Definitely painted a picture. His shoe came off, and his foot stayed in it. Ugh, I am feeling nauseous in a way now that I didn’t when he told me that day. Oh my god. And he died. He died. You don’t come back from that. So I think you pretty much die right. Don’t go and don’t jump in. Now there are some pools. That’s that’s some really good last words. There are. That was stupid. There are some pools in the park that are not acidic and are not too hot. And apparently, you know, locals, the locals know where those are at. But you can imagine all the experiment that has experiments that have been done to figure out if, okay, can we get into this one? Who are we going to make go into this one? It’s gnarly. We saw the largest hot spring in North America. Third largest in the world behind two that are in New Zealand, which you have seen at least one of them. Apparently I did, yeah. Apparently. 360 degrees in, uh, diameter? Well, that’s I mean, 360 feet in diameter, I think it’s so longer than a football field. Grand prismatic. This thing was amazingly beautiful. If you’re at eye level with it, the, the light bouncing off of the water, um, Makes the like, steam that’s coming off, uh, it, it, it colorizes it like a rainbow. Yeah. Because that Stop looking into a rainbow. Because of this Like a rainbow that’s just in the, like, the midst of the ground. Like a grand prism. Um, so that was cool and we hiked up, uh, to get some elevation and take a look at that. Now one of the things that he kept, that he was talking about, it was just so fascinating to me, as we were sitting next to the river having lunch. Is we began talking about the balance of nature as it exists in Yellowstone. And this was just wild because we had seen elk as we came in and we had seen bison as we came in. We had learned that bison and buffalo are the same thing. Buffalo is a slang term for bison. And of course, these are the, The animals that roam the great plains of America. There were millions upon millions of them until we showed up and killed almost all of them. Um, but they have made a little bit of a comeback and there are these wild herds that still. Exist and are protected like the herds that are in Yellowstone. And so you’ve seen the TikTok videos. In fact, I think there’s a TikTok account called Tourons. Tourists who are morons. And it’s people getting too close to these things and the bison don’t F around and they will gore you. Take your ass out. Out or give you a new asshole is really what they’ll do. Yep. And um, so anyway, we were a little bit frightened But he begins to tell the story because I was like aren’t didn’t they introduce like reintroduce wolves and are there bears here? And like what’s the deal with this and that and he began to tell us sort of the intricate Story of the different powers that be and the biologists who work for the park, but also the conservationists or the public or the hunters or whatever, and the different people who are vying for this. And then you got like the ranchers and the farmers in that part of the country who, you know, they don’t want the wolves to be around because they’re killing their livestock. But because the. Elk didn’t have any natural predators. All of a sudden the elk population is completely out of control. And of course, hunters come in and like take some of them out, but there’s still too many of them. They reintroduce wolves. They can’t reintroduce the timber wolf, which is what was native to the area because it’s extinct because we killed that sucker. So they put another type of wolf in there. That’s a little bit bigger, has no trouble taking out the elk. And all of a sudden they’re thriving and maybe they’re getting a little too bit too big. You’ve also got the grizzlies. You know, and and then he’s talking to us about the fish we’re sitting there next to the river, right? And he’s like, you know, there’s a few different trout species in this river And the only one that’s native is the cutthroat, but there’s also brown trout and there’s rainbow trout and he says What the biologists do is they come down here and they put like a temporary sort of like net or whatever and they net off a very large area of the river and then they put some chemical in there that knocks all the fish out. They float to the surface, the biologists go around and they take out the invasive species and they put them on the shore and then they put another chemical in there and they wake them back up. This is crazy that people are doing this. I mean, it’s kind of awesome that they’re trying to figure out how to. But once you’ve. Really screwed up the balance of nature. You can see how difficult it is to get it back, but they’re really making noble efforts to do so. But that was fascinating, right? I also think that there’s a balance of nature and like people jumping into hot springs and dying. Maybe that’s called the natural select the Darwin awards. Yeah. We learned all about nature. But while we were there at the river, we were trying to figure out how we were going to get to go to the place that we wanted to get to because they had closed down a road because the bison herd had come in and they were basically splitting this road. And there’s some on the road and there’s some next to the road and this was like the mating season. So you’ve got all these really horny males who are in, in the rut. What, rutting? What are they? The rut? Yeah. They’re horny. You know, they’re kicking up dust, they’re trying to F anything they can, and they’re out of control, and they don’t want the tourists to get too close to them and get in between them and something that they want, and so they shut down this whole road that we needed to get our e bikes down so we could e bike! Yeah! And so, because Jay, Jay’s the hero of the story, Jay, because he knew the park ranger. We were heroes of our own stories earlier, so it’s fine. It’s fine. He basically talked to them and he was like, can we get, you know, we need to get down to this parking lot and can we get an escort for just us and the bikes? And they were nice enough to let us, because it was just one group. It wasn’t like they’re letting everybody in. They, so the park ranger escorted us through this herd of bison on this road. And there’s like, well, we want, you know. To bring your, to notch your story down a little bit, we weren’t on bikes at the time. No, we were in a truck. The bikes were in a trailer, and we were in I kind of wanted to be on the bikes. I wanted to be on the bikes. In the herd, to like, be able to tell the to be a Turan. You know, we told Jay this as we were, cause he was telling us stories the whole time about bears and bison and all the stuff that can happen. And, uh, we was like, well, you know. If something does happen, we have a podcast, we’ll talk about it. So we kind of want something to go sideways, but nothing really did. Um, and look at us still talking about it, but we took the e bikes through and we got kind of close to some, uh, bison at times where it was enough to be like, damn, these things are big. Um, but after like talking about the balance of nature and hearing all about bison, uh, that night we went to a restaurant and bison was on the menu. Oh! Bison’s on the menu, boys! And I was like, I just feel like to complete the circle of life here, I need to eat bison. Uh, okay, yep. And so you did. And, uh, the woman, uh, A lot of places serve bison around there. It seems everybody wants it. She said this bison is not local bison because the local bison would taste like sage grass because that’s what they eat. This is farmed Canadian farmed bison, which I would then go on to find out. Later, using another resource that we’ll tell you about in a second, that I think 96 percent of all bison are just on farms right now. People just farm them for, for food, uh, just like they would cows, but there’s still like a small percentage out there that are still, you know, the buffalo are still roaming out. How did it taste? Uh, it tasted like lean beef and There’s, you know, let’s just be honest here. There’s a reason that cows ended up becoming the thing that people ate besides bison, right? And I don’t really know the history of this, you know, cattle are domesticated bovine. I think that they’re actually from Europe. I don’t think that they are like, Buffalo that were bred to be different. I don’t think but they’re all coming from the same common ancestor at some point is bovine thing, right? Okay, but they don’t taste as good as cows. Well, well, because what? Because cows are basically genetically engineered over many generations to basically be a certain combination of fat and muscle or whatever. And so, however, there’s a lot of people who prefer the taste of wild game because. It hasn’t been engineered in that way, but when you’ve just kind of grown up and that’s what you’ve been eating, I think while game can take a little bit getting used to. In fact, the woman at the restaurant was, uh, she said, and the woman at the second restaurant, the second night where there was also bison on the menu, which I didn’t get the second, she was like, Oh, yeah, because I ordered a medium rare. She said, you should order while game. One step up cook, cook, cook temperature wise, less rare than you usually order. You should, it will be less rare. So you should order it more done. So if you like meat, it will be more rare. So you need to order it less rare. Yeah. You need to order more cooked. So you should order medium. I should have ordered medium instead of medium rare. It’s just too rare for me. And I know you can make. You can make the rec of the book, but since you’re talking about, um, eating Canadian bison, that brings up a, a voicemail we received. Hi, um, I’m from Ottawa, Canada, and I’ve been listening for many years and I just had a question about what do you guys think of Canada? Um, I feel like Canadians know a lot about the United States. Um, I tend to know a lot of cities. But I’ve heard that Americans don’t know that much about Canada and I’m wondering how much you guys know and what you generally think of us. I’m just curious. Thanks so much. Bye. Okay. Well, thanks for the question. Uh, as it turns out, we know a lot about Canada. Um, of course, for starters, we know that Your, your bison is the most edible. We know that the children in Canada are never fed from the breast. Instead, they are fed directly from the maple tree. Right. Uh, if you go to Canada, what you’ll find is that the babies. There’s a little there’s a wrapping that goes around the babies and they’re just placed onto trees and somebody goes up and puts a little right there at the mouth a little siphon and it just basically feeds them maple syrup. That’s how the babies are raised. I know that much. It was the original term. Treehugger was referring to Canadian babies. It’s been co opted. Right. Um, by the environmentalists. I know that. Or people who refer to environmentalists. I know that you all speak French. I also know that everyone is required to play hockey. Right. It’s not, it’s not, there’s not, it’s not really a negotiable thing. In order to get, uh, uh, uh, your GED. Which is, you know, the equivalent of a high school degree. You have to be at least able to ice skate. Yes, um, of course we know that in Canada there are no, there are no delineations. There’s no states or, I don’t, any, you wouldn’t call, Even if you call it something else, you don’t have it. It’s just one big thing called Canada because it’s like, it’s almost like it’s just another us state, but it’s just a big one that’s on top. And there’s not, there’s not many cities, um, I think there’s three cities, but they’re, I think, Vancouver, Toronto, and, uh, Montreal. There’s three cities and the rest is just open plain. Well, and then the, or Forest Ottawa, I think is a, she mentioned Ottawa. So that’s a, that’s not a city. That’s, that’s a region. That’s a region. That’s a region. And it, but it’s not a, but the regions don’t, it’s unusual that that region has a name. ’cause they, most, most of them don’t because I know this because Mm-Hmm. I’ve met a lot of Canadians. Yep. And every time I meet a Canadian and. Um, what they’ll do is that they’ll say they’re from Canada, and that’s all they’ll say. Right, because there’s really no distinction between the person. There’s no, there’s nothing else you can say. Another thing But they do, they, they say that. I am from Canada. Yeah, another thing that was surprising to me is that there’s actually less than 1, 000 people who live there. Right. There, more people The fact that I’ve met five is pretty amazing. More people Went to Harnett Central High School. Then live in Canada. Which is something that a lot of people don’t know. Um. I think one time they did get over a thousand. But it was just when somebody married an American. So they could get Canadian citizenship. And then they both moved back to America. Because they were like, this is too cold. And now there’s less than a thousand again. Uh, and if they eat Italian noodles up there. They call it pasta. Yeah. That’s how they say it. Right. They say pasta. I don’t know why they do that. That’s like, they’re not, they’re a smart people, those, those people. The thousand people but but that people think that they’re stupid because they say past and they also refer to the female Reproductive organs as poutine, right? Yep Which is really the best part about canada poutine it in and taking it out when I When I tell my wife that i’m in the mood for poutine poutine it in she doesn’t have to be a canadian To know exactly what I when I mean, yeah So yeah, we love Canada. You putin the gravy. Let it lay, man. Let it lay. Alright, I mean, I just want to tell you, if you want to know anything, leave us a voicemail. We love answering questions. Earpod One! Now, let’s talk about this wreck, because this is going to be a wreck, but also a discussion. Yeah. Um, again, it goes back to Jay, the best tour guide in the history of e bikes, maybe the best tour guide in the history of tour guiding. Um, I gotta say so. He recommended, as we were asking many questions, and let me just be honest with you at this point, uh, you know, we are, we were five, uh, Middle aged dads, and I’ve noticed something happening to me. I was telling Jesse about this the other day, you know, I’ll be 47 very soon. And, uh, it’s something about passing 45, I think. Uh huh. All of a sudden, I’m just really interested in history. And I’m just finding myself becoming a dad, and I really, and like, and I just want to read books about history. And I’m like, how the hell did I get here? You know? Yeah, I mean, we’ve hated it for so long. Yeah, right. History. I don’t know. God. And you got me into this book, and are you saying this is my gateway drug to history? Well, uh, I’ve always loved natural history. As a subject. Um, and this, this book is a little bit of both. So when they call it earth science and I’m like, Oh, I like that. But when you call it natural history, Jay recommended the book by, uh, Steve Rinella. It’s called American Buffalo. And I was familiar with, with Steve. He’s a local guy. He he’s in Bozeman. Yeah, I think he’s from Montana. And I had, you know, he’s a, he’s like, he’s probably like, I don’t know if he’s one of the most popular outdoorsman, you know, in the, in the world or whatever. So I, you know, seen him on a number of things. And, and, and, yeah. Uh, always enjoyed hearing him talk, tell stories and stuff. So Jay recommended American Buffalo as a great resource. If you’re, if you could tell that these dads were dadding so hard that the more history that they could find out about the buffalo, the better. Yeah. So he was like, you know, Ken Burns actually made a documentary about the American Buffalo, but I personally prefer the American Buffalo. So that was when I was like, Hey, guys, in retrospect, you really can’t compare the two because they’re really not about the same thing. One’s a documentary also. One’s a book. Okay. Um, I’m sure anything Kim Burns does is great, but I haven’t watched it. This is a much smaller time commitment too. You can listen to American Buffalo in less than 10 hours. So I was like, Hey guys, why don’t we, as a way to kind of continue to like have something to talk about as a group, why don’t we all get this book and listen to it? You know, Greg had a big trip back home and he was driving, so he was going to start it. And yeah, I actually finished it. Like three days after we got back, but it’s a great book, but you know, he’s telling the story, the history of the Buffalo, but he’s also kind of weaving in the modern day story of him. Getting a buffalo tag, which is when you, you get a tag, you get, you basically get a permit to hunt a buffalo. And again, this is all like a certain part of Alaska. This is all like the, the way that all this is really ties into the conversation we were having earlier, which is. That, you know, hunters play a really important role and basically humans have come into the situation and effed it up real bad, right? And we’ve changed the balance of nature in a lot of ways. And one of the ways that we now have to, we actually, because we impacted it so much, we have to kind of keep doing some things to actually rectify some of the shit that we’ve wreaked on nature. And one of the ways is actually. You have to call some of these animals in order for them not to just die horrible starving deaths in the, in the, in the wild. So I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but these, you know, basically these people are awarded tags to, and you get hardly any, right? Because we’re not trying, they’re trying to control the population. They’re not trying to eliminate the population like they did back in the day. So it’s really unusual to get a tag. And he tells the story of getting the tag and then going on the hunt, which was crazy. And. Then tells a story of how the buffalo basically became the buffalo and then became what it is today, and it’s it’s a fascinating story Yeah, there’s some archaeology, and I knew you were geeking out to that. Yeah, like finding the bones That’s I I kept I kept saying you know we had that day after we were done tubing down the The Madison River which was an amazing experience. Super relaxing and awesome. Uh, I, I kept saying, Hey, when we go through Bozeman, there is a top notch dinosaur museum here. And I just said that and seen if anybody would perk up. I thought you were going to be all over that and be like, yeah, I want to see some dinosaurs. I would be interested in it, but I think that I think the thing that I actually am interested in is digging up a bone, finding the bones. I don’t want the digging of the bone is a long process. It takes a while. Maybe you want to find an arrowhead. You get the interns to do that. I want to find it and maybe like step in for a couple of like, okay, a couple of photo ops. Okay, I’ll join you for that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. She called me for the photo op. But yeah, I’ve enjoyed the book. The thing that I’ve really liked about it is his ultra specific and relatable descriptions of things that. Are foreign to me like I’ve never hunted. I’m not. I’m not really into that. I mean, I can appreciate the thrill of the hunt with the way that he describes it, but I can understand it because he’ll say things like it rattled the sound of the so and so rattled like a box with one tic tac. Oh, I know exactly what that sounds like. He has a knack for. Using these these sort of analogous descriptions, but I really get a kick out relatable terms yeah, and it’s you know, it’s it it makes me want to start journaling my life and describing it in in very in super descriptive ways like that That’s my biggest takeaway. I had one tic tac left in my fanny pack And this is what it sounded like well, you see it’s not gonna be he didn’t actually have a tic tac at all He’s talking about something else. That was what was so cool about it. You could be like I think maybe you could journal about the things that you experienced around Los Angeles. My wife said, something’s happening. She thought these women were fornicating. But it turns out, one of them had had a seizure. We grabbed a Trader Joe’s bag. I hope she’s fine. There was green blood and red blood as we approached the body. Yeah, see, people would read that. And he was on a raft in a river with a guy named Rafferty, but he never acknowledged that. That bothered me a little bit. Oh, he wanted you to make that discovery for yourself. Yeah, it’s like leaving a little bit to the reader. I like that. So if, if you don’t think you’d be into what we described, You won’t be. You won’t be. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So don’t, but if you think you would be, then you will be. So you should listen to me. But I agree that you don’t have to be like an active, you know. Some people, just the idea of hunting is like, this is, it’s a non starter. I don’t want to have a conversation about it. I don’t want to hear anybody talk about it. I get that. Right. I respect that. Um, But you don’t necessarily have, and I’m closer to that and I, I’m a little bit on that side of this. I mean, I hunted growing up. I haven’t done it in my adult life, but this book was, uh, uh, but I, I’m, I’m not done. It’s engaging. Yeah. It’s just like, there’s something about the journey, right? This very, it’s a very specific journey with one very specific goal. Mm-Hmm. that is super relatable in the way that he tells a story. But again, history, I don’t know. I’m in this history phase, man. I read that. chamber divers thing. I’ve done the American Buffalo and then I just started this Lost City of the Monkey God book or whatever, which is about some city in Honduras and the jungle that all these people have tried to find. And I guess it’s a little bit history and a little bit like modern day, you know, Uh huh. I’m kind of in that phase right now. I think this is all gonna culminate in us having to go on some grand adventure, I’m just telling you. I think you can only I like the sound of that. You can only read about this stuff so much before you’re like, Well, shit, we gotta go find something. So, I don’t know, prepare yourself, man. Oh, I’m ready. I’m ready. Okay. You might have to bring two fanny packs, though. I Kind of stuff that I have to. I’m ready. Oh, okay. I’m telling you, I’m One for each side of the fanny. Okay. Yeah, I’m ready, man. And for my new asshole that the bison gave me. Right, yeah. Alright, we’ll talk to you next week. And in the meantime, don’t forget about us. Hi Rhett, Link, and Jenna. My name is Mandy. I live in Seattle. Big fan. That’s my cat Theo, if you can hear him. Um, I just wanted to let you guys know that we, uh, in social services, at least me, um, in the area here, I’ve been using Vote Like a Beast. To register a lot of my residents to register to vote and it’s been a really helpful tool. So thank you guys so much for creating it. Love you so much.