Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike. And I'm Nate. What are we smoking today, Nate? Well, we have a first on our podcast. We have some sponsor sticks. It's like a sponsorship, but instead of money, you get cigars. So our friends, Kayla and Gary went down to New Orleans or New Orleans. I think I was saying that right with the appropriate regional dialect and brought us back some Romeo and Julietta 1875s. Yes, I'm excited. We have Mike made us some fancy drinks.
Yes, we are together at my studio today. So together at long last. Yes. And we have two guests, one cat and one dog. So we'll see how that goes. Nothing like putting them together. What are we drinking? We are drinking a drink known as a stone fence, which I'm sure everybody knows what it is. Oh, and we did mention it on one of our previous episodes, what it was. Those who don't know, it's a hard cider, bitters and whiskey. And it is tasty. It is. Oh, very good. I like this cigar.
Yeah, this one's good so far. We say as we're two and a half puffs in. Well, sometimes when you start they're sour, they get better or whatever. They're like the cult and they're bad from puff one to puff seven when you put it down. This is horrible. I made it halfway through, I think. No, I think we both kind of made it halfway through. So it's one of those. I think that next time we have Al on, I'm going to have him smoke it. We won't.
We'll just be like, this is the only episode we're not smoking. We just want you to. Well, it's like we should do a segment where it's Al smokes because he can't taste, he can't tell the difference between a Moon Trance and a Romeo and Juliet. I had him try a Series R and then I think I had him try MX2. And it's like he couldn't tell the difference between any of those three. They're pretty different cigars. Slightly, slightly. We haven't done the MX2 on the show yet, but we are going to.
We will, yeah. We haven't, but we will, we shall. It's in the works. We've got all of our sticks planned out for the next five seasons. I feel I got a big old bag bursting at the seams from Mike. So yep, I have a, well that humidor right there is only sticks for the show and it's cannot get any more in. So I've got that same humidor. Yep. And I think I'll be using the other humidor for the show sticks. I've got two about that size and then one larger.
Yep. And then I can move all the stuff out of the large one and keep that a show one. Yep. We both have the same setup kind of, cause I have one large one and then two smaller ones. Yeah. And now I'm starting to get enough to where, or low enough to where I can buy cigars again. Cause there for like a year it was like. The buy ban is now lifted. Yeah. The buy ban is lifted. Yep. Yep. Cause yeah, I have way too many cigars. At least I did.
Yep. Nothing like deciding to do a cigar podcast and smoke through them. Well, that was part of the problem too, is that I had your sticks and my sticks there for a while. It's like, oh geez. Yep. And yeah, and I brought some, a few sticks up for Mike. So we've got some good ones that we're both looking forward to. Yes. I was pretty stoked. Nate made a presentation out of the handing over. Yes. We did get some limited edition ones. Let's say that one time a year thing.
And I ran down and fought the mobs and acquired these through mostly legal means. If they're as good as they look, I will have to call them and see if I can order a box for next year. Have them set one aside. Yeah. Well, they're, they're, they come in two varieties. So we'll have to see which variety we like best. And then that's the box that we'll have to. Yep. That'll be the first cigar I've ever had with a natural wrapper, but even though it's just that band, I've never had a natural.
Yeah. A green cigar. Yep. Not that I'm opposed to it. I just, you don't see them often. Yeah, I know. I guess I wasn't sure how they got that green, but it's just not. It's the aging, the way they age them. So yeah, I did know, and we might talk about this a little bit later, but we have a guest slated for the future and I don't know how in depth I should go. I don't want to talk for them, but they'll be on the show and we're doing kind of a little bit of a, what is it called?
A gathering, like trying to find a good time to have them on the show. They've already picked the cigar. We have all the cigars we need to be able to smoke. They're in a different state, same time zone, but different states. So they're going to be remote. And the thing is they're a Hasidic Jew and so they can't record on, what is it? Saturdays. Saturdays from sun up to sun down. And we normally record on Sundays, but Passover, is it Passover? Is happening or Lent or something.
And so they can't have anything that's leaven, meaning bread and yeast. And it goes so far as to like glue that holds cigar wrappers together and things. And so they actually do, I was talking to him and they actually do make kosher cigars that you can smoke during this time period that don't have the modern additives of whatever the process is. I don't know enough about it and maybe he'll talk about it, but- That would be, we're talking about that. We have to talk about that.
I've never heard of such a thing and that sounds awesome dude. So just a little teaser for an episode coming up that we haven't yet recorded. Now I want to do it now. I know, but you can't because it's Saturday. Saturday when we're recording today. Yeah, we talked about that before. I was trying to get him down with the sickness for tomorrow, which is Sunday, which is our normal recording night. And Mike, of all things, has to go bowling tomorrow.
So we'll just have to wait until after the religious holiday is over and then we'll get him on first thing and we'll have some fun talking, but he really enjoys the cigars. So good. Good, good. Yeah. Well, that stick that we picked out, that's a nice stick. Yeah, the stick he picked out. Yeah, that's a nice one. I had to go to a couple of different cigar shops to find it because it's such a popular stick.
The place I normally go was sold out of them and they said, we might get some more in, but- We might or we might not. And that means they'll get more in, but the people that like those sticks will go get them before I ever know that they have them in. Well, at that particular store, I'm sure has regular customers that are there more than one day a week. Oh yeah. One is a cigar lounge.
So people will go there and buy things and then you can only smoke what you buy there, but I'm sure they go and sit there because they've got the ventilation. You can sit in there and smoke and smoke and smoke. We had a lounge. Well, we had a cigar shop that was a lounge in Minot when I was living there and then they changed the smoking law when I was living there and the city was going to close down the lounge. So it was called Tom's Garage and it's closed now.
That's where I got the big humidor and I got a shit ton of cigars and that's where I got that Gurka. Where is it? That big Gurka? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. They gave me that for free because I bought so much stuff. But anyway- He's talking about a Gurka ashtray. Yeah, a Gurka ashtray. Remember, isn't it a presidential one? Yes. Okay. So for those of you who are into the collectible ashtrays. Yes, it is a presidential collectible ashtray from, I think, Trumpster.
Okay. It's a nice, it's a good looking thing. Yeah. But while they did... We have a separate story. So we'll stick on Tom's Garage, but yeah. So they turned it into the lounge part into a private club that you had to spend money and it wasn't that expensive. Yeah. And he had refrigerators and TVs and it was like a lounge. Yeah. So we would go there and we'd bring our own beers. Okay. He couldn't sell, but you could have. And then yeah, you'd go there and smoke cigars and it was a lot of fun.
Me and my buddies would go there and chill. Okay, yeah. Yep. One of my friends at the time had the passkey to the outside of the door. Oh, nice. We could go there anytime. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the thing is smoking in Minnesota. If you don't want to stand out in the bitter cold for half of the year, you need to have some kind of interior space that you can smoke in. And Mike's got the nice studio here on his patio porch. It's a four season porch. Four season porch.
Yeah. And I finally got one built in the garage and there's a few tweaks I'm still going to do, but it's been working great. It's tough to smoke year round here. It is. Yeah. If you're not going to dedicate space or resources to do so. Yeah. And like I say, I think I'm going to put a fan there because I sit there usually for the show. Yeah. And that way I only get as much smoke into the house when I'm done because I don't let it air out.
Yeah. And I think we're going to maybe do some switches on our mics, our microphones, but I kind of want to save our technical setup because I want to go through that. Just right. But I feel like that would be a good topic for our shrew showdown because that'll be, we're going to smoke. I think we decided three shrews or three half shrews, so. Yeah. And do the comparisons. I could get a different, a fourth one. And Nate and I talked about it and you guys might as well hear it.
There's one company in the States that makes almost all the shrews and they're just different sizes. So I'm pretty sure they're all the same leaf. I could try. Not the one that I have because I bought that Italian pack. Yours is an Italian one. And then the Bandito is different. That's totally different than the Kentucky, but the Kentucky shrew is made by a company that makes almost all of them. And I could get a backwoods. I suppose we could get a backwoods, try that.
Yeah. I mean, we're just trying to think like, and this could be something where maybe we stick to three because that's, and then we'll do another three batch and maybe then we'll do another three batch. And when we have the winners of each of those three, we can do like the finals or something or the showdown of our favorite. But I feel like that episode will be short enough to where we can talk about kind of our technical setup and the different stuff that we use.
But to your thing with the fan right there, I would almost put the fan over on one of these side windows and have it pull from there. See, I was thinking I'm gonna have to face this way because I was thinking of having the lower fan out and then I can blow the smoke down and have that push it out and then have the other fan come up. I was thinking just for a noise, strictly for noise. But if we get the different mics, it won't make a difference.
That have the two to four pickup range, two to four inches pickup range. Yep. Then it won't matter as much. I mean, you'll still hear a little bit. And by and large, Mike's audio on this, now we're getting into it, but Mike's audio doesn't have a whole lot of background noise because he doesn't have any fans running, but he's got enough windows he can open to clear the smoke out. Whereas my background noise is bathroom fan.
And it's a quiet fan for bathroom fans, but it still picks up on the mic that I'm using. And that's why I'm looking at a different pickup pattern on the mic. Yeah. And they can still hear vehicle traffic sometimes. Yeah. I usually am able to cut that stuff out. Yeah, and Mike's audio, like the car going by now, we can hear that sometimes on the mic and stuff.
So if anyone's interested in the technical side and you want to start your own podcast or your own cigar podcast and compete with us or- Yeah, yeah. Be competitive with us. Collaborate with us, hopefully. We're going to go through all the tech stuff and all the different stuff that we've tried and things that we've been learning because it could be as easy as just hitting record on your iPhone.
But Mike and I are a little bit more perfectionists than that, or I want a little more control over what's happening. I'm not, Nate is. Let's be clear. That's true. That's true. Nate uses this as an exercise in flexing his muscles.
Well, it's making me better doing the digital stuff that I have done and would like to do in the future because I've got the background in filmmaking and I'm not actively working in any film projects, but the audio side has always been one of my weaker points of filmmaking and audio is huge with filmmaking. People will watch a movie shot like shit, look at Cloverfield. It's shot expertly, but it's all pretend to be been on a camcorder, right?
So the quality is supposed to emulate camcorder quality, but the audio does not replicate what audio you would get from a camcorder. That's professional audio. People will turn off on professional sounding audio no matter how great the movie looks. They'll shut that movie off quicker than if it's a shit shot movie with great audio. So you really need clean audio. I get that because I listen to a lot of audio books and LibriVox has free recordings.
There is a huge difference in some people's setups when they do the reading and it's bad. When it's bad, it's like you can't even continue. No. I did one audio book and it was like, I don't know, four hours of silence. And then at the end it went, oh, out loud. Just the occasional page turn noise. And here is the Odyssey or something. Oh, out loud. Instructions unclear. How do I proceed? That's awesome. Oh my God. Awful. That's awful.
So if you haven't guessed yet, dear listener, this is what we colloquially look to call ... This is what us in the industry call a vamp episode. We don't have necessarily a specific topic. I know that since we last recorded, some indictments came down and I don't know if Mike wanted to talk about those. Yeah, we can talk about that. I honestly, I haven't looked into it at all. Yeah. I think it's the first ever ex-president to be charged with anything or indicted.
And I looked into the issue because Stormy Daniels is going to bring them down and not in that way again, I guess. But whatever. And what it is is that's a nice ash, Mike. It is a nice ash. He's dangling it. And it's one of those things where the cup is over the edge a little too far and you know it's going to cause an issue. And we did get, I won't say chastised, but we did get told that we should not make a mess in here.
And we've had other episodes where we've made messes in here with some really nice ash, but it went all over the floor and so the ashtray as will happen from time to time. And so it goes. And so it goes. But what happened was apparently or allegedly, I don't know if there's an indictment, do I still have to say allegedly? Let's just say allegedly to be safe. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a tax professional and neither is Mike.
So this is just two people talking who vaguely understand some of the concepts that are happening. But allegedly Trump's lawyer at the time, who I think has since been fired and went to jail, himself paid $130,000 to keep Stormy Daniels quiet. He paid her hush money. And what happened was Trump allegedly reimbursed his lawyer from campaign funds, which is a no-no and at least one of the charges being brought is a felony charge. Yes, of embezzlement from a political campaign.
So if he did, in fact, misappropriate funds from his political campaign, that would be, first of all, really stupid because he could have just used dark money from a pack. He could have just used his alone from his daddy. Right. Yeah. He should be worth $5 billion. Right. So a hundred and let's just say between a hundred and $200,000 is not a lot of money. Not to them. Not to the ruling class. Yeah, not to him.
So the fact that he embezzled it from his own campaign is double stupid because one, he has the money on hand. He should have that on hand. Yeah, he could just pull that out of his pocket. He could have used dark money from a pack and nobody would have ever been the wiser. Yeah. So it's double stupid and we know for a fact he's got packs. Yeah. And we know for a fact that he probably did it, you know, because he likes to brag about all the things he does and how he can get away with everything.
His lawyer went to jail for doing it. Yeah. So there's enough evidence to put him in jail. It's a matter of how, what level of involvement did Donald Trump have directly in the action? And typically those characters are layers of involvement separated to where you can, it's called plausible deniability. Yeah. For those who know, everybody who is listening should be an adult and knows about plausible deniability. But hopefully, hopefully also don't talk to cops. They're not your friends.
Your lawyer is your friend mostly. But yeah, I can't imagine that he doesn't have plausible deniability. I don't know. I think it's one of those circumstances where he's pissed off enough people now, you know, and this doesn't matter if you like him or don't like him. Like if you like him, I'm not trying to trigger you. I'm just saying he's pissed off enough people. And the people that like Trump say, well, that's what he's supposed to do.
And people that hate Trump is that's because he's an asshat. Whatever your take on it is, he's pissed off enough people because let's face it, he thinks he's the big bull in the China shop. And he is in many ways to be honest or he is in many ways. But he's pissed off enough people and we all know you can only piss off so many people for somebody needs to get paid or somebody needs to go down or somebody needs to be put in their place.
And of all of the things they could get him for paying a porn star off seems like such a little tiny thing in the grand scheme of his career, let's say. Well, that's the thing about Trump is that he doesn't really break any laws. He uses the law and manipulates the law. As they all do. As they all do. It's just that he has been a public figure since my, well, my entire life. He's been a public figure. And he's honest and open about what he's doing. He's not, yeah.
That doesn't mean he's a great person. That doesn't mean he has good moral character. But he's to that point where he feels he's untouchable and whatever your thoughts on the election or the big lie or whatever, your thoughts are he's vocal about what he thinks to his detriment because a lot of other people in power, let's just say, go the other way and they don't talk a whole lot unless it's from a script. And I don't think Trump likes scripts a whole lot.
He likes to go and pretend like he's telling it as it is. But that's the best way if you're a public figure, if you're a celebrity to get yourself in trouble. Well, he's the pussy grabber in chief for a reason, you know. Well, and some of the posts I saw online were, we're going to prove to Trump he can't grab any pussy. And somebody was like, that's not why they're indicting him. And the response was, well, the arc of justice is long or something.
But I don't think they're ever going to indict him for saying that kind of stuff. And they're probably never going to indict him for the January 6th thing. Maybe they took all those oath breakers or oath brothers, whatever they're called. Oath keepers. Oath keepers, sorry. Not sorry, not sorry. But they took most of them to prison. Some of them, I mean, there's a significant amount of evidence that January 6th was assisted by the FBI. Yeah. Well, we've talked about that before on the show.
It doesn't really matter. I think that this is a huge mistake by the prosecution. It's only going to bolster Trump's supporters. It'll bolster them. But as we've talked about on the show, too, I think Trump has caused a divide in the Republican Party because a lot of the Republicans this last midterm election were faced with the choice of do I support Trump or do I distance myself from Trump? And we kind of saw, and I don't know the stats, but we saw almost a 50% divide, right?
You know, like some kind of distance themselves and some took it upon themselves to try and bring Trump closer to the vest. And all of that is, is just political bolstering for these lesser politicians, we'll say. I don't mean lesser in the sense that they're worse politicians, but they're not ex-president politicians, right? So they're trying to buddy up to who they think will next be in power. And that's how politics works.
And if you don't know that, then you'll learn eventually, I guess, or always be consistently angry. But some of these politicians, they're doing their own calculations on will Trump be my ticket to further my career or will he sink my career? And we've seen people come down on both sides, even within the Republican Party. Well, the Republican Party nationally, nationally is a minority party. They haven't won a majority of the voters in decades.
And Trump, depending on how it plays out, Trump is a spoiler because people like my dad, who's been a lifetime Republican, will not vote for Trump or any politician that's like Trump. So the last Republican that ran in Minnesota was Scott Jensen, I think his name was. I can't remember. And we were talking about it. And he said that he would never vote for him because he was a hardcore right-wing Christian nationalist. And my dad's not a Christian.
And I suppose you'd call him a nationalist, but he doesn't care for that Trumpy style Christian nationalist conspiracy theory type of stuff. Well, I think the distinction to be made is you can love your country, but not be a right-wing nationalist or a fascist or whatever it is, whatever you want to call these people. You can love your country and not be a flag waiver. Right. Well, my dad doesn't have a flag pole and he was in the military for 30 years. Let's put it that way.
Yeah. But I mean, if he's convicted of a felony, he can't run for president again. Yeah, he can. Can he? Yes. Felons can run for president, but they can't vote. Yes. Felons can serve in elective office. People who are currently in a trial can run for elected office. There's a guy, I can't remember his name. But what you're saying is even if he's convicted of a felony. He could be president and be in prison, as far as I'm aware.
Because there was a senator or a congressman from Baltimore, I want to say, is one of the East Coast city areas. He was indicted on felony charges and he won his election during his trial. And they dropped the charges just because he was serving in Congress. But he would have been, he was guilty. He was, I mean, well, the evidence I saw, which was the news narrative. And that shouldn't be a thing either. If you're guilty, they should vacate the election. Yeah. You know what I mean?
Like they shouldn't let you off because you're now serving the government. Indicting Trump makes no sense. They'll never get a conviction. How are you going to have a jury convict a former president of any crime? You're going to have at least one of those people who are going to be sympathetic. Yeah. I think that this is one of those things. And we talked about this during the Mike Lovzacoka episode. But like fan service, right?
Like most of the country now, I mean, think about it, probably most of the country, because Trump has driven a wedge in the GOP. Most of the country does not like Trump. The majority. Right? Yeah. Yeah. The majority does not like Trump. And I know there's still staunch Trump supporters out there and they're going to say, well, that's because this and that doesn't matter. The fact of the matter is no Democrat likes Trump.
And now Trump has splintered the Republican party to where some of them don't like him either. If you just go straight odds where 50% of the country is Democrat leaning and 50% is Republican leaning, which is complete bullshit. But let's just say for sake of argument, that's true. His odds of ever winning another election are very, very slim. His odds of being indicted are probably also very, very slim.
But the fact of the matter is most of the people in the country or majority of the people in the country want to see some sort of justice over the shit show that is Trump. And he's no more of a shit show than Biden or than Clinton or than Bush or than any of these politicians, JFK, you know, the poster child of, you know. People need to keep in mind, and this is just my personal opinion, but I think it's the opinion of a lot of people.
I would say this is the majority opinion that Donald Trump is the worst presidential candidate we've ever had minus one. And that was Hillary Clinton and Joe and Joe Biden is possibly the second worst presidential candidate we've ever had, maybe even worse than Hillary Clinton. But he won, you know what I mean? So he's like the second worst or whatever. Yeah, I mean, so we're not, we're just not fans of politicians in general. Not the ones we have right now, that's for sure.
But I feel like this is more of a whoever's doing this, serving up the indictment. They're like, people want something. We don't want, we don't want the people to burn the entire system down. So we need to show them the system is trying. Does anyone really care? I mean, does anyone really care if Trump gets charged or not or gets convicted or not? Yeah, some people do. Some people really care and they are beside themselves right now and they can't stand to think of him not being convicted.
Whereas it doesn't affect my life if he is or isn't. No, there's some big Trump haters out there and I don't understand it. And it's fine. You know, he's not a warm, bubbly personality. He's not a friendly fellow. I'm not inviting him to friendsgiving. No, you know, but does it really matter? No. What's the biggest thing at stake here? The American belief in heavy air quotes, the system, which is our politicians are good and when they're bad, we take them and make them pay their due diligence.
Well, he's not going to pay his due diligence even if he's convicted. You know, there's going to be all sorts of other loopholes or he's going to contest it. It'll get overturned. It's going to drag out until it gets overturned. Everybody else forgets about it and he's going to retire on his golf course. Quick break. Yes. I am at least halfway through. I like it. It's very good. No flavor change, but I like it. And I think, oh, go on. I was going to say, but it's a very good flavor.
It's medium to light. I would say it's a lighter side. Very good. It's very good. I like it because a few puffs I took of it reminded me of when you, when you go. And so we have, we don't really have a spice cabinet because our kitchen is very small. So we have a spice Tupperware thing that we slide out of a space that was meant for like a basting pan or something back in the sixties when the house was built. I don't know.
And you know that kind of like, it's like an earthy, like spicy, but not, not like spicy, spicy, but like just spice, uh, more like a parsley spice than like a pepper spice. You know what I mean? Just a, just a nice, like it's almost got grandma's cooking or something. Umami flavors. You know, like it's a, it's a really, it's a very complex flavor. If you can, if you appreciate it, that umami like a soy sauce like that. Yeah. Yep. And it's just, uh, just enough of that.
I mean, it doesn't take it. So don't get me wrong. I'm not saying I feel like I'm inhaling oregano, but it just, some of the puffs and the, and the, the smoke in my nose reminded me of a, like a well stocked spice kitchen or something where you have kind of those different flavors and scents mixing together. And uh, I really enjoy it. There is a pepper undertone. There is a little bit of a pepper undertone. It's very, it's complex herbal. Yeah it is herbal. Herbal or whatever.
Herb. What are you doing in my herbs? Herbs. Yeah, that's very good. No, I like this one. This one's really good. So extra thank you to Kayla and Gary. Yeah. Thank you very much. We're always open to sponsor sticks. Yep. Absolutely. Sponsorships. I know Kayla, but I don't know Gary. So there we go. Well, we'll have to, because Gary loves a lot of the same things you do, uh, fishing and hunting. I'm sure that we have similar interests.
Yes. Um, but anyway, uh, to this back to the Trump talk, never forget the gross. Oh yeah. See the gross on the. Yeah, I see it. Yeah. We used to go grouse hunting all the time and I don't know how many of you have, I mean grouse are kind of, uh, nationwide. No different forms. Rough grouse are. Rough grouse. Rough grouse are like. There's also like wooded areas. Yeah. But there's other grouse down south. There he goes. I love when they, I love when they drum. Yeah. Oh, they drum.
Yeah. I'm not sure how many coveys we have this year. We had two coveys last year. Okay. I'm hoping that we have more. I do think, cause we have a covey there and I know we have a covey up there. I think we have another one there and those guys are set up over here. Right. We might have four this year, but I don't shoot them, uh, because I want to have the grouse around because they eat the ticks and the grouse hunting is so fun though.
Um, it's crazy because pheasant pheasant you've gone pheasant hunting. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm not, I'm not trying to assume. I know. I assume you're manliness. I know you're, I go, I go pheasant hunting every year. Pheasants is like shooting down bombers almost. And grouse hunting is like trying to shoot down a fighter jet, uh, especially in the woods. Cause you have to, you be like, we've usually hunted them in the woods.
Yeah. It's like thick woods and there's trees and you have to try and like shoot them through there. Like it's a challenge. It's, it's quite entertaining. I would say, I would say fighter jets would be more like teal or, uh, or dogs maybe. Yeah. Woodcock. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love, I love dove hunting. Okay. I'm not a dove hunting. Uh, you know how fast like a Woodcock or a teal flies? One point two, one point two five. They're fast. Okay. They're really fast.
So now you're going to say never forget. Oh yeah. With the trumps, with the, with the, yeah, with the Trump talk, the main never forget the Oliver North defense, which Trump, no matter what, if they can victim, he's going to have a retrial and then he will use the Oliver North defense, which is this is too public of a trial. I'm too much of a public figure. We cannot get an unbiased jury. Therefore the conviction needs to be thrown out because the public knows too much and it can't be fair.
But you know what? He's probably, he's not wrong. He's not wrong. He's not right. I mean, it's baloney, but that shouldn't make you untouchable. It does make you untouchable. If you're a public figure, why don't we put them down to what? Isn't the Dominican Republic a US territory or Papua New Guinea or something like we have other Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico. Let's try them in Puerto Rico. Midway. Yeah. Like let's try them.
One of our things that we deny statehood to, but we'll let them try them down there. Right. Yep. I'm not sure if midway is even popular anymore. I don't know. I don't know enough about that area. Years ago, that region before, right after I broke out as a journeyman, before I moved back to Minnesota, I was traveling. And to be clear, that's journeyman not broke out as journey. The band. I did not.
I was looking at working internationally and they were decommissioning a few military bases on the Midway Island systems because the rising ocean waters were flooding the underwater parts of the military bases. So they were decommissioning them, taking all the equipment apart, shipping it across to different locations and reassembling it for the research stations. And I almost applied to that. I was like, ah, that'd be pretty interesting. You had to do like a three year commitment.
Okay. And it was good money, but it wasn't more. It was less than what I was making at the time. Yeah, sure. But it was still good. And you didn't have to pay taxes on it because you were out of country for three years guaranteed. Yeah. So it was tax free, you know, whatever it was. I think I know the number. It doesn't really matter. Yeah. But it was less than what I was making. I was like, mm, yeah, it was less, but it was more because there was no tax.
So do you want to talk about the party we crashed earlier today? We can or that's up to you. It's a mildly amusing anecdote. Mike won something else. Oh yeah. I won a gift. Yeah. Well, he won a bottle chugging contest. A bottle chugging contest. So yeah, I won a gift. A bottle chugging contest so he can work the nip. I guess I can work the nip. But I, because my wife is pregnant and had her baby shower and Mike, Sarah and my Sarah were together. The universe did not explode yet.
And Mike and I were together and the universe has not exploded yet. Yes. But we got voluntold. Well, I got voluntold, but my condition was I wasn't going to do any kind of baby shower game unless Mike also did it because you know, it's something good to talk about on the podcast if we both do it. Right. Otherwise it's just one of us making fun of me. Right. Which I'm not all about. If we're going to make fun of me, we both need to be making fun of me. Yes. But he won. I did win.
He won by a landslide. By a landslide. They put orange juice in these baby bottles. And it was pulp orange juice. It was very pulpy and I was sucking the pulp through the knot. You had to suck it hard to get it through the nozzle. Oh yeah. I'm not sure if you noticed, but my Sarah was wearing a scarf that was to cover up evidence. Evidence of a nipple suck. Yeah. Session. Session.
I didn't want to say anything because you never know for sure with people over 25 if it's a passion mark, as they say, or if it's some other thing. Yeah. And it's kind of the same as you don't ever go up to a woman and be like, hey, congratulations on being pregnant. Yeah. Unless they have previously told you that they're pregnant. Those are just things you don't really do. And I played it cool. Yes. Yeah. That was an accident. Yes. I find myself... We don't need to talk about this, actually.
There we go. That's perfectly fine. Let's carry on. We're editing for you in the future. Yes. Future me thanks present me. Yes. Oh, I love doing that. Our guests have been pretty good. Yeah. Yeah, they have. Yeah. By the way, when I was out there messing with the dog, they were a different group of- Grouse. Grouse. Kind of doing their little dance out in the driveway. So that's good. Yeah. It's neat seeing wildlife. Heck yeah.
Like I say, we hunted them one year and then we didn't have grouse here for so freaking long. Yeah. And it's like, no, I'm not doing that again. Yeah. If we had a cornfield still, that'd be different. It'd be different. Yeah. Yeah. That draws everything in. We had a cornfield at the time. Deer and pheasant and grouse. Yeah. And everything is... And pheasant and grouse, I think grouse especially so, is very dependent on the fox population.
Yeah. So if the fox population is up, generally the grouse population is down. And then when the grouse population comes back, the fox population pops back. There's an established fox den over on that point. Okay. If you look through the woods, there's that point. There's a den on that point. Okay. Because that's where our gut pile is. Oh yeah. All of our carcasses go there. Yeah. And so they have made a den there because they get food.
Yeah. If they sit there and chill all winter, there's usually enough for them to chill and you can eat and not have to work too hard for the winter. Yeah. That's what we're all about. Yeah. Although this winter has been the opposite of that with all the snow we have been getting. It's all fine. Summer is on the horizon. Oh yeah. We got turkeys here too. They nest all here. Oh my God. So many of them. Yeah. Down in the cities the most that we see, we see a lot of hawks and peregrine falcons.
Yeah. They do have peregrine falcons. And they sit on the street lamps on the highways. Yep. And wait for roadkill basically. And then we get swans and geese and ducks and we get herons in the parks and stuff that have ponds or water features. And so those are kind of cool. And then one year, this is before we moved down there, I went with my family and we saw, I believe it was in Ygritte at one of the mini golf places down in Edina of all things. And I think that's something that's cool.
And I don't know, I mean Minneapolis is probably better than average with green space versus other major metropolitan cities. Yeah. If you look at the happiness indexes, Minneapolis is actually pretty nice. But I've seen other foreign big cities that have way more green space than even Minneapolis. And I'm an architecture minor and I would really enjoy to see more creative green space.
Sure. I was just reading an article this past week about how they were converting all of these big roadways to be shared spaces or dropping from six lanes to four lanes and putting two lanes as bike paths or walking paths or gardens or trees. They had one where they converted two parking spaces into a bike space, like a bike parking space and they counted up, they could fit two cars there previously because it was a two car stall. And you fit, I don't know, 21 to 30 bikes in the same space.
And so in a big city, not in the North where we have snow, like that's a big deal because then you can have, instead of having 31 cars having to park elsewhere or other places, because that would only hold two cars, you'd have potentially 31 people utilize the same space that two cars take. So you're maximizing the bike ability. Yep. And I love riding my bike anywhere I can. When I lived in Minneapolis, I had a bike and take the train everywhere. And it was awesome.
When I was working down there for two week periods of time, I didn't even drive my vehicle. I would just drive to go North and then come back. And I didn't drive any other time. It was a really, I enjoyed it actually. I really enjoy when a city can make alternative transportation other than automobiles.
Yes. And there was a point in American, I'm sure other cultures too, but my son and I have been watching the documentary series, America's National Parks, or National Parks, America's Best Idea, because America pioneered the national park idea just worldwide. And it starts out with the first national park and the national monument and all this other stuff. And they were trying to increase visitors to the park because that's how they got money to then take care of this land.
Well, automobiles became a thing and they started putting highways and roadways through these national parks or near these parks. And there's a big debate. Do we put the roads through the park? Do we put them near the park? And at the time they wanted more visitors. Well, once automobiles caught on, that led to other issues with the national parks.
But that also kind of, I feel, and I don't know, I could be wrong, but I feel like that embracement of the national park system of automobiles was part of a larger kind of mentality shift with city planning and Americanism and roadways. And do we design our cities to prioritize automobiles versus pedestrians versus bicycles? And I feel like it's part of a bigger thing. And I'm not a civil engineering history expert by any stretch of the means.
But I know that in that documentary series, they were talking about how the national parks were faced with that conundrum. Do we keep these as seen as possible, meaning not as many people can enjoy them? Or do we prioritize the automobile so that everybody can come here? And they did park stickers. Every park you got to, they had a park passport.
You get a sticker, you get a stamp, and people would then try and collect all the stamps, which is great for the national parks because that's one person visiting all the national parks. They still do that. And they still do that. But I think that they've kind of pulled back a little bit from being like, yeah, you can drive your cars right up to Old Faithful or right up to the edge of the Grand Canyon.
Or so they've had to also kind of like dial that back a little bit with more and more advances in automobiles. Yes. But it's still pretty accessible. Even the state parks are really accessible as far as... And I think they mostly should be. Most of the... Well, most state parks in the state of Minnesota have a mixture of trail systems. So there's going to be a trail that is going to be wheelchair accessible all the way to
like... Sarah and I went to Crosby Manitou and the hiking trail we went on, you had to go through a bog and a rock slide to go... I mean, it's like, this is a planned trail that's marked on our map. And you had to walk through a bog that was unmarked and a fucking rock slide that wasn't re... I mean, it's been there forever. And people got lost. We got lost way back into this gully. Okay. Yeah. It was... I enjoyed it.
Yeah. I know a lot of the parks do kind of what they do with ski hills and they kind of rank the trails on beginner, intermediate or advanced. And I think that's nice and that's great because Yosemite, you can drive and you can see from the car, you can see El Capitan and Half Dome. But if you want to hike up to the top, that's an advanced hike. You can get there without climbing gear, but it's an advanced hike. One of our buddies went and said that they had to wait at the cable.
This is a cable for like a handhold to get up to the very tippy top. And they had to wait if people were coming down or going up or whatever. It was like a single file type of thing. And some people were freaking out because it's so high up and rocky terrain and all that stuff. So you don't need to be a climber. You don't have to have the harness and the helmet, but it's still a little more intense than let's say the average, you know, I like reality TV person or something like that.
Yeah. So it's nice because you can still see the stuff from your car or from an easily accessible place. But if you want to experience it kind of as it was originally, then it's a little more extreme. Yeah. And there's I like that. I like that. I mean, why shouldn't it be accessible to everybody? Yeah. Accessibility is key in my opinion. That's I'm not a historian of civil engineering either, but natural architecture was for a long time in the States wasn't used.
Yeah. And so a lot of the designs became very industrial and very anti-human friendly. And now we're trending more towards wildlife friendly too. Yeah. We're really anti wildlife friendly. So now we're heading into a phase where it's more we have this highway and we have snow drifting mixed use. We could put up a snow fence or we could plant some trees and we could just plant tree rows and the problem solved.
Yep. One other countries have like amphibian tunnels under their highways every so often so that the frogs or the turtles can go under the road instead of salamanders crossing the road. Yep. And I saw a salamander crash when I was working in Dakota because the waters rise, you know, and then they get up and they do their breeding and the salamanders across the road. The guy's work truck, he drove over so many salamanders he lost control skidded and flipped on the side of the highway. Okay, jeez.
Yep. So what are you going to do? I mean, yeah, there's only one way to go and there's salamanders on the road. There's not a lot you can do about it. Unfortunately. Yeah. I figured I wouldn't tell him about the salamanders. That was like that whole year. There was so many of them that I just went around all for probably three weeks on service calls and it was just pulling salamander bodies and stuff out of electrical systems because they crawl up in there and short them out.
You have to clean it all out. It was disgusting. Fried salamander jerky. Yep. Yep. And that was like rattlesnake country too. So you have to like be very conscientious of that. Yeah. But always interesting with that stuff. But yeah, and by the way, the national parks are set up the same way to where they have, you can do as hard as you want to go. Or as easy.
Yeah. Which is nice because if you do a lot of it, you want the challenge and if you don't, but you want more than the parking lot or the visitor center view. Right. And you can keep easing really beautiful paths you can take. Yeah. I mean, if you want to go for a day hike, sometimes you want to be out there for 10 hours and sometimes you really only want to be gone for three and you don't want to be tired by the time you're back.
Yeah. Or you want to take an hour trail, but you want to take three hours doing it because you just want to be outside. Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Sometimes you want to, there's like prairie dog villages you can walk through and all kinds of cool stuff. At a theater Roosevelt national, they have the original entrance and buildings that are out there, but you have to go through a prairie dog village. Oh, sure. So it's kind of really cool.
Yeah. We went to one and I don't know if it was a, it's a state park and it's down by kind of new home area. I can't remember the name of it right now, but it's in the city of New home. No, it's outside up the river. Oh, the river. But it's a old military fort from the native American days. Yep. And they have original structures out there, but you sit where these structures are and you can just see. I mean, you can just see and it's a big equestrian park now. Yep. There.
Yep. And they have the original foundations to the buildings. Yeah, the foundations. Everybody who lived there. Yeah. When they tell you how many people live there and I can't remember the name of it right now. No, I mean, I would look it up really quick if you wanted to. I would know if somebody told me, but that's a really neat place. And then, you know, you're only 20 minutes from new home where they got the big brewery there and they have a state park in new home. Oh, okay.
Yeah. Yeah. There's a park right there. Okay. Yeah. This one was outside, but it was, you know, it's like, you can go there and they've got enough trails and the horse trails and everything. So you can walk or do whatever you can drive right up to the foundations and do that big loop and see all the foundations. And then if you want, you can walk down by the river and it's a little more strenuous. That's how they term them. Like how strenuous is this trail? Yep. Absolutely.
Yep. We did a day hike there two summers ago and it was really interesting. And part of that loop that we did, that little settlement area was part of it. And then we went past, did you go to the, the burned down little farmstead they had there? I don't think we went to the farmstead. Okay. They had a farmstead there and the original inhabitants were killed there in the Sioux War. Oh, okay. Yeah. Very cool.
So our loop went through like, we always do the, the park pass loops, which basically depending on where everything's located, the difficulty varies, but it hits all the like prime spots of the park. So you kind of see everything in like a, you know, however long it takes you to do the loop. Yep. No matter how many miles it is. And yeah, it was a very, that was a cool park. Yeah. It's a neat park. We brought our kite and so we were fine. Our kite, sure.
That with all the foundations and stuff, cause you're on the top of the hill. Yep. Yep. And we just, we, our real reason was we had a tour scheduled at the Shell's brewery. Yes. We just wanted to get out and explore a bit before our tour started. And so we found that park and Fort Ridgely. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That makes sense. Here it comes. It just popped into my brain. Yeah. Yeah. And we went there and you know, it was just fun.
You know, we brought a lunch and our kite and we just kind of like putzed around and read the plaques and saw the stuff and went on a little hike down, down by the river. Saw a couple of horses, horse riders go by and then I went and did a brewery tour. So it was pretty cool. They had a little field there with different prairie plants and did you end up going to the, is that the only one you went to in that area?
Okay. Yeah. Yeah. It was just kind of like a little day trip, you know, and you know, we were capping it off with the brewery tour. So our tour wasn't for a bit and we're like, well, let's just go down early. There's a park there or, you know, that Fort Ridgely had high reviews. So let's check it out. We had the park sticker and everything. And they have a bison, there's a park down there that has a bison herd. Oh, okay. So they do a drive through with the bison herd.
And then they have a trail that goes around the edge. Yeah. And you can see it and they have like a, I don't think it's functional anymore, but an old mill. Okay. Yeah. We did one of our, we used to do family trips when I was in high school and stuff and we had a full-size conversion van and we would load that thing up and we'd kind of like Griswold it a bit. But we went across the Dakotas and we had 70 mile per hour wind.
And so we stopped the car and we got out and there's, you know, all the prairie dog holes and everything. And we ran out and we like would jump in the air and it would blow us back. And that was really neat and fun. And then the other cool thing was there's a wild bison herd and they were right outside the windows of the van and we're like slowly driving through at like three miles an hour or something. But to see them all that close and how big they are. They're huge.
Yeah. You know, like just amazing. Yeah. We camped there at, I think you were at, were you at Theodore Roosevelt? I can't remember where we were. Okay. Yeah. Driving.
We were, we, while we stayed at the North and the South unit, we did a winter, a winter expedition and there was a single bull bison that was spending his days and nights at the campground next to the port of John or the bathrooms and Sarah had to go over and it was like, the bison was like from here to, you know, I don't know, probably my bedroom from the thing. And he'd get up and look at you every time he had to go to the bathroom.
Yeah. I mean, so I know Como, Como Zoo has some bison, but seeing them in that setting is not the same as seeing them right outside your vehicle window. No, they're big. And throughout all of our, all of our, we hit a lot of the national parks. We did a Northwest loop and we did a Southwest loop.
Cool. Two different years, you know, but, and we've, we saw the big horn sheep and everything and you know, all that stuff, but everywhere you go, there's these really dumb tourists who want to get as close to the wildlife as possible, which one ruins your picture of this wildlife that you want to take. And two is not respectful to the wildlife.
And three is incredibly dangerous because even a bison or a, a, a ram or a sheep, like they're not carnivorous, but they're still wild animals and dangerous and will defend themselves if they have to, you know. Sarah and I have a great story. She tells it better than me because she was on the side where the bison was. We were driving the loop. There's a big loop. I think it's the North or South unit.
It might have been South unit, but there's a big loop and you can do the loop and then there's trails off of it and you can do whatever. But there was a bison that was hanging on in the road and we drove past it and he started walking. So we kind of slowed down, have a picture, you know, but we're in a truck. We're trying to keep our distance. Yeah. So I keep on driving and he swapped. He didn't hit my truck. Yeah. He kind of like little buck, buck close buddy, too, too close for comfort.
I wasn't trying to harass him, but no, but that's one of those things where him or her, you know, I'm assuming it was him. He was alone. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those things where when nature and humanity are kind of, I'll say forced, even though, you know, somebody like put the road there. So the bison didn't have a say in where the road went. Right. But when they're in close quarters with one another, interesting things can happen. So you probably shouldn't try and approach them.
No, yeah, no, definitely not. Definitely not. And I, I enjoyed that part of the world. I lived in Watford city for a long time and I really enjoyed screwing around out there. You can, they have the national grasslands and you can bring your vehicles out there. Okay. And there's like little path paths that are like prairie trail-y, but you can climb up on the buttes and then there's like little outlooks and stuff. Yeah. And the only way you're getting up there is on a truck.
Yeah. And you have to have a four wheel drive truck for sure. Yeah. It's pretty cool. You can bring guns out there and shoot, do whatever you want. Yeah. We used to show up through clay pigeons over the, over the big valleys. Oh, sure. So it's like 800 foot drop, but you're shooting, you know, it's very cool. Very, very cool. I picked up a lot of garbage. People are not very respectful. No, we always try and pick up, pick up trash and stuff.
Every place we stop, if I see garbage, I'm picking it up. I literally just bring garbage bags and throw it in there. And then, cause I'm bringing garbage myself, so I have to throw away something. Yeah. But yeah, I don't get the people that, you know, are dicks to the wildlife and then dicks to the environment, you know, cause these parks, I mean, it's one of those things where the parks are a place where you, you, an individual person can make a difference.
Yes. You pack out your trash, you pick up other people's trash. You can actually make a difference. Not like recycling or using, not using like single use plastics. That makes a little bit of a difference or like pollution, but you have these big corporations that are responsible for over 70% of all pollution. And so the individual, yeah, you can slow it a tiny fraction of a percentage point, perhaps, but by and large, that's not like you have to curb the corporations.
But in the national parks and out in wildlife, you pick up stuff, you pick up trash and you leave it better than you found it. Yep. And that, that will go a long, long way. Well, it's just like my ditch here. That's a day of my life that I'll never get back every fucking year picking up people's garbage. And it's like beer cans and cups and you know what, like, why are you throwing out your window, your Wendy's cup?
Yeah. Why are you throwing your whatever, whatever your little paper, plastic-y, everything, it's paper with plastic coating. So it's not disintegrating in the ditch. No. You know, it'll disintegrate eventually, but it's obnoxious. I find a lot of beer cans. Yeah. So many fucking beer cans. It's like, really guys? Yeah. Well, you're dry. You don't have to be drinking while you're driving. Even if you are drinking while you're driving, throw it in your own throat. You have a little plastic bag.
Yeah. Throw it in the plastic bag. And when you get home, well, I feel like part of that is evidence. If they were to get pulled over, it is evidence. You're making terrible decisions. But you know what? If you're drinking and driving, the beer can is not what's going to get you in trouble. No, it's the case of beer and your... It's your AAC. Yeah. Okay? Like, technically it's illegal to transport an open container. If you rinse a beer can, it's no longer an open container.
It was an empty beer bottle of beer can. And I had somebody that was, let's say, high up in the government in a certain area say that if you want to bring this beer bottle home, you just rinse it in the sink and then it's legal. Sure. Wine you can bring. I know that. And I think it depends on the cork on a whiskey bottle. You can transport a whiskey bottle. Because if you get a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, I don't know what kind of cop would be... If you didn't have a BAC, I don't think...
Yeah. I mean, it comes down to situational a lot of times. And a lot of the times where the letter of the law would place you guilty, but it's kind of situational. Like, you have a zero BAC, you're driving just fine. We pulled you over because it's that hour of the night or whatever they have. Yeah. I mean, police will swear up and down they don't have quotas and that's a different topic. But it's not a big deal. So... I'm getting flavor change the last quarter, by the way.
Okay. It's getting mustier. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to see if we wanted to do final thoughts on this one and wrap it up. Yeah, we can do final thoughts. I'm still enjoying it, actually. I'm not going to still smoke it. I just... I don't want to start a whole new topic and I think that we kind of ended on a good note with go visit your state parks, national parks, pick up some litter. So I really enjoyed this one, the 1875. Oh, I would highly recommend if you find it.
Thank you, Kayla and Gary. Yeah, big thank you to Kayla and Gary. If you would like to send some sponsor sticks our way, we can make that happen. Otherwise... Be safe, have fun. Catch you next week. Bye.