BONUS: Down the Rabbit Hole: Phantom Ruby Tuesdays in New Mexico

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So do what you can make the world a better place by helping a little thing that's fuzzy skin Shall all those weird tactile senses thinking sideways stories of things which can feed don't know the answer to don Hey, guys, welcome to our very first bonus episode inaugural um. You may have seen us doing polls or things like that on social media for the name of this officially, right now, we are calling this side program down the rabbit Hole.

By Thinking Sideways, special bonus content for all of our fans on Stitcher Premium using Stitcher Premium, which we're very excited for. Thanks for the rabbit Sorry, dude, we took over your whole Thank you for subscribing on Stitcher Premium. Yeah, for sure, this is the reward. I was stating around awkwardly talking, Yeah, this is kind of lame for down the rabbit Hole. By thinking Sideways, we are basically giving

ourselves a little bit of a free for all. We are allowing ourselves to talk about things or stories or whatever that interests us that doesn't necessarily fit into the thinking sideways format genre genre in general. This is our first one. I'm really excited about it because I get to host it. As you can tell. So that's the concept. We hope you guys enjoy it. Today we're talking about thing of Phantom Ruby Tuesdays in New Mexico, some sort of time slip with not just a fan and restaurants

a Phantom of city. It's yeah, Phantom. It's a weird thing. It is a story that one of our mods, Leslie, suggested to me and it was found on Reddit glitch in the Matrix. Okay, so if you if you're on Reddit, you probably know what matrix is, right, or you can assume if you've ever seen the movie The Matrix. Yeah, anyway, well let's just launch right in here. Okay. The story starts in winter of two thousand nine, when the original poster we're just going to call him op I'm just

gonna say it opt. That's great. Um Now, when you do your story, you can call it Opie. Um Up and his brother drove from Portland, Oregon our Fair City to Florida to visit their system, and on the trip back to Portland, they decided to take Interstate ten all the way back to avoid some snow to lays they had experienced on the way out. Because runs along the southern portion of the Louisiana and Texas I've driven through, I've driven actually both of these routes to the east coast.

I ten is actually way more enjoyable. Yeah, it was. It was way more enjoyable. Um. The first day they made it to San Antonio, which was a pretty good that's quite a marathon. I mean that's like probably a twenty two hour day. Yeah, So they stopped and then the next day they had planned to make it from San Antonio to Las Vegas. Um, like you do with road trip, you start to really learn your car and

what kind of gas mileage you're getting from it. So they knew that they usually needed to stop at about three hundred and fifty miles for gas, but they could go all the way to four hundred if absolutely needed. They were right now. They were in a Honda hybrid. Actually okay, okay, hybrid, okay, yep. Um, So, about a hundred miles outside of San Antonio, the op noticed that the fuel gauge was dropping noticeably faster than usual. So, um, they looked to you know, on the hybrid cars you

can maybe you don't. On a hybrid car, you can click to see fuel consumption. A lot of cars do that these days. Yeah, I drive an old car, so my car doesn't, but newer cars. If you have an analog fuel gauge, if you would upgrade one of those awesome digital ones, yeah, way better. I'm cool with my analog. Thanks. Um. But they noticed that the car was only getting the like almost barely twenty six miles per gallon versus they

had been getting closer to miles per gallon. Obviously, this is pretty crazy, but there could be a lot of explanations for it, like they were going uphill, or there was a headwind or something, or maybe yeah, there was some sort of gravitational tug from sort of you know, gravitation after or something. Yeah, I mean somebody on RETTA said, you know, it could just be something as simple as they bought gas from a really crappy station that adulterate

their gas with water exactly, yeah, purposefully or otherwise. You know that if the tanks live underground, and if the tanks are old, they can get a little porous, and the water because in the ground can just seep right in. Yeah, exactly. So there are a number of reasons, but um just decided they couldn't really come up with one other than to quote, make them pull over where they did, a reason that this was happening. That's what they can come

up with. Afterwards. I thought it was fate, yeah, or some invisible hand something, yeah, um, And I do think from the story the original poster is Mail so him. They pulled over for gas earlier than expected and then followed the GPS directions back on course. After a few minutes of driving, they realized that they are not on the predetermined I ten path, but instead on Highway to

eight five heading north Texas. Right. It was yeah around there, yeah, so, and that that happens sometimes, especially in this kind of more desolate parts of our of our country, interstates and highways kind of commingle and share the same share the same I mean, not the numbers, but they will share the same actual road, have the same number, can be on the same stretch of road they spur off. So yeah,

that's true. But oftentimes you know you'll get this is um I five I four oh five and also Highway to eighteen and Highway one seven I mean, you know that all on that same road. So they just kind of thought, well, maybe this is what that's what's going on there, um relized only too late. Yeah, and then they so they just kept going, and then they make it to New Mexico, but realized that they're about an hour early crossing into New Mexico. Then they would have

been on I ten. So they realized that they're not actually on I ten at all, and at this point exactly right, and then at this point that they've just gone too far. It would have been an hour faster to stay on I ten, but at this point it's not faster to backtrack all the way back to I tend to go back up to Vegas. So they're just staying on the roads. There are other ways to get back to River City, but they were, but they were using a budget GPS unit, not a not a real

high dollar fancy one. Maybe that was part of it. Yeah, yeah, I think it was part of it. But luckily there's more than one road in the US. Sometimes they got to find their way home. Yeah, and I've driven this stretch of road, this actual specific stretch of road. I don't know if either of you have, but even even in this part of the country, if you've ever driven through it, you know, almost everything you encounter are like pit spots or um like we exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's

you know, you maybe get a gas station. Maybe if you're lucky, the gas station has like a subway connected to it or something like. That's pretty much all that exists there. And more often than not, it's a sign that says huber this way, no services. The jackpot when you get the pizza Hut taco bell combination. One of my favorites is just last gas for two. But you want to pay attention to those signs, yeah, my favorite.

My second favorite is when it says last gas for two hundred miles and then you drive ten miles down the road in the risk there's way more. Yeah, and there's actually a thriving city somehow. Yeah. So these guys eventually hit a place called Vaughan, New Mexico. This is like a four person population type spot, so, you know, not the wide spot on the road, but not thriving community necessarily. You know. Actually I had to go do a little street view on that one, and it looks

like I used to have more than four people. There's a lot a lot of they're like boarded up buildings on the main drag there. Yeah, I think most of the places through this area used to have a lot more people, maybe at least some more people. Um and and Sino they eventually drove through, after which I am not lying. When you google and Sin, no, the thing that comes up is pictures of abandoned outhouses. Oh I

thought it was going to be that poly short movie. No, that's the first thing it tries to suggest, but it is nope, nope. About ten miles by um the posters estimation they drove to a town or a city. It wasn't on their GPS. Again, this isn't insanely unusual. The budget GPS is either you know, loose service and don't really update or stuff. Yeah, their maps are out of date or whatever. But they also said that there was no no kind of signing around it, none of them

Ville next exit. Yeah, and actually this it sounds like was not a poduncd vell. I mean there were a lot of chain hotels and even like they said, like in Albertson's and a number of chain restaurants. I mean, it was a big enough they said they thought it was like a ten to twenty thousand person population area, which is fairly sizeable, particularly for that neck of the woods, and particularly to have like no signage or anything else

just pops up out of nowhere. Yeah yeah, kind of weird. Yeah, though, I will say again, having been on long haul road trips like this, especially if they pulled a twenty two hour day the day before, sometimes you just stop paying attention to the signs that are blowing past. You think you might have been on the wrong road or I I don't know really why what's happening there? They decide

to take advantage of not being at a little podunct wherever. No, you know, they don't want the the crappy burger and yeah exactly, and stop in at Ruby Tuesdays for dinner day. As soon as they walk in, they are greeted by a waitress by name. I guess at this point we have to name them. We can do our standard Justin and Aaron. Yeah yeah, I like they're good names. Yeah um. But the waitress basically walks up to them with a huge smile on her face and she says, oh my word,

is that Justin and Aaron. They both assume that like one of the brothers knows her, you know, like Justin's like, oh, well, Aaron obviously knows her, and Erin's like, well, Justin obviously

knows her. And they kind of vague their way through some answers, you know, and she says, how are you doing blah blah blah, sits her down, and they sit down, and she goes off to get the menus, and they confer and they realize neither of them actually knows this woman, and they think, well, Justin and Aaron are like pretty common names. Maybe, you know, maybe maybe she's just that podcast saying a lot of people started naming their babies,

so yeah, they are pretty common names at that point. Ye. Then a bartender comes over and says, no way, Justin and Aaron, are you guys back for jobs. They informed him that he must just like be mistaken because at this point they realized they they are being mistaken for somebody else apparently, and he just kind of laughs like they're joking. The bartender continues by asking how they had fared in their three month anatomy and physiology courses that

they've taken at Oregon State. Once it turned out they had taken yeah, I mean, Joe, can you read this next little bit? It's an actual quote, okay, okay quote. I remember thinking, all of a sudden, this is not a coincidence anymore. My brother and I had taken the three months fifteen credit A and P class at Portland State University when we were in our early twenties. We

were late twenties when this interaction happened. Finally, I asked the guy again exactly where they knew us from, and he just kind of paused and started looking me over. Then he said, oh, you guys just like really similar to some people that used to work here unquote. He apologized and claimed they had to get back to work. After a bit, our food came and my brother and I noticed it had switched out our waitress from the girl who recognized us when we walked in. That wasn't

a big deal, though a bit strange. Next, a guy I can only guess was the manager starts walking over to our table with a big smile on his face. As he guess with him about ten feet of us. He kind of starts looking over my head and stops. I think someone behind me was directing him not to talk to us. After he received the message. You sharply turned ninety degrees and walked away without saying a word unquote. I mean it's weird and awkward, but yeah, a little bit,

you know, nothing like too crazy. That's kind of crazy. I mean they basically you can tell they are not comfortable. I wouldn't be. And they finished their meal as quickly as possible, and the new waitress comes back and says, oh, our cash register system is down, so your meals around the house, which is again like a chain doesn't normally do that, just to just sit there for the next minutes, or you know, you need cash, like we have a t M. There's an a t M down the way.

Just pay us cash something to get paid. Uh. Justin says that he wanted to ask where they were, but also just like really wanted to get out of there, which I can totally sympathize with. There are some moments where you're just like, oh my god, I gotta get out of here. I need to know more, but I gotta get out of here. They figured they had to stop for gas anyway, so they would you get the little receipt and it says, you know X on mobile Portland's northeast or what I mean. You know, it says

where you're basically right. Um. But unfortunately, as they were getting on the highway it was divided, so they were forced to turn right out of the restaurant, putting them back directly onto northbound eight five thank you, which basically forced them back on the road without being able to fuel up. So they drove for about twenty more minutes and then found a truck stop where they stopped, which ended up being right at the intersection of two five

and I forty. Uh and I forty is the road that you would take for the rest of pretty much the rest of your journey westward. Um. Yeah, so you can. You can see this all on on Google. You can see the area and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And so the the other reason that this is weird is that there is nothing there really isn't between Encino and the junction of two eighty five and I forty. Actually, there is a little phantom business there called Ruby Tuesdays. I forget

what it is. I was looking at something like, you know, Mike's Mike's Repair or something like that, but it's certainly not a Ruby Tuesdays. No, when you look it's actually labeled to Google. But when you actually nothing there. Yeah, so that's the thing. I attached a map to this, so you guys got to look at it, which is pretty cool. But that's like the weirdness of this whole thing. I mean, on top of everything else, right, there is nothing in there, literally nothing. I mean it's a pretty

short stretch of road, yeah, and there's nothing there. Yeah. It's interesting though. It's actually if you look at if you street, you and everything, it's it's a double highway, so it's too lazy direction with with a nice me radian in between, considering and I checked the traffic flow on that. But through the state of New Mexico, that little stretch in there is two thousand, two hundred forty seven cars a day. That's a that's a lot of really nice asphalt for that number of cars. And uh

it really is. Uh yeah, that's a big, beautiful highway going straight as an arrow. Yeah. Well, actually, somebody on Reddit, since this was a Reddit post, somebody on Reddit took the time they lived close and they they actually took a picture. They drove this entire journey, you know, from Vaughan, New Mexico, all the way to this truck stop that the guy said they stopped at and took a picture pretty much every couple of miles, every time they saw

something of any kind of interest. And there's nothing there. So here's the question, and I I So I looked at the map you had and spun around a little bit on the map, but I didn't do any extensive searching.

Is it at all possible that are our storyteller? That's how I'm going to refer to him, our storyteller diverted yet again from the road they thought they were all I had that que I had that question exactly, and I will tell you know because they said they went through Vaughan and Encino, and those are two very distinct points and then either you can go straight and then you hit the border, or you go up and you

intersect with I forty. They know that they stopped within an hour of Encino, give or take, you know, actual driving distance an hour of Encino. They hit the junction of UM to A five and I forty. And the only place that that those two intersect is that truck stop. Now granted, they could have yes gone diverted, but to divert they would have hit like a bunch of major cities, major cities, and they would have been hundreds, if not thousands of miles off course and so wrong about where

they're at them they would have known. Yeah, And that was one of the things is like, you know, one of the theories on this is like they were just wrong, but they would have had been really, really wrong. The other thing is is that, um, if you look at Ruby Tuesday's website or even a historic log of where Ruby Tuesdays are in New Mexico, there's only one and it's two hundred and five miles away from where they claim they were, and it's actually a pretty decent sized city. Yeah,

you have to be really wrong. And of course this wouldn't be the first time that somebody were wrong about something. I mean, it could have been they were at Ruby's Tuesday. I was a chain what I mean it could have been, Yeah, it's not the chain Ruby Tuesdays. It could have been something that was very similarly named or Rusday. Yeah, yeah,

Ruby Rubies. I mean they represented it as the reason that they were excited about it is you guys may remember that the first Ruby Tuesdays in Portland's started opening up around two nine or whenever the story we're being excited about. No, I wasn't excited. But you know that's kind of when they came here. And so the reason that they had chosen that particular chain is because they were like, oh, those are opening up around us. Let's

see if it's any good. So here, and but yes, I will allow I will allow a whole lot of error here. But even like the most amount of error can't get me a random city in the middle of basically what is just like wasteland. So were we in theories? Now? Is that where we're at here? Yeah? I mean this isn't this isn't thinking sideways what it is talking about what it could be? Yeah, okay, but before we talk

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Because I mean, the first thing that comes to my mind is that this is on glitchen of Matrix, and it really sounds like something that should have been on no Sleep. It could have been made up. It sounds you're very, very fictional. To well, it's very conveniently peppered with true details, but then diverts from those rather corputate. So um, shut up, stop tiring. Um. I mean, yes, of course that is a theory that this is totally made up, but it's I'm just having fun kind of

entertaining the other options. How far away is this from Roswell's actually passed through Rowell to get to where they were. Okay, so it's entirely possible that this is an after effect of Roswell. The whole thing was in their heads because they were doped up. Actually, that's like an interesting thing

is that there are two really interesting theories about that. One, as we're playing along, right, is that it's possible that they could have been abducted by aliens and then had these memories implanted in their brain to supersede whatever horrible things they experienced serience. The other theory is that they're actually spies. No wait, no, wait, this is I mean, this isn't the worst theory ever, right, Okay, they're actually

so that all of this aside. Right, we just assumed that they were actually out of Ruby Tuesdays where everybody knew who they were for some reason. It's the new Mexico version of cheer sure, right, for some reason they were like somehow, yes, they found this Ruby Tuesdays where everybody knew who they were. It seems totally unreasonable. They

were in the totally the wrong place. But the other theory part of this is that like that was all real, but their spies and they've had their memories wiped and replanted, and so all of the people at Ruby Tuesdays did actually know them, They did actually used to work there.

They just have no memory of it because their spies and have been brainwashed to believe that there's the exactly Yea, I like that theory a lot, except you think that they they were going to wipe their memories, they would have also given them like new names and identities to you would think, yeah, yeah, I am looking. I am desperately looking through Google right now. For there was some

really really crappy Roswell movie. They came out probably in the last five years, and that's something like this Happen No No, But the plot of it, it's it's by the same guy that he's has a bunch of those really shaky camera movies. It's really cheaply made, and there's like Blair Wedge Project, right, but there's been one or two that are hits and the rest of them are

just garbage. But it makes me think of that kind of thing where this could have been somebody's script concept for that kind of movie that the shaky camp like four hours in the car they rolled down the window, they're talking to the camera that I mean that's this is or it could be that they were just abductive, but I think it I agree. I think it probably is made up, but it's still like a crazy like on the off chance it's not, it's a crazy, fun,

interesting story that I wanted to share. I admire that that that he didn't overdo it with the dramatic elements. That was that's good. If he did make it up, it's it's like, you know, the whole thing about it is it's it's very mundane. You know, he's not dramatized. It's not a real dramatic story. The reason that falls down for me is I'm totally into the whole time slip, alternative,

alternative timeline and all that stuff. But here's the problem is that, uh, nobody would put a Ruby Tuesdays franchise on a highway that has less than cars a day, well, right, I mean alternative timeline. Well, but in an alternative timeline that could have been the main highway. I mean, you know, they're the only reason that it wouldn't because it wasn't like this lone Ruby Tuesday is hanging out by itself.

There was a bustling little area, so you would assume that in this alternate timeline, if they did happen to slip into it or whatever. Um, that that for whatever reason, that would have been a kind of hub in the area. That occurred to me too. But here's here's where. Here's where it fell down again for me. Okay, there's a there's a there's this whole city that is not there in our our timeline, and and so that means that there's a lot more people. So he should have noticed,

you know, the notice the city. But they should have notice all of a sudden, we realized there's ten times as many cars on the road around us. Where did they all come from? All of a sudden, we notice that we're driving through this town and there's like there's like overpasses and stuff. And that's the first overpass we've seen it in this entire highway the entire time. Things like that. They didn't notice any of those things. I agree, I think. While Steve's over there on his phone, I'm actually,

that's okay, well that's what I'm usually doing, so fine. Um, But I mean, realistically maybe, but I feel like I've taken so many road trips in my life where there have been times where we've hit this kind of weird little bubble. And it's not like there are suddenly more people. We are still the only car on the highway. But that doesn't mean I mean, who knows what time. It

sounds like it was later in the day. Maybe it was a weird time that they hit it, but it just the impression that they did it right around lunchtime or something. But that could be wrong about I guess it was like later dinner time in my mind. But I mean, you know, again, like that's not given, and so that that gives us that kind of reasonable doubt of being able to say, well, maybe it was a weird time, And I mean, you know, I don't, I

don't know. I just I would say that things like, um, you know, when you drive out to the coast, you drive into Telemook for instance, Right, Telemooks kind of the same size as I would guess this area was probably a little probably probably a little bigger. But you know, you can drive on twenty six, or you can drive on the Telemook through the Telemook Forest, right, it doesn't I've I've driven both ways a number of times, and I've never felt you going either way that suddenly there

were more or less cars on either of them. The twenty six gets way more traffic than the road through the Telemook Forest, right, I don't. I think it always feels about the same amount of traffic perception, Yeah, I don't know. I mean suddenly when they get into town though, there should have been all of a sudden a lot more cars around, and there may have been, and they just didn't because because there was tended people. He was like, yeah,

of course there's more traffic. I don't know. As we thought as we talked about this when I was on my phone for is that this really really makes me think about I cannot find the name of it, but years ago I read it was a book or a short book or a story by Stephen King where essentially this person was driving all the time and making fantastic different distances, and the concept was if you have a flat paper map, but you fold the map and you connect the to the the road from the two folded edges,

you cut out all that distance, but you go through this weird kind of fantasy space that makes me think. But it's it has the same quality, in the same feel as the things that are described in that like I almost feel like a rip off of King in a way that I mean, that sounds like not intentionally, but the King probably ripped off Reddit. Yeah, that sounds like a wrinkle in time to me. So are you sure it's Stephen King? I really feel like it was

Stephen King. But it's a theory of time travel in general is that you just wrinkle two things and stop. Actually he did mention that he picked up that road Atlas to the western US and that which is market America. They did, he didn't, But that's okay. Anyway, UM, do you guys feel like you have anything more that you want? I mean, this is a weird story, I want to be honest, but I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, it's good.

Sure they made it up. Like I said, I don't think that you're going to find it because even in the alternative timeline, I still don't understand why anybody would plant the city in a particulous spot because I've looked at it. Why do they planning cities in any typically? But anyway, I hope that everybody else got to enjoy this. UM as a little bonus something. UM, we want to thank you very very much for being part of Stitcher Premium.

If you want to connect with us, you can head to our Stitcher page to connect with us on all of our various social media's and also linked to our website. Or if you want to talk to us about this case or any other case, you can feel free to email us at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah, if you live on Highway five, we especially want to hear from. If you work on the rout at the Ruby tuesdays on that road, please let us know. Um. But otherwise um, Yeah, thanks for going to get out

of here to lou. We'll see you next time. Get burger okay,