Ear Biscuits with Rhett & Link - The Maine to Miami McLaughlin Marathon: Rhett's Spring Break Trip | Ear Biscuits Ep. 331

Episode Date: April 18, 2022

Locke's going to college which can only mean one thing: roadtrip! This week, Rhett details his mulit-state trip starting in Maine and ending in Florida, touring colleges, eating delicious food, and drinking tons of lattes. Rhett talks about how women from Maine took a liking to Locke, he solves the decades-long Philly cheesesteak battle between institutions Pat's and Gino's, and surprised his family with a cruise around the Florida everglades in a fan boat. Most importantly, Rhett meets a bunch of Mythical Beasts along the way! Be sure to watch Inside Eats on Food Network & Discovery+, premiering 9:30 PST | 10:30 CST Sunday, April 24th! To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This, this, this, this is mythical. Shop Best Buy's ultimate smartphone sale today. Get a Best Buy gift card of up to $200 on select phone activations with major carriers. Visit your nearest Best Buy store today. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Ear Biscuits, the podcast where two lifelong friends talk about life for a long time. I'm Rhett.

And I'm Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, I finally get to hear about your spring break, epic road trip with your oldest son. You did the long way around in just in America, like a few months back, you went from North Carolina back here to California on a UN Lock road trip. And now I've done the long way down from Maine to Miami.

Yeah. Shout out to Ewan McGregor. You weren't on motorbikes. No. Like Ewan McGregor. And Apple was not interested in documenting it. No, and you're gonna document it now auditorially for me. There's been a number of times we've gotten together with friends and they've asked you about your trip

and I really appreciate the fact that you completely shut them down. Yeah, I was like, I'm gonna tell you about it. He's like, you'll have to listen to my podcast. I have a podcast. I'm excited about it. I'm'm gonna tell you about it. He's like, you'll have to listen to my podcast. I have a podcast. I'm excited about it. I'm excited to tell you about it. So you preserved this experience for me.

It's gonna take a while. There's a lot of details. All right, let's get into it. But I do also want to remind you that our television show, yes, we have one of those, Inside Eats with Rhett and Link. Yes. Remember it premieres on Sunday, April 24th,

this coming Sunday, as you're listening to this, if it's fresh, 10 30 PM on Food Network. It's also on Discovery Plus, and the version on Discovery Plus has extra scenes in it because you don't have to abide by any rules. Eat it up. On streaming. Inside Eats with Rhett and Link. Our show is premiering. I'm excited. Yeah.

This coming Sunday. All right, tell me about your thing, man. This is ambitious. I like it conceptually, you know? Well, you know, the funny thing is, is that- Main to Miami? I didn't have any road trips planned at the end of 2021.

Uh-huh. The first road trip that I talked about last time trips planned at the end of 2021. The first road trip that I talked about last time was a complete just circumstantial thing of kind of being forced into it in a sense. And we had such a great time that we eventually, initially we wanted to go to like, Locke and I wanted to do spring break trip, the spring break trip like in Japan, but then that didn't happen.

And then everything got slowly like pared back to just remaining in the United States. And it was like, let's go to Maine. And then let's go to Maine turned into, well, there's a college in New York City that I'm interested in, so that turned into Maine to New York, turned into, well, we got that new cabin in North Carolina.

If you hear a little rattling, Barbara is walking around, her cat, I don't know if the mic's picking it up, but just don't be alarmed. It's not like- It's not your chains. My dentures are not about to fall out. There is Barbara. And also, so we got the place in North Carolina.

So then it turned into Maine to North Carolina. And then a lot was like, well, what about that school in Miami that I'm interested in that I'd like to look at? So that turned into Maine to Miami. And I also liked the alliteration of the Maine to Miami McLaughlin marathon. Oh. And so we just went with it, man.

So you ran. Yeah, it was all on foot. Actually all on skateboard. How many days total was this trip? It was- Just to kind of set the parameters. Seven days. So seven days less mileage than going from North Carolina to California and more days.

So we did North Carolina to California in five days. We did Maine to Miami in seven days. Barbara, you're gonna have to settle down. Just take her collar off. Yeah, I'm gonna take her other collar off. Come here, come here, come here, come here, come here. She's gonna make you come to her. I've been to Maine once.

We shot a music video, I Wanna Be Your Maine Man in 2008. That was fun. Fake beards, just a few hours there. I ate my first lobster roll. I've been to Miami twice, I think. We did some night swimming when we shot the big box store part of the epic rap battle, Nerd versus Geek. That was shot in a Miami-

And there's a little throwback to that trip. Build.com box store. So, flew into Portland, Maine. Originally we were gonna fly into like the Northern part of Maine, cause it was gonna be Maine. But then when you're trying to just get across the country, you fly to the Southern part of Maine, which is also like the airport that you can trying to just get across the country, you fly to the Southern part of Maine, which is also like the airport that you can fly to from,

you know, there's no direct flights from Los Angeles to Portland. There's a connection in Charlotte. But because of the time change, we got in and basically the only thing we had time to do was go to the hotel to kind of just like, let's settle down and go to sleep and get ready for the next day. But let me tell you right off the bat,

I had something that I was like, well, dang, this is going to be quite a trip because we get to our hotel. And again, this is Locke and me. Locke is 18. He doesn't look 18. He has somewhat of a beard, you know, he is mistaken often.

He could be in his 20s, yeah, mid 20s. Yeah, so he seems like he's in his 20s. I'm 44 and I like to think that most people don't realize that I'm that old. So when you see us together, you don't immediately, apparently think father and son. Maybe you do, I don't know. And as I tell you this story, you'll have to interpret

what this person interpreted us to be. We get on the elevator. I think I would interpret you as young pop star and a manager. Oh, and I'm the pop star. No. And so we get on the elevator to go to our room and a approximately 25 year old woman gets onto the elevator

and it's just the three of us on the elevator and no lie. So she looks at us and she looks, I'll just be honest, she looks mostly at Locke, okay? She looks mostly at Locke, I'm just gonna be honest. But she looks at both of us, she seems to be interpreting us as a set. And she says, before the elevator door closes, like as the elevator door closes, she says,

"'How long are you guys here?' And I said, one night, not really knowing where this was going. I'm gonna stand here one night. And then she said, we should hang out. What? We should hang out. And it was like, whoa, the women in Maine,

they've been cooped up. The boys from California show up and how long you gonna be here? They come on strong. What'd y'all do? I guess it's in the lobster. I mean, lobster, shellfish is an aphrodisiac. So apparently,

it is something in the diet. But I spoke up and said, well, actually we were gonna go, it wasn't the Final Four yet, it was the Elite Eight and there was a game on and we wanted to watch it because we both care about that. And then I was like, we gotta watch basketball. I was just like, what's the unsexiest thing

that I can say right now? We gotta watch basketball. You know, I wasn't gonna like embarrass her. I don't know, maybe I need to pop my back zits. I'm his dad. Less sexy. Like I'm his dad. I could have just said that,

but I decided not to, because maybe she would be like, oh, I knew that. I don't know, this is a main woman that's high on oysters. She probably would have just said, I was talking to him. Well, she didn't say that. I know. I just wanna, I'm gonna bring you down a notch.

So, no, as I sort of stated from the beginning, she was definitely directing most of this at Locke. So I was like, this is gonna be an interesting trip if this is any indication of what we have in store for us. Thankfully, we're not hit on by any more women, so I can go ahead and give you that spoiler alert. But that next morning we wake up and the plan is to spend some time in Portland

and specifically kind of walk around the old port area, which is like cobblestone streets, like the main maniest part of Portland, Maine. And I had actually gotten to know somebody just like two weeks ago out here who has a place in Maine and is from Maine and had all these recommendations. And I was like, well, the main thing I'm trying to do

in Maine is get the best lobster roll. You know, I've had a lobster roll or two in Maine before the first time we went, but like, what in your opinion as a local is the best lobster roll? And he was like, eventide, eventide in Portland. So I was like, okay, well. You have your mission. And he was like, he also gave a couple

of other recommendations. They're like, there's a bakery that everybody wants to go to for a cup of coffee and some bread or whatever, you know, and a little pastry. Whatever, just tell me about Even Tide. But the plan was, you know, I kind of wanted to get on the road because I had a relatively tight agenda,

meaning that there was a destination every single night because there was a hotel reservation. So unlike the previous trip, which was thrown together a little bit more last minute, and we use like hotels tonight to figure out where we were gonna stay in that first trip. This one was like, I actually want to curate my hotel experience.

And I don't know exactly what we're gonna do during the day every day, but we just gotta get to these destinations. So we had some place to get, and originally my plan was to just spend a little time in Portland and then get on the road to Boston, then eventually Rhode Island to spend the night. But when he was like, you gotta eat at Eventide,

I was like, well, it opens at 11. So we're gonna have to like walk around and kill some time in Portland and get a brunch lobster roll. So first of all, Maine is everything that you want it to be. You know, it's- Quaint. It's beautiful. It's quaint.

There's a coolness in the air. It was actually too cold for me and I didn't bring a heavy enough jacket, but I got through it, I survived. But we get to Eventide and I think it's called Eventide Oyster Company, so we did get some oysters. And like the woman was like, this place was like, not like a, this wasn't like a hole in the wall.

This was like a hipster nice place. You know what I mean? Like, oh, this community has got some like really nice, it's like someplace you'd see in LA in terms of like, this is, they know exactly what they're doing with the design of the place. It's not like an old school place. Maybe it's been around for a long time,

but it has the feel of like a new trendy place, but just it has this reputation. And like Yelp and everything else confirmed that this is the place to get your lobster roll. So the oysters are great talking about where they're at in the different bays of Maine or whatever. And then they bring out the lobster roll.

And by the way, there was a mythical beast fan in the back in the kitchen, which made me feel good. Like I wasn't gonna be poisoned. We ended up getting like a free cookie. Okay. Which is very good. Take what you can get, man. But this lobster roll was about this big and that is about four inches.

Okay. Don't get any wrong ideas. This is only four inches. Seems dinky. And yeah, and $21. Whoa, is it piled high or something? It is piled high. I have a picture of it that they're probably seeing right now if you're watching on video.

I'm not gonna show you pictures because I haven't organized it. This lobster roll was exquisite. Now, you know I like lobster rolls. Was it crunchy or soft? The bun was soft in this like wonderful way. I can't, I don't even know what kind of bread it was.

Okay. And it was the brown butter, like warm kind, right? So, you know, I love lobster rolls. I had a lobster roll truck at my 40th birthday. Yeah, I like the warm ones. had a lobster roll truck at my 40th birthday. Yeah. I like the warm ones. And- Better than the cold ones. And they would do cold or hot.

And I love the hot brown butter style. And the lobster was just perfect. And I was like, man, this is a lot of money for a little lobster roll. I immediately want another one, but we had multiple stops planned in the day. Like eating was really the main thing we were trying to do. And in the process of eating it,

I dropped a fricking piece of lobster on the ground. Oh no. And by my math, it was approximately $3.75 worth of lobster. Ouch. Was it dirt or linoleum? Did you pick it up? Well, we were sitting at like, you know, one of those like high bars facing out the window.

And so in order to get the lobster off of the ground, I would have to get off of the stool and bend down, cause a scene. Or use both of your feet. Oh, let me tell you, I considered it. I considered it. That's a shame. Considered it multiple times, but I let it sit there. But then I did proceed to tell the waiter,

I was like, by the way, there's some lobster on the ground. Before I had time to like get up and get it, I was just like, I just want you to understand, like I really value the lobster. I was kind of hoping he would be like, well, we'll bring you another piece. Really?

But- You trying to angle for another piece of lobster? So great start culinarily to the trip, right? And then we head down the coast and there's not much Maine left after Portland when you're going south, but there is a place called York, Maine, which based on my limited research

was a very Mainey Maine coastline. So like we're talking rocky coastline that has a little trail that you can walk on, a little beach there. Okay. We actually pull up and there's a dude getting out of the water in a wetsuit. I mean, I can't explain to you how cold he was surfing. How cold it was and how cold I imagined the water to be,

but you can't keep a main man down. He's gonna surf if he wants to surf. They're used to it, they're rugged. Took a little stroll, again, met some more mythical beasts on the trail. And I was like, this is interesting. Cause I bought a t-shirt in Maine and the girl who sold me the t-shirt was a mythical beast.

We go to the Eventide restaurant and somebody in the back is a mythical beast. We stopped to take a trail in Maine and we meet like two sets of Mythical Beasts, one whole family of Mythical Beasts on the trail. And I'm like, well, you know, I haven't been out in this way in other parts of the country, literally in years, right?

Because I pretty much have been in North Carolina is the only place I've been. And your Food Network show's not even out yet. And the Food Network show's not even out yet. And the Food Network show's not even out. And I use this collectively as a little bit of a, it's always a nice little check-in to be like, people still care? People still watching this show?

People still listening to this podcast? And the beginning of the trip was showing a lot of promise that yes, people are still engaged, Link. Just so you know, I've gone out, I've done a report. People are still watching the show. People still know who we are. Did they ask about me? Yes, I got a number of, where's Link?

And I was like, I don't have, he's not currently being geo-tracked by me, so I don't know. So we drive to Boston. I was in North Carolina, by the way. Yeah, well, I didn't wanna give up your location. I felt like we needed to do something historical. Again, this was a little bit of an obligation type thing.

We're gonna be going through Boston and Philadelphia. We're going through like where the country, you know. Started. As we consider the United States where things were kind of getting going. And Locke and I don't care a whole lot about that history, to be completely honest with you. So neither one of you were up for it,

but you did it anyway. No, it was like, I can take a little bit, but I'm not gonna like go on the whole freedom trail. You know what I'm saying? Like there's like a two mile stretch in Boston that you can just walk and there's all these historical things and you can read plaques and stuff like that.

And it was like, ah, let's just go, what's the coolest thing on this? Paul Revere's house. Yeah. Okay. So we went into Paul Revere's house. It's like six bucks to walk around. This thing hasn't changed much. I felt very historical.

We read all the plaques. The British are coming. We considered it. The British are coming. Yeah. We read about Paul Revere and we felt like we had done our duty and then we went, we were actually already- All right, what are we gonna eat next?

Exactly, well, so I didn't know this about Boston because you and I have been to Boston a couple of times, but we haven't spent a lot of time there and we're usually there like under someone else's sort of guidance, right? Yeah, and so I was expecting more seafood in Boston, but apparently the North end of Boston is essentially a little Italy

and has some of the best Italian food that you can find. And so I was like, well, I'm kind of in the mood for that. And plus we wanted to watch another one of the basketball games because the basketball games were continuing to happen throughout. And an Italian bar? We did, we went to an Italian restaurant that had a bar, sat at the bar and ate. I drank a little bit

and we watched one of the basketball games. And then we went to another place. I can't remember. We had some really good Italian food. But we had to leave Boston and get to Rhode Island. I never, this is one of the states I was checking off, you know, marking off of the list that I've never been to. Didn't realize until relatively recently

that it is not an island. Oh God. Did you think Rhode Island was an island? I think I'm, it's kind of shaped like Florida. You look at that part of the map. It's like a peninsula. So I guess. It's not even really a peninsula.

I would have said, sure, it's an island. Well, this is the deal. There is an island called Rhode Island that they call something else that is a big island that is right there. And I think when most just amateur map people like me look at a map, they see an island up there and they're like, that's Rhode Island.

It's really, really small. You can walk across it in a day. But no, it's bigger than that. And it's not an island. So we stayed in Providence and- You didn't go to the island, the proper island? We didn't really have time because we had a very packed agenda the next day, okay?

So, because that was Maine day and Boston day and then it was basically like, all we're gonna do is sleep in Rhode Island. So stayed in Providence. I gotta say, I don't feel like I fully experienced you, Providence. I was say, I don't feel like I fully experienced you Providence. I was inside you for a very small amount of time, but nothing happened.

It wasn't exciting. You know what I'm saying? Nothing happened. I was just inside and then I pulled out real fast. But what I did have is a donut because it seemed like they were very proud of their donuts. In that part of the country, they tend to be very proud of their donuts. In that part of the country, they tend to be very proud of their donuts.

Yeah. And I had a very good donut and a very good latte. That was the thing. Every single day, Locke and I were like, where are we gonna get that latte? He loves lattes, I love lattes. Not coffee, lattes. Yes, we are fully Angeleno, okay?

And- I didn't think latte was Angeleno. It's just a lot of milk. I like a latte. Yeah, but it's a little frou-frou. Let's just be honest. Okay. Cowboys drink black coffee.

You see Clint Eastwood showing up, you know, at the campfire and asking for a latte. Dab of cream. Yeah, I mean, come on, get with the program here. It's a little frou-frou, but I unashamedly enjoy it. But you gotta make sure you get a good one. So we would look up and where's the best place for a latte? This place happened to have donuts.

Food really directed your trajectory. I was like, we both really like to eat and we both really like lattes. And so we're gonna be happy. If you're well fed, you're going to be happy even if you don't get to do some attraction that you thought you wanted to do. Rather, better to be well fed

than to be well entertained with your eyes. I think I would do the same thing. I'm not much of a sightseeing person, especially when there's an itinerary. Yeah. I think I would prioritize the food too. And I, it's funny, both of these trips have done something to me, gotten me to a place, I have a tendency

and I know you have the same tendency to be like, am I really enjoying this as much as I should? Did I make the best decision about where we went? Did I stop at the right places? What did I miss? Did I do enough research? Are we having as good a time as we should be having right now?

They call that FOMO. I constantly ask myself that question. In fact, Locke and I had a really great conversation as we were walking on the main coastline. I was talking about how I'm having a great time. This is beautiful, but I just wanna, like Locke and I really, we connect a lot and we've connected a lot this year,

which is interesting because we had that conversation on Ear Biscuits about what to do in his last year. And like these two trips of like, our friendship has really blossomed. That's cool. And we had this conversation, I was telling him about this. I was like, man, we're having, we're in this place,

we're doing this amazing thing. And I'm kind of thinking about what else we could be seeing and what am I missing? And I had to like, I made a decision on that first day in Maine to sort of let go of that and be like, whatever I'm experiencing is what I'm supposed to be experiencing. And so I didn't have that FOMO the rest of the trip.

That's good. That's very good, Rhett. But we needed to get to Yale. Now I want to be clear, Locke is, he may be interested in Yale, but he's not Yale material. So he's not going to Yale. But one of his really good friends is, okay? And so he, we wanted to see him.

We wanted to stop and see his buddy, Ray, who we've known for years. And we were like, Ray's at Yale. I've always wanted to see Yale. Locke really wants to see Yale to see what he's not ever going to experience. And, you know, just to see like an Ivy League school. And I always had this like this visions in my mind

of what a Northeast like Ivy League school looks like. I've never been to Harvard, never been to Yale. I've been texting with Ray. We were on a little group thread and I was planning the trip and I was like, "'Hey, what's your schedule on so-and-so date "'that we're coming through?' And he was a little slow to respond.

And then we kind of worked it out. He's like, "'Oh, I've got class that day, "'but I'll be able to like get lunch with you guys.' You know, and I was like, "'Okay, well, plan it so that we're coming through "'around lunchtime, Locke and I'll be able to like get lunch with you guys, you know? And I was like, okay, well, plan it so that we're coming through around lunchtime, Locke and I will probably walk around the campus, check it out and then we'll get lunch. We'll have lattes.

And well, the latte had already happened. And so we arrive in New Haven, Connecticut, which is where Yale was, which is not something that I could have told you. And we park next to campus and I text Ray and I'm like, hey, we're here, we're gonna walk around a little bit. Let us know when you're out of class, I'll come get you and we'll go to this place

that we're gonna eat that I had chosen. Consulted with him but chosen. Yeah. For reasons I'll get into. Ray was like, what, you're here? Your text said you would be here on so-and-so day a month later. A month later. So I was there on like March 20 something

and my text had said I was gonna be there on April 20 something because when I looked at the calendar, I got it wrong. By a month. By a whole month. Oh wow, so was he even, was he able to meet you? First of all, let me just tell you that these circumstances bring high amounts of shame to me.

I do not like to be the guy that makes the mistake. I hate making mistakes. You don't know your months, dude. And I just beat myself up over it. So I was like, dang it, what is wrong with me? Like, how did I screw this up? And, but then he immediately is like, but we were there on a Monday,

which was the same day that we had planned on. And so he was like, you know what? What a welcome surprise. My schedule's the same as it was gonna be. I'll text you when I'm out of class, totally fine. So I felt great. So we meet Ray and it turns out that- He said, what a welcome surprise.

What a welcome surprise. That's something a Yale student would say. Yeah, since he's been at Yale, he's using terms like that. What a welcome surprise. Right, yeah. I think he also used the term sparingly one time. But he didn't use it sparingly. Well, one time is pretty sparingly one time, but he didn't use it sparingly. Well, one time is pretty sparingly.

No, he's always been a well-spoken guy. That's why he's at Yale. Wherever you're going, you better believe American Express will be right there with you. Heading for adventure? We'll help you breeze through security. Meeting friends a world away? You can use your travel credit. We'll be right back. backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamx. Benefits vary by card, terms apply. So he, I had been told by the guy that I knew from Maine,

but also from a little research that New Haven, Connecticut is known best for its pizza. In fact, considered to have what might be the best pizza in the nation. And specifically- Is it a different style? How do you say that, Neapolitan? Yeah, I'd say it that way.

It's that style. So a pizza about that big that they kind of put into, you know, wood fire oven. And apparently this place, Frank Pepe's, Pepe's? Pepe's. Pepe's. Pepe's Neapolitan. Frank Pepe's. Is supposed to be great. In fact, has been voted the number one pizza place

in the nation by some publications. Oh. So I was very excited about this. Were they expecting you next month? No, I didn't make a reservation, thankfully, because I would have been a month off. And it's a little bit of like a hole in the wall, kind of outside of the main part of town situation.

And there's another place that's supposed to be as competitor that I didn't seem like it was as good based on what I saw. Anyway, had a good meal. I wouldn't say it's the best pizza I've ever had. I'm sorry, New Haven. It was very, very good. I did get a T-shirt. Okay, very good. I did get a t-shirt.

Okay, it was good enough to get the t-shirt. But once you get to a certain level of pizza, it's sort of like, how do you go any further? You know what I mean? Okay, I get that. But interesting thing that happened at Yale. So as I explained to you a second ago, was getting recognized

a fair amount. Got recognized at the Paul Revere House in Boston, right? Like, okay, I'm like, okay, this is coming down the East Coast, there's people in the Northeast who are mythical beasts, it makes me feel good. But when we get to Yale, we get out of the car and we start walking and the students are getting out of class and there's just hundreds of students.

And I turned to Locke and I say, now Locke, I don't think I'm gonna get recognized at Yale. I was like, these students are too busy and too smart for us. I mean, I'm just gonna be honest with you. Oh, you're throwing the mythical beast under the bus. Listen, I just think that if you're at this institution, you're just studying a whole lot and you're thinking about things on such a high level

that I'm sorry to say, I just don't consider what we bring to the table in terms of entertainment to be high brow, Link. I mean, at times we may sound smart, but it's a charade. No. And I think that, I'm not saying that the Mythical Beasts are stupid by any means, I'm just saying that,

when we're getting to like the 0.1% smartest people on the planet, I just think at that point, they're just not watching a lot of YouTube videos. It's my guess, right? Okay. That was my theory. My theory proved correct. I walked past hundreds of students pouring out of classrooms.

Nobody says a thing. I felt good that I had been right in my prediction, a little bit bad that I had been right in my prediction. So- These people, they're preoccupied. They're preoccupied. They don't have time for entertainment. But, so we spend the, again,

a couple of hours between, we walked around, like the way that they do it is they live in these colleges, there's multiple colleges on a campus. It's very much designed in the way, like when I went to Oxford a while back when I was in London, when I was in England, it's designed, you could totally tell, they were like, we did it this way over here

and now we're gonna come over here and do these Ivy League schools in exactly the same way. So we like walk through the iron doors. I mean, first of all, the campus is just, you've been on like Duke's campus before, which has this old school feel. It's like that on steroids. And the college is, you're like,

this is where you live in this little, you have this little courtyard and you walk through this iron gate and there's- Medieval stonework? Yeah, all this stonework, incredible stonework, and then he passes by the Skull and Bones house. Oh, really? This is their meeting house or whatever.

But again, no one's recognized me. And we finish up, we had lunch with Ray, we say our goodbyes to Ray, and then we start walking to the car. And we are. Then a whole group of Yale students says, surprise, we didn't know who you were. 50 yards from the car, Locke turns to me.

He's like, dad, I actually didn't believe you, but you were right. No one at Yale recognized you. The moment, the moment he finishes the sentence, I hear, fuck, rat from Rat and Link, holy fuck, holy fuck. Oh wow, that's a very sophisticated response. And there was a guy who I think he recognized me. A little bit.

And continued to just be like, fuck man, fuck, holy fuck. Rhett from Rhett and Link. So it was just like the enthusiasm. Made up for the. If I could get recognized by no one at Yale and to have one guy say, holy fuck, when he recognizes me. Right. Passionately. It just, it changed my whole view of Yale.

It changed my whole view of the Ivy League system. There's hope. Yeah, there's hope. For us. I will continue telling you the story. There's a lot more cities. There's a lot more stories on the way, but we do wanna talk about Inside East with Rhett and Link, our television show.

I mean, it's been a while since we had a television show. Yes, we do this about every 10 years. So yeah, we go behind the scenes, we get unfettered access. Well, we're kind of fettered. There's people there who are watching us, but we go to like test kitchens, we go to headquarters of your favorite eateries, food places.

So I mean, Chipotle, Cheesecake Factory. We also went to Cool House, an amazing ice cream shop. That's, I'll call it syndicated. Beyond Meat, we were the first people to ever get access to film behind the scenes at Beyond Meat, which was really cool. So we learned a lot and had a lot of fun. So it's this interesting mix of comedy

and food experience and access that creates Inside Eats with Brent and Link. 10.30 PM, Food Network, same time it's launched on Discovery+. The extended versions are on Discovery+., the extended versions are on Discovery Plus. Yeah. So check it out. We've been saying things like bonus footage,

but that makes you think that you're gonna have to like watch, click on something else. And it's like, no, the episodes are longer and have things that we had to cut out Extended versions. to get to the 22. Extended versions is the right one. Yeah, so check it out. We're on Food Network.

We're doing it. And I think, and we're just being us, man. Just being us, man. Eating stuff, having a great time. Check it out, Inside Eats. What was the last thing that filled you with wonder that took you away from your desk or your car in traffic? Well, for us, and I'm going to guess for some of you, that thing is...

Anime! Hi, I'm Nick Friedman. I'm Lee Alec Murray. And I'm Leah President. And welcome to Crunchyroll Presents The Anime Effect. It's a weekly news show. With the best celebrity guests. And hot takes galore.

So join us every Friday wherever you get your podcasts and watch full video episodes on Crunchyroll or on the Crunchyroll YouTube channel. Okay, so left New Haven. The plan is to head to New York and look at a school in New York that Locke is interested in. Oh, wow, yeah, because that... I was picturing Rhode Island and Connecticut

south of New York State. Nope. I don't know why. It is funny how the geography sort of gets jumbled up. Coalesces in your mind as you're driving through it. The other thing that you realize is that unlike any place that I've ever lived, the concentration of population in major cities

is so high, so much higher in the Northeast than anywhere else. Like once you get to like North Carolina, you're gonna be driving a while before you get to a major metropolitan area. But when you're up there, you're gonna go from like Portland to Boston, to Prov Providence to New Haven to New York to Philly to Baltimore to DC,

like there's just a bunch of big cities right there next to each other because it's where it all started, you know? How long were you in New York City? So we get to New York in the afternoon and you know, we're the McLaughlins, so we did not plan any official tours. Let me just say-

You're talking about New York City, not New York State. New York City. You should plan official college tours. I'll explain it in a second. If you're gonna do, if you're gonna, because with this campus in particular, it's a pretty secure campus. And when we tried to just walk into it,

we were stopped by a security guard. He was like, you can't just walk in here. I was like, well, he's been accepted here and he's just like, no, I mean, no, you can't do that. It has to be like an official thing. I was like, okay. So we ended up traveling into Manhattan. Scaling a wall?

Traveling into Manhattan and spending the night and then setting up a tour for the next day to drive back out of the city to go to this school for an official tour. So that was a little bit of a hiccup in our travel schedule, but it didn't really matter. So that night, I'll tell you about that in a second, but that night we go to Lower East Side, New York,

which just happens to be where we end up staying like every time we go to New York, which is a great spot, really high concentration of great restaurants and stuff. When you have an 18 year old with you, you can't go into bars and you can't like go into comedy clubs. There's a lot of things that you can't do

when you have somebody under 21. And I was like, oh, this is interesting. I haven't thought about this. But what you can do is go to restaurants. So we like did the whole food tour-ish type thing where you go to a restaurant and you just get a couple of things and you leave and you go to another restaurant and get a couple of things.

This style of vacation has really opened a whole world to me, this road trip vacation where you just drop into a city and eat a couple of things at a few different restaurants. It might be my new way of vacationing. It's just, I don't necessarily mean a full like top of the nation to the bottom of the nation road trip, but it might be like, I'm gonna land in one state, spend a couple of days in this place,

and I'm gonna go to this other state, this other city, like this dual city thing. I'm definitely floating this idea with Jesse. Well, you're getting ready for Europe then. That's how you can do Europe. So we spend some time in Manhattan, have some great food. Then we go back, we do the official tour, which was illuminating,

because we've done some unofficial tours. But when you can get into the buildings and stuff and you don't have to wait until a student opens a door and then run in behind them, it's much better. And then you also get to ask questions to people who have experience at this college. Okay, yeah. So I was like, oh man, like this is,

lesson learned for Shepard is what I kept telling Locke. I was like, okay, well me and Shepard do this. I'm gonna do it better than I did it with you. Okay. And you don't have to do what I did. If you have a kid, do official tours. You're probably already thinking that. Now, I knew I wanted to drive to Philadelphia.

And again, we were gonna go to Pat's and Gino's and eat a cheese steak from both places. Oh, both places. So the thing was to take Locke to this place where I've got this experience from making this video in 2008. Yeah. On the Alka-Seltzer Great American Road Trip.

And I was like, we're gonna taste these cheesesteaks and then you're gonna help me determine which one's the best. And then we're gonna get the t-shirt from the place that we think has got the best cheesesteak. But, I hear a but coming. So we go to Gino's first, okay? And-

The flashy one. Flashy orange color, you know, he's the one that's like the big personality, bit of a controversial character as well. I think he had a sign on the door for years that was just like, if you can't order in English, don't order at all or something like that. I think it's since been taken down.

But I was like, okay, but these are the classic cheesesteak places, we're gonna get one from both of them. We get up to Gino's and immediately the guys who are cooking the steaks back there who are not old enough to have worked there since 2008, these guys are in their 20s. Yeah. Are like, Rhett, Rhett from the video.

From the video. Yeah. Oh wow, they all see the video. So it's not like Rhett from Good Mythical Morning, it's just like this video apparently is something that if you work at Pat's and Gino's, you've seen this video. And so then they were like, he knows what's up, he came back to the right place. And I wasn't about to say,

I'm going to Pat's right after this. So we get one cheese steak. Now, first of all, Locke's a little bit picky, okay? And I kind of knew this was gonna be a little bit difficult for him because I was like, the way that they suggest you order it is with Cheez Whiz. And he was like, dad, I can't eat something

with Cheez Whiz on it. Like he just won't do it. And so I was like, all right, well, you're probably right. Let's get the one with provolone. It was just better anyway, right? That's what I thought. So we get like, you know, he has a special way you have to order it.

They're not as strict at Gino's as they are at Pat's about saying and all in the right order or whatever. But we get it and we split it and we eat it. And first thing I'm struck with is like, this is not that great. Let's gonna be honest with you. I'm like, I've had a lot of great cheese steaks and I've had a lot of good sandwiches.

And I was just like, this is just not that great. But it's pretty good. But if I made a cheese steak at home, if I threw something together with some good bread and some cheese steak meat, I'd be getting pretty close to this, right? And Locke's like, yeah, it's good. It's always pretty good.

So then we go to Pat's and I went around the back to try to, I didn't want them to see me just go over to Pat's. I felt a little self-conscious. Yeah, because they had a bill. You chose the right place. Because you can see them from each other. Yeah, oh yeah. That's right.

Because there are two adjacent corners. Yeah. So we go over to Pat's and first thing I do is I order from the wrong window, like a moron, because there's a drink and everything else window and there's a cheesesteak window and there's a cheesesteak window. And there's a very particular way and you're supposed to say it in order.

It's kind of a little bit of a, I mean, at this point. It's a pain. It's part of the like- It's a test. The vibe. They make this thing with provolone. I gotta be honest with you. Like the prov, at Gino's, they put the provolone and the meat together and it kind of melted.

At Pat's, they put the provolone and the meat together and it kind of melted. At Pat's, they put the provolone on after they put the meat on there and it was just like not melted into the meat. And then- So it wasn't good either. We sit down, Locke takes one bite and spits it out. Oh my gosh. And I take a bite and I'm like, oh gosh, this is-

This is actively bad. Oh my gosh. This is actively bad. I remember Pat's being better. That's what I thought. I'm just saying, and again, you can't- They've gone downhill, man. No, I have a theory and I have a conclusion. I have three conclusions I came to on this trip

and one of them is about Pat's. Okay. My theory is, now the thing that you see all on Pat's, all on the advertising is about how they're the first place, they're the guys who invented cheese steaks, the original. That's what it says all over, and there's like all these different fonts or like written many different times in many different ways.

If you've been doing something the same way for, I don't know, 50 years, well, the American palette has been transformed significantly and people are eating better and better things. As Locke said, and I wholeheartedly agree with him, he's like, dad, the Big Kahuna from Jersey Mike's is like five times as good as either of these sandwiches.

And I was like, you are 100% right. The bread is better, the meat is better, the cheese is better, the way they do it is better. If you're just doing something to do it the same way, and let me tell you, no crowds at either place. I didn't have to wait at either place. I bet it's only tourists too. So here's my conclusion, and I hate to throw it,

listen, I'm a fan of what you've done. I'm a fan of the tradition. I went there, I purchased a steak. I did not get a t-shirt from either place. I didn't feel like either place stood up to it. Oh, there you go. It met the standard. My challenge, my conclusion is that one of the places,

Pat's and Gino's, if they actually want to end the cheesesteak wars once and for all, they need to publicly admit that it's time to change and they need to reinvent their cheesesteak and do it in a way that reflects the evolution of the modern palette. And they need to bring out a new cheesesteak and be like,

listen, we did it the same way for 50 years and now we're doing it the right way. And all of a sudden the other place will be leveled. Something has to change. The other place will never recover. If you got the kahunas or the kahones to do it, do it. That's my conclusion. When I was in North Carolina, we went to Highway 55,

formerly known as Andy's Cheese Steaks when we were growing up there. Got some new facilities next to the Bojangles in Lillington. It's better. That is a good cheese steak, man. It's better, it's better than Pat Sangino's. Yeah. I came to two other conclusions that I'll fold into this

because the other one happened on the same day. I had noticed by this point that there were multiple times when we needed to use the restroom. Okay. When you're traveling, you need to use the restroom. And when you're in a city, there's no public restrooms. There's no public restrooms. And there's so few public restrooms in America.

But you're always eating at a restaurant. At Pasadena's, they don't have a bathroom. Mm. We had to piss. We've been drinking lattes, man. Big lattes. Yeah. Eating cheese steaks, drinking Pepsi or whatever it was.

I think I know where you're going with this. I gotta piss, man. And then we start talking about like, I mean, I had to piss so bad, am I gonna find a place to piss? And it's like, you can't do that because you don't wanna get arrested for public urination. That would be bad.

That would be bad look. I would love that for you. And then I was like, I actually think I could live this one down. I think this might be good PR for me because it's not real serious, but I was like, you're right. So we actually had to do this in New Haven.

And then we had to do it again, where you go into a place and you purchase something in order to use the restroom. So in New Haven, we went to a Subway and got a cookie so we could use the restroom. That hurts. And in Philly, we went into an Italian restaurant and I asked for one garlic knot.

Apparently, you can't get one garlic knot, they gave me four. So four garlic knots or one cookie equals one urination. Basically, I want the bathroom special. Yeah, and we did eat the cookie and we did eat all four garlic knots because why not, you've got them there. And then I came to a conclusion.

I was like, this didn't happen to me when I was in Australia because everywhere you go in Australia, there is a toilet that you can put a coin in to access, a public toilet that requires a little bit of money to use, paid public restrooms. Now, whether they're free and when they're subsidized or whether they're paid, America needs more restrooms. They need more public restrooms in cities.

I just don't, I don't get it. I think they could turn all of the defunct pay phones into little walk-in closets. I mean, remember in Amsterdam, you'd walk around this like spiral thing to the center and then you would pee and from your shoulders up, this is a six foot tall person, from my shoulders up,

I was just looking at the landscape. Yeah. At the urban landscape. Yeah. People were peeing. I can make eye contact with people while I was peeing. No, I don't like that. But you couldn't see me peeing, well, you could see my face. You might have seen me peeing. And tell that I was peeing. I don't know.. But you couldn't see me peeing, but you could see my face. You might have seen me peeing.

And tell that I was peeing. I don't know. And you could also see my shoes, and some of them, I think. And I think there was like a toilet there. But yeah, and there was no door, it was just kind of like a snail shell. What ends up happening- I love that. What ends up happening in American cities,

and I'm sure this happens around the world, but homelessness is a big happening in American cities, and I'm sure this happens around the world, but homelessness is a big issue in American cities and it's only gotten worse through the pandemic. So you've got these unhoused people who gotta use the bathroom somewhere. And so, but these restaurants are like, I don't want this homeless person coming in here and messing up my bathroom.

And so you gotta purchase something to use the bathroom, customers only. And then it creates situations where the homeless something to use the bathroom, customers only, and then it creates situations where the homeless people are using the bathroom, sometimes on the street. You know, in LA, there's like, they'll bring like a porta potty or something like that out there, but. I thought you were gonna say

that you were gonna get like a Go Girl. Like one of those things, well, for- Oh, I have one. For girls. I didn't bring it though. It works in such a way that- No, I have a wide mouth. I mean, I'm not bragging. Nalgene. I'm not bragging.

You have a pee Nalgene. No, I have a thing that is glows in the dark. I talked about this before on a camping trip. Non-potable Nalgene. It's a glow in the dark thing with a handle that you can pee in during the night while camping. I love that idea. And I should have just brought that.

Should have brought that. But you could have bought- We would have one per person. Yeah, but you could have bought like a big container. Well, here's the other thing. The third conclusion I came to. That's the thing you need. The third conclusion I came to,

because I love these things, is one of the things they have in the Northeast is these travel centers. You know about the travel centers? Yeah, like a truck stop. But it's a rest stop that has a whole, it has multiple things. It is a gas station, a convenience store.

It is a electric car charging station. And it is a food court with like a Starbucks and a McDonald's and a KFC, multiple plate and then a bunch of places to sit and of course, really nice, very large, very clean bathrooms. It's like a capitalistic rest stop. And I just gotta say, we need more of these in the United States.

It's just because- This is the platform you're running on. Coin operated toilets and travel centers everywhere. It's just such a missed opportunity. Like rest stops are okay, but like the travel centers just make you feel so American. Okay, well, I mean, go as long as you want, but we're still in New York state.

Oh yeah, yeah. Well, you know what? The pacing of my conversation goes with the concentration of metro areas, which again is very cluttered at the top of the country. Okay. So from there, we drove- Well, I guess we were in Philly.

We drove to Washington DC to spend the night. Oh. This may have been the highlight, okay? And let me just say, DC? I wasn't expecting DC to be the highlight. And you know, I've been to DC many times and I've seen all the monuments and the stuff that you see. And it's just like, it's always kind of cool,

but it's not like- I can't guess why DC. Well, I'm gonna blow your mind. It has to be the food, obviously, it's all you did. Well, so Washington DC has great Ethiopian food because there's a very large Ethiopian population. It's really known for some great Ethiopian foods. We picked like the best place.

I knew this was gonna be a little bit of a stretch for Locke because again, he's picky and picky people don't like to venture out into places like Ethiopian food. I think I would like Ethiopian food. So it's essentially a bunch of meats and vegetables and stuff put on this big pancake and then you take another piece of the pancake and you pick it up and eat it.

It's exquisite, I love it, but it's the kind of thing that I don't wanna do it all the time. And it was like satisfying, great, whatever. Well, we had some plans for the next day. I'd originally planned that we were gonna wake up early and go basically see the monuments, right? We stayed in a hotel pretty near the mall,

the Washington, the mall, and he thought that was, until I clarified, he thought that was like a mall mall. No, this is not a mall, son. We're not shopping. This is a place where all the monuments are. But then I'm looking, it's like 10 o'clock at night after we finished, we had gotten there late, we ate a late dinner, got some dessert at another place.

Again, we would like go to two different places. That was the MO. And I'm like, these monuments are open 24 hours a day and there's lights. That's cool. And I was like, let's go see all of them right now in the middle of the night. It's a good idea.

So we took an Uber to the Jefferson Memorial, which is on like the far side of the Tidal Basin, which I didn't know that's what it was called, but that's the giant lake there in the middle that all the monuments are around, right next to the mall, that's the Tidal Basin. The shallow swimming pool? No, no, you're thinking about the long manmade thing

that's directly between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. I'm talking a giant lake. Oh, okay. So we go to the Jefferson Memorial and there, and again, it's probably like 10.45, 11 p.m. at this point, there's one family in the Jefferson Memorial and they leave. So we have the entire Jefferson Memorial to ourselves.

And I never- What are you gonna do with it? Deface it. No, we were talking about how there's all these cameras and there's cops around. Not that we actually wanted to deface it. But I've only ever seen this stuff when there's a bunch of other people and it's like hot

and it was like cold. It was like kind of uncomfortably cold. And that made the crowds really low. People were like, why am I going to go in the middle of the night when it's cold? But these things are designed to be seen at night. The lighting is incredible. And there's like this solemn sort of feel.

And I was like, this is going to be amazing. So we go clockwise around the whole thing. So we stop, so like Jefferson Memorial, and then there's like, there's other stuff that I hadn't ever really seen before. Like there's a whole FDR section, and then there's a whole MLK section, which is amazing. I think that might be the most recent one.

That's newer, yeah. Haven't seen that. And then going around hitting the Lincoln Memorial, which there was probably like 10 people there. Like you can't get the Lincoln Memorial to yourself. There's just, it's just too popular. But like, we like sit, we stood up there on the stage and we had just seen the Martin Luther King Memorial.

And then we go stand exactly where he stood when he gave his speech. And we're just exactly where he stood when he gave his speech. And we're just talking about like, when he gave this speech, like if you could have told him like, "'Listen, you're gonna be remembered as this great man. And no matter the fact, there's gonna be like a 40 foot statue of you over here,

almost within eye shot. And you're gonna be killed for saying these things, you know, by the government, most likely." You know what I'm saying? It's like the, it was just kind of surreal and Locke and I were like having really great conversation about a lot of things, but I got this weird feeling of,

I'm gonna use the term patriotism, but let me contextualize that. I'm gonna use the term patriotism, but let me contextualize that. You know, our country is so divided, like so like viciously divided right now, right? Yeah. And like people on both sides of the argument think that the people on the other side

are legitimately evil, right? Like that's the point that we've gotten to. Like we've gotten so polarized that we think that the other group of Americans is evil. And there was something about like being there at this time and seeing these, and listen, our country is just riddled with, it's a complex, complicated history.

Like I said, the fact that you've got this giant statue of MLK right next to the place where he spoke. And then like, we know for a fact that the FBI didn't want him to be alive, you know? And so we know that there's so much complex history. But something about being there at night and seeing these things that like, we did this thing, we started this country and it's supposedly built

on this principle of the equality of all people. And we put these things in this giant grassy area to like symbolize this. And it was just, there was just something kind of moving about it. And strangely, like the sense of hope that like, obviously like looking at the Washington Monument, it isn't like the fact that we can build this giant-

Obelisk. Obelisk into the sky means we're gonna get through this, but naively maybe is kind of what it made me feel. I was like, all right, we're gonna get through this and this big giant ass thing is gonna still be in the air. But aside from- So it worked. Aside from my, yeah, the propaganda, I told Locke, I was like, the propaganda is working very well

for this guy. Like I'm very susceptible to marketing, but the whole thing is just marketing America. And I was like, you got me. Like, I believe in this principle, equality for all people, let's make it happen. Let's come together and make it happen. But regardless of your political affiliation

and what you think about what I just said, let me just tell you, go see him at night. Go see those monuments at night. It's just awesome. Locke told me that it was a highlight of the trip for him. That's awesome. He had no idea that it was even gonna happen. It's like you're going up to each one

and you're like, where is the food in this one? Okay, so the distance traveled each day is about to increase. We drove to Charlottesville, Virginia. My nephew, Locke's cousin, goes to UVA. We took a little tour of UVA. Cavaliers! What a beautiful campus, by the way.

I love college campuses. I love the idea of college campuses. College was a great experience for me. And I love just that, just like this city kind of just exists for this university that's been here forever. We went to Edgar Allan Poe's dorm room because he went to UVA and they still have it like preserved in a way that he would have had it when he was there.

And you can like look, the door is glass and you can look into it. Met several mythical beasts at UVA. Then we continued on down, we actually picked up Eli, our nephew, brought him with us to North Carolina. He needed a ride. Okay.

So we took him to North Carolina. We met the family, you know, my family, my parents and my brother and his family all hung out at the new cabin that we got in North Carolina. And we also picked up Shepherd to now take Shepherd all the way to Miami. So it's three McLaughlins now. That was the plan to pick up Shepherd,

leave Jessie in North Carolina. She's like doing some design work there. She's going to like the High Point furniture thing. She's like living her best life in High Point. And then Shepard, so Shepard's coming with you. Yeah, and I told the boys that first stop- Is a latte. Well, yeah, of course.

So after the lattes, but the second stop is not the, but a creation museum. What? Uh-huh, yes, sir. Thank you to roadtrippers.com. Again, I used that service again, still paying for it. So you must have gone- Nobody reached out to give it to me for free.

You left North Carolina and you went to where? Where is a creation museum? Southern Pines. Southern Pines, North Carolina? Yes. So the Creation Museum, the Ken Ham Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky that has a full scale Noah's Ark.

I haven't been there. I would love to go. I love this kind of thing. I didn't know Southern Pines. Sidebar, if you know my story, I used to be a Christian. I am no longer a Christian. One of the reasons I'm not is some conclusions I came to about the historicity of the Bible.

But creationists and hardcore creationists like young earth creationists believe, and this isn't all Christians, it's a fair amount, but not all, believe that everything you read in the Bible is true and Noah's Ark was a real thing and Adam and Eve were a real thing, evolution didn't happen, people-

True literally. Yeah, true literally. It is a literal historical account, right? And so when I heard that it was a creation museum in Southern Pines, which have you been to Southern Pines? It's where, I mean, there's a golf course there that's really nice. So it's near Pinehurst where some of the best golf

in the world. Southern Pines is true to its name, a bunch of pine trees in like this very historic, quaint town. What is that the Creation Museum there? Well, the Creation Museum is in a Christian, that's the name of the sign, the sign says the Christian Bookstore.

That's the name of the place. It's inside a bookstore? So you go into the bookstore and then immediately down into the left, there are steps that go down and you can obviously tell you're entering into like what feels like a Southern rainforest cafe kind of vibe. Because essentially it was this pastor who has since died,

but they've kept it alive. They've kept the museum alive. It is basically a collection of taxidermy of everything you can imagine. What? And also a collection of taxidermy of everything you can imagine. What? And also a bunch of tools. So it's the Creation Museum and the Tool Museum. And it shows up on like roadside attraction type stuff

because it's so- Quirky? Quirky. Well, these are just normal animals? There's like a North Carolina section, which is like everything that you can kill in North Carolina, there is there on display. But there's also just like mostly American things. So it's just like, look at all these,

God made this animal, look, God made this animal. But then there's little exhibits. Like pretty early on, there is a cabinet that is a glass cabinet and there is nothing inside of the cabinet. And on the top it it says inside this cabinet is all the credible evidence for evolution. So it's things like that.

But there was a little snake with an apple inside the cabinet, which was like Satan, the serpent inside the cabinet. Now this guy was like serious about all this. Like he didn't necessarily have a sense of humor about any of this. And I didn't know how the people who currently run the Christian bookstore were going to feel about this. Cause I didn't know how the people who currently run the Christian bookstore

were going to feel about this, because I'm obviously coming in there as a guy who's like, I disagree with everything that you're talking about. It's wild, man. But I'm fascinated by this mentality and I understand it because I've known so many people who believe this, that this will be a fun thing for us to do. And I'm not going in there to make fun of them to their face.

I mean, obviously we're going in there and be like, what, this is crazy. We're kind of laughing, but I'm not gonna laugh in their face. And I was also like, you know, how much does it cost? And they were like, whatever you think it's worth. Huh. And so I did drop 20 bucks into the donation thing.

I'm like, I'm gonna come here and I'm, and I'm, you know what? I'm gonna send a lot of people to you guys, because if you're in Southern Pines, go to the Christian bookstore, look at the Creation Museum, it's fascinating. There's a whole section, it's kind of crazy how much crap this guy collected.

He collected these tools that I didn't even ever really figure out what it was, they looked like levels. He was really, like he's got all these old, certain type of tool. Like found, like antiques. But a whole bunch of the same thing, like hundreds of the same thing. And I'm like, I don't even know what this thing is.

I'm afraid to ask. But you're not a placard reader. But there is a section where you'll go down a little hallway and come to this like glass case. And it'll say, these are the things, these are the other gods that the world worships. And it'll be like country music. What?

And then it'll be like a guy on the front of a muscle magazine or like a woman, but not a woman in a bikini, but like suggesting like these are the other things, but then mixed in with the vices. So country music, muscles and sexiness. But you know, the worldly pleasures, but mixed in indiscriminately where the worldly pleasures

is like something that represents like an African tribal religion. Like, so like other religions, like Buddhism. So like, you gotta understand, I totally understand this way of thinking. I used to kind of think this way growing up. You thought that all these other religions were essentially like satanic expressions of things.

They weren't like somebody's like heritage and the same type of thing that you had done and come up with your own deal. You thought that they were wrong and you were right. And so you could put them along with all these other vices, like worrying too much about your body or caring too much about food or caring too much about music.

And the boys were fascinated. They were just like, what? I don't, they couldn't process it. They were like, I don't understand what he's saying. I'm like, no, well, let me understand. He's saying that everything outside of God and Jesus, as you understood in a very particular interpretation of the Bible, everything outside of that is wrong.

That's what this guy thought. And that's what a lot of people still do think. It's the source of a lot of strife. And you gave him $20. And I gave him $20, right. So we saw the Creation Museum, highly recommend it. And then we were on our way to Florence, South Carolina to stop at this hole in the wall barbecue place

that I'd read about. But little did I know that kind of coming from Southern Pines and getting to Florence, South Carolina, we were gonna go right past south of the border. This was an unintended stop. So if you've ever been on I-95 going from North Carolina to South Carolina. You got sucked in, huh?

You see, well, you can't not stop there when you're on a road trip with your kids. Yeah. Now you see all the signs that- Every mile there's a billboard. Let me just, I'm just gonna go ahead and just give you an idea. Stop and see Pedro, the mascot. This is a,

definitely highly racist stereotype of a Mexican man named Pedro who wears a giant sombrero and has a mustache and is welcoming you to South Carolina as if you're passing from America to Mexico. It was somebody's grand idea many, many decades ago to have this Mexican themed play land. There's a motel there, there's a putt-putt place there. There's a giant Pedro with a giant sombrero tower

that you can go into. Yeah. So we stopped there. How is it still- It's not doing well, man. I mean, we literally were inside the souvenir shop and the power went out. Like it just, the whole place just went black.

I guess they shut down while we're here. We witnessed the end of South of the Border. Wow. But the boys, again, you know, they're growing up in much more informed times than we did. And so like, they're just like, dad, this is like so racist. I'm like, yes, son.

I did not realize that when I was your age, but you've been educated differently. So we decided to not get a t-shirt. I was like, I, you know. Okay, yeah. I don't really want to play into this whole thing, but it's still there. And it's become a little bit of an artifact.

Yeah. In and of itself. But we were gonna go to this Hole-in-the-Wall Barbecue place. Now, I just heard about this place. I'm actually, I'm torn with mentioning it because the barbecue was very, very good, but the guy is like so politically, like he's really just set himself up.

His barbecue place has become like a political statement. Oh. So you can find it if you want to, you don't have to do too much research, but I won't give them the free advertising, but the barbecue was impeccable. Really? Mustard-based?

It wasn't, so mustard-based is kind of isolated more to the Columbia area and we weren't going through Columbia. And so I was, they had a mustard base that you could put on things that we did kind of get, but the barbecue, we got pulled pork sandwiches and they were pre-sauced, but sauce in a good way and just pretty finely chopped. So very similar to North Carolina in that there's,

like it's not pulled pork, it's chopped pork, which is not my preference if I'm doing it myself. Yeah, me neither. I like to make whatever I'm eating in the moment my preference, because I have a lot better time with it. So, and I did that and it was exquisite. It was great. It's a food truck that is next to a dining facility, like a dining room.

Mm-hmm. On just like this random road. Like a shelter. No, it's like you could have put the restaurant in here, but you didn't. Because you want to drive it away. But there's a pool table in the middle of it and Fox News was on, on the television.

And then we set, we all purposely set right next to, because we were the only ones in there, a giant picture of Donald Trump. The picture was so big that when you're next to it, it was like, you couldn't even tell what is so pixelated. Like you could see that they had printed this thing out and they did not have a picture that was large enough. The resolution of the Trump picture

wasn't large enough for this sign, but it says it's got Republican with a checkbox, Democrat with a checkbox, and then Trump with a checkbox, and it's checked Trump and hasn't checked Republican or Democrat. Wow. So that's the statement that this guy's making. And there's a lot of other questionable paraphernalia

and some stuff on the wall and that kind of thing. But the thing is, is that, that is what the South is in a lot of ways, right? Like if you get outside of the cities, that's the mentality that you're gonna run into and to a lot of the people. And I was just basically just telling the boys, I'm like, man, this is where I come from.

Like, this is our background and this is the barbecue that they make. And I'm not gonna just not go there, you know, because they've identified with this racist asshole. But you know, it was a little bit of an eye opening experience, but they also kind of loved it in a sense, not love what that dude stands for and what the mentality that those people have,

but it's almost like going to a foreign place. Yeah. You know, when you live in Los Angeles, you don't get to see that, you know? Right. And we have the privilege as three white dudes just rolling through the countryside. I'm not worried about my safety.

I might get some side eye because of my hair or whatever, or the clothes I've got on. Yeah. But I'm not gonna, my life is not in danger. I don't feel unsafe. I don't feel like I need to make sure I'm in my hotel before the sun goes down. Right.

Which if my skin was a different color, I might feel that way. So I recognize the privilege of being able to like go and experience these things in almost like a historian, like an observer, like a journalist type way, because I can just come back to my bubble over here in Los Angeles and not have to see any of this stuff. But great barbecue if you happen to figure out

where it is based on what I just said. We stopped in Savannah, Georgia. Again, now you're talking, like you see how quickly we're moving, right? Yeah. So we go from North Carolina, we're in North Carolina, we eat lunch in South Carolina, and then we're in Savannah, Georgia for dinner.

Savannah's cool, isn't it? Savannah is awesome. I know Birmingham is really cool. Savannah is a different thing. Savannah, I don't think I've ever- It's on the ocean. Oh yeah, we've been, university, no, have we been? I've been to Savannah before,

but I don't know if I was with you. I think I've been to Savannah. Savannah is everything that you imagine in terms of like the deep south with the mossy trees and the humidity, again, the temperature had changed significantly by the time we get down here to Georgia. And it's basically, there's a small part of Georgia that's on the coast and Savannah is there.

There's like Augusta at the top and then Savannah. Okay. And Savannah is old and beautiful and it kind of has a little bit of a Charleston meets New Orleans kind of like, there's a high concentration of really great things to eat, lots of things to do. There was like a music festival going on.

There's like soul food, Southern cooking restaurants on every single corner, right? And of course we didn't know where we were gonna be there. So I'm not doing any reservations. I'm just like getting there. And maybe there's a place that I've researched ahead of time but like we like walking into places and I was like, we don't have any tables

but we did find a place. And I just wanted to give you, this is what we ordered just to give you an idea of the food. We had low country mac and cheese with shrimp and sausage. Oh. That's what Shepard got. I got gumbo and grits,

which had everything from gumbo and cheese grits. And Locke got country fried bison. And we just kind of shared it all. Country fried bison sounds strange. It was like country style steak, but bison. So it was a little bit leaner. It was incredible. Wow.

I highly recommend Savannah. And that's when it started to hit me. I was like, man, me and Jessie would have a good time. Me and Jessie would have a better time than me and the boys are having here. Because it's got that sort of like, there's a little bit of romance in the air. It's supposedly the most haunted city in America.

So if you're into like the ghost tour of it all, there's a bunch of people going around on like, on a ghost tour, basically. Okay. Just so much history there. And then we ended up spending the night in Jacksonville, Florida. So we got all the way to Florida

from North Carolina to Florida. Again, it's like so much more time passed. Oh wow. Or much more mileage under our belts in the second half of the trip. We spent the night in Jacksonville, which by the way, I learned is the largest city by area in the continental United States.

It's 840 square miles. Jacksonville, Florida is 840 square miles. Is it on the coast? Yeah, it's on the East Coast of Florida, at the very top, basically right when you get into Florida. Okay, yeah, I've only passed through there, but I guess it did take a while. Don't feel like I gave Jacksonville its due.

We just got to a hotel late at night and stayed there and then got a latte and got out. The latte was pretty good, but we wanted to get to St. Augustine. Oh, the oldest city in America. Yeah, so St. Augustine was- My dad's been there a few times. He always talks about how much he loves it down there.

The grass. I could totally see your dad loving it. And I gotta say the sort of middle-aged white dude in me kind of loves it too. Like there's something that kind of draws you in. There's old houses, there's golf, there's grass. Yeah. You should see the blades of grass down there.

The food in all these places you're getting in just like the best food in America, you know? I mean, in St. Augustine, you're kind of getting your, so St. Augustine has like a Spanish influence. I learned so much history. I didn't understand how old St. Augustine was, but they basically like built that mission there like a few decades after Columbus.

Like we're talking about 1530 or something like that. They're basically like, this is a town now, Spaniards. And then I also didn't realize that the Spaniards owned Florida until the 1800s. Did you know that? And maybe the late 1800s. It's weird. I just didn't understand.

I don't, I didn't, we didn't take great history and I didn't pay attention to it. Well, you got the Louisiana Purchase. Yeah, that was when Louisiana was purchased. We're talking about Florida. And then Florida was after that? Florida was like one of the last things on the East Coast. It was the last thing on the East Coast.

There's a weird thing that happened with Key West and like the Confederacy at some point. And the Confederacy like used the fort there at St. Augustine, which we toured at some point during the war. I don't know, man. It's a cool place. There's a lot of history there,

but we were heading to Miami. And this is when we started. We actually had been listening to this ahead of time, but I'm gonna go out, I'm gonna break this out. This is my rec for the week. Okay. Have you heard Keith Whitley's Miami, Miami? Yeah. Which is his number one song.

It's actually bigger than when you say it best, you say nothing at all. I don't know it that well, but I know that it sounds like he's saying Miami, Miami. Miami, Miami. Is gone or something. He thought she was gonna be gone, but he's in LA. The thing is, is that he's in LA and she's in Miami

and he's on a plane to Miami to see her. Miami, Miami loves me after all. It is an amazing song. We listened to a lot of Keith Whitley. We got into- Tearjerker, he died. He died at 34. Yeah. We'd listened to a lot of Keith Whitley. We got into, you know. Tearjerker, he died. He died at 34. Yeah.

We'd listened to a lot of Keith Whitley. The boys were really into Keith Whitley. I don't know what he died from. Locke said alcoholism when he looked it up on Wiki. That's sad. So we started playing like Miami. Great voice. Like you're driving towards Miami

and you're playing Keith Whitley. It's just, everything is falling into place. Much better than the Will Smith Miami route. Yeah. Still a fan, but I never liked that song. Well, speaking of songs, I talked about this in the AMA that we did the other day for the Mythical Society,

but I love to play music that is regional. Whether it's, you know, if we're heading through a town. So like Dawes has a great song, St. Augustine at Night, which we listened to in the morning because that's when we were in St. Augustine. We kind of hated that we weren't there at night, but that's a great song. But listening to Miami and then we're heading into Miami,

but I had a little surprise plan. And that was to stop and take a fan boat on the Everglades. No, really? Oh, you did that? And I did it. Oh man, I'm so jealous. That's the one thing that I've wanted to do before I die. Yeah, well, I've always wanted to be-

Now you can die. I've always wanted to be on a fan boat and I didn't know whether- So you made plans. I made plans and I almost didn't get there in time. Man, so the Everglades are really big and they start pretty high, but they end in the bottom in Miami. So you're gonna take a fan boat to Miami?

No, so I was basically, there was multiple locations, but I was like, I'm gonna drive to the one that's next to Miami. So we're kind of like almost done with our day and we do this like late afternoon fan boat ride. Oh, okay. And shout out to the people at Sawgrass Recreational Center.

They have a little reptile zoo and then they have the fan boat rides and there are a few mythical beasts on the staff there. and there are a few mythical beasts on the staff there. And we, I learned some things. So we get, it's just the three of us and the dude operating the fan boat. How many seats were on the six? There's three rows of bench seats with no seat belts.

Oh. No, there's nothing over you. It's just like a bench and you just gotta hold on. And so Lock and Shepherd sat in front of me and I sat behind them. It's super loud. They give you earplugs. Oh, we didn't wear them because we're in Florida.

We'll lose our hearing, it's fine. And then it's super loud, but he's like, he's lived there all his life. And he's explaining, I'm like, so you guys have like, first of all, we're gonna see some gators. He was like, yes, he's lived there all his life. And he's explaining, I'm like, so you guys have like, first of all, we're gonna see some gators. He was like, yes, we're gonna see some gators. And we did.

And he was like, they're active at this time of the day, it's mating season. So we probably saw- Gators mating? 12 alligators in the wild, some really big ones. And then he was explaining, we said, have you ever seen a mating? It was like just the other day,

they were mating when I showed up and they rolled into the water. We didn't get to see any gator sex as much as I wanted. I think they charge extra if you see that. It's like a little retroactive thing, but then- It's like putting a foot into a gator boot. And then, but I'm asking him about, I'm just kind of noticing that it's all water.

I mean, yes, there's a whole, it's like two feet of water and there's a whole, it looks like land, but I can kind of tell that it's all water. There's no like land. And he's like, yeah, the bottom half of the Everglades is 600 square miles, not as big as Jacksonville. Maybe it's 6,000 square miles, that makes more sense. Oh, so you didn't have any of like the Cypress trees

or whatever those trees are. Right, he says, that's the land that's gonna have some trees and stuff is further north. And he says, and that's where all those invasive pythons are, the ones that have like taken over the whole Everglades because of people letting their snakes out, their pet snakes. Oh, wow. He said, I've only seen one down here ever

because they want some land. But then he likes telling us about the history of this area because there's also this invasive species of bird. He was like, yeah, like in the 90s, there was a hurricane and this bird that's from another place in the world got out from some zoo and now they all live around there and the gators love to eat them. And so like, it's just cool to see like the ecosystem

and how, I guess how screwed it up it is. Were there paths or, because there was like reeds everywhere, but paths, right? We were going through some obviously natural sort of canals but there was one really long straight canal. I was like, now this isn't natural, right? He says, no, actually a hundred years ago or so, the Army Corps of Engineers decided

that they were going to drain this and put cows here. And so they put the cows out here and it was an absolute disaster because it was like super muddy and they couldn't keep pumping the water out. And so then they just let it fill back up. But one of the things that happened is there are these little tiny pockets of land,

like I'm talking like big enough to put a house on, that people could come out and claim. So he took us to this island and there was this island that we didn't go on, like we drove, we rode up to it. And it was this house on this island. What? With this giant Trump flag, of course, like this is Trump country.

And this guy has just set up his, he lives out there full time. Off the grid, no power, of course. Off the grid, he has his own like, I think he's got solar panels or something. But like, he's just his land. Because like you could, at some point in the past, you could just claim it and they got grandfathered in

and never had to pay for it. And so he's like, yeah, this guy is like 70 years old. He's retired, he lives out here and he bought a fan boat from us from the place that I got the fan boats. And so he has his transportation on his own fan boat that he goes back and forth on the land, just living out there. Completely isolated.

Surrounded by alligators, by the way. Surrounded by them. Wow. It's wild, man. So if we had to do it again, you'd be up to go to the Northern Everglades because it's a different experience. Yeah.

Where the woods are. Yeah, I mean, I'd also do that again. I mean, I don't know. I may be going back to Miami a lot. Locke hasn't made a decision about school, but that was the final destination was to tour the school and he's interested in Miami, which we toured and it was beautiful.

But the last piece of the trip here is, so we, oh, that night we go, we went to Miami Beach, which again, if you remember the geography of Miami, there's a pretty giant downtown that's on the coast, right? And then there's an island that is out from the coast, which is where the real beach is. And that's like where we stayed at the Fontainebleau

and stuff like that when we did that event. Okay, yeah. And that's where the real beach is. And that's like where we stayed at the Fontainebleau and stuff like that when we did that event. Okay, yeah. And that's where like the beach is because there's not much beach at all. Cause it's pretty much mangroves that come all the way down to the water in most places. So there's not really a shoreline except like a traditional beach,

except Miami Beach has a heck of a beach. So that's where we went, you know, when we stayed in Miami Beach. Yeah. We did the night swimming. Yeah. So night swimming was on the agenda. Oh.

Now, we ate some incredible food. Miami has so, the food is so good. We ate at this like, it was like Cuban Peruvian fusion or something. I don't know what it was, man, but it was unbelievable. It may have been my favorite meal of the whole trip. And then food on this trip, I just love eating so much. I should have a show on Food Network.

So Miami, enjoy it while you can before it all goes underwater. Yeah, that's what I keep thinking when I see it. I'm like, man, you know, this is not gonna be around, but it's around now. And we go to the beach and I was like, guys, one of the best experiences in my life is night swimming.

And one of their favorite songs is night swimming. We have songs that are like tied to everything and the boys, it's all like- REM? Yeah. And so I was like, all right, we go down there. Now, I don't remember what time of year it was when we night swam with Stevie and Ben and Alex,

and not Alex Punch, but Alex Alexandrov. Yeah. But it was hot. It was hot. And the water felt like a bath and you couldn't tell the difference in the temperature between the air and the water. Not so much the case in early April when we were there.

So Lot was scared of sharks and it didn't feel great. It felt great outside of the water, but it was kind of a little chilly. Like when the bath's a little bit too cold kind of situation. Okay. But I was like, well, you guys have to get in and sing at least the first verse and chorus of Night Swimming

and then get out. So they did that. And then that was the last. So what we were supposed to do, night swim, then go stay in our hotel, then tour the campus. Couldn't get an official tour, but this campus was an open campus. So we could tour it anyway.

Official tours were like booked or not available on a Saturday. But there was a convergence of events. And that is that we knew that Carolina and Duke were playing each other in the final four. That night. That night, Saturday night. And this is the night that we're supposed to come back.

And I bought these flights a long time ago. Now I'm super conflicted because I'm an NC State grad. I do not like Carolina. I do not like Duke. I do not like Carolina more than I do not like Duke. But this is like watching, as I said on Twitter, the two popular bullies in school fight. It's like, I don't like either one of them,

but I'm showing up for the fight. Yeah, even I watched it. Right. And if you don't have any context for this, I mean, this was the most important college basketball game in the history of college basketball. This is what might be the biggest sports rivalry. I think it was actually voted the biggest sports rivalry

over the Red Sox and the Yankees by Sports Illustrated back in the day. I don't know about that, but it is for us the biggest thing. And they were gonna be playing literally at the same time that we were on the plane and getting off of a plane and getting onto another plane. And I was like, Locke is a huge fan of basketball and he really wants to watch this game.

I'm a huge fan of basketball and kind of want to begrudgingly watch this game. So you pulled an Eric Church. I changed the flight. I was like, we're gonna watch this and we're gonna fly out in the morning. So yeah, we didn't have quite the repercussions of Eric Church's, Barbara quit scratching over there.

What are you doing? Why you gotta be a troublemaker? Why can't you be like Jaden just sitting in my lap the whole time? So we changed the flight. We watched the game. We watched the game late. We watched the first game, the Villanova,

another Villanova, whatever the first game was. I've already forgotten it. It was Kansas and whoever they beat. Can't remember. And watched that first game was, I've already forgotten it. It was Kansas and whoever they beat. Can't remember. And watched that first game in a bar. And then we were like, we're at the second game, we're gonna watch it in the comfort of our hotel room so we can get as loud as we want,

even though we're not really, I wasn't, Locke was pulling for Carolina. You were pulling, you better be pulling for Duke. So, a very interesting thing had happened to me and I talked about this on Twitter. I saw your tweets and I was like, what's going on here? Well, here's the thing. I've lost some of my,

I think that one of the things is, for many years now, I've been able to step outside of the real passion and emotion that I have around sports and understand that it is fake passion. That it is the way I feel about sports and the competitiveness of like, if NC State's playing somebody, the way I feel, like my brain and my body

doesn't know the difference between a life or death situation in NC State sports. Do you see, that's what sports is like for someone who really cares about it. Yeah. And I understand from an outsider perspective, that seems crazy because it is definitively crazy to care that much to the point that years are coming off your life.

You're doing things that are bad for your health. Maybe getting yourself into a situation where violence happens because to other people or maybe to a wall because you care so much about this stuff. And something about being in LA and also my life filling up with so many other things that like, I'm just like, I still care about this, but it's really hard

to get passionate about NC State athletics when it tends to be just a marathon or merry-go-round of disappointment a lot of times, right? So, and especially when it comes to basketball and you live in the shadow of Duke and Carolina, all these people in my family go to Carolina. My wife went to Carolina, my brother goes to Carolina. My nephew goes to Carolina.

Locke wanted to go to Carolina, but he's not. And so, and I was also like, I want to see Coach K go out with a win because I used to be a Duke fan when I was in high school for no other reason than I just like picked a team because they were good. And I was like, I'd like to see Coach K go out with a win. But then you just kind of look at this hobbling

North Carolina team where they've got seven guys who play. They got this new coach, Hubert Davis, who I like as a person. They're playing hurt. They're an eight seed. It's just like, it was hard not to pull for them. But in the end, I was, I got to a place where I was literally 100% indifferent to the outcome, but still nervous at the same time.

Like I had this weird, anxious energy watching it. And I was like, you know, if Carolina wins this game, it'll be, it'll be crazy. If coach K wins this game, it'll be fitting. And like, he'll go out on a high note. And so in the end when Carolina won, I just kind of felt just an empty nothingness. And I was like, I changed my flight for nothingness.

I altered my entire schedule. I paid extra money so I can watch an emotionally just non-gratifying, you know what I'm saying? It was just such a weird thing. I was like, I'm so glad I watched this historic game, but I got nothing from it. It was like eating a burger that's made out of newspaper. Oh.

That's what it felt like. Well, I don't want you to end your entire trip account on that front. I mean, why don't you end on something else? That was the end of the trip. But let me just say, we had an incredible time. Some of the, you know, I couldn't, I've already gone for an hour and a half,

but some of the conversations that we got into, like we got so tickled, like there are now, like with Sheppard being 13, the nature of the conversations and the funny things that we talk about and the way that we make each other laugh, it's just, I really value that time that I have with them. We just have a good time together.

You're on a 13 year old level. Yeah, right. It's like, we're all now on the same level. And so, boy, we just talked about so much weird, philosophical, existential, funny stuff. And just, you know, they're both very passionate and have a bunch of opinions about everything, just like somebody they're related to

or two people they're related to. And I just had the best time. And Locke and I, the funny thing is, is Locke and I had such a great time. And then the very first night when Shepard shows up, Locke's like, Shepard was doing something, like he was getting in the shower and he like left something. I was like, don't do that with the towel.

And Locke was like, Shepard, don't screw up our system. Dad and I have a system that we have established and you can't be messing up the system. I was like, I'm proud of him. I didn't even tell him it was a system, but he picked up on the fact that we had a system. We were in a rhythm. You used the top half of the towel,

he uses the bottom half of the towel? Yep, well, usually there's two. But yeah, Shepard was invading on the system a little bit, but he eventually fell in line. Well, I'm glad you guys had that. You know, it's something you'll never forget. And if you do, just listen to this podcast. And that is the thing I was thinking about

as I'm experiencing something like a trip like this. I'm like, man, there's an impulse to write it all down because you take pictures, take video, but you wanna encapsulate the whole thing. Well, you know what? Hold that thought. Cause I think there's a lot there that I do wanna unpack. And there's something that I've experienced

that I hinted to you a little bit that I think leads to an entirely different podcast that I think you should re-access that. Okay. Let's put a pin in that. But that's why I didn't write it down because I was like, I'm gonna talk about it for an hour and a half

in great detail. Somebody just needs to transcript it so I can read it as an hour and a half in great detail. Somebody just needs to transcript it so I can read it as an old man. Let's just post it online. Yeah, let's do that. As audio and video. Again, My Rec, Miami, Miami by Keith Whitley. And Keith Whitley as a general recommendation,

just a guy who was doing some very special, specific country in the time that he was alive. In the 80s. In the 80s, and then he passed away in 1989. And did you know that he actually had a, he and Ricky Skaggs were in a bluegrass act together, and if you listen to Keith Whitley eventually on Spotify, because he doesn't have that many hits

because he didn't sing for that long, you get down to the album where he and Ricky Skaggs did and his voice is completely different. Doesn't sound like Keith Whitley at all. That's strange. It just sounds like a dude singing bluegrass. Barbara wasn't with us. Say goodbye, Barbara.

Bye bye. Hashtag your biscuits. We'll see you next week.