Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - Camping Builds Character | Ep. 345

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Soren finally makes it to the mysterious mining claim his family has owned for decades, bringing his son along for a character-building trip through the Colorado mountains. They find the land and solve an old family mystery—then Soren’s boots fall apart five miles from camp. The boys also debate what to do with 3.2 acres they can’t build on, eventually landing on a surprisingly lovely solution: give it back to the world. Follow the guys on Bluesky!https://bsky.app/profile/danielobrien.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/sorenbowie.bsky.socialBonus episodes 2x/month at patreon.com/quickquestion OR Apple Podcasts

It's got a quick, quick question for you all right. I want to hear your thoughts. I want to know what's on your mind. I've got a quick, quick question for you all right. The answer's not important. I'm just glad that we can talk tonight. So what's your favorite? Who did you get?

If there's an answer, they're going to find it. I think you'll have a great time. It's quick question. It's the show. Soren, I'm jumping right into it this week with a food question. What is the best food shape? Keep in mind. Burritos, hot dogs, French fries are all technically tubes.

So your options are square rectangle, like sandwich type stuff and anything else. Yeah. You've got your triangle pizza. You got circles. That's your donuts and bagels. You got tubes. Nugget is a shape unto itself. Yeah.

What do you think? What's the best? What's got the best things in their shape? It's tubes. I think it's tubes, too. 100% tubes. Because you say sandwiches are squares. That's not true.

The very best sandwiches are tubes. Yeah, they're tubes, yeah. I was going to get you with that. I was going to roast your ass. The other things that are tubes that I, and you wouldn't maybe think of them as tubes first, is spaghetti. Pastas. A lot of pasta tubes. I would even say Yoki, that's a tube.

But obviously there are some that are not tubes. Some that are... That's so true. Shells aren't tubes. Don't like shells. Elbows aren't tubes. I mean, elbows are tubes. Yeah.

Or botei pasta, I mean. Yeah. I was... To expand the conversation a bit, is there... I think... if I could have my druthers and convert more foods to different shapes. Because there are two separate questions. One of them is like what shape has the best like team of foods underneath it?

And that's tubes by a mile. And then I thought like if I could get what shape would I prefer more things be in? That's a different conversation because I don't think I want a tube of pizza flavor, even though like hot pockets exist. Calzone, I suppose. I don't know if I guess this maybe doesn't. Calzone might be its own, you know, pocket foods. Yeah.

I feel like are their own shape. I do feel like we, we, it is an error that more things, uh, don't, don't eventually become nuggets. Just a little, a small thing of flavor that I could dip into whatever kind of sauce that I want and eat it that way. And like, if I could have five pasta nuggets that I could dip into marinera, that's a nice little movie theater snack, take, take some fucking pizza nuggets to the ballgame. You know what?

I'm realizing now that one of my favorite parts about weddings is the hors d'oeuvres that get passed around. and I would conclude all of those things in nuggets. A baby keesh, I would include it as a nugget. I would include the crab rangoons. All that in my mind is nugget. And boy, do I love. I feel so fancy.

And when I get to have the whole bite of food, everything I'm supposed to taste in that thing in one go. Sushi nugget. Sushi's nuggets. Yeah, for sure. So maybe, boy, you know, if it's an uncut sushi, it's a tube. but if it's got sushi, it's a nugget. I'm in a role, anyway.

Oh, boy, I'm feeling like nuggets actually starting to take the lead a little bit. Wow, this is huge. Because I do enjoy that things that are in tubes, I prefer the aestheticness of that. Like the way that I eat a tube feels right. It's like you're never going to run into a situation where it's beyond the corners of your mouth when you're eating tube. And I like that. I don't like a Klondike bar versus an ice cream bar. An ice cream sandwich.

Ice cream sandwich too, but like a Klondike bar, that's square. Sometimes there is nothing I want. I want to say the good things first. Sometimes there is nothing I want more than a hamburger with some fixings on it. It's just like I think about it all day and I need to get a hamburger. It is a horrible design. for a food. Slider, which is nugget, is good. Greatest. But like a burger, it's never exactly the, like each, each bite isn't identical. And there are some bites that are just worse. And

sometimes you're working on a burger and you get to the last bite. And the last bite is like, oh, this is just like the elbow of the meat and some bread. I've already gotten all of the the accoutrement out of this. So now my final bite, my lasting memory. memory of this burger. The thing I'm going to take with me to Dreamland is just scraps. Yeah, it's the bread with a little bit of mayo still soaked, soaked into it. Before Dreamland. So you're, you're eating a burger and then immediately taking a nap. I'm wondering what I would, if I would like it, if someone offered me a two burger, a burger on a hoagie roll or something like that. I wonder how I would,

I can't even imagine it. Maybe our kids could do it. I think now if I went to some restaurant and they were like, and I ordered a cheeseburger, and they gave me a hot dog bun and inside it a tube of ground beef and some bacon ground up in it. I'd be like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Now, like, that's how we do it here.

And it's like, sure. My parents will never be okay with nuclear power. I will never be okay with a tube of beef served. me. It's just a generational thing. I think of all the tubes, though, I think hot dogs are weighing them down a little bit. It would be nice to get rid of hot dogs from the tube because

the ratio is automatically off. Anytime you have a closed, like the bun is one thing as opposed to two, then you've got I mean, obviously it gets more structurally unsound if you were to separate them. But the bites themselves of a hot dog, you're

really dealing with all the fun stuff on the surface. You get the meat, And then you've got, you've got to, it's just a chore to get through the bread at the bottom of it. And then meanwhile, you know what's perfect? Little cocktail hot dogs paced in a blanket. And that's a nugget. Or you go to, Wetzels, pretzels, or Annie Anz, and you get mini corn dogs. Oh my God.

A sack of mini corn dogs. That's nuggets, baby. That's nuggets all day. I think a corn dog might be pocket food. I don't even know if, it's going to be tough to determine whether that's tube or pocket food for me. Let us know on Blue Sky. Let us know in the comments. We don't need anything other than pocket or tube.

Just say pocket or tube to us for a while until this bit plays out. And then we'll have our answer. Speaking of Nuggets, Soren. Denver Nuggets. Wow. Speaking of Denver. Colorado, Sorin. Hit me.

Yeah. I got big updates about Colorado. Con of Sorin's of the show. will remember that I was going to a mining claim with my son, some formative experience for my child and my brother's child as we hiked across the mountains of Colorado looking for a mining claim that belonged to my dad. Now, in case you haven't listened, I'll just do a quick recap. My dad had a good friend that he grew up with and they went to college together and then they were climbing the 14 years together. 14 years or 14,000 foot peaks all around Colorado.

and it's a big deal to bag all of them. When they were doing this, they report, and they were like, we should buy land here. And their big plan was to buy land at auction. They were going to, site unseen, see, just like, go get land. And they'd be like, we'll deal with whatever happens afterwards. His buddy Hawk did do it. Bought land for, I think, like $60, $3.2 acres for $60.

It turned out to be a mining claim, which doesn't mean you can't build on it. You've got surface rights, which means you can build on it, but you've also got mineral rights, which most people don't even have it thrown homes. You can't dig in your backyard for lead or like what I don't know, it grows in the ground in New Jersey. I would assume it's lead, right? I certainly have done digging in my back. There must be like a depth that I'm not allowed to hit. Well, you're not allowed to excavate. Yeah, you're not allowed to mine.

And so we had both this problem. property. Hawk had both these things. Hawk tragically died in a climbing accident with my dad when they were in their early 20s. I only knew my dad as like a guy grieving the loss of his best friend. Very sad. That land then went to Hawk's family and then Hawks family slowly died as well. They gave it to my dad. And then I didn't even know this thing existed for a long time. My dad had it for probably 20 years before I knew about it. And then when my dad was dying, he had his buddy in the hospice with him. And his buddy was like, are you going to give the boys the mining claim?

My dad was like, oh, I didn't even thought about it. And my brother and I were like, the what? And he told us the story. They had, he and his buddy Stacy and his other buddy Eric, they had gone up there, found the land. They had put up a memorial to Hawk that said, this is his land. he was a neat guy who liked to do neat stuff. And it was really beautiful. And it was a cool memorial that they had put up there for him.

They said that they then went to visit it again and couldn't find it. They went maybe in like the early 80s and they couldn't find it. They thought somebody had torn it down. Just a quick comedic sidebar because it's been a minute since I've made any noises. It's funny to me that your dad's friends are named Eric and Stacey. and he has Stacy, the man. Yeah. Yeah.

And your dad has two sons, and the firstborn is named Eric. And I'm sure when the second one was coming around, Stacy was like, they're going to, will this one be me? And I was like, no, no, no, no, no. Stacey is way too crazy for a boy's name. They were like, we're naming him. We're naming him. And Stacey was like, come on, come on. Soren.

Incidentally, the thing that Hawks do, you're out, Stacey. You're not any part of any of this. I'm surprised you didn't name me Hawk. That's interesting. I guess maybe Hawk was too crazy for them. Yeah. But, yeah, the land was past my dad, and then he gave it to my mom, I think, and then my brother and I did, but with the intention that my brother and I would have it.

So now my brother and I actually own this land. for a long time property taxes on this thing were like real low just like 60 bucks a year and then all of a sudden in 2024 it shut up to $600 and we were like oh no like this isn't just a fun thing to hold on to anymore now it's like we need to know what this this is so my brother and I planned a trip with our two eldest with my son and his son because they're at age where they can do some backpacking and we boy did we ask them to on this trip um And we were going to go see it. We just wanted to go find it, see it.

And then also see if we could find that memorial, too, since they couldn't last time. Well, Daniel, I'm going to report that not only did we find the land. Hold on. Before you get into that, is pizza circle or is pizza triangle? Pizza is triangle? Okay. All right. Yeah, except cafeteria pizza.

Yeah. And it's worse to eat. Yeah. Because they're square. And then there's also circle, like the circle that's not. cut, terrible way to eat a pizza. I think the way that you would ingest it is triangle. Yeah. Okay.

And so we found the land. And not only that, I figured out why they didn't find it the last time they went up there. So I unsolved, or unsolved, I solved a family mystery without the help of the people who were there. I'll tell you about this trip because it's really fun. first of all there's a an unfinished road that goes up there

but an unfinished road in Colorado means that it's just these giant rocks and boulders in the road and you're driving over that you need a very specific type of vehicle you need an ATV or you need a rigged Jeep with the tires aired down so that you can actually get up there aired down means you just take the pressure out of the tires

so that they kind of grip the rock a little bit better and then also they don't pop. okay we were not prepared to do that we weren't also I think rental cars they may attract where you go in a rental car it's so that when you bring it back they can be like oh fuck you you went to you went to 11,000 feet in this thing no um so we rented a car with a pretty high clearance but we drove to where we thought there would be a place we could camp this and uh the place we camp was called mammoth gulch in colorado it's not too far from Denver, but it's, it's primitive camping.

It's just like flat space is all it means. There's nothing else set up other than that you could, it's flat enough in areas where you can put a tent. We got there and it was lightning and thunder and torrential rain. And the kids were like, so are we leaving? My brother, I'm like, no, man, this is the best. This is the best camping. You're going to learn something here.

Man, man, your brother is a liar. We were Calvin's dad in Calvin and Hollis about camping very much. So we're like, you're going to build character here. This is what it's going to be. My brother and I, in our 40s, if we started backpacking it, it was raining. We would say, you want to, so do we quit? And I was like, yeah, of course we quit. This is not.

I've learned enough. I had enough gear for the boy that he could be in. I had rain pants and a rain jacket for him. And once he was in that gear and he realized the rain couldn't hurt him, he was like, yes. I'm the kid. I've dominated the rain. And we set up camp the next day, we looked at the map again, tried to figure out how far it would be.

And in looking at the map, I realized that they had marked out a trail. They'd marked out how they got there when they did it, I guess probably the second time, because they had the claim marked on there. And based on the topography of it, I was like, wait a second. This isn't what I've seen from the, like, the Gilpin County. treasurer or whatever who sent me basically a rundown of where this place was.

And so I'm matching up the topography and I'm like, they're off by about a tenth of a mile. Like they're in a slightly different area. I think that claim is actually over here. So the next morning we woke up, we hiked up there and boy, did those kids complain because it was, it's a farm. hiking. We asked them to do a lot. We were not, they're not in full backpacks because we can leave all

that at camp, but they're in day packs. And we made them hike the whole day, probably 10 miles, which is a lot for a little kid. Are they carrying their own water in their daybags? Or are you handling that? They're carrying their own water. Fuck, man. Yeah. And they, they were upset with good reason. Why? But it's also steep, too. So it's slow going. And we hiked it, got to it, and started kind of looking around. Went to where they'd originally thought it was.

And I was like, yeah, this isn't it. And went back. Oh, the other thing is that in the picture that I have of my dad sitting next to the shrine, my dad is like 22 in this picture. And you can see some landscape behind him. You can see a peak. You can see a saddle. into another smaller peak and you can see kind of like some ridges and stuff.

And so I brought that with us so that I could line it up like I'm in zero horizon. I mean, what's that? Horizon Zero Dawn. Yeah, Horizon Zero Dawn where I've got to like match it up to get what I want from it. And so I'm like finding it and then I find this this ring of iron rock. So it's like a really deep red. the circle of it that's the exact same size of the shrine. And I'm like, this is it.

It's like I get down in the position and I line it all up and it is exactly right. This is the spot where they had done it. This is the property, which was very exciting. Clearly somebody did take it down though, which is a huge bummer. I don't know why someone would do that unless for service or somebody didn't understand that this was owned land and they were like, you can't build here. And so they just took it down. I'll show you really quickly.

Sorry for everyone who's not there. That's the land. Beautiful. Yeah. So it's above Timberline. I'll paint a picture for you. It's not as, it doesn't appear to be as steep as it actually is here in the picture. It's hard to get that in the angle.

But there's some grass growing up there, some tundra grass. And most of it is just sheer rock and scree around it. So you can't really build. build there or anything. Some people have done some excavations, some minor excavations to see, because I think that there are mines around there as well. So yeah, we found it. We found the spot where we had a really nice moment where we found like Hawks Memorial or what was left of it. And then there's a peak right behind this called Kingston Peak, which is like 12,200 or something like that. And we're like, let's go up it. And the kids were like, no, fuck you. We're like,

Oh, come on. It's just, we'll scamper up there. And that took like another hour to get up there. My son, to his credit, was like really game for all this stuff and would do it and would not complain too much. But he every once in all, he'd be like, hey, when we stop next time, is it okay if I lie down? I was like, yeah, man, that's fine. We got to the top of this peak. It's beautiful up there.

We took some good pictures and stuff. And then the souls of my boots fell off. Yeah. Holy shit. Which was terrifying because it's not a thing I had even considered was a possibility. Of course not. And could potentially be life threatening. Yeah.

You're at the top. We went as far as we were going to go. And it's pretty far. Right now we're about five miles from camp. and we're on a very rocky scree, which is just these like sharp, awful rocks. Now, often when we've gone backpacking, we have at least packed like slides or trail runners,

which you wouldn't hike in. That's like when you're done and you're camping at the end of the night, you can't be barefoot, but you can't spend another minute in your boots. So you have like an alternate, very light, weight thing. That's at least like some protection between your foot and the earth. Did you bring that to this trip? And did you happen to bring it up? I brought them on this trip. I brought some great Brooks. They were sitting in camp.

Hell yeah. That's the way to do it. Back in camp. And so one of them came all the way off. The other one came half off and was just like flopping around. And I was like, fuck, fuck. I don't, I'm, and now I'm trying to think of like, how am I going to get back? And I asked my brother if he had superglut. We always bring first aid kits. So we both had one. And I was asking him if he carried super glue in his. And he was like, no, I do have some back at camp.

And I was like, not helpful. No one seemed as worried as I was. But I think I was taking in the full weight of what was about to happen. We travel with so much emergency shit every time we backpack. And I'm trying to think if anything in those bags could solve this problem. And I don't think it could. Like, we did solve it. Maybe like you wrap a bandage around the whole shoe to try to secure the soul in place.

I love that you're, wear your heads at. That's exactly what we were thinking. We ended up using athletic tape. Yeah. I wrapped athletic tape around the toe to keep the front on. And then for the back, the heel has a little bit of a raise to it on most vibrant souls. and I wrapped around that, you know, like where the gap is with the soul and then the heel. There's like a little tiny gap where it doesn't touch the ground.

If it has a little bit of a raise to it in the tread. I wrapped underneath there and then up around the back of the heel and just tape the shit out of it. And still, I was on ice skates. Like these things are moving. Yeah. Every time I'm not on solid ground, I'm shifting on top of the soul as well. And the tape is snapping and stuff like that. So we go back down that way, and I've got these terribly cobbled together boots.

And all I'm trying to do is keep rubber between me and the ground. The bottom of the boot itself, in between the soul and what I was wearing, was kind of like a soft nylon almost. So it was not, you couldn't just like take these soles off and be like, oh, this will be fine. Yeah. So we taped it up and headed back down. And it was slow going for me for a long time. And then I was stopping every once in a while to retape. And that's all I'm thinking about.

Like I'm not enjoying the view anymore. I'm not having fun. I'm not trying to build up my son's ability to get back down. I'm not helpful. I'm just like, I don't want to be left up here. because the other option was what my brother goes back to camp and then hikes it again with my shoes yeah which is now we're dealing with darkness and stuff like that yeah leaving the kids behind at camp leaving the kids at camp there were not a lot of good options um but ultimately they made it back

down which was great by then everyone was very excited like the kids got back down to camp after feeling like they were going to die they got back down to camp and we're sitting there in our crazy creeks and they're like well what do we do now I'm like are you fucking kidding you just spent the whole time talking about how you wanted to lay down in the tent

go lay down in the tent just relax. This is what camping is we just sit around and we talk and we relax and we listen to nature and we fucking feel one with the world we wait till our kids go to sleep and we drink whiskey we have gummies

just go to sleep aren't you tired? Yeah, so they were they were just kind of like up and ready to go again. The next day, I felt awful. You know, like it heals your feet are really sore. All the things that were like already hiking is you're going to feel sore and achy afterwards. But you are without even realizing it tensing a whole bunch of different parts of your leg and foot that you don't typically think about at all. Right.

And so it was, and also just the way that travels up the muscles up the muscles in your legs in weird ways because you've been like compensating in certain ways you're not used to. So I felt I felt pretty awful the next day. It was fine. My brother and I realized on the trip though how in our everyday lives we are not super, we're not like fastidious people. I can let the house kind of fall into disarray when my wife isn't here. I don't care about crumbs on the ground a ton. You can't with kids. You got a cave on a lot of this stuff.

We realize that when we camp, we are the most anal motherfuckers in the world. The way that we keep our camp together. And I guess it's because I got it from him because our dad wasn't this way. And he was on Mountain Rescue and stuff. He was taking us on trips all the time. He was not like this.

It's the two of us. And I don't know what it is. There's like this OCD just turns on when we're out there where everything has a place. Everything has its own. Stuff. and you know exactly where those things are. At the end of the night, you bomb proof the tent and you bomb proof like camp.

You make sure that everything's where it's supposed to be and tucked away. And we're trying to like instill that in our kids and they're like, why? And we're like, I don't know. I think the most surprising part of that is your dad wasn't the same way because it seemed like that, no matter what you are in your home life, it seemed like it would be universal to be suddenly anal about camping because when you, A, the gear is very conducive to that. Everything that you get, it's very, it's, it's, uh, it's very clear that you have lots of different pouches and stuff for a reason and things are supposed to go where they're supposed to go.

And you plan out how you pack based on when you are going to need things because you, you, you don't want to be digging through, you know, if I want a snack or something like that, I don't want to have to dig past my sleeping bag to get it at the bottom of the bag. So it's all like so intuitively designed and so intuitively packed. And the other reason is that you, you feel everything when you're hiking. So you just, everything needs to be in a very specific place so it doesn't hurt you in any way. I can't imagine an adult doing that haphazardly. That's really surprising. Well, he knew my dad, so there's certainly an elegance to packing in terms of weight distribution.

And my dad was big on that. But my brother and I, I don't know what happened. My wife can barely tolerate it when we go camping. Even like car camping, I'm like this. She'll finish with the leatherman. And then I see her put it on the ground. And I'm like, what are you doing? Did you just fucking put my knife on the ground?

And the blade is still out? or like she's and as it gets closer to night I'm like we'll just grab your head lamp she's like well I don't know where that is I'm like how do you know something are you you don't know where your head lamp is and I'm getting mad in ways that are not

fair to her and she's but she's to be right because she is like very cool about it and her defense most of the time she never needs to know where her headland is. No. And you think about any time you travel anywhere,

an Airbnb or whatever, especially with children, your shit just plops around. It's just everywhere. You've got stuff sitting on the bed that you didn't, because nothing has its own space. Yeah.

And so you're really demanding that somebody get to a location and create a space immediately for every single thing that you're carrying. And that it cannot leave, if it leaves that space,

it has to go right back to it. And that's not a fair, a fair ask of anybody. And so it was very fun listening to my brother in the tent, unloading stuff with his son and being like, you know, it's just a lot easier if you have a very specific spot for all of your things. And then you're going to know where they are. And then later, if anything goes wrong, you know exactly where that is. And trying to impart this mental illness onto his child. I felt that when my family just did like, we got a giant. for the whole family, Beach House in North Carolina. And this is exactly the kind of,

you know, it's a rental. It's exactly the kind of thing where like everyone's everything, you know, we're all, you're going to mix sunscreens. You're going to mix sunglasses and hats up. It's just you're going to reach because you can't find anything anywhere at any given time. And I, with my packing, would see someone close in my family who was looking for a charger.

And we're just like, well, I know. where mine is, and my charger is for my phone, which by the way, is fully charged, as it somehow is at all times. And if I give it to you, who knows what's going to happen to it? It's going to get mixed up with all the other chargers, wherever your charger is. So I'm just going to keep my mouth shut about this. Yeah, I mean, that's how I was feeling. And there were times where my somebody was even like, I don't know where my water is. And I was like, come on, man.

Like that's, that's, that's all we got out here. That's number one. Yeah. These things you've got to know. I don't even have shoes on my feet. My feet don't even have a floor anymore, but I know where the water is. I've been on camping trips with my wife before where we packed bags. We're going to go car camping.

It's not even like, it's not any important. Weight distribution is not super important because we're not carrying these bags on our backs for more than 50 feet. But we're going on a trip and I see her bag sitting at the door ready to go. And it's got gaps in it and it's lopsided. It's like it's misshapen like a Santa Claus sack. And I'm like, what the fuck? Can I repack your bag? Because I need it just, I need the waitress to be right.

I need it straight. I need those air pockets fucking gone. And like I'm also really particular about what you're allowed to bring, which is great with a kid. Because with my son, I could be like, here's what we're packing. You're going to wear this. You're going to have one other pair of shorts. is an emergency.

You're going to have one other pair of underwear is an emergency. And you can have like fleece pants and stuff for while you're at camp. But I'm not going to let, I'm not going to pack different outfits for different days. That's insane when I'm camping.

Sure. And I'm like, we're shedding weight here, buddy. And so, you know, I'm doing my best to give all this to my child so that he has to live with it. Yeah. When he goes out of the wilderness. But then it all turns off.

Once soon as I get home, I'm just the stuff as I take it out, still at this point my tent is sitting outside airing out i could have put it away four hours after i got home instead i'm just like whatever i can live out there for a little while can i mean that's where where you and i are different than that i will unpack at this point in my life it doesn't it doesn't matter i'd like to unpack as soon as i get home or within like two hours of being home getting everything unpacked things that need to get in the wash i want to get the that process started. And I want to put the suitcases up in the attic where the suitcases go.

I can and do do all that, but none of it matters because my wife is wired differently and is okay with suitcases just sort of existing until the next trip as far as she's concerned. We had bedbugs at one point in our life and now we are hypersensitive to that where and it works in my favorite because when I get home, I don't want to unpack immediately. I want to just be home for a little bit. And I will, we leave our suitcases outside. They are not allowed inside the house for a little while because we feel like somehow that's going to make a difference. Once the bugs see the landscape in the area, they're like, oh, let's just start a brand new life somewhere else in this town.

We don't need to go in the house. They give up on their failure. They have a failure to thrive and they just die. when they see that they're outside again, they're like, oh, no, surely there's nothing near us, and then they just curl up and die. So the other part of this trip that was my son was awesome on was both directions, our flights got canceled.

Going there, we had to get up at like 4.30 in the morning. We went to the airport and we were checking in, and they're like, that flight's canceled. And we were like, what do you mean? I was like, well, when's it, what's available? And they said, well, we do have a flight that's going, tonight and it will get in tomorrow morning. And I was like, we're going to Denver.

How is that? Like, oh, there's 11 hour layover in Las Vegas. I was like, well, we won't be doing that. Are there other airlines? And like, well, I don't know. So we went, we walked around to different terminals at LAX. We were like, who's got a flight that's going? And then we had to buy it.

It would have been better had I not ever bought a flight at all. If I had just shown up at the airport, but like, all right, let's see who's going. because I had to buy a flight on the day to go there. It was awful. Frontier is the airline. I don't mind saying they're terrible. Don't ever fly frontier. Don't ever fly frontier.

They're terrible. The other thing they do is that if you want to actually talk to an individual there, they're going to charge you $25. You have to use their app exclusively. You have to get their app, use their app exclusively to check in on your flight, check your bags and everything. If you wanted to go talk to somebody at a kiosk, fucking $25 a person. I don't think we as a society.

need to be coy anymore about talking shit about specific airline companies. All of us in the podcast and like public facing space who are afraid to name airlines, just go. I mean, they're all bad. So it truly doesn't matter anymore. Just like it's, yeah. Like the airlines aren't ashamed of it. So just go for it.

Just go nuts. They don't care. They were not willing. They were, there was no interest in helping us. And I'm with my, my boy. And so he's very good. about not complaining during that moment, letting me talk to them and just sort of like hanging back. As soon as I need to rush somewhere else, he's right there with me. He's just on it.

He's reading the room very, very well. And he can tell when I'm kind of like, this isn't good, this isn't good. And he's just sort of like hanging back. He's not like, well, what are we going to do or anything like that? And I know he's feeling that stuff because he was looking forward to this. And he's so cool. So on the way back, I was joking a lot with my brother about as soon as we got back to the airport. I was like, well, if I have a flight, I didn't, got canceled again. The flight back, they canceled within three hours of the flight, and they were unhelpful. The woman who was helping me, the woman who I was talking to, she was like, well, we have one tomorrow at in the night. It was like 10 o'clock at night again. And I was like, where are all these flights? Like, why are you

canceling these? And she goes, they say weather. And I was like, well, what does that mean? I think what's happening is that if there's not enough people in the flight, they'll cancel it because they're like, it costs us less to reimburse these people than it does for us to fly. And fuck them. Like, they'll figure it out on their own. So she again was very unhelpful.

I was like, well, if we stay overnight, aren't you obligated to give us a hotel? And she looks at somebody else. And the other person goes, yeah. Like I had,

like I had somehow gotten them. They weren't going to tell anyone. But I was like, oh, this guy knows. Right. Yeah, but you have to take the flight tomorrow. And I was like, well, what hotel is it? And I'm like, well, we're not even going to tell you until you accept. And I was like, well, this is shady as shit.

And so we walk away. We walk over to Southwest. And Southwest, thankfully, had a flight that was fabulously expensive. And so we ended up taking that. But after I had gotten that, that other flight taking care of. I've gotten my bag put away and everything. I see the woman who had been helping us, and she's on the phone talking to somebody,

and it was clearly unrelated to work, but she is crying and talking on the phone. And my first unhealthy thought was good. I'm glad that you're unhappy. Something in your life has gone wrong, and I'm happy about that. because you were not nice to me. And then your second thought was...

Foxhorn. I'll tell Dan about that. That was my second thought. Yeah, obviously, that's not a healthy thought. I didn't express that to my son. I didn't point her out to him. Look, Ro, look, this is what happens. This is what happens when you fuck with me.

Look. Look at that. Look at that. That's called consequence. Doesn't that feel good in your stomach? A thing I also learned on this trip, this last thing. I don't know if you've ever traveled. You have.

When you have a big backpack, you've got to check it, obviously. It's too big to carry. When you checked it, what are you doing with all the straps and shit that's coming off of that bag? Nothing. What do you mean? Well, they get caught and stuff all the time. I don't know if you've ever traveled like that before. and then gotten it, and then your bag is, like, cinched all the way down on just one side.

All the stuff hanging off, there's all stuff that's getting caught in belts on the way into the plane. It's getting banged around. I don't think I've ever thought about it. I think I just check it and everything worked out for me because it always does. Well, my brother discovered this. I think maybe he saw it on Reddit or something like that, but it is a brilliant thing that you can do with your bag. From now on, if you're going to fly with your actual backpacking bag, backpack,

go to IKEA and you get these blue bags. Oh, yeah, yeah. Zipper bags. And they fit, it does not going to look like it's going to fit,

but they fit a backpacking bag perfectly. Even a full backpacking bag, it's like an absolutely perfect fit. And then you just use that. And it's wonderful. And then your bag

is completely protected from everything around it. That's smart. Yeah, from all the filth on everybody else's suit. cases. All the bedbugs. Yeah, yeah.

Well, yes. Yes, it does. It's, uh, people, since you first brought up the mining claim a few months ago, people have taken to any available comment space to ask what's going on with the mining claim. When are we going to hear more about the mining claim? Oh, yeah. And as much as most of them, I'm sure, what they really meant was, what was it like flying? What do you can do you can do anything to complain about soren?

Let me tell you about the mining claims. My shoes fell apart. My flight got canceled. Is that helpful? I think what they really want to know is. Yeah. What are you going to do with it, if anything? Yeah.

Having seen it, it is gorgeous up there. And it's a lot of land. It's 3.2 acres, which I didn't realize how much that is. That's a lot of land. And it's breathtaking and incredible to visit. And there's absolutely nothing. to do with it. I also don't. Sourd, you've been to my house. You've seen my backyard.

Do I have an acre? No. Do I, okay. I have something. You don't even have an acre. Not even close. You have a fraction of an acre. I have a fraction of an acre. Okay, great. Then I also don't know how big acres are. That's good to know. And my brother and I were deciding, because first of all, we can't build on it. Building on it requires two things. First of all, some sort of way to avoid light. which I don't know how we do.

It's also at a such a degree up there that I think it's a slide area. I think that it's a slide risk in the winter. I think there's no way to avoid avalanches in that spot. And you have to get construction vehicles up there, which seems next to impossible. And the ground, I cannot stress this enough, it's fucking impossible to dig in. You need real equipment to dig in this ground because of how stony and rocky it is. And so if you were to even to level the ground, that job would be so enormously expensive and hard to do

that it's just not worth it. When I talked to land management in Gilpin County about the hypothetically if I was going to build, if I just went up there, my brother and I were like, well, we'll just do it on our own. We'll just chop down some deadfall. And we will build a cabin up here. Right.

Not allowed. Okay. Not allowed at all. In order to build in Gilpin, you have to have running water to the place and you have to have some sort of sewer situation. You don't have to connect to the city, but you've got to create a, what are those called?

Septic tank? Yeah, septic tank. And there's no, fuck, we're not doing anything. Getting water up there would be, I guess you could maybe try and dig a well, but that seems impossible based on the impenetrable rock. Anyway, it's not to be built on. We're not going to dig for gold up there.

You're not going to mind. We're not going to mind it. It's also so beautiful. The idea of trying to excavate that feels so awful. Will you sell it? Does anyone want to buy it? That's a good question. Every once in a while we get texts.

You know those cold texts that people send you for your house? We're like, Dan, you're interested in selling your house? We get that. We get people interested in the property just because they're interested in every single thing that they can gobble up. They've never seen it and they don't know what it is. just know that this is owned. So, yeah, the next time we get messages from those people, we'll be like, all right, what are you offering?

And if it's more than we're paying for the property taxes, then we're like, yeah, we'll sell to you. So anybody listening to this, if you want to buy this land, hey, we're up for selling it. You can own a little piece of beauty. It sounds like just a truly beautiful place for a data center or an Amazon shipping, hub. Oh, what would really be nice there is a gas station because there are a lot of ATVs coming up around there. We did have to dodge a lot of, some terrible doom buggies and stuff. It's a totally different culture that I'm used to. The outdoor culture, there's like, it's split into factions.

And man, those factions hate each other. There's like, they're the people who are every single day, they're like, we got to get in the outdoors. What they mean is, we're going to take our vehicle up somewhere high and then drive it back down and be like, fuck yeah we were out there and maybe along the way they're shooting guns at some signs of sure and then there are the people who are like I want to keep it as pristine as possible and some and a little bit of overlap between those two people where there's somebody who's like it's important that you maintain nature but occasionally I'm also going to kill a buck up there yeah you're like okay I that's more tolerable I guess but yeah it's it

there is very different groups of people up there the people there the people the naturalists who are like, fuck, this is great. This is what nature's all about. And then the people driving their doom buggies through the middle of it with giant fuck Biden flags. Yeah.

A real shock to see out there. For sure. It's such a conflict in me to be pretty strongly anti-gun culture. But I also, man, something about shooting signs seems way more fun than like going to a gun range

or doing anything else. else. That sounds like a blast. I wish I could just just like be different for a little bit. Just a vacation. Yeah, just dip your toe on the other side. They, we did hear a lot of gunshots while we were there. It's just people messing around out there. It's like, well, I mean, I'm hoping you're not just firing that off into the distance. They're actually shooting into something, but I can't say for sure. And they're not hunting. I mean, these are just

recreational gun use up there. Yeah. which wasn't my favorite a lot of people a lot of considering how specific and regimented I am about how you're supposed to interact with the wilderness and how you're supposed to interact with your things there I did not care for the way other people were doing it so

so you're happy to sell it you don't like the element that has moved into the area it's not for you I think this is a pretty this is this is a good resolution this is probably the best resolution that that this story could have ended up with honestly.

I, the thing we were really considering is donating it to the Forest Service, just having this be wilderness and sending, putting it back into the world so that it can't be owned, which I'm still like, okay, that sounds, that sounds doable. We didn't pay for this. We got it. So it was just handed to us. Yeah. Like, why would we sell this to somebody else who might do?

something with it. I don't necessarily want anyone to do anything with it. Let's just give it back to the world. Yeah. So that probably will be what we end up doing. Nice. Well, that's going to do it. So glad we got resolution on this.

Yeah. I'm glad I got to talk about food shapes for a while. I think we should. I think that's what we should clip and put on social media. I think that mining claim stuff is. We should. dig into it more because there's stuff that doesn't fit into any any category as far as I'm concerned there's slop which I think is maybe its own category slop's pretty good yeah there's a lot of

slop that's delicious I do I do love a slop I got to think more about it I got to decide if there's other stuff that I can't put into a category and then I'm going to have to come up with something new but I like the scientific classification this is going to be this is going to end up being the, it's going to pick up the torch dropped by when are they going to resolve the mining claim story. It's just going to be people for months who are like, when are they going to get back into shape

taxonomy of foods? Yeah. They promised. I listened to the whole episode. Come on. Is salad a slop? You've got inquiring minds want to know. All right.

Thank you, everybody, for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast, you can find more of it. And our Patreon, you just give us a little bit of money and we give you a little more podcast. If you like this theme song, that's by Me Rex, if you like this podcast in general, it's because of McKenzie Mazzel.

She's the one who puts it all together. She's got a podcast of her own called Don't Make It Worse. No, is that right? Don't make it worse. Don't make it worse. Yeah, don't make it worse. And a YouTube video, obviously. Goodbye.

So, bye. I don't know what's on your mind I've got a quick, quick question for you all right the answer's not important, I'm just glad that we could talk tonight so what's your favorite? Who did you get? When will I be? You need, Daniel O'Brien.

If there's an answer, they're going to find it. I think you'll have a great time, yeah. I think you'll have a great time. New.