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the weather allegra what is the weather outside it is 74 degrees and sunny huh it is 74 degrees

and sunny where outside what about it the temperature outside is 74 degrees and sunny

I don't know about that. The latest in sports.

Clarissa, how many did the old satchel strike out last night? Satchel Paige died in 1982. How many did he get? Satchel Paige is dead. He what now? Died. Who did? Satchel Paige. Oh.

I don't know about that. Even local news and pop culture. Bonita, what them boys up to across the street?

They are just playing. They what now? They are just playing. You say they're just playing now? Yes, they are just playing. I don't know about that.

Some people call it catfishing. Some call it to catch a predatory. In Jesus' day, it was called pulling a Judas.

What's the symbology there? Symbology? I'm sure the word you were looking for were looking for was symbolism what is this this need you have to be the smartest guy in the room

is off-putting you know what dude we can make a lot of money on this if you're making these

out of thin air i mean there's no overhead we're gonna be rich oh my god one hundo a day both of

bus 500 a week that's rich all right hello good afternoon and welcome everyone to a wednesday edition of tvtl the show that just might be too beautiful to live oh my god guys we are crushing it my name is luke burbank i am your host don't miss the sausage fest knocking my microphone over But trying to get the show rolling here Speaking of sausage fests I am joining you from beautiful Chicago, Illinois Right now Where it is absolutely spectacular

Oh ma, pa, it's just beautiful

It is colder than it was in the Pacific Northwest Which I departed from this morning But it is this beautiful kind of patchy clouds The sun is setting It is just an absolutely lovely place to be And I am very happy to have arrived here for episode 4091 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. It was an adventure getting to my airplane flight early this morning and then an adventure, an almost equally daunting adventure, getting out of O'Hare Airport.

Oh, and the adventure begins again.

Which is why this show is dropping down in your feed much later than usual. apologies for that. That is 100% on me. I endeavor to turn in an especially great performance today so that everyone will forget that the show is posting late because of my situation that I will explain in just a moment. Speaking of situations, Andrew found himself driving around Seattle with a complete stranger recently. I'm an excellent driver. So we're going to get the story on that as well. Oh, speaking of the longest running co-bro of the show, he may be best known for his depictions of the tall ships. He's Andrew Walsh, and he's joining me right now. Good morning, my friend.

Hey, Luke. I should not admit this to you. Yes, what's wrong? Good afternoon, my friend. Oh, did you say good morning? I didn't even notice. I did. It's so like... Meow. It's so ingrained. Did you say meow?

Now you're hearing things. Oh. I am so used to saying good morning, my friend, that I just... I worked really hard to start the show by saying good afternoon, because we're starting this recording Insanely late for us It is 4.09pm Chicago time As I am talking to you

Which is weird because it's 2.07 here What happened to the two minutes

So the time difference is two hours and two minutes

Famously between Pacific and Central time

This part of Chicago I'm near the South Loop Club Bar and Grill And that famously adds two minutes

Oh right by the vortex I was going to say that I shouldn't admit

this to you but it was quite the pleasure today i woke up later than much later than i usually would because i was up kind of late uh kind of dealing with this moisture that continues to seep into our basement or at least spread under the carpeting of our basement after a little flooding yesterday and i couldn't tell last night if more water was coming into the house or if these little contained areas of wetness on our you know underneath our wall-to-wall carpeting in the basement was getting worse or just spreading out i think spreading out anyway genevieve got us a couple of these industrial carpet dryers that are humming away uh i'm actually surprised you

could get your hands on those two men with the atmospheric river descending upon the northwest

those seems like they'd be in high demand they are absolutely shout out to aurora rentals um and i saw that our other friend got a dehumidifier from they still have that big old fake elephant oh is that the elephant so that's south of it genevieve picked these up and so i wasn't exactly sure i knew i'd seen aurora rentals the name around but i couldn't remember where so that's a bit south of us on aurora i know that elephant yeah i think that used to be a restaurant when i

was a little kid it's by the jack-in-the-box on 85th i think yeah and i think that elephant was associated with some kind of a like a like a sherry's or a coco's type of operation and then i think aurora rentals moved into that building and then i think since then may have totally renovated uh so i don't even is the is the elephant even there yeah it is or it was somewhat

recently because i know that i've i've walked beneath it many times but are you absolutely sure not to be argumentative that it wasn't the industrial supply rental company that put the elephant on the sign or created a full three-dimensional uh half-size life-size elephant

because when you see that elephant you know just like affordable cotton candy machine for your child's ninth birthday by the way it's amazing that what are we at episode 4091 andrew we're

finally discussing the elephant in the room oh the elephant on aurora the elephant on aurora

Exactly. So anyway, I I'm still smarting from some of my NBA all star game related mistakes recently. So I don't want to I don't want to sort of like, you know, commit my my entire reputation to this notion that that's the that elephant is associated with Aurora rent rentals. But I always think about them in my mind together.

Yeah, no, I think you're right about that, or at least they are right there in close proximity. Anyway, just to complete the point, which doesn't really need to be made at this point, but it was one of those mornings where I woke up. I heard Genevieve getting ready for work. I even heard her mutter a couple of times, like, oh, I'm running so late for work because she was working from the office today, and I'm just like, oh, super tired and just kind of ignoring everything, turning off my alarm without looking at it. And then when I finally woke up, it was like 9.17. Now, you and I usually record at 10 a.m., and I'm like, 9.17? and then I look at my text messages and you're like oh yeah sorry I'm stuck at the airport it's probably going to be even later than a noon dial-up or whatever you texted and I was like I completely forgot that we have a late dial-up today it was like a miracle from heaven yes I was so because I would have been so like groggy sounding and froggy sounding for some reason when I wake up late I just go ribbit ribbit all the time I don't know why it's just a habit but But anyway, so that was a little miracle that I woke up so late and then realized, oh, I still have a few hours to kind of wake him up.

And a few more hours than that, Andrew. Yeah. So you got in fact, almost too many hours. Are you sleepy again? Yeah. I've gone through the full circadian cycle on this this Wednesday. Check back in with me at the end of your story. No, I'm just joking. What happened? Why were you running late? Well, I had an early flight out of Portland today. Portland to Chicago. 7 a.m. flight. and my dad and I were working kind of fairly late into the evening last night, and then also I was a guest on the Talking Taco Time podcast, which we recorded at about 8 o'clock at night. I think that's coming out this Monday, by the way, so if you'd like to hear the same stories that I tell here told to a different group of people, you can tune into the Talking Taco Time podcast on Monday. But I decided to stay out at the Madrona Hill studio instead of going down into Portland to stay at Becca's house because I sort of had rationalized last night. You know, it was rainy and I was tired. And I also honestly wanted to see the last episode of Shetland, even though my dad had spoiled it pretty hardcore for me. And so I just said, you know what, I'll just get up a little extra earlier because I probably need to add about 15 minutes to my commute to make it from my place versus making it from Becca's place in Portland. So I was getting all cozy in my bed. And I said, OK, it's a 7 a.m. flight. I need to be standing in the airport at 6 a.m. I need to be physically in PDX. As Reggie Watts pointed out on Livewire one time, Portland is the only place that has adopted its airport code as also shorthand for itself as a city. PDX is the name of the airport, but people call it PDX all the time when they're talking about the city of Portland. I'm here in Chicago. Nobody says, hey, I'm just classic O'Hare. That's just how it goes in O'Hare or O-R-D, I guess, which is the abbreviation of O'Hare.

Although it's more complicated that they have two airports. I only know Portland as Stumptown. In fact, when you say Portland, I'm confused. I think of it just as Stumptown.

Because you were such a fan of the Colby Smothers.

You know it.

Procedural based in Stumptown.

We've talked about this so many times. I didn't watch that show, but Genevieve would have it on sometimes. And it seemed like whenever I walked in the room, somebody was working the word Stumptown into a conversation that I just don't think matched the reality of living in Portland. Nobody rocks like Stumptown. Like what? Do people say that?

So I decided not to stay in Stumptown last night. And so I was setting my alarm and I was thinking, okay, I need to be the flights at 7. And because I have all of that, you know, pre-check business and, you know, I generally don't check a bag. I've gotten the process pretty streamlined. And this might sound, you know, like a real recipe for disaster. But for me, being at the airport an hour before the flight is pretty solid. Like that generally means I'm going to actually be kind of sitting and waiting at the at the gate. But that's OK. I was like, OK, so that's the plan. So my mind was I need to get up then at probably about 430, maybe 445. I've got everything packed and laid out. I'll get up at 445. I'll take a five minute shower. I'll throw my clothes. I'll be out the door. And this is all going to work out somehow. Now, in that moment, instead of typing 4.45 a.m. into my phone alarm, by the way, I set two alarms, my brain just decided to transpose some of the various numbers flying around in my head and have me type in the numbers 5.45 a.m. exactly one hour later than I needed to be getting up. I put the alarm in wrong, and then I put the backup alarm in at 5.50 a.m. because I was already now barreling down this road of terrible, terrible cognition. And so I had two alarms set, one for an hour after I needed to get up and one for one hour and five minutes after I needed to get up. And you know how often when you have to get up early for something, you sleep kind of poorly because you're just like tossing and turning you keep thinking that you overslept you keep checking the alarm I actually made a note last night as I woke up you know at some point in the night I thought god I'm sleeping great like this is not even bothering me this alarm situation like I'm actually this is I'm feeling like a very deep and relaxing and

satisfying sleep here wait I'm confused you were having this thought almost dreamily while you

were asleep well you know at my age i'm never gonna sleep for like eight straight hours so even on a good night of sleep i'm gonna wake up and and roll over okay four in the morning so in the moment there was basically a moment probably let's say it's 4 a.m where i woke up long enough to sort of reposition myself and yeah sure and i remember having the pillow a little bit sure yeah exactly eat two of the mints two of the andes mints that i store under the bed i do a turn down service for myself at the house yeah and i remember thinking wow you're not even stressed about this wake-up call at all i had that thought andrew and then i got up to pee at about 5 20 and the thought went through my mind well you're already awake i mean should we just like start this thing and then i thought no man we're going back to sleep we're gonna go relax for 20 more minutes why not you

earned it luke and so it wasn't until so you were awake already past the alarm that you should have

set but then you went back to bed before the one that i had accidentally set right i had already at this point unbeknownst to me i've now slept through what should have been my alarm but i am still ahead of what in this point my brain still thinks is the right time for me to be waking up and i got back in bed and i thought you know yeah i'll catch you know i'll catch a few more winks and so at 5 44 i woke up now one minute before the alarm and i said to myself all right luke you know what um it's time to get up and so i turn the alarm off and i step out of bed and something in my brain clicks and i think well it's 5 45 a.m right now the flight's at seven how does this math work and i realized in that moment that i had made a in the words of most of the cast members of arrested development a terrible mistake and i

just started saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, looking around my room, just going, no, no, no. Like, I just didn't really know how to process. For all of my disorganization, I am actually a very, a pretty competent traveler, and I do not miss a lot of flights. I've been, you know, I've been in a bad way many a morning in some hotel somewhere, and I always get to my flight pretty much like this is this is not my move and so i my my first thought was to do the quick math and go okay i'm 45 minutes from the airport so that means the soonest like it and i'm by the way i'm in my like shorts and a t-shirt and my hair is sticking straight up like um uh the character in eraser head and so i'm thinking even if i were to sprint out the door right now the absolute soonest i could be on the property of portland international airport would be 7 30 which means and then you know they closed the door 10 minutes before so that means i would have 20 minutes from parking my car at 7 30 to standing at the gate 750 so they'll let me on the plane and i just thought that ain't gonna happen so i'm going into plan b and i'm thinking of you andrew by the way you don't know how close you came to almost having to do the show at the agreed upon normal regular time because i was like well i can oh right call andrew although i will be honest with you i was like he's not gonna like this this is a man well also so wrong what time that would

have would i have even been awake given what i just told you about accidentally oversleeping

myself today we both over well i was going through well yes i i was going through here's what i was going through my mental math was okay i can't go to chicago today i will have to stay here i will have to figure out a way to rebook a new ticket for tomorrow that means we can do tbtl at the normal time today that means we don't have to do it late that means when andrew gets up you know whenever that is like i would i would have probably shot you a text around 8 8 30 to just say hey by the way i screwed up my travel so we're back on we can be back on for a normal dial-up time but i also thought he not gonna like that well a couple of things about that first of

all we wouldn't have needed to like if i had if if okay let's say that i had arranged my day for like a noon dial-up for me and so if i wasn't home or if i had a haircut or something like you could have still just done the show at our agreed upon time right my question is are our flights um like there's basically only a couple of flights that would be workable for you from portland to chicago on any given day like you missing a flight at uh seven o'clock or whatever it is um you couldn't just like maybe get them to book you on a noon flight or something flights

are a little bit more rare than that on the only airline that i use andrew alaska airlines um there are not a ton of flights between portland and chicago and i in fact checked on my phone as i was now kind of sadly walking downstairs to the bathroom and by the way i'm not there's no pep in my step i've now given up on getting to the airport so i'm just kind of like walking downstairs at a normal pace i'm using the bathroom i'm on my phone kind of trying to see if i could book a later flight and it's like no later flights so what i start to realize is this is involving me now calling or emailing the fine, fine folks at wait, wait, don't tell me and saying to them, I missed my flight and I need you to rebook me on it. And by the way, I don't know if we get any money back on this ticket. Like, you know, because, uh, if there are no more flights today, I have to go tomorrow. And then a lot of times, like they'll let you, if there's another flight in the same day, most airlines will, if there's room, let you get on that flight. But if you're talking about a whole different day, now you're getting into, you know, you got to buy a new ticket territory and i'm sitting there in my bathroom and i'm looking at my phone and i'm thinking about and now by the way time has been slipping away so that that idea of maybe i can get there by 7 30 that's now off the table and i just think if everything goes right and i get there i might have a total of 15 minutes between when i park my car and when i need to be standing at the gate and i thought that's really unlikely but maybe the flight will be delayed i don't know just crazy things happen like i think i'm gonna go for this i'm gonna roll the dice and i'm and i'm gonna just try to make this so i just throw on some clothes by the way some pretty random clothes like when i fly i try to generally look fairly put together like i like to take a shower and comb my hair and put my little hair powder in and and uh you know just sort of i don't know why i just i think it's a pushback against what i feel like is an extremely casual culture in airports So generally speaking I try to be somewhat put together Also there's a very very small chance I'll run into someone who listens to the show So this was not that This was my hair standing straight up off my head I'm in like the wrinkliest t-shirt of all time Which I just throw like a Mr. Rogers sweater over Grab my pants

And that is a sweater with Mr. Rogers face on it Or a Mr. Rogers quote

It actually has Mr. Rogers

Mr. McFeely's face on it and a lot of people have asked questions and I don't have good answers. Mr. McFeely, yes. I just think that must have had a really different connotation back when they came up with that character's name for the children's television program.

I really don't think I heard or thought about that name in the light that I just heard and thought about that name ever since it just came out of your mouth.

I'm like, right, Mr. McFeely, okay. Oh, you know who's here? Mrs. Windowless Van, the librarian. so i was like i i run oh the other thing i don't i'm sorry i'm already making this story take way too long um and we i want to i legitimately really want to hear why you were driving a stranger around this weekend in your car so i will really try to speed through this basically the other problem andrew in all of this was and i don't know why this was what was decided but my dad said to me when you get up in the morning wake me up as well because my dad wanted to get back To my parents house really early in the morning Because the cable person was showing up And he wanted to Kind of like they're getting a new cable Type service installed And he wanted to kind of like walk the person through it Even though my mom was going to be there I just think he had a particular way He was hoping it would go So not only am I now ruining my life I'm ruining Walt's life Because I woke him up A full hour after he thought He was going to be getting up Now it raises the question why didn't Walt just set an alarm on his phone I don't know. But somehow I was the human alarm clock and I really, really dropped the ball. So as I'm I grab my stuff up in my bedroom and I'm literally running down this hall and I just knock on the door of my dad's room. It's like, morning, dad. And then I'm just like out. So I go running down the stairs, run out to the car, throw my stuff in and start hauling my way towards Portland. Now, it was very rainy this morning at 6, 10 a.m., like just so much rain coming down on I-5 that it was like you're just driving kind of in a cloud and it's still pitch black. And also I'm going over a lot of like pools of water where I feel the car almost wanting to hydroplane. So it's like the least great conditions for trying to make up time compared to what Waze is telling me. And the other problem is there was no slack in the line. Waze told me you will be arriving at Portland International Airport at 6.38 a.m. And sometimes when you get that notice, you can, depending on the route you're taking, you might be able to make up some time here and there. The problem was it is all freeway. This is just and it's there's no real traffic to speak of. So this is like Waze already know like there's no there's no there's just no outsmarting it like when you know what I mean? when you're just when it knows you're just going on major freeways and there's no traffic what it quotes you is pretty much the time like you're not hitting a wormhole you're not buying yourself

five minutes somewhere there along the line so to be clear here you did say your flight was at seven i'm sorry i know you've said 7 a.m 7 a.m okay so and you're looking at 6 38 so essentially that's 20 minutes to park your car in long-term parking 12 minutes because they closed the doors at 7 50. Sure. Yeah. Okay. So even, I mean, they, sometimes they close the doors before that one time I was brushing my teeth in the airport bathroom and I was, uh, and then they called my name over the loudspeaker because they were closing the doors and it was like 20 minutes before the flight was supposed to take off. Anyway, let's just say, okay, so like 12 minutes or whatever. But again, you're driving a car, so you got to park it somewhere, get through, get to the airport, get through security. The only thing, at least in your mind right now,

i'm assuming is praying for a flight delay that's huge and of course uh you know i'm just checking the app like maniacally and it's of course on time it's it's the flight is doing great on time and under budget so i'm like of all the days for this flight to be totally on time if not possibly early so now i'm developing starting to develop some strategies in my mind as i'm driving i mean a couple of things happened i don't want to make this too woo woo but i realized something i don't know maybe 15 minutes into the journey which was when and you so rarely find yourself in this position Andrew because you are really careful with your life so as to avoid being in this position if that makes any sense but maybe you can relate when you are super late for something like a job interview or a flight it can just if if you allow it to and I usually do it can put you into a state of mind where it's like your body just dumps yeah all the cortisol it has right into the system like if you were to take if you were to cut me open it would just be pure cortisol pure stress hormone pouring out of me and self and self-hatred right you know maybe not

maybe i could use more self-hatred i think okay i thought that's what you're saying is maybe one of the reasons I'm so obsessed. with being on time places is is for me that feeling like on the occasions that I've overslept for work and this goes back to being a high school student working for my dad or being a young professional or whatever it is oversleeping for a job that you were expected to be somewhere for at a certain time and waking up and just seeing that there's no way you're going to make it or waking up and realizing that the workday has already started because you've slept in so long on accident like that that feeling to me is is just one of the worst feelings you can ever have Like, I it's just amazing that I've survived those moments because that I didn't just drive my car off of a cliff or die from from self self self loathing and embarrassment. Yeah. So it's I thought you were going for more of that. But just generally speaking, you're talking about like the adrenaline.

I'm talking about the way that you can get one can get so amped up that everything that everyone else is doing makes you want to actually murder them or I'm sorry, muck duck them. sure yeah like you're driving you're super late so that every person who's not also driving at 85 miles an hour is actually personally plotting for your life to be worse and and intentionally trying to make things bad for you i mean that's the state of mind i can get in and again this usually revolves around flights for me if i'm late where like i'm under my breath wanting to curse out every single other vehicle on the road because they're not you know they're not doing what i them to do which would be i guess to all pull over to the far right lane as if i'm an ambulance and let me drive by and i want everyone to run every yellow light so that we you know it's like everything everyone else is doing is making me furious and that extends into when you get in the airport and someone is just trying to get their stuff together to go through the tsa it's kind of like that woman that was behind you uh when you were going through the tsa and she was being really rude like and we're going to the same flight and we had tons of time right which that part is insane to me i mean it at least my my unbelievably stressed out and probably rude behavior is attached to me missing the flight not that that's an excuse but like the idea that you guys were early for your flight that really kind of mystifies me why that woman was acting that way but i guess what i'm trying to say is i realized something early on in this journey which was i'm either going to spend the next 45 minutes to an hour in a state of of anxiety and anger and tetchiness that is going to honestly be bad for me physically like I mean my body is going to release so much stress hormone and so much anger and like or I'm going to just find some kind of peaceful place which is in in like I'm just going to try to be present like my stupid tattoo says are you here I'm going to basically be like, I don't know. My life is going to be in 45 minutes, but I know my life is right now. My life right now is I'm just driving on I-5. I'm in my car. I'm safe. I have my health like I'm going to this is the it is like the moment that I am least likely to be present in is driving to the airport, freaking out because I'm going to miss my flight and thinking about how do I explain this to the wait, wait people? And will there be another flight? And how do I, you know, what does this mean for our TVTL recording schedule? And we're supposed to record some extra stuff tomorrow. And now is that my brain is like wanting to just spin on like 50,000 things. And instead, I'm going just be in this car right now and be like present so that if I get to the airport and they're like, sorry, you can't get on the flight. I, I don't explode. And B, it's not like I was trying to make it so that the it wasn't the case that the only OK outcome was me getting on the flight.

flight because I knew that was going to put me in such a state of anxiety for the next hour of my life. And I was like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to be in that mode for the next hour. So I was really trying to kind of work on myself and just be like, it is what it is. We're going to try to get there, but I'm also not going to turn into a complete demon on the road. I'm not going to be screaming at everyone and honking my horn and, and, and like sort of, you know, I don't know like bugging people in line at the TSA I'm just gonna like I'm just gonna try to be okay and be present so I get to the uh parking lot of the airport it is now I mean I get I give ways credit it's now exactly 6 38 a.m by the time I take a picture of my parking space which by the way I was tempted to not do because it took an extra minute but I was like if I don't do this whatever happens I will never find this car again yeah I have no flipping idea which level of parking it is that i'm at so i like took that picture and then i just haul ass into the airport and i'm starting to develop this strategy which is if i can get to a person who is taking the bags at alaska airlines on this side of security and ask them to please call gate c20 and tell them they got a runner they got someone trying to make it to the door Thank you. maybe that will buy me two minutes on the backside. Maybe they will close the door five minutes before the flight instead of 10 minutes before the flight. So I'm starting to kind of like set up this system in my mind. Of course, I'm running through the airport, and I see where the Alaska Airlines counter is, and there is a line to check in. There is a line in the first-class elite line. There is just people everywhere. So I realize that's not an option. So now I just start sprinting for security. And there's a pretty substantial line in the TSA pre-check line. Now, I had been upgraded to first class, so technically I could have gone through this middle lane where you literally go right to the front of the regular person line. But the problem was the regular, the non-precheck line, if you got on the other side, if you got through security, through TSA, the line on the other side was really long. So I'm just like, what do I do? So I get in the precheck line. I want to give, I give a lot of grief to the TSA. Oh, by the way, Andrew, I did not ask the question about who is the designated yeller. Just so you know, I think you'll have maybe on my way home. But I guess if you missed yesterday's show, we were wondering, at least I was wondering if there if if the person who's always giving you the advice from the TSA has just decided to do that or if it's actually part of the assignment. Andrew thinks it might be part of the assignment. I did not get clarity on that matter, but I will soon. So I want to give some real credit to the folks at the Portland International Airport TSA this morning. they had two folks working this TSA pre-check line they were efficient they were friendly they kept the line moving it was one of those things where the line was really long but it was moving

so now I'm looking at my watch and now it is 6 45 and I am moving through the line but I'm not yet to the front I'm not yet actually the point where I put my stuff on the on the scanner on the whatever conveyor belt and I just think if I can have if I have three minutes I might be able to run oh by the way gate C20 at the Portland airport is the furthest away gate I don't mean one of the furthest I mean it's literally the last gate it is the farthest run you would ever have to make in Portland international airport so I get through security I grab my stuff I tell the guy I go I have a microphone in here that is always looks dodgy and he just goes okay and but I was trying to just make sure that they didn't pull my bag for the wanding because that would have been like that's it game over there's so many you know what this was like and I say this with peace and love to our listeners in Wisconsin but like this was like when the Seahawks came back against the Green Bay Packers in the NFC championship game when they had a one percent chance of winning it's like you needed John Ryan to throw that touchdown you needed the onside kick to work I needed so many things to go right in this scenario for it to even be statistically possible god i hope there's a

john ryan-esque photo of you running through the airport with your tongue sticking out i promise

you john ryan looked like pierce brosnan compared to what i looked like running through and that's also part of the story andrew because i've also said along with trying to look fairly put together in the airport i i'm i'm i'm especially embarrassed about running in airports i shouldn't be but i am Because it makes me feel like I'm telling the whole world I don't have my shit together There are times when I probably should be Kind of maybe jogging in the airport If I'm running late But I will just briskly walk Or even walk at a normal pace Because my embarrassment about being Obviously that person who screwed up Is intense

I don't know if this helps or hurts But for what it's worth When I see somebody running through an airport I assume that the airline fucked them over Because so many people Well, the times I've been running through an airport, it wasn't my fault. It's because they messed up, you know, like a connecting flight or a delay on the first leg of my flight led me to almost or actually missed the second leg.

That's a good point. And I mean, that's probably the normal person's interpretation, of course, because I've been cursed with too much airline information. I knew there would never be a connecting flight at 6 a.m. So I guess there's probably two gold 75K people that would have known that it was my fault. But everybody else would have just been like, yes, connection didn't come in. But I'm fully sprinting through the airport. My Mr. Rogers sweater has now come. It's unbuttoned, which doesn't mean anything other than my incredibly wrinkly T-shirt, which is now sweat-soaked, is all that's standing between me and the eyeballs of everyone in the airport at this point. The sweater is flapping in the wind My various Jiggly parts of my body Are just flapping in the wind As well I'm just kind of like I'm just a mess And I'm just running through the airport And I now I'm getting I'm at like C15 Now it's like C17 I can see in the distance C20 I look up and there's a clock That just says Seven or sorry It just says 650 Exactly 650 And I'm probably still a 45 second run or a minute run from the, from.

the the c20 gate and it comes in sight and i see that there's obviously no one standing around to board the plane but there's one person in alaska airlines outfit who's standing behind the desk and i don't exactly remember what i said but i think literally andrew what i yelled down the concourse was please i believe i yelled the word please i think that's what that was that was just like that came from a deep emotional place that did not come from a cool place that did not come from a logical place that came from a very primal place I believe I just yelled please and I could see that the woman was kind of smiling and then my brain starts calculating well she's smiling so if the plane if she was going to tell me I can't get on the plane she probably wouldn't be smiling but also people have odd reactions to things sometimes maybe she's getting ready to tell me bad news and she feels bad but she's involuntarily smiling this is all unfolding in the like 20 seconds that I'm still sprinting towards the gate like trying to I trying to interpret her facial expression uh to to let me know if I'm getting on this flight or not and I get there and when I tell you Andrew that I have probably not been more tired after a workout in a year and considering this was a quarter mile or something that I ran like I was gassed and i'm just sweating and like please let me on the plane i'm so sorry i set my alarm and she was like yeah okay um uh you have like 30 more seconds so i had 30 seconds to compose myself and then um i said uh can i just check this bag because what i didn't want to do my my rolling suitcase what i didn't want to do was be the last person on the airplane everyone knows this person is you know this person is last person on the flight i'm covered i'm pouring sweat and i've got this bag this rolling bag because i may have to go to la after this which is tbd for a tv story so i had to pack for basically five days so i didn't want to get on the plane and then start going around trying to find overhead space with my bag i just couldn't emotionally take that so i said can i just check this bag and she said sure and she puts a little thing on it and she gives me a little tag and i walk on and i sit down on the plane and i made it andrew which was a pretty incredible feeling i don't really know how it happened i beat it by 30 seconds i went from 6 38 a.m turning my car off to 6 50 and 30 seconds being on the airplane i don't

seem possible for what i know of tsa like oh well oh you had the pre-check situation i had pre-check

but there still was a line at pre-check but it went really fast and then i just i mean i was a it was a dead sprint it was a a full-on and by the way i'll mention also there's uh construction at pdx so even c20 is the furthest gate but it's even further because you have to take this extremely uh roundabout way because of the fact that this whole area is now blocked a certain area i don't i i don't to this moment andrew understand how it happened but i somehow got there and um it it tells me that i can now leave my house oh good oh god this is your fucking takeaway great i mean great honestly i feel like now i can leave my house i mean i've been i've been a fool getting to the airport an hour early i should get to the airport a minute early great fantastic um

what did the person next to you like what did you have any interaction with the person next to you

what a what a lovely lovely person it was a young woman named jessica who was flying out to chicago It was her first flight that was not on the West Coast. It was her first flight towards anywhere east of the West Coast. And I was like, I'm so sorry about my sweating. She was like, no problem. Do you want some extra fan? Because you've got those little nozzles up there. I was like, no, no, no, please. You keep yours. I'll just try to get it together here. And she was like incredibly kind and conversational and like not, you know, not kind of like rolling her eyes at me or anything like that. So that was really helpful. But, Andrew, if you want to know in the you win some, you lose some department, this is this is I don't know if we call it karma. I don't know if it's just kind of how the cookie crumbles or just what tends to happen in life. Maybe it's just the sort of the fact that life wants to find sort of stasis, wants to find a medium point.

In this case, it would be plain, by the way, not karma.

Okay, thank you. I'm sorry. Train-ma. I got so fortunate that everything broke my way so as to... And this is... I'll go back to the Seahawks analogy. You know what happened in the NFC Championship game? Everything broke our way. And then you know what happened in the Super Bowl? We threw an interception on the two-yard line. And my interception on the two-yard line, Andrew, was that when I got off that airplane here in Chicago, I did not know that they were putting my luggage, my suitcase, right there when you get off the plane.

Oh.

is where the strollers are nobody told me that I should have I should have asked I should have been more curious but I just it whiffed out of my brain so I get off the airplane I go out to the baggage carousel which is initially I think when I'm starting to text you and our co-worker John Sklaroff about various things and I'm thinking now like okay well I'm gonna grab my bag I'll be in town in 30 minutes it turns out my suitcase was trapped on the other side of security and there was no one who could get it and walk it out to where i was for wait for it andrew two hours and 20 minutes two hours and 20 minutes i would go up to the uh the the people at i started out down in baggage claim and that woman who was actually very nice she was like oh you know what happened your bags actually you're supposed to grab it at the gate nobody told you let me get on the walkie-talkie says okay she calls someone she goes okay they're gonna bring it up and meet you up at the ticket counter upstairs i was like okay great so i go up and like 30 minutes goes by 40 minutes go by i go check with the ticket person they're like hold on let me check and i just hear on the radio or short-staffed like it sounds like they're in the shit it sounds like they're in nam the people doing the baggage at o'hare like they were just like my little to me suitcase was the lowest priority for them again as well it should have been they're trying to get flights out they're trying to pack the bellies of these planes but like i mean you're lucky it

wasn't lost in a worse way you know what i mean at least like they have eyes on it in so many ways like this trip would be so much worse if that if that bag was just like in limbo somewhere nobody

knew where it was that would have been worse and that did sort of happen to me with fedex a while ago so i guess it's possible on the other hand sometimes if they mess up and lose your not lose your luggage but it doesn't make the flight you can go on your merry way and then it'll show up some some person in a van will drive by with it i've had that happen before but yes i was i was lucky that they got it on the plane i i should have asked more questions like will this be at the carousel or will this be at the gate i didn't i was so high on on the excitement of having made the flight that i didn't ask the necessary questions but then i just found myself languishing in o'hare andrew feeling like i was putting you out i was putting the listeners out because you know and also i can look and see that traffic is getting ever worse coming into town you know i mean traffic is just always bad between the airport and here but i i swear to you i know it sounds like i'm on some i'm trying to get on some sort of like ram das shit but i was sitting there in the airport and i was starting to crawl out of my skin because of this feeling of knowing that my suitcase is a five minute walk from me but i can't go get it and i can't get anyone to make it a priority to bring it out to me and i just started thinking guess what luke this is also where you are this is where you are the show will get posted the show will happen it will be okay you will end up in chicago you will have some dinner and feel much better but right now what you are doing is sitting in o'hare airport so why don't you put on a little music and why don't you just be here now With this shit and I swear to you When I did that Calvin Walked up with my rolling bag

And then

I mean I got

And it really did take about two hours or that was the prediction Oh more than

No no no no no more than two hours It was two hours and twenty minutes after we landed When I was able to leave the airport That's over half the flight time Flight time Four hours Wait time at O'Hare two hours twenty minutes So I'm here It's late But I'm excited To be participating In a special TBTL After Hours with you my friend Andrew And now enough about me

I love the fact that After Hours is now 3 o'clock Pacific time

I've already ordered my Tuna Melt special that I'll be having at 4.45 you know

If it's After Hours I'm going to go mix myself a drink And then we'll come back and do the donors

Well I actually Enough about me, enough of this dribble drabble Let's thank the donors, and then I do want to hear why you were ferrying someone around Seattle who you didn't know in your car. That sounds like a situation, so we'll talk about it after these donors. Hey, let's thank some of our donors. These are the people who are supporting TBTL financially, which is incredible. and also they had to wait extra long to get their piping hot tbtl today so please please accept my personal apology uh eleanor johnson of raleigh north carolina god it's like are you kidding me if you and i andrew if this is tbtl after hours it's only 4 50 p.m where where I am. Yeah. It's positively midnight in Raleigh, North Carolina. By my math, you're absolutely right. Minus two minutes. Thank you, Eleanor, for your patience and for your support of TBTL. Thanks also to Stephen McConkie, who's in West Mifflin, PA.

Aha. I will not make any office references.

Oh, right. I wonder. Do you think that Dunder Mifflin, the company, was somehow, that name was inspired? Because, I mean, it's in Pennsylvania on the show.

I've never heard the word Mifflin outside of that context, and this is Pennsylvania. But I don't know. I don't know.

Could be. You know, who would know? Stephen McConkie. Stephen, get at us. Let us know. Also thanks to Mike Piazzatelli, or maybe even Piazzatelli, who's in Gig Harbor, Washington.

Oh, man.

Andrew, Gig Harbor, Washington. What a beautiful place.

I don't think I've ever been there before. Do they have an Arby's or a Whirly Ball?

You have been there before because it is where the Tacoma Rainiers play.

They don't play in Tacoma?

That is technically Gig Harbor where you are. When you pass over the bridge, when you go across the Narrows Bridge, you've moved into Gig Harbor, I believe.

Cheney Stadium is technically in Gig Harbor, not Tacoma?

I don't know. Can you gorgle it?

That, what you just said, shocked me.

Who is that? I could be wrong.

What is that drop?

Let me see if I can find it on this particular computer system.

Sorry, I'm not trying to put you on the spot. But that drop went through my head the other day, and I was like, I don't even know what that is. And when he said that, that shocked me

I have no idea where that's from

And when he said that, that shocked me I put that in The address is Tacoma 2502 Tyler Street in Tacoma But it sounds like I've been Gig Harbor adjacent You've passed through it

I'm actually very surprised to hear that that's still technically Tacoma Because There's a, well anyway I've bored the listeners too much with my Various stories today I'm just gonna I'm just going to slowly back into the hedge, Homer Simpson style, and say I always thought that was sort of Gig Harbor down there. But anyway, it is a beautiful place. I stopped there on my way to my parents' Thanksgiving deal, and I picked up a bunch of groceries. And I was driving around Gig Harbor getting to the grocery store, and I was like, my goodness, this is real nice down here.

Oh, I see. Gig Harbor is across the water, sort of, from Shaney Stadium, according to the map I'm looking at.

okay okay maybe I'm maybe I maybe I have been miss filing where Cheney Stadium is in my mind I guess I always thought you had to go across the Narrows to get to it oh I see I'm looking at this

is the yeah okay the Tacoma Narrows Bridge nope this you would not cross the Tacoma Narrows Bridge

to get to Cheney Stadium oh okay if you were coming from Seattle if you were coming around

this is I can't I need to stop nope I have to stop this is good I'm here I'm here for this

I have to stop doing this it's by Snake Lake oh okay sure that's what I'm thinking it was the gateway to snake lake anyway mike thank you and i'm sorry joshua cory is in vienna virginia wow vienna i think i heard about vienna fingers before i heard about vienna virginia and also mr mcfeely thing vienna sausage so the name vienna virginia has always made me hungry i didn't know there was a vienna virginia i knew about the delicious foodstuffs that had vienna in the name before i knew that there was a city named vienna i mean it's got to be named for like what austria is that where vienna is the original vienna um that what did you say austria vienna austria i believe yeah i don't know how about this andrew yes it is i'm sorry i'm just really

embarrassed like it you suddenly saying that i was like i don't know where vienna is but yes austria i had to look it up but it sounded right but then i i just got really in i just got really

really insecure there and i broke down i'm this was a final jeopardy um question recently and the listeners can play along i'm going to get some of the details wrong but but it'll generally work as a question can you think of the city in america that has i believe it's roughly 10 times the

population of the city in america it was named for okay the city in a there's a city in america That's named after a city somewhere else in the world.

No, in America. So there's a city in America that is named for another city in America. Interesting. But the newer one of the two, the more recent of the two, has roughly 10 times the population of the thing it was named for, of the place it was named for. Oh, my goodness.

And it must be, is it Gig Harbor?

It's Cheney.

It's Snake Lake. Well, I'm trying to think of it. It sounds like this must be a large city, but I can't think of any large cities that are named after small.

cities uh is there do you think there's a reasonable chance that i would even know this

am i just wasting time here really no you're not wasting time i'm wasting time when i'm getting into the weeds on what side of the narrows bridge gig harbor is um it's i will tell you this i did not get it immediately but becca did yeah but i think that's owing to her her where she grew up

so that's a hint i can't remember where she grew up i don't know i give up i i feel like i've

already ruined the show portland oregon named for portland maine of course well first of all i

geez louise when you started telling your story before about flying out of portland i almost made a joke to clarify that you were talking about portland oregon and not portland maine because when you know growing up in closer to portland maine and then and then living and living in new hampshire it did not occur to me until i moved out here that when most americans just say portland without specifying that they're probably talking about portland oregon portland maine always lived larger in in my brain and i've had to readjust on that i'm really upset with myself for not

realizing don't be don't be i didn't get it either and i was in portland oregon at the time i was at rebecca's apartment which is in portland oregon and i was like i got nothing on this and she looked at me and she went portland why is it named after portland maine that i couldn't tell you but you know who might know samantha hartman in missoula montana but the thing about samantha is she spends a lot of time there in Missoula researching the origins of Portland, Oregon. I've heard that.

So she'd be the person to talk to. Thank you, Samantha, for your diligence and for your support.

And then Jessica Haley is in Boston, Massachusetts.

Not Boston, Oregon this time.

Named for the market.

Yes, exactly.

And unlike the market, it still exists.

I have a question for you about Boston Market.

Yeah.

Where I used to live in Capitol Hill, and you knew me then. Yeah, yeah, you'd come over once or twice, I think. We lived there in Capitol Hill where that kind of fancy Starbucks was for a long time.

Which was previously a Boston market.

Somebody told me recently that that had been a Boston market, and I was gobsmacked.

Oh, it was like, it was the last of a dying breed. It was like the last Boston market, I think, certainly anywhere in Seattle. And I used to go there pretty frequently, much like I went to the last Boston Market in L.A., which is on Sepulveda, right in the shadow of LAX. And I used to try to, when I wasn't oversleeping by one hour, Andrew, I used to try to get to the airport maybe a little early so I could swangle in to that Boston Market on Sepulveda and get me some of that creamed spinach.

There was a Boston Market in Concord, New Hampshire, not too far from where I used to work. And sometimes I would go have my business lunches there. When I say business lunches, I mean by myself, going through the line cafeteria style and choosing your sides and everything. And the thing is, like, it was a hearty meal. But the thing is, I don't even have a – like, I have such a distinct memory of the taste and texture of that food. But I don't even remember ever really liking it that much. Like, honestly, the stuffing was a little bit dry and crumbly. But, like, I would still go back there. I feel like my time in Concord was me being super hungry by lunchtime and then going and eating some really unfortunate food and eating too much of it and then waddling back to the office for an unproductive afternoon.

You raise an interesting question about Boston Market, which is, I mean, it's kind of I think there might be a couple of locations still, but it's certainly on the decline. and like I think I loved it but I don't know was the food even good or did I just did it somehow comfort me because it was turkey and mashed potatoes and creamed spinach and and crab rangoon and things of that nature like I don't think I could actually sit here and tell you it was good food but I liked it for some reason and there's I think I said this to you the last time

I came up on the show I forgot that you were trying to would you say swangle by there before

a flight. I believe that might be a Camaro Kev term. I think he talks about kind of like swangling in somewhere.

It definitely sounds like it. But also, it just sounds like a Boston market in LA sounds so wrong to me for so many reasons. A Boston market in Capitol Hill, Seattle doesn't sound super right, but just kind of like, well, we're going to Santa Monica Beach, but let's swing by the Boston market. Oh, I know. So many

things wrong with that. No, I agree. I wholeheartedly agree. It made no sense. That was what was so amazing about it. I could I don't think I ever did this, but I mean, it was on more or less a direct shot from the Tattletail to Hollywood Park Casino swangling down Sepulveda. So I don't think I ever popped in there, you know, on my way to the casino because, you know, what the casino had was Pink's Hot Dogs. They had a they had a hot dog cart there that somebody worked at just making Pink's Hot Dogs. And they tasted exactly like the ones you'd get at the real place.

But you'd have to wait in line for an hour. You'd have to wait in the crazy line.

And, like, they don't have that there anymore, and it's, like, there's a whole fancy new casino there that's part of that, like, SoFi field and everything, but they did not bring back the Pink's hot dogs, and that's why I'll never go there again. Not because I've been trespassed from the property, Andrew, but because I don't like that they don't have the hot dogs anymore.

Fair enough.

Yeah, so thank you so much to all of our donors today for keeping TBTL going.

Here I go once again with the email. Every week, I hope that it's from a female. Oh, man, it's not from a female.

All right, you've got a V-mail, Andrew, that was of particular interest to you because I guess it also echoed to some degree something you dealt with recently.

Sort of, or it reminded me of a story that happened to me over this weekend. But let me start with the voicemail. This is related to something that, and I think listener Maggie sets this up at the beginning of her voicemail, but I think it was maybe last week as a top story. You told the tale, you spun the tale of these unfortunate drivers, I believe somewhere in Vegas or outside of Vegas, who were following a Google map direction on some road somewhere that literally led nowhere. Like it was a whole line of cars. Why was everybody heading out that direction? Now that I say that, I don't remember.

Well, the F1 races had been in Vegas. Right. And so people were coming back to California from having gone to the F1 stuff. And there was this crazy dust storm that I think literally shut the main freeway down. And so the Google Maps thing was trying to kind of respond to that in real time and send everyone on some, you know, better path. But the path that it that it picked was like a road that just was gravel and then just stopped existing.

I just, yeah, just got like, and I, again, and I told you my story of trying to go down Mulholland Drive in L.A., and eventually the road just gets worse and worse until it almost like stops existing, and they're like, I probably should have stopped doing this a long time ago, but anyway, listener Maggie called in with this story of trusting Google Maps a little bit too much back in the day.

Hey, Luke and Andrew. Luke's story about the Google Maps fiasco leading people into the middle of the road that just ended reminded me of a time years ago, 10 or 15 years ago, I was taking my small boys camping. We were meeting up with other friends at a campground that we hadn't been to before. And Google Maps put the pin for the directions into the geographic center of the state park rather than at the park entrance or the campground registration building.

Can you hear this okay, by the way? Can you tell what Maggie's saying? Okay, so the map just said, oh, you're going to go to this park and just put the destination right smack dab in the middle of the park, not the entryway.

And so I'm following Google Maps. I've got small children in the back, like six and eight or something like that, and I'm following the maps, and it's sending me off the road into this path, And then the path gets smaller and narrower and more branches begin to slide along the side of our minivan. And then we come up to this tree that's just in the middle of what I thought was the road. And there's nothing to do. There's no way to get anywhere else. There's no signs. There's no trailblazers. There's nothing. And turning around a minivan on a pass that's disappeared under your wheels was not easy. And while trying to pretend to the kids that, oh, it's not a problem, we'll just turn around and we'll turn back and we'll find it. And to not let them know how completely freaked out and scared I was and how sure I was going to, like, drive into a bog and get stuck forever. And I asked the boys about it yesterday, who are now 17 and 20, and they have no memory of this whatsoever. but it's pretty good parenting my nightmares but um i've learned at least from that to uh check where the maps is actually sending me thanks a lot guys love the show uh that is a

part of parenting that i don't think about much i i won't say that i've never thought about it at all but it is a part of parenting that i think would be one of the tougher things for at least me to handle that idea of i'm a panicker or at least i can i can be in kind of an internal panicker and having to maintain your cool so that you're not creating trauma for the young people in your car, that seems tough.

I think you would be very good at that. I was literally talking about this topic with someone recently. I was saying the thing about Andrew that you would not know if you didn't work with him as much as I do and spend as much time with him as I do is that for all of your kind of talking about things that you wish you would have said differently, et cetera, when the chips are down you are a cool customer like you because i sit with it like no seriously like it's it's

There is, like, a very highly competent and highly calm Andrew that's hiding under the regular Andrew. And whenever I've needed your help or whenever things have been going sideways or something has happened, I'm always very encouraged and calmed by you. You're very unflappable, really and truly, when it's a situation where no flapping will do. You're very unflappable. And I don't know if people would know that, but I just want to honor that. Well, thanks. I appreciate that. I think you'd be a great parent, and it's not too late.

I wonder if most of those situations are technologically related, though, like if we're panicking about because that maybe because I have a little bit like I've learned that like panicking doesn't help there. And, you know, like I think the last time I had a real like almost meltdown, but had to just like kind of focus all that energy into like the technology was when we were doing our 10 teeks road show. Is that what we ended up calling that? In my parents' recently flooded basement. And it's very complicated. I mean I think there are better ways to do it but given our kind of janky setup it's kind of difficult to set up a zoom call for a mass audience of like a couple hundred people where you where we can hear them but they can hear us individually anyway there's just like a lot of ins and outs as far as audio mapping when it comes to that especially in a basement and so anyway when we we thought we had everything set up and then we got the production rolling and i realized that what was it we couldn't hear listeners i think and then like i had to just like figure that shit out while you and our colleague may like tap danced um i remember that being a moment which is like you just gotta i just kind of shut down any unnecessary emotional processes and focus on the technology but that's because i think i'm a little bit more comfortable in that space like i feel like there could be a I have I'm mortified you want to talk about like memories that embarrass me when um I was new in Los Angeles launching that new radio show with Madeline Brand and I'll just I mean this doesn't really paint her in the best light either but it's the truth but like we were doing either our very first show or maybe even just a dry run of the show and it was like a live radio show I like things to be live and I've directed and produced many live radio shows before but madeline maybe coming from the npr network level or something i don't know what she expects of a director who's like kind of behind the glass while she's in the studio with guests or a phone line or whatever and then all of us producers are on the other side of the glass with like the audio board and everything and i'm not running the audio board i'm not screening calls or doing anything like that i'm just the director i'm there to make sure that cues are being hit and people are doing what they need to do and she's just like having a conversation with a guest on a phone and then she sort of yeah this doesn't paint her in the nicest light but I will just um I will just say later on she just like I think like in my headset she just sort of hissed at me like what are you even doing in there oh no and I was just like I looked at her and I was just like and I was like well what do you want me to be doing like everything was going fine like she I don't know what she was used to a director doing but I would you know and in that moment I didn't have anything i didn't i couldn't there were no buttons to push there was no zoom for me to put my energy into i was just like i don't know what do you want from me that you're not getting is what i wish i had said i don't know what i said i probably just you know like sank into a puddle

but like that's a moment of panic where i did not have any kind of recourse i don't know why that's

the example that pops there have been times where i have not been able to do the show for one reason or another or just like i've had to send you a message being like i know we had this plan but Now we need to change it to this. And you're always, your response is always very cool, calm. You're like, we got this. Okay, we'll figure out an alternate plan. Like, it's, again, I just, I think you would have handled yourself pretty well as you drove down that increasingly small and now non-existent road into a bog. I also want to say to the listener, Maggie, you would have made a beautiful bog person with your children.

I mean, you would have raised your children as Ents. There's nothing wrong with that.

I mean, listen, the downside of dying in a bog is your life is over. The upside is you will be perfectly preserved and found maybe thousands of years from now, which is a pretty cool legacy. Like, if you've got to go, I mean, I know that the end... Do you know about the whole bog people thing, by the way?

No, I was mostly picturing, what's his name, the annoying kid from Game of Thrones who basically becomes a tree, spoiler alert.

Wait, how did I forget who becomes a tree on Game of Thrones?

Who's the kid who ends up becoming really annoying by the end of the series? He sets all the things in motion by being pushed out the window by James. Oh, Bran? Bran. Remember Bran? Bran is annoying. Doesn't he end up becoming like a tree or whatever? His storylines are just so good. I think he does. I got pretty cynical about that whole story by the end.

It's so funny because I have like, you're probably, I think you're right. I think Bran got a little big for his britches. by the end but no the bog people I'm very fascinated with them because they were and again unfortunately a lot of them were they've met an untimely fate either they fell into a bog or maybe they were ritualistically their life was ended and they were thrown into the bog this is over in you know like kind of Scotland area and places where maybe there was sort of more Viking stuff going on but oddly enough because of the components of this particular kind of soil and terroir they were put in a lot of them are perfectly preserved and I I mean, that's all I ask is to be a very beautiful corpse in 100 years. Is that too much to ask?

A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies are also known as bog people. Wow. I didn't realize how dark you were getting with Maggie there.

I'm saying, I'm just saying, you know, there are upsides to. Andrew, haven't you heard me lately how zen I am? Yeah, I know. How much of how present I am. I would just see myself sinking into the bog thinking, this is where I am. I'm a bog person now. Let's not think about the next flight or where you were. You're a bog person.

This is your life. Where are you now? Okay, so I want to tell you a quick story. Unfortunately, I don't know if it's a very quick story, but I'll do my best here.

Don't make it quick. I got nowhere to be now.

Okay, I don't want you to be late for Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. This time tomorrow. Yeah. But it actually does tie into not only Maggie's story about Google Maps, but also me panicking a little bit. So and of course, as I mentioned to you off air yesterday, this begins with me at my volunteering gig on Sunday. So we got to work that in as much as possible so that people remember that I'm a hometown hero. But anyway, so this is just this last Sunday. And I met the you know, we serve, you know, food and hot coffee and stuff to folks who need it from three to four in the Roosevelt neighborhood of Seattle. We're just outside. We do that. It's just for one hour. And then we pack up and we go. And one thing about me that I think that we've talked about and I'm sure you've noticed, Luke, is I'm pretty good with boundaries, especially as I get older. Like I do that volunteering gig because I enjoy it. And people, when you're helping them, especially, you know, depending on what their level of need or even desperation is, can ask more and more of a volunteer in that situation. Right. So I'm there handing out coffee and food or whatever. But there are times when somebody might say, hey, can I can I use your phone for something? And my answer to that is always no. I don't give my phone to strangers. You know, people have asked me things.

Do you have a, if you don't let me ask, do you have a kind of a way of saying no that doesn't feel like you're being unhelpful? Like, do you have a kind of a standard, oh, I'm sorry, I'm just not able to do that? Or do you just say, no, I can't do that? I just pretend like I don't hear the question. Oh, okay.

Well, that's a strategy. That's actually how. I'm sorry. I'm a bog person. That's actually how my friend Josh Rogers, the world's most aloof man, used to handle things. And he admitted. He's like, why can't you just pretend like you didn't hear it? He would tell me that. That's a pretty good Josh Rogers impression. Speaking of a person who knows from Portland, Maine. Yes, exactly. So, to answer your question more honestly, it just depends on the situation. Sometimes I'm just like, no, man, I can't help. It just kind of depends on what it is. I have also sometimes expanded my boundaries. I don't even know if I ever told you this, but it's pretty far in the past now. But there was like a couple who were, you know, kind of regular customers of ours who I don't know exactly where they were living at this point. I think it's before they got a vehicle. So I'm assuming they were maybe living in shelters or maybe on the street. But this woman was like really kind of desperately trying to get like a legal ID card so that she could get services and stuff. But it's like it's just so impossible. Think about like the bureaucratic shit you and I have to do with with all the resources we already have in a computer and all this stuff. But she's, you know, like a vet who was living in a different state and her other ID was expired. And so how is she going to get a new one? But like you just can't get a new one if your other one's expired. It was just like, you know, it's just like all this bureaucratic shit and it's impossible. So for that couple, I actually let them use my home address as their mailing address for a while to help her get an ID, which is kind of as far as I've ever gone. I kind of talked to Genevieve about it.

Until Sunday.

Well, yeah, you're trying to get to it.

anyway no no that was that was that was not that was not where i was going but i am somebody who

for the most part will just be like no sorry i can't do that there have been people who hey can i use your car to charge my phone and i hate to say it but i'm just like no sorry that's not an option um but i volunteer with some other people who like really honestly amaze me i work with this this one woman who's you know you know definitely a bit older than me you know kind of uh i don't want to guess her age but she's an older woman and a short just very pleasant completely down to earth woman not somebody who has as far as i know doesn't seem like somebody who's like come up through activism or a lot of i i don't know what her background is but she she and her husband are just like this very nice couple that i volunteer with um they live in Green Lake and one thing I've noticed about her though is she's just so casually can do when somebody needs help she seems like she seems fearless two words that have never been used to refer to me do you know my nickname in college for the stupid radio show I worked on was can do Andrew and I hated it do you know that but it was your nickname but you had well I didn't come up with it the host of the show called you the host of the show would give all of his producers Nicknames during the credits

Is this the one where you used to go record the sound of Like an empty church or something

Um no but some nature stuff A chamber orchestra

Oh okay I think of nature as an empty church Yes

Wow we just got into some Who's the musician who you don't like Who sexualizes religion or something Oh Hozier Yeah that sounds like a Hozier lyric

Something like a dog whatever he says

I think of nature as an empty church

It's really the intersection of the sacred and the sexual

I love the way that we're going after Hozier I'm sure that the vast majority of our audience I honestly saw an interview with Hozier and he was lovely Yeah, everybody loves him

He's a sweet guy For me, the intersection of the sacred and the sexual Is not I do actually like the song Like a Prayer by Madonna But I have no time for erotic Catholicism Sorry, Andrew, I know we have a story to hear But like in the movie Tropic Thunder, the Robert Downey Jr.'s character, I believe, is, you know how they have all these fake movies that these actors have been in previous to this sort of Vietnam piece they're doing. And one of them is where it's like Robert Downey Jr. is a monk, but he's having some sort of a torrid affair with.

It's just a quick trailer that they show. It's literally the best part of that movie. Yes. It won the coveted Golden Monkey Award.

It's like I'm just so uninterested In the intersection of the sacred and the sexual That's just me And I encourage everyone else to enjoy Their life however they want to enjoy it Including the music of Hozier who seems like a lovely person

It was called Satan's It was called Satan's Alley This fake

And they use that You know who is that

I'm blanking on it now Enigma I believe you're right It's very visual too like a lot of the I'm going to play it anyway as soon as YouTube will stop playing ads here. You should get an ad blocker for that. Yeah, just reject it.

In a time where to be different was to be condemned.

Oh, that is Tobey Maguire. Why did this movie have to have blackface? Because otherwise it's so good. And to be condemned.

was to die. So it's these two monks and they're making eyes at each other. They're clearly in love. One man chose to question his God.

From Fox Searchlight. Five-time Academy Award winner, Kirk Lazarus. And MTV Movie Award Best Kiss Winner, Tobey Maguire.

This is my favorite line.

Winner of the Beijing Film Festival's coveted Crying Monkey Award. Satan's Happy.

I think I said Golden Monkey Award. The Crying Monkey.

Crying Monkey.

What were we talking about?

You've got a crying monkey that wants to charge its phone in your car, and you had to have boundaries.

I believe I was saying that you and I should start a fuel business and call it The Sacred and the Propane. Now, that's a show title, my friend. I know. I thought of it as a show title first, and so I had to work it into the show in order for it to make sense. I'm writing it down.

Continue.

All right. So, anyway.

are we going to use a picture of hank hill as a show pick to go along with the sacred and the

propane somewhere between bob's burgers and king of the hill is the the sacred and the propane burger um okay so anyway those are kind of my my boundaries generally speaking and i work with this one woman who i really admire and sometimes i question but really admire her just unflinching helpfulness to anybody I mean I've seen one time we were doing our serve and nearby there was a woman who was clearly having like a very sort of like kind of violent mental breakdown right she was one of those people she was on the sidewalk she had stuff scattered all the way around her she was yelling at passersby I think even maybe making physical confrontation with them and as we're setting up our tables i'm just thinking i hope that person doesn't come over here which is like an awful thing for like somebody maybe in my position to think but like i don't want that person disrupting everything that we're trying to do here what does my friend kathy do she just says i'm gonna go see if that woman wants some food and like heads directly over there and like i've just seen her do that a bunch and um i've seen them do some see her and her husband do something similar to what i'm going to describe here is we were at our serve on um this past Sunday and maybe like 10 minutes before we're going to break down and wrap up for the day, a woman shows up who I've never seen before. And she's sort of a she's a short, older woman. She's carrying two big plastic garbage bags with her belongings in it. And she's kind of got a cane and she's she's walking, you know, clearly feeling some pain in one of her legs. And she comes up and she doesn't speak English as a first language, but her English is pretty good. But she's kind of a low talker and and so um i i go over to her i'm like hey what do you need or whatever and she's like do you know how to get to um dexter avenue and kathy my other my you know other volunteer friend comes over and she's like well you're trying to get to dexter and she's like yeah do you know how to get to dexter avenue and that's kind of a strange question because we're in a part of town that is nowhere really near dexter and also dexter is a big road right like you know Dexter it starts all the way up by the Fremont Bridge and goes way down to Denny like what do you mean like maybe we can try to help we're right by a major bus stop so like maybe we can try to get her on some buses although I would worry about her being able to make the proper transfers or whatever but where on Dexter are you going and she says I'm going I'm gonna give the real addresses here she's like I'm going to 4511 Dexter Avenue and so I'm like okay yeah I don't know and then I see that Kathy is talking to her and tapping on her phone I'm like okay Kathy's got this I'm gonna go serve some more coffee after a few minutes Kathy waves me back over and she's like hey I'm trying to call a car on Lyft but I'm not really good with this technology can you help me out here I'm like oh okay that's interesting so Kathy right away just like yeah I'm gonna call you a car on my own personal Lyft and I was like wow that's that's really good of Kathy because I don't think I would do that I don't think I would use my Lyft credentials and it's not just the money thing but it's the reputation it's the putting the driver in potentially a tough situation just to put a

stranger who I know nothing about into a Lyft on my account. But Kathy's willing to do it because Kathy's a better person than me. Let's all just say it. But Kathy is kind of fumbling around with the app a little bit, and she's trying to put in the address. And when you're using an app like Lyft, when you put in the address, it'll usually identify the location, right? Like this woman was saying that she's trying to get back to a shelter. I'll tell you a little bit more background right now that I sort of learned over the course of time. What happened was this woman, I'm thinking lived in her car but mostly on the east side and was not super familiar with with the seattle side like she lived over in i don't know redmond or something she said that she worked at a panera bread over there and um and i'm assuming she was living in her car because she was in an accident that destroyed her car and everything that she owned she said that kind of several times she was just like and also she had broken her knee apparently she was really hurt in this accident And that's why she had the cane. She clearly was in a lot of pain and she had nothing. And she found herself here in Seattle at some shelter. I think she woke up in the hospital and didn't fully remember everything that was going on. So she'd been living in a shelter here in Seattle for like the past three days. So all of this happened pretty quickly. And she's still pretty trauma shocked. Right. Like she's just like her whole world has which sounded like a pretty tough existence anyway, was totally upended. And now here she is out and about away from the shelter. It's only it's about four o'clock right now. So it's getting dark here in Seattle, but it's not especially late. Kathy's trying to find her a card at this address, 4511 Dexter. The woman keeps insisting that it's it. And I'm and I'm it's not popping up on the lift as an actual address on the lift app. So I'm like, well, let me look on my phone on, you know, Google Maps and see what 4511 is. We're like, what's the name of the shelter? She doesn't know. She doesn't know the name of the shelter. She's still pretty confused and what have you. So Google Maps shows me a red, you know, it gives me a marker for four or five one one Dexter Avenue, but it seems to be in the middle of the intersection in a complicated intersection. It doesn't show me like, oh, this is the building. This is a Mary's Place shelter or anything. It just looks like kind of kind of like a listener mag. It's just like a red marker, but it's in the middle of a complicated intersection. I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't think you have that address right. I don't I mean, I guess you can put her in a lift and tell the lift driver to find it. It doesn't seem like that's the right place. But again, I'm sort of just sort of leaving this and I'm letting go and letting Kathy. Right. So then I walk away again. And then so Kathy's got it. She's like, oh, I think I've identified what it is. OK, I'm going to call her a car. But then Kathy waves me over. She's like, I apparently don't have any funds.

is set up for this lift she doesn't use lift apparently and so now i'm thinking does she want me to call a lift on my phone and that's where i would draw the line i'm like i i'm not just i'm just not going to put a stranger in a lift i was actually thinking of you later i think that you would that would you do that oh i have and it didn't end well andrew really have you told that

story or is this a personal it's a it's it's it's not personal to me but it is to uh oh is this our mutual friend i put somebody in a lift once and it didn't end well and it was on my account and i got a call from lift saying uh we've had to take somebody to the hospital i know that story

and that wasn't even a stranger right can i say that no i will never put anyone in a lift ever i wouldn't put you in a lift right no i know that story and that wasn't even a stranger and so like again my heart goes out to this woman and it sounds like she's she's gotten the fuzzy end of the lollipop every which way you can imagine right now in this moment so I'm not trying to be hardened about this but I'm not putting a stranger in a lift especially for an address that doesn't seem to go where she thinks it's going so we're there for a second and then suddenly I have a realization usually after this volunteer gig I'm the one who takes all the tables and chairs and the bed you make your living it's for real like that is the job the job is tables it's what we call it which is why that sketch and i think it should leave is especially funny to me my job is tables but when my job is tables and i have a little volkswagen golf it literally like all of the supplies and everything fill up every last inch of space in my car i couldn't give a gummy worm a ride if i wanted to when i'm the one who's doing tables i couldn't give a good gummy worm a

right now, Andrew. I was cyber

bullied to within an inch of my life. I'm just now wondering why I went with gummy worms considering they're the same size as regular worms. It's way funnier than that.

Trust your first thought, best thought.

And tastier. But all of a sudden I have this realization, almost like a light bulb going off over my head. I'm like, wait, I'm not doing tables today. I have room in my car. And this makes much more sense. I'm like, oh, I'll just give this woman's name as Margarita. I'm like, I'll give this woman a ride. and so I pull my I'm like here give me your bags and uh and we'll go to my car and then and of course now at this point I'm doing everything to indicate to this woman that I you're not that I am safe yeah exactly um and then we start to walk to my car and that's when I realize oh wow she can barely walk like she says she's got a broken knee so I pull my car closer and watching her you know I kind of help her into my car her left leg goes into the passenger your seat first that's fine it's her right knee that is broken and oh my god i to see her in so much pain just trying to get a leg into a car for the next like five minutes as we talked i could hear the shaking in her voice and i don't think it was nervousness i think it was from the pure pain of getting in the car like it was it was tough to see but um so so i'm like all right i'll give you a ride to this address but i i did say like i don't you don't know the name of this place And she just keeps on saying four or five one one Dexter. And I'm like, all right, it doesn't look like there's anything there, but we'll try. So I drive to this location. And as I get close, I realize what the red marker is taking me to, which is it's just like smack dab in the intersection of one of the worst intersections in Seattle. I don't mean worst as in, like, a bad part of town. It's a good part of town, but it's a fine part of town. But it's, like, where it's exactly where the Fremont Bridge meets Nickerson meets Dexter meets another road. It's like a kind of a no-man's land. It's sort of a no-man's land. I mean, there's a business there. There used to be the Nickerson Cafe there. So it's not like we're in the middle of nowhere, but it's an incredibly hard intersection to navigate on a good day. so like as i'm looking around for any kind of a building any turn i make can real i can't explain it to listeners who don't know that area but like if you go over the fremont bridge you're totally in a different part of town now that's going to be hard to get back over if you keep on going straight on nickerson it's just like it's just a mess it's one of those it's very un-pedestrian

friendly as well particularly if you're a pedestrian that's having difficulty moving at all

Exactly. But more importantly, there's no shelter there. I'm just like, I don't see it. Do you see it? She's like, no, no, I don't see it. And I'm like, are you sure it's 4511 Dexter? 4511 Dexter. That is the thing that she is most confident about in her life. And I'm like, I don't know what to tell you. And now I'm kind of like, I don't know what to do about this. Like I pull into this little parking lot and I'm even saying to her, I'm like, I don't even know how we're going to get out of this parking lot. Like this traffic is awful. When we were getting off of Aurora Avenue and heading towards the red dot and this terrible intersection, I got off at this that this little exit ramp that I'll bet you, you know, well, Luke, you're traveling south on Aurora and then you get off at Dexter. But it's like this weird thing that looks just like.

where does the headless horseman hang out it looks just like uh uh like the the town ichabod crane it's like you go you get off sleepy hollow yes it's like sleepy hollow do you know what you go under this bridge it's like suddenly there you're on aurora then suddenly it's very wooded and you're curving around and you're going under a bridge and it really looks like a place that you would kill a vagabond you know like and as we're going under it i start getting like really chatty and i'm just like okay we're just gonna be coming out to dexter right now now i'm like does this woman i mean it was just like it's like one of the scariest exits off of aurora well maybe that's not true uh but anyway as we're getting off that exit earlier she's like oh this looks familiar this looks familiar i'm like oh good okay maybe we'll just drive slowly and you'll recognize it i get to the intersection she doesn't see anything so i'm like i i don't know what to do and now i'm starting to panic a little bit because i have a human being in my car who's in a very Very fragile situation. And she mentioned to me, you know, I need to get to the shelter before they close the doors because they told me if I show up late, I can't get back in.

I'm like, well, one of the many things that is challenging about life when you're unhoused is that there are a lot of rules like that. Yeah. Which are, you know, pretty ironclad and which are, you know, can can cause someone to not have anywhere warm to be for a whole night because they miss something by five minutes.

Exactly. And so and this woman's sort of like she's sort of like low talking to herself the whole time in the car, like kind of talking to me, but also just sort of kind of muttering about her experience and sort of like sometimes in Spanish, sometimes in English, sort of like I can hear her saying like, oh, oh, Lord, or whatever. her and not about me but just about her situation you could just tell she was still reeling from everything right that has happened to her in the past several days I don't know why this is why I need to point this out but one funny thing she said out of the blue she just said she's like talking about the accident she just said he was just kissing my butt he was just kissing my butt and then oh wow and then he hit me and I was like oh you mean he was driving too close to you she's like yeah she was using the term kiss he was riding her ass not kissing her butt the thought

of like oh god that guy was just kissing my butt I know it took me a while I feel like if we all used that we would get less mad at people who were riding our ass because kissing my butt it just seems like they're being a little deferential exactly and I was actually kind of clinging

to little moments like this of humor to kind of help me through it a little bit because I'm starting to really get nervous here because now the sun has really set it's dark again it's not late it's 3 p.m so the sun has been down for hours well the truth is it is five it's getting damn near 5 p.m and I'm like could that be the time I'm like that seems 5 p.m seems way too early to close the doors and not let residents back into any shelter but I also don't know how this ends and I'm not leaving and I'm telling this woman she's like well just leave me somewhere I'm like I'm not leaving you somewhere like we need to figure out where you're going or at least get you into somebody else's hands so then i'm just i'm like let's drive back to that place where you said things looked familiar let's just drive slowly down dexter so i'm driving slowly down dexter people are kissing my butt i had to pull over a couple of times to let people pass and now we're driving towards mercer if you know the area um i'm driving right towards the mercer mess which i thought they spent tons of obama dollars on to make it a less of a mess but it was just they

straightened it up andrew but it's still not clean if you look in there's a lot of dust it's tidier but it's not they didn't deep clean the mercer mess i mean it was ridiculous somebody

told me later that a highway might have been closed down or maybe there was something at the arena that was an event but either way we drive all the way down dexter from point a to point b from, you know, head to tail on that street. Nothing looks familiar to her. And I'm like, I don't know what to do. I'm calling Kathy on the phone saying, hey, we're driving around. Like you said, you might have had a line on a shelter that you thought we were going to. Can you help me with that? We're talking on speakerphone with her as I'm talking to Kathy. I think it's clear to everybody that I'm kind of starting to have less humor about this. And again, not like angry at anybody, but just kind of a little panicky and, you know, a little bit harder for me to kind of keep that smile on my face as I'm trying to figure out as I'm trying to map out what the rest of my evening looks like as I try to find a place that is safe for this woman so we're driving around we get into the Mercer mess like nothing on Dexter looked familiar to her I use Google to find a nearby shelter I doubt it's her shelter because now I'm a little bit far away from that original address but I'm like if I can just get to the shelter oh and while i'm looking at shelters i'm seeing more and more of them are saying closed open monday at 9 a.m or god damn it so i go to this one shelter luckily i find some parking nearby um as we're getting close to this shelter she suddenly says i recognize that i recognize that and she points out the window and i look and she's pointing at the space needle You

oh wow and i think i literally laughed i said you can see that that's the space needle you can see that from all over town she wasn't saying i'm living in the space you know she it was just the first thing she recognized as somebody who is not from this country and apparently doesn't make it over to seattle much and works her job over on the east side somewhere got excited for a second because she recognized a view of the space needle which you can see from all different parts right of the city so I was just like I actually clung to that too I kept thinking about kind of how funny that moment was because it was keeping my panic at bay so I'm like okay yeah that's the space needle that's not super helpful I'm gonna go into the shelter just ask for some advice from the folks in there because I'm like this is not your place right she's like no that's not my place I'm like well let me just go talk to them and see if they have any advice for me as I'm about to get out of the car she says can you hand me my the smaller of my black bags in the back my phone is in there and I have it written down in there oh wow I've been driving and panicking for about 45 minutes and I find out I find out that not only does she have a phone and who knows I mean I'm not saying that she should have been able to navigate all this by she's an older woman you know I mean there's a lot of challenges there so I'm not like oh you have a phone this whole time I didn't have to help you it's not that but it's like wait this whole time you've had a any kind of a device that you think the address is written down on i cannot tell you how many times i asked her are you sure it was dexter was it denny denny sort of sounds like dexter was you know she and she is so certain of it and then she's like hand me my bag i'll check my phone i'm like okay you do that i'm gonna go in and talk to these other folks so

i talked to these other folks were you kind of relieved to hear that it had been written down or were you kind of flabbergasted had your flabbergast button been sort of pushed i

relieve i'm not at relief yet because i just don't know how this is going to turn out and i but i'm slightly more hopeful i'm like we'll see but i'm not i am still i'm still not i mean i'm going through every scenario here i'm wondering if i'm gonna have to call jenna even say we might have to put somebody up for the night like how would you feel about that like i told you about my boundaries earlier that is not something that i wanted to do at all but if it really really came down to it you don't even like friends and family standards i don't let you sleep over are you no you've kicked me out many times no i mean for a lot of reasons i don't i don't want to do that um but at this point the people the shelter did give me like a 24 hour emergency number i could call for somebody who would keep her safe until they figured stuff out but i haven't given up on this yet so i'm not feeling relieved because i haven't seen the phone i don't know what's in I don't know what it's gonna say but I did think it was super funny that at this point of the adventure she just casually says can you hand me my phone I

can totally understand though why it was that it didn't occur to you to ask hey do you have it in your do you have it along with your iPhone like do you have it in your purse with your phone like right there's a certain level of like not wearing girls you don't want to presume anything about somebody what you know sort of technology they have what resources they have you my guess would based on the circumstances but the information you had at that point the assumption is this is not a person who has the address written down somewhere it's not in their other black bag with their phone and to assume that like almost like if she got in the car and you couldn't find you go like well don't you have it in your phone like that would be a real presumptuous kind of a-hole question to ask yeah so that's why you didn't ask but then later in fact may have been with the phone

in the purse and it's not unusual for the people that we serve to have phones you know i mean so It's not like I was like shocked. I wouldn't be shocked that this woman would have a smartphone, but I was shocked that it hadn't been presented as evidence, especially with the knowledge that she thinks it might be in there. Because, again, she and she was I don't mean to make it sound like she was an unpleasant person. She was the most pleasant person you could imagine, just a very, very sweet woman. But she was very insistent about one thing. And that one thing was four or five one one Dexter. And I'm like, OK, you check your phone. I'm going to go talk to these folks. I come back in the car. She's on her phone and scrolling, scrolling, scrolling through old messages or something. And I'm like, OK, those folks didn't know exactly what I was talking about, but they think there might be a little shelter tucked away on Dexter somewhere. I'm like, how about this? Until you find more information or if you find more information, we'll go back. We'll retrace our steps and I'm going to drive slowly down Dexter again. And you really keep your eyes out for anything that looks familiar. she's like okay so as we're winding our way through terrible traffic on a Sunday evening she's scrolling through her phone scrolling through her phone and now I've given out a lot of information but I think it's just okay I don't think anybody our audience is going to do anything with all of the information if you piece it together but she suddenly says Elliot 451 Elliot that's the address not 451

one dexter it's four five one now i want to come to her defense on this yes those are both names that white people give their children i promise you throw a dart at any kindergarten on bainbridge or in wallingford you've got some elliots you've got some dexters so i say that's it it's elliot

and again i'm not i just for what it's worth i'm not just like why didn't you tell me that sooner I wasn't feeling any of that I was but at this point now I'm starting to feel very hopeful or close to very hopeful and and maybe a little bit of that relief you were describing before I'm like really it's Elliot 451 Elliot she's like yeah so I punch it into my you know the the google maps on my dashboard and it looks like a real place it didn't I don't think it called up the name of the place but it looked like it could actually exist you know as opposed to the first one I saw so we're driving in like as the crow flies there no these two locations this made-up address she had and the real address are not even really that close together I mean they're sort of in the same section of the city but like there if I had left her on Dexter she would not have been close to yeah if I'd left her on Dexter she would not have been close to where she needed to get Luke when I pulled up to this place on Elliot and you know it's like kind of a it's like this sort of felt like a little bit like a no man land a no man's land like sort of a piece of land that's sort of in between more prosperous parts of towns it's not run down or anything like that but it's sort of a no man's land except there's this big area where there's clearly like something that might have been industrial or commercial at some point was turned into housing and I see the she's like there it is there it is there it is this time she's not talking about the space needle she was right it's a blue building the museum of pop culture it was mo pop big frank gary head you gave it away um anyway uh and luke when i showed up at this place and i learned later that it's kind of a newer place that was set up i think near the end of the pandemic or something like it was i was there's not a place i could have been happier to be dropping her off other than her own home you know with family because i we saw it i mean i almost wanted to cry i was so happy and suddenly this woman felt like my mom i was just kind of like i was like do you want me to hang her i didn't offer but i was like she's like there it is there she's so happy there's a parking spot right out front i help her get out of the car i can just feel how relieved she is she's i'm like i'll get your bags let's just get you in there there's a somewhat like stern i mean i think it's hard work to work in a place like that so there's a very unsmiling stern young tall man working the uh working the desk and of course there's a lot of security so he's behind a lot of glass but like it's very clean there's a you know she rings the bell clearly he recognizes her and she kind of kind of hobbles in and I go back to the car and I get her bags and I we walk into like this common area that could not have been like more warm and clean and safe feeling and oh my I you want to talk you were talking about the dopamine or whatever running you know coursing through your veins earlier I don't know what was coursing through my veins at that moment but like I called Genevieve immediately after to tell the story and I don't think I was making any sense I I was on some sort of drug that is called just being the best human being possible no just like some sort of drug of just like absolute release I had not

realized how stressed I was until this was all over and so anyway that's my story I bet you too

Andrew and I don't know if you'll if you'll agree with this but like you've talked a little bit about how you know you had some questions in your head about like how is this going to play out what will this impact be on like me and Genevieve's life, et cetera. But I'm guessing that a significant portion of your feelings were, whether or not you were even conscious of it was, is this lady going to be okay? And is she going to get, be somewhere safe? And more than you being, because if this was me, 100% of my thoughts would be about, am I being put out by this? I think it was probably more about like 95% of your thoughts were like, is this woman going to be okay? And I'm guessing that that was a even more uh that was a probably even larger percentage of what your feelings of of being kind of upset and put out were more so than how is this going to impact your life negatively whereas if it was me it would be 100 feelings of is this going to negatively impact my life maybe one percent is the it wouldn't be 100 it wouldn't be 100 but i mean i think that

i mean i think that at this point i had i think calling jenna even asking if we could put this woman up i that was that was like plan z you know like i was like i will find some sort of safe emergency service like i i didn't love that idea i liked it again she said several times um just leave me just leave me here i was like i'm not leaving you here like are you can you just imagine

like i don't i feel like i'll start crying talking about it but like having things happen in your life where that seems like a reasonable Yeah. Yeah. And an expectable outcome for this person, you know, that this is a person who's been through so much in their life that like, you know, that's you had to drop me off, you know? Yeah. That's just like that makes me so heartbroken to think about. She offered me gas money. Oh, man. Now, in fairness, I offered the pilot gas money today. So I'm just saying it's a thing people do.

And in fairness, I took it. No, but no, she did. She's like, you got to give me, you got to let me give you $20 for gas. I'm just like, I said, are you, I think I literally said, I said, are you kidding me? I said, and that was still when we didn't know where things, where we were going to end up. But I mean, I think to be honest with you, I had, by the time we were making our way there or by the time I left that, that first shelter where people gave me advice, I kind of knew what the plan was going to be if I really couldn't find this woman's temporary home which was i was going to call a 24-hour line somebody would have sent out a van and kept her safe until they could have sorted things out and people maybe just the fact that she was getting

to go the plate to the place she wanted to go and that it was like you said warm and they knew her even if they were a little stern at the front desk yeah that feeling of like you're not just you're not just sort of placing her somewhere that's the least that's not the worst option like uh they're okay there's someone who doesn't know her who's going to like allow her to be in a different van right safely versus this is the place i've been trying to go for this night for this sunday night probably getting rainy sunday night in seattle yeah i'm gonna be in a place that feels somewhat okay to me and that i can yeah i understand why you walked out of there just

buzz oh my god yeah it was great then i came home and i made tacos did you do the gritty though

silently the way i did after the huskies on friday because that's the ultimate indication that you have absolutely actually too many endorphins in your system right here's the thing

i didn't want to tell you at the beginning of the story because i knew it sort of changed the dynamic wearing an oregon she was wearing an oregon's duck jacket and a full-on duck's hat in the shape of a duck not unlike my turkey hat so well anyway i'm really glad to hear that that

turned out me too man that turned out okay and you know there's many things that i want to say to you about about i really admire your your work with those folks um but i know that that's not why He brought that story up, so I will spare you the empty compliments that I would otherwise be offering you.

Save your empty compliments for other things.

That's right. Well, I've got a whole episode of Wait, Wait to record tomorrow night, which will be mostly empty compliments.

Okay, great.

Anyway. All right. Well, it's about midnight here in Chicago, so we might as well wrap up this morning's episode of TBTL. And thank all of you for your patience and for being part of the show and listening. We will be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you. The good news is I have no flights tomorrow, so I will be right here at the appointed time. In the meantime, have a great, what is it still, Wednesday? Take care of yourselves.

Wow, you're really messed up.

And please remember, no mountain too tall.

And good luck to all.

this has been um not fun but you know it happened yeah power out