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We have another live episode for you. This one was recorded for the Dayton Mensa RG – Lost Cities. The theme of the weekend was Lost Cities.
Alan and Stephen have both been on trips that many geeks would love. We discuss some of the places we’ve been which give us a glimpse into the past.
There is some discussion of fantasy trips and trips we could take via technology. Alternative Reality and Virtual Reality have given us new avenues to explore the past.
And there are some ‘lost’ places that more people should visit and we have a great chat about those also.
Come listen to the live podcast as we explore!
Transcript:
Alan 0:38
So it’s because we’re now actually looked into artificial time, we want to do so thanks, everyone for coming. And what we’re, you know, what relentless geekery is about we had a little bit of an introduction is, you know, to talk about these things, both current because that’s often of interest to people, but also we have been reading and seeing and doing and playing for a long time. And so we tried to share those things. In particular, for this session, with lost cities being the theme for the RG, we wanted to spend some time on that Stephen and I have both traveled physically and in our minds any number of different places. And so we’re gonna try to use that as to what are some of our cool experiences have been, but as you might imagine, it’s not only have we really traveled there, it was kind of like geek travel, you know. So, Steven, you have an opening, you know, you can’t wait to talk about what this topic strikes?
Stephen 1:29
Well, when I talk about things, places we’ve been to, and the geek things, reasons why or places that we still want to, but we’ve investigated,
Alan 1:39
I would say both. And also, as quick, you know, I know that this is we’re doing it live, and we’re recording it and so forth. And but if there’s anybody that really has a wonderful conference, to be sure to make that they’d like to chime in with, please raise your hand, please do you have a dog, please make sure that they’re currently not going to be taking us to doggie Ville. So here, I don’t know.
Stephen 2:05
Let’s start off, what’s the most geeky trip you’ve taken to some exotic place, maybe not even a city but some exotic place.
Alan 2:15
So it’s kind of a very good geeky place for instances. So here’s a quick frame. I’m Colleen and I have been seeing state capitals all of our married life. We went to Bar Harbor for bah, bah, bah, have a honeymoon and underway. So
Stephen 2:31
did I my first time Montpelier,
Alan 2:32
which is the smallest of the state capitals. And I kind of knew that for reading one of those like, you know, trivia books. Well, we loved it. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there. But you it’s it’s only like 4000 people, but the Capitol itself is a perfect dome, and a perfect like big sidewalk with stairs leading up to it and perfect gardens. And it just was beautiful. And we kind of said, you know, this is where every state kind of like shows off, what’s the best foot forward, right? See all the state capitals. And from that throwaway comment, like two days into our married life three days in,
Stephen 3:04
we’ve now seen 14 out of 50, you proposed again, right?
Alan 3:09
And the reason that’s cool, I guess, is because it has proven to be that that state capitals are beautiful. And often that’s kind of a Nexus in the state for what other things the state likes to show off. So it’ll be you know, if you’re, you’re if it’s a mining state, it’ll be here’s some of the biggest mineral deposits and God ever pulled out up there in Wyoming. And if it’s like, so, where we’ve been to those various different things, it’s also given us the excuse to travel all over the United States. And so it’s amazing that besides the cool, relatively respectable state capitals, all you have to do is start hitting the on America sites and you can find out Well, that’s within 100 miles of the biggest ball of twine that’s within, you know, the world’s biggest freestanding gopher statute.
Stephen 3:56
Now, you only mentioned the ball of twine, because it’s a weird al song. I know.
Alan 4:02
That’s part of what this geekery is, as well as that, you know, all these polyglot polymath things hit weird, Allison is he’s like us, he sees a cool reference. And he says, I’m just going to file that away. So I can use it in a cool spot later. And all the geeks will say, I picked up the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota. So having said that, what’s the coolest geekiest thing? We were in New Mexico. And they have very cool, it’s a roundhouse capital. It’s really beautiful, all kinds of art. But nearby is Los Alamos. And if you’re looking for kind of a mecca for science, tourism, and geekery means Los Alamos is where the atom bomb was developed. And the people that gathered to do that it was the 80s right, it was the greatest hits of the mid 20th century. So Enrico Fermi is there and it’s a they’ve, they’ve captured it really beautifully they have, where they really lived and where those things really happened in a whole bunch of Wonderful history compressed into this area. And we were just loving reading every placard on the wall. And seeing like, you know, they didn’t only create the atom bomb, here’s what they played softball, because when you’re under the incredible pressure, like you’re going to win the war, if this works, and we’re not if you don’t, they needed to be able to me. So I’m now logged out there
Stephen 5:21
now, I haven’t been to as many state capitals, but we live very, very close to Gettysburg. And for history buffs and geek nerd. It’s just a mecca of so many cool and interesting things, not the least of which is my wife is very sensitive to other worldly things. So we want to go back again, and see if we can stir up some ghosts. I’ve talked a little bit about my Raspberry Pi project with the cameras in that we want to get some catcher actoplus
Alan 5:53
Yeah,
Stephen 5:54
yeah. Yeah, we want to we want to go back and try some of that. So I think, you know, travel as geek, it’s not like, Hey, we’re gonna go to this place and sit on the beach and go to the roller coasters. It’s, hey, we’re going to go and film ghosts in the middle of the night. That’s where you start getting excited about it and people get interested, as far as you know, we’re concerned,
Alan 6:18
right? Well, as you might imagine, I’m skeptical of all that kind of stuff. But I like going to places where, okay, if there is anything here, maybe there’s like an Edgar Allan Poe spookiness to it. Maybe there’s an HP Lovecraft spookiness. And it’s never happened for me, I’ve never felt a presence in the room. I’ve never felt a chill hand touched me or anything. And so my personal experience and my skepticism is high. But still, I go out and go into places that are supposed to be haunted, because I guess, why has it gathered all those stories? Is it because it’s a suggested place? You know, there has to be a place that they want to share, or this is spooky, you’ll feel it when you go in there.
Stephen 6:57
to revisit this at Halloween, because I think, with slightly different Opposing Viewpoints, I think we could have a lot to discuss it on both sides. I think that’d be great. Once again, one of the things I loved about Gettysburg, though, if you haven’t been there in a while, they have this rotunda, where they recreated in miniature, the Battle of Gettysburg, and they do a little presentation. But it’s, it’s speaking through the, you know, all around you. And then they have little flashes of light going off. And they light up certain areas as they’re telling the story. So it gives it while it’s a model, it’s not animated, or anything like that. It gives it that sense of motion. And it gives it a sense of things happening, even though it’s very static. And it’s I liked it for the more
Alan 7:43
we designed.
Stephen 7:44
Yeah, you know, I enjoyed that more than I would have just some video presentation. It was. So I think that’s a worthwhile trip. And we’re, what two hours away from it. Three hours away from here, something like that.
Alan 7:57
One of the ways in which I would embrace the LA city’s theme is I love going to a place where there’s a sense of time. So for instance, we’ve been to dinosaur National Monument. And, you know, I know that the world isn’t only 6000 years old, it’s 6 billion years old. You know, when you go to the Grand Canyon, you can walk the path that it’ll tell you, these rocks are 150 million, and these are 160, I believe, you really get like this, this carving by the Colorado River. It didn’t happen in two hours. It happened over the course of millions of years. So we were a dinosaur National Monument. There’s a place where you can actually it’s not only the exhibits within the cool Hall, it’s that there’s still dinosaur bones, like in situ, I think, as they say, in the rock, right? on a path. And like, well, how cool is this? Imagine being the guy. So first of all, you can go back to hundreds of millions of years. But imagine just going back 200 years and being the first guy exploring around here and stumbling onto one of these bones and going Wait, what is this? Yeah, well, it’s not a bison, this is significantly bigger I’ve ever seen.
Stephen 9:02
Let me jump in there with two comments. And this is totally different topics anyway. One, that that’s what makes me laugh when people say, oh, we’re ruining the planet. No, we’re killing ourselves. Once we’re gone, the planet will recover because it’s been here a long time and faced a lot of changes. And when they say
Alan 9:20
Oh, another layer on top of Yeah,
Stephen 9:22
we don’t want to ruin this because that’s the way it’s always been. No, it’s not always been that way anyway. But saying that also makes me laugh, but I’ll forgive you. You’re Lithuanian. But that 200 years ago, that still may not have been the first person to see that the Indian and Native people may have been looking at it for 3000 years or something. So in fact,
Alan 9:42
I often thought that that’s what when you look at mythology, when you look at stories that are 10,000 years old, it’s because those things were still be found, and by relatively primitive peoples that they didn’t have the language they didn’t have the concept of the way the world worked to be able to explain. There were giants in those days or there were gods or there, were do What I mean? So just what you said it, were we to Western explorers Kit Carson wise, we’re hardly the first people to have stumbled onto something that was beyond explanation at the time, right? You know what I mean? And really, like, ominous or Awesome, awesome in the old way of like, wow, this really is kind of like godly. I don’t know what to make of this. Right.
Stephen 10:22
And, you know, there’s all those places they found hieroglyphs. And they try and decipher them. And it’s like, well, you know, that just looks like an alien in a spaceship. You know? And so, is it really? Or is it some interpretation difference, or, you know, so that’s something if I was going to explore, I’d like to go see because I, as we’ve talked, I’ve done some backpacking, some hiking in the mountains, and it’s the weirdest thing to be on some trail in the middle of the woods, up in a mountain, you come around a corner, and there’s half of a house. It’s like somebody used to live here.
Alan 10:58
That’s right. And we did same thing. We love finding ruins like that. And in fact, to jump around a little bit, we’ve been we love going hiking as well. And we’ve been to like, on one of our trips was arches and canyonlands and it’s a very interesting combination of there have been people in various different settlements there for a long time. So and maybe not limiting how to say this, Utah itself is loaded with those kinds of things. So you can go to Mesa Verde or why is the name escaping me where there’s like, these are Indian ruins that were once mostly inhabited, but now they’re abandoned. You go to even further back a place called if I remember right, like newspaper rock, where for whatever reason, people regularly gathered here and they put on their primitive if you will, cave drawings but it’s outside and you think, Wow, like they really did have this is how they captured the hunt. This is how they captured the harvest the wedding. And of course, modern hieroglyphics. Someone had to put like, you know, Al was here in maybe l plus Caray heart, we didn’t, but you know what I’m trying to say. And that was like, you know, that’s just so disrespectful that this thing was here for 10,000 years, and they ended this, but it’s kind of like in the big scheme of things. It’s exactly the same moments.
Stephen 12:09
So here’s, here’s a thought I had and it leads to something we’ve talked about that goes on with our theme. How about Okay, I was gonna say, like, the great Serpent Mound that we’ve got down in southern Ohio.
Alan 12:21
Illinois has them exactly,
Stephen 12:23
yeah. So you don’t want it people ruining that. But then you get stupid people that want to carve their initials in it. Well, all these kids are on digital stuff. Why don’t they create an AR program to where you can snap pictures and digitally sign your name or stuff? So you can put it up online? And then you don’t ruin what’s right. There’s
Alan 12:41
no destruction. There’s only addition? If you Right, exactly. Yeah. So it’s a very good idea. Actually,
Stephen 12:47
we talked about this before, that there are some places that you can do tours with VR or AR goggles on. And I think that’s the coolest thing, especially if I of course, I mentioned to some people, they’re like, Yeah, whatever. It’s like, okay, so you’re not a big deal. But like Ravenna here, Ravenna has got a lot of history, like 150 years. And the built, some of the buildings are still like the same construction, they haven’t been demolished or changed. So how cool would it be to put on some goggles, so I can see around me and I don’t step into the streets, but that it puts the buildings what they look like, 150 years ago, and I could see what those look like. And I could walk around and with the technology we have, it would like dress everybody I walked by in close it from that period shall on them exam. Yeah. And then you click a button, and now you’re at 1950 instead of 1850. You know, I think that would be love that myself.
Alan 13:47
Yeah, number one, I love to experience that. But that’s one of those things that I would love to be with the people that isn’t good enough tour guide that they’re able to do, let’s walk you around here. And that in their mind, they can picture Okay, this is before motorcar. So here’s where the hitching posts were. And here’s where the watering trough was for the horses. And here, you know what I mean? Like they could, well, your ongoing description and patter would create so much extra information and sense of place, it would be a really cool immersive experience.
Stephen 14:14
But it’s also if you got the goggles, we’ve got the tech, you could record it and it gets triggered by GPS coordinates. So it just tells you walk this way for, you know, so many feet and that triggers another thing and you could explore it, you know, in different ways. You wouldn’t have to take one guided tour, it could be wherever you go certain things trigger.
Alan 14:35
Yeah. And think about that if it wasn’t Ravenna, which is 150 years, but if you took me to Troy, and they said, here’s what Pompeii was like, here’s what Troy was like. Here’s what they really did kind of take you back to a suddenly there are gladiators
Stephen 14:51
right in the arena.
Alan 14:52
Suddenly there are you know, like the Senate is filled with Romans and togas debating the issues of the day. That would be an amazing immersion.
Stephen 15:01
And with the AI and getting 5g, you could have interactive NPCs that you’re talking with just like a video game.
Alan 15:09
Just think of that if at first you thought it was only like, you’re gonna say this, you’re watching and then suddenly the thing started to interact with you. Some people would embrace it and somebody will be like, ghost. I don’t want this. I don’t want people talking to me that are real,
Stephen 15:27
right? You mentioned Troy more likely we get a spear through us then.
Alan 15:32
Exactly. Any place where the word in the language for enemy is the same as for stranger? Yeah, you’d be getting a spear.
Stephen 15:41
If you mentioned palm Pay Now I you were talking about how you got some not yet
Alan 15:45
been there. But that’s high on that bucket list of you know,
Stephen 15:48
have you watched some of the shows that are on some of those new streaming services that you’ve been looking at? No. Oh, man.
Alan 15:55
Are there this kind of thing we’re talking about? Where They’re digging down and they’re discovering in the middle? Here’s how they used to live and Oh,
Stephen 16:00
yes. Tom pay has been a hotbed lately for whatever reason. And they’ve discovered more bodies. They just discovered, like a food vendor cart. And it’s still had the, the coloring on it and stuff. And it was about flash buried by ash.
Alan 16:18
Yeah, amazingly preserved
Stephen 16:20
snakes. And they found these bodies and they had made up, here’s what we think they are. But then they brought in teams that did x rays. And they looked into it and tried to figure out how old they were. And like, one was someone carrying a baby. And they you know, and they found the one that they said, Well, we thought this guy was such and such, but it turns out, he was probably a servant, carrying the household goods on his back. And they they, because of technology, they were able to find that out. But I guess like 100 years ago, somebody who discovered the bodies originally, they wanted it to be exciting. So they literally paper macheda and put sticks in there to change their posture. So they can make up a story and interest tourists in it. So they’re using technology now to find originally how it should have looked and acted
Alan 17:12
in a more authentic.
Stephen 17:14
Yeah. So, you know, we talk a lot about tech. And I think some of the cool things with tech is something like that, where we, because if you’re unburying stuff, and you’re just using a sledgehammer and ripping it up, you miss some of the things, if those bodies had been destroyed even more, they wouldn’t have been able to look at them now. So you know, it’s really cool with the tech, like even x rays, which are fairly old for us now, you know, to look into these bodies that are basically, you know, turned almost into stone in some places.
Alan 17:47
I’ll share this, you’re like I mentioned, when when Colleen and I are getting ready to do one of our road trips, we love doing that, because it’s a very good combination of you’re going to see a lot of the territory, but you can stop whenever you want to. And if you have a hotel that you know you’re going to be staying at, you really could be on the road until 11 o’clock at night, because you know, you have a sick spot. So we’ve done things like the geeky part would be, we’re driving along and we’re extending on doing something and then we see mini golf. And we’re like, we just we’re suckers for mini golf, because it’s a very cool human ingenuity thing, you win. I mean, like to see a little Castle in the middle of Where’s your shouldn’t be a castle, you’re getting off. So that’s kind of funny. But we also, as I mentioned, there’s all kinds of fun guidebooks and websites. And I’ve always been one of those people that loves reading about that. And I have a little spreadsheet that’s guiding our trip. And it’s not only like, where are we gonna stay? Where’s a good place to eat? It’s also so we, for instance, we’ve been to the geographic center of the United States, and of the United States, contiguous United States, including Alaska, Hawaii, and North America.
Stephen 18:46
Nice.
Alan 18:47
And so Bell fouche. Now, first, South Dakota is a very nice, like National Park Center, where they have all the state flags, and they have an exact Compass Point thing where this is that place you really are. You take a picture, you take a picture there, and I don’t know this, who knows why this is something about me with my symmetry or whatever. From this point. If I step in any direction, I’m heading towards the coast. Right. You know what I mean? Kind of a cool concept. I love that. And when we having said that, and how they really did it up in Bell fouche. That was the that was United States. You go up to the center of North America, and that’s been rugby’s North Dakota. And where is that? It’s a obelisk about 10 feet tall in a parking lot. In that shopping mall. There’s like a 711 and a male store in a trending equal. The other thing was,
Stephen 19:39
aliens don’t visit there. And it really was like, okay,
Alan 19:43
we’re here. Kind of a letdown. But we really, really made to the center of North America, including all of Canada. You just have to go through South Dakota, North Dakota. That’s kind of cool.
Stephen 19:54
You know why the obelisk is there though. Why? So that’s God can balance it when he was playing around.
Alan 20:04
Steven, you are so much my perfect shoe. I read a story on the Wikipedia site that said, the reason that they found that the center of North America was there was someone took a map, like on wood, and they’ll sit on their finger. And when they looked at it was perfectly balanced. It was within like 10 miles of where the real geographic said,
Stephen 20:25
it’s pretty cool and smart is
Alan 20:27
that someone said, I can figure this out without, you know, triangulating and exact your latitude longitude. And so I’m always amused by, you know, Enrico Fermi having been able to figure out the magnitude of the first atom bomb explosion, because he threw some piece of paper on the floor, and it’s showing how much they jumped and pulling out his slide rule. He figured it in within like, 2%. And that’s teiko how smart you are. You know, what’s the kind of rocket we’re on to the concussion? We’re this far from the site. And anyway, I just, you know, I, I love Geeking it up like that, what else we had. So geographic center. For instance, we I, we went to the Hemingway house, which was Hemingway wrote in keywest digit and get something to drink. You know, you can’t help every bar around there has Hemingway cocktails and so forth. But this is very funny. One of the reasons I really wanted to see it was not only because it was Ernest Hemingway, because what is this house known for? Do you know this? It has polydactyl cats. Real tom cat that someone gave me as a gift that apparently was quite successful. It was a
Stephen 21:38
con,
Alan 21:39
I guess. Exactly. And he was with every lady cat to where the entire population in the neighborhood and especially in this house, our cats have extra fingers, toes, whatever, you call them on a cat, you know what I mean? And they’re still they have to run to the house. They’re kind of a protected species there. And, and I know animals like me, they they like how I sound and move and smell. And so no cats like spooked and ran away. I was able to give all kinds of polydactyl cats like little scratches, and even like, hold upon and really see there really are six beads here. This is
Stephen 22:13
I don’t know why but Alan with polydactyl cats. That sounds like somebody needs to make a haiku of that.
Alan 22:20
I think it’s named for good rock band, ladies
Stephen 22:22
and gentlemen. Yeah, definitely. I haven’t visited we’ve got a couple on our list, like the Winchester house,
Alan 22:34
that as a matter of fact, everybody knows about this one. It’s where the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune built this house that has all kinds of crazy rooms that go off like walls that doors that go Don’t go anywhere. Things are at weird angles and upside down and stuff. Because she’s taught that the way to bring the spirits to rest of all those who have been killed with the Winchester rifles was continued to add rooms onto this house. Right. Right. Is that that’s pretty? Yeah. Okay.
Stephen 23:05
Yeah. But that’s that’s on our list to go to again, supernatural element to it.
Alan 23:11
Absolutely. I will say this in my mind when I was picturing was the house like in psycho, kind of nothing around it on a hill. It’s actually California has kind of absorbed approached. Exactly. And so like, right across the street is a taco bell. Do you know what I mean? is well,
is that what it is? It is very cool. Like, as you’re wandering around, you can see, man, if I didn’t have a map, you could get lost in here so easily. Because things go off in no direction. And it’s it’s it’s an unnerving place because it really isn’t like, am I? This doesn’t feel even. And yet, I don’t know that it’s true or not, because things are there unnervingly different than you would from a regular house?
Stephen 23:56
Well, you know, later this year, we’ve got plans for a couple writers conventions I’m gonna go to one of them’s in Salem and one’s in New Orleans. So
Alan 24:08
interesting sources for Yes, Hales and spooky.
Stephen 24:11
I already wrote one story set in Salem. So I use Google Maps and Street View. So I’m actually going to go visit the places that I wrote about in the story. And like, one of them was a tattoo shop and I’m gonna go Oh, by the way, is it okay, if I use your tattoo shop in my story?
Alan 24:27
Yeah. I would imagine people would love to have that little bit of local color. And then yeah, immortality by being mentioned in print.
Stephen 24:34
Yeah. Because, you know, you mentioned Hemingway, of course, my stuff’s gonna be quite as big as his.
Alan 24:40
You just have to be really sparse and how you’re right. You got to get right to it, you
Stephen 24:43
know? Yeah, I don’t know about that.
Alan 24:46
So I’m crazy like we
Stephen 24:49
are wait. So when we go to New Orleans, we have Well, first of all, I want to visit the bar that they film with NCIS New Orleans, the one that’s got back Color plays piano at because I want to sit at the same piano that he has played. At least
Alan 25:05
I like that where there’s a place that’s so famous, but you can really go to it, right? I mean, I’ve done that a couple of times. And New Orleans must have multiple places. It’s been in any number. Like, you know, the French Quarter itself is you can remember where that was the scene like there’s a gun battle in this one movie. And that was exactly the point. Yeah,
Stephen 25:21
right. Well, I, I got a picture of standing on Bourbon Street. So I was pretty good there before. But then we also found out about this bar, this pub that has literally been there for like 400 years or something like that. It’s considered one of the oldest still standing operations. Yeah, in the US. And so we want to go visit that it’s still mostly like it was then they’ve had to do things to keep it up and reinforce it and stuff. But overall, it hasn’t changed in the for some 100 years. It’s been been there. So that’s just cool that this thing has been around for so long. In our country. Yeah,
Alan 26:03
with that same stewpot going. Same batch of clam chowder, whatever.
Stephen 26:09
Right? You know, you’re talking about, you know, the Colosseum and stuff, you know, we don’t have anything to compete against that. But this is at least something kind of cool.
Alan 26:17
Yeah, in fact, this is coming. I have done a little bit of literary tourism, you know, you’re talking about places that you’ve, you’ve read about in books, and so forth. So Colleen has always looked a little House on the Prairie books, right. And so we’ve been to any number of Laura Ingalls Wilder cites where it’s like it not only here’s where she wrote the books, but this featured into the books, here’s the place where they weathered a really tough winter and this pantry was exactly really in the pantry where they kept the supplies that like help them make it through where they weren’t sure they were going to make it right. And here’s the schoolhouse that she taught right as a teenager, whatever. And so, and obviously, Tallinn could speak wonderfully authoritatively on this. And I’ve been kind of along for the ride. But I love that sense of this is from 200 years ago, 150 years ago, whatever. And here, it still is, right when I mean, they built sod huts to last or whatever might be
Stephen 27:09
the one thing I remember from the Laura angles books was I actually learned where the term horsepower came from, because they talked about it in the one book where they something they hooked like four horses up, and it was going around the spin move on something I don’t remember what but they actually said, we’ve got we hooked the horse power up or something. I’m like, Oh, my God, that’s right, where the word came from exactly
Alan 27:32
that this horse could turn this male for? Exactly, yeah,
Stephen 27:36
yeah.
Alan 27:37
When we’ve been to Biltmore house, one of the things we really loved was not only the opulence of where the where the vanderbilts lived, but it was still a working farm up to today, and that they had actually had a whole bunch of early innovations, like, here’s the perfect threshing machine, they had people actually designing, you know, I love things where nowadays, as we talked about with computers, you can do pretty much any simulation you want and bring things to be back, then you had to figure out, if I’m going to run a machine over a field that’s going to lift the plant up, take the important germicide off, leave behind the chief, you know, pick it apart so that I don’t get it, the fact that you can see this thing with 100 moving parts, and they all go which, and, and that they were so brilliant as to how they made that work off of a little gas, motor. It’s just the coolest thing. You know what I mean?
Stephen 28:33
Or even something manual by hand.
Alan 28:36
And that too, you know what I mean? That that’s, you can turn a crank up, for instance, was it Biltmore house. And I think where it was, they had fans, ceiling fans everywhere, that through an elaborate series of belts and power, they had every one of these fans in the house turning off of one central power source, one central road motor running. And they figured that out without being well, you’re not going to you’re not going to, you know, walk under it and worry about is suddenly going to snap and take your head off. They really were already Zen about what’s the strength of our materials, they understood rubber, they understood wood. And the weight ratio is of working to make it so that not only does it work, but it’s like beautifully silent, and moves the right amount of air so that even in this era before air conditioning, it didn’t become unseasonably ridiculously hot in North Carolina. And so I just it’s, again, kind of the last cities in this case being that transport back to, you know, we didn’t get smart, like in 1950 when computers were division, right? Human beings have been remarkably ingenious and creative for a long, long time. And I’ve always loved evidence of that. And also,
Stephen 29:50
and something I mentioned to you before, I don’t know if you’ve caught any of these shows, again, something cool with technology is there’s a show. There’s several Like it, but the one I like is draining the waters. Have you caught that one?
Alan 30:04
You mentioned you wanted to talk about this. It’s Yes. Things that were underneath.
Stephen 30:08
Yeah. revealed, like the the Colosseum of roads, or the Colossus of Rhodes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, they, they, the gate, and the statues, they they went diving underwater, they found pieces that they believe were part of this. And they scanned it from like three bazillion different angles, then they compiled it and put it together in computers like a jigsaw. And then they put it up. And with, you know, basically an iPad, he held it up and it drew it on top of the landscape that was there. And you can see how tall everything was and how big
Alan 30:44
it was. And the entrance to a harbor house. Yes,
Stephen 30:47
yes, that’s very, and some of the columns and stuff are still there under the water. But no one can really get to them and they’re spread out and, and even some of the items, you know, they’re worn, they’re broken apart, they’ve they’ve moved, which is why they scan so many things, and then got it all pieced together. That’s a really cool show, again, shows some really cool use of the tech and some of these new discoveries down in South America especially they’re using the the drones with LIDAR, and they fly over the jungle, and essentially they show it and they’ll show you very dramatically on the screen. Okay, now we’re gonna get rid of all the plants vegetation, and then it just shows what’s under it. Exactly. That’s.
Alan 31:33
So here’s know the Angkor Wat type thing. Yes, this temple has been in the jungle for forever. And yet, we didn’t become aware of it until 1954, or whatever the real year was, I should so and there’s got to be those in the Amazon or in like impenetrable desert or underwater. And I know that I’ve seen that too, where they use satellite imagery to say, if we were trying to find out what the best possible place where ancient ruins would be, you look for where there’s just enough difference in the shading of the earth, that something probably was here, he got buried, but there’s disturbances like you can look for graves. That way you can look for, you know, old ruins that way. And I love that we are able to do such in all that data that we’re collecting, we found ways to process it to give us the next hints towards let’s find out where this mighty river once flowed, because it doesn’t flow there anymore. Right? You know, that’s
Stephen 32:25
it. And yeah, Indiana Jones would really be a different person today. wouldn’t be as exciting to be a hacker.
Alan 32:36
You know, I read a ton of Pope’s when I was growing up. And so they’re like they they were very cheap magazines that were kind of contemporary needs with comic books and predecessors to paperbacks if you will. But one of the things that was fascinating to me about comic books throughout about pulps was they fully explored place when you read Doc Savage, or operator five, or any any kinds of exploring the world type series, they really had not been in every jungle, they hadn’t been, you know, down deep in the ocean, they hadn’t been in deep into the deserts. And so, again, to race the last cities thing, you know, everybody’s heard of Tarzan, you know, and the various different lost cities that he interacted with the jewels of opower whenever Doc Savage had discovered a city in Central America, that was a source of the gold that he used for his adventures in a fake country called Hidalgo as I recall. And but then, as you read those things, it’s amazing. How many of those things that were only speculation you come to find out? Well, there really is a city like that it just isn’t exactly where they thought it would be that there’s a whole underground complex, and they really did eat mushrooms to stay alive, or there’s, like, where did this exotic creature go? You know, all has to do is stay away from humanity. And you know, as long as doesn’t suffer habitat loss, that’s why we’re still fighting. Then they just like made it and find a Tasmanian Tiger for the first time when they thought it was extinct for the last 40 years.
Stephen 34:04
There have been a couple things recently, couple things like
Alan 34:06
that. And so I like and this is, so that was the pulse which was like the 30s to the 50s. It’s cool to read about what they were thinking the world was going to be like them. And then after a while, you start to say okay, then they have satellites, and then they had air travel and the world got smaller, if you will. But then once a while you read a story of like, here’s this cave that has huge crystals in it. Have you seen this picture of a guy sitting amongst crystals that are as big as him and they had never discovered before. So there are still wonderful Indiana Jones level, miraculous discoveries to be made it one of the reasons that we love going to the Banff mountain film festival every year is because they keep on saying here’s the world’s biggest sinkhole what’s at the bottom of this, and then they’ll like take you on a journey and I love that.
Stephen 34:52
So that that is one of the things we’ll always talk about our love of technology and some of the great things it’s doing. But that is one of the things I think It has harmed us a bit, is it takes away some of that sense of wonder Mystique. We don’t have use our imaginations as much in visiting, doing these trips, visiting some of these ruins some of the ancient cities or even watching some of these shows and see it sparks our imagination or wonderment and mystery gives you a little bit of sense of that, you know, the world, the universe really is big. There’s a lot out there that we may not know. And, and it’s funny, you mentioned the pulps. That’s the exact reason I read all the science fiction from like the 30s. You know, that timeframe?
Alan 35:37
Yeah. And sometimes it wasn’t only speculation, it was like, okay, we’ve discovered that there really are things that like fluoresce under ultraviolet light. And even they didn’t understand fully how they did it. They started to speculate, well, how could this be used for spycraft? The species is there, like when they found out that aspirin did it? It was like, well, what’s special about aspirin? Is it you know, and I loved reading some of those first uses of now that we have jet planes? What will that do to have people that it used to take an ocean voyage of two months, and now they can get across it in six hours? or whatever? It might be? It’s kind of like, as we approach teleportation, that was their first taste of what if there’s more than enough energy for anything? What if time is not a factor? How does it affect people, business empires, it was very cool to have them speculate, you know? Well, if war is fought on the basis of information, and you start having that someone has air superiority, meaning not only enough planes in the sky, but they have a perfect map of the battlefield, and the other one has the fog of war, you know, who’s going to win? You know what I mean? It’s so I, I’ve always loved that kind of speculative stuff, I guess. And we have had really good luck with when we’re out on our journeys. It isn’t even that we have to have the AR and the VR goggles and so forth on just having a phone in your hand where I think I might have missed the story. We were driving down to Marietta back and forth, because Colleen had a couple of clients down there. And we love those brown signs along the ways that say there’s a point of interest. We saw the big muskie bucket, that’s like,
Stephen 37:12
yes.
Alan 37:13
What the heck is that? Is it like a so my speculation was all right, there’s streams that come together, and they they kind of have a perfect breeding ground for mosquito fish. And so the bucket is this like, basin, if you will, where there’s a lot of muskies,
Stephen 37:28
right? Nope.
Alan 37:29
You look it up on your phone, and you find out that Archer Daniels Midland long ago, when they were doing clear cutting to be able to do mining, they had huge earthmoving equipment. Like, like house big, you know, not quite city big. Well, there were some things that were so big that after you were done with it, the amount of money that it would cost to clean up after yourself wasn’t the best economic decision. So the big muskie bucket is one of those big shovel jaw things from a big Earth mover that they just decided to leave behind. And how big is it? They have like a photo of the local high school’s marching band all fitting into the big muskie, right? That’s how big so but I love the fact that instead of just seeing that sign and saying, Who knows what that is, one day we’ll go exploring. When we read about that. It’s like we got to see the world. And we had extraordinary luck with climbing along and going. Wait a minute, I always loved Louis L’Amour when I was growing up reading all those westerns, this is where he wrote them. We go and see the Edgar Allan Poe place for the Louis the more place that we’ve had very good luck with the whim because of being able to like do a little bit of research beforehand, or just be sitting there at a subway and look over and say, What are those big green legs over there? And you find out that it’s the Jolly Green Giant statue. It’s like, we didn’t have that on our radar. But we’re game and so I love the fact that between technology and our sense of curiosity, like it’s kind of funny, I don’t mean to keep pounding on the lost cities thing. But I think that’s what you have to have is a sense of curiosity and exploration. And I wonder what does that mean? What’s over there? Yeah, there’s another Hill to go over. There’s another corner to go around. They’ll do a little more exploring,
Stephen 39:19
still being able to see the world around you with that wide eyed stare.
Unknown Speaker 39:24
Yeah.
Stephen 39:25
I have a story. It’s not my own. I believe it was in Stephen King’s on writing. He, him and his wife. I don’t remember the hotel off top my head. But they stopped at a hotel. Earlier in the day he had this idea for a story. He wrote it down on a napkin, shoved it in a pocket and he couldn’t get it out of his head all day. So he got out of bed mill the night and went to the desk clerk and said hey, can I is there someplace I could write for a couple hours and the guy pointed them this back stairwell on like the second floor landing In between or not the floor, but like the little area between landings, there was a desk. It was just right there. And he said go ahead and use that. Supposedly it was the desk that Rudyard Kipling died at while writing. And Stephen King was like in awe like, Oh my gosh, really, this is the desk I’m going to sit and write. But I wonder if they still have it there because obviously had been there for a long time. That’s like you said one of those little things. You may not plan it but you know, how cool is it that Rudyard Kipling set not only sat and wrote at this desk, he died here, that’s again, supernatural. But it’s those little things. You know, I tell the kids all the time, you guys are not building a life in a story by sitting in your bedroom, watching videos, you know, what do you tell people? Oh, yeah, the one day I really stubbed my toe bad. Where you could say, well, we stopped at this hotel. And I wrote something sitting at the desk that Rudyard Kipling wrote was also an exam, you know, it’s, it’s not like paying $100 to go to a roller coaster Park, you know, it’s at a hotel on a landing because people don’t give it as much care. And that’s sad, in many ways,
Alan 41:16
you know, call me and I raised reasons that we are very good companies. First a, we can’t hear a mention of Rudyard Kipling without one of us saying to the other, do you like Kipling? I don’t know, I’ve never killed anyone.
Stephen 41:30
There’s probably four or five people saying now, of course,
Alan 41:34
for those who hadn’t heard it, I had to inflict it on you. I’m sorry. The we’re both very game. You know, like I said, our favorite vacations have been our driving vacations because we’ve had such luck with a coincidence of let’s check that out. Why not? And it turns out to be there’s a cool dinosaur skull in the back of a library or something like that. Like, for instance, we went to Punxsutawney and we’re, it wasn’t February 1, and so we weren’t expecting to see the reading of the weather and stuff like that. Well, while we were in Punxsutawney, they said, Well, you know where they are in the offseason, they’re over there in this library. And it wasn’t just Punxsutawney Phil, it was Philomena, because they have to keep making more. Punxsutawney,
Stephen 42:14
right. It’s like, it’s like the jolly rod or the Dread Pirate, right? Robert like
Alan 42:19
that, that there’s an inheritance that goes on here. But it was very cool to see. Here they are. I mean, these are really the authentic, you know, famous from a movie. And and they’re like, it’s a very comfortable little terrarium of a place, you know, they’ve got all the vermiculite they need so they can build their little nest and, and do you know, groundhog things. But you know, just very cool to be, we actually really love that some part of how we’ve had very good luck is we tend to not go when everyone else is there. We don’t travel in the summer when the families are there. And everybody is like, Oh no, there’s more crowds and litter and noise and whatever else might be traveling in the color seasons, you can go and see things and have kind of a more personal experience of it. And also, the people that are there that really are the Knowledgeable, interesting caretakers, they often they’re so happy for company.
Stephen 43:07
Yeah,
Alan 43:07
we went to accept state capitals, we’re in Des Moines, we we find out that they have apparently a very nice library. Well, we’re we turn like the corner to go down the hall to the library. And the library doors are like two and a half storeys tall. You know, you’re hoping this is gonna be really cool. You open these doors, and it’s like the doors to us, like everything outside was black and white. And it’s the most beautiful library you can imagine. It’s like six storeys, tall, spiral staircases that go up amongst endless shelves, and it goes off into the distance and all this, like cool stuff. And if you’re a library lover, it was just beautiful. Like you almost said, you want to get quiet because you’re like, this is just like a church. This is a cathedral of learning. It’s the coolest thing. Well, we walk up and say, you know, we love these kinds of places. And because we were they’re the only people there. I said, Would you like to see some cool stuff?
Stephen 44:05
Yeah,
Alan 44:07
they take us and they open up the secret bookcase and open it and you can step out onto a balcony where from you’re looking at the Capitol and the primary building from the outside. There’s a frieze of various different like godly figures and concrete that are all standing there while you’re on the back end behind them. So you’re looking out of the armhole from underneath the guy with his arms, akimbo over the call rounds. And like, I don’t know what what did we get, you know, one out of 1001 out of how many people even know that exists much less get get the cool tour of it.
Stephen 44:45
Yeah,
Alan 44:45
and we’ve just had I I don’t never mean to talk too much. We’ve had such good luck by just being a little bit of talk to the people that are there, show that you’re interested in fun and cool. Like, you know Is that we’ll give you the sexual tour of the cave. They usually love
Stephen 45:03
what I do.
Alan 45:04
Yes, it’s just, we also we don’t look like Desperado. Standard, everybody wears
Stephen 45:10
a mask now. I’ve had that argument with my cousin. Because a lot of times, I’ll pull up the GPS and I’ll turn off, you know, don’t put me on toll roads. And he’s like, well, that’s gonna take 40 more minutes. Well, no, it might actually take an extra hour or two, depending on what I see on the way. And there was a place out west I stayed at it was a campground. But it was like jellystone. It looked like the Flintstones, it had a car, it had houses. It had a dyno slide. It was made to look like the Flintstones. The kind of weird thing is I saw in the news a couple years ago, it had been closed and abandoned. And they were getting ready to like, get rid of it, unless somebody bought it. And I’m like, oh, man, it’s just sad. That memory of being there. And now no one will get to do it, you know, but that was one of those weird little things, you know, you’re in the Flintstones city.
Alan 46:05
Exactly. You know, I wonder how much. Of course COVID 45 has had all kinds of impacts on restaurants that couldn’t stay open all kinds of places. I wonder how much like a family campground like that. That depends on a certain amount of tourist business. And then tourism shut down for a year. I sure hope that enough of them are all going to be open or at least they were preserved that they didn’t just like the rain guy and everything is destroyed. I really would love to be that this wasn’t a destructor kit, because we
Stephen 46:33
go camping quite a bit. A lot of them were actually opened last year, but there were rules that you had to stay within your camp area. You could they had the store clothes, they had the swimming pool clothes, they had the playground clothes, you know, stay in your area
Alan 46:50
anywhere where you could be part of the swapping. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Stephen 46:54
So of course, then everybody starts drinking. So that went out the wayside. Do we want to see if anyone else has anything? Any places a Becky
Alan 47:03
any any contributions or any questions? You know, part of burning good doing the cool Live podcast is it’s not just Stephen and I. And he was calling what’s been your favorite experience that we’ve done the favorite, any cool, memorable thing that I have neglected to mention?
Unknown Speaker 47:21
I’ll say one thing about doing 48 capitals in 48 capitals, we have never once seen a governor at work in his office.
Alan 47:30
That’s true,
Stephen 47:31
you should have taken pictures of 48 empty Gov
Alan 47:34
empty seats.
Stephen 47:37
That would have been a collection, you could have done a book put a picture book out.
Alan 47:42
We have because we often been there like it’s kind of funny, all kinds of states, they don’t have their officers have their representatives in session the entire time. So a whole bunch of New England states, it really is like third session, maybe three months out of the year. And then they’re like fixing and able to tour in the meantime. So we could go right into the coolhaus chamber. And I was able to stand at the main speaking lectern and aurait Yo, and I mean, so we have all kinds of cool pictures that didn’t involve a set pushing a senator aside, we just kind of got to have the run of the building. And again, maybe because we’re not, you know, like little kids running around, maybe spilling equals or spilling. Like that. They all seem to let us be okay, everywhere. But New Jersey, New Jersey really was like, What are you doing in here? It’s like, wow, we’re touring. We’re tourists really suspicious.
Stephen 48:34
Because the one thing I remember about New Jersey, through all the different travels I have done is when you fly into New Jersey, you’re saying, okay, we’re coming down to our descent and you know, you still have like 40 miles or something like that. And you look out the window. And for the whole 40 miles, it’s all tracked housing. So that’s my New Jersey, like, I’ve done I think
Alan 48:59
one of the effect is funny before we were calling, of course, knowing that that we were going to be doing this conversation, one of the things you wanted to mention we mentioned was so there we are dinosaur National Monument. And as usual, they have park rangers there and so forth. We were having a wonderful conversation with the lady who was the answer woman. And then we talked about we had taken the walk and seen the bones and all that kind of stuff. And one of her great comments. That is pretty much our life is, you know, if you’re bored in this world, you just don’t get attention. Nothing. Yeah, exactly. Because there’s wonder to be found everywhere. A little Calvin and Hobbes II sounding you know what I mean? Like, just, if you just take a walk and you don’t appreciate it spring, these things are blossoming or here’s, you know, what made this whole you know what I mean? There’s and when we’re in the middle of Saguaro, so you know, National Park, and they’re like, wow, this really is like a little owl or an Ocelot or something lives in this cactus here. And, you know, all the different ecosystems that we’ve seen at the different sense, when you’re in the middle of a deep pine forest. It’s just so calming and so ancient in a way, it smells like this place doesn’t believe what you’re saying this place doesn’t require any humans. This place. We’re doing just fine. Yeah.
Stephen 50:18
I have a relative and I’m not gonna mention names. It’s not Dan, that I go to places with. And like a hail farm when they do the Civil War reenactment was an example. Yeah, I went there. And I’m like, looking at everything. I want to touch what I can I want to read stuff and all of that. This particular relative, like, what? Boop, boop. Okay, well, we’re done. Let’s go get something D and I’m like, Are you kidding me?
Alan 50:47
I’m just starting to have a placards.
Stephen 50:51
It’s not that, okay, well, I’m here great market off the bucket list and leave. You know, it’s like, I’m in bracing it I’m enjoying it. You know what? It opens at eight. So let’s get there today. Yeah, Ray, hold on.
Alan 51:04
art museums where people are taking pictures of the art. You know, we’ve been, we’ve been on a hike where someone came up to Colleen and said, look at this cool picture. I just took, like, you mean, the view out that window right over there that I can see and absorb. And so it is an odd thing that that things only get, like real when people capture them nowadays instead of their sensor data, if you will.
Stephen 51:31
I don’t think it’s Hemingway. I forget who it is. But isn’t there a poem something about taking a seashell off the beach, and how it reduces its magnificence and glory by putting it on a bookshelf. I saw a poem I’d have to look it up again. It’s
Alan 51:46
been years. That’s a very nice sacrament, we tend to never do that. You know what I mean? Right, we have our memories and we take pictures of everything because we love to have the memories be the trigger for remember where we so we were on Harney peak. What is hardy peaks distinguishing feature, it’s the tallest point in between the Rocky Mountains and the eponine in Europe, like not the Appalachians or the Adirondacks. And so it’s one of those you can walk all the way to the top. And then there’s actually a little structure on top where you can take a ladder up and you can be like the highest thing and get the entire VISTA looking all the way around. And I think now I just read that it’s now not going to be called Harney peak is going to be called Black Elk peak is another one of those places that is, if not sacred Indian land. It’s very much in the Black Elk wilderness, which we wandered through by reading a map wrong. Let me just mention that. And so that’s where I almost like got hypothermia, and Colleen saved me. But the fact that like, what’s, what a cool artifactual fact is that, yeah, I’m on the highest thing between the Rockies and Europe. You know, that’s a really,
Stephen 52:53
they’re taller than Colleen so she didn’t even get that distinction to build
Alan 52:57
the tallest thing in South Dakota.
Stephen 53:03
I love that they changed the name but at least it wasn’t something like you know, Walmart point
Alan 53:09
sadboy it What if someone had bought the naming right? Yeah, exactly. That this is gonna be AAA Park.
Stephen Schneider 53:16
Yeah.
Alan 53:18
So we another thing that we’ve and bear with me, I had a thing I wanted to mention. Sorry, I’m getting lost it now. Another one of those fun coincidences, where were we? I’m sorry. I’m blanking.
Stephen 53:33
Ah,
Alan 53:34
that’s a good one, too, you know, oh, we, we had one of the after we had talked about you know, we’re at 48 out of 50 state capitals and only have Alaskan Hawaii to go to. And then we’ve been talking about like, What’s an interesting next goal? You know, do we want to see all the highest places in each state? Is there anything we should extend? Of course, outside of the United States? Where do you want to go? And one of the things we talked about was doing like an object’s of power tour. See the books of Cal? Don’t you want to see the crown jewels? Like we were in Austin, Texas. And only when we were there to be discovered that they have a Gutenberg Bible of the University of Texas. Wow, we did not get a chance to see it. But Gutenberg Bible,
Stephen 54:17
I mean, that’s
Alan 54:18
like the start of movable type.
Stephen 54:20
Yeah, the start of knowledge. Now, they actually had
Alan 54:24
in a very real way everybody can get to it way instead of only the upper echelons. Right. And the priesthood and the scientists, you know.
Stephen 54:34
And now, you know, if they had a working Gutenberg press, now, that would be something cool and still printing off Bibles. You know that that would be pretty cool.
Alan 54:44
But but it’s I I love the fact So having said that, so we were at the annual gathering in Boston. And we’ve had there’s two quick stories here. At one point when we were doing our we did a loop from the annual gathering in Portland that we went like to Yellowstone and back around. We find ourselves in Spokane, Washington. And it’s like, okay, it’s a cool big city, but I don’t know much about it. I often get the alternative newspaper, that’s where they have the cool music and comedy and restaurant listings. And we find out that there’s a layer note individually exhibit at one of the local museums. And like, well, he’s only the most mensen of Benson’s ever, incredible polymath of all time, he just knew everything and did everything. And so you go to this place, and they have artwork of his and like, not only from his courtesies where they have the pages where he designed things they had created the things that he had designed. So here’s the first image of what could be a submersible. Here’s a perpetual motion machine. Maybe you didn’t get that one. Exactly. But the fact that you were just in the middle of this roomful of genius, and totally unexpectedly, and I just I love the fact that if I hadn’t happened to pick up that magazine, and we were like, before we leave town, right, missing this, we’re going here, that’s
Stephen 55:53
one of those little things that people miss.
Alan 55:56
And so similar to kind of tie this all together, we were in Boston, we read about that their local museum there has a copy of the Magna Carta there. And there’s a copy of a working version of the Constitution, and of the Declaration of Independence, where they had like margin notes, you know, those spring for little, brilliant persons. They had to, like hammer them out between many discussions between brilliant and stubborn men. And so you walk into this place, and like, here’s the Magna Carta, which is in Latin, and so they have the translation salad. But then you see, like, here’s the translation of the first time that it says, A man has the right to face his accusers, like these things that are incredible. bedrock foundation things for how the rule of law works, and that they work. Was it 1216 I’m sorry that I’m an idiot. I don’t know this exactly. Once again, that right?
Unknown Speaker 56:46
Well, 15 1215
Alan 56:48
Oh, you’re pretty close, but like to be in this room. And things are like humming with power. You know what I’m yeah.
Stephen 56:56
And you don’t believe in the supernatural owl Come on. But there’s that that
Alan 57:00
it’s, I didn’t feel Benjamin Franklin’s presence there. It just was, how formative how beautiful that these things have survived time. From what I understand there’s like a dozen Magna Carta is that can go around the world. They have some tour in some state in state, but that they’re they made copies because when it was first done, the agreement for Jean King john and all the barons, they had to send that word out to the land center. We good No, there’s a wow state of oneness here. And so the fact that those have survived for 800 years is very cool. And then of course, the very particular American things like to see. So is that like, you know, James Monroe’s handwriting in the margin there. It’s very cool to get and get that cool sense of history and of contribution and of connectivity. Oh, I didn’t know I didn’t want to leave. Yeah. Oh, my God, it was beautiful. So Well, yeah, I
Stephen 57:51
got a small trip for you. And it’s pretty close to Dayton, if no one’s been there, cross the border, go over to Point Pleasant, West Virginia. That’s where they have the Mothman festival every year. And they have a giant silver moth man statue. So you can go get your picture with it. It’s It’s very,
Alan 58:09
there’s been many, many sightings and it’s kind of unexplainable. And so but you know, I don’t know I I’ve been to metropolis, Illinois, which is kind of funny. And I don’t mean to be the shill. Tomorrow. I’m doing a talk about comic book velocities. And he’s, well, yeah, Metropolis is Superman’s home. But there really isn’t metropolis, Illinois. And they really do have a statue of Superman there. And they, they found it in very interesting balance between not just cashing in and having Oh, here’s your Superman corndog. And here’s a Superman. instance. Instead, they actually have fun with it and reverence for it. And they’ve, as a small town managed to kind of make it entertaining.
Stephen 58:43
Oh, hey, I would go
Alan 58:45
so yeah, it’s really cool.
Stephen 58:47
Well, speaking of the corn dog right down the road, from this giant silver moth man statue is hillbilly hot dogs. Okay, now, I’ve not been there, it’s on our list.
Alan 59:01
But that being out of like varmint meat, like you don’t know, well
Stephen 59:04
put it this way. We were driving by and we look over like wow, that really looks like someone’s gonna come out with a chainsaw and kill us. There’s like people on the porch. But I wonder if they’re like looking at us sizing us up. There was a car stuck on a pole and we went What the heck? And then we saw a sign that said hillbilly hotdogs. I literally like had to stop the car. I’m like, that’s a serious restaurant. I thought it was like some rundown shack. That’s hilarious. And what’s his name guy fury from diner driving the dive. He’s been there. So he didn’t die.
Alan 59:42
There wasn’t like banjo music in the background and you were spooked. First thing
Stephen 59:46
we all did we all start going down to daddy or daddy
Alan 59:49
backlink because you know the guys on the porch, you know, he’s right there.
Stephen 59:51
They really like naked, you know, as hillbilly as they can, and they embrace that. So there you go. You got to add the Mothman saju and hillbilly hot dogs to any travel list.
Alan 1:00:06
Yeah, that’s
the one of the things that we’ve noticed is the, a lot of the guidebook prep gonna say this, you know, if you look at photos and Frommer’s, they’ll have important stuff, they’ll have historic and etc, etc. But for instance, we’ve been to the Frank frazetta Museum. I mean, I really love his artwork, you would have seen it from like the, you know, Molly hatchet cover a whole bunch of creepy and Conan 60s covers Conan the Barbarian. Exactly that and there’s actually his son runs a museum in the wilds of Pennsylvania, I think it’s like, the kind of towards. So where’s the Baseball Hall of Fame of
Stephen 1:00:47
Cooper Cooper’s?
Alan 1:00:49
It’s, it’s like, kind of heading towards there. And we had a wonderful time because again, we were there like midweek? No. And he was a Monday who was not supposed to be open. We were in our hotel, and I called over and said, you know, we drove all this way to see you guys. He goes, Hey, if you buy something where the gift shop, we will turn the lights on and open up wasn’t because they weren’t supposed to be open. We kind of had Frank Jr, his wife to ourselves. And they just gave us the most delightful Family tour. Not only of course of the artwork, but like him sharing stories about about his father. And little known fact about Frank frazetta. He actually had a big heart attack a stroke. And he learned to paint with his left hand. Have you been right handed all of his life so much that he could create things that were still really good frazetta artwork? And like, think of how your mind is that mighty? So artistic? Are you that you can use your off hand and still create things of beauty? Wow, my offhand looks like I’m five. It’s all stick figure terrible.
Stephen 1:01:50
My dominant hand looks like really, I
Alan 1:01:52
guess Me too. You know, I mean, it’s not it’s not that much different. Actually. The reason I love doing crossword puzzles, because I can do it in all caps. And I can handle precise lettering like that. My cursive looks like oh boy,
Stephen 1:02:05
I have I’ve always said that’s why God invented word processors.
Alan 1:02:10
To get rid of, you know, my bad handwriting. My paper always got marked down or whatever.
Stephen 1:02:14
The only thing I look like a doctor is I may not be a doctor, but I write like one.
Alan 1:02:21
One of the things that come in, they’re talking about doing when we’re in retirement is we love not only doing this kind of travel, but there’s first different cities that have wonderful concentrations of cool stuff. And so you don’t want to go there for a weekend you want to go to Washington DC for like, two, maybe three weeks. And every day, definitely to the Capitol, and the the all the various like, I want to go to the museum of the mint. I want to go to the spy museum. I want to go to the museum. I think that actually just close which is so unfortunate. But just by getting into Toronto, for instance, once we got like the city passed, and we were like, let’s go to their natural history museum. Let’s go. Yeah, we have this vision, oh, probably a dozen different cities, where Philadelphia has lots of history. So does Boston. So there’s Washington, let’s go to San Francisco. And they have you know, and let’s go like Florida has one of the rooms where they have a Salvador Dali museum. But they do. And they have a comic book museum. And so what a cool combination, and there’s a truly glasswork exhibit. And as you do a little bit of this things, you start to find those concentrations, those Nexus it’s like, I kind of want to go there and not see as much as I can in two days and rush through everything. I want to take a week and know that if I find a place really wonderful, I’ll go back the next day and capture all the stuff that I didn’t feel like rushing through. And so I think we’re going to become that that you know, we’re gonna have to learn how to, I don’t know our own alarm the house well enough that we could be gone for two or three weeks. Right now, of course, what’s our best alarm system, our houses appearance? You know what I mean? We don’t look like a boss in here. And there’s treasure you look like we already
Stephen 1:03:59
do what we do just live out in the boondocks roll your neighbor’s houses look just as bad. Nobody wants to drive out there.
Alan 1:04:05
Exactly. Slim pickins when they get off of 59 or whatever. But I think that that’s a very cool idea of there’s so many cool things I know you go to. And it’s not only like the United States history in Philadelphia, is that also where they have like the motor Museum of birth out of these. Is that the title of it?
Stephen 1:04:26
Yeah. And like I again, I don’t
Alan 1:04:28
master medical oddities. Thank you. I’m not a master of the grotesque but the fact that somebody put a whole collection of carousel horses or medical oddities or mustards or I just love we were out in Marietta and went to a dollhouse museum. And it was like the most truly temples that I’ve ever seen in one. It’s kind of cool the overwhelm of it, and the obsessive nature that led to that thing being collected over the course of time and they put it into a nice environment. So you really could enjoy it. Sometimes there It can be a little bit weird if it’s a little cluttery or whatever. But I just I like to honor people that this is their life’s work. That’s really kind of a cool thing, even if it’s a little obsessive, like I said, you know, there’s still something about that. That’s it’s I like to I don’t know, acknowledge that the work they did did not go wasted. I’m there. I’m saying
Stephen 1:05:22
that made me think of the Motown museum up in Detroit. That’s another, you know, obviously Motown had a bit of an impact. Absolutely. There is an amazing basis, James Jamison that played every time you hear a Motown suit tune, and it’s just got this really kick ass baseline. It’s probably Jane, that guy. And then the Henry Ford Museum, where I almost got arrested. Um, what that would have brought that. Let’s just say they put the barriers between you and the car that Kennedy got shot in for a reason.
Alan 1:05:58
There you go. So whereas you can go into the bus that Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus at her seat, and tell that’s not an object to power? Tell me that’s not a place of power. That is very cool to be there for that.
Yeah,
Stephen 1:06:15
well, you know, heck, I live eight miles from Kent State. And there’s still assigned as a bullet hole in it from that shooting. So I mean, I’ve been like an inch from it. It was like, well, I could stick my finger in it and touch it, but I didn’t want to it didn’t feel right. You know,
Alan 1:06:34
like I said, you know, we’ve had such good luck about that, like going to the Ford museum. I wasn’t sure it would be getting into but then you’d be like, wow, this really is the bus. It’s not like a recreation. It’s not and other places we’ve been, you know, sometimes as you know, history isn’t pretty. So you’ll find, here’s the gun that was used. Here’s the dog that was set on somebody. You know what I mean? Sometimes it’s Balto, where here’s the dog that brought diphtheria medicine and saved a bunch of people. So it’s, it’s worth seeing that capture of history, I guess. No matter where we’ve been at anyway, we went to a cool place in Oregon. That was like the Oregon Trail museum and a little bit of what you mentioned to earlier it’s all Stanek diagramas but they really captured what it would have been like to be going through the Badlands be you know where you had like two sets of clothing and you had to like wash them and alternate between you didn’t have a wardrobe you know, here’s here’s the I really had a great sense of this was not easy pioneers really were amazingly hardy people you know what I mean to and to have done this with like, we don’t know what’s at the end of the trail, we hope we’ll be able to land build a farm create a new life, but that that amazing either optimism or desperation that led people to be Sooners or Oregon Trail people or California Gold Rush people. It that’s kind of much of how the United States got built when we’ve been at the Lewis and Clark museum. It really was kind of terra incognita all to the west. And you’re only in like, St. Louis, you’re in Jefferson City, as I recall, right? The whole West was still to be found. That’s kind of cool. You know?
Stephen 1:08:15
So the Oregon Trail museum did they like show all the people that died of dysentery?
Alan 1:08:19
They had references to that? That was though this many people didn’t make it? You don’t? I
Stephen 1:08:24
mean, this is beyond your time. But I don’t know, you know, about the very popular
Alan 1:08:29
way to die. the very earliest, exactly. So computer games, not a video game computer game.
Stephen 1:08:35
Exactly. Kids. Heck, that thing still comes back. You can get it on iPad, and they just released a new version. And they’re making a cartoon now as I’m right.
Alan 1:08:44
Just like zork you don’t I mean, Georgia, Texas. I’m sure it never goes away. It gets repackaged. Yeah, one thing I remember about the Oregon Trail Museum, remember this Colleen, it was on a top of a hill, and it was so windy that you were getting pushed around. And so that was a big capture of so imagine being in that kind of wind across the prairies for days on end, just getting entered the dirt and dust is getting into everything, and you can’t really catch your breath and you can’t even like yell at each other because the wind carries it away. And it was very, um, I guess it was an unexpected on their partner and an unintended maybe it’s a better way to put it. Like Wow, I’m really experienced a little bit of what it would be like to be like you’re naked to the elements, you really could die out
Stephen 1:09:28
here. And you could still go back to a car.
Alan 1:09:34
So, okay, um, I think we might have done our our Is that correct? Any other endeavor? contributions questions? Yes, please. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:44
Steven, you mentioned at the beginning about elegance, a haiku about i’m gonna i’m going to put one in the chat.
Stephen 1:09:53
Okay, great.
Unknown Speaker 1:09:57
If that worked
Alan 1:10:01
Well, you are the sweetest.
Stephen 1:10:03
Oh my god,
Alan 1:10:03
I’m so lucky to have married you
Stephen 1:10:08
will love to post it on the website. I want to make shirts out of it. We’re always talking about
Unknown Speaker 1:10:14
counted correctly.
Alan 1:10:17
referenced haikus are one of the few art forms where you’re not just enjoying the art of it. You’re always counting to make sure that
Stephen 1:10:27
we need to get relentless geekery t shirts with that Haiku and six fingered cat.
Alan 1:10:33
There you go. Exactly a little busy that will do that. beans out, not the claws, because they really they were my total friends. They were so cuddly. And honestly, so I’m sorry, everyone. We have been mostly paying attention to faces and noises and stuff like that. There have been some very nice contributions to the chat thing that we didn’t really bring up. So very, thank you very much for the Black Elk speaks reference. Thank you sure. to somebody else who has been to the big muskie bucket. Some of the group here Winchester house in San Jose. Honestly, I feel bad for now not having pulled people into discussion. And thank you. But thank you very much. It’s been really sweet. Thank you, everybody who attended. Thank you very much, Steven, for being being so great to do this with you know what I mean to you too,
Stephen 1:11:19
man, this is always fun.
Alan 1:11:22
So, thanks, everyone. I think we’re this we’re trying to make this kind of a cool, regular thing at RGS I guess you know, it’s on, please go to the relentless geekery comm website. And we have quite the interesting accumulation of this kind of humor and information. And I don’t know the joy of geekery it’s, we really have had a nice time doing it. And then
Stephen 1:11:42
it’s kind of like sitting around at a table at an RG every week.
Alan 1:11:46
It really is, you know, the conversation rages far and people are out like pulling their phones out and taking notes. I got to listen to that. I got to read that I got to go there. I love when medicines share those cool things with me. I have so many things have I gained from telling you about the book you’re reading and unless you told me about it, I wouldn’t know about it, but it’s great. And I love those kinds of recommendations. You know, that kind of thing. So, okay, thank you again for the Haiku Colleen, you are you are the poet laureate, relentless. geekery we’ll have
Stephen 1:12:16
to hire her to come out with like yearly haikus. Exactly. Yeah,
Alan 1:12:20
that’s we’re gonna have like a T shirt series. You want to meet we need. Oh, I love that.
Stephen 1:12:28
Okay, cool series.
Alan 1:12:30
Here’s the geekiest thing I will show a little bit of love right now. Calling got me this cool puzzle. I think I mentioned it online. Oh, yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, you can see that right now. I think March 26 is showing in those two little gaps. It’s a set of pen dominoes that forever. The top two rows are all the months of the year. And the bottom four rows are all the dates of the each month. And you can solve this puzzle for every single day throughout the year. And so since I’ve gotten it, I’ve managed to I think I’ve only had one day where it escaped me but otherwise I’ve managed to apply myself to a little bit of puzzle solving. That’s pretty cool. My daily you know, don’t always be computing don’t always be talking. There’s something that is this kind of brain fun. And every day I do it so thank you calling for this wonderful gift.
Stephen 1:13:19
That’s pretty cool. I like that.
Alan 1:13:22
Okay, enjoy the rest of the RG everyone. Thank you everyone in date for putting on another virtual RG. Yes. Anybody who would be interested in a comic book perspective on this please join me tomorrow and I think 130 and otherwise, relax and you know whatever your beverage of choices, a little sip here. Here’s my Dr. Pepper my hideous addiction. So. Alright, we will see you against the ice.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
