Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike.
And I'm Nate.
So we are recording at my studio today, aka my smoking room.
We're smoking a Rocky Patel Vintage 92.
And I said before we started recording that I really like the shape of this cigar.
That's a 1992.
1992.
Yes, I really like the shape of this one.
Box press, torpedo, looks to be six inches long.
You can look it up for yourself.
Yes, very nice shape.
Very nice shape.
I really like this.
Smells all right.
I think this will be a good one.
There's a little bit of spice on the wrapper.
Yeah, there is.
I don't think we actually said what we were going to talk about this time.
No, we didn't.
No, I know we wanted to.
And I'll see if I can pull it up real quick.
We can give some initial thoughts.
I mean, we're only a couple puffs in, but...
It's very strong.
Very strong.
It's got a good draw to it.
Yes.
These are highly rated usually.
This would be more of a premium cigar than what we've been smoking.
Yes.
We thought it'd be fun because it's a while ago now, but we're going to talk about kind
of the Aunt Jemima, removing the Aunt Jemima icon and Lando Lakes, removing the Lando Lakes
indigenous person from the...
Fighting Sioux.
I know I didn't mention it when we talked about earlier, but that pissed a lot of people
off.
When they changed them to the Fighting Hacks.
So we thought it'd be funny if we went through and found all of the products that were gendered.
Not like Soap for Men, but like Mrs. Butterworth versus things.
But I think that'll have to be a different one because I don't know.
Here's 35 products that are pointless.
115.
These aren't really necessarily the names of the brands.
So maybe I should have done gendered name brands on my Google search.
We'll do a little research.
We'll do a little bit of research.
We'll see what this...
Well, we could talk about what we were doing earlier.
Nate's been over at my place for three hours now.
We shot some Trap, then we did some target shooting as well.
It had been years and years and years since I shot Trap, so it took me at least a few
rounds to get back into the swing of targeting and everything.
I had my ammo at a place that had a fire, so I have a lot of smoke damaged ammo.
So I was shooting six shot high brass and then T shot, three inch T shot, which if people
don't know, that's a heavy goose load ammo.
So it's very strong for those who aren't hunters, which is always fascinating.
The sixth shot would be something for early season pheasants.
Then we did a little bit of pistol action.
Yep.
We shot a nine millimeter and a 38.
Yeah.
It's always fun.
Always fun.
Yeah, it took me a couple shots before I got it down and then I was double tapping.
I'm not going to say like normal, but pretty much like normal.
Yeah.
I had a lot of the dust and rust off the old shoulder and everything.
Yep, yep.
So I'm going to have to clean that firearm.
I talked to a guy who works for the military who does arms for them.
I asked him about the ammo, if it was going to get damaged by the smoke.
He said, no, shoot it up, but you're going to have to make sure you clean your firearms
because the smoke on the outside will damage the gun.
Yeah.
I was like, oh, okay.
That's interesting.
I'm surprised that the plastic housing on the rounds didn't melt.
They're not, it wasn't heat.
It was mostly smoke.
Oh, smoke, okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
It was an electrical fire caused by a carbon monoxide detector shorting internally.
The thing that's supposed to save you of all things.
Yeah.
The thing that's supposed to save you of all things is that it had a short internally, which
is interesting.
But as you can see, the brass was corroded and everything.
Yeah, it was.
Yeah.
Even the old wing master couldn't eject some of the rounds.
I remember hearing why the Colts, like the pistols were so popular with cowboys and everything
is they weren't necessarily the most well-manufactured revolver of the time of the era, but they
were manufactured so loose that they could still operate and fire with dust and sand
from the trail in them.
So everybody preferred that because they weren't as fine-tuned precise as some of the other
revolvers on the market.
Sure.
So you could actually get them out, get them dirty and still fire them.
Sure.
So that's like the original, I'm going to make myself sound like a fool because it's
not an AR-15 and it's not an M1.
The AKs?
No, no, no, no.
The American rifles, the first generation American rifles.
You see this in like half lit.
I know, that's weird.
The first generation of the M1 when they brought them to Vietnam would have jamming problems
because the tolerances were too tight and they would mud in them and stuff.
They were just junk.
Well, Vietnam is fairly humid, I believe.
Yeah, it's humid and muddy.
It's jungle.
Jungle.
I've been in Southeast Asia and it's jungly, but very interesting.
Yeah, versus the AK-47, which I heard that comparison once that the guy who designed
the original M1 was an aircraft designer, engineering, and the guy who designed the
AR, or not the AR, the AK-47 was a tank designer.
So they have two different philosophies.
I don't know if that's actually true, that might just be apocryphal.
I thought the AK-47 designer was just a drunk Russian, but...
Maybe some of that.
Hard to say.
I don't know.
So on the table here, do you know what this is?
I think we've had it before, haven't we?
Have we had it before?
Well, you tell me.
Well, the listeners might not.
You might have had it.
I've had this here for a while.
You can see it at home.
If you're listening right now, you can see what Mike is holding.
Oh, he can see us right now?
That'd be awesome.
Activate your 3D goggles now.
Yeah, exactly.
I was on vacation a year or two ago in South Dakota, and I will not say what part or anything
like that, but we stopped by...
There's only one part.
Right.
We stopped by a gas station and they had white liquor in the gas station, in mason jars.
And this is a ball, wide mouth mason jar.
And a local person...
We're not going to name names.
We're not going to name names, but I guess it was a little old lady that lived a couple
miles from the gas station, made white liquor.
She was grandmothered in.
Yeah, literally.
Before it was illegal.
Yeah.
And they were selling the white liquor at the gas station for this old lady.
So I of course had to stop and get some.
And it's pretty good.
We had some of this before.
We had to have had some before.
Yeah, it's pretty good.
Didn't make me go blind the first time and the jar is almost empty.
I should have bought a half gallon.
But that was an option?
They did.
They had half gallons of it.
Yeah, they had every size.
The next time you go, let me know and I'll give you some money.
Pick me up some.
I'll have you.
I'll go back to that part.
I know some people there live there, which is why we were there.
Yeah.
But yeah, that is like, oh my God, who can resist buying white liquor from a gas station?
Especially with the heartwarming story.
I know with the heart.
We have with the heartwarming story.
Probably your 16 year old grandson that's making it and carrying her name and icon on
a good event.
But it's good.
Not it's not the horrible white liquor that you get from the store, which is a weird
thing.
It's always strange because you can buy white liquor now.
But it's always crap.
And then you get the white liquor that's made by somebody and it's good.
When you can buy Everclear in the store.
Not real Everclear in Minnesota.
Oh, not in Minnesota.
Yeah, they don't sell 195 here.
I know they do across the border.
Yeah, they sell everything across the border.
Yeah.
So it depends on which border.
But I used to use 195 to clean pipes.
But now I just use vodka.
But when I had better access to 195, that's what I used.
Yeah, I remember making some.
I don't know what term for it is that isn't offensive.
So we'll just say some cooler mix with some Everclear.
You know, you put Everclear and you toss a bunch of fruit in there and let it sit.
Oh, like a party.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You do it a couple days before and then let it sit.
Yeah, I don't know if any of the nicknames of what we call it would.
Yeah, I know you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't want to just say, hey, this is what it was.
There's a J and a J. Is that what you're talking about?
It's like, I don't know if it's an acronym starting with a W.
Oh, I didn't know that.
I know that that's a racial slur, but I'm not sure if that is.
That's why we're not saying the only thing that we know about.
I'm saying like mixed in a larger volume vessel such as a cooler or something else that you
wouldn't be too turned off drinking out of.
Right.
Yeah.
You could do it in a bathtub, I assume.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
The I guess was if you were an adult, you'd do it in an igloo.
They glue water coolers.
Yeah, they make 10 gallon ones.
No, I just saw one.
It's too big to fit into a back of a pickup though.
You can't close your cover on it.
It's like, well, what's the point of that then?
The whole point of the five gallons is that you can strap it to your truck if you have
a truck.
Or you can buckle it in the passenger seat if you have a car.
Right.
Cool.
There is that.
Yeah, we were initially going to try and I quit Google search.
I thought for sure there would be just something out there.
There's all the brand names that have like a Mr. or Mrs. or Betty Sue or whatever where
the brand names are just unnecessarily gendered.
But all I could find was why is there a different soap for men and women?
Why is there the products that are needlessly gendered where it's like a man's razor versus
a woman's razor?
Sure.
Nice, Sarah.
And I get that all the time, but we've occasionally had that conversation.
And I buy the lady stuff if it's cheaper.
I don't care if it's pink or not.
I know that I use a monkey butt powder a lot during the summer because I work outside a
lot.
And I'll buy the lady monkey butt powder.
It's dyed pink for whatever reason.
It's in a pink container and they have a pink dye in it.
But you can get three bottles of it for the price of one regular monkey butt powder.
It's like, well, I don't care.
So what if you look like Rafiki?
Yeah.
All I want it to do is absorb sweat on my crotch.
That's all it needs to do.
Or in my socks.
I'll put it in my socks and stuff like that as I lace my boots up.
But I have a pink backpack for bowling.
We've talked about that before.
And I got them for super cheap.
So not that anybody really cares, but I have a matching set of bowling bags.
I got a four ball and two, three balls and they're all the same royal blue color.
And they're super fancy and all that.
And they make a royal blue backpack in the same brand.
They're all the same brand.
But I didn't buy the royal blue because the royal blue was like $30 more than the pink
one.
And the pink was so cheap.
I got one and then I went on sale even deeper and I got the second one for like 13 bucks.
I don't give a shit.
So when we were out shooting, shooting trap, we were talking about, because we picked up
our shells and I was shooting a 20 gauge and I was shooting a 12 gauge and all of his shells
were kind of a deep red.
So not like the hunting uniforms or hunting outfits from like the 80s where remember they
were all red.
And then they invented or came up or decided blaze orange was easier to be seen.
And then mine were all yellow, which were easy enough to see in the grass.
But we were talking if you're out hunting in the fall, you've got yellow and red and
some of the shells are green and some of them are black.
They're not really high visibility.
And if you really want to, you know, a lot of hunters will go out and say that they're
hunting because they love the environment oh so much and you need to manage animal populations,
which is true.
I mean, in modern times, that's why we have a lot of fires that cause all this destruction
because the plains used to burn, you know, woods used to burn.
We prevent all of that stuff now as humans.
But we were picking up the shells and we were talking about why don't they make these, you
know, blaze orange?
Yes, we were or blaze pink.
Yeah, because they the year a couple of years ago and I'm sure they still do it.
Federal was making breast cancer themed not promo loads.
That themed breast cancer awareness.
Yeah, breast cancer awareness themed promo loads, which for people who don't know, they're
like seven and a half eight shot loads intended to shoot at clay pigeons only.
And it's kind of a nice gimmick.
And I liked them.
I bought a couple cases of it because they're super easy to see when they go on the ground.
And it's great.
And I hunt out of a lodge with guys that I've been hunting for years.
And every one of us all agrees that they should make blaze orange hunting shotgun shells.
You know, we're shooting pheasants from fall to winter.
And it's just so hard to see sometimes where the shotgun shells are, because I have a variety
and they're from the dark red like that oak, red oak red to olive green to black.
And they're all colors that look they disappear into the grass.
Yeah.
And it's a deep, deep red.
It's not like the sumac in the fall red where it pops.
No, it's like red oak.
Yeah.
It's it is very difficult to see in a field especially.
And even my dove loads are black and red and olive green.
And you're shooting on fields that were just cut.
And it's so hard to see that.
And I don't want to leave them and you're shooting, you know, it's just like, oh, how
obnoxious.
Yeah.
And especially in the fall and all the leaves come and you know, you've got the yellow poplar
leaves on the ground and red and the brown and you can't hardly see them.
Right.
There's no reason not to make them blaze orange or pink.
Because then even if even if you're going is like where we used to target shoot, other
people would target shoot.
And we'd always pick up we pick up more more shells than we shot.
We pick up more clay pigeons than we shot.
We pick up all the trash there because it was on state land and we wanted to keep it
nice.
We wanted to be able to keep shooting there.
We wanted, you know, you just don't want your woods littered with shells and stuff.
So we always pick up all of our shells, all of our spence when we're out in the woods,
either target shooting or hunting.
And there's no reason not to make them highly visible.
Oh, absolutely.
You know, yeah.
Like who wouldn't, you know, and that's kind of led to a discussion about, you know, is
that kind of that fragile masculinity or toxic masculinity where you won't buy something
pink because it's pink or you won't, you know, like you think it's girly so you won't do
it.
Right.
Which occasionally guys will make fun of me lightly for my pink backpack.
But it's really easy to see my bowling equipment when I put it on top of my bowling bags.
When you're in a bowling alley that's got 30 lanes, really easy to see where my stuff
is.
I think by and large, most men either like it because it's a different color than they
normally see or they're a little jealous that they're not confident enough to carry a color
that is supposedly been gendered.
Sure.
I have a pink watch.
Yeah.
I love it.
In summertime, it's great.
I don't think I've seen that one.
You have to show me.
It's that swatch that has the pink band, the Miami band.
So swatch makes cheap watches, second watch red, and they're all quartz.
This one's really cool.
The dial is green and blue and it's got the rotating, it's all skeletonized, but then
the band is a Miami themed band.
So it's like turquoise and pink and yellow.
It's really fun.
I know I was doing some research on to, I'm not as big into watches as Mike is.
Mike seems to be big into everything that I've got kind of a passing interest in.
So maybe that's why we're good friends because I get a lot of information from him.
Right.
And you're a big fan of stuff that I'm like tertially interested.
Movies?
I've seen one.
Didn't like it.
But my biggest thing was I grew up in a small, small town in Wisconsin and we all just wore
the graphic tees all the time and the baggy shorts or whatever.
And then how do you dress more adult?
Well, nobody knows because our parents lived in that small town and they never went anywhere
where anybody saw them.
And you don't necessarily have to, like I'm not saying you have to wear fancy clothes
or know anything about style, but I was trying to get a little more into it so that I didn't
look like I was perpetually a high school kid, but getting older.
He's been held back 20 years now and he's trying to graduate.
So I was trying to get some nicer clothes, but for cheap because I didn't want to go
out and spend all this money on stuff that I wasn't sure I'd even like or fit or feel
comfortable in.
But you can develop your own style anytime, anywhere.
It doesn't matter.
That's not the whole point of the conversation.
But I was looking into kind of cheaper watches that weren't because all I had was like a
digital one, right?
With the rubber band and digital and it was whatever.
You wear it out hunting because it doesn't tick so you don't scare the deer and stuff.
But the one that I really like, it's a Timex from Target.
So it was like, I don't know, 15, 20 bucks.
Has a cloth or fabric band.
Real nice movement and everything.
It keeps good time.
It looks good with most clothing.
I didn't wear it now.
I wore it in New York and the band got kind of soaked in sweat because it was almost 100
degrees every day.
Probably got to give that a old Rinse-a-Roux.
You should look into getting NATO straps.
I like the NATO straps.
They're just a pull through.
That's what this one is.
I modify them.
I turn them into a Zulu so the NATO has an underband.
I just cut that off, burn it so it's a straight through.
You can switch them out real easy.
Even on my work watches and stuff, I'll have a NATO.
I wear a G-Shock at work.
I'm wearing a G-Shock right now, this is an expensive one.
My digital looks like that, but it's one of the cheap ones.
This is a GW5000, like one JFU or whatever.
It's made in Japan.
It's all the fancy stuff.
Yeah.
Mike's got the encyclopedic knowledge of the model numbers of work boots, shoes, and watches.
Yes, I do.
When it comes to cigar length and gauge.
That's a little hit or miss.
Yeah, a little hit or miss.
But everything else.
I'm not so savvy on movies either.
We complete each other.
Yes, I guess so.
Yeah, the NATO straps.
I have several.
You know what the diameter is for your band?
I have a bunch of NATO straps.
They're super cheap too.
We can just look.
We'll do a little watch show and tell after this episode.
Yeah, we can do that.
We can figure it out.
Yeah, I have a caliper.
It's not here.
I have a caliper and everything.
Yeah, I got a caliper at home for nerdy things.
I have boxes of straps because you can get a box of them of five for $7 on Amazon.
Even the expensive ones are like 20 bucks.
Yeah, I know there's a lot of stuff you can get now.
It looks a lot better than just randomly pieced together things from your high school days
or my high school days anyway.
I didn't know about your high school days.
I didn't know you then, but Sarah got so mad at me.
She's not mad, but I wear just a lot of t-shirts all the time.
Sure.
Whatever, they're comfortable.
Who cares?
She bought me all these collared button downs.
I don't know, just a month or two ago, she was like, you always just wear those t-shirts
and you never wear these nice shirts I got you.
It's like, well, I work from home.
I never have my camera on on my laptop.
Who cares what I wear?
In New York, I wore all of my shirts like this.
I figured I'd wear them this weekend too.
I'm wearing one of them now.
It's the snap, so it's easy to do the Jeff Goldblum.
If I'm out and about, I wear a button up shirt most days.
I like the Columbia professional fishing gear and professional hunting gear shirts because
they can roll up.
You can turn them into a short sleeve and they have the holes in the back.
A lot of the Columbia shirts look really nice too.
They got the collars, just the floppy collars, but they button up.
They look a lot nicer than a t-shirt and they're so breathable.
They wick everything away from you.
They're like a performance shirt, but it looks nice.
They are cooler temperature-wise than wearing a t-shirt.
I wear them hiking.
They look nice enough to wear around town.
I'm on two bowling teams this year and they're both highly organized scratch teams.
Let's call it that.
We have button up shirts that are logoed.
One of them has two shirts.
They have a t-shirt and then they have a nicer shirt.
Like the home and away uniforms you're playing on your home lane.
Yeah, something like that.
But no, once from one year in that particular place had t-shirts already and then the owner
she wanted to get us nice shirts.
But I wear a pocket t-shirt at home and stuff as you can see.
I actually felt like a scrub because I was like, I'm going to do work this morning before
you showed up, which I did obviously.
I was like, I'm just not going to change.
I'm going to shoot.
I picked out, I'm like, I'll wear this one for shooting because it's a little more olive
toned.
It looks like it could be like an Australian tour guide or bush guide or whatever they
call them.
Whatever.
Yeah, you're a cat dundee or whatever.
Yeah, crocodile dundee.
There are no crocodiles here, hopefully.
No, hopefully not.
They wouldn't last very long.
White tail dundee.
Yeah, all good.
You can find a lot of nice things for really affordable, I think, or a lot of things that
just up your game, whether it's like style or anything really.
The PFG shirts, the Colombias, if you get them for the right time of year, you can get
them for a very good price usually.
Of course, I don't buy anything full price.
Yeah, you can find a lot of, I don't wear them so much anymore now, but ties.
You can find a lot of really sharp looking ties that are dirt cheap.
Like at JCPenney, they used to have the $5 per tie rack or something.
You can go out and they were all just strewn about, so you'd have to sift through them.
It's almost like the $5 DVD bin at Walmart or whatever you dig through, but you might
find that really sharp looking tie or whatever.
I have a bunch of Jerry Garcia ties.
I get compliments from guys.
I got a few of them for different events that I used to go to.
I found a really sharp looking white tie.
It's all white.
It's pure white and then it's got polka dots, but the polka dots are like the holographic,
like whatever.
So in the light, they kind of like shine a different hue.
That's pretty cool.
So it's not overly loud.
They're very, very subtle.
So you have to be fairly close to see that they've got the little like, I don't know,
holographic.
It's not really holographic, but what would you call it?
What's that when you look at something or if you're looking through like a sheet of
cellophane or something and you've got like the different purples and greens kind of?
Sure, like transparent kind of.
I don't know what it is.
I don't know what that is.
A foil.
Yes, something like that.
Like a fishing lure.
Yeah.
These, we're about halfway through.
Yeah, I would say so.
You know what?
We're pretty dang even here.
We're pretty even.
You burned off a lot of your tip, I think, when you re-lit.
I know.
I lit the whole thing and then it was the left half or top half was lit and the other
half wasn't, which was really weird.
Like I've never had it.
It was like perfectly down the middle.
So I don't know if like one half was like a little damper.
I'm going to make a call back.
You didn't rotate your cigar, bro.
Oh, fuck.
Yeah.
When I smoke, I smoke alone with my buddies.
I don't know if he listens to these podcasts or not, but shout out to Willie if he does.
But he was the one and we smoked the Hexpress together.
Really good friend, but it's always like we have a cigar podcast and I smoke cigars around
other people who smoke cigars but don't have a podcast.
They're always like, you have a cigar podcast and you're smoking like a moron?
It's like, yeah, I do it for fun.
Nobody ever taught me how to smoke a cigar.
I've just kind of learned what I've learned and what I don't know, I don't know, I don't
know.
And so, you know, and I always tell everybody they're like, well, you have a cigar podcast.
Why aren't you doing this?
I'm like, dude, listen to this.
My co-host, Mike, was telling me about freezing cigars to get the Weevil Beatles out or something,
you know, and like I never knew that.
Like that's something you don't know.
And I've never gone online and researched like how to smoke a cigar or anything like
that.
I just kind of picked it up in college or after college and I was smoking like acids
and like flavored, not like, not the swisher sweets, but you know, like you'd go and just,
oh, this is a cheap one.
Oh, acid.
That sounds like a bad ass name.
Let's smoke that.
Like it sounds like acid, you know, like just whatever young kids do.
Yeah, they have motorcycles on them and shit.
Yeah.
It's like baby boomer cool.
So you know, you learn into it.
And I think a lot of these hobbies, whether it's bowling or trap shooting or wearing ties
or cigar smoking or drinking scotch or building Legos, you know, whatever it is, like a lot
of them are too snobby.
Yes.
You know, and so I've heard, I've heard somebody cause like book, people who read books can
be really snobby.
Like, Oh my God, you haven't read Pride and Prejudice?
Well, don't it's boring.
It's lame.
Sorry.
My one friend who likes that book.
I like that book.
I like all the Genos novels and I've read them all.
I think that they're great.
Sorry.
My two friends that like that book.
I do actually like, so the story about Pride and Prejudice for me is I really wanted to
read the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, but I thought I better read the original one
first.
Sure.
And it was just boring.
And you know, maybe I wasn't in the right mindset because I was like excited, jacked
out about the zombies, like in the, like the remake or whatever.
But I understand that that was all marketing and they just wanted me to like read the zombie
one and be like, Hey, that's cool.
But I never read the zombie one because I hated the first one so much.
It was just boring.
You don't have to like it.
But what I heard about people who read books is a lot of times they'll be like, Oh my God,
you haven't read Pride and Prejudice.
But instead of saying that if you want to, and I don't want to go full on like, let's
all be inclusive, but why not?
You know, instead of saying you haven't read that say, well, you're going to really enjoy
that when you do.
Instead of saying, instead of trying to shame them for not having read that, encourage them
to do so, but in a non-threatening thing.
And it's the same thing with like parents, right?
They always guilt you or try to guilt you, even if they're not actively trying to like,
Oh, well it'd be really nice to see you for dinner or something, whatever it is they do.
But they always kind of say it in that way where you kind of feel obligated to do it.
And you can use different words, you know, you can do it like, Hey, it'd be great to
see you for dinner if you got time.
Yep.
Boom.
You take half of the stress out of it.
Just, just with that, I try not to do that with bowling.
Uh, cause a lot of, uh, newer bowlers will try to come up and talk to me and blah, blah,
blah, and all that stuff.
And I don't like bowling against the new bowlers, uh, particularly.
Uh, and I get sour sometimes.
I'm just tired of it, but at the same time, I know, I know, right?
I know.
So I, I, I need to work on it more, but I really try to work on if they're showing interest
in the game and they get their own stuff and they're showing up, I have to get a better
attitude about trying to talk to them when they ask me questions.
If they're asking me questions, I actually usually get pretty positive.
I'm like, Oh, they're interested.
You know, that's cool.
Yeah.
You know?
Um, but, and that's not to say that every novice or every, every new person to the sport
or hobby has the right attitude coming in either, you know, they think, Oh, here's
a old crotchety person that's been doing it for a long time, or here's somebody who, you
know, and they come in and they want to like prove themselves or whatever.
And that, you know, I don't think that's the right attitude either.
Right.
You know, for, for a new person, you know, and so like smoking cigars, I don't have
a big ego about smoking cigars.
Yes.
We've got a cigar podcast, uh, but we went to the, let's be honest, our cigar podcast
is mostly so we can bullshit once a week, whatever the reasoning is, it's fine.
It's all good, you know, but, uh, and I was funny with Dave was asking like what we hope
to get out of the podcast.
It's like, I just want to smoke.
Yeah.
Um, but you know, we went to this humidor, uh, my buddy Willie and I, and, um, you know,
he's talking to the guy and I'm like, I would never talk to the guy, but I'm an introvert.
Like I would just like, don't talk to me.
I just want to look at the sticks, you know?
But then he's talking like, okay, this one, you know, initially it's got like this like
florally and then it shifts to this and that and like the mouth feel and like he's going
on like full on like wine, sommelier, um, on all these things.
And that's how Willie picked this express, which I never would have picked because I
never would have talked to the guy, uh, to know it.
And so I've got a bad attitude sometimes too, and I got to work on that.
Right.
Um, but you know, sometimes it's just enough to know that you don't know.
And I wasn't trying, I didn't try and like cut this guy off and like talk over him because
I could tell he knew more than I did.
Right.
Um, but I never would have talked to him and that's my fault.
Like I should have probably talked to people that know more than I do about it.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And it's like you say a lot of times when I get like, especially with bowling, cause
I do it a lot.
I'm talking with new people.
People want advice.
They don't quite understand how technical it is.
You know, there's a lot of technology involved in modern bowling nowadays.
And uh, well, and even it, it's just like, it frustrates me because they don't do any
research on their own.
I go online and watch a few videos for God's sakes.
I'm not saying you need to buy Earl Anthony's book.
All right.
Yeah.
But, uh, you should at least have an idea of what you're getting into.
If you're trying to like be seriously into this as a hobby, which is, you don't have
to be, I mean, uh, it takes all kinds to make, uh, an industry.
Uh, but, uh, well, and every bowler is perpetuating bowling.
Even if you're just going as a family and you know, right.
Whatever.
You're not, you're not buying your own balls, but you're bowling.
You're still showing support for the bowling alley.
You're still out there.
You're having fun.
You're enjoying it.
Hopefully.
It's a, it's a well-known fact in the industry that league bowlers keep the alleys open.
The open bowlers is where they make profit.
So you go to a smaller league, a smaller house, like during COVID, the smaller houses that
have more leagues did much better than the bigger houses that have more, more entertainment
center styles.
Like the moonlight or the midnight bowling and the disco bowling.
Yeah.
Though if you're relying on open bowling and birthday parties, then they did a lot worse
off.
Uh, but the smaller houses, you know, if you have a eight lane house that has wood lanes,
but you're putting out sports shots and you have competitive leagues and shit, they did
well because all those guys were there.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, they're showing up.
They're not going to not bowl.
Period.
One, uh, even technology aside, because, um, for one of my birthdays, my dad got me, uh,
like a coupon or whatever to go to the bowling alley in town here and get a ball.
And I think take two or three, I don't know, maybe up to five lessons.
And so as a kid, I was in a bowling, bowling kids league.
And um, I think the highest ever scored was like two 10 as a, as a child.
And but the child one is, uh, the way that I was taught the bowl is it's like a straight
approach, you know, right?
And you, and you start from the, not the furthest back set of dots, but the next set of dots
up.
I'm sure there's a technical name for the, for the different sets of dots, the ladies
tease basically for golf, um, and then go from there.
But of course now I'm six six, so I can't start from there anymore, uh, to get a full
good thing.
And then they were teaching me the, uh, not the straight straight throw, but to put some
spin on it.
Right.
And then you, you know, the way you have to do your hand.
And so it gets very technical, even with like the form of bowling.
Like if you want to get more into it.
And I remember I had to like, you taught me all this stuff and like I had to, I wrote
it all down and I keep it in my bowling bag and I haven't gone bowling for even longer
than I haven't shot trap.
So we got it because we tried to go bowling that one night.
Uh, we told the story, but the lanes were all full and then we just kind of like went
home because it was late.
Um, and we're old, but basically, yes, that's pretty much more.
Less moral of the story.
And um, you know, so if I were to get back into bowling and bowling with my ball, cause
it's got a different core in it than the house balls do.
Yes.
So I have to, I pretty much have to throw it that curved way or that way that I was
taught how to throw it.
You can throw it straight.
It's it's fine.
Yeah.
Mike just like grimaced a little bit when he's like, you can throw it straight.
Well, Sarah, uh, I bought her a bowling ball and hers has a core in it.
Hers is a modern ball, you know?
Yeah.
She throws a straight, it will hook though at the end.
Yeah.
So I would like to like, that would be something I would like to do because I have the shoes
and the ball.
And if I just did it, you have to do it enough.
Just like shooting trap today.
I think I missed every single, every single pigeon, my first go round.
But then, you know, set by this third go round for sure.
Like the second go round, I hit a couple and then by the third go round, I was finally
feeling back into the swing of it.
Yep.
You know, cause there's just enough stuff, you know, it's kind of like riding a bicycle,
but you know, if you haven't ridden a bicycle for 20 years, you hop back on it, you can
balance, but you're not taking corners at 25 miles an hour.
You know, you're not doing some of the stuff that you used to do as a kid.
Right.
Um, but it'd be fun to go bowling and get some pointers and like relearn how to throw
the modern way, I guess.
But yeah, and I bowl the modern, well, it's not even modern style.
No, a lot of the younger guys who want to play the power game are throwing two-handed.
That wasn't a thing.
When I started learning how to bowl, there wasn't even a ratchet resin bowling balls
yet.
And I developed like the modern power game for the nineties and early two thousands.
And that's very technical.
Very, there's a reason why they don't do it anymore.
It takes a long time to get good at it.
Really long time, way longer than the two-handed.
Two-handed bowling, you can get almost immediate success.
You can get up to 170 average two-handed bowling pretty quick with modern equipment.
Okay.
But if you're going to do one-handed and you're going to actually have the proper rolling
release, it takes, you have to lift weights to be able to be strong enough to let it coil
off your hand and not injure yourself.
When I was a teenager, I literally was lifting weights so I could get better at bowling.
That's like some of the positions of the Kamasutra too, is you have to do some weights, some
cock pushups, things like that.
But you only need to do one cock pushup.
That's true.
You only need to do one.
But yeah, it's always interesting.
And then there's different approaches too.
This is a bowling podcast.
No.
But we're going to talk about it a little bit.
My dad started bowling in the 70s.
So his release is totally different than mine.
He's got a totally different approach.
And he still tries to teach people to lift.
That's what you did when it was rubber.
Because he wasn't even bowling in a plastic era.
Plastic balls didn't come out until the mid 70s.
So in order to get roll on the ball, they would pinch with their fingers and try to
pull the ball up as they released it.
Okay.
Which is the exact opposite of what you want to do.
Nowadays, with modern equipment, you don't want to do that.
You want to throw like a spiral.
Except you're not doing this.
Well, you're not doing the overhand.
You're doing the best spiral you're doing.
Yeah, you're doing underhanded spiral.
And it's crazy to think, well, just for me, bowling as a kid with the straight approach
and then learning the hook shot or the curve, I don't know what you would call it.
Hook, hands, hook.
You kind of let it go off your hand and kind of, you know, but it puts a spin on it.
So it's a spin on it.
And it's crazy how accurate you can be with the spin.
Like you wouldn't like if you're just thinking about things is straight going to be more
accurate than spinning.
Well, you know, logically, maybe.
But you know, hunting rifles, they have rifled barrels to put more spin on the on the bullet
so that the wind affects it less and the external forces affect it less.
And it's like a football or even a baseball that spins through the air.
So like intuitively, you might think something going straight is better.
But physics basically fucks life up for everybody.
Right.
But if you understand it or you just see it happen in practice, then you know, you're
a believer.
A lot of two handers don't put their thumb in.
But when they shoot spares, they put their thumb in and they one hand it because it's
a lot more accurate to do with one hand.
Yes.
It's a lot more accurate to do with two.
But you have so much more power.
Even my revered, I have a somewhere like I have a four eighty to five hundred revered,
which is really high for a one hander.
Especially an amateur.
But a two hander can get six all day long.
Yeah.
My revered is higher than any of the two handers that bowl in this area.
But one.
Yeah.
And he bowled in college.
So he's he's a very good bowler.
But he's been doing it.
Yeah, he's been doing it.
Yeah.
He's been once as he was a child and we're buddies.
We bowl together.
We we bowl on the state, the state winning team.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
So.
But yeah, he's really good.
And then his brother in law, I'm friends with him.
Yeah.
And Will is his name.
He's completely against two handed bowling.
He thinks it should be banned.
OK.
Yeah.
And then.
Yeah.
So it takes all types.
Yeah, it takes all types and there's totally different attitudes.
I know that I bowled the guy in.
He's unfortunately passed away now.
But oh, thank you.
Thank you.
We will.
We will have that later.
Right now.
We're going to eat on the podcast.
You are.
Because I didn't know you were recording.
That's all right.
I made you lunch.
Thank you.
It's Sarah's debut on the podcast.
It is.
And we have lunch and that's amazing.
And thank you.
Thank you very much.
I love you, baby.
Love you too.
But I bowl tournaments with the guy.
And who's passed on now, unfortunately.
But we were in the mode there for a while that they should even get rid of modern bowling
equipment and we should put a little cap on it and just have like older technology that
doesn't hook automatically.
Like a retro league.
Like a ball like, yeah, they should get rid of all this modern stuff with the ball hooks
by itself because we both had a quote unquote modern release.
And I can make a ball hook.
I trained, quote unquote, trained to make a ball hook.
Yes.
So I don't need the modern stuff, even though I use it, obviously, who wouldn't?
That's the point is like, you know, even with, I don't know if it's similar to board games
or not, but I do a lot of board games and it's kind of the same thing.
If you have newer people that are new to modern board gaming, meaning not monopoly or risk,
but there's even older games than that that are out there that are a lot of fun.
And you can have a lot of fun with an older game and you can have a lot of fun with a
game that's not crazy complex.
You're not spending eight hours trying to play this game, right?
You can play a game in 45 minutes, half an hour.
It can be fun.
And if you're playing with newer, newer players, you know, you have to start where they're
at.
You can't start where you're at.
You have to start where they're at.
Right.
And part of it is you want to, you want to encourage them to continue to enjoy the hobby,
whatever the hobby may lead them into.
And so some people, I'm sure in bowling, get super into the modern.
I need the latest technology right now and I need it yesterday and I need the newest
shoes and I need the newest everything.
And then there's some people that are like, you know what, my style fits this better and
I would rather do this.
And if you don't do the two-hand bowling, but you've got good results with your one-hand
style, why go to two-hand?
I think the two-handed bowling is getting a lot of people into it because they see on
Fox, they'll see, you know, the Jason Belmonte throw the big hook and they're getting into
it.
And that's good for bowling as an industry.
But I was talking with a guy this week and it's his first year and he's already got all
the major equipment, like big expensive equipment, you know, three, $400 bowling balls.
And he throws a huge hook and he throws a two-handed and he fucking sucks.
He can't make a spare because he's throwing the big hook.
He can get strikes, but he never learned the accuracy to be able to make a spare and he
never will, most likely never will because of the two-handed bowling and the big hook.
He'll never be able to pick up splits.
He'll never be able to shoot corner pins ever.
He could, but he'd have to put in a lot more effort than I'm guessing he's going to do.
Yeah, yeah, because it's impressive.
And I was the same way when I was like 14.
You know, I wanted to throw the big hook.
Well, sometimes, I mean, sometimes you get those people that are old and they get like
so entrenched in their ways.
They won't learn how to text.
They won't learn how to Google something for themselves.
They won't learn self-reliance in the technical age.
And then you've got people that I would hope I fall into this second category where the
older you get, you realize, I don't know how to do this.
I better learn or I can't do this.
So, I better learn how to overcome that shortcoming of myself.
Right?
Like I don't know.
I don't lift weights.
I don't foresee myself lifting weights to do crazy bowling shots.
Right?
So, I need a style that fits my preferences or my physicality.
Right.
Or whatever.
You know, I mean, there's ways to overcome anything, especially now with all the technology
that we have.
You can find something that works for you regardless of it's bowling or knitting or
anything.
You can find a style or, you know, your own thing.
But you have to be open to learning a new way of doing it if you want to take whatever
that is to the next level too.
Oh, sure.
I mean, I was a lot less into spear shooting when I was a teenager than I am now.
That's my little path in life, I guess.
But I was forced to shoot spares a lot when I was a kid.
So, that was organized.
I was trained.
Forced because you wouldn't do strikes or what?
I was trained and I had organized practices.
Yes.
And I was forced to shoot spares.
Forced is a very strong term.
But it was fun.
Yeah.
I'll go in and practice and all I will bring is a plastic spare ball and throw at spares.
Throw at the corner pins basically.
So with bowling, maybe here's a question because you've got some good balls.
Yes, I have a collection.
But your bowling balls are great too.
Yes, thank you.
Do you bring more than one ball when you go bowling?
Depends on what I'm doing.
Okay.
So I went bowling Wednesday, summer league, right?
And I brought one ball.
Okay.
One ball.
That's a new ball that I haven't really thrown a whole lot.
I was trying to get more of a feel for it for the season.
But if you're in a tournament, you bring multiple balls and then you throw one ball for a certain
circumstance or situation?
Yes.
Okay.
You have to adapt to the lane pattern.
So typically, let's say I bring six.
Six is pretty much a number that I would bring.
Six or seven.
Six or seven balls.
Yeah, bowling balls.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's mind-boggling to me because I normally just go open ball and grab one off the rack
there.
Yeah.
No, I'd bring, most of the time I bring seven.
Okay.
So I have these two, three ball bags and a backpack.
One will be a spare ball plastic if I'm going for score, which obviously it would be.
And then I'll bring, depending on the lanes, if I know that I'm bowling at a woodhouse,
I'll bring a set.
I have three sets of six bowling balls plus a spare ball that I own.
Okay.
So I'll overlap between the ones I bring because the medium-sized houses with plastic usually
have medium oil patterns.
The larger houses usually have heavier patterns and the smaller houses will typically have
less volume for the most part.
It all depends.
But usually that's the way it goes.
So if I'm going to an alley and I know the size, I have some insight, I'll bring a set
of six that I think is going to be good.
And that'll be a strong early, a strong late, which means that it hooks earlier and it hooks
later, but they're very strong overall.
The covers absorb a lot of oil.
They're very aggressive.
Two mediums and a weak and a urethane, usually.
I always bring a urethane with me no matter what.
So two bowls pretty much go with me everywhere I go.
Yeah.
But I bring a plastic spare ball and I bring my urethane of choice right now happens to
be a fast pitch, storm fast pitch is what it's called.
And I can use that pretty much anywhere.
That's like a backup.
That's like the ball.
If I'm lost, I can grab that.
I know that I can make it go strike.
I know I can strike with that ball pretty much anywhere.
And I use it a lot.
Unfortunately, the USBC just changed a rule that where you're not allowed to bowl major
tournaments anymore with a ball more than two years old.
So I'm going to have to try to find a new one because it'll be two years here this year,
I think.
I think it's a 2020 ball.
Okay.
But yeah, that's just the way things are.
Well, I suppose to keep the playing field as even as possible.
Maybe or to keep the ball manufacturers in business.
One of the two.
It's a little bit of that, I think.
And then there's a lot of evidence that shows that the modern urethanes, specifically the
purple hammer, as they age, they get softer and they get under the legal hardness level.
Okay.
Because they have a minimum hardness that a bowling ball has to be.
And there's some evidence that shows that after about two years, they all they start
to get too soft.
Okay.
Then they banned plugged bowling balls, which screws a lot of people over because I like
to re-drill.
And yeah, there's different little tweaks like that.
That doesn't really affect most of my bowling at least.
But we'll see how the state level tournaments go and different tournament stuff.
Yeah.
I suppose if you're bowling for fun and if you're proficient in the equipment and your
preferences on balls and holes and covers and cores, you've got your own.
If I could perform at tournaments with this setup, this would be my preferred setup.
Right.
But because I'm in a tournament, I have to alter my setup to the rules.
You have to fix the rules.
Yeah, yeah.
But that's kind of neat too where it's like if you know enough, you know enough how to
make yourself successful in the tournaments, but you've maybe got a different setup that
you would personally just bowl with all the time.
Right.
Yeah.
And they oppose the rules.
So you can, if you're going to the national tournament or something, you can adjust.
My strong equipment is going to be a problem because I don't throw it a lot.
I throw pretty much some medium and weak equipment everywhere.
So my strong equipment, I never use it.
I have one bowling ball that I have less than a dozen games on for sure.
I might even have less than six games on it because I never have an opportunity to use
it really.
So when you say strong and weak, is that like velocity down the lane or?
No, no, no, no.
You know, as the ball goes lengthwise like this, a stronger ball will start to try to
hook earlier.
It digs through the oil better and gets into the surface and it starts to get into the
hook face earlier.
Okay.
Because you have a skid, you have the hook and you have a roll.
Right.
There's three phases.
Got it.
And the stronger balls will get, have a shorter skid phase.
It's not necessarily left to right.
That's deceptive.
It's more front to back.
Okay.
But I don't really use, I use a lot of urethane and I use a lot of medium and weaker equipment.
So just because of the area up north, there's not a lot of oil volume unless you hit Duluth.
There's not a lot of oil volume.
Even yeah, there's just not.
They don't, they want to save money.
The more oil you put on, obviously, if you can, if you can cut a couple of mills off
your overall volume per lane, over that length of a year, you're going to save a lot of money.
Yeah.
Would you have an interest in doing like a down and dirty bowling?
Just you and me.
Maybe the Serras.
So there's a lane in my hometown in Wisconsin.
The only selling point outside of it, they have some bowling lanes, is you can get a
pitcher of new glares for like three or four bucks.
Yes, I would do that.
Okay.
And I think we just go there, we buy a bunch of pitchers and we just use house balls.
Okay.
We use, I can bring my shoes, right?
We use Mike's balls.
I can bring my shoes, right?
I don't really care if you want to bring your own ball.
I'm not trying to hamstring you.
I just was like, Hey, it'd be fun to, you know, I'll bring some new glares.
I'll bring a spare ball, a plastic spare ball.
That's fine.
Whatever.
I just don't want to hurt my fucking hand.
No, that's fine.
I'm just saying like, you know, if we just want even like toe to toe, it might be a fun
little challenge.
Like here's some backwoods bowling alley that probably might not have ever heard of oil.
I don't know.
They have to preserve the lane.
They have to put it on a lot of these alleys.
You say they have to, but so there is like this thing where a lot of these smaller houses,
especially they won't put oil on and they just end up damaging the lane.
Yeah.
It's so dumb that you have to have that on there to like protect the surface from these
balls.
I understand that.
Yeah.
I'm not saying they do, but I don't, well, they understand.
They just don't care.
Yeah.
I just thought that'd be fun.
Mostly just because it would be a good, good way to drink some real cheap new glares.
They can only get in Wisconsin.
They don't distribute outside of Wisconsin.
Right.
Some of their beers are really good.
Oh yeah.
I don't really like the Spuddy Cow is fine.
It's not my go-to of theirs.
It's not better than fine.
It is okay.
It's fine.
I have a friend.
Well, my fine is probably you're okay.
I don't know.
I have a friend who's originally from Wisconsin and he lives out West and he loves Spuddy
Cow.
He doesn't get it very often.
Yeah.
And it's like, so every time I meet this character, I try to bring him some Spuddy Cow and so
it's the best thing ever.
Spuddy Cow is fine.
If you're going to drink, because it's just like, it's the introductory beer, right?
If you know a microbrewery that a lot of times they make an introductory beer that is for
those people who like the Coors Light and the Bush Light and that's their equivalent.
Yes.
And it is to get the broadest population of beer drinkers into their establishment to
find something that they will find tasty.
Honey Weiss.
Honey Weiss is the same thing.
Honey Weiss is, it's good, but it's no better than-
It's fine.
Yeah.
It's no better than good.
But that's what it's meant for and if you're a beer drinker and you know what your flavor
preferences are, is it worth trying a Spuddy Cow?
Yes.
If you never had one, try it.
That's their starting point.
That's their flagship.
That's their, you know, what they're known for.
So give it a go.
If Spuddy Cow is like somebody that has a whole fridge full of Coors Light.
Exactly.
They'll have a Spuddy Cow for their foo foo friends.
That's why it's, but that's why it's there.
Right.
It serves that function perfectly fine.
Just like the local brewery here, they've got a lager that's for people that drink,
Coors or even Natty or whatever.
They're for the kind of the hunters, Hillbillies, the cabin people.
That's what it's for.
Right.
But they also have IPAs and Stouts and other things.
And the same with New Glarus is that like their two women is really good.
Yeah.
And they've got a lot of other ones though.
The Roadkill is really good.
Just a ton of really good ones, but they have an introductory one to get people in the door
and they've got other beers for more serious beer drinkers.
Right.
How did that pair with the Stella?
This paired really well with the Stella, this cigar.
And it actually paired really well with the food.
My plate is empty and Mike hasn't touched his.
And I've never actually smoked while eating before.
So that was...
I'm not a fan.
That's why I'm not...
I didn't know if I was, but I was really hungry because normally Mike makes me two fist it
with the drinks.
And today we're only doing the one fist.
And then he won't feed me.
I just don't think about it.
I haven't ate anything today at all.
If you're to be a guest, and I'm sorry, Dave, but if you're going to be a guest on the show,
I highly recommend coming to Mike's Smoking Studio when Sarah is not working because apparently
she feeds you.
So that was great.
And it was really tasty.
Very excited.
This has been a very good day.
Yeah, it has been.
It has been a good day.
I did my lamp build yesterday.
I rebuilt the lamp.
My wonderful spouse is getting into antiques and she wants to do some remodeling or refashioning
antiques.
We're not restoring to original condition and that's her goal.
But better than original condition, I would say.
Because what you do with the lamp is similar to what my Sarah and I did with a lamp that
we found.
It had a huge...
I can't remember what the name of it was.
It was some huge halogen bulb base.
You can still buy the bulbs, but they're terribly dangerous.
Yes.
And so we actually tore it apart.
We pulled the wire out.
We pulled the socket out.
We bought a lamp kit and we had to buy a plumbing fixture to attach the modern fixture to the
old...
I don't know how old it is, but the old brass stem.
And now we have an LED bulb in there.
It's super safe and it works and it's great.
But I think...
I don't know if it's like reconditioning or what you would call it, but it's...
It's refurbishing.
Not necessarily like restoring to original because a lot of the older bulbs weren't safe.
Well, yeah.
That wiring on that lamp that you saw today, the bottom light would flicker because the
lugs on the original socket were corroded and they just put them on there straight.
And I put spades.
Yeah.
You know, I crimped it on there and it's actually going to be safe.
Everything's due all listed, you know?
So there's a lot of things like desks and dressers and tables.
But the dresser that we hauled in today is...
You can restore it and you can restore it to original condition.
Yes.
But with like lamps and things, you want to kind of refurbish where it's bringing it up
to modern standards, keeping the original look or feel of it, but making it safe.
Yes.
And I like that.
And a lot of the old antique furniture, if it's in good condition, all you had to do
really is rub linseed oil on it and pre-finish the outside, which we have a huge shop to
do that in here.
And you have a lot of pieces out there to do that too.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
We have one that actually was sold here in town.
Okay.
And we got an old...
It's still got the stamps even of the store that sold it.
Oh, cool.
Yeah.
Very cool.
And we got it for real cheap, like 130 bucks.
Okay.
For a Hoosier table, I guess.
Okay.
I would call it Hoosier.
Yes.
Sarah calls it Hoosier.
I'm like, that's Hoosier to me.
Yeah.
But an old Hoosier cabinet.
It's really cool, but they painted it.
Yeah.
Of course.
And you know, blah, blah, blah.
Well, it's like our house.
We bought our house and I don't know what was in there before, but the bank owned it.
And so they refurbished or redid everything in there.
And so they just put carpet.
It was a fucking drug house because you had the doors kicked in.
We had to repair that.
Yeah.
The doors kicked in.
And actually we did National Night Out.
We co-hosted National Night Out with our buddy Dave, who was a guest on the show.
And the cops came.
Well, because you block off the block, right?
Sure.
So you put the barricades up.
Or the little, I don't know, fake soft horses up with the orange stripes.
But then the police come and they visit each one and they request them to stop by and meet
the people and stuff.
And they came by and so we were talking to them and I was trying to ask them, hey, any
crazy stories from this house?
And they didn't really know about one of the other neighbors.
It was like, oh yeah, man.
I watched them.
I watched them kick that door in.
I'm like, perfect.
Great.
Right.
Yeah.
And I could tell because I remember we ran extra wooden screws and stuff and glued it
all in.
Yeah.
But they put carpet over this hardwood floor.
So we know that we've got beautiful hardwood.
So when our daughter is old enough to where she's not destroying everything, we can pull
up the carpet, refinish the hardwood floors, and it's going to be a completely different
space in there.
But it's the same with sometimes people wallpaper over just beautiful things or carpet.
My brother bought his house and the person that put carpet over all the hardwood and
in the bathroom.
Oh, really?
And how gross is that?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that.
Even the people, unless you have one, I don't think you do.
But they sell those things at the big box stores and even the smaller ones.
Because you can get the padded, the cushioned toilet seat covers.
They also sell the one that you're supposed to slide around the base of it.
Right?
Yes.
You've seen those?
And that's the grossest thing ever too.
I have one in the guest bathroom.
Okay.
Yeah.
It's not nice.
No, I'm not a fan.
But women look at stuff because it all looks nice and matches.
You know what?
I'm more of a fan of it now after this meal that was delivered to me.
Actually, the guest room toilet, I just rebuilt the whole thing.
All the parts are original now.
Are new now.
Yes.
So it's actually working better than ever.
Just a pain in the butt.
I'm not a plumber by trade.
I think I'm going to have to do something else because in our upstairs toilet, after
we moved in, it started refilling all the time, every hour or less.
And so it was like the flapper valve.
And so I had to go and replace the flapper valve, which is you have to remove the whole
water tank and remove this giant PVC washer nut thing.
And I'm like, oh my God, I got the toilet all disassembled.
And I'm like, I don't have a wrench big enough for this giant nut.
And I'm like, oh my God, I don't want to run back to the store because this is our toilet
that we use.
And a quick Google search was, hey, you got an oil filter wrench?
Fits it.
So I went out, grabbed my oil filter wrench out of my trunk and it fixed it.
But now it's starting to refill again.
I've noticed it queue the refill while I'm gone.
And it takes too long to hold down, to flush.
And there was like a set, you could set the flapper valve like zero to 10, but it didn't
tell you which was faster, which was slower, what those two things meant.
And so we just set it at a five because we're like, it's got to be okay.
But I don't think it was.
But I think to change it, I have to take the whole tank off or drain the water or something.
You know how you set that?
I'm not a huge fan of that.
If you have a 1.6 or a 1.3 gallon, it's like zero.
And then if you have the old like five gallon or three gallon or whatever the hell it is,
then more.
The bigger the amount of volume, the higher the setting.
And then the smaller the amount of volume, the lower the setting.
So I changed mine.
Mine was a 1.65 gallon and I changed it to a 1.25 through the new components that I put
in it.
So it's a little more efficient.
Now I have like a shit ton of empty space at the top of the tank.
But who cares?
Yeah.
I don't know how any of that works.
And I didn't know how it worked either.
It bothers me and I don't want to tear it apart again, but I might have to.
You need to go get yourself a 460 channel lock.
That's like the big one.
No, the big ass.
They have one that they literally call the big ass.
Okay.
It's a 480 and it's even bigger.
But I bought a 460 15 years ago.
I've never needed anything bigger than that.
And I probably, hopefully won't.
Yeah.
The other thing is like our tank is a little wobbly on top, but I'm afraid to tighten the
bolts any further because they're pretty tight as it is.
So it's just an older, it's an older toilet is what it is.
But I just, there was such a pain to do and it's not, I don't think it's working how it
should.
So I don't know.
I don't want to do a whole new toilet, but I don't want to necessarily dig into it again.
So right.
I didn't want a new toilet either.
Of course, Sarah hates that one in the guest bathroom because it's like baby blue, but
I love it.
It's hilarious.
I'm a big fan of the stupid stuff like that.
Probably shouldn't walk around a whole lot.
I don't know.
I mean, if we're done with the cigars more or less.
We still got plenty.
I actually like the, so back to the cigar.
The first half was fine.
It was all right.
The second half I'm actually enjoying significantly more.
Yeah.
I think it had a nice flavor change.
Yeah.
I don't understand why these are rated so high.
I don't know.
Name recognition probably.
Yeah.
I mean, and they are good.
They're good.
I think my favorite Rocky Patel so far has been the Connecticut Howitzer.
Yes.
Followed closely by the Fuma.
Which is crazy that the Fuma would be that good.
It was good.
It was a nice smoking cigar.
Yeah.
It was really good.
I like to smoke cigars.
I don't like ones that are nice to smoke.
I guess.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, it's nice to try all these different ones and give feedback.
The more we smoke, the more we're able to compare and contrast within brands and even
across brands.
I don't know if there's a different brand of a similar kind of style and flavor profile
that was better than this.
What would you recommend?
I don't know.
I like similar flavor profile.
Partagas Black.
Okay.
I like the Partagas Blacks.
I prefer a Rothschild or something like that.
But the Robusto is hard to go wrong with the Robusto size.
Yeah.
That's like the most common one.
And it's very good.
But I like Rothschild cigars too.
The bigger diameter ones, you know, bigger gauge.
Yep.
And the Robusto, I'm becoming a lot bigger fan of the Robusto for whatever reason.
Yeah.
There's a reason why it's the most common size.
Yeah.
It's kind of like, yeah, of course.
It's consistent.
Yeah.
It's consistent, I think.
It is.
You know, even when we're doing the Moon Trance, the Torpedo version didn't have quite the
same airflow, I felt.
Yeah, as the Robusto.
And the Rothschild in the Moon Trance is very good too.
That's the first one I ever smoked.
Okay.
I think with the Robustos, it's somehow more consistent with the manufacturing process.
They just make a lot more of them, I'm guessing.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Whatever it is.
But it's a popular size.
If you like something different, do something different.
Yeah.
And different sizes are good for different things.
You know, I mean, obviously, if you smoke with those big Hollisers, you're committed
to a task.
Yes.
Well, it's only a task if it's fine or worse.
If it's a good one, it's not really a task.
It's an enjoyment, you know.
Right.
But you're definitely, there's a time commitment there as well.
Right.
I'm not going to smoke it on a fucking lawnmower either.
No.
That is true.
Right.
I used to smoke way back when you could still smoke in the alleys.
I used to smoke cigars when I bowled, and I would smoke a big cigar then.
Yeah.
Because you'd like one, and it would last you the whole set.
Yes.
And that wasn't too bad.
That was good.
Yeah.
You could do a big one golfing too.
You know, yeah, if you had a, especially if you had a stand to put it on.
Yeah.
They sell them at that Tobacco Grove shop.
Oh, really?
They sell those golf clips.
Oh, that's cool.
You clip them right on the golf cart, and then you can set your cigar on there.
And that's cool.
I know this is like late in the episode to start a new topic, but I get a kick out of,
because there's a lot of golfers who bowl, and a lot of bowlers who golf, whatever you
want to say.
And I always get a kick out of the golfers who say golf is like some sort of extreme
sport.
Yeah.
And then they poo poo on the idea that bowling is anything more than like a passing hobby.
Kind of like they make it an equivalent to like darts.
So it's even darts.
If you throw a lot of darts, that becomes very sporting very quickly.
There's a league for anything.
And I played my first few games of pickleball a couple weeks ago.
Okay.
I like pickleball.
And I had never played before.
I'm used to racquetball where you've got three or four other walls that you can bounce the
ball off of.
Yep.
And depending on how much power you put into it.
So you can bounce it off the back wall.
You can bounce it off the front wall.
You can bounce it off the side walls.
And so pickleball is kind of like racquetball meets tennis a little bit.
But it's weird.
They've got some really goofy fucking rules.
Sure.
Like the first.
So like the first you can't like be in the kitchen.
Yes.
Which is like fine.
There's always like in those racquet sports, there's always a line you're not supposed
to cross like on the serve or the very beginning.
But then like you have to let it bounce the first return or something.
Right.
So you serve and the first return has to bounce.
But then after that you can hit in the air.
And so it's very difficult for me to not just wallop on something that was, you know, like
sometimes the ball is floating in.
Yep.
And you're like, oh, this is going to be a good one.
I can put it right where I want it.
I can put the right amount of thing on it.
So the person across the way can't get it.
But then it was the first return and it had to bounce first.
And then it was their point or like, you know, whatever the end of my server, whoever was
serving it doesn't matter.
But like that first return has to bounce.
So that was very difficult for me to like remember.
The kitchen thing is fine, I guess.
But to remember that the first one, the first return has to bounce was like the biggest
struggle for me.
Interesting.
In that game.
And then there's something like 70 year old woman who just like whooped everybody.
Oh yeah.
And I'm 36 and my brothers are three and six years younger than me.
She just destroyed us.
But she's played a lot of pickleball.
Right.
You know, and that and good for her.
You know, I'm not a pickleball expert.
That was my first time ever playing.
Right.
I was using like the court rackets.
Right.
From their court bin or whatever they had.
I played a lot of racquetball when I was in college and there was one of my college friends
who happened to be a woman.
Yeah.
And I played against her all the time.
And I don't know if I beat her even one time.
Yeah.
And I was, you know, it's like, holy shit.
Yeah.
She did shot put on the college team.
And so she was pretty strong and she could overpower me on the racquetball court.
See, this 70 year old woman was not strong.
I wouldn't call her strong.
Sure.
But smart, very, very smart.
You know, that's like she was playing to her strengths.
Like she wasn't chasing.
She wasn't chasing the ball anywhere.
Sure.
She knew based on how I was swinging or whatever, she could predict where it was going to go.
Sure.
Or she knew where she would shoot it if she were me.
She had experience.
She had enough experience and she had the finesse and she knew how to hit it based on
her playing style.
Right.
So it was very difficult to try and like get a point on her.
Yep.
But it was fun.
I like it.
My middle brother bought racquets for himself because he's got a bunch of pickleball courts,
right?
Going right next to where he lives.
Oh, okay.
He's going to be able to go play a lot of pickleball.
I know there's a lot of pickleball down by me, I think.
I've never looked up to it, but it was fun.
Good time.
But that one rule was just every time, not every time, I finally kind of came around
to it, but I would still forget every once in a while.
I always played like six or eight games.
But there was one other guy and he was older too.
I mean, everybody was older.
The youngest one's there by probably 20, 30 years.
And this one guy and I was teamed with him twice in both times.
The ball was coming right at me and I had this shot and I played racquetball before.
So once you kind of learn the bounce level of the ball and the racquet and all that stuff,
it's coming right at me.
I'm like, oh, I'm going to be able to get a good shot off of here.
He would dive in front of me to make a terrible shot.
But he had played before, so he felt like he was trying to save the team and I never
would have made a good shot at a ball coming at me.
So I was kind of like, okay, bud.
Whatever.
I mean, everybody's more, some people are more jacked up about things than other people.
But it was just like, don't steal the easy shots from the newbie.
You'll make a hard shot on your own that's coming to you.
Don't steal my shot.
So this cigar is turning into a roach clip.
Yeah, for me that is turned into a roach.
It is very good at the end.
They're very good at the end.
I think that's probably it though for me because I'm getting really, yeah, it's getting pretty
toasty.
The hot finger.
Mine's shorter than yours.
It is.
I have maybe an inch and a quarter, which would be two and a half centimeters.
Yeah, maybe three centimeters.
Yeah, something like that.
It's starting to get hot, but it is actually getting, it's better.
It's better at the end than at the beginning.
So I think that'll be it for this episode.
All right.
Hope you guys have a profitable week.
Yes.
Thanks for listening.
Have a great week.