Five, four, three, two, one, zero.
Welcome to the show, people.
Welcome to the show.
Eat my shorts.
So here is to conversation.
And quality based here, the ankle has landed.
Welcome to the Cash Exchange podcast.
Today's three choices.
Today's three...
Common threads? Common threads, yes.
Are a trip to the casino, a trip to get a colonoscopy, and a trip on mushrooms.
What's the common thread?
Wow, alright.
I'm not going to lie, I am very proud of this list.
Of these three things.
Okay, so it's a trip on mushrooms, a trip to the casino, and a trip to get a colonoscopy.
That is correct.
Things that could go sideways really fast.
Yes, yes, good job.
Alright.
These trips are either very good or very bad usually.
I personally have never had a colonoscopy, but I've heard good things and I've heard bad things.
Never done mushrooms, heard good things, heard bad things.
Honestly, they terrify me.
Yeah?
Yeah, I don't trust myself to have a good trip.
That is a fair mentality.
Don't do drugs, kids.
You can get over the blockage in your mind relatively easily, I will say.
Yeah?
Because my brain works against me all the time, but that one is not as hard of an obstacle as I thought it would be.
Huh.
Theoretically speaking.
And then a casino, I've walked out of there a winner and I've walked out of there many more times a loser.
I think a lot of people walk out of casinos a loser one way or the other.
I think you're a loser when you walk in.
But I still do it because I'm still living for that American dream.
Still holding out hope that you're going to win the lottery.
One day. You can't win if you don't play.
That is certainly a mentality to have.
But you know what else has wild swings on whether they're good or bad?
What is that?
Vacations with family.
That is a very fair point.
Or really just vacations in general.
I think that it depends a lot on your company, what you're doing, why you're doing it, and how badly you needed the vacation.
Yeah, I think it's so difficult to do family vacations if you have different ideas of what fun is.
Because there's always one person that's a lot more dominant in their opinion.
Oh, you sound like you're speaking from experience.
You know, he's not going to listen to this. I absolutely am.
I doubt it.
But after this one's posted, I'll send it to him.
That's fine. Just burn all my bridges for me.
I'm fine with that.
No, a lot of our vacations growing up were centered around one particular member of our family.
And it made all of the things that we did just weird.
Because a six and a 12-year-old aren't going to want to do the same things as a 42-year-old.
Something like that, yeah.
There was no meeting in the middle on those.
To be fair, we do have a lot of crossover.
Every time that we were at a mini golf place, Chuck E. Cheese, we wouldn't see him.
He'd be off playing the games, and we'd just be there fending for ourselves.
That would be a fun episode.
I don't think it is 100% fair to say that we didn't have anything in common.
And his interest didn't align with ours at six and 12, 13 and seven, 14 and eight.
Sure.
15 and nine.
Yeah.
16 and 10.
Did we go on any vacations when we were 16 and 10?
I was thinking about that.
I was thinking about the last time we went on a family vacation.
I think we went to...I don't remember when we went to Port Aransas.
I want to say I was like six or seven.
Yeah.
It was a long time ago.
Because I think that, if not that, then San Antonio maybe a couple years later was the last one that we went to as a nuclear family.
Okay, yeah. That makes sense.
And then after that, it would just be our mom taking us for like, I don't know, four or five days to San Antonio.
We always went to San Antonio. Or Oklahoma.
Also, for those listening, this was before Blackfish, so we didn't know.
We did go to SeaWorld.
And side note, I've seen Blackfish. I like Blackfish.
I think it is very...I mean, it definitely has an agenda.
So that's something that you should take into account when you're watching any documentary.
Right.
But it definitely had its impact on SeaWorld.
We went over Spring Break and it is like a ghost town.
And all the shows suck now.
Aren't they about to change it from SeaWorld to like United Parks or something like that?
I thought they were changing their name to something way less fun.
Yeah. I don't know exactly what it is, but there's definitely that documentary put a hit on their profit margin.
So you're saying that your most memorable family vacation was Port Aransas?
Yes. Now that you mentioned SeaWorld, I do remember SeaWorld.
But the only other one I really remember was Port Aransas and sort of the Space Center in Houston.
Yeah, because you went there with the Girl Scouts, right?
Well, I went there with you guys too.
I was a little at that point.
Yeah. They had a big playground and stuff in there. They don't have it anymore.
Is that a post-COVID thing?
I don't think so.
I think that their demographic just was older than that.
Because really now you don't see a bunch of little kids running around.
We went there last year and I think the kids we were with were probably the low end of the age spectrum.
That's surprising.
I would think that there would still be a massive market for kids at NASA.
There's still stuff you can do, like hands-on stuff.
But as far as the jungle gym and stuff, that's all gone.
Another thing I think is that they also added experiences and stuff.
Okay.
So stuff that would take up more room.
They have an Angry Birds space experience that you can do.
What is that?
I have no clue. I think you have to pay extra for it.
Okay.
Or maybe you don't. But either way, the line was super long so we didn't do it.
Yeah, I think that that's probably the, I don't know, just the thing that's changed with the times.
I miss having experiences. I feel like so much of our spending these days is just things.
I miss being able to go do things.
I try to steer away from that because I mean stuff just ends up all over the house.
And so if something's coming up and I say, hey, what do you want to do?
Not what do you want, what do you want to do?
I feel like that's something that's for everyone.
It still celebrates that person.
And you get a lot more out of it than you would if it was a Barbie and it was played with for two hours
and then thrown into a bucket somewhere.
I cannot tell you how many things are currently in my apartment that I either have never used or used and will never use again
because the guilt of throwing away something that someone got me is just a little too much.
Have you ever had someone come up to you and be like, hey, did you enjoy that blah blah blah blah?
I have many times. And it's always for a gift that was bought online.
That was something that like it's usually for something that I liked at some point in my life
that I don't necessarily like now.
And so it's just it's I got a little like safe thing inside of a Bible
because he thought it would be funny that I got a Bible as a gift and then I opened it and it was a safe.
I also got a...
So if someone has come into your house and they're struggling, they're having a real hard go at it
and they're sitting on your couch, they look over, they see a Bible, they pick it up because they just want some answers.
They just want to feel that warm embrace of God.
Yeah.
And instead they're just going to find a little tiny safe.
OK. So first of all, no one and I mean no one is coming to my house to look for answers, especially with God.
OK. OK.
But yeah, I got I got that. I got the hoodie and I got a clock that confuses the hell out of me.
So it it starts white noise 1 a.m. every single day.
Do not know why. About two weeks in.
Like the so the light comes on. It plays like bird noises and general foresty things at 1 a.m.
At 1 a.m. every single day. Or it's not even 1 a.m., which is weirder.
It's like 103. Is that on purpose? Every day.
I didn't set it. I do not know who did.
But I took it was one of those things that I didn't want to throw away.
But like I wasn't going to use it.
And so I unplugged it and I was just going to like let it die. Let it hang out.
It is. September.
It is the end of September.
I got this thing in December of last year. Has not been charged.
It does not have batteries. It's still going every morning. 103.
Have you ever considered the possibility that your place of residence is also haunted?
I hope it is. I think that's a dumb poltergeist, but I hope it is.
One that just turns on a white noise clock every day and charges it while you're gone.
Did they die on January 3rd?
Like what is their significance here?
I feel like there has to be something.
So if the only vacations that you remember are Port Aransas and San Antonio, you don't remember Branson at all?
We went to Branson. We did go to Branson.
No. Yeah.
And tried to go to Silver Dollar City and they were closed, which I felt like someone could have looked up before we went.
We saw Lane Spurton. Who? Magician. Okay.
Extraordinaire. We rode. We did one of those amphibious. The duck boats? Yeah. Okay.
Yeah. You don't remember anything about that? Not at all. Oh.
When was that? Like how old were we? I couldn't tell you. I just know that we went.
Was it a PS? Preach 9? No, no, because I wouldn't remember it.
No, because that actually leads me into...
So, okay. So which one of those two that you remember do you think was your favorite?
Can I play the fifth?
What about Shreveport? You remember Shreveport?
I remember being in a hotel room and watching something on pay-per-view.
We watched two things on pay-per-view.
That is the extent of my... That sounds gross.
There was Daredevil, the great movie starring Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner.
That was a real low point.
And the Lizzie McGuire movie.
Alright.
So we got permission to rent movies on pay-per-view because we were at a casino.
We were 7 and 13 at the time, maybe. Somewhere around there. Yeah.
No chance of going on to the casino floor.
And our dad just left us up there with our mom.
I mean, we weren't just abandoned, but it was the three of us.
Yeah, it was the three of us in a hotel room in Shreveport, Louisiana at a casino hotel watching pay-per-view.
I don't know if you can consider that a vacation.
I mean, it was somewhere else. We weren't home. We were somewhere else as a family.
One of us was doing something fun.
Yeah, no. That has some of the makings of a vacation.
We got a fancy Chinese meal where they, after the meal, they come over with a razor and scrape all the crumbs off the table.
I work in a place where you have to use a little... It's called a crumber, for the record, in case you're curious.
A crumber.
It's a crumber, yeah.
So if you're ever really...
The restaurant's going to hell in the handbask and they're like,
Where should I? Do you say, I'm over here crumbing? I'm crumbing.
No?
God damn it.
No? Is that a no?
No!
Why not?
You know what? I don't have a good why not.
You don't say, I can't right now. I'm over here using the crumber.
You say, I'm crumbing.
To be fair, in my many years as a server, I have never once had to announce to anyone that I was crumbing.
You've never been interrupted while you were crumbing.
Alright, and that is enough of that.
Good lord.
Oh man. That's why they pay me the big bucks.
This is why I need a real Bible in my home.
It wouldn't hurt.
I don't know that I have a favorite vacation because I really only remember bits and pieces of the vacations that we took.
Mine's the original where they go to Wally World.
Yeah. I didn't much care for the Ed Helms one.
It had its moments. It definitely was a lot of just trying to chase what the original was.
But I think it had its moments.
Yeah.
Okay, so no favorite, least favorite.
There are a lot more vacations that you've taken than was with all four of us.
I know. Actually, in mentioning that, there are a lot more of the family vacations.
Because the first thing that my brain went to was the four of us, the more nuclear family vacations.
I think my favorite vacations were actually the ones at Turner Falls when we would go back to take our cousin back to Oklahoma.
We would go camping for a weekend or something like that. That was always fun.
That was most of the time fun.
Yeah. And I wasn't ever part of those. And whenever we would go to Turner Falls, it would be like a day trip type thing.
We wouldn't stay out there.
As far as least favorite vacations go, I have two.
Can I see if I can name them?
Let's go.
Is one of them international?
Yes.
Canada.
Yep.
Vegas.
And Houston.
For the wedding?
Yeah.
No.
Oh, no? Okay.
That was the Vegas trip, though. We went to Houston. We were there for a day or something, and then we left Vegas.
Anyway, Vegas wasn't great either of the times that I went.
And part of the big part of the problem with Vegas is that I don't like gambling.
I don't consider myself a very lucky person when it comes to that specific kind of thing. And so I don't have a lot of fun gambling.
And so taking me to a casino, especially when I'm underage, it's not fun for me.
Because the first time that I went to Vegas, I was 17, and the second time I was 21.
And I think I was up like 200 bucks when I left Vegas the second time.
The first time we went to the Grand Canyon, which was something that I'd always wanted to do.
And our aunt threw a tantrum about halfway through and just sat on the road and said that the bus was going to stop to just get her,
even though we were probably a mile from an actual bus stop inside the Grand Canyon.
She just sat there for I think 30 minutes while…
Middle of the road?
No, on the side of the road.
Because she was convinced that the bus was going to just stop mid-route, even though all of the buses said, we don't do that.
So all of the other members of the family were trying to convince her to move.
I think that is a prevalent opinion with people on that side of our family.
That things are just going to happen the way that I expect them to.
Yes.
Yeah, that's absolutely accurate.
I haven't seen that side of the family in I don't know how long, but I definitely know enough about them to have that opinion.
Because the person from that side of the family that I do have constant contact with is also like that.
Which is why we ended up in Shreveport.
Well, it's funny because my least favorite vacation was Vegas, too.
Yeah? Why is that?
Well, because I was six years old.
You were in utero.
Oh.
I got left at…
I know at one point we went to Circus Circus and I know there's stuff to do there with those kids.
But dad just up and ran off, left me with his sister.
We drove there.
So I mean, I don't have any recollection of that, but it just that seems…
That's an insane drive to make with a six-year-old and a pregnant lady.
Did she go?
Mom didn't go.
No.
That's an insane…
What?
She got left at home.
But why didn't you come with?
It was just me and dad.
I don't know.
Huh.
Yeah, we went to Vegas and then we went to…
We were in LA for a little bit because I remember we went down the walk of fame and then I think we ended up in San Francisco or San Diego.
My God, that's so much driving.
I mean, I have no…
I have memories of bits and pieces of it.
I don't know how much of it is actual memories and how much of it is I knew that happened so my brain just formed as a memory.
Yeah.
I remember Circus Circus vaguely and I remember Disneyland.
We went to Disneyland too.
And I remember going on the submarine ride.
I think at that point it was still Captain Nemo's whatever 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.
Yeah.
But yeah, as far as that trip goes, that's all I remember.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure I just got passed around most of the time.
Sounds about right.
And I mean, I know that they say that Vegas is more family friendly now, but don't take a six-year-old to Vegas.
Wise words.
Or a 17-year-old.
Just throwing it out there.
Yeah.
I mean, if you're going to go for the family angle, maybe like 10 and up.
I did see David Copperfield when we were there the first time.
So that wasn't terrible.
Yeah.
I mean, there's lots of shows.
There's lots of stuff you could do.
But most of the stuff is going to be lost on a child.
Yeah.
And it's going to be lost on a teenager that would rather be literally anywhere else but with you.
And can't gamble, so that negates like 98% of the city.
I spent a decent amount of my trip right after I turned 21 trying to figure out how I could like break off on my own so that I could go check out one of the dispensaries.
That was like the only upside that I had when I was 21 in Vegas.
I did that too.
And I couldn't make it.
But I did.
I did get a lecture on why weed is bad.
I did that in Colorado Springs.
I had a whole trip planned out.
I found my hotel.
I planned my route, everything.
Someone decided to tag along.
And my sole intent was to go to a dispensary, stay there for a day or two, and then come back.
And then whenever this other person tagged along, that was no longer the plan.
And this was peak COVID, peak shutdown.
And in Colorado.
Like Colorado is one that stayed closed earlier and later than most of the other places.
And so I informed them heading out that there wouldn't be much to do because I was going there for a specific reason.
And then I was just going to come back and didn't get to go.
Tried to sneak away, went on a walk and was thinking about going to one.
But then it was just ruined at that point.
Yeah.
They have a dispensary in Vegas that's basically like a Walmart.
Oh yeah?
And for no other reason.
I'm just curious what that looks like.
It's a 24-7 superstore for weed.
Which is, I mean, is that necessary?
It's absolutely not, but I want to see it.
I mean, if there's anywhere that it would be necessary, it's Vegas.
Maybe Denver, but mostly Vegas.
And they also have like 24-hour liquor and all that.
I don't know.
I think it'd be interesting to see.
It's not called Sin City for nothing.
Fair point.
My final, my actual like number one worst vacation was Canada.
Oh Canada.
I did get to go to a Tim Hortons.
I'm real proud of that one.
I did not get to try poutine.
I got an argument at the top of the CN Tower and I was not spoken to until we were back in Texas.
Like several weeks after we were back in Texas.
I mean, that happens.
Yeah, you know.
It's just an acquaintance, right?
No bigs.
We didn't go to the one restaurant I wanted to go to.
Which was what?
You know, I don't even remember now.
That's not been too important to you?
No, it got overshadowed by the fact that I got an argument at the top of the CN Tower.
I was in...
So you could say that while you were at the top of the CN Tower, you and this other person weren't seeing eye to eye?
That was a good one.
I'll give you that.
Thanks.
I had to explain to Nate what a rim shot was today.
He was a little concerned for a second.
So you're talking about electric drum sets.
You had to explain to Nate what a rim job was?
Rim shot.
Oh, oh, okay.
That makes more sense.
That freak already knew what a rim job was.
That one feels less earned.
I was just putting that in there so I could put it in on the other one.
Yeah.
Yeah, half of the time that we were in Canada, I was just in an apartment on my phone.
Because people around me were speaking a language that I do not speak.
And making foods that I did not want to eat.
There was a whole fish.
I don't like fish heads.
I don't like seeing fish heads.
I don't like the general face parts of the animal when I'm eating meat.
I like to be in denial.
Was it like the big fried kind?
Like the flat ones?
Mm-hmm.
That you just dig a fork into?
Yes.
Yeah.
And it smelled horrifying.
That's racist.
I will not stand to have that on this podcast.
Okay.
You take your racism elsewhere.
So obviously vacations without family are a lot more fun.
Preferable.
Vacations with family.
But do you find that when you're on a vacation with significant other or whatever friends that you end up doing stuff that probably would have done with a family?
Or do you feel like you steer clear of all that stuff?
Steer clear of all the other people's families.
And then you go out and do all the crazy adult stuff.
So we went to Branson a couple months ago.
And when we went to Branson, we avoided all of the family things because it's supposed to be a family event town.
And that's not what we were there for.
We mostly just wanted to be outdoors for a while.
And the only things that we saw that we were really interested in that were more family designed activities were mini golf, which we did end up going mini golfing.
That was a lot of fun.
And I think it's called the Museum of Illusions or something.
It's this massive interactive science museum.
That sounds fun.
It looked really cool.
The outside of it is an upside down building.
And so it looks like the foundation is on top.
It's something that I think I would check out if we went back.
But in all the vacations that we've taken, we've typically steered away from the family things just because if I'm out trying to enjoy my vacation, I don't want to be around other people's kids.
Generally speaking, I don't want to be around other people's kids, except for yours. Love yours.
Yeah, I think that I think that I am more inclined to do family centric stuff when I don't have the kids.
I think it's mostly because I want to test it out before.
OK, that's fair.
Because it's so much money to do stuff with kids to just you pay for two adults, which is already expensive, and then you're going to pay for three kids.
And then you're at their whim.
Yeah.
So if they say, hey, I'm going to be an asshole, then you have to leave because they're being an asshole.
And they know it.
They know that they're in control and you can't do anything about it.
Oh, yeah, that sucks.
You can fight them until you're blue in the face, but then it just ruins it for everybody.
Yeah.
And so I think a lot of my stuff when I'm when I'm out of town or when I'm out somewhere without them is just to test it out, see if it's something that is actually going to be worth the time, the frustration and the money invested.
Yeah.
Because I've done stuff like we went to Pensacola three months ago and we did mini golf because I like mini golf and kids like mini golf.
And so we tried this place out.
And since we didn't have kids, we were surrounded by kids.
It was miserable.
Yeah.
I don't know, we go on like vacations and stuff usually in the off peak season. Like it's usually easier for our schedules to align whenever everyone's in school.
Yeah.
So I don't have to deal with that too much.
Yeah, I will.
Because I like doing I like doing like kid centered stuff.
Like I'm not going to go out to bars, I'm not going to go out to where there's like crazy loud music and you just can't hear yourself think.
Yeah.
So I think that I do the family centered stuff, no matter who I'm with.
Obviously this isn't something that you have had to deal with firsthand, but another thing that I have to take into consideration when I'm planning vacations now is all the nonsense that has to be packed.
Everything that goes into leaving my house and going to live somewhere else for a couple days.
Because good Lord, it's, it's two swimsuits, it's clothes for five days when we're going to be gone for two, because you never know what's going to happen.
It's tablets, it's chargers, it's headphones, it's because if you don't have that stuff, you're going to be miserable, because they're going to be miserable.
Yeah.
And then you're just going to be hearing about it the whole time.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
Exactly.
Are we there yet?
And so I mean it's, I'm not big on just throwing the kids in front of a tablet or something just to keep them occupied and keep them quiet and out of sight, out of mind.
But that is one time when I make that exception, because I think that if I didn't, we would all go crazy.
That's fair.
I think if you're doing road trips, you have to have some kind of like consistent entertainment.
Like when we were growing up, the, we had that like portable DVD player thing with like the extra screen.
And I think that was probably the only thing that kept us anywhere near sane driving any long distance.
Well it's funny, because on our way to Shreveport, we stopped at a truck stop and I begged our parents to get us this five inch black and white TV.
Yeah.
That plugged into the cigarette lighter.
I remember that.
And had an antenna.
Yeah.
That's how old we are.
I genuinely miss the little portable DVD player.
Don't get me wrong. I don't remember the last time I was in the back seat of a car.
Yeah, it makes me sick. I get nauseous.
I don't remember the last time I was in the back seat of a car.
But portable DVD players were like the pinnacle of technology.
They still are.
They are, yeah.
Tablets are not the same.
If I have to download a movie off of Netflix to watch it in the car, it takes all of the joy out of it.
You're unhooked. There's no Wi-Fi needed.
There's no loading.
There's no waiting.
You could be done with something. Just press the button. It pops open.
You take the DVD out. You put the next one in. Boom.
You fall asleep and you listen to the title screen for three hours.
Over and over and over again.
I've done that one a time or several.
Yeah. It definitely has its perks.
You're unplugged, so you don't have to worry about being interrupted by anyone outside of the car.
You're not being inundated with notifications of all the shit that's going on in the world.
It was a simpler time.
You can completely just zone out and watch the ringer.
Yeah, or Shrek 2.
Or...
How the Grinch doll Christmas is the only one I actually specifically remember watching on DVD on Little Portable Thing.
Yeah, I remember that too. We also had Elf.
Oh yeah.
We did most of our in-car traveling to Oklahoma, so it was for Christmas.
And so all of our stuff would usually be Christmas-centric.
And typically on Christmas.
Yes. We were the family that traveled on Christmas.
Which now sounds like a big old nightmare to be on the roads on Christmas Eve.
Yeah, especially on going to Oklahoma where they actually get winter weather.
And usually having to deal with ice or snow or any sort of crappy weather that comes with that.
Do you prefer flying or driving?
So I definitely prefer road trips, but there's a limit.
So we drove up to Branson. Branson was eight hours.
I think my cap is 12.
So we drove to... I drove to Denver a couple years ago, and that was fun.
The person that I was with traded off with me at six hours in.
So we went from Dallas to Amarillo, Amarillo to Denver.
But I think anything more than 12 hours is a flight.
Because then you're not going to be able to enjoy the vacation as much
because you're just thinking of how awful it's going to be to get back.
Yeah.
But even flying has its headaches with getting back and having to deal with all that stupid nonsense.
I have never had a bad experience at an airport.
No? You've never been frisked?
I have not. I've never been randomly selected.
I have, I think, always flown at off-peak time, so I've never had to deal with super insane lines.
I always... I make sure that all my flights are either early in the morning or late at night.
I don't go during the middle of the day.
Yeah. That's the same mentality, though, that I have when I'm driving.
If I'm taking a road trip, I'm leaving at four in the morning.
Yeah.
Because I don't want to be on the road when everybody else is on the road, because then I hate road trips.
I always intend to leave super early. It rarely works out that way.
But that's another thing that also comes into play when you're traveling with kids, is that you can't leave that early.
You can intend to, and you can set everything up to be out the door.
You could have the car loaded. You just need to get their butts in their seats, and it's still going to be two hours.
Yeah.
And then on top of that, with all the bathroom break stops and all that and having to eat, because I can...
I just drove nine hours, only to stop for gas.
Yeah.
And so that would be my kind of road trip, but that's not what I have right now.
I don't have that available to me right now.
That's fair.
To drive nine hours straight.
But I also don't know what kind of a headache it would be trying to get three kids onto a plane, either.
They've never been on a plane, right? None of them?
No.
Yeah, man, to do first flights, that sounds so stressful.
But also the idea of having to manage five people's bladders as the driver sounds optimistically like a headache.
Yeah.
So I'm impressed that you have been able to accomplish any family vacations.
We made the drive to Albuquerque with the two of them, and it's a miracle that we didn't have any kind of issues,
because we definitely... I mean, it was not fun.
Yeah.
That was what, 10 hours?
About, yeah.
And that was you three, or you two, mom and the kids?
Yes.
Yeah, which, I mean, we started out late, and then we stopped way more than I wanted to.
But, I mean, we got there, and we got there super late at night.
Hotel was all messed up, and so we ended up in this super sketchy hotel for the night.
Ended up sleeping there for maybe three hours, got back in the car, and then went to go see the...
The balloons.
The lighting of the balloons, yeah, which was cool.
And then later on, found out that none of the balloons would take flight because it was too windy.
Yeah, I mean, all in all, I think that I have a...
I definitely have a difficult time during, but when I look back at them, I think that I look back at them fondly, usually.
Yeah.
Even Albuquerque, like that was a nightmare.
Just getting in so late, hotel reservation being messed up, which I'm the one that messed it up.
I didn't plan it right.
And the solution I had, because if you've never been to Albuquerque during the balloon fest, it is almost impossible to find a room.
Like, every single hotel room in the city is booked up.
And so the ones that you're going to find if you're trying to get one last minute are places that you wouldn't want to be caught dead in.
There was exposed wires.
There was one outlet for the entire room.
There was a hole punched in one of the walls.
There were stains in the bottom of the bathtub.
Were they red?
Coppery.
Oh.
So either rust or blood that had been there for a while.
Cool.
Yeah.
Very cool.
Yeah.
It was some shit had gone down in that room previous to us being there.
Maybe it was Robert and he's just followed you since then.
Were we here?
No, we weren't.
No, you were in separate places.
Yeah, we weren't here.
Yeah.
So how do you feel about Disney world or land, whichever?
I am very anti-Disney.
I think the fandom is...
You think the Disney adults ruined it all?
Disney adults ruined a lot of it, for sure.
I understand the Disney adult mentality.
I think so much of that is trying to reclaim a childhood either because you didn't get one.
Yeah.
Or you are just like stuck in that like nostalgia loop.
Yeah.
Which either way, to each their own, love what you love.
But at the same time, understand you suck to be around.
Yes, when that's your entire personality.
And I mean, it doesn't even have to be Disney.
It could be whatever you base your entire personality around.
If that's the only thing that you think makes you interesting, then you are not someone that is fun to be around.
Right.
And so I wouldn't go to Disney as just myself.
I wouldn't go as just the one adult or the pair of adults because I do recognize that that's so much more of a family thing.
I would maybe go as a group if I could find a couple of other adults that were willing to go.
Because I think that would make it fun.
And you would be willing to brave a lot of the stuff.
But it's just so expensive.
And I can't possibly imagine that the experience that you get is worth it.
I don't understand how it's just it goes up and up and up and up.
Like I've been looking into it.
And I mean, it's not anything that I would do in the next two years.
Like kids are going to need to be old enough to remember all of it and to understand that this is like a once in a lifetime thing.
This isn't going to happen every year.
And I just I cannot fathom why a vacation for two adults, three kids would have to be ten, fifteen thousand dollars.
That's insane.
And that on top of all the other stuff that Disney is doing.
And that's not even the political stuff.
Like political stuff is annoying.
Like just make stuff that people want to see.
But it's more the raising the prices, but then diminishing the product.
Yeah.
So like they take stuff away.
They take stuff that was free, stuff that was this price.
They raise the price of the overall thing.
And then they take away this free stuff and then charge you separately for it.
What is what is like the base rate?
Like what would you be paying for just tickets into the park for Disney?
If you want to.
OK, you want to do a four day pass for all four Disney World parks.
So you got Epcot, you got Disney World, you got Animal Kingdom, you got Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom.
Is it Hollywood Studios?
I have no idea.
What is it called?
I don't remember if that's what it used to be called or that's what it's called now.
But ninety nine dollars per person per day.
That's actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
So you're looking at four hundred dollars for four days.
This is only park admission.
This isn't hotel.
This isn't food.
This isn't anything else.
Yeah.
So you have two adults, you're already paying eight hundred dollars just to get in.
Yeah.
For four days.
That's God, I don't like that.
I've been desensitized to the point that that doesn't sound like as much as I expected it to be.
Eight hundred dollars for just the adult.
And then you're paying food somewhere around the park.
If you're not paying in the park, it's going to have a Disney tax on it because it's close to Disney World.
You're going to pay for transportation that's going to have the Disney tax on it because it's close to Disney World.
You're going to have a hotel even if you don't stay on property.
You're still going to be paying more than you would pay somewhere else in Orlando because of its vicinity to or its proximity to Disney World.
And so all that stuff adds up.
I just I cannot under I can't wrap my head around these families that go there every year.
There was a while when I was back on Facebook that like things would pop up on my feed and it was always these like tips and tricks people that could like help you budget out a trip to Disney.
Yeah.
And the amount of stress in just the idea of the things that they were telling me like I'm sure you would save a decent amount of money, but the amount of stress that it would cause to be like I have this broken down to the dollar and we need to spend this, this and this.
Like that's not I don't have kids.
I don't know.
I guess for sure that that's how that works.
That's not how kids work.
They're going to need things that are expensive or they're going to throw a fit and you're going to want to save your vacation.
You're just going to pay for the extra thing.
I can't imagine going through that level of planning for a vacation and being able to enjoy it at any capacity.
No, I mean, we have vacations now that don't cost anywhere near that much.
And it's still when you break it all down afterwards, you're just you feel just not good.
Yeah.
And it's just that's why I have that's why I justify it by saying, OK, but so in lieu of a thing in lieu of this item that you're only going to use for however long, then we're going to do this.
That money is going to go towards this and this will be something you remember.
We'll get pictures and all that other stuff.
That is the only way to justify all of it, because if not, then it's just going to be it's drive yourself crazy.
And I mean, I think it would be a lot easier for for your type of situation for two incomes, no kids.
But still, I mean, when you step back and think about all the the other things, all of that money could have gone to.
Yeah.
It's just hard to justify.
But then you end up getting in a rut because you don't want to spend the money, but you feel like you need to to get out.
You need that release and you need to get a change of scenery for a little bit.
We were actually in that situation this week.
So we got invited to a cruise left out of Fort Lauderdale at the end of next month.
And we were doing all of the math on it and trying to figure out like, yeah, we know it's close to the move, but we're in a decent enough financial space that we would be able to afford it.
It wouldn't be terrible.
And when we were doing the math and stuff, I could see that it was I don't have the same perspective on money as I used to, because when I was younger, I used to stockpile it because the idea of something happening
always threatened to break me.
But I've gotten a lot better at spending money wisely.
And the longer that we talked about it and the logistics of getting out to Fort Lauderdale, getting on the cruise, getting back all of that stuff, I could tell with every dollar that we were spending, it was stressing him out more and more.
And I knew that it was going to be us getting on that vacation that he agreed to go and probably didn't want to.
And then he was just miserable the whole time because we had spent so much money that you have to have this like, it has to be this level of fun to justify the fact that I just spent this much money.
Yeah, you have to squeeze this much enjoyment out of it in order to make it worthwhile.
Right.
Yeah.
And that's just it's I don't think I would ever be able to go to Disney without that kind of mentality.
I don't either. Like I'm spending 10 grand. This better be the best thing I've done in my whole life.
It's crazy what we're required to do for vacations these days.
I say like I've ever had any alternative but.
Well, I think that this is a result of a social media culture because I mean, I don't I don't post on I don't post on social media stuff outside of stuff for this podcast.
But you just you have this feeling that you have to keep up with the Joneses with what you're seeing other people doing like you think that what they're doing is what you should be doing.
And so you need to meet or or one up. And so I think that that is a major thing that has come out of that has just skyrocketed the cost of all this stuff is the fact that if they can get one person to do it, then they'll post it.
They'll talk about it. They'll do all this other stuff. And then they're going to bring in three other people that have seen this.
They want this. They want to have these pictures to post whatever say that they did this thing.
And then that's going to reach out to even more people. And so they know that if they can get in that initial initial crowd, then it's just going to grow exponentially.
And it's not going to matter what they charge. Yeah, because people are going to find a way to justify it. Yeah, I I also don't understand those people.
I don't I don't know if that's maybe a thing because I don't have kids. If you're not like that, then I guess it's it's not a thing.
But like the people that go on vacation specifically to take pictures like I I I don't ever have my phone on vacation.
I'll take like a handful of pictures maybe just as like a thing that my phone will pop back up in a year. Yeah.
But I I do my best to stay away from my phone because I just I don't want to do the same things that make me miserable here but elsewhere.
Yeah, like I don't see any kind of merit in that and spending all of my time on my phone, but in a place that I'm paying to be.
I could be doing this on my couch. Yeah, I'm I'm opposite of that. I'll I'll take pictures like crazy. I think I get that from our dad.
But I don't take them to post them anywhere. Yeah, they're there for me. I'll send them to family. Yeah, I'll send them.
Hey, look what happened here. If it's a funny picture, then I'll I'll send it out. Yeah, but I'm not going to post it anywhere to get satisfaction from people that I don't care about in any other aspect of my life.
Yeah, I mean, it's I'm sure it's different if it's done with the right intentions, if it's not you just living life through your phone needing like the perfect picture and all of that stuff.
If it's like actually you just getting like candidates or actual just regular pictures of the kids. Yeah, it's the people that spend their whole time needing to retake the same picture 15 times because it just didn't this thing didn't look right.
Not even necessarily for posting it because I get a little bit particular if my picture is taken.
But but I also like if I'm on vacation, take a picture of me if it's good and cool. If it's not cool. I tell the Mrs.
You have two chances where you get a genuine smile.
If you can't take it in those two chances, then yeah, you're you're going to get something that looks real goofy.
I am because I hate having to stop down doing what we're doing and have to take this staged picture. If it's a picture, if it's a candid like it's just while me while I'm doing something, if it's one of the kids while they're just doing something.
Those are my favorite ones. Yeah, I hate the ones that are like, okay, stand here. Smile, smile, open your eyes, smile. Yeah, those I hate those.
If you tell me to smile reflexively, I will be so angry that the picture you take of me will not look good.
And I understand that that is what she needs. And so I make the compromise.
I give her two chances if she can't do it in those two chances, if she can't make it work in those two chances.
Okay, we'll move on. We'll try again later.
So we have a Facebook portal, I think it's like a one of those like smart frame thingies. Oh, yeah, we can like video call and all that stuff.
We've had it in our closet for the longest time, and it got set up today.
And we realized that I could not tell you the last picture that we took together.
Is there something that some instigating reason why you dug it out of the closet and set it up?
We were just doing some some cleaning. Oh, you just happened to rediscover it?
Yeah, like I don't think that we've taken a picture together.
Probably like a year, except for the ones like the.
Oh, no, I guess we didn't take any pictures together at Pabes. Yeah, no.
Well, that makes sense because neither of you are very sentimental people.
That's definitely not true. That's not.
I mean, I mean, I'm not saying that you have a bad relationship.
I'm just saying that that kind of stuff isn't a priority for your relationship.
Yeah, like documenting, documenting your goings on and posting them and letting people know what you're doing.
I so I'm more sentimental when it comes to like random memorabilia, I think I collect like ticket stubs,
which it makes me real sad that we don't get ticket stubs for anything anymore.
But like now, if I give gifts and it's a can. Yeah, you can.
Yeah, I'm not paying extra for it because I've gotten ticket master tickets that have required me to like.
No, you you just go for will call.
No French about tickets. OK, that's what I do.
Most times when I'm doing something, I'll just I'll do will call instead of that's usually an option that you can choose online.
OK. And then sometimes you can buy directly from the venue and avoid all those stupid fees, too.
So there's another quick fact for you. I will keep that in mind.
But I keep yeah, I keep ticket stubs. I keep like playbills and stuff like that.
Yeah, that's the kind of like sentimentality I have.
And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that I don't like getting my picture taken necessarily.
Yeah, because I was forced into so many pictures growing up that now I'm just I'm kind of burnt out on it.
So it's like a psychosis for both of us. Yes, absolutely.
Because I could tell you all of the pictures from I'm going to say like 10 to 18 when I stopped cooperating for all the pictures that I was requested.
Yeah, I think I started flipping that off in pictures.
I did it a couple of times and he got so mad at me. I got the silent treatment and again, it was definitely recommend.
But yeah, like I'm not I'm not the biggest picture person because I was forced to take so many of them.
And so I know that even now, my reflex is to do the hostage smile.
The like, I'm you can tell it's not genuine. Anyone that sees the picture knows that it's not genuine.
And so I would rather just sidestep it in general and just keep the other things that happen or the other things that we get from it.
Yeah, I like state fair tickets and stuff from like Grapefest and all of that.
Yeah, I don't I see a picture. I mean, I don't ever like it. Yeah.
Yeah, it's. Hmm. That's not much should have gone to therapy for.
Thanks a lot, Dad.
So if you're thinking about going for a low key vacation, a couple of days, nothing crazy.
What would you do?
So outside of necessarily the scope of like family vacations, vacations in general.
All of my favorite vacations have been outdoors.
For one thing, they're inexpensive, so I never have to worry about the amount of money that I'm spending.
I usually spend like a whole bunch of money on gas and food on the drive.
Yeah. And that's kind of the only thing I'll have to worry about.
I like vacations where you can unplug. And so camping is my absolute favorite thing to do.
If I have like a window of time, I want to go camping. Yeah.
And and like, I guess having the conversation that we were having earlier about like the the things that kind of like make and break a vacation,
the the things that go wrong in camping because they're just like like every time that I've gone camping, it's rained.
We the last time that we went to Broken Bow, Oklahoma, we were there for like four days.
It stormed so bad on one of the days that one of the one of the tents, a couple like spaces over from us blew into the water.
It was just floating. People had to bring out their kayaks to go like paddle over and retrieve these people's tent.
And that is still one of my favorite vacations because, first of all, we stayed dry.
And it was just that's just kind of what happens when you go camping. Yeah.
It was realistically should have been a lot more careful with the weather, but I have no regrets about it.
I got I got rained out when I went camping with a friend of mine a couple of years ago and we slid a little bit down a mountain.
Not super, super far, but we moved like you got caught in a mudslide.
It was raining so bad that, yeah, like our tent was sort of flooding and it moved a little.
Then you just hydroplained down the hill. We hydroplained. Yeah.
That was still a whole lot of fun.
We like I think there's no there's no expectations when it comes to to vacationing outside.
You have no control over the situation aside from the fact that you can Google the weather and I for some reason never do.
Yeah. But it's so nice to be able to just be so far away from all of the little things in your day to day.
Yeah. Like when you get so far out that you don't even have any signal. Yeah, that's that's pretty nice.
That hasn't happened to me in a long time. And I'm camping with us with the kids.
It does make it a little more difficult to be that unplugged.
But yeah, I would I would love to just not have to worry about that kind of stuff, not have to worry about being contacted by anyone except for the people I'm there with.
Yeah. I think we were there for four days and the only thing I have used my phone for was I took pictures at the very beginning of like our campsite and stuff.
It was gorgeous out there. I took a picture of like the next morning and then we played music on our speaker and that was it.
Other than that, I did not check an email, a text message, didn't answer a phone call. It was awesome.
What is what is your favorite vacation or like your ideal vacation?
I don't know if it's ideal, but it's our go to.
If we have I don't know, so we have a four day weekend and don't have anything too pressing to do that we have to get done here.
We'll go down to the coast. We'll go down to usually Galveston, sometimes Corpus.
I don't recommend it if you're not from Texas.
You're not a Texas Beach person because it makes sense for people in Texas to go to Corpus or Galveston.
But Charles Barkley notoriously has a problem with Galveston because it does.
It sucks. It is. We went to Pensacola a couple months ago and that is an actual beach and that has actual sand.
And that is you actually feel like you are in the Gulf.
And yeah, so if you have been to a beach literally anywhere else, if you've been to the Jersey Shore,
if you've been to any beach in Florida, if you've been to any beach in California,
I do not recommend coming down to Texas in order to give one of our beaches a try.
Unless you're going to South Padre, but then you're not going there for the beach anyways.
Yeah, that's fair.
You're going there to party and you don't care what the beach is like.
I also went to Padre with our father.
Yeah?
That was, I don't swim, so that's also not necessarily my ideal vacation.
But yeah, Texas beaches are fun for a day.
Yeah.
It's fun to just like be away.
Yeah, and be close enough that you can come home if you needed to, if something came up or anything like that.
But we made the drive to Pensacola. It wasn't fun.
And it's definitely not something that we could have done straight if we had had the kids with us.
It would definitely be something that we would have to split into two days.
And so you're taking this trip that maybe you have four days for and say you have five days.
So you've got two days that you're using to get there.
You enjoy a day there and then you have two days to drive back.
Yeah, that sounds like way more hassle than it's worth.
Yeah, and so that's the main reason that whenever we tell the kids, hey, we're going to go to the beach,
they know that we're going to Galveston.
And it also helps that they haven't seen a real beach.
Oh, yeah, that's going to really shatter that illusion.
It's going to, their heads are going to explode when they see a real beach for the first time.
Yeah, that's, do you have plans to go with them kind of in like the eventuality to?
I'd love to go back to Pensacola or somewhere in Florida.
I've heard amazing things about Destin.
I've never been to Florida, so I couldn't tell you if that's true.
But I've heard Destin is the place to be.
Yeah, I mean, there's people that work their whole lives away just for a timeshare down in Destin.
Well, if we're going off timeshare rules, I don't know that anyone's the winner there.
Work your life off for a timeshare in Missouri.
They tried to sell us real hard on a timeshare in Missouri.
That was a Taylor Swift reference.
Was it?
For the song Florida.
Wow.
Yeah, if you don't have anything else.
Nope, that's all I had.
To add for this one, then go ahead.
Peace out, Carl Scouts.
And just remember, it costs absolutely nothing to not be an asshole.
See you later.
Bye.