The Bicycle Grief

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

I'm Bailiff Jesse Thorne.

This week, The Bicycle Grief.

Claire brings the case against her mother, Suzanne, and her stepdad, David.

Every summer, Claire spends a month visiting Suzanne and David at their house.

Her visit always overlaps with the Tour de France.

Suzanne and David watch every minute of the tour because they don't want to miss any of it.

Claire says that's getting in the way of them spending time with her.

Who's right, who's wrong, only one can decide.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman enters the courtroom and presents an obscure cultural reference.

19 liters of hot chocolate, 7 liters of tea, 8 cooked eggs, a mix of coffee and champagne.

45 cutlets, 5 liters of tapioca, 2 kilos of rice, and oysters.

Bailiff Jesse Thorne, please swear the litigants in.

Claire, David, and Suzanne, please rise and raise your right hands.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

So help you, God or whatever.

I do.

I do also.

I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, despite the fact that he probably wears one of those normal round bicycle helmets instead of those long, skinny ones?

You know, those long, skinny ones.

Those Tron helmets?

Yes.

Yes, we will abide.

Judge Hodgman, you may proceed.

Dave, Suzanne, and Claire, you may be seated for an immediate summary judgment in one of your favors.

Can either of you, and I'm going to make you, David, and Suzanne, a team because you are co-defendants.

Not fair, Claire, is it?

No.

I can tell.

I can see you at the top of my screen.

Claire is like not enjoying that at all.

It's okay.

Don't worry, Claire.

Everything's going to be fair.

I made a note this morning.

I said, make it fair for Claire.

That was the note note I made.

Much obliged.

You're welcome.

Claire, do you want to guess first?

Sure.

Well, it sounds like the

meal list of the things that were eaten by a member of the Tour de France in like

1912 or something like that.

1912 is the year you want to go for it.

Sure.

1912?

Not earlier.

No, I'm going to stick with 1912.

I feel confident about that year.

Remember how it was going to be Fair for Clare Day?

Okay.

I'll go with 1911.

Snap prices right.

Okay.

1911 Tour de France, something that was a menu that was enjoyed by a bicyclist.

Yes, I don't know any of their names, but I suspect that the other team will.

So I'll leave it at that.

Probably Jean-Pierre or something.

Sure.

Right.

Okay.

Suzanne and David, which one of you is going to be

how do you do it?

Someone rides in front of someone else to cut down on wind resistance?

Draft behind.

Who's going to lead and who's going to draft behind?

I will lead.

I could see.

And by the way, I saw you nodding along when I was reading this off, David.

I think you know this one.

I wish I did, but

I think it's actually a French to English translation from the triplets of Belleville,

the animated French classic from

15 years ago.

So, you did a really good job translating.

You don't want to say 16 years ago, David?

Yeah, I think 16.

Okay, I don't know.

But I do know that Triplets of Belleville does feature the Tour de France in it.

It's not a film that I've seen, I'm embarrassed to say.

So

it's unlikely that I would have quoted it.

Since I know that you got it wrong, David, Suzanne,

you want to give it a try?

Sure.

I think it's a menu for a team's celebration because there were oysters and champagne in there.

So you only do the champagne on the last stage of the tour.

The cyclists

ride along and they drink champagne.

So I think it's maybe a menu from the last day of the tour in Paris, and I have no idea what year it would be from.

Well,

let me say this.

Do you want to, I'm sorry, did you you want to take a guess?

No.

Okay.

You want to say 1910?

I think it was probably around 1910.

That's what I'm guessing.

So

none of you win.

What do you get when

you win the Tour de France?

A plate de stew?

No, you get this massive trophy, this massive plate, glass plate.

A plate?

Yeah.

None of you get the plate du glace.

I think that means plate of ice.

Anyway, none of of you get it.

But I'll tell you, in order of furthest away from correct, coming in third was David, coming in second.

Suzanne, coming in first, closest to most correct.

Claire.

It was fair for Claire, right?

Absolutely.

But all guesses were wrong.

The diet, this was the diet followed over, I think over the course of the race by the winner of a 24-hour bicycle race in Paris, not the Tour de France.

It was a precursor to the Tour de France, and it was held in 1893.

The winner traveled 701 kilometers.

I didn't have time this morning to figure this out in miles, so you're going to get it in kilometers.

David, I know you're, you'll know what I'm talking about.

The winner traveled 701 kilometers in 24 hours, racing around the Champs du Mars, the site of the Tour Eiffel now.

The winner was only one of two to actually finish the race.

That is, bicycled all 24 hours because most of them were drinking red wine the whole time.

And spoiler alerts, it's a he-him person.

He beat his closest competition by 49 kilometers.

In other words, he traveled almost 50 kilometers more in 24 hours than number two.

David, do you know the, you like bicycle races, right?

Absolutely.

You like to ride a bicycle.

You like to ride your bike.

Freddie Mercury style.

Many miles.

Right.

I can see you're wearing your bicycle jersey right now.

Yes.

Do you know the the name of the winner of that race?

I think I might.

Ritty.

You're not going to win the case now,

but I'd like to know.

Ritty van Vlanderen.

No, sir.

Maurice Garin.

I'm sorry about that.

It was a good thing.

You know who Maurice Garin is.

Of course.

Who?

I don't know.

It's Kien.

Just like the other one.

It's a made-up name.

Who?

Ki.

Ki.

That's what I meant to say, not Kien.

My French and Spanish just live, fight each other in my brain all the time.

Maurice Garin, Garin, Garin, Maurice Garin, was the winner of the first Tour de France

in 1903.

Did you want to say something about this guy?

Well, these are things we should know since we're mega fans.

No, look, look, you live in this century.

You know, there's no reason.

that you would go read a Wikipedia page to try to stump me.

My job is to read a Wikipedia page to stump you.

You're doing your job fine.

Maurice Carrin won the first Tour de France in 1903, and he described the race, which is 2,500 kilometers, right, David?

Over days, 19 days?

21.

How many days?

21.

21 days.

Ventéon.

With two rest days.

Right.

But he described it as miserable.

Yes.

And he wrote.

He wrote to the organizer, I see myself from the start of the Tour de France like a bull pierced by Bandarias.

Those are the swords that they stick in the bull.

A bull pierced by Bandarias who pulls the Bandarias with him, never able to rid himself of them.

That's what it felt like.

He also won the second Tour de France,

but he was stripped of his title for cheating.

The rumor was that he took a train for part of the way.

But it was not particularly shameful that he was stripped of his title.

All four finishers were stripped of their title and disqualified because the Tour de France,

look, there's been some doping scandals, correct?

In the Tour de France?

I don't think, I don't follow this race particularly closely, but I don't think that you have like fans of one team tearing down trees to block the road for members of another team, which is what happened in 1904.

Bicyclists also, people were cheating everywhere.

They were throwing tacks over the road.

They were throwing tacks over their shoulders and they were hanging on onto motorcycles.

Someone would bring a car in and a bicyclist would hold onto the car and the bicyclists were poisoning each other and throwing guns on each other during the race.

This is the sport that you love, Dave.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, some of those things you described still happen.

The tax.

Yeah.

Okay, well, we'll get into that in a moment.

Claire, you bring this case before my court, correct?

Yes, Your Honor.

What is the justice that you seek?

What's the problem?

What's the beef?

So the beef is that for

most of my life, as long as I can remember,

every July

my mom and David have watched the Tour de France

and

that's when it happens, I presume.

Yes, that's when it happens in July.

Phew.

All right.

And now that I'm an adult and I no longer live with them,

I come and visit every summer because I'm on an academic calendar and I live in the deep south.

So being where I live in the summer is not particularly enjoyable.

So I come up here to beautiful western Massachusetts.

And

while I'm here, they watch approximately five hours of cycling every day.

Wowie, Zowie.

And that's a lot.

Now you are an adult.

Correct.

You live on an academic calendar.

Yes.

Which, by the way, that's the way everyone should live.

Agreed.

That's what Joe McClellan told me in high school.

He was the permanent substitute in the French department.

He's like, I'm going to be in academia all my life.

This is how people should live.

Two months off at least in the summer.

Or just move to France.

And then you get two months off.

Yeah.

I've done that too, but not at the time.

It tells me.

Yeah, but you don't live in France now.

It says here you live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

That is correct.

You're saying that every July you go and visit your mom and stepdad David in western Massachusetts.

And it says here, David and Suzanne,

that you live in Sunderland, Massachusetts?

Correct.

I'm not going to get you to say anything

so the listeners can triangulate where you live.

I just needed to say something about Sunderland.

Please do.

That Route 47, very pretty road.

Did I ever drive you down Route 47, Jesse, when you were visiting me in Western Mass that time?

We may well have.

I mean,

what a pretty road.

Not the kind of road name I would remember.

Well, they've renamed it.

Did you know that?

You know what?

Now that I think about it, John, I think we went down Road 53.

Then I made a mistake.

Maybe it was 19.

I don't know.

I don't know.

Route 47, that's how you drive down from

Leiden, Massachusetts, down into Hadley.

It's right along the river, the Connecticut River, and you drive by a bunch of tobacco farms because that's where they grow that beautiful Connecticut River sandy loam shade tobacco that they use for cigar wrappers.

And then you cut over onto Cemetery Road once you get into Hadley and go take the back roads over by the Oxboat.

I love everybody, everybody in those top two frames is nodding along with my rhetorie right now.

Poor Jesse Thorne is bored out of his mind.

So let's get back to this case.

David, you're wearing a cycling jersey.

Suzanne, you're wearing a wonderful green bucket hat.

I'm not sure if there's significance to that.

Is that a cycling thing?

It is.

It's the hat that I got.

It's some of the swag that I got when we actually went to visit visit Claire when she was living in France.

And we went to an actual stage of the Tour de France, you know, live and in person.

And there's a whole caravan that happens before the race.

And they throw out, you know, stuff.

And I got this really cute hat with the sponsor,

one of the sponsors' names on it.

What is SCODA?

Is that what it says?

What is that?

I have no idea what it signifies.

Well, it's a brand new one.

It's a way for us to find out.

David knows.

He says.

David knows.

What is it?

It's a car car company.

Oh, cars.

Okay.

Claire, you were living in France.

You mentioned?

Yes.

When were you living in France?

I've lived there a few times.

I think on that trip, I was, this was probably about five or six years ago, and I was working at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

Well, Marci Bo Ku for your work.

Darling.

Did you invite David and Suzanne over?

Did they just say, we're coming because the bicycle race is happening?

No, I invited them,

but I did not invite them to go to the tour exactly.

I invited them to go to the beach, and we made a detour.

A detour to France?

Yes.

How far a detour?

I know, sorry, I'm a dad, too.

How far a detour was it?

How far?

How wildly did they derange your plans?

I think it was probably about a day.

a day out of your way yeah something like that yeah all right i don't need the metric for that i understand

all right david you're wearing your cycling jersey what is what does bicycle racing mean to you well you do it right i do yes i have been a competitive cyclist uh since my kids were young teenagers and um in fact Suzanne and I have been together for 26 years, and I did my very first bike race that first year that we were together.

And this was it the Sunderland Classic?

It wasn't.

It was the Northampton Cycling Club Tour of the Hill Towns, which we run every year.

And it's a brutal race.

It's for someone of my age, it was 62 miles.

And

my goal was to not finish last.

And I wasn't.

So that was good.

So you love bicycling.

And when did you start watching the Tour de France?

Well, I was thinking about that.

And it was actually before I even met Suzanne.

My kids would like to watch it with me.

And

this was during the really early years of Lance Armstrong's comeback.

And it was at the time when there weren't phone apps to watch bicycle racing.

And you're all at the mercy of whatever the networks wanted to show you.

And back in those olden days of the tour, they would show like, oh, a half an hour summary every day of what that stage was like, even though the stage was six or seven hours long.

My kids got into it.

My son's a cyclist as well.

He lives in Portland, Oregon.

My daughter just was absolutely enthralled by

the whole spectacle of the tour.

And

I tried to get her into cycling in that way.

And one of the things with the tour, you'll notice if you watch it, people paint people's names in the roadway.

to cheer their favorite riders on.

And so when Hannah really got into it, I went out in front of our house.

We were living in Amherst at the time.

And in latex paint, which I thought would last about a week or two, I painted across the entire roadway, Go Hannah.

That is still there.

25 years later, you can still see it on

the satellite or the aerial photography for Google Maps.

So it has

withstood the test of time.

Jesse, this is in Amherst.

Did you say Amherst, Massachusetts?

Jesse, could you get the Amherst Police Department to do something?

Tell them we got a cold case.

Very cold.

I'm going to crack a cold case today.

So you mentioned stages.

Let me give the listeners who maybe don't know this, including myself, because I'll read a Wikipedia page all day long about Maurice Garin cheating and

his sad later life.

He died basically in anonymity in 1957.

Anyway, I'll read that all day, but you know, I didn't read the rules of the bicycle race.

So there are, it takes 21 days with two days of rest.

We got that down.

It is literally a tour of France.

It goes all through different parts of France.

And there are stages.

Now, what is a stage?

A stage is the race of that day.

It might be a time trial.

It might be a flat sprinter stage that goes actually into Switzerland or into Belgium or into Spain if it goes through the Pyrenees.

There's climbing stages.

There's all sorts of different types of stages.

But yeah,

it's got maybe

a third of the stages are really hard mountain stages.

A third are kind of flat sprinter stages.

And a third are somewhere in between.

Okay, I just want to wrap this up because I can see that Claire is falling asleep while you were talking there.

Right, Claire, a little bit boring.

Yeah.

No, it's not.

I mean, mean, it's your passion, David, correct?

It's your passion.

And Suzanne's.

And Suzanne's as well.

So

let the record show Suzanne made one of these like head back and forth motions like, yeah.

Metza, Metza, as they say in Paris.

I am 100% on David's side on this one.

My mom has become by far the biggest tour fan of the family.

She's going to deny it, but she's the one.

Yep.

David and I are in agreement about this.

Is Suzanne, why do you think your mom is going like, not really,

why?

Because she doesn't want to, she doesn't want me and David to gang up on her.

And so she's trying to minimize her responsibility in the situation.

Why would you and David be ganging up on her?

Your dispute is with the two of them.

Yes, but, you know, there are sometimes there are just traditions in a family that are hard to break, regardless of the situation, and that is the customary way.

Is there some history behind you and David ganging up on Suzanne over issues?

Yes.

Okay.

I see that SCODA hat nodding.

What's Suzanne?

What do they tease you about?

What do they get at?

What do they, what do they team up on you about?

Oh, it can be just about anything.

You know,

sometimes I will reveal my ignorance in certain ways and then they just have a field day with that.

Like saying the other day, well,

Judge John Hodgman is a real judge, right?

He's like an actual judge.

And,

you know, hopefully anyone listening who didn't know that already, I'm hoping I'm not bursting their bubble like mine was burst.

But so they took me to task on that one.

Really, it can be just about anything.

Oh, my sweet Skoda-hatted summer child.

No, I'm totally fake.

But shame on you, Claire and David, for laughing at Suzanne.

Well, you know, I've learned to take it, and I know they do it out of love.

And sometimes I even like plant little

things that I don't really believe or think just to have see them go to town on me.

But the reason I was Metz and Metz

about

the passion is because I'm not a cyclist.

I'm a Tour de France passion, passionate watcher, but I'm not a cyclist.

So I would say cycling is David's passion, but it's not my passion.

You like to watch David cycle?

I do.

I do.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I watch him cycle as much as I can when he's competing.

Yeah.

He kind of goes past pretty fast, though, I imagine.

Let's take a quick recess and hear about this week's Judge John Hodgman sponsor.

We'll be back in just a moment on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

You're listening to Judge John Hodgman.

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Let them know Jesse and John sent you.

Suzanne, so you love the Tour de France.

What does it mean to you?

Well, it was something that

grew on me very gradually.

And the first thing that sucked me in was seeing them going through the landscape of France.

Because as David said, it was always on in our house.

He'd watch it with his kids.

And I'd walk through the TV room and think, God, this is boring.

How could anyone spend hours watching this?

And I would say.

It's a record show, Claire is nodding a little.

And so I, so I...

I understand where Claire's coming from.

But I started to watch like the scenery, the little villages.

I started writing down the names of the towns that I, you know, wanted to go to when we went to France the next time.

And,

you know, then I started, you know, if I wanted to hang out with David,

you know, I would have to hang out with him watching the tour.

And I started to, you know, learn about the different riders, their

habits, their nicknames, their families, what they ate, you know, like all of that sort of stuff that didn't relate to the cycling as much.

Yeah.

And then over, you know, over I think they eat mostly cutlets, right?

That's what I've read.

Lots, lots of cutlets.

Mostly they eat 40 to 45 cutlets per 24-hour period.

Per day.

What's your favorite nickname of a cyclist?

Oh, gee.

Le Petit Prance.

There is Le Petit Prance.

Really?

Yeah.

Who is Le Petit Prance?

Marco Pantani.

Marco Pantani.

I like the Bailiff Jesse.

I bet he's pretentious, the Le Petit Prance, don't you think, Jesse?

We.

Does he wear a little coat and stand on a tiny little planet and help middle-aged men with their midlife crises?

Maybe he does.

Keep waiting for him to get better, but he never does.

He may do that when he's off the bike.

I don't really know.

But I like the shark of Messina as a nickname.

That's Vincenzo Nibali.

The shark.

The shark of Messina.

Il Pistolero.

And Il Pistolero.

That's Alberto Contador, who Claire calls Albert the Counter.

See, despite herself, Claire has learned a lot about cycling, kind of the way that.

But it doesn't sound like she's had a lot of choice.

Correct.

True.

So, Claire, tell me about when you come home to Sunderland, you take that drive up Route 47,

finally get to the house that Suzanne and David share.

How much are they watching?

Is this like World Cup type thing, like all those World Cup weirdos in Brooklyn who get up at 7 a.m.

and go to bars because the games are later on?

Or what's happening?

No.

Paint me a picture.

So it has changed a lot over the years because, as David mentioned, the way that the tour is recorded and how much it's available in the U.S.

has changed.

But basically, the way it is now is that essentially the entire race is filmed, and that could be six or seven hours per day.

Right.

And then

they have it on demand.

So they don't watch it at 6 a.m.

or 7 a.m.

They don't watch it live.

They watch that day's stage

from like

dinner time,

including while dinner is being consumed,

until

whenever they fall asleep.

And sometimes during the day also.

Five to seven hours of Tour de France watching per day.

Yes.

Except for those two rest days.

Aren't you grateful for two rest days?

Well,

well, usually what happens is that they will either fall asleep or

there will be some really long stage and they'll say, oh, we'll save part of that for the rest day.

So although the cyclists are resting, we are not resting.

And when you say that

the Tour de France is on during the dinner hour,

like uh do you have a do they have a tv in the kitchen or the dining room or does everyone gather in the living room what's going on yes so the tv is in the living room they both have recliners that they've had for the last 25 years that they sit in with their with their dinners in their laps and i sit uh in another chair that

is not as good of a view of on a small hard stool

yeah i mean the chair itself is fine, but it's just, it's sort of in a corner and you can only sort of halfway see the TV from there anyway, which actually is okay because I'm not really paying attention.

But then we'll eat dinner there.

And sometimes I'm allowed to talk

and sometimes I'm not.

And it's a little unclear.

Like, I can't, part of the problem is I can't tell when something exciting is happening because it's.

Well, it has to be one of the bicyclists is going faster than another one.

Well,

yeah.

Right?

Right.

It would seem that that's part of the race.

What would you,

has there ever been a case where you have made dinner for them and they just shove it in their mouths mutely?

Yeah.

While watching the Tour de France?

Yes.

In fact, one summer they were living in Shutesbury and they were living on a dirt road in Shutesbury and I was studying for the bar exam and I was staying there while I studied for the bar exam and I did not leave the house all day and I didn't talk to any other humans and I would, this is before they were retired.

And I would make dinner and they would get home from work and take the dinner that I had made and say hi to me.

And that was the only human contact I had for the entire day.

And then they would take their dinners up to the TV room and watch the tour.

Wow.

How did that make you feel?

I mean, the whole experience was bad, but I mostly would blame studying for the bar exam.

I would say it made me feel like

I was starting starting to lose my mind a little bit, like being in this remote house on a dirt road.

And then that my own, only

human contact during that time was choosing a

activity that was

fascinating to them in a way that I just could not understand.

You mentioned earlier.

that you come north to escape the heat of Tuscaloosa, aka Dreamland, Alabama.

Yes.

Now you're trying to tell me that you're not just visiting to escape the heat, that you might actually like to see and spend time with your mother and stepdad?

Yes.

I love them very much.

And it's very sad that I live so far away and it's hard to come up here.

So when I come up, I like to come for a long time so that we can spend a good chunk of time together.

hang out.

And it says here that you travel with your dog, Gemma.

Is that correct?

Yes, I do.

Gemma like the Tour de France.

She loves it.

What?

I can't deny it.

She's obsessed.

How do you know?

Because she doesn't watch anything else on TV, but when the tour is on, she gets on David's lap and she will just sit there with rapt attention for the whole time.

I believe that you did submit evidence or someone did.

Yes, I did.

Of Gemma.

Sorry, go ahead.

Oh, I was just going to say it's not exactly evidence in my favor, but yes.

Well, you know,

it's a wonderful photograph of David on this

recliner in a very comfortable woodcar bed situation

with Gemma on his lap.

I don't see Gemma watching the TV, though.

I see Gemma just snoozing out.

Gemma's legs look like little drumsticks.

It's true.

What kind of dog is little Gemma?

She's a mix of Chihuahua and Pomeranian and Beagle and Shih Tzu and a bunch of other stuff.

A true lap dog.

She's a funny little dog.

Yeah, but this is just Gemma like

hanging out.

Well, this was before.

So the TV you can kind of see in the picture in the background there is not on yet.

This is David had just gotten his martini and they were just sitting.

This was like preparation for tour watching.

So

this picture was before the tour because when the tour

goes up comes on, I usually try to leave the room.

So this was preparation.

Jesse, look at this guy sitting in this chair.

I mean, his dog on his lap and his martini waiting for the Tour de France to come on.

I love everything about this, John.

I know it speaks to your love of mixed drinks.

I love a lap dog, too.

I love a comfy chair.

I love a wood-paneled den, but go on.

I can understand it from the dog's perspective as well, because in the absence of a Tour de France

garbage truck edition, watching bikes race is about as good as it gets for a dog.

Yeah, maybe you're right.

I hadn't thought about that.

Boy, oh boy.

David, you mentioned that you have at least two children from a prior relationship, it sounds like, and they're older than they are the same age as Suzanne's two children, opposite gender.

My son, Taylor, lives in Portland, Oregon, and my daughter, Hannah, lives in Alaska.

And she is actually arriving this evening for a visit.

Oh, very nice.

Very excited.

Well, with her husband.

It's interesting.

She's chosen to visit before the Tour de France starts.

True.

But the point is, your nest is as empty as it gets.

This raises a question.

Claire, why don't you visit in August?

Well, then you don't have to deal with this.

Yes.

Actually, this year,

I am here.

I am at their house right now and is due.

Oh.

But the reason for that, maybe we can get into.

But the short answer is: July is usually the month when I have the fewest other obligations.

So the semester starts in mid-August, and I usually have conferences and other things in June.

July is kind of the biggest stretch.

It's also the least pleasant time to be.

That's perfectly reasonable.

Yeah.

I mean, August, it gets hot in Sunderland, too.

True.

It's the Tuscaloosa of Western Massachusetts in some way.

During all this time watching the Tour de France in this house, is there something you'd like to be watching, Claire?

Well,

I would be happy for us to be doing something that doesn't involve watching television.

What would you like to be doing instead of Tour de France?

I would like to be

talking to each other

and

going outside and going for a walk in the evening, going down to the Sugarloaf Frosty maybe and getting a soft serve.

Oh, my boy, you are just unlike...

You ever read any Marcel Proust?

Did you ever read any Marcel Proust?

I've read about Marcel Proust.

He wrote that book.

He wrote that children's books.

I went to BC Santa Cruz, John.

He wrote that children's picture book, Madeline.

All about how, when you remember Stanton, I remember that one smelled really good.

Yeah, that was one of the best-smelling picture books of all time.

It was pretty well known.

I think Claire is pandering to me specifically here by pitting bicycle racing against ice cream.

They have

pretty good ice cream with the sugarloaf

creamy, do they call it?

They call it a creamy, right?

Or a frosty.

Creamy is in Vermont.

Creamy is in Vermont.

The sugarloaf frosty.

Yeah, I used to go there.

Well, but see, it seems to me that that's incompatible with the Tour de France

watching schedule.

Yes, I agree.

What do you suggest should be done?

That they not watch it or that they watch it at...

I mean, you're already watching it asynchronously, David and Suzanne.

Why not take a night off to go for a walk in town or see and speak to and enjoy the presence and company of your daughter and stepdaughter?

That's a good question.

And

now that we're retired,

we can do that.

We could do that.

She won't be with us.

Actually, this year, I'm going to be at her house during the Tour de France.

So that's going to be interesting.

I don't think we'll be watching it at her house.

Oh, wait.

It's a reverse Uno card.

You're going down to Tuscaloosa this year?

I am.

Yes.

Yes.

Because

I love my dear little granddog, Gemma, so much.

And Claire's going to be traipsing around Europe doing conferences and things.

So I'm going to hang out and be there with Gemma.

Oh, you're dog sitting in Tuscaloosa.

Yeah.

Did you ever see, Jesse, you ever see that independent film Dog Sitting in Tuscaloosa?

That was one of the lesser Zach Brath movies.

Yeah, I think it was nominated for a Firecracker Award.

Yeah.

For the record, I just want to put on the record that I did not request that my mother come to Alabama in July to dog sit for me.

She suggested it.

So, just in case everyone thinks that i'm just being incredibly entitled here or punitive oh good point yes i i also didn't schedule my uh conference in belgium to overlap with the tour intentionally either it just happened to coincide why don't you send gemma on a little uh dog bus up to massachusetts

they have those right it's a greyhound bus for dogs a little little greyhounds

I'm making this up.

It's a service that I wish existed, though.

That would be great.

I did take her up with me this time.

She's here.

She's with me now.

Seems to me like you could just leave.

Well, you don't want to leave her there.

Why do you want to go to Tuscaloosa, Suzanne?

Well, keep Gemma there.

I suggested that to Claire this morning, actually.

But I actually love going to Tuscaloosa.

I've been several times to Dog Sit and also to Baton Rouge, where Claire used to live, to Dog Sit.

And

I love my alone time there with Gemma because usually it's, you know, when Claire is going off to do something else, and you know, I'll see her at the beginning and at the end, and um, and then Gemma and I just hang out.

And um, you know, this year is going to be hard because I won't be watching the tour, but David said he would wait till I got back, and

he would wait till I got back.

I, I, I, I just have to say, Claire made a pretty interesting gesture there.

I don't want to interpret it for you, Claire.

It was like open hands, like, see,

what, what was, but I don't, but I don't want to put words in your gesture.

What, what, what are you trying to say with that gesture?

Well, just that when they choose to, they can watch it later.

Like, it's, they, they're, the whole time they've said, we can't wait, we can't watch it later, we have to watch it while it's going on.

But this isn't the first year that they've waited.

They went to Alaska two years ago, I believe, during the tour and postponed at least a week of watching it.

And

they are capable of doing this.

The access to the tour is not what it once was.

And it is entirely possible to spread it out over shorter period, like, you know, a couple hours a day

for a longer period of time, all those things.

But if you put off a whole week of watching the tour, David and Suzanne, that means you have to be on like pretty heavy-duty lockdown.

if you're trying to keep it fresh for yourself.

Right.

So I do a lot of group rides with the Northampton Cycling Club two, three times a week.

They're talking about the Tour de France a bunch.

And I always have to see when I roll up to the start.

It's like, nobody says anything.

I'm three stages behind.

And I almost always hear who has won that stage somehow, either through social media or someone who knows I'm a cyclist saying, oh, what about such and such?

Wasn't that a great win today?

So it's really hard for me.

If I get more than a few days behind, I generally will find out who has won certain stages.

The Northampton Cycle Racing Club.

Cycling Club.

Yeah, NCC, Northampton Cycling Club.

Oh, the NCC.

Yeah, I've been in touch with them.

They love doing that to you.

They told me.

They love spoiling the Tour de France, and they come up with new ways to do it.

Yeah, they do that.

Claire, do you feel that you catch the brunt of Tour de France more than your siblings and step-siblings?

Sibling and step-siblings?

Absolutely, yes.

None of the rest of them will watch it ever.

Why do you feel you bear the brunt of it?

Because I stay with them in their house and nobody else does that.

Right.

And how does it affect your boundaries when you're visiting them?

Do you feel chased out of the house?

Do you feel ignored?

Like, what's going on?

Yeah, I mean, it is just, it's like...

This is this very elaborate,

long ritual has to happen every single day.

And during it, if I want to be in a room with other people or eat my dinner or be in the only room in the house that has air conditioning during the times in July when that is necessary, I must be in that room.

And even when I just go into the other room or go say, oh, I can stay with a friend or something like that, my mom really wants me to be there.

She, she really, it's my presence is

requested for

this.

So it's, it's not just that.

And then also like this time, even though it wasn't during the tour, I got here and within five minutes, they started telling me about what had happened in the Giro d'Italia, which just ended.

So I know that there was a time trial that ended on a mountain, which is really unusual.

You know, I don't need that information to be in

my brain.

So you feel like you're being invited, but the moment you get there, you're being ignored in a way in favor of

this other sibling that you have called the Tour de France.

Yes.

This golden child of July.

Yes.

This petit Prance

de.

I don't remember what the French word for July is.

Jouille.

Jouille, merci beaucoup.

Oh, yeah, you must speak a lot of French.

I do.

Do they speak any French?

My mom does.

En petitpe?

En petitpe.

Sur le monhui.

Arguably, you can probably follow more of the

Tour de France than they can because they're just watching watching the cycling.

But you've been to France.

You've lived in France.

You know the culture.

You know the culture of Europe.

You're going to Belgium,

the capital of Europe.

You know all the ins and the outs and the cultural stuff behind it, arguably, wouldn't you say?

Sure.

I know, I have the same feeling about the Tour de France as many French people do, which is that it's kind of annoying.

And whenever I live there, I don't actually go when it's, you know, coming through my town.

Do you have any hobbies or favorite shows or anything else that, that Suzanne and David don't like?

Well, not that, not that my mom doesn't.

My mom and I have very similar taste, actually.

And so what we have been watching,

there's not a, any sort of cycling on at the moment.

So my mom and I share a real love of international dating shows.

And we have tried to get David on board with that, and he's not about it.

Well, people like what they like, and dogs like what they like, too.

That's what we're learning, I suppose what's your favorite international dating show i could probably watch that with the our current favorite is love love village

love village yes i was really hoping you were going to say love island because that's some the love island uk i have a very fraught relationship with that show yes no love village love village is much stranger okay i'm gonna check it out

David, what time do they start riding the bicycles in France?

Six in the morning.

six in well six in the morning our time but usually a stage will yeah yeah a stage will start in france like noonish

no i'm talking about i'm talking about eastern standard time 6 a.m or daylight time whatever it is 6 a.m you know you ever get up and watch no

no we

pour qua no because we record it and i can watch it on my either my phone app or on one of the the cable stations that we get that covers it and i record it that way So there's all sorts of different ways to watch it.

We could watch it on our phones, on our TV.

You put it off Tour de France for a week to go to Alaska.

You've made accommodations in the past.

It sounds as though you don't make accommodations particularly for Claire when she comes and visits you.

Is it because, why not?

Well, that's a good question.

Actually, I met my daughter and son on the West Coast last July as well.

So Suzanne and I had to

delay our tour watching last summer as well.

Right.

I guess.

But is it because, well, you know, you go, you take a guess and then I'll tell you what I think.

I, my guess would be that I was under the impression that Claire kind of liked it.

A little bit, maybe.

Wow.

And maybe she just liked to tease us a little bit.

This must be a real

eye-opener for you.

It is.

A real, this is not correct usage, but a real Trump lawyer.

That is true.

So,

yeah,

I didn't think that this was that big of a problem for Claire.

Is it plausible, Claire, that David

and perhaps your mom as well,

quote unquote, didn't realize that this was a problem for you?

I think it's possible, but I think it's probably

required required a certain amount of

delusion or a certain amount of

wishful thinking, maybe is a better way to put it.

I mean, I do sit with them and watch it.

And I think part of what it is, is that the names, as you heard, are like really,

they get stuck in your head.

Their names are these really,

you know, wild sounding, complicated.

The shark of Messina.

Exactly.

Drapes of London.

I will repeat things.

You know, I'll mimic it.

I'll talk, you know, because it's like better than nothing.

So I think I've maybe I've made the best of it

more or less.

I do want to.

Have you gone along to get along?

Yes, I would say, I would say overall.

Prior to inviting your mom and stepdad onto a podcast, did you ever sit them down and say, hey, could we not do this so much?

Or express your feeling of like you want to take it down a thousand when it comes to Tour de France time?

Um,

I don't know how clear I've been about that in the past.

I think because I am a guest in their home, I had sort of figured, well,

anyone would know that

a guest in your home doesn't want to watch five hours of cycling every day.

So, if they're insisting on doing it anyway, it must be so important that I shouldn't,

you know

anyone would know but except for retired people

right

a little more on that later uh okay

now that you've heard claire's point of view clearly david and suzanne

do you

does that change how you're gonna watch the the tour this year is obviously different because suzanne's gonna go down to dog sit gemma they'll probably watch in the tour de france together you're gonna watch it alone up there, David?

No, we have an agreement.

Suzanne and I have an agreement that

I will refrain from watching while she's gone.

And we will, when she comes back, we'll catch up.

And, you know, it might take us till September or October, but that's when the Vuelta starts.

So

just in time for Claire's visit.

You'll wait until.

No, there's no fun.

It's not fun watching it without David.

I wouldn't watch it by myself, even with Gemma.

And I feel

you love each other.

But I'm going to say this.

Do you hear what Claire is saying?

Would you make an accommodation in future, let's say, next July, if she were to spend July with you in Sunderland?

Well, I certainly would.

Now that you know,

I would because, you know, I'm her mother.

And of course, this, you know, makes me feel like, you know, I'm prioritizing this bike race over my very own flesh and blood, whom I love dearly.

So

yeah, I think that I did think it, because Claire, because Claire has this history of kind of teasing me and,

you know, getting on my case about various things,

I didn't really think that it was that big a deal for her.

That, you know, she's a very independent, mature woman, and she comes and goes as she pleases.

And, you know, she could always make plans to go out with friends.

She has a lot of friends who still live around here.

I've given her my car to take when she's here.

So, you know, she could have made other

house and yeah and she and i do spend a lot of time together when she's here um you know but in answer to your question yes i i think that i would feel horribly guilty if you know i just continued on with my ways of of watching the tour de france but but if david decided that he was just going to keep watching no matter what then i would be in a dilemma because then

I you know, if he said, okay, you know, tonight we're going to take the night off and we're going to go do something together as a family or just talk or whatever, that would be one thing.

But if he said, no, I'm going to watch the tour and, you know, you two can go do whatever you want, then that would be a, that would be a dilemma for me.

I would be torn.

But I think I would have to fall, you know, to come down on the side of my daughter if, if given that choice.

Sorry, David.

No, I get it.

It says here,

the Claire, your ideal ruling would be that Suzanne and David limit their tour watching to fewer hours while you're visiting or

at the at the very least not watching the tour until after dinner without the tour david you say your your ideal ruling is keep everything the same and suzanne you say your ideal ruling is claire forgives you

claire do you forgive suzanne yes see if we can get this out of the way absolutely i i i harbor no ill will about this at all it's more that this seems like

like anytime i explain how many hours of cycling I'm watching when I'm visiting to anyone else, they seem shocked by this.

And I feel like I've sort of gotten worn down over the years.

So,

how many years are we talking about this happening?

Would you say?

Well, I think this pattern of going to visit in the summertime and having a fourth person in the home, the Tour de France, the scene of the shark, or whatever.

Oh, probably

10 years

with some variation within that time, 10 or 15 years, something like that.

Right, right, okay.

Okay, I think

I have heard everything I need to in order to come to a decision.

I'm going to go into my private Velodrome, Jesse the one.

That's a bicycle racing stadium, right?

Velodrome?

That's my favorite David Cronenberg movie.

Oh, yeah, right.

Forgot about that.

Anyway, I'm going to ride

my green machine around in a circle for a while while I puzzle this out.

I'll be back in a moment with my decision.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the court.

Claire, how do you feel about your chances?

I mean, they're very charming.

And so

I understand why anyone would be sympathetic, especially if you could see them in their cycling outfits that they're currently wearing.

But I also feel like, you know, my requests are reasonable, so

optimistic.

David and Suzanne, how do you feel?

I think

I think that David is

he's he's not going to get his way in this one.

Um,

because, you know, I'm the mom, so I'm kind of the, like, the tiebreaker.

And I feel like

I'm somewhere in the middle here.

You know, I'm the Tour de France fan, big time fan, but I'm a bigger fan of my daughter than I am even of the Tour de France.

So

I think this is going to be a harder one for David than it will be for me.

Well, we'll see what Judge Hodgburn has to say about all this when we come back in just a minute.

You know, we've been doing my brother, my brother, me for 15 years, and

maybe you stopped listening for a while, maybe you never listened, and you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years, I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah, you don't even really know how crypto works.

The only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on my brother, my brother, and me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show, Let's Learn Everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined.

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lollum.

I'm Caroline Roper.

And on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

It's the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

John, what's going on with you?

Well, as you know, nothing's going on with me because I am on strike along with the Writers Guild of America.

I'm also a member of the Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, aka AFTRA,

who may go on strike as well soon.

So I'll be double striking.

Thanks for all your support on the picket line and on social media.

If you want to find out more about why we're on strike and what it means to even you, you can always go to my link tree, linktr.ee slash hodgman.

It's also in my bio and my Instagram account.

But I was going to say, since I didn't have anything going on, there are a couple of things I wanted to to mention.

I did my research for thy cultural reference, and I came up with that incredible one about the first winner of the Tour de France.

But there are a couple of things that I, a couple of holes that I went down, a couple of paths that I trod in search of a good cultural reference.

And I was reminded of a couple of great things, including I was looking for a good quote about the Tour de France from Breaking Away.

Have you ever seen Breaking Away, the movie Breaking Away, Jesse Thorne?

That movie rules.

That movie movie rules so hard.

What a great movie.

It's what a short list of dramedies are that good.

Diner, Breaking Away, Broadcast News.

I was going to say Broadcast News.

And I feel like Breaking Away is one that has disappeared from a lot of people's consciousness.

And it's about four 19-year-old high school graduates in Bloomington, Indiana, who are not going to college and are facing a 19-year-old midlife crisis as a result.

One of them's really into bicycle racing.

It's got Dennis Quaid, it's got Jackie Earl Haley, it's got Daniel Stern, and of course, the bicycle guy, Dennis Christopher, plus Barbara Barry, Paul Dooley.

It's a wonderful, wonderful movie, and it's just so funny and great and watchable and very bicycly.

And it had a little quote about the Tour de France in it, but it was not meaningful enough.

I also was reminded of the song by Kraftwerk, Tour de France,

one of the early synthesizer music songs, hits of the early 1980s by Kraftwerk, and learned that that song is the song that Michael Boogaloo Shrimp Chambers does the broom dance to in the movie Breaken.

Everyone talks about Breakin' 2 Electric Boogaloo, and maybe that's a good movie.

But Breaken?

is a really genuinely good movie.

And that scene where he dances to Kraftwerk's Tour de France is bananas good

and he's a really good dancer Michael Boogaloo Shrimp Chambers if you're listening good job and uh rest in power shabadu jesse thorne what do you got going on what do you have got going on well i watched style wars on canopy recently that's the best early hip-hop movie by a wide margin no offense to breaken or

beat street or any of the other great early hip-hop movies but the clear winner is style wars So I recommend watching Style Wars if you can find it anywhere, including free on Canopy if your library system provides Canopy to you.

The movie is so good.

Style Wars is incredible, incredible.

I'm putting it on my list.

And of course, I still have the Put This On Shop.

So go to putthisonShop.com.

Speaking of style, not even Style Wars, Style Triumphs, Style Victories.

You know what I'm going to do?

Put This On Shop.

I wasn't planning on this.

You know, we have Pocket Squares in the Put This On shop?

This is an experiment.

Yeah, I do know about it.

Okay, so the pocket squares, I should take vintage, mostly vintage textiles.

They are hand-cut, hand-rolled, hand-sewn.

They're very special.

And

I'm going to make a code.

You use the code breaking away.

All right.

And a half price on pocket squares.

Half price on pocket squares with code breaking away.

It's only going to go to the end of the month.

Till the end of the month, half price on pocket squares with the code breaking away.

It's an experiment.

I don't know.

Are people listening to this?

Probably.

Who knows?

Breaking away.

And don't forget to check out the

$6 a pack, Topps Indiana Jones, and the Temple of Doom trading cards.

$6 a pack.

Those are going to be full freight.

You're going to have to pay full freight for those.

Full freight.

And a big sale on a Mallory Taupe Fedora, 7.18 size.

Go check it out.

PutthisonShop.com.

Shall we go back to the case?

Let's get back to the case.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman re-enters the courtroom and presents his verdict.

David, you said that bicycle race has stages, stages, etage, I believe they say.

Stages.

You know what says stages, Claire, Suzanne, and David?

Life.

Life has stages.

And this is partially a life stage dispute here.

Because,

Claire, what you need to understand is that

your mom and stepdad watch an inordinate amount of bicycle racing.

And when you, and I need you to hear and understand this, when you go to say to your friends, this is how much Tour de France is going on in this house, and your friends go, that's too much.

They're right.

Your friends are right.

Your instincts are correct.

It is an unusual amount.

Five to seven hours of cycling content per day is an unusual amount

unless you're a retired couple

whose children are grown and out in the world.

And now you can do whatever the francais you want.

This is the thing about growing older that, you know, I am, I'm, we are incipient empty nesters ourselves

my wife who's a whole human being in her own right and i

and um

we we've we've we've gotten into a into a

moment in our lives where we're starting to think what is the pattern going to be

once there are no other adult humans living in our house and it's just the two of us

and i can see myself on a chair with a dog in my lap and a martini

very easily and one of the things things that I didn't even mention about this

piece of evidence that you sent in,

which you can see obviously on our Instagram page at judgejohodgman, as well as our show page at maximumfund.org.

One of the things I didn't mention about this sitting with dog and lap and martini portrait is

the amount of sunshine shining in the window.

This is a mid-afternoon

dog sit with drink moment.

And I think it's wonderful.

My wife is a holy memorandum, right, and I are thinking about what our patterns are going to be.

And

we're going to go into some quiet patterns.

It's going to involve a lot of antiques road show.

I can tell you that right now.

And a lot of going to bed at 8.30 p.m.

And we're getting into that moment of our lives where it's just for the first time in

22, 23 years, it's just us again choosing what we do with our time.

And it's a very liberating moment.

The trick is to not get so far down

into that comfort zone of empty nest retirement

that you can't come out again.

Say if an adult daughter is coming to visit you.

So, for example, our ages are different,

but I think this is a fair analogy.

You know, we still have a soon-to-be adult son living with us, but our adult daughter doesn't live with us anymore.

And she came back.

And the whole pattern of my life changed, which is to say, I was being held forced to stay awake until midnight every night watching Yellow Jackets.

And this was later than I wanted to stay up.

I enjoyed Yellow Jackets a lot.

This is definitely later than I wanted to stay up.

And it definitely was frustrating because I still haven't finished season three of Love Island that she was making me watch.

She's been making me watch it for three years.

We still haven't finished it yet.

And I'm like, can't we do this?

She's like, no, we're doing this.

And I say, yes, okay, okay, I will.

And then the other night, she's left again, but the other night, she's like, are you ready to watch another Yellow Jackets?

I'm like, it's 12.30 in the morning.

She's like, I know, but I'm only here for another day.

I'm like, okay, you win.

Because soon enough, she was going to go back to her life.

And then I can go back to.

My life of joining my spouse in bed at 9.30, where, by the way, she gets to go to sleep.

I don't understand why my wife was a holy meeting on her own right, gets to go to sleep whenever she wants.

I have to stay up.

I have to stay up and watch yellow jackets.

That's how it goes.

That's just the way it is.

Because when your adult child comes back and wants to share and spend time with you, that's what you do.

That's what you do.

You interrupt your pattern.

So, what I'm charged with is how to, you know,

the reason, and the other life stage thing here, Claire, is that you're an adult.

But what's complicating this is that unlike your adult siblings who don't come for a big stretch of time because they don't get to enjoy the academic lifestyle,

you're a mature adult doing a kind of young adult thing.

It's just like coming home for the summer and spending it with your mom and stepdad for a big chunk.

Like you're entwining in their lives in a way that is sort of like reminiscent of

when you were much younger than you were.

you know, maybe coming home from college, for example, as opposed to coming home from the International Court of Human Rights.

And so it's hard to, it's hard, like, you know, you've, you've done your, your bit of kind of like, go along to get along.

Like, yeah, my mom and step dead watch a lot of this thing, but who am I to say, I do, I want to watch Love Village Now or whatever.

It's like their house, their rules, that kind of thing.

No, you're a grown-up invading their retirement.

So what we need to do is find some way to honor both your

actual mature adulthood and the fact that

and Suzanne have obviously earned the right to be as weird as they want to be.

Now, I know what the solution is.

And it's really, really, really obvious.

Because I know that I go to bed at 9.30, but I no longer sleep past 5 a.m.

Just get up, David.

Just get up and watch this thing.

Watch it live.

I'm just saying you should consider it a couple of days.

Get the head of your, you know, win the race for once with your, with your cycling team.

Get the scoop make them look like dopes know all the stuff that's happening you get that thing you knock that thing out from 6 a.m 7 8 9 10 11 12 1 1 p.m

then you take a two hour nap then go to frost date what time out why go ahead you object yeah i just have to say that we don't really watch during daylight hours except in the morning because i'm usually out cycling in the afternoon so we don't really start watching i mean seven hours sounds like an amazing amount of time, and it is, but we don't really start until five, no, six or seven at night.

Look, I don't know, I don't know the details of your schedule.

No, you do.

I'm just saying, I'm just saying this.

This is one proposed solution, which is you get up, you watch at least some of it, you go about your day, you go on your bicycle race or whatever, you come back, you fix dinner, and then you watch what you missed.

You finish up that evening.

You get the whole day in that one day.

That's a really good idea, actually, because

Claire's dog, Gemma, wakes up very early.

And, you know, speaking of not being able to...

She wants to watch the bicycle race.

Yeah, so she and David and me could sit and have our coffee and watch cycling and Claire could go back to sleep for a little while because nobody wants to get up at 5.30 with Gemma.

But if Gemma's up, she, the first thing she has to do is come and find David and I and wake us up.

So

maybe that's an

solution that you could look into.

I think there are a lot of solutions that you could look into that would allow Claire to feel seen, heard, and valued when she travels from Tuscaloosa to spend time with you.

And look, we both know that she's just trying to get out of the heat, but I think she also loves you.

So whatever you work out, the adjustment, and I, and I'm finding in Claire's favor here, the adjustment is don't watch Tour de France with dinner.

Like after dinner, terrific.

Before dinner, great.

Take a break.

Go to the Frosty.

Get a hamburger.

Get outside.

Get some fresh air.

Like, it's the last thing you need, David.

All you have ever had is fresh air your whole life, but you know what I mean.

Spend some time with your adult daughter/slash stepdaughter around the dinner hour.

That's a good idea.

Maybe play a game.

Maybe play a game of Mille Bourne.

My favorite.

Oh, no, no, no.

I don't know why.

That just struck me that that might, I don't even remember.

That's a French card game about car racing, isn't it?

Car racing?

Yeah.

Or is it bicycle racing?

No, it's cars.

Anyway,

the dinner hour is out, but I also need you to respect, Claire, that anything outside of the dinner hour is fair game for cycling.

This is your whole world.

Look at these two.

Like, I understand why it's like,

you know, like, I,

you know, David came along and stole your mom from you and turned her into a Tour de France addict.

But she deserves happiness.

And that bucket hat, she loves it.

But I think if you're visiting, if someone's taking the time to visit you and they love you and they're not just there to get some of that sweet Sunderland cool breeze,

set aside dinner time at least.

This is the sound of a gabble.

Judge John Hodgman rules that is all.

Please rise as Judge John Hodgman exits the courtroom.

Suzanne, David, how do you feel?

Oh, I feel that that's fair.

I got a little alarmed thinking about game playing because I absolutely hate to play games, but maybe this is.

No, that's off the table.

That's off.

Never mind.

I'm sorry I said that.

Okay.

I thought maybe that was my penance.

No,

I feel guilty for having put Claire through this torment for all this time.

And I apologize, Claire, sincerely.

And

I think that the points that were made were very fair and

that our retired lives

are quirky in the way that they are and different from other people's.

But that when you're here, we should definitely prioritize spending time with you and hanging out with you and being available to you claire how do you feel i feel delighted uh that this went in my favor although i'm sorry that my mom feels bad because uh i i certainly wouldn't wouldn't want her to uh to feel as though feel guilty about this it's um

you know it's just one of those things that you start doing and it starts out being one hour and then it's seven hours a day for three weeks.

And you know, where did the time go?

Yeah, and I'm just going to jump in to just

join you in injoining your mom from feeling guilty.

Like, you, you're doing what you love with a person that

you love, and it's fine.

Like, as Claire pointed out, it's easy to get caught up in habits and in passions and in hobbies.

And you don't even see it even when a third party comes into the house and goes, that's weird.

Sometimes it's hard to see, but it's just fine.

You're just following.

You're just having fun.

You guys are having fun.

I completely support it.

You shouldn't feel guilty.

We're making the adjustment now.

Guilt is a pointless emotion unless there is an adjustment of behavior to go with it.

And that's going to happen.

So it's great.

Don't worry about it.

Easy for you to say, but you're not a mom, you know, mom guilt.

But I hear you.

I hear you.

Both my parents were Catholic.

Oh, okay.

Never mind.

I know a little bit about it.

Okay, all right.

I know a little bit about it.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

I think this is great.

I'm perfectly supportive of that decision.

And you were right, Your Honor.

It was an obvious decision in the grand scheme of this dispute.

So I think we could easily tone it back and accommodate Claire's visiting and do more things together that's not sitting.

in our comfy chairs watching the Tour de France.

Just that's for after dinner.

That's all I'm saying.

dinner time you gotta walk down and get some soft syrup soft serve

david suzanne claire thanks for joining us on the judge john hodgman podcast thank you too that was awesome thank you thank you

another judge john hodgman case is in the books we'll have swift justice in just a second our thanks first to redator problem bear bruno for naming this week's episode the bicycle grief john we had on Jordan Jesse Gogh the other day a fiction writer and stand-up comic named Amy Silverberg.

Very cool, very funny lady.

She joined the ranks of Jordan Jesse Gogh guests who have been published in the Paris Review, which after

careful consideration turned out to be way more than I expected.

It's like, I remember that John was in the Paris Review and he was really proud of that.

My first meaningful publication, it's true.

I had no idea about all the other.

Anyway, my point here is that all Reddit usernames are goofy.

And Amy Silverberg, who literally is, she sold a novel.

She's a professor at USC.

She has a PhD.

And

her Reddit handle is

CDU69.

Anyway, join the conversation with us over at maximumfund.reddit.com.

That is also where we are asking for title suggestions for cases.

So

make sure to

submit them there.

Judge John Hodgman, of course, created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman.

Our producer is Valerie Moffat.

Now, Swift Justice, where we answer small disputes with quick judgment.

Julie writes, my husband Corbin says water doesn't have a flavor.

I say it does.

Otherwise, how would I know?

I like the taste of tap water better than filtered water.

He argues it's the minerals in the water that have flavor.

I count those minerals as an ingredient of the water.

Please order my husband to admit water has a flavor.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Water has flavor.

Come on, Corbin.

I mean,

you know, the first time humans tasted water,

it wasn't in a Brita.

It was coming out of a stream.

having run over rocks and bugs.

It's got all kinds of flavors in it.

You know,

it came out of a, you go to Saratoga Springs.

Why do they call it Saratoga Springs?

Because they got these natural springs popping up all over the place.

And believe me, if you go to the Union Motel and go to their natural spring in their courtyard and you fill up your plastic pitcher that they give you with the nourishing mineral water that's coming out of the earth and you put it in your hotel bedside table and by 2 a.m.

it's turned brown and your room smells like farts, then you know of the flavor of that water.

So yes, obviously, I just want to go back to the the Paris Review for one thing because I got to give, I just remembered one of my very, very favorite jokes regarding the Paris Review.

And lots of people, it's a very famous tweet by a very funny person named Patricia Lockwood.

I can see that Valerie Moffitt knows this one.

Legendary tweet.

Here it comes.

At Paris Review.

So, is Paris any good or not?

And she doesn't even put a question mark on it.

That's just so spectacular.

Patricia Lockwood, the author of priest daddy and other books and the winner of the thurber prize for humor anyway uh hey everybody thanks for all of your uh case suggestions we need some more obviously it's how how we make the show uh this week uh you know we're heading into the summertime i've already put out a call for summertime disputes in the past uh maybe you've got someplace else in saratoga springs that you like to visit and you think i'm wrong uh maybe you prefer maybe you don't like a road trip maybe you like an airplane trip how about this what about camping disputes Surely you and your partner, who is a whole human being in their own right, or your kids or your friends, have gone on a hike or gone camping.

Have you ever been caught in the bottom of a ravine and had to cut your own arm off to get out of it?

Any camping disputes that you have?

Disputes, camping etiquette, camping horror stories, let us know.

Just go to maximumfund.org slash JJ H.

O.

And of course, Jesse, we don't just want camping disputes, right?

We'll take any kind of dispute.

You know what's a camping horror story for me, John?

What?

Real life camping horror story?

All of camping?

Yeah, I go camping.

That's the horror.

That's the horror.

Okay, the premise is I go camping.

That's it.

But we truly will take disputes on any subject.

In fact, if you are listening to this right now, I would challenge you to go into your brain, rack it a little bit.

and think about who you've got a problem with.

Think about it right now.

It's probably someone you love, your romantic partner, your kid's little league coach who's a really nice, good coach that you're on like a

first-name basis with, yeah, except for that one thing.

That one thing.

That's what we want to hear about: that one thing.

We want to hear about that one thing.

Maximumfund.org/slash JJHO is where you can submit it.

And you know what?

I'm going to go one step further, John.

All right.

When you hear your friend complain about that one thing,

push them to maximumfund.org slash JJHO.

No, don't physically shove them, but just encourage them.

Yeah, no, do not physically shove them.

Maximumfund.org slash jjho.

We will talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

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