Trail Mix-Up

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Speaker 2 Brian got it wrong.

Speaker 2 Brian got it wrong.

Speaker 2 Brian got it wrong.

Speaker 2 Brian got it wrong.

Speaker 2 Brian. Not it wrong

Speaker 2 again.

Speaker 1 On this episode of the Commercial Break, we all try and make ourselves sound a lot more important than we are, but now we're here, and this is dangerous. And people die on this trail all the time.

Speaker 1 They get disappeared, they get eaten, they get killed, they fall and break a leg and they don't have any way to get in touch with you. Now with cell phones.
Yeah. Now with cell phones, it's different.

Speaker 1 But that's the other thing. There's no communication to the outside world.
If someone was to have gotten hurt or fallen, I quickly realized someone else would have to go back and get help.

Speaker 1 And the only guy who supposedly knows how to read a map is looking at it upside down.

Speaker 1 He thinks we're in Rhode Island.

Speaker 1 Or we're in Georgia.

Speaker 1 We're dead.

Speaker 1 The next episode of the Commercial break starts now.

Speaker 1 Hey there, cats and kittens. Welcome back to the commercial break.
I'm Brian Crane. This is my dear friend and the co-host of this show, Chris Joyhodley.
Best to you, Chris. Best to you, Brian.

Speaker 1 Best to you out there in the podcast universe. Thanks for joining us.
Chrissy and I were just talking about

Speaker 1 not only am I watching the virgins on D Plus.

Speaker 1 Big D Plus, but then I also have gotten into the documentary series on Netflix regarding the biggest loser, the television show, the biggest loser that had a big run there for about 15 years.

Speaker 1 That was 15 years, like 16 seasons, 15 years. It was,

Speaker 1 I think it was maybe one of the last truly big reality television shows in the early 2000s when it was just like the reality was at its zenith, competitions were at their zenith, Amazing Race.

Speaker 1 What Survivor, Biggest Loser, the Osbournes were on at the time. What's it called like competition shows? They really

Speaker 1 Brother was on, I think, had started at the time. American Idol, I think AGT was right around the corner.
The competitions.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and so the biggest loser, it's the story of how the biggest loser came to be, the production behind it, and the dangers and the, I guess, kind of pitfalls of that type of reality television.

Speaker 1 Taking people who are very large and then trying to get them to lose weight for a very huge cash prize, $250,000 is not life-changing money, but it sure can help.

Speaker 1 I mean, we could use $250,000 around here any day of the week. And the things that I would do for that, I would lose money.
I mean, I would lose money.

Speaker 1 I'm already doing that. I would lose money to gain money.
I would lose money to gain money. I would lose weight to do that.

Speaker 1 I would probably be willing to do things that were unhealthy in the long run.

Speaker 1 And I think that's, I haven't finished it, but I think that's kind of the crux, the like angle of this documentary, which, by the way, is executive produced by the same guy who executive produced the biggest loser.

Speaker 1 It's fucked up. He's now looking back on his own work and saying, that was pretty shitty of us.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And one of the things that I forgot that they did, which was just like kind of insane,

Speaker 1 they would have these temptations. Oh, right.
I saw that part too because I haven't finished it yet either. There's three parts.
Yeah, there's three parts. I'm about halfway through the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm through the second one. Okay.
But yeah, the temptations where they would make everybody like have to resist all these. No, not resist.
Eat as much as they can. That's right.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Eat as much as they can.

Speaker 1 So the temptations, and I don't know if this went all through the whole season. I don't remember it in later season.
But then that would be to the detriment of their weight loss. Correct.

Speaker 1 So here it is. Ready? Walk into a room.
You're 300, 400 pounds. Clearly, you have some kind of obsessive eating.
You have a problem with food. You have an unhealthy relationship with food.
Right.

Speaker 1 And they take these people, they work them out to death, and then they have a temptation day, which is basically they walk into a room and there are hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of food, like pizza, cupcakes, donuts, pastries.

Speaker 1 All kinds of stuff. And then they would say, after having not been around their family for months.

Speaker 1 at a time they would say you can go home for the weekend and visit your family if you are the person who eats the most amount of food so they would

Speaker 1 they would incentivize them to eat it. So then they would walk in, the tears streaming down their face, eating deep dish pizza, right?

Speaker 1 Because they knew that this was to the detriment of the game, but to the benefit of their mental health. Right, right.
And the producer was like, you got to simulate things that happen in real life.

Speaker 1 I mean, most people aren't going to be in a boot camp for six months with professional trainers. So what happens when they walk by the refrigerator or go by the donut shop?

Speaker 1 It's like, I have never, and some lady said it on the show, and I totally agree.

Speaker 1 I have never walked into a room where there is a dais full of food, and they're going to give me a free flight home to my kids if I just eat as much as possible. Yeah, that's so cruel.
God.

Speaker 1 It was insane. That show eventually and obviously was taken off air.
Not only did I think it had run its course, was it still, if it was still popular today, it'd still be on the air today.

Speaker 1 But I think people realized that. There are competing interests.
When you're 400 pounds and you're going to win $250,000 and you have professional trainers, you are going to do,

Speaker 1 if you want that money and you want that fame, you're going to do whatever it takes.

Speaker 1 By the way, most of the contestants, at least the ones that are shown in the television show, most of the contestants have gained some, if not all, of the weight back because that is the reality of obesity.

Speaker 1 Obesity is not easy. It's not, there's nothing easy about losing weight.
That's why all of us fail at diets. All of us do.

Speaker 1 And the people who stay spelt and, you know, highly trim and slim and work out obsessively,

Speaker 1 That's a problem on the other side, in my opinion. But also, if you stay that healthy, that's because I think you're genetically predisposed.
Yeah, a lot has to do with genetics.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not because you have some fucking superpower. You're like have, you know, you're better than anybody.

Speaker 1 It's because that's just the way you're, you just have a genetic predisposition to being that way.

Speaker 1 And mental. And mental.
I think mental health. Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, losing weight is really, really tough. And now there are so many tools that can help you, medical tools that can help you.
People are just, doctors are going bananas over these GLP ones.

Speaker 1 They're saying, yeah, we don't know what happens long-term, but so far, so good, right? So far, so good. Besides some short-term side effects like throwing up.

Speaker 1 Well, I mean, they've been using them for diabetics for a long time.

Speaker 1 So they can kind of see what's going on there. And there doesn't seem to be a lot of downside.
Yeah, I read an article. Could we have found the cure to obesity, right? The actual cure to obesity.

Speaker 1 And some doctors are saying yes. Some doctors are more cautious.
Some doctors are saying they're bad for you. But of course, there's always going to be naysayers in the group.

Speaker 1 But, you know, then I just, you know, I, then maybe that's, maybe the biggest loser doesn't make any sense anymore, too, is because why not just get on GLP ones and start eating more healthy and exercising?

Speaker 1 But that show was wild. I mean, that show was wild.
And I met Jillian Michaels, really, her career really blew up from that. Both of them.
Yeah. Jillian and the other guy.
I forgot his name.

Speaker 1 Yeah, but God, the, you better do this. Yes, you better do this.

Speaker 1 You better get this. Get out of my gym.
You're fat. Fuck out of my gym.
Are you about to pass out? Good. You fat fuck.
Get out of my gym.

Speaker 1 She was like, mean, with, you know, then there would always, she'd wrap around it with a compliment or, you know, see, I told you you could do it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm fighting for $250,000. If 15 million people are watching me, including every one of the people that I ever knew.
Like, of course, there's motivation there.

Speaker 1 And yeah, it's just, it was just a wild show. And that documentary, I'm like, I do remember watching The Biggest Loser.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Because this is still a time, you know, when network television had some cachet. You would watch what was on.

Speaker 1 You know, unless you had a Ti-Vo, you couldn't go back and watch the things that you missed. There was no streaming.
There was no Netflix.

Speaker 1 You had to go to Blockbuster to get a movie. We did.

Speaker 1 That was it. Ah, the good old days of Blockbuster.
The Blockbuster. Speaking of Blockbuster, I saw an ad for a Blockbuster candle.
A Blockbuster candle. A candle that smells like blockbuster.

Speaker 1 Like the inside of the store. Yeah, I never remember.

Speaker 1 I don't remember that being a distinctive thing. Well, the thing is, is that there is this condition that

Speaker 1 may resonate with some people, doesn't resonate with me, that they have to go to some kind of retail store to go poop. Have you heard of this? No.

Speaker 1 This is a thing. No, I've heard of people who can't poop anywhere except home.
Yes. But I have not heard of the retail poop.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to say their name, but I will share that someone that I once was related to, like a step, you know, an in-law talk. Okay.

Speaker 1 Told me that she only pooped once a week. Oh.
Once a week. Now, I don't think this is particularly abnormal for women.

Speaker 1 I have read before that women on average. It's not healthy.
It doesn't sound healthy at all. But she ate like a bird.
So, you know, okay, all right, whatever. She ate like a bird, drank like a fish.

Speaker 1 So you figure out.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 she said she pooped once a week and that she knew what day and generally what time she was going to poop in that week. But if she missed that window, she wasn't home.

Speaker 1 If she was out of her comfort zone, like on vacation, she just wouldn't poop. And

Speaker 1 I thought that was clearly bullshit. But then I stayed with her for long periods of time.
And I realized that I don't even, you know, like, maybe it is true.

Speaker 1 I don't see when she's going to the bathroom, right?

Speaker 1 But there are people who are reporting and there are. psychologists and medical doctors.

Speaker 1 There's a medical doctor who had a reel who said this is a real thing, that people walk into a place and it allows their bowels to relax.

Speaker 1 Either the smells or the feeling of being in there, it's like coffee. It allows their bowels to relax.

Speaker 1 Listen, I know every day for a fact, as my kids do, as my wife does, as everybody in the household knows. I wake up.

Speaker 1 I do not pass go. Maybe I'll say hello to my children.
If they happen to be from here to the refrigerator, I might pass go and say hello to my children. I grab that cup of coffee.

Speaker 1 And as soon as I pop the lid on that cup of coffee, I need to be somewhere near my own bathroom because that's it. I'm going.
I'm seeing you later. I am, it's like clockwork.

Speaker 1 It's clockwork orange, if you will. Clockwork brown.

Speaker 1 And that's just the way I am. I'm extraordinarily regular.
Don't ask me why. That's just the way it is.
But I know the coffee has something to do with it. Like

Speaker 1 it's a diuretic. But for me, it's just the smell of the coffee that then gets my body moving, right?

Speaker 1 I could not feel like I have to go to the bathroom when I grab the cup of coffee and I pop the lid lid before the coffee even hits my lips, I can smell it and then it's like my body just goes into mode.

Speaker 1 It's like, all right, let's go, shit, that's it, let's go poop. The smell is one of your most powerful senses.
I know.

Speaker 1 That's part of the way that we eat. We eat with our nose.
We eat with our eyes.

Speaker 1 Some people eat with their ears.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it has like a direct connection with your memory. Yeah.
So there is a condition that some people report and that medical doctors have confirmed that like coffee is a, it's like Pavlovian, right?

Speaker 1 You walk into Target, you got to take a shit.

Speaker 1 I think that's a terrible, that's a terrible condition to have. I know.
Yeah. But then again, I did work at McDonald's, and I knew there were a couple regulars, and I knew exactly what was going on.

Speaker 1 They'd take a newspaper to the bathroom. They'd come in, they'd order their double bubble fart burger and then, you know,

Speaker 1 triple egg cheese and sandwich McMuffin and a cup of coffee. And then they wouldn't even eat it.
They'd just put it down on the table and they'd run to the bathroom. Straight to the bathroom.

Speaker 1 Straight to the bathroom. The McDonald's smell was

Speaker 1 their poop smell. That's right.

Speaker 1 That's right. And as a young employee of McDonald's, a 15-year-old employee of McDonald's, you know that I had to be the one to go in and clean up that bathroom.
I still have nightmares about that.

Speaker 1 I mean, people are weird and disgusting and gross. Yes.
Yes. What are they thinking?

Speaker 1 We went to, when we were at Disney, Disney has like an attendant or two or three per bathroom, right? That's their whole job.

Speaker 1 Their whole life is just sitting in one particular bathroom and cleaning it up. I can imagine you need it.

Speaker 1 Hundreds of thousands of people every day coming in and out. There's a lot of, that's a lot of toilet flushing.
That's a lot of shit going down there, right?

Speaker 1 And my son and I go to the bathroom in one of the places in Magic Kingdom, and we go to the bathroom and we pop open the door because he's got a go-go number two.

Speaker 1 So we pop open the door and there is shit on the wall, like had flown on the wall. Oh, yeah, God.
and i'm like

Speaker 1 under what circumstances does one just pull down their pants bend over and aim it at the wall yeah what animal does that my dog does a better job of aiming her poop than this human being did on any given day yeah why do you do why would you do that under

Speaker 1 what gives you the thought that you know what i'm gonna do i'm gonna see how far i can spray my diarrhea it's so gross Oh, God. It's so gross.

Speaker 1 I don't want to know you if that's the kind of person you are.

Speaker 1 I understand accidents happen, but you think it would like splash in the bowl. Don't talk about it anymore.
Geez.

Speaker 1 I'm going to put pictures up.

Speaker 1 Kevin, can we get some pictures? No.

Speaker 1 I tell you the story of when I was a kid. I hope you're not.

Speaker 1 Some people are turning this off and going, I'm going to do this after lunch. Right.
Did I tell you the story of when I was a kid in grade school and we had to

Speaker 1 have a big school meeting? Did I tell you this? No, we were talking about your parent-teacher conferences the other day.

Speaker 1 No, no, this wasn't that. The principal called all of the students in who were in fourth to eighth grade.
Okay.

Speaker 1 And she was like, I cannot believe I'm even having to have this conversation.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 our janitor had to clean up feces

Speaker 1 from the floor of the boys' bathroom.

Speaker 1 And then everyone's laughing. The whole class is laughing, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. She's like, stop it, you know, it's not funny.
And the janitor's standing there with like his mop, and he's shaking his head.

Speaker 1 I felt so bad for the guy. Oh, yeah.
And she goes, how, you know,

Speaker 1 she goes,

Speaker 1 and we've narrowed it down to the fourth through eighth graders based on the size of the family. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 And the whole class just, I mean, everybody was just

Speaker 1 so much fun.

Speaker 1 We thought this was the best thing since sliced bread. And we had to get a lecture about proof.
Did anybody ever find out who it was? No, I don't think so.

Speaker 1 I think they chalked it up to, you know, kids being kids or an accident or something happened. I didn't know if the rumors went around with the kids themselves.
We, you know, we tried to make it.

Speaker 1 I think I knew who it was. I think I knew who it was.
Based on just behavior in general, I think I knew who it was. It was a kid who wasn't quite right.

Speaker 1 You know, there's always one kid that's not quite right, and I thought it was him. And he was a big boy, and they said it was a big boy thing.

Speaker 1 Anyway, all right, let's take a break. We'll be back.

Speaker 4 Hey, it's Rachel, your new voice of God here on TCB. And just like you, I'm wondering just how much longer this podcast can continue.

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Speaker 1 I'll just make it worse than it already is. We're talking about adding more technology into the TCB studios.

Speaker 1 I am following a guy right now who is on the quest to be one of the few people on earth who, in one shot, has gone from the beginning of the Appalachian Trail to the end of the Appalachian Trail.

Speaker 1 And I'm fascinated by his reels. They're really, you know, he's documenting every single day, if not twice a day or three times a day.
He's like 200 miles in. I think it's 2,700 miles altogether.

Speaker 1 It's a long way.

Speaker 1 We did a little part of it. We did half a mile.

Speaker 1 And we got lost.

Speaker 1 We were less than 100 yards from our car, and

Speaker 1 we were getting nervous that we were going to get stuck in the Appalachian Trail. We went to the park at Amakalola Falls, I think is what it's called.
Amakalola Falls. Beautiful waterfall.
Gorgeous.

Speaker 1 I think the tallest waterfall in Georgia.

Speaker 1 It's gorgeous. You got to walk up 600, 700 stairs to get to the top.
If you start at the bottom, at the top is a hotel. It's beautiful.
It overlooks the Appalachian Mountains.

Speaker 1 It's at the one of the very, the highest, one of the highest peaks in Georgia, right up there. And they have a little winery and you can go up there.
And we ordered a glass of wine or whatever.

Speaker 1 We got up the stairs, which took us a long time, but we managed to get there. But then we walked back down on the trail.
We didn't want to go down the stairs because the stairs are very crowded.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of people walking up and down those stairs. And if you get stuck behind some people, and it's not like they're, you know, 15 feet wide.
They're not very wide. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And so we said, okay, well, let's just go our own way. You can get on the Appalachian Trail to get back down to the parking lot.

Speaker 1 And this is a half a mile as the crow flies. It's not very far.
It's just down, right?

Speaker 1 And but the trails are marked by different colors and posts and sticks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we were just beep off and down, probably half drunk or all drunk.

Speaker 1 And we got lost in a minute. In one minute, we didn't know where we were.
We had just started there and gone down there. And by the way, it was fall.
You could see through the trees.

Speaker 1 It wasn't like it was like overgrown foliage. We could clearly see, but we couldn't figure out.
You were like kind of slipping with the leaves.

Speaker 1 You're just sliding down the mountain into different colored trails, and it wasn't very well marked. It's crazy.
I still remember that feeling of like, how are we going to get out of here?

Speaker 1 Are we going to have to call for help?

Speaker 1 Because I think we're supposed to go this way, but then I thought that two turns ago. And then we like, we'd walk for a half an hour and end up at the same place.
And I'm like, shit.

Speaker 1 I thought we were going down, but we were really going up. How's that? How did we do that?

Speaker 1 And so we thought we would be the first to have to be rescued 10 yards from their car.

Speaker 1 Update on two missing hikers.

Speaker 1 They were found in less than 60 seconds by local sheriff's officers, 10 yards from their car.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think by the time we actually found the car, it was like dark. It was dusk.
Yeah, it was getting dark. Yes, it was.
We started at like 4 p.m. and we ended up in dark.

Speaker 1 There was three hours to go a half a mile.

Speaker 1 But to be fair to us, there was a small ravine we had to cross, and I think that confused us. You have some pictures from that.
Oh, I'm sure. I do have pictures of us up at the top.

Speaker 1 I'm in a, I still remember what I'm wearing. I'm in a blue Nike

Speaker 1 track suit, and I've got my sunglasses on, and we're drinking wine in the hop top of a hotel.

Speaker 1 But this guy is, I mean,

Speaker 1 I'm for it.

Speaker 1 So he's doing it all in one shot. Because many people have hiked the full Appalachian Trail, right? But not in this time period or something.
Yeah, I think what it is, he's going up and down.

Speaker 1 So, you know, you go up, you go down. Yeah.
And I think that is what makes it the 2,200 miles or something. You go up and you go down.
And there's a certain time of year when you have to start.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you have to plan that. Yeah, I think it's now.
I think you have to be like, not the hottest part. You don't want to be up north during the winter.
You got to come back down. So it's like,

Speaker 1 I think you start now.

Speaker 1 You start in mid-August and then you try and get back i think by january or february or something like that um before the snow gets you know really starts covering the mountains so um so i'm all about this guy he's doing it for a cause you know congratulations maybe i'll maybe i'll donate i forget what the cause is books or something i don't know who cares uh but he's doing it but it it does remind me of the time not with you but i actually

Speaker 1 when i was a kid I was, I fell in love with, and I say love with, I mean, like, I was in love with them, but I was kind of afraid of them too. They were like true hippie chicks.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 True.

Speaker 1 Yeah. And we kind of became a trio for a while.
We went down to Disney World. We went on some, we used to like,

Speaker 1 a couple of times we just got in the car and we would be traveling the back roads of the panhandle and we stopped and got our fortunes told on the side of the road all the while listening to tapes of the grateful dead like tapes from people who had taped The Grateful Dead, right?

Speaker 1 So for a minute, bootlegs, I was a true hippie-dippy, but I had my head shaved and I was wearing Doc Martin's. And so I was the militant hippie, as they used to say.

Speaker 1 So I didn't fit the mold, but I was into it. Smoking a lot of pod, doing LSD, taking ecstasy.
Back when ecstasy was the thing that you enjoyed taking.

Speaker 1 I was doing it all when we were having fun and I was in love with these girls, but a little bit afraid of them.

Speaker 1 One came on really strong to me, and that made me nervous. I don't know why, but I was nervous about the whole thing.
So you're attracted, but nervous.

Speaker 1 I was still, I was at the age where I was still scared of pussy.

Speaker 1 It's true. It's true.
You know, I'd make all kinds of excuses. But anyway, so these three girls

Speaker 1 and I, these two girls and I,

Speaker 1 part of a larger group of friends, they decided they're going to, like all hippies in Atlanta decide to do at some point when they're 17 years old, go hike the Appalachian Trail.

Speaker 1 And so a group of us decided we we were going to do this at one point.

Speaker 1 And completely ill-prepared, having no idea what we were getting ourselves into, packing so lightly we probably would not have made it two weeks, let alone the entire 2,200 miles.

Speaker 1 And we started at point A, where most people start the Appalachian Trail, up in North Georgia.

Speaker 1 And so we had spent a couple of days scrounging together materials like, you know, a little pup tent, right?

Speaker 1 Some water bottles,

Speaker 1 some fuel for this, you know, some camping food. I think we had packed some trail mix.
Basically your backyard camping. Exactly.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's kind of the point is like we were prepared to spend one night where there would likely be running water right next door to us, right?

Speaker 1 We were not prepared to do anything else, but I trusted the hippie-dippies in the group that they knew exactly what they were doing. So we get up there.
It's like an, it's an afternoon.

Speaker 1 I think it's late summer. I remember it being warm.

Speaker 1 I'm still wearing Doc Martens and long, you know, I'm still wearing the same uniform I had always worn, which are bell bottom jeans, bell bottom skater jeans, Doc Martens,

Speaker 1 and two t-shirts. Why two t-shirts? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Who knows? That was just a thing you did back then. You wore a white shirt under a color chain.
A wallet chain.

Speaker 1 Wallet chain was always with me, you know, because you're going to need a wallet when you're on the Appalachian Trail with no money in it.

Speaker 1 I mean, I had no money, no credit card. They didn't have debit cards like they do today.
I mean, you could get one, but you know, whatever.

Speaker 1 So we get up there and we get, we park the car at the place where we're supposed to park the car. And the intention was

Speaker 1 three weeks up, three weeks back. That's what we were going to do.
A full six weeks, we're going to be back by, I think it was Halloween or something like that.

Speaker 1 So just as far as you could go in three weeks. As far as we could go in three weeks.

Speaker 1 We had a point that we wanted to go to. You know, one of the guys in the group had a map.
He knew where you could stop at a general store.

Speaker 1 There were, you know, there are places where you go civilization. It's not like you're in the jungle for all, you know, six weeks.
You stop at places. There are places you can sleep.

Speaker 1 There are hotels and motels. There are BNBs.
There are places where the government has put up little shacks where they have like, you know, shitty mattresses and running water. So this is a thing.

Speaker 1 And, you know, it's a well-worn path. And so we get up there.
And we start hiking. And I don't even think we get six or seven miles in the first day.
And that is not a good clip.

Speaker 1 You're not going in a good clip if you only get six or seven miles in a day, depending on the terrain. But everything seems scary to me.

Speaker 1 And I'm starting to realize that the people around me really don't know what they're talking about. There's a lot of matt looking at the map.
There's a lot of backtracking.

Speaker 1 We forgot we let we went this way. We should have gone that way.
When it's all, this is the easy part of the trail, too. Right.

Speaker 1 This is the part of the trail that like you and the family do on a Saturday afternoon.

Speaker 1 Not the part where like, you know, hardcore hippie hikers do it. Right.
And there's one guy guy who's kind of leading the charge, and I'm quickly losing faith in his ability to do anything.

Speaker 1 And so now night is starting to come, and I think to myself, we got to stop and eat something. I've been living on like,

Speaker 1 now it's all the raisins at the bottom of the trail mix are the only thing that's left, which is the worst part of the trail mix. We all know it.
Let's just all admit it.

Speaker 1 It's the M ⁇ Ms that are good and the peanuts that are good. You know what I'm saying? Yes.

Speaker 1 So then we're like, what are we going to eat for this? And they had brought some like camping, like, you know, ready-to-eat camping things. Like, dehydrated stuff.

Speaker 1 Dehydrated stuff that you would have to put in a kettle, cook it with, you know, under a sterno. And the camping equipment wasn't like it is today.
And even if it was, we couldn't afford it.

Speaker 1 So we didn't have any of it. Someone had like an old teapot their mom had given them.
And

Speaker 1 it didn't have a holder. So we had to like hold it over.
Our guy tried to make a stick thing and the stick set on fire. It's a whole thing, right? And no one knew how to make a campfire.

Speaker 1 It was, we were terribly ill-prepared. The pup tent did not pup.
It did not.

Speaker 1 There was no pup to the pup tent.

Speaker 1 So here we are, first night, not very far off, and things aren't going great. And everybody is trying to stay positive about this, but we're just being honest.

Speaker 1 I know that it's not going great. I am scared, right? If we get 20 miles in and now we really have a trek back and we, I really don't remember where we're going to go.
What if I want to bail?

Speaker 1 I'm going to have to call somebody to bring me out. And I know my dad's not picking me up from nowhere.
Yeah, he's already bailed me out of jail. He's not bailing me out of the Appalachian Trail.

Speaker 1 That's for sure. I don't have a money for a bus ticket, plane ticket, rental car, forget a rental car.
What's that? I'm 17.

Speaker 1 So the first night,

Speaker 1 we eat some shitty food that's not even cooked, you know, that's like weird consistency. It's not good.
I'm very hungry. We're kind of, you know, the water's running low.

Speaker 1 And now we're going to have to think about where do we get water?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Is there a place where we can get water? There are some places, but we haven't found them.
So this dude's down at the stream and he's like, I don't know, checking it for contamination.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, this just all sounds so weird. So I tell the girls, I said, I, you know, I don't know.
I'm not feeling great about this right now. I'm not feeling like this is the best situation.

Speaker 1 They're like, no, no, no, no. You know, this is part of the, it's part of the thing, man.
Part of the journey.

Speaker 1 One of them's got like a little battery operated tape player and where she's playing the Grateful Dead. And then she's like, Let's just smoke some pot and we'll get some sleep.
Smoke some pot

Speaker 1 under the stars, which can't really see each other. Did you have like a sleeping bag? We had a we had a yeah, a sleeping bag.

Speaker 1 Yeah, each of us had like a little roll-up sleeping bag, but it wasn't very thick.

Speaker 1 And I remember it got very cool that night, and we got so fucking high, and everybody else seemed to be sleeping except for me, who was just having an internal anxiety panic attack.

Speaker 1 And every noise that I heard was a bear or a lion or alphabet.

Speaker 1 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 My mind was going wild. Yes.
What's that? What's that? Did you hear that? I remember, like, I cozied up to one of the girls real close because I was actually legitimately scared. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Because we had talked about this. There are black bears up there.
You know, we can't keep food out. And I don't think anybody took any precautions about any of this stuff.

Speaker 1 No one had like bear spray, a gun. Forget about it.
We were just like a bunch of kids pretending we knew exactly what we were doing.

Speaker 1 And the lead, our fearless leader, was really just a dip shit stoner who went to private school. You know what I'm saying? Who probably never came.
How big was your group?

Speaker 1 There was, I think, if I remember correctly, there was like six or seven of us. Okay.
With the knowledge and the conversation that at times some of the group may move faster than the others. Yeah.

Speaker 1 We may break up. Right.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just wasn't, it didn't feel like it was a cohesive group. And then I got really, I started thinking about what happens if tomorrow we move faster, they move faster than we do.

Speaker 1 Now we don't have our fearless leader, doesn't know how to catch a fish, has no idea how to trap anything, brought five ready-to-eat meals. Can't read the map.
Can't read the map.

Speaker 1 We've already backtracked. We've only made it like, you know, 10 yards from the car.
What are we going to do?

Speaker 1 So the next morning, you know, everyone's getting up and you know, some people go find this water source and they're down there, you know, splashing it on.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, I'm not bathing in that shit-filled river. And now my stomach's all cramped.
I have travel tummy. I'm like,

Speaker 1 no. Yeah, someone's got one roll of toilet paper.

Speaker 1 It's, it's just bad. It's just bad.
It's just, I got, I was so excited about this. I thought this was going to give me some bona fides in the hippie community.

Speaker 1 And what I'm really realizing is I am not cut out for this type of thing. I'm a city boy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I need to be in the suburbs where there's a TJ Max snor.

Speaker 1 That's what I need.

Speaker 1 A McDonald's and a TJ Maxx. I don't want a bear and a stream and one roll of toilet paper between seven people.

Speaker 1 And I'm already feeling like everyone's starting to smell a little rank. It's just bad.

Speaker 1 So we all manage to get our camp and get up. And we go maybe like another two miles in four hours.
I mean, honestly, we don't know where we are. This guy's not reading the map.
He thinks we're here.

Speaker 1 We might be there. We're supposed to be seeing something in the corner.
You know, I'll figure it out. And he's like a real stubborn kind of guy.
Are you a know-it-all? Yeah, he's a know-it-all.

Speaker 1 And when we're backtracking, I'm like, didn't we already go this way?

Speaker 1 Listen, we had to go over there to make sure, to make sure that we were in the right direction. You know, it's like, okay, dude.
All right. And I didn't know this guy very well.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 I think five hours into day number two. I am starting to formulate a plan of how to get out.
Of how to get out.

Speaker 1 If I could walk

Speaker 1 really fast and I could could not have to backtrack, if I could remember the stakes and the trails and the things that we did, if I could just get to where we camped last night, I think I can, it's a pretty straight shot to back to the car.

Speaker 1 And if I could convince the girl who owned the car, then we could all go back

Speaker 1 to this. Okay, so

Speaker 1 late afternoon. We're still going to walk some more, but we're taking a break.
But then some of the people are like, I think we should just call it a day.

Speaker 1 I think other people in the group are starting to mutiny, too.

Speaker 1 They're getting the same idea. And I believe I'm still high from the night before.
Like, I'm really haven't had much sleep. I'm kind of panicking.

Speaker 1 So, we stop, and I manage to separate the girls from the group a little bit. Right.
And I'm like, listen,

Speaker 1 I don't think we know what we're doing. I think this is a dangerous proposition.
We haven't seen any civilization. I think we're supposed to be seeing civilization.
Like, we could be lost already.

Speaker 1 And even though we're on a trail, which trail are we on? Because Jim Bob over there doesn't seem to be able to sniff it out. Right.
What if we just bail? We walk backwards.

Speaker 1 We can probably wake up tomorrow morning and make it in one day. You know, it's only seven or eight or nine miles, however long we've walked.

Speaker 1 And we don't even know because we don't even know where we are on the map. But I think we can still make it and not get lost and make it back to the car.

Speaker 1 And by tomorrow night, we could be doing whippets at your house.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to get a proposition going.

Speaker 1 We could be listening to 78.

Speaker 1 You you know we could be listening to october 6 78 where cornell 73 cornell 73 where phil does an incredible bass solo if we can just get back because the batteries are going to die in this day player soon and we don't have anywhere to go and they're both like well we kind of said we would do three weeks and if we leave then we have the toilet paper you know probably leave the fucking toilet paper here leave them here leave the trail mix here what are we going to do

Speaker 1 i i did i don't manage to close the deal but now i'm convinced that one way or or the other, I'm getting back to that parking lot. And maybe I'll just have to hitchhike back down.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I'll hop on the back of a motorcycle,

Speaker 1 give a blowjob to a trucker, something. I'll have to figure it out, right?

Speaker 1 So we go to sleep, and then I'll tell you after the break.

Speaker 1 Let me do something Brian has never done. Be brief.

Speaker 4 Follow us on Instagram at the Commercial Break. Text or call us, 212-433-3TCB.
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Speaker 1 That really wasn't that difficult now, was it?

Speaker 4 You're welcome.

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Speaker 1 All right, so now everyone's decided we're stopped for the night. So it's like getting dusk, and we out someone manages to build like a small, I think, campfire or something like that.

Speaker 1 We get more of these ready-to-eat, these MREs that are just disgusting.

Speaker 1 The second night, we're a little better at cooking them than the first night, but it's still gross. I'm side-eyeing these girls every chance I get.
I'm like, you know,

Speaker 1 you sure?

Speaker 1 Sure. You know, this guy, this leader dude is opining about what the next day is going to look like.
And, you know, this is the day we're going to make a lot of progress.

Speaker 1 We're going to get 15 miles tomorrow. And I'm like, 15 miles.
We haven't gone six total. What are we doing?

Speaker 1 And then. We're just spending the night out in the woods.

Speaker 1 We're just camping really close to the car without any supplies to do so. No tent, wet sleeping bags, cold clothes.

Speaker 1 I mean, I only brought like one change of t-shirt because we were going to wash our clothes in the stream, dry them off, and put them on the back of the, you know, just put them on the back of the knapsacks.

Speaker 1 When did you guys come up with this plan? Was it like one night drunk? And I

Speaker 1 Okay. Yes.
We hatched it.

Speaker 1 I think we hatched it in a car ride in Florida that this is what we wanted to do because we knew a guy who was going to do this. Oh, you're going to hitch on with him.

Speaker 1 We were going to hitch on with their group. Their group was, we knew loosely.

Speaker 1 The guy, the leader dude, we did not know and we did not know that well, but he had claimed that he had been on parts of the Appalachian Trail for weeks at a time.

Speaker 1 But it was clear to me that that was not true. Like a lot of 17, 18, 19-year-olds, he was just full of fucking shit, just like I was, just like everybody was, right?

Speaker 1 We all try and make ourselves sound a lot more important than we are. But now we're here and this is dangerous and people die on this trail all the time.

Speaker 1 They get disappeared. They get eaten.
They get killed. They fall and break a leg and they don't have any way to get in touch with them.

Speaker 1 Now with cell phones, yeah, now with cell phones, it's different. But that's the other thing.
There's no communication to the outside world.

Speaker 1 If someone was to have gotten hurt or fallen, I quickly realized someone else would have to go back and get help. And the only guy who supposedly knows how to read a map is looking at it upside down.

Speaker 1 He thinks we're in Rhode Island

Speaker 1 or in Georgia.

Speaker 1 We're dead.

Speaker 1 We're sitting there. We're just off the trail.
We're obviously a larger group. So, you know, making some noise.
And up walk two real hippies. And I mean real hippies, dread, locks, and all.

Speaker 1 You know, Betty Boop and whatever, you know, Sun

Speaker 1 Starseed and Sunbeam

Speaker 1 walk up

Speaker 1 and they're like, hey, y'all, how's it going? You know, and we're like, yeah, great.

Speaker 1 All I want to do is help.

Speaker 1 But now I'm wondering if we need help from them. Do you know what I mean? Yes.
Yes.

Speaker 1 They are.

Speaker 1 Dirty. I mean, they look like they've been doing this for a while.
Yeah. And they're not exactly clear where they came from.
They're not exactly clear where they're going to.

Speaker 1 They just pop a squat, and now we're all talking to them. And like the leader dude, I think I think his name was Bobby.
Bobby is like, you know, welcoming them into the conversation.

Speaker 1 Like he thinks he, you know, now we found some kindred spirits that are going to be able to help us out. These guys have like hobo backpacks.
They've got like a thing on a stick.

Speaker 1 And I think they had a dog with them too, if I'm not mistaken. It was like a whole scene, right? And I was like, oh.
They were just homeless is what it was. Basically, yes.

Speaker 1 Or homeless or dehomed because that's the way they wanted it. Maybe.
Maybe that was the truth. That's okay, too.
Whatever's clever.

Speaker 1 They

Speaker 1 start talking. And then after, like, I'm kind of like talking with the girls.
And after a minute, I'm not really interested in these two because I'm not getting a great vibe from them.

Speaker 1 And then after a couple of minutes, now they're offering to sell LSD to the group, like liquid LSD, but for like a dollar. Like, give us a dollar and, you know, take a, take a bop, you know?

Speaker 1 God. And

Speaker 1 our fearless leader is the first one to take a bop. Oh.
And I'm like, nope, I'm not going to be tripping my balls off. I'm already excited about it.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to go through another night of no sleep tripping my balls off. But a couple of the other people in the group do.
And I'm like, okay.

Speaker 1 So now these people are near us. Some people are tripping balls.
I am not.

Speaker 1 And I see what I see the guy who had come up, you know, Sunbeam. I see the guy who had come up.
One of the other people was sleeping who had not taken LSD. And I catch him with my eye.

Speaker 1 I catch him over in the corner rummaging through

Speaker 1 their stuff, right? But I don't know what to do because I'm like, do I confront the guy? And then now we have a real scene. He's tripping balls.
I don't like him. I'm not getting a good vibe from him.

Speaker 1 But luckily, the other two girls that I was with saw this happening too. And when they saw this happening, I turned to them and I go, Are you ready? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And both of them said at the exact same moment as if they were identical twins, yes.

Speaker 1 We are out of

Speaker 1 yeah.

Speaker 1 So I don't know what he rummaged through. I don't know what he grabbed.

Speaker 1 We kind of kept an eye on it to make sure he wasn't physically hurting anybody, but he clearly was looking for something and he may have taken something. And I don't remember how that all panned out.

Speaker 1 But they slept very, uh, or, you know, kind of camped very close to us. Everybody's tripping balls.
And then we, the sun starts to come up. I'd managed to close my eyes for a minute.

Speaker 1 The sun comes up, and Bob, our fearless leader, is nowhere to be found. What?

Speaker 1 He is nowhere to be found. His stuff is there, but he's nowhere to be found.
One of the sunshine is nowhere to be found. So Sunbeam is there.
Sunshine is gone. Bob is gone.

Speaker 1 The guy, guy, the girl, and our fearless leader, they are gone.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, oh, shit. Yeah.
And so I'm like, let's go right now. Let's go.
And they're like, we can't leave. What if he's? And I'm like, I can't see this situation getting much better.

Speaker 1 So let's not be a part of it. Let's get out of here.
I'm sure Bob is fine. He's probably tripping his nuts off down by the stream or something like that.
With sunshine. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So now we have to decide how we're going to break it to the group, right?

Speaker 1 And so it was determined.

Speaker 1 Just toss the toilet paper and run.

Speaker 1 It was determined. But I was the one who had to say it because I was the least hippie.
Like, you know, and I could, I just, is the excuse in the group. I'm like, I'll take the bullet.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you didn't have any rep to be ruined. Nope.

Speaker 1 I'll take, I'll take the bullet. So I go up to the remaining people in the group.
And that now, like, you know, Sunbeam is there too.

Speaker 1 And we're, they're all like sitting around and, you know, getting ready and packing up. And then, where's Bobby? Should we go look for Bobby and whatever?

Speaker 1 And I say, I have the toilet paper in my hand, and I'm like, okay,

Speaker 1 hey, everybody. Good morning, you know, and everyone's sitting around like, hey, what's going on?

Speaker 1 You're walking in my dog, Martin. Yeah, I'm walking in my dock.

Speaker 1 Good morning.

Speaker 1 Everyone sleep good? Good trip. You still tripping?

Speaker 1 How much more LSD did you do after I went to bed? Did you get anything out of anybody's knapsack there, Sunbeam? Anything good?

Speaker 1 I have an offering.

Speaker 1 Some kind of moist toilet paper.

Speaker 1 It's wet toilet paper.

Speaker 1 So in the moment,

Speaker 1 this is why this even made me think of this.

Speaker 1 So in the moment.

Speaker 1 I still remember this. In the moment, I go, listen, me and

Speaker 1 Drutcher, we're going to head back. Yeah.
What? Yeah. What?

Speaker 1 Yeah. What? We don't even know where bobby is you know and i said i know

Speaker 1 but i gotta be honest for the last couple days i've had explosive diarrhea

Speaker 1 it's making me wonder if i'm in any condition to be out here i feel a little

Speaker 1 yeah i i think i might have got something and brought it in and i don't want to make anybody else sick and And I just need a car ride home. And they're like, no, it's okay.

Speaker 1 You know, it'll flush itself

Speaker 1 and i'm like i don't know how much more there is to flush out we're not eating well out here we're out of water and toilet paper is running low

Speaker 1 but i wanted to give you the toilet paper

Speaker 1 make sure that

Speaker 1 it didn't leave you high and dry

Speaker 1 pun intended

Speaker 1 or dirty and wet you know uh but listen I really hope that everything goes well for everybody. Sunbeam, it was really nice to meet you.
And he was like, yeah, man, yeah.

Speaker 1 Listen, it's, you know, sometimes, sometimes we're called to do it and sometimes we aren't. Not for everybody.
And I think into myself, you've been living out here for 10 years.

Speaker 1 You were born to do this. Look at me.
I have a chain around my wallet that's empty.

Speaker 1 I'm a poser.

Speaker 1 I should be waiting in line for Alice and Chains to get

Speaker 1 not out here on the Appalachian Trail. That sounded like a great idea, but it's not turning out to be.
And then I got my parting words, which were, do you want to, do you want to drop on your way out?

Speaker 1 Oh my God. From Sunbeam.

Speaker 1 And I was like, I would, but I don't have any cash on me. And he goes, no, no, no, man, it's cool.
It's cool. It'll come back around.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, if I take a drop, I'm going to be the one coming back around because we're never going to find our way out of here.

Speaker 1 So I said, no, man, as much as I'd love to with the stunt, you know, with the shits,

Speaker 1 I'm afraid it might make things worse. And he's like, yeah, you might be right about that.

Speaker 1 And the other people, they tried to do a little haggling with us, like, you know, come on, one more day, you know, stay one more day if we can't get to the hotel, you know, if we can't get to a place to sleep and, you know, some food, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And we said no. So we managed to make it out of there.
on our on our own. We, you know, we had map.
Like there was more than one map, but he would, this was just the guy who happened.

Speaker 1 He told us he knew what was going on. Right.
But we managed to get out in one day. Afternoon.
Yes. By just following

Speaker 1 our noses and the map and looking for little signs, we managed to get out of there very quickly. So I know we were not very far.

Speaker 1 It takes about 30 minutes in tough terrain to walk a mile if you're going at a normal clip. I think it took us five hours to get out of there.
We might have been 10 miles in. I mean, maybe 10 miles.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it was probably best you got out when you did. We did.
And so what happened? What happened to Bobby? That's what happened to Bobby.

Speaker 1 Well, it turns out that even though some of his stuff had been left in a LSD-induced haze, he apparently fell in love with, you know, Soul Beam or whatever her name was.

Speaker 1 They had some kind of, you know, romance going on and in their trippy state had decided that it was best that they go ahead to the next post, walking in the nighttime.

Speaker 1 I could not believe that they would want to do this because it is not easy to walk during the daytime in some of these places, let alone the nighttime. Yeah.
But they had made it a cup.

Speaker 1 They were like a couple of miles ahead, and eventually they crashed out. Like after a day or day and a half, they crashed out and the group caught up with them eventually.

Speaker 1 But for like a day and a half, they were just gone and no way of communicating.

Speaker 1 I am so glad, so glad that we decided to bail when we bailed because had we not done that, we would have been stuck in that chaos and confusion.

Speaker 1 And I would have been even more scared than I already was.

Speaker 1 The best feeling in the world was good to the car that I had had up into that, up until my life was number one, turning around and heading back, but was number two coming up on the parking lot or knowing we were on our way to the parking lot.

Speaker 1 And listen, even though I did not technically have explosive diarrhea, I really had to go to the bathroom when we got back.

Speaker 1 I was ready.

Speaker 1 All those raisins and trails.

Speaker 1 All those peanuts and almonds and MMs and

Speaker 1 shitty beef stew,

Speaker 1 dehydrated beef stew, had built up into quite a, had worked up

Speaker 1 quite a bundle.

Speaker 1 I was home by midnight. Best day of my life.

Speaker 1 Shit. I keep on pressing that button.
I'm sorry. Oh, my God.
Wow. That's a good one.

Speaker 1 Well, hopefully the guy that you're following on his track is more prepared. He looks much more prepared than I do.
Much more prepared. I don't think this is his first road either.
Uh-uh.

Speaker 1 He's trimmed, he's fit. And by the way, just like as a follow-up, follow-up,

Speaker 1 the guy, one of the guys in the group who was not Bobby,

Speaker 1 I met, I connected with him years later when I was in my early 20s.

Speaker 1 And he was, because he was dating a girl I was working at a restaurant. So we just kind of serendipitously ran back into each other.
Still a big hippie, still loved to hike and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 And when I met him, he was preparing to walk up and down the trail. And he did.
Okay. He did it.
Now, he didn't do it in one shot. He stopped at some point because of something.

Speaker 1 He had gangrene or some shit like that.

Speaker 1 But he did it. I mean, he went and he really did it.
And I. You had a friend in college that did it.
That did do it too. We were impressed.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 There's, I think there are, I think there's probably a number of people who do it every year, right? But it's not many. It's not like thousands of people accomplish this.
It's hard. It's really hard.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you got to know what you're doing. And a lot of people go one, you know, just do one way.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Yeah, one way I think is

Speaker 1 that's the yeah, that's the advanced route. But then when you're an expert, you go up and down, right? But then if you're just a beginner, it's like go like I did.

Speaker 1 Go spend a day or two up there and you figure out if that's what you really want to do. It's likely you won't.
It's likely you won't want to do that. So I'm just saying.

Speaker 1 Not trying to knock the Appalachian trailers, but it's. Oh, no, it's a whole thing.
It's tough. And the easiest part is the beginning of it.
That's the easiest part of it. Yep.

Speaker 1 I mean, I know that there are flatter parts of it, but that's, you know, whatever. Anyway, there you go.
All right. 212-433-3TCB.
212-433-3822. Questions, comments, concerns, contents, ideas?

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Speaker 1 tcvpodcast.com your free sticker now available all the audio all the video and more information about chrissy and i okay chrissy i guess that's all i can do for today i think so i'll tell you that i love you and i love you best you best of you best you out there in the podcast universe until next time chrissy and i will say do say and we must say goodbye

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