Dial The Wild
Dial The Wild Podcast is an ongoing discussion with like-minded individuals who have a desire to engage the primal nature within themselves. Topics ranging from Music, Sports, Hunting, Archery, Jeeping, MMA, Comedy, Fishing, etc. what ever dials-in your wild!
Dial The Wild
LLCC Episode -1- Whiskey Wisdom, Martial Arts Tales, and the Art of Savoring Life
Ever find yourself swapping stories with friends that are so wild, they could fill a book—or, better yet, an entire podcast episode? Grab a glass of Writer's Tears, and join me for a ride through tales of friendship, whiskey wisdom, and martial arts mastery. Reflect with me on the serendipitous bonding over motorcycles and tenderloins that led to my unexpected friendship with Kaleb, and how our Saturday breakfast rituals set the tone for a weekend of camaraderie and laughter. Plus, don't miss the buzz around Lucas Young's "drunk bus" anecdotes, a service that's become a staple in our local nightlife.
This week's guest—decked with black belts and a whiskey collection that would make connoisseurs green with envy—shares insights on the profound influence of Yamanaka Kojute Jujitsu and how martial arts have shaped a lifetime of experiences from law enforcement to bar ownership. He'll also drop some pearls of wisdom on building a whiskey collection without raiding your retirement fund. Tattoo tales and bar fight philosophies? We've got those too.
As we wrap up, indulge with us in the aromatic world of scotch and cigars, and discover how the right pairing can transform your taste buds into sensory detectives. We'll take you behind the scenes of wine tasting, revealing the art of 'trilling' to unlock depths of flavor you never knew existed. And for those who share our love for a smooth old-fashioned, we've got a twist on the classic you won't want to miss. So settle in, light up a cigar if that's your pleasure, and prepare to be whisked away on a narrative journey where every episode is a chapter in the legendary book of life.
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Suck it. Ha ha. Man-conquering technology, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:Jess said stop that right now. I said no, it's nice that a best friend wants to include me in activities, unlike other so-called best friends.
Speaker 1:Get it on recording so that Jess listens, is it? Jess is already messaging you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, she said stop that right now. I said no, it's nice that a best friend wants to include me in activities, unlike another so-called best friend. It's a true story, very true, like when was the last time she ever invited us to do anything?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I got to create when was the last time she ever invited us to do anything? I don't know. I got to create like concerts and shit for her to come to and then she doesn't even show up she doesn't even show up for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, something about a sick kid. Yeah, yeah, right, right, likely excuse. Don't she have a husband who can help with that?
Speaker 1:Man, kids complicate things, true, so much.
Speaker 2:I mean, but I've never seen her come visit outside of the events you put on.
Speaker 1:Oh no.
Speaker 2:It's like she doesn't actually want to come see me for anything.
Speaker 1:It's like she doesn't even want to be part of someone's life. Isn't this technically?
Speaker 3:an event he's putting on and she's still not here.
Speaker 2:Another event that.
Speaker 1:Travis is is doing, but she's not here, for I guess technically she wasn't invited to this one, but that's just because it's it's best friends only best friends only which is ironic because we weren't allowed to become friends when we first started talking about doing shows and stuff at year, because you were her friend and then that slowly not really slowly almost automatically became. We became best friends and she's kind of like you know she doesn't even seem to be a running thing in your life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say he was telling me about how you guys became friends by like similar circumstances yeah, our friend, mutual friend, alex, would not let us be in a room together.
Speaker 2:Oh, that's good. He's like no, you guys can't hang out, absolutely not. And then eventually we hung out, away from everybody. We were like what do we do?
Speaker 3:We were riding motorcycles, we would go hunt down tenderloins so that we could tell him about where we'd found the best tenderloin, and we never took him.
Speaker 1:I'm starting to see a pattern here with Caleb. It's like I'm going to steal your best friend and we're going to go do amazing things and there's nothing you can do about it.
Speaker 2:And even then on motorcycle rides you're riding so you don't get a ton of time to like sit and chit chat. But then when we started doing this we came to realize that like we really just enjoy hanging out, we may talk, we may not talk, we may just play stupid videos, but stare off into the best part of the week is saturday mornings there you go.
Speaker 1:I was invited to this. I call it League of Extraordinary Gentlemen breakfast. I went and had my breakfast with the old boys of the second of the 123rd over at the old dairy, and then popped over to have a cigar and a little bit. What is this that you give me to sip upon?
Speaker 3:So this is Writer's Tears, writer's Tears In a skillin' ice wine cask finished Irish whiskey.
Speaker 1:Okay, I would ask what that all entails, but you explained it earlier.
Speaker 3:So In a skillin' ice wine is ice wine from Canada and they import the cask after they're done aging the wine in it over to ireland and then when they get done aging the irish whiskey, they finish it by putting it in the in the skillen ice wine casks and the whiskey marries together with the residual ice wine that's left in the wood and creates a more sweeter finish and a lot of people describe a lot of stone fruits in it.
Speaker 3:Sure, I just love the way it makes it so much more, almost like a cordial. It's sweet. Yeah, I think it has a very delicate flavor. Most Irish whiskey does.
Speaker 1:Right, I think it makes it even more so, and that's honestly my taste of choices the Irish whiskeys. I'm no stranger to that, but I tend to be cheap, so it's usually a Jameson or a Proper 12 or a. Oh oh, he says.
Speaker 3:I hesitate to speak ill of Proper 12 because I don't want to find out. If maybe I can make somebody angry enough, I could get in a fight, but I'm not. I wouldn't be quick to buy one.
Speaker 1:Well, we are down here with a certified ninja, I've been told.
Speaker 3:Well, no, I'm just making a joke about the fact that Proper 12 was who.
Speaker 2:Conor McGregor's Whiskey. I'm not kidding.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I'm not. Have you seen the new Roadhouse movie?
Speaker 1:For those who don't know, of course I'm Travis. I'm here with Caleb Gearan. We've been running shows over at the Ritz here in Macomb since November and I'm here with Lucas Young and you say you do dispatching for the local Bus company Bus company. That's awesome.
Speaker 3:For the city bus.
Speaker 1:What we lovingly refer to as the drunk bus. You know, there's songs on YouTube Lean with it, ride with it riding on that drunk bus.
Speaker 3:I drove the drunk bus back before the university's attendance had come down, when it was still, quite frankly, almost a rolling house party, and it was an experience.
Speaker 1:I just remember holding on for dear life as I'm riding back to someone's apartment, you know.
Speaker 2:Oh God, what's happening?
Speaker 3:And the funny thing is, I think everybody would probably recall their drunk bus experience as holding on for dear life. But in reality, if you ever rode it sober, it was probably more like the slowest ride home you ever got absolutely it was.
Speaker 1:It's at 100 percent was um chemically induced.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well that's that's the thing when you drive that bus, especially when it's full, at the end of the night, when you're headed home, you know as a professional you have to be very mindful of the fact that you are driving 40 inebriated people. So you do drive slower and you are more cautious and you take your turns a little wider. And so if you rode the bus sober you'd almost be like what is going on.
Speaker 1:Driving Miss Daisy to an extent, but you know halfway inebriated.
Speaker 3:You probably feel like you're on the rocket on the way home.
Speaker 1:Caleb, you went to a tournament not too long ago, didn't you? Yeah, what tournament was that?
Speaker 2:I don't remember which tournament it was.
Speaker 1:What style of?
Speaker 2:fighting Karate. It was a point match, karate tournament. I hadn't competed in seven years. I just decided to go have some fun and things went pretty solid. I won my first match, lost my second to a kid who's really good. We tied but he had the tiebreaker For not competing in seven years. I was not disappointed with my performance.
Speaker 1:What all arts do you study as far as martial?
Speaker 2:arts. I've got a third-degree black belt in Shotokan karate, a third-degree black belt in Yamanaka Kojute Jujitsu, which is Japanese Jujitsu. Our group was asked to carry on the name because that was one of the first styles of Jujitsu to come across to america from japan. So we were asked to kind of be the group that kept it because typically you think of brazil when you think of jiu-jitsu. Yep and I'd done that also, and, uh, a lot of grappling stuff for that, which I love.
Speaker 3:That's my favorite part, and the japanese focus is more on, like the throws you're saying your favorite part of the martial arts is wrestling on the ground with another man. Yeah, you got a problem with it. I'm not going to get into that.
Speaker 2:He's jealous. That's what it is. He's jealous, Probably. And then I do have a secondary black belt in Taiho Jitsu, which is a form of police self-defense. And I have some other ranks and other styles, but I never actually trained in them. Like the higher ups in those styles are like we're giving you this because of how good you are in the other stuff.
Speaker 1:Gotcha, it's like an honorary degree yeah it really is. I'm like I don't.
Speaker 2:I'm like okay, but the only the, the two things I really do is karate and jujitsu. So gotcha.
Speaker 1:So what? What led you to buy in?
Speaker 2:buy in the bar then uh, I worked at the ritz when I was in college okay um and I could see where your skill set would have been very valuable in that atmosphere that's exactly why I worked there, um, and ended up doing just about every job there I cooked, I waited tables, I bartended, I barbacked, I would manage some nights and I'd bounce, and I was head bouncer for a long time, um, and it was my favorite job I ever had. It was just the group I worked with was so much fun. I went and worked at bars in Arizona. There was a lot of good times there. Then it was a cop and I don't think I chose a good department for my mindset where I was at. I think I would have gone to a different department.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. You say that because we don't have to get into it too far but it's interesting that you say that it's like having a certain mentality is better for different departments. Like I don't think that people talk about that enough when it comes to law enforcement.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our department was. We wrote full reports on written warnings and verbal warnings, which no department does.
Speaker 2:That and I got called in the office seven times one day because I mistyped the word the on a written warning, and at that point I was very eventful department so I was like, okay, I think I need to find my way out of here and I think if I would have gone to another department I probably would have enjoyed the job more and stayed. But the owner of the Ritz at the time was selling and he and I had worked for him, so I went through the process to buy that, and that was 13 years ago gotcha, you got plenty of time.
Speaker 1:I have some things to introduce you to. You are a cigar whiskey freak like I've never I I mean I I have in certain homes. But as soon as caleb walked me in here he's just like behold, I was like here, go it's my favorite room.
Speaker 3:I have been very fortunate in that I have made friends with some different managers and owners of different stores and have a good buddy that works in the industry, and I've been able to procure some of the more harder-to-find bottles, especially in our area, sure. But I'm also very fortunate in that for the vast majority of my collection I've always had a side hustle that has been very financially fruitful for me to make enough money that I can afford this hobby without right cutting into my regular weekly income regular income.
Speaker 1:Sure, that's what reffing ball games is for me. You know that's yes I. I hand over a few of those checks to help with the bills from time to time. But, like my, reffing money is my, golfing money, it's my going to to shows money.
Speaker 3:When you get into like whiskey a lot of the whiskey YouTubers that's one of the first warnings. Whenever they do a video about like bottles to collect, when you're first beginning or how to get started into this collection, they always give this warning Stay within your budget. So my approach that was to completely delete my budget from the situation. Yeah, by using only my hobby side, hustle money.
Speaker 1:That way it's never cutting into the bill paying money and that says that says something for about any hobby, though, too like a lot of people when they say how do?
Speaker 3:I get started into this. I'm like well, the first thing you need to do is get yourself a side hustle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because this stuff gets expensive yeah, and my buddy that I shoot archery with has told me he goes, set aside just a little bit, just a little bit. He's like you'll be surprised how it racks up, but you know once, once, once you really get into. My thing was always archery over the years, yeah, and then the better that you get into that, the more money you dump into it. It.
Speaker 3:If you don't have a side hustle, then it's I mean, just like archery, there's a time to buy and a time not to buy. You know, I purposely hunt out the best deal on a lot of the bottles.
Speaker 1:Like the.
Speaker 3:Writer's Tears that we're enjoying right now. It was almost a $100 bottle, sure, but I caught it when it was on a clearance down to, I think, 76. And then my work had given me a gift certificate to the store. It was actually one of those area chamber of commerce gift certificates. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Most any store in town and I think that took another 20 or 30 bucks off of it. I enjoy the hobby of whiskey because to me, I enjoy this more for the ability to share this experience with other people. The most expensive bottles I have in this room have been opened.
Speaker 3:I actually have very few that I'm bunkering, like a lot of guys. A lot of guys will go out and they'll buy 3 or 4 bottles when they get a good deal on it and they'll stack them away and they don't intend on opening them. I've had liquor store managers call me up and say, hey, I got this one bottle. And I'll show up and to make it clear to them that I'm not going to secondary this, I'm not going to sell this out and make a profit, I'm not going to bunker this down, I'll say, hey, man, you want to get a couple glasses and try this that's all right here in front of you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because for me this is a selection, not a collection I got you, yeah, absolutely my buddy in, uh, in indiana.
Speaker 1:He's been on a few podcasts. Eric, eric jansen we call him the inbred lovingly. He. He is a nut for cigars and whiskey as well. I'm not gonna say to the level you are, but, uh, if he ever came over here, he, you guys, could talk for hours and hours and hours on. You know he does all the tours through kentucky and tennessee and the tastings and he's the one that took me to that fifth third. So I was telling you about outside of indianapolis, which is an amazing place. I was sitting there last winter. Um, we just got done shooting a day of archery. So we just got done shooting, sitting there drinking an old-fashioned, enjoying a cigar. They've got final four on tv. There's a guy in the corner playing a guitar. Everybody's just smoking a cigar and and relaxing. So I thought that was pretty sweet. Sounds like it'd be a good time. It sounds like something that'd be a good time.
Speaker 3:It sounds like something that'd be nice to have around here, but you know, somebody would throw a fit about it. Well, I think the problem with our area is that it's been so long without a good cigar club or without a real gentleman-friendly bar that has a really nice extensive whiskey collection.
Speaker 1:So many of the people who are into this have started their own collection found their own buddies, and I think that COVID had a lot to do with that too.
Speaker 3:We learned how to be so I don't know if a cigar club would would prosper, survive here. Yeah, yeah, I think about it I've thought many times about how to start my own.
Speaker 2:With illinois rules and regulations and the city's rules, it's just really hard to make a sustainable well yeah I mean my buddy took me up to.
Speaker 1:uh, they have a lot of shows at the skylark and uh, in the Quad Cities it's more or less an old church that they refurbished into like a.
Speaker 1:They do weddings in there, lots of concerts, blah, blah, blah. And Farley has had what they call the Quad City Cannabis Club in there and they get together about once a month. They bring in board games. Not a single drop of alcohol is allowed in there, right, but it's. It's a thing for people to go in there and enjoy cannabis together and have conversations, and there's a there's a local guy that's wants to get a cannabis lounge going.
Speaker 2:It wouldn't be any alcohol, that part, you know right. But he wants to get a cannabis lounge going and it's just trying to figure out how to do it legally the ins and outs of it.
Speaker 3:I couldn't imagine I I, jason figured it out up there somehow, but uh I I wouldn't want to think about a lot more welcoming of that they are and they, you know they lean several different directions up there.
Speaker 1:So it's no secret that. Uh, you know that they, they just advertise it's like hey, quad city cannabis club meeting third saturday of the of the month or something you know, and he leaves it up to them. He goes hey, this is great. You know how often you guys want to do this, and there's some people would be like let's do this every week and some folks are like every other month, month you know something.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it is a neat concept. So how Caleb and I hit it off was they showed me the upstairs for throwing shows and I was like I can't believe I've never been up here before, I never even knew this was here, and I still hear the horror stories from decades ago of the floor looking like a a tidal wave yeah, but you got that all cleaned up and then after that we're setting up a show and you start showing me these fat electrician videos oh yeah, like this is the coolest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:It's never a war cry, the first time nope, uh what steel?
Speaker 1:what is the acronym for steel?
Speaker 2:uh, strategically transfer transfer equipment to alternate locations it's just great stuff.
Speaker 1:It's history.
Speaker 3:That's the cool part in his, in his um I really think that that guy could make an amazing history teacher because the way he presents the stuff and I'm sure that on his end he's putting a vast amount of effort into the research Because other people have fact-checked him.
Speaker 1:And they're like yeah, no, that holds up, that's pretty solid.
Speaker 2:Did you watch this? Week's no which one, is it 77th Army? Oh shit.
Speaker 1:Which is the?
Speaker 2:old bastards, but it wasn't. Have you seen Hacksaw Ridge, the movie? Yes, that's 77th Army. Okay, they were also referred to as 77th Marine because they got attached to the Marines in the Pacific Theater and the Marine General was so amazed by them he called them the 77th Marines. Nice. So they had like a 22 to 1 kill to death ratio against the Japanese.
Speaker 3:When the Japanese finally surrendered, they said we'll surrender to any other unit except for these guys. Because they had such a legacy of not taking prisoners and they were afraid they would just be killed by surrendering. So they had to get a bunch of the younger guys in the unit to strip their patches from their shoulders so that the Japanese wouldn't realize that they were part of the 77th. Oh wow.
Speaker 1:And they had to go forward and act like they were from a different unit, just to get these guys to give up. But it's more than just. A lot of it is military stuff, but it's more than that. In a sense he even goes into the evolution of the US postal jeep. Yep and I thought that that was cool as hell, or the cheese stash in Missouri. Yes.
Speaker 3:Breadgate, or the chicken law that prevents you from being able to buy an imported SUV.
Speaker 2:I really liked Breadgate, because I don't like certain politicians, or ice cream in America.
Speaker 1:What are we going to do with all this?
Speaker 2:milk. That's what led to the Dairy Farmers Institute, which the Got Milk campaign, and the billions of dollars, the billions of pounds of cheese.
Speaker 1:We had Seeing Mark McGuire with a milk mustache yeah, it is, and his history is just spot on. I really like watching that.
Speaker 3:I love how many of his own little colloquialisms he's developed, like in the 77th ID. When he's talking about this is the equivalent of dad getting woke up from his nap, and being like alright. I'm just going to dad dick the hell out of this situation and everybody's going to find out now. Because you know, there's a bunch of older guys in the infantry and they were just like we're not here to mess around, we're going to get the job done and go home.
Speaker 2:I really want to take like a Sunday and contact that guy and set up like a. Take my dad to meet him, Cause my dad loves all his videos.
Speaker 1:It'd be fun to do like a do a thing upstairs at the Ritz where, like, we just do a podcast and then open up a panel for people to ask questions.
Speaker 2:Oh, that'd be fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, do something like that. You know what we could do.
Speaker 3:Load up in the excursion and just smoke cigars and roll the excursion can fit a whole panel of people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that'd be a job for the Zoom. Just set it down and start my buddies that do Working Class Bowhunter when they decide they're going to podcast in the truck, they got headset mics. They just throw them on and start rolling. They'll be on their way to a trade show and all their stupid conversations along the way they record there you go.
Speaker 3:I could be up for that, that could be kind of cool, that'd be a blast. Stopping every now and then for everybody running to use the restroom and get another cup of coffee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just because we can, it'd be Caleb and I watching these Fat Electrician videos and then my sister sitting there going. You know he's my friend right? You're not allowed to be friends.
Speaker 2:You can't talk to him. We love you Jess.
Speaker 1:And then she'd look at Steve and she goes he's my friend, you know that right. He goes. I don't think he is anymore. Love you, jess, anyway she's been a huge help for the shows. Yeah she's awesome. She couldn't make the last one just because of, uh, sick kid, but uh that after that last show seth and his girlfriend had to leave, just couldn't make it, and we, we hauled out all the bands and then it was just carly and I tearing down the rest I was like what's going?
Speaker 1:on. So we're upstairs like just trying to think about the show what happened, what went right, what went wrong, what we can do to make it better. You know situational AAR after action review, if you will.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:And so we came up with some ideas for the next one. Came downstairs and you were still there. I don't go anywhere, but I think the shows have gone over. Well, I'm excited to do another one. I just I'm moving towards it slowly because of the summertime and there's so much going on, yep a lot going on. It's not like we've had a whole lot of the college crowd, so it's yeah, it's still worked out, I think.
Speaker 2:I think you'd probably pull about the same crowd as you did.
Speaker 1:Yeah, We'll have to see. I keep getting asked when's the next one? I was like, well, when we can afford it. Because the sponsors have done great.
Speaker 2:I'm really impressed with how well you put everything together and get all the sponsors together and the bands and coordinate everything. People want something different together and all the get all the sponsors together and the bands and coordinate everything.
Speaker 1:Well, people, people want something different.
Speaker 2:Yep, they might not show up, but they want the option.
Speaker 1:They want the option to you know, yeah, if you had a dollar for it for every time someone said they're going to be there and they didn't show up, you'd have a lot of dollars a lot of dollars it's just part of it and you know it running events, running events out of there and how it is.
Speaker 1:But even you've probably seen it driving around campus and stuff just how inclusive things have gotten over the last several years. I mean people still go out to the bars but I don't think it's near as it's not near what it used to be.
Speaker 3:Our party bar culture in this town has definitely come down dramatically from where we once were. I mean, you know pretty much we got two bars that I think are open kind of sporadically, and then there's the Ritz, right you know, and there's the Ritz, there's the ritz, and I remember when I went here as an undergrad there was heck. There had been seven or eight bars where by nine o'clock at night.
Speaker 1:It was one in, one out. Well, you could also walk up and down adam street without the fear of something happening to you yeah, which lately has been, and now there's not even houses on adam street no, they've done a lot to get away from that.
Speaker 1:But there is adam street tattoo. Just just did a podcast with him not too long ago while he was carving into my flesh. Jess is just like. I was actually really impressed by that. She goes that was one of the hardest tat that my sister's covered in tattoos. She's like that's one of the hardest ones I ever got, was on the forearm and you did a podcast through it.
Speaker 2:I I was like well, I don't feel most of my tattoos when I get them. There have been a few that I did, but when I got my big one on my ribs I didn't feel it. My little one on my ribs was when I was younger and still felt most of the pain you become dull to this moment, I really didn't feel anything on this arm, except for one spot. That shouldn't have hurt, and it was right here.
Speaker 1:Where you're burning yourself with your cigar I don't even feel Right here.
Speaker 2:that spot was the only spot on my arm that hurt the whole time.
Speaker 1:Right there where the dark is on the wrist.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're getting really close to some like bones and joints and tendons and stuff.
Speaker 1:There it got to a point Sorry.
Speaker 2:My elbow and the other side didn't feel a bit.
Speaker 1:That's where everybody said it would always hurt when he shaded in right there on the wrist. I mean you could feel it, but my hand started to do you know take my strong hand type Twitching. Started doing some fun stuff, and so johnny finally so that he wouldn't interrupt the podcast finally, with his other hand, grabbed it, pulled it down and then just went on doing his thing. But johnny's also known as one of the tattoo guys in the area that's very good at being light-handed and not hurting you too bad so he's absolutely amazing.
Speaker 3:He's a good artist, so I got a tattoo. I have a matching tattoo with John.
Speaker 1:Years ago I found out I had a heart condition. And I lost a bunch of weight.
Speaker 3:And in the process of it, I started riding a bicycle and John said we got to do something. We got to do something with this. I'm like well, what do you want to do? And he's like listen, I'm a tattoo artist. I can't have matching tattoos with people. This isn't something you do as a tattoo artist, he's like, but I have an idea for a tattoo and I want to get a matching tattoo with you. And I was like all right, well, what are you talking? Many cyclists get a tattoo of? Uh, it looks like a sprocket, like a greasy sprocket on the inside your leg. Okay, your leg touches up against the drive side of the crank and we'll get an imprint from the. The oil that was, you know, left residual on the, on the teeth of the gear, gotcha, and so that's what I have. That's right here. Um, johnny has one in the same place, oh, cool um, I'll have to ask him to be like he did mine you ever have that cheek tattoos with another dude.
Speaker 3:Yeah, there you go he did mine and then one of his co-workers did his, but when I came in to sit down for this, so he has this template out. He's like I had to make your template a lot larger, because I'm a much larger person than johnny and he's like but I got this, I got this idea, I want to try this.
Speaker 3:And I was like, yeah, what's that? And he breaks out this tattoo needle and he's like this is the whitest tattoo needle I've ever seen. He's like and I think I could probably do your tattoo like super fast if you're down for it. And I was like I don't really care how long it takes, but I mean it's cool that you got this. So and and it was done, it was was like what happened?
Speaker 1:Well, these painless tattoos have become a thing now too. I mean, I get it, but it's kind of weird. It's kind of like a rite of passage.
Speaker 2:Part of the enjoyment of a tattoo is the pain.
Speaker 3:Right, I was raised by a sailor. My dad was a career Navy aircraft.
Speaker 1:Well, that explains the cigars and whiskey sort of uh whiskey more than the cigar I got a cigar smoker.
Speaker 3:But uh, I told my dad one time one of the one of the girls that I've worked with, uh, up in michigan at a camp. She had this theory when you want to get a tattoo, you decide what you want and then you wait three years, right, three years later, if you still want it, if you get that tattoo, you won't regret it. And I tell my dad that and immediately before I could even finish the sentence he was like that's bullshit. A tattoo is something you're supposed to get like on a weekend, on a stupid idea when you're half-hammered and you're supposed to regret it.
Speaker 3:It's a rite of passage. It is one of those things where you get it when you're young and you're like, yeah, I don't know if I'll ever do that again. For a lot of people, obviously, it becomes almost a lifestyle. They're going to do it again and again, and again.
Speaker 1:Right, they become addicting. I really think.
Speaker 3:If you're trying to take the pain out of the experience. I mean, the original tattoos were done with bamboo needles, in the South Pacific, you know, and it took like four days and you, you couldn't be drugged, you couldn't, you had to stay conscious and it was a rite of passage, sure to remove the pain from it, I sort of think is like well it's like everything nowadays. Yeah, we're trying to make cheating instant gratification, without the instant gratification without the pain involved.
Speaker 3:The first tattoo I ever got. I got a tattoo blue. I was dating a girl who was friends with the owner of Tattoo Blue and I'd just come back from working on a Native American reservation in South Dakota and one of the last provable male descendants of Crazy Horse, a man named Dewey Bad Warrior, told me that my spiritual guide was a bear and immediately I started laughing because most of my life people compared me to a bear. I snore, I'm loud, I'm big, I forage for food, I'm grumpy. When I woke up like you.
Speaker 1:You named like zero positive qualities of a bear, I think, because I'm noble. No, no, no, I have a wonderful fur coat.
Speaker 2:He's not the good kind of bear.
Speaker 1:We're talking Yoki, we're not talking Blue. When I come back from the res.
Speaker 3:I'm talking to Scott I think that's his name, the owner of Tattoo Blue, and I'm telling him I want to get this tattoo of a bear paw as big as my hand. And he's like just line work. And I was like, just line work. And I was like, well, eventually I want to get filled in, but just line work to begin with. He's like I'll make you a deal.
Speaker 3:I got an artist that hasn't done anybody yet. If you let him tattoo you and you be his first, I'll only charge you for the cost of the materials. So I got a tattoo the size of my hand for like 20 bucks Nice, right. But when I go in to get this tattoo done, liz the girl I'm dating at the time she comes with me and there's this football player from Western, this big black guy, and he's getting this huge black puma on his back Nice. And this guy had been sitting there for like six hours and I was like that is an insane amount of time. And the dude's like turns to me and just says, oh, bro, he's just doing the left paw. Yeah, like it was all down his back, all the way to his belt line of this gigantic puma on his back, and six hours was just the left paw on his left shoulder my first tattoo experience.
Speaker 1:I don't think I've ever told on podcast. I might have but I was at Eureka College and my buddy who was in the same fraternity he's covered in tattoos, you know, from his fingers all the way up to his neck on both sides I started thinking I'd kind of like to get that done. That work looks pretty good. He tells me where it is. It was what's the sketchy one and what's the sketchy one in um peoria the street is that adam street probably impossible.
Speaker 3:It's one of the downtown streets, adam, washington, I don't know jefferson yeah, that's yeah, it's a rough part of peoria okay yeah, I'm talking down on the south side, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I walk into this sketch place and I was like, okay, well, this is what we'll do. It was terribly done, but I told him what I wanted and he did it.
Speaker 3:See, that's part of that rite of passage.
Speaker 1:You go to some shady place in a bad part of town and that's where the good artist is. Yeah, Johnny has covered it up since.
Speaker 2:Was that the deer one? No, that's the.
Speaker 1:Skull with the flag, so wait a minute.
Speaker 3:You went to Eureka.
Speaker 1:What fraternity were you in Teak?
Speaker 3:Zeta, theta 966.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i-1054. Yeah so zeta theta 966, yeah, uh, I 1054, yeah, no. So I go into this sketchy ass tattoo shop and there's this language.
Speaker 3:Are they speaking to each other?
Speaker 1:there. Well, it's two pretty rough white dudes and they're tattooing. And the other dude that's in there, uh, had like a bottle of hennessy and it's in one hand and he's getting the other forearm done and he's got, you know, dreads and gold teeth and the whole works. And we're all just sitting there and getting work done and they get him done. He takes a big old swig of hennessy and I go so what'd you get there, dude? And he Shows it to me and it's this face of a lady and then a dollar bill on the other side and it says M-O-B. I was like what's that mean, dude? He goes money over bitches. I was like you do you bro?
Speaker 1:I'll never forget that as long as I live.
Speaker 3:So one of the guys that I used to know, he had on his chest the name of a woman and then a line through it and it ran down his arm and every time he got a new woman and his wife he scratched it off. Yeah, and it just A line through it and I'm like you realize you're basically advertising that this is a short-lived situation.
Speaker 2:It's not my fault.
Speaker 1:I put her name there. That means it was forever right.
Speaker 3:But just a line through each name. And then it's like by the time I met this guy there was like 26 names coming down his arm. I'm like come on, man.
Speaker 1:It's kind of like moms with the pictures on their back windows. Mom dad, kid, kid, kid, dog, dog windows, mom dad kid, kid, kid, dog, dog Dad gets scraped off. Or you get the one with the family running with a T-Rex that says I don't give a shit about your stick family.
Speaker 2:I think I got about as much of my scar left as you do at this point. Yeah, I spoke like a chimney.
Speaker 1:Oh man.
Speaker 2:But you don't drink at all? Nope, not my thing. I don't do anything that alters my mental state. I've been prescribed different pain meds over the years for injuries and I don't even like taking those, even when I'm in pain, because it I like to be. I like to make sound decisions from a sound state of mind all the time. Right, uh, I want to be fully in control of myself all the time. I don't like the feeling of not being mentally on top of my game like all the time gotcha.
Speaker 1:Um, that sounds stressful to me. Yeah, that's what I'm saying when he says that only that's exactly why I drink that's exactly why I'm trying to get away from this real I have had, I need a mental break.
Speaker 2:I have my entire life had exceptionally uh kind of bad luck. Bad things happen to me and if I was not clear-headed I wouldn't be here. I got you. I've been. I got attacked at Aurelio's one day by some guy I'd never met. I've been. You name it. It's happened to me. So I just kind of always am prepared for something bad to happen.
Speaker 1:Not that I want anybody to get hurt, but if someone in this town is going to get jumped, I kind of half hope it's going to be you, just because I want to see what happens.
Speaker 2:I went there with my buddy Willow and we were eating pizza and I didn't have my contacts in or anything. I will fight you blind. This was like a month and a half before.
Speaker 1:I went in with a walking cane and beat the shit out of somebody.
Speaker 3:I think there was a television show about this one.
Speaker 2:This was like a month and a half before I left for Worlds for Jiu Jitsu the first time. So I am on peak training form. I am in great shape, I'm ready to go. Willow's like Caleb, do you know that guy over there? I look over and there's a guy four tables away standing up. He's got his little girl with him. I look over and I'm like I don't know. He's like dude, he's staring at you. I'm like, well, I don't have my contacts and I can't really see his face. Whatever, we sit there for a couple minutes and willow's like dude. No, he's still staring at you and I'm like I'm gonna bathrooms behind him. I'll go to the bathroom. I'll see if I know the guy when I get close. So I walk up. I get up and I walk past this guy and I'm looking at him and I don't know him and he's.
Speaker 1:I can tell he's staring at me now like he just got his third day chip from anger management or some shit.
Speaker 2:I'm getting close and he's staring at me. I'm like what's up, man? He's like what's up, not much. I go in the bathroom, I get this vibe like this guy's going to follow me into the bathroom. So I'm a foot inside the door getting ready to fucking level the next person that comes through the door and I wait in there for a couple minutes and he doesn't follow me. I'm like okay, just being paranoid. I come out of the bathroom and he's staring at me. I'm like what's up, what's up, okay. So I go sit down. It was like dude, that guy almost followed you into the bathroom. I'm like I thought he was.
Speaker 2:So we're sitting there and I'm watching this guy now and he takes something out of his pocket. I'm like what, the what is this guy doing? And it's a sock. Like why does he have a sock? And he takes the glass salt and pepper shaker off the table, puts them in this sock and wraps it around his hand Like it's a jailhouse club. Yeah, so Willow starts to stand up. Like I stand up, and Willow stay out of my way, like you're just going to get in my way, let me handle it. So I about two tables between us and I sit there and stare at this guy for a minute and he's sitting there swinging this club in his hand and he eventually wanders off and I'm kind of pissed off and the waitress who was a friend of mine comes. I'm like, hey, do you know who that guy was over there? She's like no, like you just stole your salt and pepper shaker off the table. Do you want them back? She's like yeah, I'm like all right, call the cops.
Speaker 2:Wait right here I walk cops, wait right here I. I walk out into the park and as soon as I cross that street, this guy comes running through the park at me. He's got his freaking daughter and as he's approaching, I'm just having this flash in my head of oh, the sherlock holmes compression to ribs throat punch.
Speaker 2:I had trained this one technique for knife and club defense called the makakomi, and I'm seeing this guy run at me. I'm like I'm going to do this. It's go time. It's basically like a sacrifice hip throw. I am going like I'm like I'm going to kill this guy if he does this. And as he's running him up, I'm like if you do this, I'm going to kill you. And he stopped and he stood there for a second like dude, why'd you take the salt and pepper shaker? What's the problem? He's like I took him to hit you with him, like why, I don't even know you? And then the manager walked up and I was like, hey, give him the salt and pepper shaker. So give him the salt and pepper shaker. Cops roll up, they end up arresting the guy guy. And to this day, no idea why I?
Speaker 2:I was told that he and his wife were having problems, but he was gonna beat the shit out of somebody that day. He picked the wrong dude like I'm like talk about the worst lottery choice you've made like I. I was the best I had ever been in that time frame and this guy was gonna try to do something you gotta get be half worried.
Speaker 1:You're getting ready for like a big, like national tournament and this guy is like getting ready to come over and possibly injure you before that happens to be honest, I shouldn't have gone outside, but I was just so hot about. Right, Just trying to get away from the situation. I'm like why?
Speaker 2:is this guy trying to be in a? What is going? I was mad. I shouldn't have made the decision to go outside. We should have just called the cops.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm sure Aurelios really appreciates you, not Patrick? Swayze and somebody through one of their tables.
Speaker 2:But I just the responsible thing to do would have been to call the cops and let, but I was just like no, I'm going to go have a talk with this guy, see what's going on, and it all went bad.
Speaker 1:What's crazy is he's there with his daughter, yeah, and he's obviously got his sock in waiting.
Speaker 3:Who walks around with a sock in their pocket, someone who's getting ready to beat somebody with a salt and pepper shaker?
Speaker 2:We had a guy come into our bar one time and Alex was working and this guy has a pocket knife and a garrote, a piano wire with wooden handles why? And Alex was talking to him and the guy ended up saying he's like, yeah, my ex-girlfriend's on a date next door with a guy. That's why I brought this stuff. So alex immediately took the knife and the groat, which I still own to this day. It's in my house. I'm very happy about that item and like kicked this guy out, called the cops on him.
Speaker 1:Alex handled everything right, but there's some people that make notice how, in both situations, you have more than the ability to hurt and to possibly maim or take care of the situation physically, and you avoided it both times.
Speaker 2:Uh, I fight when it's necessary, not because I don't start fights. If I can avoid a fight, I always will. If I'm all compete in tournaments because that's a controlled safe.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter how good you are, you're showcasing skills, you're not trying to actually kill each other.
Speaker 2:I feel good about my skill set. I feel like I can handle 99.9% of the situation to the rise. But no matter how good you are, something can always go wrong and bad things can happen.
Speaker 1:You can't out-punch a bullet. There's always the X factor my father.
Speaker 3:When I was a kid, my dad was a pretty tough guy. He was in the Navy. He was no stranger to a fist fight. But he always told us as kids no matter how badass you think you are, there's always going to be somebody out there more badass than you and he's not going to tell you how badass he is, he's going to show you. We were teenagers me and a bunch of my buddies. We were all pretty big boys and we were coming back from a junkyard and had stopped off along the way at what was basically a bar. We were shooting pool and hanging out with each other drinking Cokes and you could hear the rumble of Harley Davidson's pull-up. This is the land of the great yellow god, right outside of Peoria and it was a bunch of cat workers on a poker run and before long you hear the rumble of another set of Harleys. And these were a bunch of Komatsu workers and they were not friendly with each other and it took very little time before they were in a big shit-kicking contest in this bar.
Speaker 3:Me and my buddies were all teenagers. We were like 16, 17 years old. So we were doing what good 16, 17-year-old chubby kids would do and just hit in the corners and beside us there was one other person in this bar, mexican fella maybe 5'8", probably nowhere more than about 160, 180 pounds, but wiry and looked like he'd worked his whole life hard. Flannel shirt, blue jeans and a ball cap drinking a Budweiser. And he just minded his own business drinking his beer while these guys were kicking the crap out of each other.
Speaker 1:It's like that part in the Quiet man where they're all beating the shit out of each other and the old boy's just in the corner smoking his pipe the whole time, but then one of them dudes go to punch another dude and pulled back and elbowed that Mexican.
Speaker 3:So he went face down into his Budweiser and he set the Budweiser down on the bar, turned around and punched out the first dude. He saw Drew back and punched out the next dude and as soon as the second dude went to the floor it was like all them dudes were gone. They picked up their buddies and they split and it was just instant silence and the Mexican turns around, slides his ass back up on the bar stool and the bartender slides him a fresh Budweiser.
Speaker 4:And I was like that is the craziest damn thing I think I'm ever going to see in my life.
Speaker 2:And it doesn't even have to be somebody that's more badass than you. You can just get unlucky, and I go into every situation, assuming the person is more skilled than me Chuck Norris.
Speaker 2:I assume they're better than me in every situation. I don't take chances. I don't take people for granted, because when you take people for granted you increase that chance that you get unlucky and something bad happens. But I know full well I could be a thousand times more skilled than somebody and something go wrong and I could still get permanently injured. I could lose. Something bad can happen and I don't want to.
Speaker 3:I use my mind first, talk my way out as best I can right, but it's like the meme we were talking about earlier violence is not necessarily the first option but if fighting is what you choose. You better fight like you're the third monkey on the ramp to know his art and brother, it's starting to rain it's starting to rain.
Speaker 2:My buddy got me a book by Varg Freeborns, the author, and the book's called Violence of Mind and this guy lived a rough life and he teaches a lot of self-defense stuff. But one of his things is yeah, you can stand up for yourself and you can yell at somebody and put them in the place or make a stand, but just know that if you're going to start a confrontation with somebody, you know how far you're going to take it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't know how far they're going to take it that's fair and that could be the one deciding factor the door you open might be that murderer you don't know, and if you're willing to get in a fistfight over it, over it, but they're willing to slit your throat over it.
Speaker 1:You lose, and how many times has it been like somebody at a bar there's a confrontation, someone just okay, we're talking about the, uh, talking about the premise of of con air here but, somebody gets it. It happened in bushnell several years back.
Speaker 2:You know just uh, regular barf right guy hits the ground a little too hard with his head and it happened in uh the quad cities, I think a few years ago, between uh, an 18 year old, the 17 year old and the. The one who did the hitting didn't want to hit the other one. That was like no man, I screwed up, I owe you, punch me, I deserve it, there will be square.
Speaker 1:Punched him, knocked him out his head, hit the ground he died, and so even if you were fighting for the right reasons, like sometimes can happen. Bad things can happen before know it. You're wearing an orange jumpsuit and you're in a C-130 flying above.
Speaker 2:Above Vegas.
Speaker 3:Above Vegas Separate circumstances.
Speaker 2:Anybody who thinks that?
Speaker 1:Why couldn't you just put the bunny back?
Speaker 2:Physical violence isn't potentially lethal. Has no idea how skilled people really are or how bad things could go.
Speaker 1:Several years back, I was in my early 20s and that's back when my uncle was in the electric electrical union in the quad cities and we were going to go out for a few beers and on the way out he goes. Hey, just so. You know, us browns have a tendency to talk a little bit when we've had a few to drink. Might, might not do that tonight. I said, oh okay, no big deal. I don't usually get in fights. He goes. I just know how we can be and I'm letting you know that militant camp trains up here. And so when you think that that little skinny 150 pound dude, you know running his mouth, isn't going to whoop your ass, there's a pretty good chance that he can, because, uh, jujitsu I've heard lovingly referred to as folding laundry with humans still in it people still in it.
Speaker 1:Yep and uh. I kind of like my shirts folded without my corpse inside. I was in the academy.
Speaker 2:One of the guys there with me was one of the coaches for the military academy oh nice and we would go work out a little bit after hours and work out and that guy freaking ragdolled me 99% of the time. Not the guys, the like it is, I have a lot better. I was still getting better then and honestly that time I spit with him opened my eyes and helped me learn so much. But like he was I mean he was a lot bigger than me, but man he was, they were he would. We were doing like kicking drills and I was using tie pads and after like three kicks my forearms were so swollen because he would hit so hard.
Speaker 1:I was like, damn well, I didn't know, like, just how involved into the martial arts world you were, because you don't talk about it much, and I kind of refer that to when I go to a leg or a VFW. The guys that are usually talking and puffing their chest are the ones that you don't normally got to worry about.
Speaker 1:But, maybe that little Mexican during a biker fight is just there. He's seen some shit. He don't want to be in anything and then all of a sudden he has to be and then he clears the bar room. Those are the guys I worry about, the guys that don't talk about it.
Speaker 2:I don't want people to know what they're getting into. I want them to underestimate me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, the joke is, when you see a group of really large gentlemen walking around, it's the little dude in the group that you have to watch out for, because big guys seldomly ever end up in a fight situation. Because most people aren't like I'm going to pick the biggest guy in the room and go try to fight him If I grab that dude, a big dude.
Speaker 1:if he gets you to the ground, it's over.
Speaker 3:But it's the little dude amongst those big guys who's usually the one who's like had to basically prove himself, usually the guy who's more prepared to prove himself.
Speaker 2:Luckily prove himself. Usually the guy is more prepared to prove himself. Luckily. I'm kind of like a big guy in a little man's body, and the irony is that Caleb, amongst all of our mutual friends, is probably the smallest person.
Speaker 3:I hang out with Me and two of our buddies pulled the 727 at a Ronald McDonald House fundraiser. We waited a tractor event, the three of us together at over 1200 pounds. So when I say me and Caleb got big buddies, I mean like the world's strongest professional power lifter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he benches over 1,000 pounds. Yeah, who's this? Bart Z, bart Z, look him up on YouTube.
Speaker 3:We're talking like a guy that when he's underneath the bar, the bar looks like it's bending around him out because there's that much weight on it and there's dudes that look like they could bench press Mack trucks on each side of him as safeties to help if anything were to go wrong, because he's lifting that much weight.
Speaker 2:He's one of three people to bench over a thousand pounds in competition.
Speaker 3:This guy used to race people with a harness on, hooked to a fire truck, uphill yeah. No, thank you and so I'm telling you, when you see us hanging out together, none of us are looking for a fight I've never. I've never found a fight. I'm not, I'm the big, loud, jovial guy. The worst thing that's ever happened is somebody's been like hey, you, you're too loud and I'm like I'm gonna buy you a drink and how, everything's cool I don't have a sock in my pocket.
Speaker 3:I'm not anybody's salt and pepper shakers. I'm looking to avoid a fight at all, let's avoid.
Speaker 1:Let's avoid mexican restaurants where they put the salsa containers and shit out on the table because that's gonna be a dangerous sock. Right there was. I mean, was it an ankle sock? Was a tube sock?
Speaker 2:it was one of those nice, decently sized just like a regular crew sock.
Speaker 3:Yeah, all right, friend you uh, you've had your in a skill and wine finish and you said that you're not really into scotch because it's too dry.
Speaker 1:Oh, what scotch are we pulling out? For oh we're going to try some scotch. You are, yes, oh, I am, you're not.
Speaker 3:I'm going to ask you a few questions to help kind of dial in what I think might be a scotch you'd enjoy. So do you like smoked barbecue? Absolutely. You like smoky foods then.
Speaker 1:I'm not communist, so we'll say yes, goddamn right, we don't boil our meat in the land of red, white and blue.
Speaker 3:Damn it. When I went to Russia for Worlds.
Speaker 2:the food was horrible. It was literally like boiled fish cutlets boiled meat cutlets Horrible.
Speaker 1:Get your communism sucks shirt, yet I need to Sorry.
Speaker 3:There's a small island off the coast of Scotland and it's where all the smoky scotches come from. This is I-S-L-A-Y Islay, islay Scotches, okay Okay, and I'm a personal fan of Ardbeg, all right. Okay, ardbeg does not respect your safe word, all right, this is a very smoky scotch. Alright.
Speaker 3:So we're going to try. I'm going to pour myself a glass. And I'm going to let you smell it and we're going to see what you think you're up for. Which one do you want? Why don't you find me? Either the Corey Vrecken I knew it was going to be the Corey Vrecken or Heavy Vapors.
Speaker 1:Love me a nice sip of whiskey with a cigar. You had a really good cigar topic a little bit ago because I, kind of shamefully, came down here and said my favorite cigar is an acid that you can get about anywhere Well in any most cigar shops. Just because I, like, came down here and said my favorite cigar is an acid that you can get, you know about anywhere well in any most cigar shops, just because I like the flavor of them and stuff. And I I was like, yeah, I like to smoke my acids around my cigar snob friends who tell me not to smoke the infused ones.
Speaker 3:But you were talking about how acid cigars really had a role to play in the cigar market yeah, there was a a point when cigars were basically in a huge slump, sales-wise Sure, when people our age were basically just reaching the point where we could buy a cigar and not get yelled at by our parents.
Speaker 2:What was the other one you wanted to be able to look for? Um, it's heavy vapors, wee beasties.
Speaker 3:It'll be in a box as well, just like that box. It's right at the tip of my tongue, oogadel.
Speaker 1:It's going to be that one or that one.
Speaker 3:Oogadel, get the Oogadel, oogadel.
Speaker 2:Oogadel, the two at the back of the tin hard bags I have to pull out.
Speaker 3:I'm sorry they're not more. It might be.
Speaker 1:Why do you have?
Speaker 2:so much whiskey and scotch Luke Jeez, because life is short, you want the Oogdell? Oh, is that what I have? Yeah, I got the Oogdell.
Speaker 3:This is the cord record, anyways, cigars. So, um, jonathan Drew is quite often tributed with saving the cigar industry because his infusions, like the Acid Line, introduced a lot of the people of our generation to a cigar that they could enjoy, that wasn't just deep leather and earth and tannins and all the things that most cigar smokers would enjoy, make your mouth taste like a dirty sock. Yeah yeah, but they had these infusions that were herbs and I don't know what goes into an acid I don't think anybody does but it makes it more aromatic.
Speaker 3:It makes it more almost like floral smelling right and I think that made it more approachable. For a lot of people, and so a lot of people from our generation, their first cigar was an acid, and what a lot of people don't realize, though, is that right now, some of the most premium cigars in the market that aren't infused are also made by jonathan drew gotcha.
Speaker 3:You know, I mean you talk about uh, league of bravado and some of these other companies. They're making gorgeous cigars. They're they're wonderful high-end cigars. Some of the most unobtainable ones are coming out of Drew Estate. Hmm.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought that was interesting when you brought that up earlier. All right, so my history of cigars is watching Grandpa Chew on a wood tip Swisher Sweet most of my childhood, until he had a heart attack and then they told him he couldn't anymore. All right, so smell this.
Speaker 3:This is not as smoky as some art bags, but definitely way smokier than probably most of the stuff you've ever come up against before.
Speaker 1:That's smoky.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So what do we think? Do we like smoky or no? Yeah, I like smoky, you like smoky? Alright, so try some Ooga Dough Now. I would encourage you, though, to try a very small pour, because we're going to dial in what kind of scotch you like, and if you go for a nip of this and you're like, nope, you're not going to offend me, because a lot of people describe this as a tire fire in a bottle or mermaid's bath water. What happens if you burn a hospital down? Because a lot of people say it smells like Band-Aids and iodine.
Speaker 2:But Scotch always tastes like andesol.
Speaker 3:And that's very common. That's very common for a lot of people to say that. So you just kind of you really have to sit with it and you really have to process it. But I think for most people you'll know in the first small pour is that where you are right now in your journey and you might not be, but it doesn't mean you won't be at some point.
Speaker 2:If you're taking like going for smoky scotch, I figure you would have gone for Lagavulin, or Well, but the thing is that I don't know as much about.
Speaker 1:It's a very interesting aftertaste.
Speaker 3:Ardbeg has a lot more of a sherry influence than a lot of the.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, you can definitely tell the sherry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, a lot more of a sherry influence than a lot of the Lagavulin's and LaFroix's. Lagavulin and LaFroix is like you want the scotch to make your cigar seem like it's not smoky. This is smoky, but it also has a very sweet, deep, sherry-cast influence on it.
Speaker 3:Gotcha, and that's why I would say this is a good one to start out with, an Isla for somebody who's trying to determine whether or not, especially like yourself who said most scotches to me seem kind of dry Right, the more sherry influence you get in it, the less dry it's going to be, the more it's going to have those like raisins and plums and deep sweetie fruit kind of flavor.
Speaker 2:I love listening to people describe different alcohols, because I don't drink, so I don't. When I do drink something with alcohol, all I taste is the alcohol. But listening to what people describe it and then being able to take that to work and make sales based off kind of like being downwind of that really hot group of girls you know you're not gonna have a chance. Strange place there. I mean you might not have a chance, but I'm not chuck norris, so so what do we think you?
Speaker 3:you like the smokiness I.
Speaker 1:I do like the smoky. It's still got that scotchy kind of aftertaste to it.
Speaker 2:That's a little weird Ambasol. It tastes like Ambasol to me. Have you ever had Ambasol?
Speaker 1:I don't think so, so it's this medicine. Okay hit pause. What was that freaking shot you made me take? Malort. That was the worst thing I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 3:That's the whole point of the whiskey bar up in princeton that has a uh chili, uh cook-off competition and you can be a judge. All you have to do is fill out the form to be a judge and do a shot of more to prove you're really into it yeah, not worth it exactly, and that's the thing. Like you have to have some stone.
Speaker 1:Well, knowing Caleb, he makes it sound like it's a rite of passage. Everybody should have to do it once.
Speaker 3:Kind of like getting a tattoo without you know.
Speaker 1:So I'm like all right, lay one on me, are you sure? And then the other guy that was there, he was telling me you know what it tastes like. I said, no, there, he was telling me you know what it tastes like. I said, no, he goes, put a handful of asian beetles in your mouth, chew it, swish it around and then, like, take a shot of vodka.
Speaker 3:That's what it tastes like, and he wasn't wrong. What the hell are you doing? Putting asian beetles in your mouth to know what that tastes like?
Speaker 1:no, but you know how they smell sometimes things get crazy sometimes you just gotta them who's?
Speaker 2:boss, oh, you're going to crawl on my windows, Fuck you.
Speaker 3:I was in a real bad car accident when I was 25. Okay, and spent a very long fall sitting on my parents' front porch. This is right after I got into cigar smoking. Okay, and so every day I would go sit out there and I would have I'd bring out this is probably going to sound kind of sissy-like, but I'd sit out there with a pot of tea, hot tea, different kinds of tea and drink tea and smoke a cigar and relax. Couldn't really move much because I basically broke my hip.
Speaker 2:And them damn little beetles were everywhere, so I'd take a puff of my cigar and I remember riding one summer when the beetles were really bad and it felt like I was getting hit in the face by needles when those things would hit me. It was bad.
Speaker 1:Well, I haven't had a motorcycle since Japanese beetles became a thing.
Speaker 2:Well, I also love that guy that doesn't wear a helmet when I don't have to.
Speaker 3:When you go out on 1500 by Spring Lake, there's that big-ass dip. Yep, okay, so I was riding back. This is back when I got in all that cycling with Johnny Olsen and everything. I'm riding back from my first major big ride 50 miles in one day. I am chafed, I am wore out, I am sunburnt, I had my ass kicked and I zip down that hill and as I get to the bottom, before I could even realize what my eyes were processing, there was a cloud of Junebugs.
Speaker 3:Nice, and I ride through this cloud of Junebugs before I can even think to close my mouth.
Speaker 3:Now I have Junebugs in my mouth, I have dune bugs all over my shirt, I have dune bugs in my hair and I'm attempting to like, because when you ride, especially through a dip, you go at it with everything. You have to get as much speed as you can, because then inertia will carry you up the first third of the hill and then you throw every gear you have at it until you can tractor your way up to the top up the hill, trying to knock all these damn things off my shirt and spit them out of my mouth, clear them out of my hair and then I'm walking the bike up the rest of the hill and in a situation where you're at the tail end of a 50 mile ride, like seven, eight miles from being home, and you're just absolutely wore out. I got to the top of the hill and there's a part of me that was like do I sit here and cry for a little while, like that was so it sounds like an interaction from, slimer Interaction from.
Speaker 3:Slimer Ghostbusters.
Speaker 1:It's terrible. What'd?
Speaker 3:you do, ray, the first major long-distance motorcycle trip I'd taken. I had a full-face helmet on and I was riding up to Chicago. And I was up around the Princeton area somewhere. I had it in one of the little towns and I smacked a bug. I don't know what the hell it was, but I was easily doing about 65 miles an hour when I hit this bug. The whole damn bug just blew up across my shield. I've had that. Green slime and shit everywhere. I've had that.
Speaker 1:It's miserable.
Speaker 2:I saw my way out of heading up to Chicago and I wasn't very far out of town. I was like, just get like before you get to where you have to slow down for good hope, and I saw this bird fly across the road. It took a shit and I literally see it you try to turn your head like and it like it, like curved in the air mother nature's just like hey, remember that thing you did a while back.
Speaker 3:We're always joking about how they're looking for our car to shit on them, but in reality I bet you they're looking for motorcycles Dead.
Speaker 2:Hit on my glasses Like how.
Speaker 1:What's that Robot chicken where the two birds are sitting in the trees? Like I gotta go, papa he goes. Okay, we gotta think about it. Where are we gonna go? He goes over there. He's like on some old lady feeding squirrels. Nope, not there, son. Well, how about over there? And then, lastly, he looks over at this boy Wearing a snorkel in the pool. There, papa he goes.
Speaker 3:Now you're learning oh, that's awful, all right, so have you finished your art bed finished? No, no, come on, man, you didn't even have that much oh, gracious realize I'm like running a three to one. Count on you right now. I and I'm good with that I got all these extra bottles. That's what she said. You're a seasoned veteran.
Speaker 1:That's what she said All right, you know my wife. The only thing she says is yeah middle finger.
Speaker 2:Remember to return the favor when she gets home. Tell her hi from me.
Speaker 3:So I got three scotches for you to try. Oh God, that was Isla. Okay, and now we're going to go to Speyside, and a lot of people, when they think Speyside, they think Glenfiddich or Glenlivet.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, those are probably one of the more notable scotches Say that again. Just the brand.
Speaker 3:Yeah, those are the brands, okay, and Glenfiddich and Glenlivet are the Glens. Most of the Glens are from Isla. Sorry, not Isla Space Eye. Space Eye has very similar flavor profiles to Isla, with the exception of the smokiness. Okay, because you're literally by the ocean. So they get a lot of the sea salt, briny, iodine-like flavor to them, but they are very heavily sherry-influenced as well, gotcha. They are very heavily sherry influenced as well, gotcha. One of my favorite space side scotches, however, in my opinion has little to no of the iodine salty brininess in it and and that's going to be abelour, all right, a-b-e-r-l-o-u-r yep, you're back.
Speaker 3:You're back on the clock here yep, and we're looking for the abelour 12th. If you start him on anything else, he's going to be unhappy with us. So not that one, not that one.
Speaker 1:Not that one.
Speaker 3:he says that's the Abelard Abunar, which in Gaelic means the original.
Speaker 2:Let's start sorting these hundred bottles.
Speaker 3:In 1978, they're doing plant renovations and they find a bottle hidden like a time capsule on a wall.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 3:And the workers begin drinking it and the master distiller catches them and seizes the bottle away and reverse engineers the late 1800s recipe of Avalor into what is now the Avalor Avanon, released every four years in a different batch. It is cask strength and it is one of the most voluptuous, heavy, strong-flavored whiskeys I own. You said the 12?
Speaker 1:12.
Speaker 3:12. Got it. It is not something you're going to want to start out on 12.
Speaker 1:I'm going to pet a dolphin.
Speaker 3:Avanar, I would liken to Stagg.
Speaker 1:Okay, have you ever had Stagg yeah?
Speaker 3:So Stagg has that, that deep cherry kind of flavor.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You get a lot of that same flavor from the Avanare, but to me it's almost got like a waxy cherry chapstick, sort of like flavor mouth cleanness to it. It's hard to explain, but it's very high in alcohol content and once again it'll rip your balls off.
Speaker 1:It's not something you want to chill with that scotch doesn't know. His wife already did I go but the 12th had to get his punch in there the 12 is just always in my opinion, this is one of the classic examples of a good gentleman's scotch.
Speaker 2:Good gentleman's scotch, so not made for people like us Well.
Speaker 3:I resemble that remark.
Speaker 1:Got any big events coming up for the Ritz Caleb?
Speaker 2:We have another music trivia night coming up the 27th.
Speaker 1:Another fundraiser We'll be doing a music trivia in Bushnell that night.
Speaker 2:Oh, are you. That's unfortunate.
Speaker 1:The Firemen's. They're having Decade of Decadence. That night, the really good hair band.
Speaker 2:We were supposed to do it sooner, but scheduling conflict, so that might be more than I need.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was actually watching you pour that and I thought man, maybe he really isn't trying to drive home.
Speaker 3:No, I'll be good Many of my friends that have drank with me before like to make jokes, and I'm not trying to sound like I'm some sort of super badass drinker, but I'm a very large guy.
Speaker 1:Well, you're a seasoned professional. I'm just seasoned.
Speaker 2:He's a professional and he's large.
Speaker 3:It's one of those things where I have to warn a lot of people Don't try to drink like I'm drinking.
Speaker 1:That is very good. You like that. That is very good. I would definitely buy a bottle of that someday, and that's not terribly expensive.
Speaker 3:You're probably looking at between $40 to $60.
Speaker 1:That's not terrible. I mean, you're already spending almost $30 on a bottle of Jameson.
Speaker 3:Yeah, right Now here's the. Thing. As a Jameson drinker, I have something for you to experience that I think you'll really enjoy. Okay, and it's a scotch, all right. Okay, and that is the Aberfeldy. Well, we'll wait on that for a while the main distillery used in the Dewar's line Okay. It is basically the base of most Dewars.
Speaker 3:Okay, it is a Highland scotch, now Highland. Less sherry influence, if any at all. None in the Aberfeldy, to my understanding, and you're going to get a lot more of the malty sweetness. That's that flavor profile that you experience when you have Irish whiskeys.
Speaker 1:I got you.
Speaker 3:Okay, so small pour Try it, but then after that I do have, if you're up for it, one more whiskey. Okay, we'll see.
Speaker 1:If you want more than that, I do have, if you're up for it.
Speaker 3:One more whiskey. Okay, we'll see If you want more than that.
Speaker 1:I have a lot more than that.
Speaker 3:I have one more whiskey you've got to try.
Speaker 1:You've got to protect the innocent.
Speaker 3:But we're going to come back to America for that last one, america. A little rebel yell. No, no have you ever had an Ambarana finish? No, all right. So Ambarana is a wood from, I believe, brazil, but it's South America. Okay, all right, and this is going to blow your mind. Okay, so there's nothing extra added to this whiskey. It is literally just finished in an Ambarana cask. This is the Starlight Huber, the brown label you see up there, third one over, and it is their cigar blend.
Speaker 1:I like how you've got like a handful of bottles that are, you know, in that $100 ballpark. I mean you've got a handful, like you said, that you've got stored away that are a little more expensive than that. But you're not out just trying to find the most expensive, You're trying to find variety.
Speaker 3:Oh, I'm going to tell you right now one of my most favorite scotches. Have you ever heard of Famous Grouse?
Speaker 1:Yes, Actually I have.
Speaker 3:It's one of the most bar-sold scotches in Scotland. It's just blended scotch. It's nothing fancy but it's just a fair representation of blended scotch. But they make one called Naked Malt. Heavy, heavy sherry influence, very heavy sherry influence. Gotcha, I love it. $20 to $30 a bottle it's cheap, wow, yeah. And the thing is honestly, I would compare it to the I'd say it's basically like the little brother to the Dalmore Cigar Malt, which is $175 to $200 a bottle. Jeez, yeah, you get very similar flavor profiles and I've heard that the Naked Malt is a blend of malts. There's no grain whiskey going into that, just malt whiskey, you understand the difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 3:So Naked Malt's amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, we went, went. When Carly and I honeymooned, we actually went on a wine trail.
Speaker 1:I know that's a whole different ball game oh no, I like wine too but you go and you have a little taste of everything and decide you know what your palate likes, what it doesn't. With me wine, you have enough of it. Then you get a belly ache. That's just kind of how it is for me. And then once we went to a couple places that had um port wines, the, the brandy infused that's where I started to really really enjoy wines. Was the. My favorite is still out of alto vineyards in southern illinois. It's called the guido. Okay, it is so good.
Speaker 3:Well, if you like, uh, fortified wines, that's your, your brandies, and, uh, your sherries and your ports. Right, you know, these are basically the, the liquor of choice of the founding fathers. Yes, um, I have a selection of some of those. Yeah, um, but, that, honestly, should probably be a whole different.
Speaker 1:That's a whole different day. It's a whole different morning.
Speaker 3:But I'll tell you when you go to a wine tasting, do they teach you?
Speaker 1:how to trill. Some places do, some places don't. Some places teach it well, some places don't.
Speaker 3:But you do know how.
Speaker 1:You do know how to trill the wine. How would you describe trilling the wine so?
Speaker 3:I'm just going to go through the whole process. It's not just trilling to me, so you start out. You see assholes swirling the glass.
Speaker 1:Right checking for the legs. I don't care about the legs.
Speaker 3:But if you swirl it, you're opening it up, you're oxidizing the wine, you're freeing up some of those free alcohols that are on your nose.
Speaker 3:And you're getting the aromas out of it.
Speaker 3:And now you stick your nose down in the glass and you take a deep snort and really bring it back into your olfactory and then go back to swirling and that sort of primes that olfactory and gets it ready for what's about to happen.
Speaker 3:Then you take your sip and you swirl it all around the inside of your mouth like a mouthwash that coats everything, because you have four some, some argue, five different flavors. Well, you have 64 distinct different smells, and that's where trilling comes in, gotcha. Now, after you swirl that all around your mouth, you drop your tongue down in your mouth and make a pool of wine in the bottom of your mouth, purse your lips open and breathe in slowly and evenly over that pool of wine and all of the vapors roll up the back of your palate into your olfactory. You can usually tell if you've got it right, if you've never done it before, because immediately you're going to get this obnoxious tickling effect on the back of your nose and almost want to sneeze and then sit on it, shut your eyes, don't talk, chill for a moment and allow your brain.
Speaker 1:It's just a process To process Gotcha.
Speaker 3:And it's almost like you smell. You know what petrichor is? No, you do, but you don't. Petrichor is that smell of dirt in the air after a rainstorm. Oh, gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 3:And that's one of the first things I noticed. The first time I ever effectively drilled a wine, it was petrichor, the smell of the dirt in the air after a rainstorm, and it's almost like you can smell. And I know this sounds funny, but to me I felt like I could almost smell the sunshine in the petrichor after a rainstorm on this particular wine that I was trilling. And that's what turned me on to wine Gotcha. And I mean, like Bourbon, real Talk is one of my favorite YouTube channels, okay, and Randy, the guy who runs it, he was into wine first and he talks about how, basically, the wine led to the whiskey, because you know, wine has so many intricate flavonoids, compounds, flavors, smells, but whiskey's that. But like the ACDC rock and roll version of it, like louder turned up, almost to the point that you have to sit with a really good whiskey if a little pour isn't enough.
Speaker 3:You know if you take one of these glasses, these Glencairns, and you turn it sideways. If it doesn't spill out, that's the appropriate pour. Ah gotcha, if you take a balloon snifter, like you see people drinking cognac out of, or brandies, it's the same thing. When you turn the glass 90 degrees sideways, it should almost spill out and that's the appropriate size pour. And then when you sit here and you swirl it and you smell it and you left nostril it, right nostril it open your mouth. If you don't open your mouth, it has the same effect as rolling down the the front windows in a car when you're driving in the wind and you hear that, yeah, and then you open the back windows and it goes away.
Speaker 1:Your mouth is the back windows. I could say that, like in a half-assed way, I kind of experience the same thing, because one of my favorite things to do is if I just got a few bucks but I'm feeling a port wine, and I just go into a Hy-Vee or a liquor store and the bottle just says port and it's $13 there's nothing wrong with that, but my favorite thing to do is just sit there with like a box of Andy's mints and drink that to each their own just like a good York mint or something, and then drink some port wine.
Speaker 1:It's amazing.
Speaker 3:So the wine cellar here in town, right, the guy who originally opened it up, dave. I used to walk past that every day on my way back from grad school and I would stop in there and have a drink. He was the first guy that ever introduced me to port, and when he poured me my first port ever, it was a tawny port, okay, yeah. And he sets it down in front of me and he hands me one of those little dove chocolates Yep. And he said I want you to try it With a dark chocolate, yeah. And then I want you to eat the chocolate slowly, let it melt, really enjoy it and then try the port Yep, and the way that it it's like it catalyzes something in your palate so that you can notice things you couldn't notice before. Right, it really changes the enjoyment. So I don't know what mince did for you, but I can see why that might be your thing.
Speaker 1:Well, I like mince to begin with. But have you ever had cream sherry, yes, okay. Have you ever had harvey's bristol cream? I probably haven't. I don't normally go into the store looking for a bottle of sherry, I guess if you like poor right I'm amazed you're not more into sherry. I probably would be if I experienced it more, but I just haven't maybe before you leave.
Speaker 3:We need to get out, oh man, maybe before, okay. So I'm telling you, like, as far as I'm concerned, there's sherry right cream, sherry and then there's harvey's bristle cream. Okay, like I'm not trying to make a Harvey's Bristol cream commercial, but you can't find it in this town. I had a friend of mine that happens to have access to the ability to get his hands on larger orders of liquor. Get me a case of it. That's how much I like it. I still have probably a half a dozen or more bottles of Harvey's Bristol cream laid back because I can't find it in town anymore.
Speaker 3:Right, my dad was a big fan of cream sherry and I mean I'll drink it in a snifter. I'll drink it on the rocks. Yeah, A cream sherry on the rocks with a slice of orange.
Speaker 1:Yes, now you're venturing into the old-fashioned world where I okay, I'm gonna tell you really love a good old-fashioned if you like, an old-fashioned you gotta try a smoked old-fashioned yep, have you ever had?
Speaker 3:one. Yep, now we might have to call the. Call the old lady up and see if she'll make an old-fashioned. My wife makes an amazing old-fashioned. We get candied orange slices from trader joe's okay, so it's like the whole slice of orange that has been so heavily saturated in. My wife makes an amazing old-fashioned. We get candied orange slices from Trader Joe's Okay, so it's like the whole slice of orange that has been so heavily saturated in sugar that you can eat it like a piece of candy. Rind it off Nice yeah. And then we get the cocktail cherries from Walmart they're the nicest cherries that I've found that straddle the line between the real high-end. What are they? The Lux, the line between the real high-end. What are they? The Lux, or whatever.
Speaker 1:The real fancy ones. The real fancy ones that are like $25 a bottle.
Speaker 3:I ain't got the kind of budget for that all the time, but I'm not trying to buy the cherries that are meant to go on your ice cream sundae either for my cocktails. So the cocktail cherries from Walmart have to me the nicest blend between being a little bit nicer than the sundae cherries but not quite spending $25 a bottle. A couple of those cherries and one of those orange wheels. And you take the glass and I got a piece of oak from the Amish sawmill and we burn that with a torch until it starts to ignite and then set the glass down on top of the burn spot and let it fill full of smoke and then you pour your old-fashioned into that?
Speaker 1:yeah, you, I've seen. Uh, the what's the big glass that they set over the? Top of it with the burning wood yeah yeah, I I've only had that a couple of times, but it definitely pops the smoky flavor well, I'm telling you, man, right now, I wish andy was here.
Speaker 3:Shout out to dr mixology um, have you been to one of andy's events? I have not, oh my god we're trying to make some amazing stuff yeah like this guy is like going through the the annals of of cocktail history, looking for weird ass stuff you or I would never consider and then finding the materials to make it at home.
Speaker 2:Thomas Jefferson's milk punch yeah, for real.
Speaker 3:Just weird stuff you would never think of. And when he's done you understand why this was part of the history of cocktail making. You're like holy cow. That is so amazing.
Speaker 1:And he makes a smoked cherry old-fashioned that sounds amazing yeah.
Speaker 3:I'm telling you man. I wish he was here. He will be eventually.
Speaker 1:You should be here. Another, you're talking about the sugar on the wedge on one of Neil Armstrong and I's podcasts, which he chickened out to no big deal. He's actually on the pitch for the Wiu soccer game today, so very nice so shout out to him.
Speaker 1:But we were talking about the kalishnikov shot that we used to do when we were overseas. It was literally just vodka, uh, a lime wedge and like really thick granulated, uh, brown yeah, and they would dump a little bit of the vodka on there. They'd set it on fire so it didn't caramelize. Yeah. You'd blow it out, take the shot, shove the lime in your mouth. It was actually really good.
Speaker 3:No, it actually sounds like it would be. I mean, I really do believe that it would be because alcohol, that's. The neatest thing about alcohol is that alcohol strips out flavonoids and things that your tongue can't detect without alcohol being there, that's fair and so those essential oils from that line and some of the complex flavors of that caramelized sugar yeah well, yeah, I bet that would be pretty darn good now I understand why that periodic table's in the bar one of my favorite ways I don't drink vodka anymore regularly.
Speaker 3:No one of my favorite ways. I don't drink vodka anymore regularly no one of my favorite ways of drinking vodka was to buy like the nicest vodka I could afford.
Speaker 3:And I'm not talking like juice or something, yeah put in a cocktail shaker with just the green of the lime, one inch by about three to four inches, okay, so a big ribbon of it, put it in the cocktail shaker and you let it sit with the vodka for just maybe a minute or two or three, shake it vigorously and strain it out into a chilled martini glass Nice. And what you end up with because it gets that vodka so cold you can't really even notice the alcohol is. It tastes almost like a very subtle lime water and the next thing you know you're shit-faced and you're waking up in Iowa having to look for mail to figure out where the hell you ended up so.
Speaker 3:Tuesday, tuesday, yeah, tuesday.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a Bacardi 151 type of night. I almost watched one of our fraternity brothers burn down our house doing that one night, because when you blow that out you've got to do to do it like eye level, otherwise you blow down on it. It goes all over the beer punk table and you set it on fire.
Speaker 3:Not that I've don't have a video of that somewhere I don't think I can remember ever setting alcohol on fire.
Speaker 1:I'm glad I never tried no, I don't think he was trying too hard either. It was just trying to blow out the flame off the top of the shot, and the shot went everywhere. Anyways, now this has been fun. We'll be doing this. We'll have to just make this a series of sorts on the Macomb League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
Speaker 2:Legendary Luke Cigar Club Luke Cigar. Club. Legendary.
Speaker 1:Luke Cigar Club Legendary Luke Cigar Club. Hold on. Hold on Cigar Club Legendary Luke Cigar Club Legendary Luke.
Speaker 3:Cigar Club. Oh, he's got the mug and everything. For Christmas, I got everybody a mug printed up Caleb would come up with the idea of calling it Legendary Luke Cigar Club. So here you've got to see this.
Speaker 3:So I started out by explaining what I look like to an AI engine, and then I explained what my wife looked like to an AI engine and then I'd done something for Andy's Dr Mixology thing, so I added a cartoon image of him. But then it come time to get Caleb right, and at this point I'd been explaining shit to an AI engine for so long that I was frustrated as all hell. So I just say to the AI engine Jason Statham, younger, with tattoos smoking his cigar and boom, I got Caleb.
Speaker 1:That's fair. You're going to have to send me that. That's definitely going to be the podcast art well, I got it in digital format. I'll send it to you well, thanks, guys, for this experience.
Speaker 2:We'll be doing it again, I'm sure yeah, anytime, like honestly, I was kind of like worried about how the vibe would, but it was just like a normal Saturday. We would just have a conversation and that's what people have never done podcasts before.
Speaker 1:I've done a handful of people that have never been on podcasts and they're all nervous and jittery, like I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know what I'm going to say. It's like dude, we literally have a conversation and I turn on the microphone.
Speaker 2:This is every Saturday.
Speaker 3:This is kind of how it's come about. I told these guys a while back I think this would make an awesome podcast our conversations because they're about stuff that I think most men can identify with, but not over the top.
Speaker 1:It's just neat, it's interesting Well and we've talked about community within the conversation. We've talked about ethics trying not to beat the shit out of somebody when they deserve it, knowing that you full well could kill somebody. History with our different brands of alcoholic drink and cigar consumption and how fast Caleb can smoke a cigar.
Speaker 2:Which you noticed how fast that went down. And we talked about how some people aren't very good best friends to us because they don't show up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know. I'd like to point out that you and I smoked a cigar that was probably 48 ring gauge and maybe about 7 inches long.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Caleb smoked a 10 by 66 to the nub I've got a picture you or I could it'll go up uh, a regular size churchill cigar like that's kind of ridiculous. He's the reason why I bought this filtration, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Speaker 1:I can't think of a better way to end it. So yeah, we'll be doing this again. Check out the luke's legendary cigar episodes. We'll just make this number one and that'll be kind of like the timber fest chronicles. We'll just have a luke's legendary cigar uh chronicle I like it Excellent. All right, Thanks guys, Appreciate it Thanks buddy.
