Guardian Angels On Two Wheels with Token Squid

A loud motorcycle, a quiet plaque, and a promise: we will remember. Maria sits down with Token Squid—executive director, veteran, storyteller—to unpack a mission that’s as simple as it is hard: show up for Gold Star families in person and keep their loved ones’ legacies alive. No scripts. No bureaucracy. Just miles, presence, and the right words at the right time.

We explore what a Gold Star family truly is and why visibility still lags, illustrated by a father who learned his own status in a parking lot. Token shares the moment a grieving mother heard, “That was a sniper’s bullet from 7,000 miles away,” and tore up her suicide note later that day. The conversation tackles PTSD without euphemism, challenges the “22 a day” statistic with lived examples of misclassified deaths, and explains why he refuses to call it a disorder. We also address Stolen Valor, how seasoned vets identify impostors, and why protecting the integrity of service matters for real families in pain.

Road stories keep the stakes human. A miracle engine code forces a 15 mph crawl across empty New Mexico, likely saving his life when a rear wheel bearing had failed; a tow driver named Alex donates a $3,000 haul after hearing the mission. We zig into history—Vietnam’s homefront loss, Desert Storm’s tempo, and an ancestor pulled from a Civil War mass grave who limped home and built a life—because memory is the work. Along the way, humor keeps the sadness from taking over, a patch (“My DD214 can kick your MBA’s ass”) becomes a fundraiser, and a plaque with Lincoln’s words becomes a bridge between grief and pride.

If service, sacrifice, and remembrance matter to you, join us. Listen, share with someone who needs hope, and help the Gold Star Ride Foundation keep riding: donate at goldstarride.org. And if this conversation moved you, subscribe, leave a review, and tell us which story stayed with you most.

Connect with Token Squid:

Facebook Page: @Gold Star Ride Foundation

Instagram: @goldstarride

LinkedIn: @AnthonyPrice

Website and Donate: https://www.goldstarride.org/

YouTube: @cafceo

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Mission Of The Show
• 0:59 Token Squid Introduces His Work
• 2:08 What A Gold Star Family Means
• 2:49 Why We Show Up Loud On Motorcycles
• 4:48 The Gold Star Mom At Lunch
• 7:37 Carrying Grief With Dark Humor
• 10:45 Stolen Valor And Calling Out Fakes
• 15:40 Firefights, Trauma, And Silent Heroes
• 18:59 A Gold Star Dad Discovered In A Parking Lot
• 22:40 Lincoln’s Letter And Keeping Memory Alive
• 26:18 Why He’s Qualified: Personal Loss And Resilience
• 31:21 Suicide Statistics And Hidden Numbers
• 35:05 Politics, War, And Supporting The Troops
• 40:48 Guardian Angels And Near‑Death Rides
• 45:06 The New Mexico Breakdown And Alex’s Gift
• 50:05 Miracles In The Shop And Bearing Failure
• 53:46 Civil War Lineage And Cost Of Service
• 58:20 How To Help And Where To Find Him

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Welcome back to the Against All Odds, the Less Than One Percent Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte, where we will hear stories of incredible people surviving against all odds. And my hope is that we can all see how life is really happening for us, even when we are the less than 1% chance.

SPEAKER_03: 0:20

Hey, hey, welcome back to Against All Odds, the Less Than One Percent Chance podcast with your host, Maria Aponte. Normally I would sit here and introduce my guest. However, I've just had such an amazing off-camera conversation with him that I'm gonna let him introduce himself. He is an amazing storyteller. And honestly, I can't wait for this conversation. So I'm going to just say, welcome, Token Squid. Welcome to Against All Odds. Give me some of your background and let me know what is your Against All Odds story.

SPEAKER_00: 0:59

Okay, Maria, thank you very much for having me. First of all, because it's a great privilege for me to be here to share with your audience the things that I've been through and the things that I do and the things that I continue to do. What I do is I am the executive director of a charity organization. And that should make a whole bunch of people want to just turn off. But what I am, what our charity organization does is we take care of, we honor and support the immediate family members of somebody who's killed in the military. So we're just getting off of Iraq and Afghanistan, and everybody knows that there was way too many body bags coming out of those two places. But our organization takes care of anybody who fits that qualification of a gold star family. And incidentally, a gold star family is recognized as a mother or father, a brother or sister, a son or a daughter, a husband or a wife, and in-laws and steps and halves. So if you're a brother-in-law or a sister-in-law of somebody who's killed in the military, you're a gold star. You're in that circle. So the way that I want to say this is that we do everything in person, which makes us different than every other charity you've ever run across. Uh, we do everything in person and we do everything on a motorcycle. So we're gonna pull up to your house or your favorite restaurant or your favorite park, and we're gonna take care of all of our business loud, very, very loudly. We got sometimes it's just me on my motorcycle. The most I've ever had was I went through Maryland, just outside of Washington, DC. We had 116 motorcycles for that. Uh, we show up with 116 motorcycles, and we will make some noise. Now, a lot of people want to say, Well, well, what happens when you go see the families? What happens? So, we're gonna kick off this with this cute little story that I like to tell. I've currently finished, I've now in seven years, I've done 69 rides around the country. I've logged over 155,000 miles, but this was early on in the first year that I was doing these rides. I it was at the end of July, it was a hot day, super hot, it was a hot month. So I had been on the motorcycle for about 25 or 30 days in a row, putting on a lot of miles, seeing a lot of families, and I get to I get an email, check my email every night, and I get this email that says, You got to meet my best friend, she's a gold star mom. That's all it says. She's a gold star mom. I said, Okay, set it up. Well, and back in those days, we didn't do any vetting. We found out the hard way that we need to make sure if somebody says they're gold star family, we can't just take their word for it, we got to do yeah, but back then we didn't. So I just said, I'll be in your town in two days. I had to ride across the country, right? So from wherever I was to wherever I was going, I had to ride across the country and I said, Set it up, I'll be there, we'll have lunch in two days. So we get there, we have our lunch, and we're in the middle of lunch. And there's a handful of people there, probably 15 or 20. And we're they made a big we're in a restaurant, they put a bunch of tables together, so we got this big thing going on there. And just out of nowhere, while we're all eating, this gold star mom who was sitting immediately to my right, she stops eating, puts her forks on the table, and she just says, I just don't understand why my son would take his own life. And I said he didn't take his own life. That was a sniper's bullet from 7,000 miles away. And she just burst into tears. Everybody at the table was crying. As a matter of fact, I think the waiter started crying when I said that, and I'd like to take credit for it. I wish I invented that phrase, but I did not, it came from somebody else. And after about 30 seconds or a full minute of everybody crying, somebody said, These tater tots are pretty good. You try them, and we went back to light, fluffy conversation, the occasional minimal joke or whatever it was. And after two and a half hours, we parted company. We hugged our goodbyes out in the parking lot, and I got on my motorcycle and I took off down the road. And I rode a couple hundred miles that day, several hundred miles the next day, a thousand miles the next day, and I'm down the road. I'm 2,500 miles away from her seven days later. And I go check into this bad hotel, and we could talk for hours just about bad hotels.

SPEAKER_05: 5:30

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 5:31

So we get I get into this hotel and I didn't have an internet signal, so I couldn't check my email. Well, I got it. I'll piggyback off my phone. Well, my didn't have a phone signal either. Well, I get a phone signal if I go out into the parking lot, so I put my phone on the motorcycle so it has a signal and it broadcasts a Wi-Fi signal into the hotel motel room, and this is one of those motels where all the doors open up into the parking lot. Yeah, and the parking lot was gravel. So, yeah, just to give you an idea, anyway. Uh, so I finally get on my email, and the email comes up from the best friend, the one who said, You got to meet my best friend, she's a gold star mom. I got an email from her, very simple, two-sentence little email, and it said, Your visit here was the greatest thing that could have ever happened. Because later that day, she went home and tore up her own suicide note.

SPEAKER_03: 6:31

Oh my god, I have body goosebumps.

SPEAKER_00: 6:38

Aren't you glad I didn't tell you that story off camera?

SPEAKER_03: 6:41

I'm so glad because I'm gonna start crying even more.

SPEAKER_00: 6:46

So that one kind of I've been telling that story for five years, and it's still it's it's I even know what's coming. I know the punchline to that story, and it still pulls up my heartstrings pretty good. Yeah, but that's just one. I've met 553 of them.

SPEAKER_05: 7:06

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 7:08

So you sure your program's only an hour long? We might have a couple more stories to tell.

SPEAKER_03: 7:15

I'm here for the stories, absolutely. I just thank you, first of all, for your service, number one, and thank you for what you do because I have my my dad was a veteran, my brother's a veteran, my boyfriend's a veteran, different branches, all of them.

SPEAKER_00: 7:33

This patch. Yeah, we can get it where the light can hit just right. It says my DD 214 can kick your MBA's ass.

SPEAKER_03: 7:45

Yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_00: 7:47

So listen, this is an important thing for me to interject at this moment because what I do is deal with a great huge amount of loss. What I do on a regular daily basis. Let's see, I've been doing it for six years and I got 553 under my belt, so I'm averaging just about a hundred a year. Yeah, this is basically me going to funerals. I've been to a hundred funerals a year, and that doesn't count the funerals I get to go to because I'm now at the social my social status, is such that funerals are social events. Yes, you young kids, you might want to go have a cocktail at a bar. Us to a funeral.

SPEAKER_03: 8:28

Oh goodness.

SPEAKER_00: 8:29

So there's a great deal of sadness, that's what I'm trying to say. There's a huge amount of sadness, and I have to keep the sadness in check, otherwise, I will be writing a suicide note. And so one of the things that we do to keep for me to keep my sadness in check is I am a perpetual smart ass. Yes, and it proves it with I prove it with this patch right here. This patch, by the way, I created that phrase right there. And anybody who's a veteran, veterans love that patch.

SPEAKER_03: 9:01

Yes, you know what DD 214. Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_00: 9:05

Yeah, a lot of people don't. You just yesterday I was talking to somebody who was wearing the vest, and he said, DD 214, is that an airplane? No, I get is that an airplane? Is that a gun? No.

SPEAKER_03: 9:16

So for our listeners that don't know what a DD214 is.

SPEAKER_00: 9:20

I like to say I'd tell you, but then I have to kill you. Of course, that's just me being a smart ass once again. Go ahead, tell everybody what tell the good people what a DD214 is.

SPEAKER_02: 9:33

So it's the discharge, right? From the military.

SPEAKER_00: 9:37

Correct. It's your discharge papers.

SPEAKER_02: 9:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 9:40

Discharge papers. It's the piece of paper that proves that you served in the military.

SPEAKER_03: 9:45

Yeah. When my dad was alive, I was basically his like administrator. So I had all of those things taken care of. And dad, I need to get the DD214. It was always something when we put him in hospice. We had the veteran liaison and all that stuff. And I was like, oh, they're asking for the DD214 so you could get the military. Like it was all so yes, I've dealt with the DD214 often.

SPEAKER_00: 10:13

And yeah, I DD214 is a good see. I can't just walk into Home Depot and say, give me the 10% veterans discount. Look, I got a patch.

SPEAKER_04: 10:23

Yeah, I got a patch.

SPEAKER_00: 10:24

I have to prove that I have the DD 214. It's not enough to just have the patch.

SPEAKER_04: 10:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 10:28

However, I can say I will give credit where credit is due. President Obama did one thing really good. Yeah, he made it against the law. It's now a federal offense to pretend that you are a veteran if you were not a veteran. It's called the Stolen Valor Act of 2013. Obama signed it into law. It's a federal offense to tell people that you're a veteran if you are not.

SPEAKER_03: 10:54

That is awesome. Actually, I didn't know that.

SPEAKER_00: 10:57

Believe it or not, there's a ton of people who do that.

SPEAKER_02: 11:02

Yeah, to get discounts and stuff.

SPEAKER_00: 11:03

The hardcore vets. I knew a guy a while back who presented himself as somebody who spent time in the military. Worse than that, he's told people he was part of the Navy SEAL teams.

SPEAKER_03: 11:16

Oh, he likes to tell stories and everything.

SPEAKER_00: 11:19

He wore dog tags. He was, and I introduced him to a guy that I know who's a dear friend of mine who served in Vietnam. This guy that I know that served in Vietnam, he's got some incredible stories too. Because his stories in Vietnam were first of all, he was promoted in the field from army grunt to army ranger to be promoted to a ranger in the field. Well, because it requires a ton of schooling. Right? So they skipped the schooling, they just promoted him and they made him an army ranger. He had an interesting job in Vietnam. His job in Vietnam was to find the Vietnamese, the Viet Cong campsites, and sneak in the middle of the night to the last tent, the one that was on the outermost. He would sneak into the tent, and there would be two people sleeping in there, and he would cut them open from stem to stern, we call it stem to stern. He'd just cut them open, cut them open, and then sneak back out and leave. So imagine doing that for six months. Anyhow, he's a good friend of mine, lives around the corner. We ride motorcycles together. Go figure. Go figure after a couple years or a couple months of he likes to ride motorcycles. He likes to get his adrenaline rush. He also likes to ride snowmobiles. Yeah, he's a machine junkie. Anyway, I introduced this guy that I thought was my friend who said he was part of the Navy SEAL teams, recent Navy SEAL teams. Like he was SEAL team in 2005 to 2010, something like that.

SPEAKER_05: 13:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:14

I introduced him to this guy who was doing this work in Vietnam in 1972. A long time ago.

SPEAKER_03: 13:21

Yeah, just just a bit.

SPEAKER_00: 13:23

Anyway, we visited. We the hi, this is yeah, this is here. This is this and we visited for about maybe 10 minutes. We talked a little bit about motorcycles. He said something about what his favorite gun was. He said something about what his favorite knife was, and then we all parted company. And I went back to see the Vietnam veteran the next day. And the Vietnam veteran said, He's a phony. I said, What do you mean he's a phony? He said, He never served, he's not part of the special no, he didn't do it. So the salty dogs can spot one immediately like that. There was I went back over their meeting in my mind a hundred times. I couldn't pick out the spot that told the Vietnam vet that the other guy was a phony.

SPEAKER_05: 14:09

That's crazy. That's so crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 14:12

Yeah, I've since called out that guy, the phony. I did a little research on him, and I I remember I said we vet people now. Yeah, we vet people to make sure that they are who they say they are. Anyway, I did a little research on him and come to find out that not only did he was he not part of the SEAL teams, he never stepped foot in boot camp, any boot camp, never, not one. Anyway, when I did the research on this stuff, they said this is what he's going to say. He's gonna say, All his records are classified, that's why I couldn't find them. He's gonna say this, he's gonna say this. It had like three or four different things that the people who did the research for me told me he would say. Yeah, and I went to him and I read it off. I didn't read that part off. I just said, Look, we found you out, you're done. Get all that shit off, get the dog tags off. You don't get to wear them anymore. Everything that says that there's even the remotest relationship to the military, it's a federal offense, and this is your only warning. I said, This is your only warning. If I find out that tomorrow you're wearing your dog tags or a hat that says US Navy on it, or a t-shirt that says go navy, I'm going to report you to every American Legion, to every VFW, to every Amvet, to every DAV, and I might even report you to a couple of motorcycle clubs. And I tell you, I know people. I feel like you're careful. Be careful how I end that sentence. If I would have got word, he would have just disappeared. Nobody would have found him. Because I'm rather forgiving. I'm a very forgiving person, but I know a lot of people who are not.

SPEAKER_05: 16:02

Who are not, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 16:03

And I got a friend, dear friend, who served in the Marine Corps. He served over in Iraq in the early 2000s, I think 2005, 2006. He served in Iraq and he ended up serving, he was in the Marines, and he ended up serving under a commanding officer or whoever it was he was taking his orders from, turned out to be an asshole and sent him and his unit into a firefight that they weren't supposed to come out of.

unknown: 16:31

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 16:33

Listen, there's bad people everywhere. Yeah, bad people everywhere. I tell people this all the time. There's five percent of the people are crooks across the United States, 130 million people across the United States, five percent of them are criminals, just criminals. And guess what? There's five percent of the podcasters are criminals, five percent of the post office workers are criminals, five percent of the police force are criminals, five percent. Well, it's a lot more than five percent of the politicians. That's a whole lot more all but one, and I haven't figured out which one. But there you're just gonna find that even in the military, we got five percent are bona fide assholes and criminals. But I know this guy who who got sent into a firefight that he wasn't supposed to come out of, and he ended up, I think he had eight men in his unit, so there was nine of them that went into this. They ended up in this firefight, literal firefight, shooting bullets at each other for 10 hours. He had 27 confirmed kills. Oh my gosh, and this is the and he saved all his guys. All of them, I think most of them got purple hearts, but he ended up getting them all out, and then he told me that if he could have, he would have put a bullet right between the eyes of the guy who sent them in there, but yeah, didn't get to do that. Anyway, I was talking with him about a year ago, we're just having lunch, and I said, Look, you're a disabled vet, you're 100% disabled now. He said, Yeah, so you got a purple heart, yeah. You can do anything you want. You're a young man, he's I think he's only 35, between 35 and 40 years old now. So he's a young man. He can do I said you can do anything you want. Anything. What would you like to do? And he said, I kind of like to go back. I said, go back. He said, Yeah, there's a few more I want to kill.

SPEAKER_04: 18:29

Oh, that's so funny.

SPEAKER_00: 18:31

Yeah, so there's these I get to meet so many bona fide heroes. Yeah, the really great salt of the earth people. I get to meet the unsalt of the earth too. I get to meet congressmen and I get to meet senators and I get to meet some big shots too. But I get to meet the real heroes of this of this earth, and I get to meet some guys that have no clue, they're heroes, but they don't have any clue. That's what they're doing. For example, I was on a motorcycle ride, I was riding through Pennsylvania, Western Pennsylvania. I know you got at least one listener in Pennsylvania, so the at least one of your listeners is gonna get this. I was riding through western Pennsylvania, and the mountains are wonderful. It was a beautiful day, the sun was shining, it was just perfect day for riding a motorcycle through the mountains. There's no straight roads, it's just all up and down and around, and just getting into it, enjoying the hell out of it. The beautiful majestic mountains of the Alleghenies in western Pennsylvania. And I get to the edge of Pennsylvania and I'm got across the state line into New York, and I was right outside of Erie, Pennsylvania. Erie, Pennsylvania is in that northwest corner of Pennsylvania. Anyway, I pulled off at right at the state line, there was a McDonald's. So I pulled off the road. Gotta put my helmet on. See, there's no I didn't have to wear a helmet in Pennsylvania. So this was my helmet in Pennsylvania. In New York, I have to wear a Helmet because they think I will be safer. Incidentally, that's not true. We can go into that later. But so I stopped to put my helmet on, start up the motorcycle, let out the clutch. Motorcycle rolls 10 feet, literally 10 feet, in a McDonald's parking lot. 10 feet and dies. And I'm like, what the hell? Hitting the button, doing this, doing this, adjusting this, trying it in neutral. There's a computer on the motorcycle. And if you push that button and do that at the same time, it'll give you some numbers so you can look up whatever code the computer thinks is keeping the motorcycle from well. There's no codes, it's all clear. It's just it just won't work. There's the motorcycle just won't, it just won't go. I can't figure it out. There's and I don't know, and I'm cussing at it under my breath. Is there a barge? Anyway, I hear this voice from behind me who says, Hey, mine does that sometimes too. Let's push it over in the shade, see if we can get her figured out. And he's a little older than me. This is seven years ago, so he probably looked more like I look now. I look younger. Anyway, he gets over there and he's on the left side of the motorcycle. I'm on the right side of the motorcycle, and it's a big motorcycle, big saddlebags, trunk, fairing, and all that stuff. And it's got stickers all over it that say Gold Star Ride Foundation. Looks a lot like that.

SPEAKER_03: 21:21

I love it. Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 21:22

Yeah, and I'm wearing the vest, so the vest says that on the back, too. Anyway, so he's pushing, and there's two on the one on each side of the gas tank. There's three on the windshield, and there's some on the saddlebags. Anyway, the stickers are all over the place. And he says, While we're pushing at about a half a mile an hour, it's a thousand-pound motorcycle. He says, What's this gold star ride all about? And I tell him what we do. We ride around the country, take care of gold star families, and I tell him all that stuff. And he says, Oh, that's kind of interesting. We're still pushing. He says, What's a gold star family? And I said, That's immediate family members of somebody who was killed in the military. And he stopped pushing and he stood upright and he looked me dead in the face and he said, My daughter was killed in Korea three years ago.

SPEAKER_05: 22:07

Oh, he didn't even know.

SPEAKER_00: 22:09

And I said, That makes you a gold star dad. And he said, Nobody ever told me that. I've never heard that before. Nobody, I had never I never knew what a gold star was. This is all brand new to me. And I said, Well, let's get it over there in the shade, and then we'll talk to you about you being a gold star dad. And you became one of those spontaneous gold star families that I met without a plan.

SPEAKER_05: 22:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 22:32

And there is a slight plan looking around for the plaque. I think I have a plaque over here. Every gold star family that we visit, we give them one of these plaques. And so we talked about his daughter. He told me about his family and this, that, and the other thing. And and I said, you know what? Let me give you one of these things, these plaques. And I pulled this out of my I pulled this out of my out of the saddlebags. I always travel with a whole bunch of these. And I've just put my business card up there because the actual plaque has our logo emblazoned on it. And I'll tell you what this thing says. This very simply says, Can I do this without my old man glasses on? Probably. I'm gonna go from mostly from memory because I've done this all more than once. So yeah, I mean this is what the plaque reads. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom. Yours very sincerely and respectfully, a Lincoln. Yes, Abraham. If you saw the movie Private Saving Private Ryan, yes, it started with two officers, one reading that letter to the other. Anyway, we leave him that little token as a memento of our visit, and then whatever the fallen hero would have done. So in in his case, his house is paid for, and this is then we didn't have any physical needs, but the need that he had was that his daughter would be remembered. And here we are, four years later. I'm telling you about his daughter. So we're legacy, keeps going, we're keeping her memory alive, and that's the kind of thing that we do, we keep the memories alive. And here's another little thing just in case there's a handful of your listeners who don't have any military experience, but they've seen a couple of movies, so they know what it's like. Two guys carrying guns, walking off that way, wearing camouflage clothing of or whatever, and the two guys are talking and they're talking about what they had for breakfast, and they're talking about whether or not bacon's good for you, and they're talking about stupid things, and they'll start to talk about the girl they met the night before, or they'll do this. At some point, in all of those conversations, one will say to the other, if something happens to me, do this for my family. Yeah, tell my wife I love her, buy my dad a new car, make sure my kids go to college. He'll say something selfish that we need that buddy to do for him because he's not around anymore. Yeah, okay, and that's all I do. That's all I do. I'm grateful. I'm grateful that I have never met a gold star family that became a gold star because the person who died was somebody I actually knew. So I'm a little thankful that they're all perfect strangers. Incidentally, they always have to make first contact. I will not knock on the door or ring the phone of any gold star family without an invitation. Um, that has to be because that's just rude. Yeah, that's just rude. But if I did do it, I would do it at dinner time. Kidding. Because we used to always get telemarketers calling at dinner time.

SPEAKER_03: 26:30

Uh-huh. I remember.

SPEAKER_00: 26:32

I'm just kidding. I don't do that. Just kidding. Listen, if all of my jokes were funny, I would be a stand-up comic.

SPEAKER_03: 26:40

I like it.

SPEAKER_00: 26:42

You've got to not a stand-up comic.

SPEAKER_03: 26:46

So I guess, and I don't know if you wanted to go into this or not, but what makes you qualified to start with that? We did, but we were not recording. You know what?

SPEAKER_00: 26:58

I can give an abridged version. How about that? What qualifies me to do the job that I do? Aside, you see all these books?

SPEAKER_03: 27:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 27:09

That's one of what did we say I had five?

SPEAKER_03: 27:12

Five, five bookshelves.

SPEAKER_00: 27:14

Oh, I have one over there too. Six.

SPEAKER_03: 27:16

Six.

SPEAKER_00: 27:18

So this is I have all these bookshelves, and there's basically three subjects. All of these books can be categorized, shrunk down into three subjects. One is self-help, one is how to make movies, and one is the civil war. And in incorporated with the ones that's the civil war, I also have two or three books on World War One and World War II. I also have five or six books on the American Revolution, uh, War of 1812, all of that stuff. Because believe it or not, on a side note, my personal family tree goes back to 1640 on this continent. Oh wow, not bad for a blonde-haired, blue-eyed white guy.

SPEAKER_04: 28:00

Uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:03

1640, yeah. Plymouth Rock. Well, it's the Plymouth Rock area. Have you heard of to test your history knowledge?

SPEAKER_05: 28:11

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 28:12

You heard of the shot heard round the world? The shot heard round the world was the shot that started the Revolutionary War.

SPEAKER_05: 28:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:19

Lexington and Kentucky.

SPEAKER_05: 28:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:21

And basically, it was not very many people against not very many people, and they had guns that shot one time. You only could shoot the musket once. Then you had to take three minutes to reload it.

SPEAKER_05: 28:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:33

It's similar to how a crossbow works today.

SPEAKER_05: 28:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 28:38

Side note. In that first Lexington and Kentucky battle, there were red coats and there were rebels. Uh, the rebels were the colonists fighting against them. About 50 against 50, right? And they fired 50 shots and they fired 50 shots, and then they all went backwards, and 50 more came up because they were loaded and ready to go. And 50 more came up and they were ready, loaded, and ready to go. That second group of 50, one of my ancestors was in that group.

unknown: 29:12

Wow.

SPEAKER_03: 29:14

That's um crazy.

SPEAKER_00: 29:16

As soon as I get done telling you about what qualifies me to do this, I'll tell you a civil war story that'll blow your mind.

SPEAKER_05: 29:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 29:23

So I had the self-help stuff. I've been studying psychology, personal psychology, personal motivation, those kind of things for since the mid-80s. However long ago that was. I know it was more than a minute.

SPEAKER_03: 29:36

That was, I could say about 40 years just because I'm gonna be 43 in a few weeks. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 29:43

Oh, what you mean to say is in a few weeks you're gonna be 29 for the 14th time.

SPEAKER_03: 29:48

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 29:51

Well, you're doing well.

SPEAKER_03: 29:53

I actually very much enjoy getting older.

SPEAKER_00: 29:56

I because that'll change.

SPEAKER_03: 30:00

I enjoy the fact that I could say that I'll be 43 because when I was 18, I didn't think I was gonna get there.

SPEAKER_00: 30:07

So oh, I was the same way because I read so many of these self-help books. Yeah, when I was 43, I was like, Yeah, 43 is a great age. It's great. Now I'm significantly past 60, and I'm going, oh shoot, I don't know if I have 40 more years left in me, but I'll give it my best shot. That's another story. Anyway, the other thing, aside from the self-help books, the other thing that qualifies me to be a decent candidate to meet with these gold star families is the loss that I personally suffered. And the loss that I personally suffered was I got married in 1999, and I knew going into it that she was an abusive person, and it was an extremely abusive relationship until 2010. Somewhere along the course of the way, we managed to get two kids out of the deal. And from 2007 to 2010, I was a stay-at-home dad. So for three years, I stayed home and took care of the kids. She was off working. But what did it ended up happening was that our marriage ended, and she persuaded the courts that I was abusive and she was not. And I lost my kids. Excuse me. Again, I'm giving you the completely abridged version because we talked about this off the camera, but I have this box of files and that box of files and that box of files, and I have all of these journals that document everything I went through when I lost my kids. But I lost my kids, and about four years after I lost my kids, four and a half years after I lost my kids, I came to the conclusion that I was going to die if I didn't make the conscious decision that my children were already dead.

SPEAKER_04: 31:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 31:59

So in my mind, we had the funerals, we put them in the ground, we did everything because the courts screwed up. Oh, have the courts ever done that before? Oh, yeah, they do it all the time. In particular in family court in the United States of America, yes, the family court system is about as corrupt as anything imaginable. The worst corruption in the worst country in the world is probably on par with family court system in the United States. There are some pockets of places where it's not as bad.

SPEAKER_03: 32:38

My family court judge that dealt with my divorce probably six months after she was disbarred and removed because of corruption.

SPEAKER_00: 32:49

Oh well, see that's corruption taken to an obscene level. Usually the corruption gets them re-elected. But anyway, uh it's not it's not something that I recommend that you take a week to meditate on the idea that you just buried your kids. The level of uh anguish uh that you get when you do something like that is this about the same level of anguish that you get if you really do it. Yeah, it's not quite the same, but it's moving in that general direction. And what happened with me and my kids were taken away for uh intensely uh blatant lies and inveracities, that just kind of added more salt to the wound. Yeah, it that made it even more difficult to how this is a rational person, they're a judge, they're wearing a robe. How can they possibly make a decision based on blatant and demonstrable lies? It's one thing if she lies and I lie, and then it's he said, she said that's all wonderful. But I demonstrated that she lied over and over and over again. I demonstrated that she committed perjury 12 times, but she was removed from the household. Oh, that was before that. That was actually before we got to court. Yeah, that was we had a domestic incident.

SPEAKER_03: 34:18

So there was some type of evidence.

SPEAKER_00: 34:20

There was a domestic incident. Well, specifically, what happened specifically was we were still living in the same house. Me and the ex-wife were still living in the same house. We had two kids, they went to two different schools. She was working as a flight attendant. The girl was younger, I think the girl was three years old, and she had to go to special needs school. The boy was older, he's like a certified genius. Anyway, we had him in public school for that year. Anyway, she was getting ready to go, but she's a flight attendant, so she was getting ready to go get on an airplane. So I said, Okay, you stay here with the girl, you finish getting ready to go to work, I'll take the boy to school. And I did that, and when I got home, my journal was missing. I kept it in my laptop bag, and I came home. And what inspired me to do this, I don't know, because it was early in the morning. I never write in the journals in the morning, I only do it at night. But I walked in the door, I walked right over to my laptop bag and I opened it up and my journal was gone. And I said to her, You're not going to work. I'm not taking you to work until that journal is returned. As a matter of fact, she was actually, I came home and she was taking a shower. I called the police and said, Get over here right now, because there's gonna be a fight. And the police were there when she came out of the bathroom. Oh, so that wasn't very pleasant. But the bottom line is I she took it, I knew she took it, and I wanted it back. It was mine, it had my thoughts in it, and if there wasn't anything she was doing that was wrong or damaging or whatever, she wouldn't have cared. Yeah, but that wasn't what she was after. She'd been planning this for months, she'd been planning to take the kids for months. She had her attorney drafted. As a matter of fact, she took the kids out of school the next day. But the police came that day, and while the police did not return my journal, they did remove her from the property. They left me there with my daughter, which was unheard of for the dad to stay with the kids. So they put her and they put her in a taxi and sent her away. And then the next day she took the kids kidnapped. I call it kidnapped because that's what she did. She took the kids out of school and went into hiding. And two hours after I found out that she took the kids out of school, I was served with divorce papers. So, yeah, she had been planning this for a long time. She had been planning on taking the kids, she'd been planning on going into hiding. She'd been planning, she'd been planning on using the system against me. And that's exactly what she did. That's exactly what she did. If you want to know more about what's in the journals and the can you go to my podcast, can I plug my own podcast?

SPEAKER_03: 37:18

Yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 37:20

It's called I Am Damaged. That's the name of the podcast, the I Am Damage Podcast. So if you search YouTube, I am damaged podcast, it'll come up.

SPEAKER_03: 37:29

And the first and I'll also link it in the in the show notes as well.

SPEAKER_00: 37:33

So yeah, so there's the that's not really why I'm here to talk. I'm here to talk about ride foundation.

SPEAKER_02: 37:38

It's okay.

SPEAKER_00: 37:39

But anyway, that's the thing that qualifies me. That's the thing that makes me feel like it's okay for me to go talk to these families of that have lost somebody in the military. Yeah, that's that's the answer. This that was that really the abridged version. Was it somewhat? Yeah, I left a lot of stuff out. You did I did leave a lot of stuff out, so yeah, we like to take care of those families. One of the other things that that motivates me, you're on a uh, I mean, there's so many things that have happened in my life that should have just okay. You've done enough stop now. You can't go any farther. Well, I gotta keep going because that's what the whole that's what everything is about, right? Yeah, you know, I often say, and I've been saying this for 30 years an airplane has to take off against the wind, or it won't fly. Yeah, an airplane has to take the wind has to be going this way, the airplane goes this way in order to take off, it has to go against the wind. That's a marvelous metaphor. Yeah, marvelous metaphor. But uh when I do stuff for the gold star families, I talked about the gold star mom who tore up her own suicide note. I can't tell you how many times that has actually happened. 22 a day is the official number from the CDC of how many veterans take their own life. Do you know how many 22 a day is? That means in five more minutes, one will have happened while we talked. Yeah, in 10 more minutes, two will have happened in the whole thing because we talked before we started recording, right? Yeah, that's two in this conversation, yeah, which is two too many. So we don't know our organization because we don't take any government funding. The only place we get money is when your listeners say, That looks like a pretty cool thing. I better send them a dollar. Yeah, I better send them a dollar. By the way, we will take a million if you have it.

SPEAKER_03: 39:33

That works too.

SPEAKER_00: 39:35

I'm just saying it a dollar's great. A dollar's great. Oh, by the way, this patch the the my DD214 can kick your MBA's ass. That's one of the ways we make money. You go to the website goldstarride.org. Can't believe it's been this far into the podcast before I said the website. You can buy that for 10 bucks, and then you buy 10 of them. You got 10 veterans who are extremely happy with the gift that you gave them for Christmas.

SPEAKER_05: 39:58

Okay, I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 40:00

A piece anyway. Where was oh 22 a day? Yeah, because our organization is set up the way it is set up. We have it's a civilian population now, but all three of our board members are veterans. 22 a day is far more than we would like to tolerate. 22 a day is also that soft number that the government hands out. Oh, because oh, did the government say it? Is it true then?

SPEAKER_02: 40:26

It's gotta be true. What?

SPEAKER_00: 40:28

No, anyway, the 22 a day is far too many. I think, in my experience, that the number is probably closer to 50 or 60 a day. Yeah, and I'll tell you a very specific story about why that is. I was in Massachusetts, and I promise the next story will be about the West End of the West Side of the United States. I was riding through Massachusetts and I went to see a gold star family in Massachusetts, and uh they said to me that they became gold stars. The the man was a veteran, the woman was a civilian, they were married, and everything seemed to be as normal as it can be when he came home from the war, and he had some combat experience, which meant that he had to dodge bullets that were being fired at him, trying to kill him. And incidentally, that's an extremely wrong thing for a human to go through. Yeah, humans are designed to go through, mentally speaking, they're designed to do certain things, and having somebody try to kill you that you do not know is not one of them. Yeah, or is the actual act of war is so absurd for the human mind that if you go to if you go to battle, if you go to combat, if you're in combat and you come home and there's nothing wrong with you, there was something wrong with you before you went before, yeah. Because and that's why I also say post-traumatic stress. Yeah, I never say post-traumatic stress disorder, there's nothing disorderly about it, it's post-traumatic stress. That's just, and everybody has different coping mechanisms, right? Yeah, so anyway, it's nice that I get an opportunity to clear that up. But anyway, this family of Massachusetts, husband and wife just driving down the road, and the wife was doing the drive-up, and they were on a freeway, and everything was fine. They were talking about the weather or whether or not that song on the radio was their favorite song, and then out of nowhere, click, pop, he jumped out the door at 75 miles an hour.

SPEAKER_05: 42:32

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 42:34

That one was not recorded as a suicide. That was recorded as an odd accident, and it has doesn't even get close to thinking about things like accidental drug overdoses because they're yeah, the hospitals are just as bad as the regular hospitals, they want to pump everybody filled with drugs. Yeah, the civilian hospitals, of course, that's how they make all their money. Yes, we like to think they make it from the insurance payments, but no, no, no, no, no, no. They make it from the big pharma. So, our organization, if you look really close, if I can get that just right in front of the camera, in between the gold and the star, in between gold star on the logo, there's a gold star. Yeah, and the stars got some shades on the points, but the top point, the one that points straight up, has some odd shade of green in it. It's only half of the point. Yeah, that color doesn't match any of the rest of the logo. So, why do we put that goofy color in there? That goofy color is actually teal, yeah, and teal is the national post-traumatic stress awareness color. We put that in our logo because out of the 553 families, the gold star families that we have met with, about 125 have been part of the 22 a day. And I met a gold star widow and he died in a motorcycle crash in California. She was living in Jacksonville, Florida. But uh, there's a more of the side story to that one too. But anyway, he died in a motorcycle crash. Was that a suicide? Nobody knows. Could be, yeah, very well could be. Her son was I think he was probably six years old when I met the family. She was, I don't know, 35-ish. And her husband had been in the Navy for 15 years, and he died in a motorcycle crash. Died in a motorcycle crash on his way to the Navy base in San Diego. So was that a suicide? Wasn't recorded as one. You remember when COVID hit, and everybody all of a sudden, every single person who died died of COVID?

SPEAKER_03: 45:02

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 45:03

Because the government said, Hey, anybody who dies of COVID, we'll throw some money your way. Yeah, he died. Look, he was 96 years old, he fell and he broke his hip, and he died in the hospital. Must have been COVID. Must have been COVID. Anyway, we talk about so many things. We want to take care of these families. We want to make sure that we remember fallen heroes because they don't ever get to come back. Yeah, they don't ever get to come back. It's not like your boyfriend or girlfriend, and you break up and you might get to back together again. No, no, no, they're gone. They don't ever get to come back. And they did that so that you and I could be free to have this podcast.

SPEAKER_05: 45:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 45:49

They did that. Now, you might disagree with the politics of the war. Okay. There, for example, in the early 2000s, the United States invaded Iraq under the pretense that there was weapons of mass destruction there. Incidentally, Saddam Hussein was the dictator in Iraq at the time.

SPEAKER_05: 46:08

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 46:08

Saddam Hussein himself was a weapon of mass destruction because he was killing tens of thousands of his own citizens regularly, and he was testing gases on them and poison gases. So the idea that we got in there and we took Saddam Hussein out, I don't care if you believe in the WMDs or not, we did a good thing there. It had to be anyway. I wanted to go a little bit sideways here and talk about the memories of the ones who are lost. And we might disagree with the WMDs in Iraq, but the boots on the ground are only following orders. If you disagree with the politics of the war, vote the guy out of office. That's why we do it. That's why he only gets four years. We can vote him out of office.

SPEAKER_05: 46:57

Yep.

SPEAKER_00: 46:58

So we vote him out of office, but the boots on the ground, okay, these are people who said, I don't know you, but I love you so much. I'm gonna put my life in harm's way so that you can protect your way of life. Yeah, okay. He probably has his questions about the politics of the war too.

SPEAKER_05: 47:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 47:22

So we can't protest him or her. We can't deny the people who are doing the work for doing the work. We made this mistake in Vietnam. In Vietnam, we did not have the support of the citizenry, right? And we lost the war. You know what else is true about Vietnam? We killed 10 of them for every one of ours that was killed. Yeah, we have 58,000 on our wall in Memorial Wall, remembering those who gave up their lives in Vietnam. They don't have one, but if they did have one in Vietnam, it would have six million names on it. We killed a hundred of theirs for every one of ours. Right? We won every single battle. Every time weapons were fired at each other, the United States was victorious in every single battle in Vietnam. But we lost the war. We didn't lose the war in Vietnam. We lost the war in the United States because we didn't have the support of the citizenry. Now, my experience was Desert Storm 1991, right? They called it Desert Shield for the buildup when they were getting everybody together. That was in principally in 1990, at the last quarter of 1990, and then in January of 1991, we started bombing them and bombed the Pissadam and all that other stuff. And we demonstrated that with the support of the citizens of the United States, we can mop it up quick. Because Desert Storm didn't last very long. Yeah, storm didn't last very long, and it would have lasted a little bit longer, and Saddam Hussein would have been removed then if George Bush Sr. would not have said, read my lips, no new taxes. Because when he said that, and then he raised taxes, all the people said, Well, screw you, we're not gonna let you be president anymore. Yeah, and because they voted him out and they voted Bill Clinton in, Bill Clinton is a marvelous politician in his own right, so let's not take anything away from Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton wins the election. George Bush says there's no need for us to be at war anymore, so he pulls out, and then we're not at war anymore. But Saddam Hussein is still in power, yeah. Incidentally, there's another story that goes along with that, which is that President Bush senior was actually preparing to take Saddam Hussein out. He had three teams of Army Rangers training around Salt Lake in 1991, 1992 that were training to take Saddam Hussein out. And that's what they do. And if you saw anything about what happened with bin Laden, now granted, a lot of stuff that happened with bin Laden they didn't tell you about because it's classified. Yeah, however, before they knew where he was for a long time, yeah, they knew which house he was sleeping in for a long time. They built models of it in the United States, they built models of it and they trained and they did it, and they did it, and they did it. And that's the way the special forces works. They figured this out. Okay, we see everything, we know everything. We have the intelligence now that's where nobody's gonna shoot back at us, and we're gonna do it until we can do it in our sleep, yeah. And then they go do it, and that's what they did with bin Laden. So that's what they were doing for Saddam Hussein in 1992 at the end of uh near the end of Desert Storm, the Desert Storm, right? And what happened is there's a guy in Amory, Wisconsin, he's a gold star dad, and he told me this story. His son was one of the army rangers that were on those three ranger teams that were training to take out Sunam Hussein in Salt Lake. They were doing their training around the Salt Lake because I don't know if you know this or not, but if you go west of Salt Lake, it's a big desert. It's a big desert. They got signs along the freeway that say, stay awake. Yeah, it's a big desert, it's big, boring desert. It's interesting. Anyway, this young army ranger actually called his father and said, We're not ready, but we have to do a test run because Colin Powell is going to come and observe tomorrow. But we're not ready. Our communications are down, we can't talk to each other. The radios in the helicopters don't work. Remember, this is 1991. There are no computers, there are there's no artificial intelligence, there's none of that. This the technology that exists today wasn't even thought of in 1991 and 1992. Anyway, what ended up happening is three helicopters crashed and 27 Army Rangers died, including the son of the guy from Wisconsin who told me this story, and that's what made him a gold star dad. Man, he was really something else. Very, very powerful personality. But because Colin Powell watched 27 Army Rangers get killed, news got back to George Bush Sr. And then shortly thereafter, he lost the election. He said, Well, why should I train Army Rangers? I'm lame duck. I'm not gonna I'm I can't spend six months training army rangers when I'm only gonna be in office for four more months. That's not gonna so that's why we stopped going after Saddam Hussein. An interesting side note that's probably why George Bush Jr. started the war in Iraq.

SPEAKER_05: 52:44

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 52:45

Now, again, what we want to do is we want to remember those people who specifically we want to remember those people who put on the uniform, who got the stupid ugly haircut, who were willing to sleep on holes in the ground that they dug with a shovel that they carried on their backpack that are willing to go in harm's way where there are people who want you dead. Yeah, and they're willing to go kill them and put their themselves on the line so you don't have to. Yeah, and the numbers are ridiculous. Do you know? I used to wear a patch, I don't anymore, wore out that said seven percent of the entire population alive today. Seven percent of 130 million people in the United States of America. That's how many people have ever put on a uniform. That number was rounded up at the time that I was wearing the patch, it said seven percent. It was actually six point five three. That number's probably down now, probably six. Yeah, you know how many out of the 130 million people. Do you know how many people are serving in the military right now today?

SPEAKER_05: 53:50

No.

SPEAKER_00: 53:55

That's like nothing.

SPEAKER_03: 53:57

That's nothing.

SPEAKER_05: 53:57

Nothing.

SPEAKER_00: 53:58

Yeah, you know how many are serving in the Chinese Army? About 10%. It's just amazing what they're able to do. But the technology is so far advanced, there has never been a fighting force on planet Earth that could do what the United States military can do. Yeah, they take it really seriously, they take your life really seriously.

SPEAKER_03: 54:21

My boyfriend was in Iraq, and he said he literally, I think the first time he met my parents, we were at their house and he was on their couch and fell asleep. There's life happening, everybody talking, and we're Hispanic, so we're loud.

SPEAKER_00: 54:37

And he and fast, you guys talk fast.

SPEAKER_03: 54:40

Yes, also, and he fell asleep, and I look at him, I'm like, How can you fall asleep? I fall asleep with bombs going off and things happening around me. I could fall asleep anywhere, and he could literally fall asleep anywhere at any time. I often take pictures, I'm like, look at you, how cute are you falling asleep?

SPEAKER_00: 55:04

But it's because incidentally, John Kennedy had the same skill. Yeah, incidentally, John Kennedy was uh he was in the Navy in World War II. I don't know if you knew that or not. No, it's relatively common knowledge. Actually, one of the things that that catapulted him through the ranks of politics as fast as it did to the presidency, and he was very young when he was he was the youngest president when he was elected. Yeah, and the thing that put him in that position at the time that it put him in that position was during World War II, he was on a it was a PT boat, had a crew of about 20 men, it was a relatively small boat, and Japanese actually hit it not knowing they didn't see it. The big battleship, Japanese battleship, didn't see his PT boat, and they actually hit it broadside and cut it right in half. And so they don't have a boat anymore. And Jack Kennedy actually he became a war hero because there was a couple people that were injured, and he literally swam backwards doing a backstroke with his teeth holding on to the life jacket of the guy he was saving who was incapacitated, couldn't swim, actually drug him two miles to the island. Oh, and he and I think he went back and got a second one, and he did the exact same thing while he himself had a broken back from the accident from that boat hitting them. And through the 50s, while he was campaigning for the Senate, he was mostly in the Senate in the 50s, he ran for vice president in 1956, but the Democrats lost to Eisenhower. But all through the 50s, every place he went, he was on crutches.

SPEAKER_03: 56:48

Really?

SPEAKER_00: 56:49

He was on crutches because he had a broken back, but he had that in common that same thing in common that your boyfriend has. You can fall asleep anywhere, anytime. Oh, I got 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_03: 56:57

Okay, okay, yeah, and it's the craziest thing. He said something the other night, and I was like, dude, you literally put your head on the pillow and knocked out immediately.

SPEAKER_00: 57:10

And I'm like, I don't have that skill.

SPEAKER_03: 57:12

I'm like, how does that happen?

SPEAKER_00: 57:14

The the truth of the matter is I I have too much PTS to be able to fall asleep like that fast. However, I do get to sleep, I have figured out my own little things, and but I want to I wanted to have a little capstone story here for you from west of the Mississippi River. Okay, because I have been everywhere. Can't believe I don't have that map. It's a map of the United States, and it was all the highways that I've driven on. Yeah, you can see it on the website. If you go to goldstarride.org and look at the pictures, one of them is a map that's got squiggly lines all over the place. That's those are all the places I've ridden my motorcycle in the last seven years. If you throw a dart anywhere at that map, and the dart hit wherever the dart hits, I have been within 100 miles. That's wherever it hits, even if it's halfway between Reno and Vegas, where there's nothing but desert. I've been within 100 miles. I might have even been in that spot because I went north and south through Nevada. Anyway, I wanted to tell this little capstone story because I know we're running out of time, and I know that your listeners are going, Wow, this is a lot of fun, but I gotta get to work, or maybe they're listening to us through your buttons at work.

SPEAKER_03: 58:28

That's how I can listen to everything.

SPEAKER_00: 58:30

I want to tell you first of all, the first story is the one from New Mexico. I was driving across New Mexico, and this was one of those deals where I wanted to make the news, I wanted to get on the news in San Diego. I was not successful at it, but what I was trying to do was ride from Jacksonville Beach, Florida, to San Diego, the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, okay, in two days, 48 hours.

SPEAKER_03: 58:54

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 58:55

Uh, it can be done. It's I got these iron butt patches back here someplace.

SPEAKER_03: 58:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:00

Anyway, because I do these distance rides, we'll call them distance rides. Anyway, what happened to me was I got to West Texas and I ran into a haboob. What's a haboob? How would somebody in Florida know what a haboob is? Of course you wouldn't know it. I'm from Minnesota, I don't know what a haboob is.

SPEAKER_04: 59:16

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00: 59:16

But I've been to West Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, and I've learned what a haboob is. What's a haboob? A haboob is a sandstorm when it picks up the sand from the desert so much. You've probably seen them in movies, and when it's preaching in movies, it's like Saudi Arabia and Iraq and stuff like that. But it picks up the sand so much that it literally blocks out the sun and reduces visibility on the highway to like five feet because you can't see through the sand. And that's what I ran into. And I was on a motorcycle.

SPEAKER_03: 59:51

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 59:53

That's I'm on a motorcycle, which means I'm not wearing a helmet.

SPEAKER_05: 59:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 59:58

But I always have glasses on. Yeah, I said, look, I know when I've hit my limit.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:05

Anyway, I made it out to San Diego because I had gold star families to see. I saw gold stars in El Paso, Texas. I saw gold stars in Yuma, Arizona. I saw gold stars in some other places. And I made it all the way out to San Diego. Saw gold stars out there. And I'm on my way back to Florida because this was in, I think it was the last week of February, first week in March. And where I'm from up in Minnesota, that's still winter.

SPEAKER_04: 1:00:31

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:32

So I'm not gonna ride my motorcycle up to Minnesota. If I don't have to, I'm not gonna. I have ridden my motorcycle in the snow twice, and I don't recommend it. Yeah, I it's it's not motorcycles, only have two wheels.

SPEAKER_05: 1:00:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:46

Anyway, I'm eastbound now. I'm headed back toward Florida from San Diego, and I'm crossing New Mexico, not on the freeway. The freeway crosses New Mexico is either I-40 in the north or I-10 in the south. I was in between on US Highway 60. Okay, and US Highway 60 is two lanes, one going each direction. And where I was at in New Mexico, there was nothing. There was nothing, and this is the kind of nothing where you just hear somebody say the earth is overpopulated, and you burst into laughter because there's nothing. I passed a town 25 miles in my rear view mirror, and a motorcycle died. And the next town in front of me, because I read the signs, right? The next town in front of me is 50 miles away, 75 miles between towns, and the one behind me had a population of 130. Oh my gosh, and the one in front of me had a population of 1500.

SPEAKER_03: 1:01:46

Oh my goodness, I think there's that many people in my neighborhood.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:52

Mine too. Anyway, so the motorcycle stops, it throws it through a code. Remember, we talked a little bit about codes before. So I pushing the buttons, finding the code. Oh, look, there's a code. Now I can get out my phone. I don't know where I put my phone. Anyway, I can get out my phone and I can look up the code, I can Google the code, and it'll tell me what's wrong with the motorcycle. Except I got no signal.

SPEAKER_03: 1:02:15

You're in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere.

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:17

And then I did one of these things where I spin around in a circle to see if to look at what's what where am I? And the there was nothing man-made as far as my eyes could see, 360 degrees, except the road I was standing on. There was not a barn, there was not a fence, there was not a telephone pole, there was not a cellular pole, there was not a house, there was not a ranch, there was not even a trough for the cows to eat on. There was nothing, nothing, but the road I was standing on. And I said, Well, shh, I'm dead in the water. I what am I gonna do here? Well, the computer would let the motorcycle run, but only up to 15 miles an hour. The principal factor here is that the computer, which is supposed to be smarter than me, yeah, won't let me ride the motorcycle fast to do more damage. But it'll let me they call it limp mode, so you can limp home to fix your motorcycle. So I thought, well, that town behind me had 130 people in it. There's no help there. There wasn't even a gas station in that town. I don't even know. I don't even know. So I know the next town is 50 miles in front of me. So I said, Well, that's where I have to go. 15 miles an hour. It took three and a half hours. Did you ever see the movie Dumb and Dumber? The scene where they got on that little teeny tiny mini bike and they're trying to ride to Denver, and then one guy peased his pants, and it's funny as hell. Yes, that's what I felt like. I'm on this great big huge motorcycle anyway. Now, the computer on the motorcycle monitors the engine, only the engine, so it monitors the gasoline intake and compression and a handful of other things that are in the engine. It does not monitor the transmission, it does not monitor the wheels in any way. Yeah, it monitors the brakes, but not at the wheels, it monitors the brakes at the brake level and the foot pedal. Okay, so it monitors that a little bit. Anyway, it does not monitor the wheels at all. So here I am, 15 miles an hour, and I pull into town and I get two blocks into town. There's a convenience store gas station. I pull in there and I get out my phone. Oh, great! Now I got a signal. Call up this guy. His name is Alex. I love Alex. Alex lives in Fort Sumner, Arizona. What's why is that sound famous to you? That's what you're asking. I'll tell you why. Because that's where Billy the Kid is buried.

SPEAKER_03: 1:04:58

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:05:00

Little side note: this is not a story about Billy the Kid. This is a story about motorcycles doing stupid things. I call up Alex. He says, I'm the only tow truck driver you'll find for 100 miles. So I'll take you wherever you need to go. But you're not going to get that motorcycle fixed anywhere near here. And I said, Okay, great. What are my choices? He says, We can go 100 miles south to Roswell. Oh, I had to think for a minute. Where's that place where the aliens with the aliens? He said, We can go 100 miles south to Roswell, or we can go 175 miles east to Lubbock, Texas. And I said, I have to see a Gold Star family in Lubbock, Texas. We're gonna go to Texas. He says, All right, I'll be there in five minutes. He pulls up with a little truck to grab the motorcycle and tow it. And he gets there and I said, Listen, before we do right at the edge of town, I gotta tell you the story. Right at the edge of town, two blocks away. I felt the back tire jump. I'm only going 15 miles an hour. I didn't see a rock, I didn't see a pothole. The front tire didn't move, but I felt the back tire jump. And he says, He says, Oh, okay. And he lays down on the ground right there in front of me. Just lays down on the ground and reaches up underneath the saddlebags that go over the back wheel. And he comes over to me, he grabs my hand, he puts these little teeny tiny black things in my hand. Little teeny little bitty ety bitty. I said, What the hell is that? He said, That's what's left of your wheel bearings.

unknown: 1:06:26

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:29

Okay, wheel bearings. Remember, I said the computer does not monitor.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:34

Does not so if I don't throw a code, I'm doing 85 miles an hour on that road.

unknown: 1:06:42

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:43

When the wheel falls off, which is the way it would have gone.

SPEAKER_05: 1:06:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:49

Yeah, wheel would have fallen off. When the wheel fell off, when I went rolling and skidding down the highway, when they found me, because I rode three and a half hours at 15 miles an hour, I didn't pass any other cars. Yeah, there's the road was dead. It was perfect road for riding a motorcycle. I man, it was great. But they would have picked me up with a spatula because there's no helmet law in there's no helmet law in New Mexico either. So I avoided being scraped up off the highway with a spatula because I threw a code because the computer said you can't drive any faster than 15 miles an hour. We load up the motorcycle and we go to Lubbock, Texas. We get there, it's 10 o'clock at night, and three hours 175 miles. We were together in that truck for a while. You get to know somebody when you spend that much quality time with them.

SPEAKER_05: 1:07:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:42

Anyway, he found out all about the Gold Star Ride Foundation. He heard all these stories that I'm telling you, and he all this, that. And he and I learned about him too. Him and his marriage and his three kids. He's been married for 15 years, and they have a wonderful family and all of this stuff. And I love Alex. Alex is a great human being. We get there and he said, I'm gonna donate the toe. Excuse me. I said, Oh beside myself, really? I can't give you anything. He said, No, nothing. Forget it. Dropped the motorcycle off at the Harley Davidson dealership where it's gonna get fixed tomorrow morning. And then he took me to the hotel that was a block away, and I got out, and that was that. And then I did the math on it. That was a three thousand dollar toe.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:23

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:26

Anyway, so if you're having second guesses, like, well, I don't know if I should donate to this. Well, Alex donated a three thousand dollar toe. Oh, and there's a book. We got to get to that book, too.

SPEAKER_05: 1:08:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:37

Anyway, next morning the dealership calls me up and says, What are we doing with this motorcycle that you left here? So I left a note on the windshield that said, Call me. And I said, fix the wheel bearings. The back wheel bearings are gone. And as long as you're doing wheel bearings, you better do the front ones too. And then as long as you got it, figure out what the code is and fix that. Just figure it out and fix it. He says, You got something to do. I said, Yeah, I'm gonna go hang out with this gold star family. So I spent four hours with the gold star family. It was a wonderful visit. I wish this was a story about them, but it's not, it's a story about the motorcycle. Four and a half hours later, four hours later, the family gives me a ride back to the dealership, and my motorcycle is out in the parking lot. And I'm thinking, huh, I guess they decided not to work on it today. So I go up to the service tech manager or whatever you call that guy. He said, My motorcycle is still outside. He said, Yeah, it's done. I said, It's done. He says, Yeah, it's done. I said, Awesome, what'd you do? He said, We put in rear wheel bearings. Man, I've never seen them that bad before. You're lucky that wheel didn't fall off. And I said, Yeah, and he said, and we put in front ones, and yeah, they were shot too. It's time for new front wheel bearings. I said, Great. And what about the code? He said, What code? I said, the code that made me go 15 miles an hour for three and a half hours, that code, the code that got me here. He said, We couldn't find one. I said, the computer has the bike, the motorcycle, has a computer on it that remembers codes from the past. Did you look in the computer's history? Yes, we did. And no code.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:18

Oh boy, do you have some angels?

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:20

Okay, do you got some do you have any goosebumps yet? Because this is what's going on now. Nothing of this world explains that. Nothing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:30

No, angels.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:32

Nothing.

SPEAKER_03: 1:10:32

It had not for you.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:34

So I hit a deer. I hit a deer going 70 miles an hour.

unknown: 1:10:40

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 1:10:42

Well, incidentally, I had to get a new motorcycle when I hit the deer because it totaled a motorcycle. The new motorcycle is the one that threw the code and the wheel bearings went up. But the previous motorcycle, I hit the deer at 70 miles an hour. I call a friend in Indiana trying to get the whole country involved in this podcast now. So I called this friend in Indiana and he says, You hit a deer? I said, Yeah. He says, At 70?

SPEAKER_03: 1:11:06

How are you alive?

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:08

And he says, And lived? He said, Yeah. And there's this pregnant pause. And he says, How many gold star families have you met with now? And at the time, it was a different number. I said, about 450. He says, I guess you've got about 450 guardian angels, don't you? I said, Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_05: 1:11:28

Yes. Yes, I do.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:29

And I have a handful more of those cute stories. But I want to end this because I know we're going, we're running right way long. Hang in there, listeners. We'll be done in a minute. We're almost done. We're almost done. We're almost done. So here's my Civil War story. The Butlers immigrated from Ireland to the United States in 1832 to escape the great potato famine that you might have heard about.

SPEAKER_04: 1:11:57

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:58

And the Butlers were they ran a small boarding house to raise their family, and they had three kids all born in New York City. And then they got older and they retired and they died. And the three kids decided that they were going to move west because now it's like 1850, 1855, something like that. Three kids decide they're going to move west and they make it all the way to Illinois. And that's where they decide all right, we're going to be farmers here in Illinois, and we're going to make a big go of it. And this is just before the Civil War began. Right? So try to wrap your head around that mindset of okay, there's no cars, there's no telephones, there's no try to remember what society was like at the time.

SPEAKER_04: 1:12:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:39

And President Lincoln said, We're at war now, so I need Illinois to cough up some volunteers from the 92nd Illinois Infantry. And I probably misspoke misspeaking some of that, but it was the 92nd something. They call it the 92nd Illinois something. Anyway, the 92nd Illinois had 35 men in it, and they were given the task to guard the bridge. And I used to know the name of this, but it's where let's see, you got Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee, and they all come together right there. I used to know the name of that bridge. It's a really funky old Indian name, the name of that bridge. Anyway, uh David Butler was part, he was the middle kid of the three kids. And he was in the 92nd Illinois Infantry, and he was part of the 35 men that were given the task to guard that bridge. Don't let any rebels cross. And then another name that I don't remember is the general that was running the rebel army that approached from the south with something like 40,000 men.

SPEAKER_03: 1:13:54

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:55

Against 35. So a couple of shots were fired.

SPEAKER_03: 1:14:00

Yeah, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_00: 1:14:02

And then about half of the Yankees of the Illinois 92nd, they just ran into the woods because they and another the remaining, I think there was about 10 of them or 11 of them, they threw down their weapons and threw up their arms. And it was about this time that the general, again, I don't remember his name, he was actually brought up on war crimes later. He said, No prisoners. So the 40,000 men opened fire and they were all shot them all down. Oh and then they marched across the bridge. So the rebel army got across that bridge, and a couple of days later, the Union big army comes along and they have a doctor with them, and they're doing a mass grave because that's what they did in the Civil War is mass graves. Big hole throwing all the bodies in it, they're putting the dirt on the bodies. When the union surgeon, that's what they were called, they weren't called doctors, they were surgeons. Yeah, union surgeon says, Hold on a second, there's still life in this one. And they actually grabbed him by the shoulders, and his feet were already buried, and they pulled him out of the dirt and they put him on a wagon, and they took sent the wagon to a hospital in Pennsylvania, so across Tennessee and West Virginia or something. Yeah, anyway, I don't spend enough time down there, so I don't know where all the state lines are. I could get pretty close because I've done a lot of traveling. I'm extraordinarily blessed that I've been able to do so much traveling as I have. So I know a lot of the state lines, but not all of them. Anyway, that was in April of 1863. The war ended in April 1865. He's recuperating. Now, listen, when the rebel army walked past, they didn't care at all. The idea was you got to reduce your enemy to that of a bug, right? You get to come up with whatever names you can come up with, you got to do whatever you can to belittle that enemy so you don't feel bad about killing him. Yeah, so as they're marching past, they're swinging their muskets and they're hitting the heads and the bodies of these dead 92nd Illinois infantry, right? And they're kicking them and they're just abusing their dead bodies. So David, remember, this is a story about David. David was the one they pulled out of the ground and sent to Pennsylvania, and he gets to Pennsylvania, and half his teeth are missing, his nose is broken, it's way over in the side of his mouth. One leg is shorter than the other, and he's released from the hospital in June 1865. Two and a more than two years, he's in the hospital recuperating. Guess what he gets to do? Walk home from Pennsylvania to Illinois. So he walks home to Pennsylvania from Pennsylvania to Illinois and he gets to the door. Now he's completely different than when he left. One leg shorter, the other's teeth are missing, nose is crooked, all this stuff. And he gets home to meet his two young boys who are now eight and ten years old. They were infants when he left, and he meets his bride, who he loves very dearly, who immediately dies from pneumonia two weeks later.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:13

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:14

Now he's got these strange boys that don't really know who he is, and he's raising them by himself, and he's trying to run the farm, and he's got one leg shorter than the other. And you know he's got back problems. Yeah, you just know it. You just know it.

SPEAKER_03: 1:17:27

I would imagine.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:27

Anyway, a year later, David Butler decides he's gonna take it in a different direction, and he marries this woman who was a made a widow in this in the Civil War. Her husband was actually killed, and they get married, and believe it or not, they pop out three more kids. And in 1892, David Butler finally passed away. So he actually he fought a good fight, man.

SPEAKER_02: 1:17:55

Yeah, he lived a good fight.

SPEAKER_00: 1:17:56

And this is a true story from the Civil War, it's uh very much a true story, anyway. In 1892, the baby of the family, the new family, her name was Mabel. She was a girl, she was Mabel, she was 17 years old, and the mom said, Well, I'm a widow twice, I've been twice widowed. I don't want to raise this girl anymore, so we're gonna have an arranged marriage. So she's gonna marry this farmer over here. And the farmer was 25 years old, and his name was George. George and Mabel get married, and they immediately leave Illinois and go to northern Iowa, where they are farmers and they're doing their thing, they're doing their bit for God and country, they're working hard and they're popping out kids. And I think Mabel had seven children, and then remember what year it was. This is 1892 when they got married. Yeah, seven kids later, seven kids later is World War I. Yeah, so that's how close all of this stuff comes together. And in 1919, Mabel died from the great flu epidemic that killed over a million people, which I think they called it the Spanish flu, yeah, which is weird because it came from France. Try to remember the French have always been there when they needed us.

SPEAKER_05: 1:19:14

Uh-huh. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:17

Anyway, Mabel died from the Spanish flu in 1919, but she had already given birth to seven kids. George remarried a woman named Ruth, and their third child was a boy that they named Emory. Emory grew up and married Gladys. Gladys and Emery had a boatload of kids too. And their third son was a boy named Keith. And Keith is my father.

SPEAKER_03: 1:19:44

Oh, I got goosebumps. That's so cool.

SPEAKER_00: 1:19:49

That story is in this book. This book is called Yours Very Sincerely and Respectfully. You heard me read the plaque earlier, and it's signed Yours Very Sincerely and Respectfully. That's where we got. The name of the book. The book was written after I rode around the country and saw 64 gold star families. The sequel is still up here, but I've this is 64 families. We've got a whole book. Look, there's words and everything. And I can that I wrote it because not only is my name on the cover, but if you look at the pictures, I'm in like almost all of them.

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:22

Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:23

Oh, this is so funny. I'm gonna tell you this really quick. This is in Wyoming. Now that's it, right? That's the last of the states.

SPEAKER_05: 1:20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:30

Our Wyoming story. I stopped in Wyoming, and uh this lady found out what I was doing. She was working at the convenience store where I stopped to get gas. And I had to get a picture. I got a video of her up on the website, too. Her name is Bobby Joe. Okay, her two sisters. There's three girls in the family, and that's it. Her two sisters are Betty Joe and Billy Joe. Why is this important?

SPEAKER_03: 1:20:54

Yes.

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:55

Because the TV show from the 60s was called Petticoat Junction.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:01

And it was a story of a single mom with three girls, and the three girls were Billy Joe, Betty Joe, and Bobby Joe. And it was the staff of Green Acres. It was very, very funny show.

SPEAKER_04: 1:21:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:11

Very funny. Anyway, her mother was a big fan of Petticoat Junction. So all three of the girls got named Glenn.

SPEAKER_04: 1:21:18

Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00: 1:21:20

That's a true story. So if you go to the goldstarride.org, if you go to that website and you click on the there's a pictures page, you can click on pictures, and there's one called vlog. If you click on the vlog tab, then look through them, you'll see her a video of her thanking the Gold Star Ride Foundation for the work that we do. And she actually opened up her wallet and paid for the gas for our motorcycle out of her pocket. Oh, I love that at that gas station. So that's so amazing. That was. I'm gonna shut up now.

SPEAKER_03: 1:21:56

I've loved every second of this. This has been so awesome. I love stories, and again, the work that you do is so very important. So thank you so much for that, and thank you for your service.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:09

And I thanks for being an American worth fighting for.

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:12

Yeah, absolutely. Listeners, I will put all of Token Squid, Anthony Price, Tony Price, the man of many names. I will put all of his information in the show notes because you have to connect with him. Please go listen to his podcast. Please donate to goldstarride.org. Honestly, this has been amazing. Go read his book, all the things so that he can continue to do this work. Token Squid, thank you so much for joining me today. I really, really appreciate it and I enjoyed every single second of it. And again, listeners, if you got as much out of today, please share and go donate.

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:57

And didn't you can do that?

SPEAKER_03: 1:22:59

You can still do that. Yeah. Even if you didn't, you can still do that. But if you made it this far, make sure that you go check him out. Thank you so much for listening today. Peace out, guys. Love your life. Bye.