Cigars, Airplane Business and a Rolex w/co-host GAry

The Sticks: JFR and Plasencia 

The Story: Within this episode, we learn more about the airplane sales business from co-host Gary and the importance of situational awareness. 

Location of Event: https://www.hotelangleterre.ch/en/home (Gary's most memorable cigar lounge, the Leopard Lounge , and hotel experience while employed as an airplane salesman). 

Fact Check: Men in Morocco do in fact have to serve at least 12 months in the military as part of the citizenship (between ages 19-25). 

In case you are curious, folks can check out the map: https://communitycrimemap.com/

This episode was recorded at Churchill's in Scottsdale, AZ in June 2025. 

Also, when AI lies, they call it hallucinations. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Alright, so we can get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Alright, so let's get started.

SPEAKER_01 0:09

You know why they call a twelve thousand pound bomb, a twelve thousand pound bomb? Because it weighs twelve thousand pounds. They call 'em daisy cutters now. Now it was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

So isn't there another name like that daisy cutter is for right now? Isn't there a like isn't there a daisy cutter? Don't we call other things daisy cutters right now?

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Well something you use to cut daisies with, that'll be a knife.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

No one does that.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

Nobody cuts daisies.

SPEAKER_00 0:40

What a knife?

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Where would they eat?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

So we're here at Churchill on Scottsdale Road doing another episode of Sticks and Stories. And here we have Gary and myself. And if you are sensitive to cursing and to things that are not for adults, then this is not the podcast for you. So with that said, we're gonna get started. I think Gary has a story for us today. Before it was about a Rolex, we tried to record that and were unsuccessful. I don't know what happened to the audio there. But Gary, you can choose to retell that story if you want. It was a pretty interesting story. Or if you want to tell one of your other thousands of thousands of thousands of stories, it could either be related to Vietnam or it could be related to you know your your time as an airline.

SPEAKER_01 1:34

I wasn't in the airline business. I was airplane business.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Well, airplane business assessment.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Nothing to do with airlines. General Aviation Airplanes.

SPEAKER_00 1:43

Oh, okay. But airplane assessment, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:46

Corporate jets. I was an airplane salesman, but we also bought it.

SPEAKER_00 1:49

How did you sell? I feel like you were like the person that came in and was like, okay, we're gonna get this plane if it lives up to all these specifications. So I never knew that you were on the side of selling.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Oh yeah. Sold a lot of airplanes all over the world. It was fun. We had to buy or trade for airplanes to sell. We'd find an airplane, go look at it, see what it needed, buy it, just like a used code.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

Okay, so it was like you were kind of not really a broker, but kind of.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

I despise brokers.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

But so you found the resource and you supplied the the buyer with the resource by going to you're like a not really a middleman, but you were the person that brought those two people together.

SPEAKER_01 2:32

That's too complicated. Monday, I don't want to get into that.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Why does your face look so perplexed?

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Well, it's just a bit it's really simple. I worked for an aircraft dealer or a fixed base operations. Yeah. And I would go out, we would find airplanes that were for sale or people wanted to get rid of just like a handy-used car for sale. We go take a look at it, figure out what it was worth if it was all shiny and new, and buy the airplane, get back, furbish it, grade avionics that needed maintenance inspections, and then resell it. Okay. Hopefully, if we did it all right, we made a little money.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

How did you get to these locations? Because you said they were all over the world. How did you get there?

SPEAKER_01 3:14

Usually well, depending on what we had in inventory, we'd hop in an airplane and fly out and look at it.

SPEAKER_00 3:20

So it would be like two drivers, and then one would drive, would you guys tell each other back? Like on a road trickle in the air?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

Well, yeah, depending on how far along the deal was, it yeah, initially. Well, let's see, how did it work? Somebody call want to sell an airplane, Gary or I'd go look at the airplane, try and make a deal. Sometimes it worked. Yeah. Probably once out of every ten times it worked. And then I'd fly it back. Or if it was an airplane that I wasn't checked out in, usually the owner's pilot would go along. He's looking for work anyway, now that they sold the airplane.

SPEAKER_00 3:51

All right.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

So they were really nice then. So we'd fly back to Lincoln or Wichita, wherever I was working at at the time, and we'd start the process and then resell it.

SPEAKER_00 4:00

Alright. Um, so so you didn't have to have like a co-pilot?

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Well, that's why the other the owner's pilot went with me. Well, I know it depended on the airplane. Some of the airplanes require two pilots. So if some of them only required one.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

So if they required two pilots, you guys would probably fly in commercial and then if you bought it, you know, you would just have to fly back together.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Okay. Do you want do you want to tell the Rolex story?

SPEAKER_01 4:26

That's just under the list of dumbass Gary right tricks.

SPEAKER_00 4:29

I thought it was a good story.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Um all started in the year 2000. When I turned 50, I was one of the 500-pound gorillas in the used airplane business, relatively successful. And I thought I deserved a Rolex watch, so I bought myself a gold Rolex.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

In that business, would you rank yourself top 10 back then?

SPEAKER_01 4:50

Back then, I was a one percenter. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

Easily top ten. That's uh you're like a legend. In my own mind, definitely.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

But how many people that that's like such a cool job. Like, how many people can say that they've done that?

SPEAKER_01 5:05

It's a really, really small business when you talk about numbers.

SPEAKER_00 5:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:10

Back in then there might have been a worldwide a thousand people in the buying and selling airplane business.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

You know what? Let me ask Chat GPT right now, how many people do that? I think it's probably all privatized. I mean, it was privatized back then too, right?

SPEAKER_01 5:25

You mean like private companies?

SPEAKER_00 5:27

Yeah, that would uh oh yeah, you know, do that.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

And the manufacturers are selling new airplanes, they had guys that would put numbers on trade just like a car dealer would.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Okay, you can continue the story. Right now I'm querying chat GPT and also I'm using Google Gemini as well. Google Gemini seems to be a little bit better. But anyways, um trying to Google the internet to see how many people today do that job.

SPEAKER_01 5:50

How uh how do you know it's not lying to you?

SPEAKER_00 5:52

It could be lying to me. There's a term for it. They call it uh it's a phantom, they don't say lying, it's called phantom results or something like that. That's something phantom.

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Phantom results?

SPEAKER_00 6:03

Yeah, phantom results lying, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:06

So next time I listen to a politician, I say, Oh, you're fantasy. What?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

Those are phantom results.

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Phantom results. The world is full of phantom results.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

So anyway, continue.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

All right, it's 2000. I got a brand new gold Rolex. I'm feeling pretty good. Well, along comes the year 2012. Yeah, I'm in Geneva, Switzerland, at an airplane convention.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:37

It's also the year I moved to uh Scottsdale, Arizona, and we were buying a house. I would I was at a place called the Leopard Lounge in the Hotel Angleterre in downtown Geneva, right across the street from uh Lake Geneva. Beautiful place.

SPEAKER_00 6:53

It would be great if you guys could see Gary. Every time he mentions this hotel, his eyes light up. It sounds like it sounds like a hundred times better than Vegas.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Well, I used to like Las Vegas a lot too, but in Geneva. It's a big airplane convention, and anybody that's anybody in the airplane business is there, making contacts, telling lies, trying to buy stuff, trying to sell stuff. Beautiful, beautiful place. And they have a great cigar lounge there at the Leopard Lounge. And we'd be in there all night long, telling stories, smoking cigars, drinking excess. I'd been there so many years in a row at that convention that when I walked into the bar, the bartender would just grab a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label and a bucket of ice and bring it over to the table and say, Here you go, Gary. I was I like that's wild. I like that place. Anyway, so that night we're I don't remember. Let's see, it would have been like in May. So anyway, I'm closing on a house in Scottsdale, Arizona.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

How's the weather there during that year?

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Usually the weather there about in May is i i it varies a lot like the weather tends to do, but it's probably in the high 70s, low 80s. It's pretty humid, but it's you know, the weather's nice.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

That sounds perfect.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

It is generally it. So anyway, my phone rings. My wife at the time, who's supposedly a real estate agent and a real estate agent, we're supposed to be closing on a house. Somehow or other they're like twelve thousand dollars short as I remember. And I'm going.

SPEAKER_00 8:20

How is that possible?

SPEAKER_01 8:21

How is that? I was a little more bravose about it, because I had already been drinking for three or four hours. Anyway, I can't hear them very well inside the bar, so I go outside, and I'm standing on the corner there, and I still there's a lot of traffic, even though it's like one o'clock in the morning. So I go across the street towards the park that surrounds there, or it doesn't surround, but it's on the Lake Geneva side. I think that's on the it's the southwest side, maybe. Anyway, it doesn't matter. So, but there's a park there. Well, they close the park at night, and I still can't hear it on the street too much traffic. So I wander into the park and my situational awareness sucks because I've been drinking and I'm talking on the damn phone. Well, up comes this young fella. Hey, have you got a light?

SPEAKER_00 9:04

Of course I'm smoking a cigar, so yeah, I gotta Never answer that question if you're far away from home. Not even in Chicago. So in Chicago, if you ask someone about the time, for example, that means something like you know, they're asking about drugs. Either do you have drugs or I'm selling drugs.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

I don't have any drugs.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

So anyways. Yeah, so continue, sorry.

SPEAKER_01 9:27

So anyway, I want some light. So I gave him, I get this cheap big lighter in my pocket. So I just said, here, take this. And I turn it around. Well, the next thing you know, I'm getting whacked. I'm getting whacked for eating good. And he goes after my gold Rolex.

SPEAKER_00 9:40

So you're you're getting mugged.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah, I'm getting mugged.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Oh, that sucks.

SPEAKER_01 9:44

Ah, it really sucked. I wasn't prepared for it, obviously. So he grabs the Rolex, and of course, it won't come off my arm, and he's yanking the shit out of it, and they're jostling me around, and I fuck. I wasn't prepared. Anyway, he finally it finally the the watch breaks and he runs off.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:02

And of course, in the process of pulling the Rolex off my arm, it gets all ripped up and then bleeding.

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Do you still have a scar from that incident?

SPEAKER_01 10:09

No. But I I still have the tendons still screwed up. Oh, that's fucked up. Alright, so I can stamp my finger.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Right hand, my left hand.

SPEAKER_00 10:18

It worked. You just have to put enough uh brain energy. Concentration? Yeah. And it's just fix itself. My body does that a lot. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

If you leave it alone, it fixes itself. So anyway.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Gary, don't forget keep the mic close to you.

SPEAKER_01 10:33

Keep the mic close to you?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah. I lost you on the audio for a second. I was like, oh, I don't hear him. And then I look down and it was barely any audio right now.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

That's too bad. Well, I mean Did you miss the part then?

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Well, I mean, about the tendons.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

You don't want to hear that anyway. So anyway, I wander back out to the street, and lo and behold, here comes the Swiss cop car.

SPEAKER_00 10:52

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

And they see me staggering around and swiftly. They can come out the boy swiftly. It was a man and a woman, and the uh guy spoke pretty good English. And of course, I as soon as they pulled up, I just kind of flashed them my arm and they they jumped out and said, What happened? I said, Well, I got mugs.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

Were you in pain?

SPEAKER_01 11:07

I was too wound up to be in pain.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

Oh, that's right. You were all also very inebriated.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

Not very, but I was on the I was a pretty happy guy.

SPEAKER_00 11:16

So you're inebriated, but also a little upset at this point because you didn't have the forty thousand dollar watch.

SPEAKER_01 11:22

The uh I didn't know it was worth$40,000.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

So anyway, the I guess it would have been great for you not to know because maybe Yeah, I think I paid like$19,000 for it or two thousand. Okay. And so do those appreciate the anyway. All right.

SPEAKER_01 11:36

Cop says, What happened? I told him what happened. Give them a description of the perpetrator. And uh and they take off. I mean, it's and they said, Here, wait here. I'm standing by the side of the street. He says, wait here. And they rush off down to wherever they go to. Well, there's actually that Geneva's got a drug uh policy where they hand out needles and shit for these clowns, and they all congregate at the park on the I guess that's the north end.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

I mean, I think that's a good idea. They do that, and I know they do it in Boston. I'm assuming they do it in Chicago. I've never seen it, but I know where they do it in Boston because I used to I did a clinical rotation there at the Boston Medical. So it's great because it helps to hopefully mitigate transmission of diseases. So that's I think that's the whole point.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So anyway.

SPEAKER_00 12:23

Oh, sadness.

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Womp, womp, so the next the cops come back, and it is like five minutes, and they got two guys within. I said, Are these the guys? And I'm going, yeah. One was about shit, he was over six foot tall, and the other guy was had the wrong kind of hair. And what does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 12:40

Was he black?

SPEAKER_01 12:40

No, it wasn't black. The guy that got me had uh not real curly hair. Anyway, it wasn't the guy. And it met neither one of them met the description I gave him anyway.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

So in my head, one has like bald head and the other one has a mohawk.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Well, no.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

That is more entertaining, so let's continue.

SPEAKER_01 12:58

They're much more they're much more GQ and Geneva, even the drug addicts.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Like most nations kinda if they have a little money, they dress a whole lot better than most of the people in the States, unless you're in New York or LA. Those are probably our jazziest places. Huh. Right? People don't really dress jazzy here. They're pretty much like especially in Arizona. It's damn hot. Well, it's it's definitely hot in Arizona. So here, this was like the first place that I was okay with wearing short shorts because it's nobody cares. It's too hot. It's like if you're wearing long like uh jeans, if you're wearing jeans, you're hot. Yeah, you're fucking hot. The only time you can wear jeans, I think, is like when it is kind of chilly outside, like the December and January.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

Maybe. Yeah, and you know, not even during a day. At night, yes, but during a day, you gotta it gets hot. Okay, continue your story.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

So anyway. They always had a they always had a bouncer. And uh I always really got close to the bouncers for some reason. This guy liked me, and I said to him, Where the hell were you? He said, What are you talking about? So I showed him my arm. I said, I just got my ass kicked and they stole my watch.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Where were you? Did your arm need stitches, Yuri?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

Oh, no stitches.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Well, how how did it affect a tendon if you didn't need stitches?

SPEAKER_01 14:28

It sounds like you probably they yanked the sh livid shit out of it. I mean to break the it's a pretty good watch band. Oh, okay. In order to break it, they strip it. I don't know what the hell they did, but I had problems for a number of years.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

Oh shit. Did you do physical therapy?

SPEAKER_01 14:43

No.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

But it actually works. Physical therapy. Now I can apparently I can pick up uh I can pick up things with my toes now. So I had a bone, a bunion, and um I had surgery, and afterwards you get physical therapy, and now I can pick things up with my feet with my toes. Okay, I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Oh my god. That might be uh too much information. So anyway, I'm talking about and I go back into the bar and now it's like two o'clock in the morning, and I'm standing there drinking, getting free drinks, because now I got a story to tell.

SPEAKER_00 15:18

And so you told the story already?

SPEAKER_01 15:20

Well, of course. These are all my buds. I know. They wouldn't know where in the hell I went. They wouldn't know why I was bleeding. I got me a lot of free cocktails that way.

SPEAKER_00 15:28

Did someone try to uh wrap it up though? The bleeding?

SPEAKER_01 15:32

We hadn't gotten to the wrap it up part yet. Matter of fact, I don't even remember what that does. I think I took some Jack Daniels and disinfected it. You know, a little snake bite. It wasn't it wasn't bleeding like, you know, we're not talking dripping blood. It's just when you lean up against the bar, it leaves little tracks.

SPEAKER_00 15:47

You don't want to leave blood at the bar.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Well, we wiped it all off. So anyway, I stand in the bar and then walks this police lieutenant. And he says, Come outside, we want to talk to you. Well, I get outside. Holy shit, there's like five cop cars, a SWAT team. Anyway, the uh the the bouncer took my story a little too seriously and he just took it.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:10

Called and everybody showed up. Well, we talked to the police lieutenant for a while, and he says, Oh, you're drunk. I had to agree with him. And I went back in, he says, We'll we'll contact you in the morning. So it's like three o'clock in the morning now, and I'm up in my room. I've got a couple of free cocktails to finish. I'm still pretty wound up. My phone rings.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

And at this point, Gary, how how many hours had you gone without sleep approximately?

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Oh, well, you know, the day before I'd flown over to Geneva. And I've been up most of that day. Oh, who knows?

SPEAKER_00 16:45

Was it at least two days?

SPEAKER_01 16:47

No, no, like 24 hours.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

No, I'm I would have been passed out. Gary, so you were 50.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah, in 2000.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Yeah, so you were 50.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Well, no, no, I'm to 12s when it happened, so I was 62.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Oh shit. Yeah. Really?

SPEAKER_01 17:00

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:00

You were 62. Gary, I'm almost 50. I'm very close to being 50. Um, after like not having let's see. If I'm if I'm missing like if I only sleep for four hours, I can't function the next day. So I can never like at this point in my life, I can't go twenty-four hours and without passing out.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

I don't see how it's that was part of the business, you know. We hop into an airplane, fly to Europe, get to Europe, look at an airplane, we'd be up all the time.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

I'm glad you're still here. So imagine sleep driving versus flying.

SPEAKER_01 17:37

You know, there's some stories about that too, but we don't want to go there.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

We're not gonna talk about that.

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Um, let's see. So where am I? So I'm up in my room and the phone rings. The hotel manager says, What the hell did he say? Oh, he said the police are here to talk to you again. This is the third time, yeah. So I go downstairs and this, you know, a couple of cops and they say, Hey, we've got your guy, we've got your watch, we'd like you to come to the station and identify it. So now, God, it must be four o'clock in the morning. So I get there and they show me a picture of well, they didn't they showed me the watch. They said, Yeah, that's my watch. They show me a picture of the guy that they caught. And, you know, kind of like a mugshot thing.

SPEAKER_00 18:13

How are they able to uh catch them so fast? That seems like legendary service. They don't do that in the states at all, unless maybe if you're in a small town and everyone's really connected, maybe, like in um like most of America, and I know you're not in the states at that point. Most of America, they don't move that fast here at all. Even so, I'll tell you a quick story. It's not about me, it's about you today. But my car, because I'm still livid about this, I had a little tiny Honda Civic. I was one mile away from 200,000 miles, ran really nicely. I had just gotten all the belts and hoses fixed for like$300 and something dollars. Crazy. Anyways, um, this guy in the neighborhood, he was drunk, sideswiped my car. I was out of town, I was in Georgia looking at some property. So the neighbors chased this guy down and identified who he was and told the police. Police did nothing, and told the neighbors not to chase anybody. That was their job. But you know, all they did, of course, was sit on their ass.

SPEAKER_01 19:07

This is Chicago, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:08

That was Phoenix, Illinois, by the way.

SPEAKER_01 19:11

How close is that to Chicago?

SPEAKER_00 19:13

30 miles.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Close enough.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Close enough enough. Okay, continue.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

I'm just mad that your people You're really gonna get mad here. Hang on. So I'm at the police station and uh identify you know identify the perpetrator and the watch. They said, Okay, we'll uh fill out a re They took me back to the hotel, dropped me off, and said, and they said, Well, we'll contact you tomorrow. Well, it's already tomorrow. The sun started to come up. You still haven't had any sleep. Yeah, you don't need sleep. Sleep's overrated. So anyway, you about nine o'clock that morning, the hotel manager gives me a call, has the what would you call it? The Geneva City Prosecutors on the phone. They want me to come down for a trial that afternoon. Yeah, already.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

That's insane.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

It's not been 24 hours yet. So, anyway, I show up about four o'clock in the afternoon there. I'm a little pissed off. Yeah, you should be. All Americans should be. So, anyway, we get to the city they call at their city courthouse. Uh, the biggest cop I ever saw in my life meets me and says, you know, put all your shit in the locker here, and I did, and takes me upstairs to a little courtroom.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:20

It's just a judge, a lawyer for the the clown, a lawyer for me, an interpreter.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Clown aka defendant.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

You know, a recorder, and it's and they they have a trial. That's crazy. And they got this guy sitting in the middle up front. I'm behind him in a table with my court-issued lawyer. Nice little gal. And uh the judge looks at me and he looks at the defendant, and first thing he says is, How much do you weigh? And of course, at that time I was like 315 pounds, I was six foot tall. I definitely wasn't ready to play football or anything, but I was in pretty good shape.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:56

But uh and the clown, he's from Morocco. He obviously wrestled when he was a kid because he was pretty good. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 21:04

Well, they're um in Morocco. I think it's mandatory that they serve two years in the military. I think.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Well, I served in the military, but I was a damn pilot. So anyway, okay. They had the little trial. The outcome is he's guilty. They put him in jail for six months, and then they send him back to Morocco. Don't pass go, don't collect 200, don't get the fucking go. And I got my broken Rolex watch back. So, yeah, it's the talk at a convention, and the convention's over, and I go to Lisbon.

SPEAKER_00 21:33

Wait a minute, oh wait. There's a convention? So actually I was there.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

An airplane convention.

SPEAKER_00 21:38

Oh, it was there. So I thought it was just like kind of a hangout that you guys did. So it was a convention.

SPEAKER_01 21:44

Shit, I lived in what you talk.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

Well, no, I thought it was like this annual thing. You guys get together, you know.

SPEAKER_01 21:52

It's an annual thing.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Oh, okay. So it was a real thing.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

European Business Aircraft Association.

SPEAKER_00 21:59

Because it just sounded like a lot of drinking to me. But then again, there's a lot of there's a lot of medical events where there's a lot of drinking, and I've been a part of that before, but I wasn't able to keep up with the people that were around me. I'm not gonna say which medical events they were.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Probably not a good idea. Anyway, convention's over, and I fly to uh Portugal to Lisbon. I'm there to look at a couple of hawkers. And uh, let's see. I've got my Rolex with me. I leave the hotel a couple days later, get on there, go, you know, get on the airlines, fly to uh back to Scottsdale, Arizona, call the insurance company, tell them what happens. They said, Yep, go get it fixed, it's covered. Yeah, the watch itself wasn't covered for the full amount. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

But is that when you found out how much it was worth?

SPEAKER_01 22:48

Well, I'd actually found I I forgot the the preamble to the story, and that was uh I'm in Hawaii. Oh, okay. I'm on a little vacation four or five days.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Okay, with the wife.

SPEAKER_01 22:59

And uh we went scuba diving. And somehow or other I didn't break the bezel, but I put a pretty gouge in it.

SPEAKER_00 23:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:05

So we went over to the the local Rolex dealer, and I said, Here, how much to fix this watch? She says, Oh, I don't know, we'll send it to wherever they fix the watches and get her done. Yeah. And I said, Hey, what's the watch worth now? And he says, Well, the replacement value would be like forty thousand dollars. And I'm going, that's a lot of money. So I go back to yeah, I'm in I'm in Wichita, Kansas. Back to Wichita, sends my watch back with a$5,000 bill to clean it, fix the bezel.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:33

So before I go to Geneva, it's really shiny again. Ah, yeah, really.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

So it looks brand new almost. It looks brand new. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, and so I go to Lisbon and I do my deal and I fly back to Wichita, Kansas. But in route, uh, so anyway, I called the insurance company. I said, go get it fixed, and it's the bill. Okay, great. So I go to a jeweler, I'm in my car, the watch has been in my bag ever since Lisbon. I open the bag, I look around, I look at look, no watch.

SPEAKER_00 24:02

Damn.

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Somewhere between Lisbon and Wichita. Well, between Lisbon and Scottsdale, my fucking watch got stolen or I lost it or something. It's gone.

SPEAKER_00 24:12

Do you still have that bag? What if that watch is still in that bag, Gary?

SPEAKER_01 24:16

No, I've been through that damn bag. I've had that bag on my head.

SPEAKER_00 24:20

You go through that bag once a year.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

I still got that damn bag.

SPEAKER_00 24:23

I would have kept that fucking bag like looking under, praying to the gods that it shows up randomly.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

There's no way in hell I lost this fucking watch. I went through my golf, I went through every bag I owned.

SPEAKER_00 24:35

That's crazy.

SPEAKER_01 24:35

Ah, it sucks. So anyway.

SPEAKER_00 24:37

So you got it stolen twice.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

Yeah, basically, in in less than a week. That's ridiculous. The moral of that story is keep your head out of your ass and pay attention.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Or don't buy that watch. Or if you buy that watch, don't take it on vacation. Put it in storage. Put it in the safe box before.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

Yeah, I wore that watch to one listen, you three different war zones.

SPEAKER_00 24:58

Well, but I also if you're going to this convention, you know, you could still wear that watch because th that's like, you know, people are showing I don't know if they were flashy. Were they flashy? Like your your brethren of uh airline people.

SPEAKER_01 25:12

See, most of them are real flashy because the people we sell airplanes to always had more money. They were smarter, they had more money, they were teasers, they owned companies, they ran fucking governments.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

Well, a lot of those people too, like well, I'll just speak for the ones in the states. I don't know if it's like that outside of the states, but people here that have really a lot a lot of money usually are not that flashy.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

I'd agree with that.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

So it was the only jewelry I had. Um not a build big jewelry hog, you know.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

So now well, I I would have been like I would have just gotten a tattoo after that. Just in that spot where my Rolex was used to be. What a sad face.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

Well, that comes under shit happens.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Gary, that was a great story. Oh yeah, I did look it up. Well, before I get to that, how many women were at this convention? Was it all men?

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Alright, now you're talking Geneva, Switzerland, and you're talking about Geneva people with more money than God all in a room. Anytime there's a lot of money, there's a lot of women.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Well, no, that's not what I mean. So, how many types of you were women? That's what I'm asking.

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Actually, there were some there's some exceptional women aircraft salesmen brokers. And okay, you know, but you count them all in one hand basically.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Yeah. So I did look it up. It said right now, you said there are thousands or a thousand or something like that. It's so again, we don't know if chat GPT is correct or not, but it's at 41. 41 people.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

And so it actually buy and sell airplanes.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Yeah, so it's certified certified aircraft brokers in 2023, international but that's the thing. International aircraft Dealers Association, IADA, certified forty-one aircraft brokers who met stringent requirements and passed a compar comprehensive. Oh, yeah, so it's just for that year. But I don't know the total then. So they would probably have the information about the exact amount of people.

SPEAKER_01 27:07

Right now, if you went to uh hotels and uh company called Jetnet, there's also one called Amstad, and they basically have uh produce a uh uh a multi-listing for aircraft for sale. And if you looked talled up all the actual organizations that own airplanes or have airplanes for sale, there'd be like seventy five hundred now. Back in the day when I was first getting started out, there might have been a thousand of those worldwide now.

SPEAKER_00 27:33

Yeah. Well, JetNet. I was thinking about Jetnet.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

There's also Net Jets, but they are the ones NetJets are the ones that have the uh fraction fractional aircraft program.

SPEAKER_00 27:44

Yeah, you could do that with uh you can rent out I think like it used to be a hundred thousand dollars a year or something like that, where you could rent out planes.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

Depends on the airplane, the size of the airplane. Yep, and then you could fly uh you could buy a you could buy a uh kind of like buying a credit card, but you could you could buy so many hours a year of use on an airplane for they have uh I don't know how cheap they get now, maybe fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, or as big as you want.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

So this one, uh jet net, uh market would it be marketplace? Yeah, the marketplace. So aircraft listings, valuations, and market intelligence.

SPEAKER_01 28:22

That's the one.

SPEAKER_00 28:22

For free trial. We're not doing that. So I've I could probably still get this information somehow. I probably have to data mine or whatever. But I could do it. Um and they are of course in New York. Yep. So um I think that's it for today. Gary, did you have any other fancy stories to add on to that? Did did you guys get the household or bought?

SPEAKER_01 28:44

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:44

Okay. See, I don't get that. Like by the time of the closing, 'cause that's the whole point of the lawyers, the real estate agents, and all of that. So that date that you guys set for the closing, all of that stuff has to be wrapped up. Like there can't be a jump in price unless the dealer the price didn't change.

SPEAKER_01 29:04

The fucking clowns just didn't couldn't add, I guess. That's real estate.

SPEAKER_00 29:08

Oh, okay. So they um whatever the down payment was, it was different. It was you know twelve thousand dollars more. How what how do you do that? You'd have to get have you bought many houses? So I've sold two and bought one.

SPEAKER_01 29:22

Yeah. Holy shit. How many have I had? It doesn't matter. I've owned apartment, now I'm a happy guy.

SPEAKER_00 29:30

Yeah, okay. I'm gonna get out of apartment life at some point. I just scary, I'm not a big fan of being around a lot of people, especially people that are you know, because people can become a liability, especially when they're well, for example, I mean maybe I shouldn't talk well, I guess I can't because it's public knowledge. Like where I live at, for example, and you can't control if this does happen, but there was an incident at my apartment building not too long after I moved there. It was within the first six months, a lady down. Downstairs came up unalived and the apartment complex did not share information with us about whether or not we were safe or not. That's the thing that I hate about apartment complexes, whether or not usually if there's a dead body, you're not safe. Well, see, if it's and so that's the thing. We don't know. So they just left everything to whirl around in our heads. So that's a thing. We don't know if it was like something targeted for her specifically or if there was somebody on the loose. So I feel like if it's a community of people, um, you're you have a responsibility to let us know whether or not we're safe, period. You know, that I know you're not law enforcement, but follow up with law enforcement and let the community know, hey, there was an incident that happened, you're safe, or you're not safe. So apparently they chose to say stay quiet, and most of the community was like afraid for a really long time.

SPEAKER_01 30:52

Did you buy a gun? It's a yes or no thing, you know.

SPEAKER_00 30:56

So I need here in in Arizona, you need a license, right? Or no? Do you need a license here?

SPEAKER_01 31:02

Not if you don't tell anybody.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

There's the top gun place, like literally right across the street. So access is and I can go in and purchase one with my ID.

SPEAKER_01 31:11

Well, it's kind of late to buy the damn gun after you get shot.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

That's true. But I mean, there's other ways to defend yourself.

SPEAKER_01 31:20

I could just wait just a minute, I gotta go buy a gun, I'll be right back.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

No, I mean you could just slice and dice.

SPEAKER_01 31:25

You got a sword in your office?

SPEAKER_00 31:26

We have to end this podcast right now.

SPEAKER_01 31:28

Okay, we're signing off now. This is Gary and Tina wishing you a happy Monday.