Deep Dive Episode 34 ( Brad Gets Handy, Watch Out Ladies )

This week Brad shares a compelling story about  a project he took on a bit outside his comfort zone: building a vintage bicycle from the frame up despite openly admitting he is “the farthest thing from mechanical.” 

We talk about concession stand food programs, and we enjoy Irish Whiskey poured out of a golden ostrich head.

#Shankyswhip #cutwater 

You can communicate with us at deepdivepod2025@gmail.com or be part of the Deep Dive Community in our Facebook Group Deep Dive Podcast https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1JGiMUC7bq/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You if you did this, because I wasn't a trick bike kid like initially. Like my first bike, I think came from coast to coast, which was like the local. But the thing to do was to put like those snap-on protective pads, right? And all the like all we all the my mechanical abilities was like just kidding it out and making it try to look a little more.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

You were talking about because the neck was a big deal. I don't know what they called it, but it was the goose neck and then the handlebars. And then I distinctly remember the day I was done doing the bike because I got my mom to drive me to I think Paul's or somewhere to buy all the pads. Paul's discussion. Because you had to have a crossbar pad and you had to have pads on the handlebars and the neck, and that was the finishing touches. It was awesome to get all the pads on.

SPEAKER_04 0:44

The handlebar pad was the only thing that didn't protect your nuts. Because all the other pads were for to protect your nuts. What was it for your teeth? I guess.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

So where I was going with this was I thought, hey, wouldn't it be cool to get the neighborhood kids together and build a ramp? You know, like you'd heard about the legend of like build your evil cannibal plywood ramp and try to like lay out four or five of your neighbors and jump them. And we're in our driveway, like setting up for this, and my mom comes out and they're like, kids are like literally laying down to get ready to guys contemplate that kind of weird.

SPEAKER_04 1:22

Yeah. So we actually did what you did, Brad. But we would actually go all evil canible, so we'd get like four or five kids laying down and then we'd light the kids on fire. That was hard. You're not doing it right if you're just jumping kids. Right, right. Yeah, one of the dads would light the kids off with a zone lighter. Eight-year-old raised with like a cigarette at the kid. Get his zippo outfit. There'd be another dad trying to you know extinguish them after the jump. Oh, that's classic. Beautiful. Hey everybody, we're back. Boys, it was dads and grads this weekend without necessarily the dads. Is everybody everybody had a grad this weekend, didn't they? That's right. Yeah, we had a perfect at the table.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

I had two.

SPEAKER_04 2:14

Brad, your daughter graduated from Tippi, University of Iowa.

SPEAKER_02 2:18

That's right. Emma graduated yesterday at um Carver Hawkeye for Tippi. Went well except for the heat. I mean, it was it was a packed situation.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

And you had the evening graduation, correct?

SPEAKER_02 2:30

Yeah, we were the six o'clock.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

So our graduation, for those not familiar with how many graduations were at the Carver Carver Hawkeye Arena, the basketball arena yesterday? Were there three? I don't know. Probably. I think there's a early morning, a mid-morning, and then maybe the evening. Yeah. The early morning was delayed 30 minutes because traffic was so bad getting to Carver Hawkeye Arena that many of the uh graduates were not in the arena on time. It was unbelievable. I don't think they planned accordingly, but I came down the Corville Strope. Becky and the advance party had left early. Okay. I had to wait for her mom to get here to bring her down, and it looked like a football Saturday. As soon as I got like within eyesight of the wig and pit, I'm like, oh no. If this isn't delayed, I'm not going to see it. I might get her to the door in time. But anyway, it was delayed. We made it in time. But uh it was hot. There's no air conditioning in that basketball arena.

SPEAKER_04 3:18

Toasty. For a field house that is buried underground. Geothermal is not working in that facility.

SPEAKER_00 3:25

No, it was toasty warm.

SPEAKER_02 3:27

And speaking of like arriving late, you know, Stephanie's always, if you're not 10 minutes early, you're you're late. So yeah. We get there with the whole family, right? So my my mom and dad and and Natalie and Stephanie and I, and my brother and his wife. And so we're there at 515 when the graduate.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

The last spot.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

First ones here. So we're there, yeah. Well in advance, right? And we watched the whole place fill up. I make two trips to the concession stand to get five dollar waters, you know. Did they have the ice cream? They did not have that. Was a big question were the carber cones going to be in play? They were not. They just had the kiosks that you you kind of almost self-serve when you put them on that little platform. And so did that a couple times. And Emma, of course, is texting from down below saying, Oh, I need a water, so we had to run a ramp for one town. And so all that chaos. And we're just waiting and waiting and watching it fill up. And then it was interesting to see a few kids like roll in five, ten minutes before come out. Like they're they were supposed to be there 45 minutes in advance, and dudes are like just running down the middle of the alley, like holding their you know 12 packs. Yeah, they probably exactly. So it was uh it was interesting. And then what we were appreciative of was some of the students, and many of the parents, of course, left after the you know they'd walked. Yeah. And so they they just cleared out, which made the you know, getting out a lot easier than if everybody had stayed to the end, which of course we did. But I think there should be a rule. Once your name is read, you and your parents must leave the building. Because they don't really do anything after that, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:00

They just close it down and it was not our intent to leave, and I didn't think most people would, but it would clearly at the early graduation that's exactly what was happening, because it was a steady stream up the aisle, and we gave it a solid 10-15 minutes, but it was gonna be quite a haul. And so and then Ava actually texted us because as a graduate, she left after she got her diploma. So she was outside for the pictures, so we got it done to be the traffic and got out of there. But yeah, and then you had a graduation at Upper Iowa.

SPEAKER_04 5:26

I did. My oldest Emerson graduated, and he's the president of the student government, so he had an opportunity to address the student body of 2026, and he did a great job. It always amazes me when he speaks. I mean, he's he's so good at speaking, and he's a really quiet kid. Not surprising, right? It doesn't surprise me. Oh, it surprises me.

SPEAKER_00 5:46

It surprises me the kids he's probably got dad's voice and gift jab and all the thing, right? Rhetorical skills. None of that is true.

SPEAKER_04 5:55

He's it's like I bet he says 24 words a day. Okay. He doesn't say anything like it was the most that a lot of his faculty had ever heard him speak, and they've actually said that in cool. But I've seen it before. He did it when he signed his national letter of intent. He spoke, he got up in front of a group and spoke. He's a gamer. You get him on stage and he's ready to go. He will only speak to crowds larger than 50 people.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

So about that. And then kind of a cool scene, it sounded like you described there for the tailgate, kind of a tailgate type situation at the graduation.

SPEAKER_04 6:22

Yeah, so the football weekends at Upper Iowa, it's a Division II school, they do a really good job of tailgating. The families come in from a long way away. And so they uh tailgate really well. The whole it's just like a regular old tailgate. Everything you expect to tailgate, the mascot and the cheerleaders and the food and everything. And so for this weekend they they tailgated in the very same place, and the kids and the parents and everybody got one last pulled pork and uh party potato shot at saying congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

I think that's fine. That that's one of the charms I think of going to a smaller school. Yeah, you know, the University of Iowa doesn't pull off something, obviously, at scale for that, but that's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

It was a neat and you did it in the in the football stadium then, right? It was outdoors.

SPEAKER_04 7:11

So what their tradition is they have um where they dress is a different facility than the football field. So the football team walks through the tailgate scene. Oh, and everybody kind of gets them jacked up. I tell you what, it's they well, the visiting team has to walk through the tailgate too. Oh, that's cool. Um, but all the recruits follow the team on game days, and so all the recruits and their families are being surrounded by when kids visit, you know, the fans know their name and they say, like, hey Jeremy, you know, we we need a D back next year, you know, and uh so it's not a bad recruiting tool, but uh yeah, so it's just outside the stadium.

SPEAKER_00 7:50

Nice. Nice. Well, congrats to the grads. Right. Now get a job exactly, and maybe just a little bit more disposable income for the dads next year. We can spend on some things that we talk about.

SPEAKER_04 8:01

Yeah. Well, hey, there's some news this week uh in the beer world. Our old friend Schlitz is going to guess take a pause.

SPEAKER_00 8:09

I don't know what Yeah, I think the press release was very clear that it was a pause, but in any event going away, right? So we're not gonna have Schlitz readily available for some time.

SPEAKER_04 8:19

I can't imagine a name that legendary is gonna go away. I just it I don't know if they're like intentionally creating I can't remember what the marketing term for it is, but it's a scarcity of it. You know, that when Bush Light only releases 3,200 cases of Bushlight Apple and everybody wants it. But yeah, I can't imagine Schlitz going away.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

It's hard to imagine. Obviously, the beer that made Milwaukee famous. We've talked about it several times on the pod. Um, I received a few text messages from relatives over the weekend after the news broke because you may recall when we interviewed Doug, I talked to him about my great grandmother who lived in proximity to John's grocery, and she would send my dad and uncles with a wagon down to get Schlitz. You know, back in the day when you could do that, they'd take the eight-year-olds, they'd fill up their wagon, they'd roll it back home to Grandma Rose, and they'd just put it on the ledger, and grandma would pay her tab, you know, weekly or whatever at John's when she went in. So uh Schlitz was a staple at our family reunions and whatnot. So hopefully it's out there in the future someday. But in any event, we're having a nice cold Schlitz tonight because we never are without at the deep dive studio. So uh cheers to Schlitz. Yeah, thanks for watching. Hopefully it comes back in there.

SPEAKER_04 9:27

49 Schlitz was one of the companies most like Paps that um they actually built the bars and they were pretty immigrant focused. And so you would see a corner bar that would be ordained on the corners and the cornerstones with Schlitz, yeah, with Paps Blue Ribbon, and you knew which bar it was. You'd look up and see the the cornerstones and uh the endorments, the stone endorments, and like, oh, that's a Schlitz bar.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

So and they're still around. They are. Well, we'll uh and Doug, I think, put something on Facebook for John's grocery that they still had supply. I don't know if it's still the case, but uh we'll make sure we try to replenish with whatever we get our hands on and have it as long as we can.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

I have a quick anecdote just speaking of John's, makes me think about this and the time we spent with the Alberhasky family and talking about one of our favorite dive bars, or it was kind of an elusive dive bar in some ways just because we we had trouble kind of swinging by when it was open, but uh the fox had. Yes. So I don't know if this is like chopped this up as Proud Dad moment or what, but Emma. Emma, who just uh who just graduated, she kind of made a list of all the places she wanted to make sure that she hit before she graduated or in her senior year. And so a lot of our favorite spots were on there. I mean, she's already regular at Joe's, yeah. She's a pretty frequent flyer at the Deadwood. And so after the ceremony, uh she and her roommates came by, had some leftovers from our from our lunch, and then they were gonna go out. And she says, Yeah. Uh one of her friends was having an event, which I didn't know you could do, at George's. So apparently they were like renting out or had it had reserved, some part of George's, which I've never seen happen except for the time that my dad and I walked in.

SPEAKER_00 11:05

I was gonna say, sometimes they do a funeral there, yeah, and then inevitably some jackass will walk into the middle of it.

SPEAKER_02 11:10

No, I have to take that back. So we did walk. My dad and I busted awake, that's true. I forget these things. How how I don't know, but yes. So if you die and have a live band on a Sunday, um apparently that's George's is available for that, which I again I have a lot. I have funeral wishes, so maybe I should advertise. Brad thought the beer was free for no reason, so he's just I mean, they sold me a cheeseburger and I did I did pay for it.

SPEAKER_04 11:36

And if the Snow family is listening, uh Brad still apologizes for busting up your briss ceremony. That wasn't that wasn't a George's it was still a uh house of prayer.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

My deepest apologies. But um Emma was gonna go swing by George's, and then she said, uh, yeah, it seemed like it was winding down, so I didn't run into my friend, but we thought, hey, I've got one one spot left on my to-do list, and it was the foxhead. So she rolled into the foxhead and gave it a warm, enthusiastic thumbs up as uh a place to discover. And then she did two places last night Foxhead and Deadwood. Those were the two things she did on her last Did she do a Tang Bomb?

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Not confirmed. I'm ashamed to say I didn't even ask. I assume so. Foxblood and Tang Bomb okay. Well we're gonna assume she did and did it all the right way.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

That's awesome. Good for her. That's proud of her for graduating with honors, but I also proud of her for you know drinking in the local culture. That's the real honor.

SPEAKER_04 12:41

All right, well, while we're in the alcohol neighborhood, I got something for you boys to see. Oh boy. I wondered what the backpack was.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

It looked like Ray was toting some heavy. Oh my goodness. The golden goose.

SPEAKER_04 12:54

What do you think that is?

SPEAKER_02 12:56

Oh. It looks like a tap head, actually, but like it's too big. It's the whip. It's the whip.

SPEAKER_04 13:03

Yeah. It's an ostrich head. Tell me about it. Looks like a major word. Well, maybe if we have um the proper drinking utensils, maybe we could take a quick snoot of this. We can.

SPEAKER_00 13:14

Yeah, well, you tell me what utensils you need, and then if this is involved some kind of a recipe, no, Brad, like you give us the four ingredients?

SPEAKER_02 13:23

If it's only two, or maximum three ingredients.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Shanky's whip. Right. What kind of vessel would you like for this, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:30

You know, I think three shot glasses would be good, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 13:33

Nice. Let's do it. Alright, so the decanter for this unit is an ostrich head for Shanky's Whip, and it's made in Ireland. This is an Irish whiskey, but it has a liqueur finish to it. So we will give a picture of that out on the website and we'll kind of talk a little bit about the history of this. So, boys, let's give it a taste and see what's what.

SPEAKER_00 13:55

Nose this first. This is you detect anything really distinct about the nose? I'm picking up some nut. Okay. I got like berry. I was saying that's 100% butterscotch. Yeah. Is that resonated at all with it? Maybe that's.

SPEAKER_04 14:09

So let's go ahead and taste it and see what's what. Thanks, Ray. First time at the Shanky's whip.

SPEAKER_00 14:14

Yeah, it's really good. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:19

It kind of warms your chest up real quick like an Irish whiskey does. Yeah. Yeah. And I've seen more.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Is there a drink that's associated with this, like a mixer, or is this usually just sipped and I don't know. Okay. Nice. Really good. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 14:33

You're welcome. So the decanter is, I don't want to say rare, but the distribution of it is is kind of very specific. I actually got this out of Nebraska. Okay. Is because there was a liquor chain and they ordered it for the entire United States. I called down to Florida, I called to Mississippi, Georgia. I mean, I called everywhere, all up and down the East Coast. And I noticed they had one store in Nebraska, in Omaha. And so I called that store and they said, Yeah, you want an ostrich hedge? How many do you want? Well, I will take three. And he goes, All right, we got four left if you want them. So very nice. So anyway, it's a nice decanter. Distinctive. Very distinctive. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 15:15

It's cool. Stunning. So Shanky's whip followed by Schlitz. We're off to get started. Could be a thing. Could be a thing in the bar, Shankees and Schlitz.

SPEAKER_04 15:23

I've got a another drink as we close out the show, but we'll enjoy our slits first because uh glad I rode the bike in. You're right. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

I think glad I moved my flight up tomorrow morning.

SPEAKER_04 15:36

Alright, so now that uh is the next on our list. Brad, you spent some time building a bike.

SPEAKER_02 15:42

Yeah. I did. I did. And folks who know me, John, can attest to this. Um while I have a great appreciation for biking and bike gear and vintage bikes, I am the farthest thing from uh from mechanical myself. So I had this big idea for this year to buy a vintage frame and build it up from scratch, and I'm very happy to report that uh with a lot of help from different folks and uh including ChatGPT. Yeah, well before you get to the book. My father's probably not listening, but I think we've we've established that she's very anti she's got uh mixed feelings about AI. But as a journalist, I guess that's maybe understandable. But she was her mixed feelings is she hates it and she really hates it. And she's ashamed of me for using it. But other than that, and she's often criticized our um you know the graphic that we use on on Deep Dive Pod. So so there's that. But yes, not knowing what the hell I was doing, and I'll let you go, John, but not knowing what I was up to, I leaned on ChatGPT heavily to help me make sure that the parts that I was trying to put on this frame were the right parts that would fit on this frame. It's a 1989 bike. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:55

Yeah, I was gonna give you a chance to tell a bit of the journey of the bike. So you purchased a frame in Washington State. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 17:02

So I um just a little bit of like personal history on why I chose this particular bike. I would say that not really the first bike that I ever bought, because I bought a bicycle in in the 80s with my paper route money, but like post-college graduation, I ordered the last available RB1 from Bridgestone USA. So Bridgestone shut down in the early 90s, and I decided to get a frame from them. Obviously, it was already pre-built, they shipped it out to me. And so these are a little bit already in the collectible zone because they haven't been around for a long time. So I've ridden this road bike for decades now and decided that I wanted to attempt to do some single track. Uh, there's a few friends, as you know, John, that do uh noon rides, um work rides basically, emanating from Civco and coming back on the trail's there, and I don't have a suitable steed to go out on it.

SPEAKER_04 17:51

So let's take let's take a pause here. Yeah. So for the people listening who um don't know a whole lot about the jargon, you are talking about a mountain bike-looking vehicle. Yes. Right. So this is like the guy that has the flat bars and the wide tires. This is not a road bike, this is a mountain bike.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

And single track is basically riding on unpaved surfaces that are kind of narrow. So it's only about maybe five or six times as wide as your tire. Um, so yeah, off-road riding.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah, dirt trail riding through the woods, yeah, around the creek, yeah, all those things.

SPEAKER_02 18:24

And and you know, so not to be mistaken for true mountain biking where you're going up super high grades and so forth, but just uh very much off-road routes and rocks and obstacles and so forth.

SPEAKER_04 18:35

So single track for me is about as close to going back to the when you were a kid as you know, it feels very much like a kid, and it's not as dangerous. Now, I'm not gonna say that people don't like separate their shoulders or anything like that, but it's it's very rare. I mean, just going off-road, these are trails that um a lot of communities already have.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

I mean, just look for kids going off into the woods and there's your single track. Some people built single tracks, not not really meaning to, right? Like like it's the path that gets dug out by I mean, obviously they're they've been groomed to some extent, but yeah, and I've never really done it, except as a you know, as a kid on my whatever Sears and Roebuck bike that I had back then.

SPEAKER_04 19:12

So you have a mountain bike type of um vehicle and you're gonna ride it as an adult, right not too far from where you work. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

Yep. So I very intentionally were was looking for this brand of bike because I kind of wanted it to be part of the nostalgic fleet that I have. So I have the the old Bridgestone Road bike. So I was specifically looking for a bridgestone mountain bike frame, and I found one on eBay that seemed to be the right size, although you never really really know. I noticed that it was like a good deal, but it was an eBay seller with local pickup only. I'm like, damn it, this looks like the right bike for me. Right, but this guy's not gonna ship it. And so it's in Port Angeles, Washington, and a friend of mine that rides rag ride with me, uh, Brent Schmatickey, who is a helicopter pilot with the Coast Guard, he actually works. And I sent him a text. I'm like, hey, are you anywhere around Port Angeles, you know, Washington? He's like, man, I I actually work there. I'm hovering over it right now. So he's like, listen, no problem. I'll go down and check this thing out. And so he did, and he gave it a once over, and it's ding-dub. Like it's not a it's been ridden. It's not a show pony, not at all.

SPEAKER_00 20:19

He gave it a once over.

SPEAKER_02 20:19

It's a piece of shit, Brad says Sidney.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

He's like, he's like this thing's Brad.

SPEAKER_04 20:24

I would not buy this. All right, go ahead and box it. I'm against it. It's too late. I already bought the mic. There's only half of the bike there. Right. Exactly. Sounds good to me.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

I was determined. And he did, he, you know, it wasn't bent, you know, it had obvious signs of use, and I was I was on board with that. So he did me the kindness of picking up this bike, and then the cellar had some parts that went with it, some brake poles, some cantilever brakes that were kind of period appropriate for a bike like that. And so Brent Schmatickey did me a big time solid and picked it up, boxed it up, and because of his status with the Coast Guard, he can fly for free and he can fly with luggage for free. So he threw the frame in a TV box and came back to South Dakota, actually, to watch his daughter perform. She's uh she's at Augustana College and does like tumbling. And so he came back for one of her meets, and another friend of mine from OSCE who rides Rag Bry with me was gonna go up and meet him. And so it flew from Port Angeles to Sioux Falls, South Dakota, got picked up by my buddy from OSCE who drove it to North Liberty and handed to me in a TV box, and that was the start of this build. Already I was engaging the help of multiple friends. Planes and automobiles.

SPEAKER_04 21:39

For sure. Did had you ever built a bike before? Never. So, and how about as a kid? Did you ever do any like alterations? So, what the bike you got was the bike you didn't make it a chopper, you didn't do anything when you're a kid?

SPEAKER_02 21:50

I can um change a tube, ideally front. Yeah. Because I don't really like taking the back wheel off. So this was an event for you. So for me, this was definitely a Yeah. An ambitious project. But something that I I truly did want to like prove to myself that I could figure it out. And so yeah, man, I I I was I was super happy it came in and then I then it was like, okay, this is real. That's when I started to try GPT. Try and think through how do I want to build this up? What do I want it to be like? I wanted to keep it, you know, period specific and or authentic to what it once was. I I did a few changes. But yeah, man, with with the help of ChatGPT, I sourced some parts uh vintage. I got a lot of stuff from sellers on eBay. I got a few things from the Iowa City Bike Library, which I learned to appreciate as a super awesome local resource where you can go in, you can rent bench time and take your bike in and get help from a profession someone who's you know qualified to teach you. It's a it's a long process because there's multiple people in there doing it. And so they're they the one I appreciate this, but the one kind of policy they have is we'll show you how to do it, but we will not do it for you. Yeah. And that was good for me. So um yeah, with the help of Drew at the Iowa City Bike Library and uh fellow um Civco cyclist, guy that I ride ride a lot with, John and I ride um very frequently with, who's built a number of bikes. He came over and you know helped me out with some of the more, you know, I guess I would say technically complex things. Like putting air in the tires. And it'd be on that. I I I I'm just thrilled to say, like, I've got a bike that rolls. Yeah, and I did. And I did and I did I think I I would give myself the over-under on the the completion.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

They were way under. I thought it would take a lot longer. Yeah. And the bike is named Chet. I don't want to like take that for right. So Chet's the name of the bike, and Chet looks great. You got a beautiful Brooke saddle on him. You got it's we you debated the paint. Yep. And the fork. Do I left it as were?

SPEAKER_02 23:47

I left the banged up fork, and I'm okay with it now. I've gotten over it. Now, finish the story.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

You you took yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

Yeah. So I mean, Brad did a great job. Chet rolled on a ride. Chat, chat GPT helped me out. I had help from Caleb, I had help from the bike library. I finally got it into working condition. Now it's got a temporary setup for the cockpit because I have a vision for a specific bull moose bar, which we don't have bore our listeners with. But it's a handle type of handlebar. Yeah, it's a it's a handlebar that's kind of specific to that period. So I utilized the bike library and got a super cheap like stem and bar set up that cost like fourteen dollars altogether. You know, so like get your rolling type thing. Got the drivetrain figured out and the brakes installed and all the things, and took it out. And John and I rode with Caleb. Yep. So two guys that were I know John would take pleasure in you know, mocking my my build and any any like hap hap things that that happened along the way. Caleb, you know, maybe a little bit more on the supportive side of things, rode it and survived. Like I did we didn't break any records, but successful role. We stopped at Dunkin' Donuts and um I wrote it home and I was like pretty proud that it was all in in in decent shape, and I had realized that the prior Friday I had spent the afternoon at the bike library doing like five or six different maneuvers, which should be able to be done within an hour's time, but because you're at the bike library and and Drew's trying to help all the other builders and I'm trying to find parts. And it was it was a nightmare. Anyway, so I took it in this Friday after having ridden it that morning, and it's all dusty, and then I took it into Drew, who's the the lead mechanic of the bike library, and I said, Hey man, um look, I'm really embarrassed. I I didn't pay you for the parts that I put on this, and I want to make sure I do that. And while I'm here, I just wanted to have you give it a quick once over to uh confirm that this thing's rideable. He's like, absolutely. Proud apparent moment.

unknown 25:43

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 25:44

I w I was looking for the praise and validation of a successful build. Right. And um, you know, he starts doing things to it and he compliments the wheel set, which Caleb's brother built for me, so that was one modern kind of um nod that I did. And he tests things out, and then he's having me tighten the the crank bolts, and he's having me do some adjustments, and then he realizes that the headset setup was what he termed as non-ideal and in fact not writable. Right.

SPEAKER_04 26:15

You say it is writable.

SPEAKER_02 26:17

I have about 40 miles on it. He said, Okay, I wouldn't ride it again. So here I am. Wheelies calling it Uber XL to get home, defeated. I mean, it deflated me in a but then he tells me I I wouldn't recommend riding. This is for display purposes only. So here we are. I've uh I've ridden it here to to this pod. Yeah, and I didn't break my teeth out.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

No.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

And um a couple schlits, and you'll be a safe ride home. Yeah, and I'm planning to ride it on Monday. I plan to ride it tomorrow for a nooner ride.

SPEAKER_04 26:50

So um one of the things we're hoping to accomplish about talking about bike builds and bicycles today is to uh make you aware that um there are bike libraries and um different workshops in your community or close communities. There's um one up in Cedar Rapids, obviously one in Iowa City and Des Moines here in Iowa. Um but if you were to do a local search, um the my guess is that there's probably a bike library. A lot of the bikes that are in the bike library can either be checked out for a week or two and you can kind of see if you like it. Um, or you can actually just out and out buy it. I know that if you walk into a bike shop now, some of you might have sticker shock at the price of a thousand dollar bicycle, or um, but the bike libraries have very good bicycles, very reliable bicycles, they're fine-tuned, and those bicycles are absolutely perfect for getting back into cycling.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

Yeah, right, I was just gonna say, um, my my nephew, actually, my brother's son, who's a student here at Iowa, just graduated with with Emma this weekend. When he came to town, he didn't have a bicycle, he came in from Chicagoland, and my brother sent me a note and said, Hey, I'm looking to get Owen a bike to get around campus. And I was like, Well, hey, I mean, yeah, I could probably help you find one, but I think my b my best advice is check out the bike library. They've got this program, and I think it's kind of designed for students or people who are new to town where you can come in and you can basically lease the bicycle. I think you put a fifty dollar deposit down and it's yours until you come back, and I think you maybe you I think that's it. I think you put down fifty or maybe a hundred bucks, and you get most of it back and it just it just costs you a little bit for the time that you use it, and then if you want to, you can just purchase it. I think he bought a very serviceable kind of trek hybrid bike that got him around campus for like 200 bucks. And he he kept he kept it. Like and that's the kind of service that they'll do. They'll you can like you said, you can come in and try it out, you can you can lease it, you can buy it for cheap, you can and it's uh it's also like it's a place where if you're a weirdo that likes vintage bikes and you spend enough time going in there, there's a few people I think that pop in maybe weekly to see what came out of someone's garage. Yeah, yeah. Because when I was working on those benches, every so often some guy would roll in and be like, I want to donate this. This guy, this on I think this past Friday, a guy came in and he had like he had this bike that was in pretty pristine condition, and he brought the original user's manual that came with the bike. So they get some some higher end uh stuff that people just look, this has been hanging in my uncle's garage, he passed away. I'm I'm donating it. So you can you can find across the spectrum of like early startup bikers to people who are interested in really like cool old vintage steel from maybe Europe or wherever else. And um the other neat thing that happened when I was there is this kid, and they have this like little track. You've probably seen it right right outside the kind of the shop door. They've got this little area where you can like test ride your bicycles. And as I was leaving last Friday, there was this kid, um, I think it might have been a special needs kid in some in some fashion, and he was on a trike. It was like, you know, a a kid's bike, but not like a like a little like a toddler trike, but like a like a kid's trike, and then you know, you know, the dad was standing there saying this is the first time he's been able to like ride a bike. This is the farthest he's ever ridden a bike. And it's like they just make biking accessible to people who might be intimidated by it. They do everything from like teach you how to change a flat to you know if you want to wrench in and change out your gear set or whatever. Um, they do a program for cyclists of all ages, so people who are elderly and need to be riding a a trike style bike do that. And then my daughter Natalie, who's very analog and very anti-AI, as we've earlier established, she goes in for a w women's night. Like it's very it's it's focused on getting women into biking and teaching them how to like be self-sufficient with servicing their bike. So it's a it's a just to support what you're saying, Ray, it's a it's a valuable community service.

SPEAKER_04 30:44

Right. And you know, if you're looking for a hobby and you already have a bike and you just want to look learn how to work on it, it's a great thing to do. If you have bikes out in your garage already and you don't want to pay somebody every time something goes wrong with it, you know, these bike libraries are worth you know putting in the car, maybe going to the next town over or you know, taking down there. It just think of it as a hobby. Listen, getting your bike up and going, that with today's gas prices, it almost pays itself off, like in three bike rides. Just you know, paying bills or putting a backpack on and going and grabbing some stuff from the grocery store, it's paid itself off. So I have got another potion for you boys. Alright. Let's do it. This is called a cutwater banana mud slide. It's 13% alcohol by volume. The flavoring in this is um cutwater vodka, which is uh legitimate distilled spirit. Sometimes they have malt liquor. This is a distilled vodka, a coffee cream liqueur, and a banana liqueur. So I was um thinking maybe it's got looks like it has some vanilla beans on it too, but I'm not sure what makes a mud slide. I always kind of thought mud slides had a chocolate connotation about it, so I was gonna mix it with the uh buzz ball, the chocolate buzz ball. But so yeah, John, what did you think this tasted like?

SPEAKER_00 32:03

Alright, I think there's two things that jump out to me when I taste this. And the first one is banana baby food. Alright, well, the other thing I thought it tastes like was a banana split. Yeah. Which, and I before we queued the mics back up, I asked Brad. It kind of takes me back to Dairy Queen as a kid. So, like, did you have a go-to standing, like tasty freeze Dairy Queen in your order that was your go-to in the summer?

SPEAKER_04 32:25

Well, uh, as a Gen Xer, let's first not ignore the fact that you knew it was summer when Dairy Queen started having these Sundays in the baseball caps. Regional Lakers Cubs, the Twins, the Ro or the Kansas City Royals, I mean, whoever was regional for you, you could get an ice cream Sunday in a hard baseball helmet.

SPEAKER_02 32:46

Yeah, yeah. That was a thing for sure.

SPEAKER_04 32:48

Oh, yeah. And that was it was great. And you would have them stacked up. I'm sure somewhere there's just an entire landfill full of nothing but Cubby's helmet.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

So did did your Little League team ever rendezvous at the Dairy Queen post-game? Did like your coach ever throw that out? Or that was the last game of the year for us. It was always the last game of the year.

SPEAKER_02 33:05

Yeah. We didn't have a DQ in town. We had uh the Ainsworth Four Corners were famous. People would drive there. It had a drive-thru, you could get some. It's kind of a hall. That's like one way. My dad was an ice cream head, so we would do that sometimes as a special thing. Not as a team, but like Dunlap's to do that. And then we had uh the corner creamery, and then there was one on the four lanes. So we didn't have like a branded DQ thing, but if you were asking about what the main go-to order was, I was always a malt guy. I liked malts. Yeah, it's almost like I would get malts with um like candy bar in it, like a like a snicker malt or a butterfinger malt. That'd probably be my main play. Yeah, typically.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

We were at Dane's Dairy, which is still in town. Yeah. And our go-to there was always hot fudge malt.

SPEAKER_02 33:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:49

That was the only place I ever did the hot fudge malt, but we would always get hot fudge malts at Dane's Dairy. The Dairy Queen on Riverside. You'd either go with the Sunday, the peanut butter parfait, or something different. But so my parents, my dad, I guess, every time literally, if you hit a home run, dad took you to Dairy Queen for a banana split. That was like the treat. You got a banana split for a home run, but my dad also was the coach, and so I think you mentioned this there's the concession stand. Yeah. It wasn't uncommon for post-game one of the parents to say popsicles or a candy bars on you know Tony's parents, and everyone would go get that. But once or twice a year, then the coaches would say, families that wouldn't meet at the Dairy Queen on Riverside, yeah, cones are on the coaches. There's always a big treat, you know.

SPEAKER_04 34:29

So I don't want to paint myself as totally destitute, but we just didn't have a whole bunch of cash. And but where we didn't have cash, we had creativity. Yeah. And so I had two signature malts. Uh-huh. So our ice cream place was called Raymond's. It was Raymond Siemens. Nice. But there was nobody else that ordered this but me, and the girls hated it, and they told me that I was the only person. So I would get so it'd be a malt, a soft served chocolate, and then the hot cherries that you would put on top of, I would have those blended up into my malt. So it was a like a chocolate-covered cherry malt. Okay. Right. So my other signature malt was vanilla ice cream. It was a shot of the mint that you would have, and then the chocolate that you would put on top of ice cream that would get hard.

SPEAKER_01 35:24

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:25

I'd have them put two scoops of that in the malt and then blend it up so there would be chocolate chips up in it. Okay. So it would be mint chocolate chip malt. Yeah. So this was before blizzards or anything like this. This is just me trying to, you know, a malt was a buck fifty, and I could put whatever I wanted into, as long as it wasn't a candy bar or something like that. So that's as close as I came to because I could have gotten something with Andy's mints or something, but this tasted kind of like it, but it was 70 cents cheaper than creative ordering. I digger. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

They probably cringed every time race coming across a lot of this bike. I grew up. Oh my god. What are we going to have to clean this? Yeah, we're going to have to clean the malt machine after this is done. Every free topping we have. Right. That's great. That's super creative. God, if they would have had ranch before then, that would have you know we've talked about these of yesteryear, the Pearson's counter at Pearson's drugstore. Yeah. Did you ever experience the Pearsons? I did, yeah. I love Pearson, yeah. And they did the phosphates by. So if you ordered a cherry coke, it was a squirt of cherry, squirta cola, soda water, but they did the most amazing chocolate sodas. Okay. Which, you know, just an old school thing. Chocolate soda, yeah. Chocolate syrup, Hershey's chocolate syrup, soda water, and then either a dop of ice cream or have, you know, whipped real cream. It was awesome.

SPEAKER_04 36:42

You know, so it was a good old-fashioned post-World War II soda fountain. Yep. And they had a Campbell's soup branded machine that would hold these little, there's about the equivalent of a half can of like a regular thing of soup. And this thing would warm the soup up. And so they would you would order tomato soup. I had ordered three tomato soups to fill me up. And they would punch it, and then the cans would come out hot and you would just eat it. The chicken noodle soup or the Pierce ones was great.

SPEAKER_00 37:13

The best tuna salad sandwich that Iowa City ever had. They posted their own tuna salad. It was amazing.

SPEAKER_02 37:20

Never experienced it. Like the sound of it.

SPEAKER_04 37:23

It was trap when it went away. I mean, people would today would try to go to great lengths to try to recreate that to be retro and kitschy.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

And it was just it's thing. I uh you know, I thought it would be a great food truck concept to have the the Pearsons truck, all the same things. This gamble soup can, you know, that what is the plated stainless steel like that was on the countertop, you know, and just have that kind of be the whole motif of the truck. Yeah, that'd be awesome.

SPEAKER_04 37:47

But it was you know, and it was down in that I don't say Czech village, but it was down where Alberhaski's down Brewery Square.

SPEAKER_00 37:53

It's where Webster and that whole building is right next to George's.

SPEAKER_04 37:57

Okay, yep, yep. And you know, it was a mixing bowl of blue-collar and lawyers and you know, some people that were at the hospital, like their family was at Mercy, maybe they're coming from the country or whatever, and so they would go over there and eat, and you would stand, and it would be totally fine to stand and eat and talk to somebody that you had no idea who they were.

SPEAKER_00 38:18

You just and it's important to for people that don't know or remember, it was a lunch counter in the back of a drugstore or pharmacy. It was you know, yeah, it was awesome. So it was a store in the front, a full pharmacy counter, and then in the back was this stainless steel lunch counter with stools. It was fantastic.

SPEAKER_04 38:36

And the other thing is they had really great greeting cards.

SPEAKER_05 38:39

They did, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:41

It was the uh that's where I got all my Mother's Day cards. And I am not going to lie, when they said they were gonna close, the first thing I thought was where I could get my Mother's Day cards. That's great. But yeah, you know, sad to say I never experienced it. Uh it sounds awesome. So um, you know, I know it's not necessarily a drugstore soda fountain, but you know, the concession stands at Little League Fields are were were kind of interesting. You know, a lot of times they serve food for people that were coming right from work or kids coming, you know, in. So they had a little bit of hot food pro what what do you call that uh their uh program? A little bit of food program. Food program. Yeah. Um they obviously had those awesome Coke or Pepsi wax cups that you could get like six-ounce draws of whoever was vending out of that every type of chocolate that uh and hard candy, you know, but the whole goal was to have somebody's grandma or grandpa or visiting aunt or uncle treat you.

SPEAKER_02 39:44

Was that a thing where you guys absolutely? I was just telling John off mic earlier that um my grandpa Dunlap wasn't uh you know, he's a blue-collar guy, he was a welder, you know, he he wasn't a high roller, he didn't drive a Cadillac or anything like that, and he didn't come to a lot of our sporting events, but when he would come down, I played in the YMCA League League, right? So Little League and then Babe Ruth was kind of organized by I think it was someone who worked at the Y, right? So the YMCA ran the concession stand, and um it was this little tin shed building, and unlike what you were describing, Ray, ours did not have a fountain soda um option. It was cans, so you could get cans of mountain dew, cans of Pepsi, whatever it might be. Yep. But I just remember they were the the sodas were so cold because like it didn't get open, right? It was just the coldest Mountain Dew I ever had came out of the case field concession stand. And then the other thing they had, I think froze the Snickers. So you absolutely didn't you had the coldest Mountain Dew of all time, and this crunch and it's it's a you know, it's summertime, right? So it doesn't stay, you know, frozen and rigid very so it was like just the combination of that ice cold Mountain Dew and that crunchy texture Snickers bar was like that was heaven. And that's what my if we won, lost, draw Grandpa Dunlap, boys, go get whatever you want. Get one soda, one candy bar, it's on it's on Chet Dunlap. And that was a big that was a big deal. Like I I don't remember the um the ice cream bit, but like we had popcorn, we had hot dogs, we had frozen Snickers, we had Mountain Dew. And then like a lot of little blow poppy, like like like what was the charm though the had the the gum center they would say those blow blow pops, I guess they were tootsie pops and then the ring.

SPEAKER_00 41:32

I don't know if they had the ring, but that was kind of the same thing. So I always just remember the red licorice, but it was anything that wouldn't melt, a couple candy bars that were frozen or else they would have melted, so they were always stored in the freezer. But we ride our bikes to City Park all the time, and I kind of muse because to this day, the in the middle of all the fields is the concession stand storage. And I remember that as the new right, it was probably built in '81, right? Yeah. But prior to that, it was literally this little shack in the middle of those fields at City Park, and it was canned soda.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

It was either Three Musketeers or Snickers Frozen. Yeah. Red licorice that didn't melt. And um, I think that was like the entire thing. No, that came with the new one got candy. And then they did hot dogs, popcorn, that was it, and then cans of soda, frozen candy bar. And I don't know why, for whatever reason, I was not a huge root beer fan if it wasn't an AW float, but that was the go-to move was the barks. Okay. And I think to your point, because it was always so ice cold. Yeah. But I remember getting the like almost frozen barks root beer at the park.

SPEAKER_04 42:33

Here is one universal truth about architectural design. Every snack shack in the United States has a two-inch wider door to accommodate a deep freeze. You could talk about fire code handicap accessibility, but every concession stand will accommodate a deep freeze and will have an electrical board that will uh separate it. So if that thing gets popped, you know, all the rest of the lights can go off at the field and everything else, but the deep freeze is still humming.

SPEAKER_02 43:05

I think we could do a whole episode on concession stands and like the various things that are served at a Friday night lights Iowa football game, or I did a lot of time doing volleyball tournaments and traveling around, you know, the conference and tasting walking tacos and so forth. But like Stephanie was telling me, and sometimes the better concession stands are not where you might think they might be. They might not be at West High or City High or the big high schools. They might be, but they can sometimes be at the like the small like Stephanie went to Pekin and she ran the concession stand for the bait for softball and baseball. And she was telling me that like that was a like you mentioned, like it was a place where people would come get their meal, but their expectations of the meal and what they would do, like they brought in crock pots and they didn't they didn't have like soda fountains and stuff like that, but they had a really good selection of candies, and then they might like have a Weber kettle or something, and then like grill. Yep. Nice sandwiches, like a like a pork burger or whatever it might be. And so the whole concession stand vibe is a thing for sure.

SPEAKER_04 44:08

I will say this, Brad. At Washington, Iowa, your hometown.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

They people get it. On Friday nights. Yeah. At football season, you can get a three dollar ribeye sandwich or something. Yeah, three-dollar ribeye sandwich. And they have it right by the entrance of the football stadium. And there are people that walk up that say, I'm just here to buy a ribeye.

SPEAKER_02 44:32

And they go in to get a three-dollar ribeye, or like five of them. They pay admission to get in, probably, right? Just to get the sandwich.

SPEAKER_04 44:41

The Washington County beef producers make a ribeye sandwich that I mean it just permeates the entire town. You can smell it everywhere. But I mean, if you paid to get in there, I mean it is, yeah, it's amazing. And they have a setup. I mean, it's like a like a legitimate restaurant type of deal, like a festival type of deal.

SPEAKER_00 45:02

Before we totally abandoned the whole genre of the concession stand at the baseball park, I gotta ask you guys about your little league experience. Did you like did you get together the week before the season started where you got summons to the park for the first practice? Well, yes, after tryouts. Okay, like when you were ten years old, you did tryouts in Washington.

SPEAKER_02 45:24

I think there were I think they had the coaches got together and picked their team. I think all the kids, all the kids would go out, you'd catch fly balls, you'd take grounders, and then the local volunteer dads would sit around and go, I want to know. And they would they would like kind of judges.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

We didn't clearly have it in Babe Ruth when we got to that.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

I don't know. That's why it was exactly at what level it was, but it was pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 45:48

You knew your teammates before you showed up the first day for practice. You knew who was on your team? I think I think I did. I don't think it's had a totally different experience.

SPEAKER_02 45:56

I don't remember exactly when this happened, but I I think so, yes.

SPEAKER_00 46:00

Did you have the canvas bag of equipment in the arms? The first thing you did was like, okay, five batting helmets in here. You identified the one or two that you wanted to use. Yes. There were like six bats. Yep. You had to pick out the bat you wanted to use, right? All that stuff. Okay, that was.

SPEAKER_04 46:15

If you were on the team the year before, you would get into the bag to see what was new. Did we get a new bat? Did we get a new helmet? Did we get new and then you know eventually it'd be like, oh, we got new shin guards. Well, that's stupid. We can't use shin guards. You can use shin guards. I can't wear shin guards.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Yeah, okay. So that part was similar. Absolutely. Now, did you have set uniforms that you knew what you were getting? Because that wasn't the reveal was huge.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

Hang on. I just want to say this. When I played little league baseball, I have photos of this. My my grandpa Dunlap came and took pictures of what late 70s, early 80s. Little league baseball in Washington County was like skinned infield, you know, like no grass infield, like a super short porch, just down from the concession stand, right? And my brother was the bat boy for my little league team. We had the following we had a trucker style hat with press-on letters. Yeah, as my experience. Maybe just one. So like if you were state bank, it might be SB. And then it'd be like state bank and block letters across a white, like what I would call a pitching shirt. It's like the three-quarter one color white body. Yep. Right. And then I played in jeans. Yeah. So it was jeans, the three-quarters. That was like minor league. That was high school. Yeah, and some people had shoes too. It was cool.

SPEAKER_00 47:35

No, but that's so you had sponsored.

SPEAKER_02 47:38

Like State Bank or State Bank, Wilson's Concrete. And there were enough businesses sponsor. I played on the Kiwanas uh Cubs.

SPEAKER_00 47:47

Did you know? Wilson's Concrete. So did was that a reveal though? Did you know like the sponsor? That was a blurse. No, that was a reveal. Yeah, like that box of hats that would be like this long box, and you knew the hats were in that and the big box of shirts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 47:59

So I will tell you how my my experience is exactly like yours. You know, there were there were so many teams and there were so many places on the teams, and sometimes they would say there's going to be a cut. Now, I would talk to my buddy two nights ago, and he said that little league's decimated because of these travel teams. Oh dude. And my youngest is a baseball player, and the one thing he has always admired was Little League, because there was never a time when he could go to the Little League World Series. Now, my youngest logs time with the Little League World Series. He knows the kids. It's great. In the Little League World Series. And he admires that place, and it is sacred to him. Yeah. But he could never get there because he was a travel kid. He was a travel team kid. But in Little League, so in minor league, we had jeans. In Little League, you're responsible for wearing pants because everybody's expectation at Centerville was you could go to the Little League World Series and you could not play in jeans. Yeah. Um, but uh it wasn't a forever thing. So you were responsible for your pants. Yeah. Um, we had a place called Favorite Sports that did everything you said, pressed on the letters. So once you got picked for a team, then you had to go get a hat made. They provided the little league shirt that had the little league patch on it, and then you had to provide your pants. So if you had an older brother or whatever, you can get those. But there were seasons where there were enough kids out that some kids did not make a little league team. So what happened was you got a phone call, and I mean you just got a phone call, and it was like very rare for you to get a phone call when you're like seven, eight, nine, ten years old, and the phone would ring, and your mom goes, He's right here. You know, and then you'd be like, Hello.

SPEAKER_03 49:54

And that voice on the air goes, Well, this is Gil Easton, and uh picked on MFA. You need to tell your parents that we're gonna have first practice, we're behind a junior high. You need to have your glove, you need to have appropriate shoes, and we're not gonna provide drinks on the first practice, so you need to have something to drink. Now you also need to tell your daddies need to go up and get an MFA hat made. And our colors are green and yellow. So an MFA hat, green and yellow. You got any questions?

unknown 50:29

No.

SPEAKER_03 50:30

All right, Ray, congratulations. We'll see you later. Bye.

SPEAKER_04 50:33

And then your parents would be able to turn around like, what who is that? It's Gil Easton. He says, I'm on MFA. He said you need to buy a green and yellow hat, and it needs to say MFA.

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Absolutely love it. It was just so much relief, though.

SPEAKER_00 50:54

Man, that was cut through Centerville. You had to try out, right?

SPEAKER_02 50:57

Oh yeah. Oh my god. I don't know. Did they really cut? Like, I I always thought that might happen, but I don't know that I ever heard someone wasn't allowed in.

SPEAKER_04 51:06

Yeah, no, it's it wasn't all the time, but we had to be a little bit more than a lot of same kind of concern. Right. We had a lot of kids out now. I mean, it all three because I think Centerville's down to like six teams now. At one time we had like 10 teams or something like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:18

So it was a thing. But I I think the jeans to stirrups and actual baseball pants was might might have been Babe Ruth for me.

SPEAKER_00 51:28

It was a trajectory. Like T-ball, way more jeans. Yeah. Like only one or two kids in baseball pants and stirrups. Junior League, maybe a 50-50 mix. Senior league, most people were in baseball pants and stirrups. And then Babe Ruth. I think we got issued the stirrups.

SPEAKER_02 51:43

I think Babe Ruth, we had the pants.

SPEAKER_00 51:44

I don't know if we got the I know we got issued stirrups and we had unis.

SPEAKER_04 51:47

Babe Ruth was the absolute best. Because if you were a freshman sophomore playing high school ball, you could go and do a double header, and if your bus got back in time, you could still pick up a third game at night. Yeah. So you just like drove around.

SPEAKER_02 52:04

That was a question. If you were a good player, you know, as a freshman, you know, were they gonna let you dress varsity or were you gonna come down and you know pitch the game on your pay roof team?

SPEAKER_00 52:14

That was that was a thing for sure. I'll tell you, Ray, you'll you'll appreciate this because Ray and I have both been involved in Boy Scouting, and I'm on the executive board for the local Boy Scout Council, and a big debate is how far summer camp numbers are down.

SPEAKER_04 52:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:27

And there was a debate about how much of it is attributed to travel sports and kids. And when I was in Scouts as a kid, we would go to Howard H. Cherry Scout Camp, and then the two nights we had games, we would be shuttled back, playing back to camp. Well, now these kids are these travel teams playing in Chicago and stuff. There's no opportunity to shuttle back and forth. It's just a decimated camp universe.

SPEAKER_04 52:47

Awesome you say that because when you were at camp, everybody was like so sticky and sweaty, and you know, you you're kind of like eating, I don't want to say the same food, but you know, you've kind of eaten a lot of things, they're smoky and everything. And then you go in and play a couple games of baseball and you shower in your shower. Yeah and you get a McDonald's, right? A McDonald's. Super cold Mountain Dew and a frozen Snickers.

SPEAKER_00 53:09

You've been gone from home for 48 hours, but it felt like you'd been in boot camp. Right.

SPEAKER_04 53:13

And then they come back and be like, What'd you do? Where'd you go? Yeah, you were on the outside. I had french fries. Now I'm back doing time.

SPEAKER_00 53:21

Right. How am I gonna get through to a parent's night tomorrow with a free-fried chicken?

SPEAKER_04 53:26

Next thing you know, you're like making a rope bridge over like 48 hours before that, you were throwing a doubleheader. Now you're making a rope bridge.

SPEAKER_02 53:37

Oh, that's good.

SPEAKER_04 53:39

Alright, boys, you ready for a speedrun? Ready to go. Yes, sir. Alright, I'm gonna give you five college majors. Three are made up, two are real. Okay. So get your pad and paper ready. Alright. So three of these are not true. And that means two are true. Alright. At a Big Ten University, can you get a degree in puppetry? At a certified Regent Controlled University, can you get a degree in virtual community leadership? Or at a respectable university. Well, I mean this is when you would Can you get a degree in digital reputation management? Can you get a degree in foresight and future studies? Foresight and future studies. Two truths. Two truths and three lies. And the last one is this is also a university. Can you get a bachelor's in human-centered artificial intelligence?

SPEAKER_02 55:10

Well I waffled a little bit when I landed on something.

SPEAKER_04 55:19

So is it puppetry the first one? Yeah. So the first question Can you get a bachelor's in puppetry?

SPEAKER_02 55:29

I went with no on this.

SPEAKER_04 55:31

No, and why why don't you think you can get why don't you think you can pay up $80,000 in education and puppetry?

SPEAKER_02 55:39

I just uh I mean puppets are important, but I don't know that they're academically viable. Right.

SPEAKER_04 55:47

And you and you're like, you would say this to Jim Henson's face, face to face with Jim Henson?

SPEAKER_02 55:52

Yeah, I think it's more of a it's a more of a like a circus act thing, or maybe like go on the road. Okay. Carney.

SPEAKER_00 56:00

John? Yeah, no, I'm sure this is true. Uh Nebraska offers a variety of degrees at the hand job sciences. Right. And I'm pretty sure most of our football team studies it. Right.

SPEAKER_04 56:08

You know, well, I think so too. All right, so University of Connecticut offers a degree in puppetry and graduates productions like Sesame Street and Broadway shows. Alright, I guess it's a minor in Lincoln.

SPEAKER_02 56:23

Um you said Big Ten team, but that's not a good one. I'm sorry. My apologies. So that's a yes, I missed that.

SPEAKER_04 56:31

Virtual community leadership. So this would be like a discussion board. Could you get a degree? Could you put in four years at a liberal arts school to learn how to manage a Reddit discussion board? I went with no with that one.

SPEAKER_02 56:49

Thinking that puppetry was a wrong answer, I went with yes on this.

SPEAKER_04 56:54

This one is made up.

SPEAKER_02 56:56

Alright. Um over two. Dang.

SPEAKER_04 56:59

Seems feasible. Alright, so the next one is digital reputation management. So could a firm, a company, be in existence, and if somebody's online reputation was being smeared, could you accumulate four years of education to figure out how to write that person's online image? Is there four years worth of learning there?

SPEAKER_00 57:28

John? I uh went with yes. I would imagine Fran and Margaret McCaffrey have endowed a scholarship in this at Penn.

SPEAKER_02 57:37

Lately, yeah. Brad. I said no on this one.

SPEAKER_04 57:41

Currently it is a no.

SPEAKER_02 57:43

But I could definitely see this. It seems like it could be a future thing. I think it would like nestle in under PR management, com management, but like, yeah. Okay. That got me back in the I haven't really followed, although I on my chat string I'm on have said has there been some recent McCaffrey shenanigans?

SPEAKER_00 58:06

Hit X and just put McCaffrey in. Okay. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:10

That's my thing. I dropped off X.

SPEAKER_00 58:13

Digital reputation management down the drain.

SPEAKER_04 58:16

All right, so the next one. Foresight and future studies. Could somebody at a philosophy or business or I guess even digital communications, could you accumulate four years of classes at a liberal arts education that can predict the futures of online behavior and marketing strategies? So foresight and future studies.

SPEAKER_02 58:44

My initial reaction was a question mark because I thought, like, hey, that sounds that sounds like it could be possible. And then I wound up going no on it.

SPEAKER_00 58:53

So I was really torn. Yeah, you really described it in such a way that it sounds convincing, but I'm just gonna stick to the no that I originally put down.

SPEAKER_04 59:01

This is actually part of a business school and um some communication philosophy studies. So can you see trends in Instagram or other things that would help in a business yeah, in a business uh market? Can you see things emerging that you're like, you need to invest in this or you need to get part of this? Um this is going away. Don't put any more money towards it. Sure. So if you're playing at home, then you know the answer to this. But yeah. So um the last question is human-centered artificial intelligence. Yeah. So is there a computer science program out there that puts the human at the center of the artificial intelligence data gathering? Is the human a perspective can you put together a four-year degree where the human is the center of the computer science?

SPEAKER_02 1:00:00

I mean, based on all my work on my bike, I would say yes. Uh huh. But based on Natalie's reaction to it, I would say probably not. And knowing how I scored on the thing, I think it's I think it's a no. But I actually initially wrote yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:15

And I wrote yes too, and I was envisioning when you first described it, something in the entertainment industry type thing where we're doing a a film creation type study in a California college around this. So that's exactly why I went yes, but I think we know the answer.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:31

Currently, no. There are very few AI companies that are wanting to put the human in the center of the, you know, so they're for logistics for military reasons, you know, they're saying, listen, there's got to be a human involved before you pull the trigger. And at a medical level, too, they want a human to okay, you know, there might be robotic surgery going on where they like, all right, before we do this procedure. Prostate exam. Yeah, we want the a human to say, yes, all of the data and everything I'm seeing is exactly what you're seeing. Go ahead and do the procedure. But currently, that is not a major that you can get. So all right, boys, you got it all your system. Listen, thanks for bringing this uh this fantastic whip. Shanky's whip. Everybody, you could probably get Shanky's whip at your local liquor store wherever they they sell fine liquors, uh, but you're probably not gonna get the ostrich heads that you're gonna see on the Deep Dive Podcast Facebook page. All right, everybody, thanks for joining us this week. Tell your friends, your family about it. Uh, we've got some really fun and interesting podcasts coming up. We'll see you later. Bye bye.