Speaker 1: No, I'm hanging around to the end. It's one more thing.
Speaker 1: I'm strong and getty. One more thing. A couple of
Speaker 1: quick things from the most recent vacation, and then one
Speaker 1: from a vacation many many years ago that I was
Speaker 1: reminded of. So I went to Florida South Beach, Miami,
Speaker 1: and then drove down to Key West and then went
Speaker 1: up to New York. A couple of interesting things I saw.
Speaker 1: One Did you check out the video yet of the
Speaker 1: guy who riding his bike around with the tire on
Speaker 1: his head?
Speaker 2: I did. That is clearly as described.
Speaker 1: It's a guy, a young guy, riding a bicycle around
Speaker 1: with a giant truck tire. He's balancing on his head
Speaker 1: while he rides it around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that video made my neck hurt.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine the skill it would take to be
Speaker 1: able to do.
Speaker 4: That myself, wondering how he decided on that particular stuff.
Speaker 1: That was my joke with my kids all along. I
Speaker 1: kept saying to various people like that, We you know,
Speaker 1: I was gonna go to law school, but I decided
Speaker 1: I'll ride around the park with a tire on my head.
Speaker 5: You know that's it would be a real show to
Speaker 5: have that guy from the Davis Farmers Market that was
Speaker 5: doing the splits eating canned eggs with this bike riding guy.
Speaker 2: But did this.
Speaker 4: Guy decide, you know what really interests me is balancing
Speaker 4: truck tires on my head. Perhaps I'll walk, no jog,
Speaker 4: no skip, no ride a bicycle with a truck tyra
Speaker 4: or was it the opposite. I was like, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm really into riding my bike with something on my head.
Speaker 4: Let's go with a potted plant. No, no, how about
Speaker 4: my pets? Now, No, that's not good out about a
Speaker 4: truck tire.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't even my kids and I talked
Speaker 1: about this longer than you would you would expect. But
Speaker 1: first of all, he most of people in the park.
Speaker 1: This was Washington Square Park, New York, where all the
Speaker 1: hippies hang out and there's all kinds of performance artists.
Speaker 1: It's very, very cool, and it's that way all day,
Speaker 1: every day for the past sixty years as far as
Speaker 1: I know. Wow, now longer than that, because Kerouac was
Speaker 1: writing about it in the forties, so yeah, more like
Speaker 1: eighty ninety years. I mean, they're magicians and people with
Speaker 1: their various poems and writings and stuff, all kinds of
Speaker 1: stuff and uh, but most people have they're either selling
Speaker 1: something or they got a you know, like a hat
Speaker 1: there you can throw money into because they're singing and
Speaker 1: playing the guitar. This guy never stopped like get money
Speaker 1: or anything like that. He had a big smile on
Speaker 1: his face. He seemed to be just doing it for
Speaker 1: his own amusements. But I was wondering, how do you
Speaker 1: get how do you start, even if you know how
Speaker 1: to do it? How do you get on your bike?
Speaker 1: Do you? I guess you hit on your bike with
Speaker 1: the tire next to you, and then you have the
Speaker 1: strength because as a big tire, you have the strength
Speaker 1: to fling that thing up and bounce it on your
Speaker 1: head before you take off on your bike. I don't
Speaker 1: even know.
Speaker 4: Well, right then you got a mount up on your bike,
Speaker 4: I would think, and hold it with one hand till
Speaker 4: you get a little momentum going Yeah, then the physics
Speaker 4: kicks in and you can incline your head.
Speaker 2: A such a way. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But yeah, what the trial and error had to be?
Speaker 4: You know, days weeks long?
Speaker 3: And how does this idea come to you? You know,
Speaker 3: I bet I can take this wheel and stick it
Speaker 3: on my head and balance it.
Speaker 1: No you can't, Yes, I can. Next thing you know
Speaker 1: you've got?
Speaker 3: This is like this guy's thing.
Speaker 5: I just looked him up and there's a video of
Speaker 5: him balancing a forty five inch TV on his head
Speaker 5: while riding a bicycle.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, gotcha. Yeah, that's that's his jam. Balancing bigger
Speaker 1: objects than you would expect on your head, bicycling, Yeah,
Speaker 1: other things, so that I had to tell this story
Speaker 1: in the podcast because it's one of those stories that
Speaker 1: if you don't use the bad word, it's not as good.
Speaker 1: So we're walking through Key West. We were there, we're
Speaker 1: in a house. We were there for three days, and
Speaker 1: have you ever been to Key West? Duval's the main dragon.
Speaker 1: That's where all the cool stuff is and very very entertaining.
Speaker 1: And so we're walking back from the restaurant. It's getting
Speaker 1: a little later. And I didn't do this on purpose.
Speaker 1: I would have crossed the street had I known otherwise,
Speaker 1: just because my thirteen year old You don't need to
Speaker 1: see this, But we walked by a bar where they
Speaker 1: had drag queen shows going on, and there were two
Speaker 1: enormous jet drag queens standing out front. I mean they
Speaker 1: were in heels, but I mean without heels, they looked
Speaker 1: like they were seven feet tall. I mean they were
Speaker 1: like nine feet tall drag queens, and very attractive for
Speaker 1: their height if you're into a nine foot tall woman.
Speaker 1: But then handing out.
Speaker 2: Little who's a dude?
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, yeah yeah, handing out pieces of paper to
Speaker 1: you know, come into the show. Anyway, we walked by
Speaker 1: Henry's wide eyed. We get a little further away, he
Speaker 1: saddles up next to me. He said three questions, what the.
Speaker 3: Fuck gender bending madness?
Speaker 1: And then finally this story, which didn't happen on this trip,
Speaker 1: It had happened on a previous trip to Key West
Speaker 1: Mallory Square, and Key West's on the very far side
Speaker 1: where you get to see the sunset every night, and
Speaker 1: they have a sunset festival. And this has been going
Speaker 1: on since Hemingway was writing about it, when you had
Speaker 1: to get there by boat, so this has been like
Speaker 1: at least one hundred years. And they got all kinds
Speaker 1: of performance artists there too, and it's very entertaining, jugglers
Speaker 1: and music and frisbees and just all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: and food, and it's very cool and it's every night,
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty five days a year, unless a
Speaker 1: hurricane blows everybody away. But the last time, Joe's heard
Speaker 1: this story numerous times, but you haven't heard this story, Katie's,
Speaker 1: so I'll tell it again. My kids loved this story.
Speaker 1: I saw an escape artist there thirty years ago, and gladys,
Speaker 1: if you could play the art. He so it's crowded.
Speaker 1: It's like probably like eight o'clock. The sun hasn't set yet,
Speaker 1: but people are already gathered and he's gonna he has
Speaker 1: people around chain him up where everybody's gathered around him,
Speaker 1: and you know, you, you, young man, here is a
Speaker 1: chain wrapping around me. However you want use this lock
Speaker 1: to lock me up? And he does that with like
Speaker 1: fifteen different people who chain him all up and all
Speaker 1: these different chains, and people are wrapping it around his
Speaker 1: legs and between his legs and around his arms and
Speaker 1: his wrists, you know, trying to come up with a
Speaker 1: difficult way for him to get out and u and
Speaker 1: they do a pretty good job of it. So then
Speaker 1: they get him all locked up. I will now escape
Speaker 1: from this, you know from my chains, and he he
Speaker 1: starts it and it is very slow moving, very slow
Speaker 1: moving over time. I mean, he just he's like wriggling
Speaker 1: his shoulders and like trying to move his legs and
Speaker 1: just his head and he's got these chains all around
Speaker 1: his neck in between his and and then he lays
Speaker 1: down and he's trying to I mean, and this the
Speaker 1: total time on this that I was there two and
Speaker 1: a half hours. Oh my god. I stayed there for
Speaker 1: two and a half hours, long after everybody else had left,
Speaker 1: because people are like, there's no inner here, and there's
Speaker 1: a guy juggling flaming axes over there, So I think
Speaker 1: I'll go watch that. And the sun sets, you know,
Speaker 1: So the sun is set, the other performance artists are
Speaker 1: starting to go away, and he's laying there in his
Speaker 1: chains on the ground, all sweaty, and I just, I mean,
Speaker 1: this is back when I still drank too, and I
Speaker 1: got a couple of beers, so I thought, I'm just
Speaker 1: I want to see how this plays out. I mean,
Speaker 1: does he just because most people would throw a few
Speaker 1: bucks in the basket and I was kind of wondering,
Speaker 1: does he just like not get out and a friend
Speaker 1: has to come let him out? But he makes his money?
Speaker 1: Is that the drink or no, he was getting some
Speaker 1: of the chains off of him. He had this way
Speaker 1: of wriggling and everything like that his body and like
Speaker 1: he'd get a chain to drop and then another chain.
Speaker 1: He tore the end at some point, and he's just
Speaker 1: covered in sweat and he's making all these horrible noises
Speaker 1: as he lays there trying to get the chains to
Speaker 1: fall off of him. And he would stand for a while,
Speaker 1: then he would sit and he'd get in a different possession.
Speaker 1: He dislocated his show. Somehow he got his shoulder out
Speaker 1: of the joint. You could see the ball slide down,
Speaker 1: and then he was able to then he was able
Speaker 1: to let the chains slide off of his shoulder, and
Speaker 1: then he kind of ducked his head underneath one chain. Anyway,
Speaker 1: at one point he starts vomiting. He's laying there on.
Speaker 3: This Trust me, let's stick with it.
Speaker 1: He's laying there on the hot asphalt in his shorts
Speaker 1: and tank top, covered in chains and sweat, his shoulder
Speaker 1: out of whack, and he's vomiting. He's just laying there.
Speaker 1: I am not kidding at all. I'm the only person
Speaker 1: left at this point. It's just me and some like
Speaker 1: street people and he's vomiting, and then he gets the
Speaker 1: other chain off his head, and then at some point
Speaker 1: he gets them all to drop off, and then he
Speaker 1: just sits there on the graud like breathing hard. He's
Speaker 1: got vomiting his beard, and he's not looking at anybody.
Speaker 1: He doesn't look pleased, he doesn't say, he doesn't even do.
Speaker 2: None of that.
Speaker 1: He just he looks miserable. And I put a ten
Speaker 1: dollars bill in his basket, and I saw that was
Speaker 1: really really amazing, dude, and I walk off, and that's wow. Wow.
Speaker 4: I mean, it was as if he was actually abducted
Speaker 4: and chained up, and his abductors had gone off to
Speaker 4: do something else nefarious and while they were gone over
Speaker 4: the course of hours blah blah blah. But indeed he
Speaker 4: did all that voluntarily.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was the first time he'd
Speaker 1: ever tried it and he thought that took longer than
Speaker 1: I expected.
Speaker 2: Or oh, that was really hard.
Speaker 1: Or if people just did a better job of chaining
Speaker 1: him up than usual. Surely every night, dude, you don't
Speaker 1: lay there, dislocate body parts and vomit so that you
Speaker 1: can make a couple hundred dollars. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 1: go back and get a degree in something.
Speaker 3: Were you flying solo on that vacation.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you had to be, because I mean there's not
Speaker 4: a woman I've ever known who would have stuck it out.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, hell no, no, that's funny. I flew
Speaker 1: in a girlfriend at the time, and she was coming
Speaker 1: in the next night, and I remember thinking the same thing.
Speaker 1: I would have missed that if I'd have been with
Speaker 1: her she said, let's leave you. I wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: able to stand there for two and a half hours.
Speaker 1: And this is pre way pre cell phones and stuff,
Speaker 1: or there would be you know, tons of videos of this.
Speaker 1: God dang it, that was entertaining. You know, I've always
Speaker 1: wondered whatever became of that guy, Like did he die
Speaker 1: one night doing that or did he keep doing it?
Speaker 1: Or did he have somewhere he decided to become a real.
Speaker 3: Dream a system manager at the local Hurts reno car.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Right, Oh, my god, there's just some bones surrounded by chains,
Speaker 4: you know, under a palm tree in the oh.
Speaker 1: That was the most entertaining thing, very slowly unfolding slowly,
Speaker 1: that I ever saw in my life.
Speaker 5: I'm picturing you was standing up at the very end
Speaker 5: and just giving him a slow clap, like, good job, dude.
Speaker 1: He looked so despondent, like what if I decided to
Speaker 1: do with my life?
Speaker 4: You know, I hate to take this in a different
Speaker 4: direction because it's been charming, but I've often reassured myself
Speaker 4: or told other people that, you know, up to a
Speaker 4: certain point, obviously, the worse the experience, the better of
Speaker 4: the story. Yeah, I mean, all right, if you lose
Speaker 4: a leg, then maybe not so much, right, but you
Speaker 4: know what I mean. So if that guy had quickly
Speaker 4: eluded his chains, or after an hour or so or
Speaker 4: forty five minutes and there are five or six people clapping,
Speaker 4: that would.
Speaker 2: Be a very mundane story.
Speaker 4: It was the very misery of it that made it
Speaker 4: good for you too, I mean, because you had to
Speaker 4: at some point be thinking I really ought to.
Speaker 1: Go right right, I did have the is there gonna
Speaker 1: be a payoff that's even close to worth how long
Speaker 1: I've been standing here?
Speaker 4: Like the opposite of the concept of some sunk costs,
Speaker 4: Yeah you thought, No, No, I have sunk those costs.
Speaker 2: I am going to sink more. I'm gonna sink as
Speaker 2: much as it.
Speaker 1: Takes a nebriation helped because I was able to keep
Speaker 1: drinking because there's places selling beer, so I just hung
Speaker 1: around watched. I mean, they're like some of the street performers.
Speaker 1: This is a popular thing now. I talked about this
Speaker 1: when I saw these in Vegas, the guys who jump
Speaker 1: over people. They're like acrobats practically, and they get three
Speaker 1: people in the middle, and then this guy comes running
Speaker 1: really fast and he jumps and does a flip over
Speaker 1: the top of him. And I've now seen it three
Speaker 1: different places. I wouldn't have known there that many people
Speaker 1: in the country that could even do that. Does every
Speaker 1: town have a guy who can run and jump over
Speaker 1: people and do a flip and land on his feet
Speaker 1: on the pavement. Maybe, I don't know.
Speaker 4: It's like American Idol showed us that there's like five
Speaker 4: incredible singers in every talent in America apparently so right,
Speaker 4: exactly so the same thing with leaping over people, as
Speaker 4: it turns out, and you got just as much of
Speaker 4: a prospect of making a living at it as does
Speaker 4: the local singer.
Speaker 3: Right, you're looking for some entertainment.
Speaker 5: The video videos of them missing the jump over people
Speaker 5: quite entertaining.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, that's how that part of
Speaker 1: the act Jack, I've never seen anybody miss no. But
Speaker 1: it's it's extraordinary. I mean, it's it was impressive. I've
Speaker 1: seen it a couple of times now. They run so
Speaker 1: fast and the degree of difficulty because you're landing on
Speaker 1: pavement at that speed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 1: If you don't time that right, I suppose you decide
Speaker 1: you can't do that anymore the first time you crash
Speaker 1: and think, well, I guess I'm done with this line
Speaker 1: of work for now.
Speaker 4: Wow, I could no more flap my wings and flyes
Speaker 4: do that. At any point in my life.
Speaker 1: I have not seen another person escape from chains while
Speaker 1: vomiting and dislocating bones before, though that I've not seen
Speaker 1: where else.
Speaker 2: An innovator, a visionary
Speaker 1: Well, I guess that's it.