Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, Steve here. As we recently announced, we are
Speaker 1: no longer producing new episodes of the podcast, but we
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Speaker 1: So what you're hearing here is one of those episodes
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Speaker 1: all those weird tactile senses thinking sideways stories of things
Speaker 1: which can feed don't know the answer to don Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: welcome to our very first bonus episode inaugural um. You
Speaker 1: may have seen us doing polls or things like that
Speaker 1: on social media for the name of this officially, right now,
Speaker 1: we are calling this side program down the rabbit Hole.
Speaker 1: By Thinking Sideways, special bonus content for all of our
Speaker 1: fans on Stitcher Premium using Stitcher Premium, which we're very
Speaker 1: excited for. Thanks for the rabbit Sorry, dude, we took
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Speaker 1: for sure, this is the reward. I was stating around
Speaker 1: awkwardly talking, Yeah, this is kind of lame for down
Speaker 1: the rabbit Hole. By thinking Sideways, we are basically giving
Speaker 1: ourselves a little bit of a free for all. We
Speaker 1: are allowing ourselves to talk about things or stories or
Speaker 1: whatever that interests us that doesn't necessarily fit into the
Speaker 1: thinking sideways format genre genre in general. This is our
Speaker 1: first one. I'm really excited about it because I get
Speaker 1: to host it. As you can tell. So that's the concept.
Speaker 1: We hope you guys enjoy it. Today we're talking about
Speaker 1: thing of Phantom Ruby Tuesdays in New Mexico, some sort
Speaker 1: of time slip with not just a fan and restaurants
Speaker 1: a Phantom of city. It's yeah, Phantom. It's a weird thing.
Speaker 1: It is a story that one of our mods, Leslie,
Speaker 1: suggested to me and it was found on Reddit glitch
Speaker 1: in the Matrix. Okay, so if you if you're on Reddit,
Speaker 1: you probably know what matrix is, right, or you can
Speaker 1: assume if you've ever seen the movie The Matrix. Yeah, anyway,
Speaker 1: well let's just launch right in here. Okay. The story
Speaker 1: starts in winter of two thousand nine, when the original
Speaker 1: poster we're just going to call him op I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna say it opt. That's great. Um Now, when you
Speaker 1: do your story, you can call it Opie. Um Up
Speaker 1: and his brother drove from Portland, Oregon our Fair City
Speaker 1: to Florida to visit their system, and on the trip
Speaker 1: back to Portland, they decided to take Interstate ten all
Speaker 1: the way back to avoid some snow to lays they
Speaker 1: had experienced on the way out. Because runs along the
Speaker 1: southern portion of the Louisiana and Texas I've driven through,
Speaker 1: I've driven actually both of these routes to the east coast.
Speaker 1: I ten is actually way more enjoyable. Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was way more enjoyable. Um. The first day they
Speaker 1: made it to San Antonio, which was a pretty good
Speaker 1: that's quite a marathon. I mean that's like probably a
Speaker 1: twenty two hour day. Yeah, So they stopped and then
Speaker 1: the next day they had planned to make it from
Speaker 1: San Antonio to Las Vegas. Um, like you do with
Speaker 1: road trip, you start to really learn your car and
Speaker 1: what kind of gas mileage you're getting from it. So
Speaker 1: they knew that they usually needed to stop at about
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty miles for gas, but they could
Speaker 1: go all the way to four hundred if absolutely needed.
Speaker 1: They were right now. They were in a Honda hybrid.
Speaker 1: Actually okay, okay, hybrid, okay, yep. Um, So, about a
Speaker 1: hundred miles outside of San Antonio, the op noticed that
Speaker 1: the fuel gauge was dropping noticeably faster than usual. So, um,
Speaker 1: they looked to you know, on the hybrid cars you
Speaker 1: can maybe you don't. On a hybrid car, you can
Speaker 1: click to see fuel consumption. A lot of cars do
Speaker 1: that these days. Yeah, I drive an old car, so
Speaker 1: my car doesn't, but newer cars. If you have an
Speaker 1: analog fuel gauge, if you would upgrade one of those
Speaker 1: awesome digital ones, yeah, way better. I'm cool with my analog. Thanks. Um.
Speaker 1: But they noticed that the car was only getting the
Speaker 1: like almost barely twenty six miles per gallon versus they
Speaker 1: had been getting closer to miles per gallon. Obviously, this
Speaker 1: is pretty crazy, but there could be a lot of
Speaker 1: explanations for it, like they were going uphill, or there
Speaker 1: was a headwind or something, or maybe yeah, there was
Speaker 1: some sort of gravitational tug from sort of you know,
Speaker 1: gravitation after or something. Yeah, I mean somebody on RETTA said,
Speaker 1: you know, it could just be something as simple as
Speaker 1: they bought gas from a really crappy station that adulterate
Speaker 1: their gas with water exactly, yeah, purposefully or otherwise. You
Speaker 1: know that if the tanks live underground, and if the
Speaker 1: tanks are old, they can get a little porous, and
Speaker 1: the water because in the ground can just seep right in. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: So there are a number of reasons, but um just
Speaker 1: decided they couldn't really come up with one other than
Speaker 1: to quote, make them pull over where they did, a
Speaker 1: reason that this was happening. That's what they can come
Speaker 1: up with. Afterwards. I thought it was fate, yeah, or
Speaker 1: some invisible hand something, yeah, um, And I do think
Speaker 1: from the story the original poster is Mail so him.
Speaker 1: They pulled over for gas earlier than expected and then
Speaker 1: followed the GPS directions back on course. After a few
Speaker 1: minutes of driving, they realized that they are not on
Speaker 1: the predetermined I ten path, but instead on Highway to
Speaker 1: eight five heading north Texas. Right. It was yeah around there, yeah, so,
Speaker 1: and that that happens sometimes, especially in this kind of
Speaker 1: more desolate parts of our of our country, interstates and
Speaker 1: highways kind of commingle and share the same share the
Speaker 1: same I mean, not the numbers, but they will share
Speaker 1: the same actual road, have the same number, can be
Speaker 1: on the same stretch of road they spur off. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. But oftentimes you know you'll get this is
Speaker 1: um I five I four oh five and also Highway
Speaker 1: to eighteen and Highway one seven I mean, you know
Speaker 1: that all on that same road. So they just kind
Speaker 1: of thought, well, maybe this is what that's what's going
Speaker 1: on there, um relized only too late. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: they so they just kept going, and then they make
Speaker 1: it to New Mexico, but realized that they're about an
Speaker 1: hour early crossing into New Mexico. Then they would have
Speaker 1: been on I ten. So they realized that they're not
Speaker 1: actually on I ten at all, and at this point
Speaker 1: exactly right, and then at this point that they've just
Speaker 1: gone too far. It would have been an hour faster
Speaker 1: to stay on I ten, but at this point it's
Speaker 1: not faster to backtrack all the way back to I
Speaker 1: tend to go back up to Vegas. So they're just
Speaker 1: staying on the roads. There are other ways to get
Speaker 1: back to River City, but they were, but they were
Speaker 1: using a budget GPS unit, not a not a real
Speaker 1: high dollar fancy one. Maybe that was part of it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it was part of it. But luckily there's
Speaker 1: more than one road in the US. Sometimes they got
Speaker 1: to find their way home. Yeah, and I've driven this
Speaker 1: stretch of road, this actual specific stretch of road. I
Speaker 1: don't know if either of you have, but even even
Speaker 1: in this part of the country, if you've ever driven
Speaker 1: through it, you know, almost everything you encounter are like
Speaker 1: pit spots or um like we exactly. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: you know, you maybe get a gas station. Maybe if
Speaker 1: you're lucky, the gas station has like a subway connected
Speaker 1: to it or something like. That's pretty much all that
Speaker 1: exists there. And more often than not, it's a sign
Speaker 1: that says huber this way, no services. The jackpot when
Speaker 1: you get the pizza Hut taco bell combination. One of
Speaker 1: my favorites is just last gas for two. But you
Speaker 1: want to pay attention to those signs, yeah, my favorite.
Speaker 1: My second favorite is when it says last gas for
Speaker 1: two hundred miles and then you drive ten miles down
Speaker 1: the road in the risk there's way more. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: there's actually a thriving city somehow. Yeah. So these guys
Speaker 1: eventually hit a place called Vaughan, New Mexico. This is
Speaker 1: like a four person population type spot, so, you know,
Speaker 1: not the wide spot on the road, but not thriving
Speaker 1: community necessarily. You know. Actually I had to go do
Speaker 1: a little street view on that one, and it looks
Speaker 1: like I used to have more than four people. There's
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of they're like boarded up buildings
Speaker 1: on the main drag there. Yeah, I think most of
Speaker 1: the places through this area used to have a lot
Speaker 1: more people, maybe at least some more people. Um and
Speaker 1: and Sino they eventually drove through, after which I am
Speaker 1: not lying. When you google and Sin, no, the thing
Speaker 1: that comes up is pictures of abandoned outhouses. Oh I
Speaker 1: thought it was going to be that poly short movie. No,
Speaker 1: that's the first thing it tries to suggest, but it
Speaker 1: is nope, nope. About ten miles by um the posters
Speaker 1: estimation they drove to a town or a city. It
Speaker 1: wasn't on their GPS. Again, this isn't insanely unusual. The
Speaker 1: budget GPS is either you know, loose service and don't
Speaker 1: really update or stuff. Yeah, their maps are out of
Speaker 1: date or whatever. But they also said that there was
Speaker 1: no no kind of signing around it, none of them
Speaker 1: Ville next exit. Yeah, and actually this it sounds like
Speaker 1: was not a poduncd vell. I mean there were a
Speaker 1: lot of chain hotels and even like they said, like
Speaker 1: in Albertson's and a number of chain restaurants. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a big enough they said they thought it
Speaker 1: was like a ten to twenty thousand person population area,
Speaker 1: which is fairly sizeable, particularly for that neck of the woods,
Speaker 1: and particularly to have like no signage or anything else
Speaker 1: just pops up out of nowhere. Yeah yeah, kind of weird. Yeah, though,
Speaker 1: I will say again, having been on long haul road
Speaker 1: trips like this, especially if they pulled a twenty two
Speaker 1: hour day the day before, sometimes you just stop paying
Speaker 1: attention to the signs that are blowing past. You think
Speaker 1: you might have been on the wrong road or I
Speaker 1: I don't know really why what's happening there? They decide
Speaker 1: to take advantage of not being at a little podunct wherever. No,
Speaker 1: you know, they don't want the the crappy burger and
Speaker 1: yeah exactly, and stop in at Ruby Tuesdays for dinner day.
Speaker 1: As soon as they walk in, they are greeted by
Speaker 1: a waitress by name. I guess at this point we
Speaker 1: have to name them. We can do our standard Justin
Speaker 1: and Aaron. Yeah yeah, I like they're good names. Yeah um.
Speaker 1: But the waitress basically walks up to them with a
Speaker 1: huge smile on her face and she says, oh my word,
Speaker 1: is that Justin and Aaron. They both assume that like
Speaker 1: one of the brothers knows her, you know, like Justin's like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Aaron obviously knows her, and Erin's like, well, Justin obviously
Speaker 1: knows her. And they kind of vague their way through
Speaker 1: some answers, you know, and she says, how are you
Speaker 1: doing blah blah blah, sits her down, and they sit down,
Speaker 1: and she goes off to get the menus, and they
Speaker 1: confer and they realize neither of them actually knows this woman,
Speaker 1: and they think, well, Justin and Aaron are like pretty
Speaker 1: common names. Maybe, you know, maybe maybe she's just that
Speaker 1: podcast saying a lot of people started naming their babies,
Speaker 1: so yeah, they are pretty common names at that point. Ye.
Speaker 1: Then a bartender comes over and says, no way, Justin
Speaker 1: and Aaron, are you guys back for jobs. They informed
Speaker 1: him that he must just like be mistaken because at
Speaker 1: this point they realized they they are being mistaken for
Speaker 1: somebody else apparently, and he just kind of laughs like
Speaker 1: they're joking. The bartender continues by asking how they had
Speaker 1: fared in their three month anatomy and physiology courses that
Speaker 1: they've taken at Oregon State. Once it turned out they
Speaker 1: had taken yeah, I mean, Joe, can you read this
Speaker 1: next little bit? It's an actual quote, okay, okay quote.
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, all of a sudden, this is not
Speaker 1: a coincidence anymore. My brother and I had taken the
Speaker 1: three months fifteen credit A and P class at Portland
Speaker 1: State University when we were in our early twenties. We
Speaker 1: were late twenties when this interaction happened. Finally, I asked
Speaker 1: the guy again exactly where they knew us from, and
Speaker 1: he just kind of paused and started looking me over.
Speaker 1: Then he said, oh, you guys just like really similar
Speaker 1: to some people that used to work here unquote. He
Speaker 1: apologized and claimed they had to get back to work.
Speaker 1: After a bit, our food came and my brother and
Speaker 1: I noticed it had switched out our waitress from the
Speaker 1: girl who recognized us when we walked in. That wasn't
Speaker 1: a big deal, though a bit strange. Next, a guy
Speaker 1: I can only guess was the manager starts walking over
Speaker 1: to our table with a big smile on his face.
Speaker 1: As he guess with him about ten feet of us.
Speaker 1: He kind of starts looking over my head and stops.
Speaker 1: I think someone behind me was directing him not to
Speaker 1: talk to us. After he received the message. You sharply
Speaker 1: turned ninety degrees and walked away without saying a word unquote.
Speaker 1: I mean it's weird and awkward, but yeah, a little bit,
Speaker 1: you know, nothing like too crazy. That's kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: I mean they basically you can tell they are not comfortable.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be. And they finished their meal as quickly
Speaker 1: as possible, and the new waitress comes back and says, oh,
Speaker 1: our cash register system is down, so your meals around
Speaker 1: the house, which is again like a chain doesn't normally
Speaker 1: do that, just to just sit there for the next minutes,
Speaker 1: or you know, you need cash, like we have a
Speaker 1: t M. There's an a t M down the way.
Speaker 1: Just pay us cash something to get paid. Uh. Justin
Speaker 1: says that he wanted to ask where they were, but
Speaker 1: also just like really wanted to get out of there,
Speaker 1: which I can totally sympathize with. There are some moments
Speaker 1: where you're just like, oh my god, I gotta get
Speaker 1: out of here. I need to know more, but I
Speaker 1: gotta get out of here. They figured they had to
Speaker 1: stop for gas anyway, so they would you get the
Speaker 1: little receipt and it says, you know X on mobile
Speaker 1: Portland's northeast or what I mean. You know, it says
Speaker 1: where you're basically right. Um. But unfortunately, as they were
Speaker 1: getting on the highway it was divided, so they were
Speaker 1: forced to turn right out of the restaurant, putting them
Speaker 1: back directly onto northbound eight five thank you, which basically
Speaker 1: forced them back on the road without being able to
Speaker 1: fuel up. So they drove for about twenty more minutes
Speaker 1: and then found a truck stop where they stopped, which
Speaker 1: ended up being right at the intersection of two five
Speaker 1: and I forty. Uh and I forty is the road
Speaker 1: that you would take for the rest of pretty much
Speaker 1: the rest of your journey westward. Um. Yeah, so you can.
Speaker 1: You can see this all on on Google. You can
Speaker 1: see the area and everything. Yeah. Yeah. And so the
Speaker 1: the other reason that this is weird is that there
Speaker 1: is nothing there really isn't between Encino and the junction
Speaker 1: of two eighty five and I forty. Actually, there is
Speaker 1: a little phantom business there called Ruby Tuesdays. I forget
Speaker 1: what it is. I was looking at something like, you know,
Speaker 1: Mike's Mike's Repair or something like that, but it's certainly
Speaker 1: not a Ruby Tuesdays. No, when you look it's actually
Speaker 1: labeled to Google. But when you actually nothing there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the thing. I attached a map to this,
Speaker 1: so you guys got to look at it, which is
Speaker 1: pretty cool. But that's like the weirdness of this whole thing.
Speaker 1: I mean, on top of everything else, right, there is
Speaker 1: nothing in there, literally nothing. I mean it's a pretty
Speaker 1: short stretch of road, yeah, and there's nothing there. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's interesting though. It's actually if you look at if
Speaker 1: you street, you and everything, it's it's a double highway,
Speaker 1: so it's too lazy direction with with a nice me
Speaker 1: radian in between, considering and I checked the traffic flow
Speaker 1: on that. But through the state of New Mexico, that
Speaker 1: little stretch in there is two thousand, two hundred forty
Speaker 1: seven cars a day. That's a that's a lot of
Speaker 1: really nice asphalt for that number of cars. And uh
Speaker 1: it really is. Uh yeah, that's a big, beautiful highway
Speaker 1: going straight as an arrow. Yeah. Well, actually, somebody on Reddit,
Speaker 1: since this was a Reddit post, somebody on Reddit took
Speaker 1: the time they lived close and they they actually took
Speaker 1: a picture. They drove this entire journey, you know, from Vaughan,
Speaker 1: New Mexico, all the way to this truck stop that
Speaker 1: the guy said they stopped at and took a picture
Speaker 1: pretty much every couple of miles, every time they saw
Speaker 1: something of any kind of interest. And there's nothing there.
Speaker 1: So here's the question, and I I So I looked
Speaker 1: at the map you had and spun around a little
Speaker 1: bit on the map, but I didn't do any extensive searching.
Speaker 1: Is it at all possible that are our storyteller? That's
Speaker 1: how I'm going to refer to him, our storyteller diverted
Speaker 1: yet again from the road they thought they were all
Speaker 1: I had that que I had that question exactly, and
Speaker 1: I will tell you know because they said they went
Speaker 1: through Vaughan and Encino, and those are two very distinct
Speaker 1: points and then either you can go straight and then
Speaker 1: you hit the border, or you go up and you
Speaker 1: intersect with I forty. They know that they stopped within
Speaker 1: an hour of Encino, give or take, you know, actual
Speaker 1: driving distance an hour of Encino. They hit the junction
Speaker 1: of UM to A five and I forty. And the
Speaker 1: only place that that those two intersect is that truck stop.
Speaker 1: Now granted, they could have yes gone diverted, but to
Speaker 1: divert they would have hit like a bunch of major cities,
Speaker 1: major cities, and they would have been hundreds, if not
Speaker 1: thousands of miles off course and so wrong about where
Speaker 1: they're at them they would have known. Yeah, And that
Speaker 1: was one of the things is like, you know, one
Speaker 1: of the theories on this is like they were just wrong,
Speaker 1: but they would have had been really, really wrong. The
Speaker 1: other thing is is that, um, if you look at
Speaker 1: Ruby Tuesday's website or even a historic log of where
Speaker 1: Ruby Tuesdays are in New Mexico, there's only one and
Speaker 1: it's two hundred and five miles away from where they
Speaker 1: claim they were, and it's actually a pretty decent sized city. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have to be really wrong. And of course this
Speaker 1: wouldn't be the first time that somebody were wrong about something.
Speaker 1: I mean, it could have been they were at Ruby's Tuesday.
Speaker 1: I was a chain what I mean it could have been, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not the chain Ruby Tuesdays. It could have been
Speaker 1: something that was very similarly named or Rusday. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Ruby Rubies. I mean they represented it as the reason
Speaker 1: that they were excited about it is you guys may
Speaker 1: remember that the first Ruby Tuesdays in Portland's started opening
Speaker 1: up around two nine or whenever the story we're being
Speaker 1: excited about. No, I wasn't excited. But you know that's
Speaker 1: kind of when they came here. And so the reason
Speaker 1: that they had chosen that particular chain is because they
Speaker 1: were like, oh, those are opening up around us. Let's
Speaker 1: see if it's any good. So here, and but yes,
Speaker 1: I will allow I will allow a whole lot of
Speaker 1: error here. But even like the most amount of error
Speaker 1: can't get me a random city in the middle of
Speaker 1: basically what is just like wasteland. So were we in theories? Now?
Speaker 1: Is that where we're at here? Yeah? I mean this
Speaker 1: isn't this isn't thinking sideways what it is talking about
Speaker 1: what it could be? Yeah, okay, but before we talk
Speaker 1: about theories, let's take a break. If you think being
Speaker 1: a Ruby Tuesdays and having everybody recognize you when you
Speaker 1: don't know them as a bit of a mind twister,
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Speaker 1: When Young Girl disappears from rural wind Gap, Missouri, reporter
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Speaker 1: Hailed as a spell binding, addictive immersion into a dark,
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Speaker 1: show of the summer by Time, Sharp Objects also features
Speaker 1: Patricia Clarkson, Chris Messina, and Eliza Scranling. See new episodes
Speaker 1: every Sunday at nine and catch up on HBO now.
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Speaker 1: Because I mean, the first thing that comes to my
Speaker 1: mind is that this is on glitchen of Matrix, and
Speaker 1: it really sounds like something that should have been on
Speaker 1: no Sleep. It could have been made up. It sounds
Speaker 1: you're very, very fictional. To well, it's very conveniently peppered
Speaker 1: with true details, but then diverts from those rather corputate.
Speaker 1: So um, shut up, stop tiring. Um. I mean, yes,
Speaker 1: of course that is a theory that this is totally
Speaker 1: made up, but it's I'm just having fun kind of
Speaker 1: entertaining the other options. How far away is this from
Speaker 1: Roswell's actually passed through Rowell to get to where they were. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's entirely possible that this is an after effect
Speaker 1: of Roswell. The whole thing was in their heads because
Speaker 1: they were doped up. Actually, that's like an interesting thing
Speaker 1: is that there are two really interesting theories about that. One,
Speaker 1: as we're playing along, right, is that it's possible that
Speaker 1: they could have been abducted by aliens and then had
Speaker 1: these memories implanted in their brain to supersede whatever horrible
Speaker 1: things they experienced serience. The other theory is that they're
Speaker 1: actually spies. No wait, no, wait, this is I mean,
Speaker 1: this isn't the worst theory ever, right, Okay, they're actually
Speaker 1: so that all of this aside. Right, we just assumed
Speaker 1: that they were actually out of Ruby Tuesdays where everybody
Speaker 1: knew who they were for some reason. It's the new
Speaker 1: Mexico version of cheer sure, right, for some reason they
Speaker 1: were like somehow, yes, they found this Ruby Tuesdays where
Speaker 1: everybody knew who they were. It seems totally unreasonable. They
Speaker 1: were in the totally the wrong place. But the other
Speaker 1: theory part of this is that like that was all real,
Speaker 1: but their spies and they've had their memories wiped and replanted,
Speaker 1: and so all of the people at Ruby Tuesdays did
Speaker 1: actually know them, They did actually used to work there.
Speaker 1: They just have no memory of it because their spies
Speaker 1: and have been brainwashed to believe that there's the exactly Yea,
Speaker 1: I like that theory a lot, except you think that
Speaker 1: they they were going to wipe their memories, they would
Speaker 1: have also given them like new names and identities to
Speaker 1: you would think, yeah, yeah, I am looking. I am
Speaker 1: desperately looking through Google right now. For there was some
Speaker 1: really really crappy Roswell movie. They came out probably in
Speaker 1: the last five years, and that's something like this Happen
Speaker 1: No No, But the plot of it, it's it's by
Speaker 1: the same guy that he's has a bunch of those
Speaker 1: really shaky camera movies. It's really cheaply made, and there's
Speaker 1: like Blair Wedge Project, right, but there's been one or
Speaker 1: two that are hits and the rest of them are
Speaker 1: just garbage. But it makes me think of that kind
Speaker 1: of thing where this could have been somebody's script concept
Speaker 1: for that kind of movie that the shaky camp like
Speaker 1: four hours in the car they rolled down the window,
Speaker 1: they're talking to the camera that I mean that's this
Speaker 1: is or it could be that they were just abductive,
Speaker 1: but I think it I agree. I think it probably
Speaker 1: is made up, but it's still like a crazy like
Speaker 1: on the off chance it's not, it's a crazy, fun,
Speaker 1: interesting story that I wanted to share. I admire that
Speaker 1: that that he didn't overdo it with the dramatic elements.
Speaker 1: That was that's good. If he did make it up,
Speaker 1: it's it's like, you know, the whole thing about it
Speaker 1: is it's it's very mundane. You know, he's not dramatized.
Speaker 1: It's not a real dramatic story. The reason that falls
Speaker 1: down for me is I'm totally into the whole time slip, alternative,
Speaker 1: alternative timeline and all that stuff. But here's the problem
Speaker 1: is that, uh, nobody would put a Ruby Tuesdays franchise
Speaker 1: on a highway that has less than cars a day, well, right,
Speaker 1: I mean alternative timeline. Well, but in an alternative timeline
Speaker 1: that could have been the main highway. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they're the only reason that it wouldn't because it wasn't
Speaker 1: like this lone Ruby Tuesday is hanging out by itself.
Speaker 1: There was a bustling little area, so you would assume
Speaker 1: that in this alternate timeline, if they did happen to
Speaker 1: slip into it or whatever. Um, that that for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: that would have been a kind of hub in the area.
Speaker 1: That occurred to me too. But here's here's where. Here's
Speaker 1: where it fell down again for me. Okay, there's a
Speaker 1: there's a there's this whole city that is not there
Speaker 1: in our our timeline, and and so that means that
Speaker 1: there's a lot more people. So he should have noticed,
Speaker 1: you know, the notice the city. But they should have
Speaker 1: notice all of a sudden, we realized there's ten times
Speaker 1: as many cars on the road around us. Where did
Speaker 1: they all come from? All of a sudden, we notice
Speaker 1: that we're driving through this town and there's like there's
Speaker 1: like overpasses and stuff. And that's the first overpass we've
Speaker 1: seen it in this entire highway the entire time. Things
Speaker 1: like that. They didn't notice any of those things. I agree,
Speaker 1: I think. While Steve's over there on his phone, I'm actually,
Speaker 1: that's okay, well that's what I'm usually doing, so fine. Um,
Speaker 1: But I mean, realistically maybe, but I feel like I've
Speaker 1: taken so many road trips in my life where there
Speaker 1: have been times where we've hit this kind of weird
Speaker 1: little bubble. And it's not like there are suddenly more people.
Speaker 1: We are still the only car on the highway. But
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean I mean, who knows what time. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it was later in the day. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was a weird time that they hit it, but it
Speaker 1: just the impression that they did it right around lunchtime
Speaker 1: or something. But that could be wrong about I guess
Speaker 1: it was like later dinner time in my mind. But
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, again, like that's not given, and
Speaker 1: so that that gives us that kind of reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: of being able to say, well, maybe it was a
Speaker 1: weird time, And I mean, you know, I don't, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I just I would say that things like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, when you drive out to the coast, you
Speaker 1: drive into Telemook for instance, Right, Telemooks kind of the
Speaker 1: same size as I would guess this area was probably
Speaker 1: a little probably probably a little bigger. But you know,
Speaker 1: you can drive on twenty six, or you can drive
Speaker 1: on the Telemook through the Telemook Forest, right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: I've I've driven both ways a number of times, and
Speaker 1: I've never felt you going either way that suddenly there
Speaker 1: were more or less cars on either of them. The
Speaker 1: twenty six gets way more traffic than the road through
Speaker 1: the Telemook Forest, right, I don't. I think it always
Speaker 1: feels about the same amount of traffic perception, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean suddenly when they get into town though,
Speaker 1: there should have been all of a sudden a lot
Speaker 1: more cars around, and there may have been, and they
Speaker 1: just didn't because because there was tended people. He was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course there's more traffic. I don't know. As we
Speaker 1: thought as we talked about this when I was on
Speaker 1: my phone for is that this really really makes me
Speaker 1: think about I cannot find the name of it, but
Speaker 1: years ago I read it was a book or a
Speaker 1: short book or a story by Stephen King where essentially
Speaker 1: this person was driving all the time and making fantastic
Speaker 1: different distances, and the concept was if you have a
Speaker 1: flat paper map, but you fold the map and you
Speaker 1: connect the to the the road from the two folded edges,
Speaker 1: you cut out all that distance, but you go through
Speaker 1: this weird kind of fantasy space that makes me think.
Speaker 1: But it's it has the same quality, in the same
Speaker 1: feel as the things that are described in that like
Speaker 1: I almost feel like a rip off of King in
Speaker 1: a way that I mean, that sounds like not intentionally,
Speaker 1: but the King probably ripped off Reddit. Yeah, that sounds
Speaker 1: like a wrinkle in time to me. So are you
Speaker 1: sure it's Stephen King? I really feel like it was
Speaker 1: Stephen King. But it's a theory of time travel in
Speaker 1: general is that you just wrinkle two things and stop.
Speaker 1: Actually he did mention that he picked up that road
Speaker 1: Atlas to the western US and that which is market America.
Speaker 1: They did, he didn't, But that's okay. Anyway, UM, do
Speaker 1: you guys feel like you have anything more that you want?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a weird story, I want to
Speaker 1: be honest, but I hope you enjoyed it. Yeah, it's good.
Speaker 1: Sure they made it up. Like I said, I don't
Speaker 1: think that you're going to find it because even in
Speaker 1: the alternative timeline, I still don't understand why anybody would
Speaker 1: plant the city in a particulous spot because I've looked
Speaker 1: at it. Why do they planning cities in any typically?
Speaker 1: But anyway, I hope that everybody else got to enjoy this.
Speaker 1: UM as a little bonus something. UM, we want to
Speaker 1: thank you very very much for being part of Stitcher Premium.
Speaker 1: If you want to connect with us, you can head
Speaker 1: to our Stitcher page to connect with us on all
Speaker 1: of our various social media's and also linked to our website.
Speaker 1: Or if you want to talk to us about this
Speaker 1: case or any other case, you can feel free to
Speaker 1: email us at Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you live on Highway five, we especially want to
Speaker 1: hear from. If you work on the rout at the
Speaker 1: Ruby tuesdays on that road, please let us know. Um.
Speaker 1: But otherwise um, Yeah, thanks for going to get out
Speaker 1: of here to lou. We'll see you next time. Get
Speaker 1: burger okay,