September 2, 2024 • 39 mins
In this episode of 'Bread for the People,' host Jim Serpico celebrates nearing 100 episodes while reflecting on a recent trip to Denver with his wife and friends. As he shares anecdotes from their journey, he delves into the complexities and humor of group travel, including navigating different personalities, prank planning, and logistical challenges. Jim recounts visits to iconic sites like Red Rocks and Pikes Peak, discussing the personal growth and lessons learned from creating shared travel experiences. He also touches on broader themes like work-life balance, the importance of taking breaks, and sensitivity towards others' needs.
00:00 Welcome and Milestone Celebration
01:11 Vacation in Denver: Planning and Reflections
05:10 Traveling with Friends: Challenges and Insights
07:38 Family Dynamics on Vacation
12:43 The Colorado Springs Adventure
22:42 Denver Airbnb and Local Experiences
28:03 Food Adventures in Denver
29:03 Travel Etiquette and Personal Preferences
34:34 Bill Maher and Steve-O Debate
38:27 Red Rocks Concert Experience
38:56 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
00:00 Welcome and Milestone Celebration
01:11 Vacation in Denver: Planning and Reflections
05:10 Traveling with Friends: Challenges and Insights
07:38 Family Dynamics on Vacation
12:43 The Colorado Springs Adventure
22:42 Denver Airbnb and Local Experiences
28:03 Food Adventures in Denver
29:03 Travel Etiquette and Personal Preferences
34:34 Bill Maher and Steve-O Debate
38:27 Red Rocks Concert Experience
38:56 Final Thoughts and Recommendations
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jim-serpico-bread-for-the-people-sourdough-pizza-life--5704379/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Bread for the People. It's me Jim Surperco.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
All right, we're nearing one hundred episodes everyone. I think
this is episode ninety six. I'm so excited. I've been
doing this for a.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Couple of years, and I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All for tuning in and listening, and we've been climbing
up the iTunes charts. Just this week, we're at number
seventy on the Food podcast. So I'm grateful to you
for listening. I am grateful to you for spreading it
the word to your friends. Please, if you have not
yet rated the show on iTunes, please go give me
(00:43):
a five star review if you think it deserves one.
I know I do well, not really because I have
a lot of self doubt and I don't think I'm
not good. But give me a five star review anyway.
I appreciate it. This is gonna be a great episode
because I am going to be talking to myself with myself.
(01:06):
It's a solo It's a solo Bread for the People.
I just got back from Denver. I needed some time
off my wife, Sherry. It's very important to her that
we get a break in the summer. She not only
helped run side hustle artisanal bread. But she's a school
(01:27):
psychologist and she works school hours during the year, and
you know, summers are short, man, summers are short, and
we still kind of go by the school calendar even
though our kids are out of school, and we realize
how fast it went. And back in November. We're recording
(01:49):
this now in August. But back in November, a group
of our friends said, Hey, why don't we travel to
Denver to go to Red Rocks.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
To see Oh.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I don't know if you guys know who Oir is
there a band that had some hits twenty years ago.
They're kind of relevant now, but not so irrelevant. They
don't get a lot of airplay on the radio, but
they're a good band. The other three couples that we
hang out with in a larger group, but these three
couples in particular love Oar, and so does my wife Sherry.
(02:23):
I kind of go along. I like OAR. I can't
say I love OAR, but always happy to go to
Colorado because Colorado to me is a spiritual place, and
specifically Red Rocks, the venue is spiritual. I could see
anything at Red Rocks, and I'm not a particularly religious person,
(02:49):
but I feel something when I'm in that amphitheater. I
could watch a movie, I could watch a speaker, I
could watch a cover band, I could watch oar, or
I could go there to see Tedesky trucks, who I
do love at Red Rocks, And it's all amazing to me,
just sitting in that venue, watching the sun go down,
(03:10):
looking at the big city behind you, looking at the clouds.
It's usually a lightning storm somewhere in the distance. Then
it gets darker and darker as it goes and they
light up the rocks on the side of you, and
the sound that is natural from bouncing off the rocks
is acoustically amazing, and it is one of my favorite
(03:32):
places in the world. But you know, I don't know
about you guys running your own businesses, but it's not
always so easy to say, okay, let's take off. You know,
is the business going to run without me? Or in
my case, do I have to shut down the business
(03:53):
because I am currently the main baker with some people
that help me but don't really know how to drive
this ship.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And we're small. We're small right now.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And then I have other friends with bigger operations and
they feel like if they go, what's going to happen
to the business. And it's not always easy for a
small business person to take off. But you know what
I've learned from taking mac Bousch's Unsliced Restaurants System class
is that if you're in that situation where you really
(04:29):
believe you have to do everything and the business won't
run without you, you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
You're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
And I am a true believer of that, and it
was important for me to take this vacation. That being said,
I had to think about it when we were asked
because traveling. I love traveling. I've been traveling my whole life.
From my early twenties, I was road manager for comedians
(05:02):
and particularly Dennis Leary, and then traveled a lot for
my career. I love flying. I'm not afraid of flying.
I love the feel of going somewhere new and experiencing
somewhere new. But traveling with one other person is interesting.
(05:22):
I'm sure all you have traveled with your friend or
spouse or someone you might have been engaged to your fiance.
It's not always easy, and I would say this if
you're thinking about getting married, travel with that person for
(05:45):
at least a week and make sure that this person
is not fucking crazy. Okay, So that is my advice
to you. If you get nothing else out of this podcast.
If you're a young person you're thinking about marrying someone,
travel with that person because that could make or break it.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Man, that is the test.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I've been traveling with my wife for years, and it's
taken me a while to realize that maybe I'm the
fucking crazy person. Maybe I'm the one causing the problems.
Maybe I have more anxiety than I realized I have.
And at the age I'm at fifty six, I'm starting
(06:32):
to realize my parents were crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Man.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I didn't know how crazy they were when I was
in my twenties. I looked up to them like they
were the shit. They were better than all the parents.
And now I'm starting to think I grew up in
such way more dysfunctional home than I ever realized that
(06:56):
I grew up in. My mom is eighty one. My
dad passed away at fifty five. He was seven years
older than my mom. You know, she doesn't know how
to listen to podcasts, so I think I'm clear on this,
but she's a little looney man, and I'm realizing that
(07:17):
now that she's eighty one. And I say all this
to say.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
A lot of.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
People are crazy, maybe even you guys who are listening
to this, because I know I'm crazy. I'm not so
easy to live with. I'm not so easy to travel with.
But listen, we're all different and that's what makes us
who we are. But when you travel with your family,
your immediate family, everyone has different personalities. And we've always
(07:48):
taken my three kids away since they were born. My
son James, it would be my wife and I and James,
and then two years later Cole was born, and then
it would be the four of us, and then four
years later Miles was born, it would be the three
of us. And now they're adult children and they have
their own personalities and we love going on vacation together.
(08:08):
But that being said, it's not always easy on those
vacations because everyone, you know, there's a point where one
person is pissed at everybody and storms away, and then
another person is upset because who said what storms away? Well,
one person gets drunk and gets in a fight with
(08:31):
a security guard who doesn't speak English. I mean, it's
crazy what happens on the family vacations.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I don't know if it's just my.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Family that fight security guards that just don't speak English,
but it happens to us all the time. And when
we were asked to go with three other couples to
see this band that Sherry loves and they love and
I think it's just okay. And I knew it was
(09:02):
in the height of the farmers' market season, which is
where I sell most of my bread for the year,
and I'm working hard on doing something bigger.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But I bit the bullet and I agreed to go.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Man, I was nervous about it, but from the very beginning.
We got together at my house, we had some drinks
in the backyard in November of twenty twenty three, and
we talked about what we were going to do, what
we could possibly do. We wanted to take everyone's ideas
(09:41):
into consideration and try to make all eight people happy.
You know, we knew Denver was going to be the
hub because this concert on Sunday night was the anchor
of the trip and the one thing I really do
believe it's nice to take a trip that has an
anchor that most of the people are looking forward to,
you know, like You could say that we were going
(10:03):
to Red Rocks to see Oar, But you know what,
it was just an anchor to get to Denver and
explore and do things we would never do, and drive
in a car and see things we would never see
because we live in Long Island, New York, and all
(10:23):
we see is Mercadise. Is that how you say it?
That fancy car with the star in the hood. Some
people call it Mercedes, some people call it Mercodise. I
know it's Mercedes, guys, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
We see nothing but strip malls and pizzerius. Every four
hundred feet. There's an Anthony's, there's a Frank East, there's
a Tony's. There's a place called Pizza. Then there's another
place called pizza too. Everywhere you drive around and then
you see dunkin Donuts. When you go out to Denver,
you don't see any of that. You see mountains, you
(11:04):
see on the highway, just as much traffic as you
see here on the four ninety five, which surprised the
shit out of me. There's a bumper to bumper in traffic.
I don't know what's going on out there in Denver.
But when you get off the highway. You see beauty,
you see nature. So we decided we were going to
(11:26):
go Land on a Thursday, go to the concert at
Red Rocks in Denver on Sunday, and fly home on Tuesday.
And we had a lot of different personalities on this trip.
And how does this relate to food? Listen, we're all people,
we're all in the food business, or we'd like to
(11:47):
eat food. And maybe you listen to this show because
you're interested in hearing me talk to people about sourdough.
But I think we could all relate to some form
of travel with others. Travel is one thing. Traveling with
your spouse, your family, or your friends is another. And
this episode really is about traveling with a group. And
(12:12):
there are some rewarding reasons to consider traveling with a group.
And I have to say that the shared of experience
that you have with your friends when things go right
is amazing. And at the end of the day, I
did feel that, and I felt a bond and a
(12:35):
camaraderie by the end. But it wasn't so easy to
get there. Okay, Now, when we first met and somebody
mentioned they wanted to go to Colorado Springs and maybe
stay there one night. I had never been to Colorado Springs,
(12:57):
so I thought that might be a good idea, And
we kind of assigned tasks to one of the eight,
and it was interesting to see who followed through with
their tasks and who didn't, who was on top of
their game. We had a Google doc with a share
(13:17):
itinerary that everyone would fill in, and the truth is,
it wasn't until June that one fucking thing was filled in.
Other than the air, everyone booked their own air. But
after we had that meeting in November, no one did shit. Okay,
(13:38):
so let's that says a lot about these eight people.
I think everyone had good intentions, but there wasn't much
followed through, including me, usually on top of things, but
for whatever reason, we realized that June we got to
make stuff happen. So by that time, one of the
guys booked the whole hotel in Colorado Springs and we
(14:05):
had to figure out what we're gonna do. And somebody
mentioned that's close to Pike's Peak, So we want to
go to the Pike's Peak. Now I'm gonna jump a
little out of order. So now we're in Colorado Springs. Okay,
it's late July August. We just got back this week.
We rented two cars. I have this corporate account with
these discounts, and we got a couple of cameras, which,
(14:28):
by the way, there's another a good example of how
hard it is.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
There's so many logistics.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I said, guys, we're gonna rent a CAMERI We're gonna
get two cameras. I got this amazing rate for five days.
It's gonna be two hundred and twenty five dollars a car.
You're all okay with a camera. Everyone said, yeah, get
booked the cavalry. Put it down on my credit card.
The night before we go, and one of the guys
calls up and goes, hey, uh, I just want to
make sure the car you rented was a Toyota rav
four like the one I have, because I got to
(14:54):
put you know, my scooter in it.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Scooter.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
He goes, yeah, you know, you know, I'm having the
problems with my feet. I got to fold up the
school and put it in the Raft four. I go, dude, man,
I booked this fucking car three months ago. I got
a camera. You said, yes, and specifically like RAF four.
I don't't even know what that is no, we have
a Toyota camera, and he never he never responds until
(15:20):
three days later he goes, the camera's fine, it'll fit
in in the Uh, the scooter will fit in the camera.
I don't even know what he's talking about, but anyway,
so we put four and four in a car, two
couples and two couples, and we decided to go to
Pike's Peak, which is one of the tallest mountains in Denver,
I'm sorry, in Colorado, and it's it's like a state
(15:44):
park and you pull up to the gates and there's
a tall booth and one guy's in the in the
booth on the right and he's talking to the park
ranger and they're taking the money from everybody.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
It's like ten bucks a person.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And then we're in a booth to the left and
our guy is like giving us the whole thing. He goes, listen,
you can't drive too fast going up this mountain, and
you got to go even slower coming down.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
And I like this car that you have.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And by the way, we were upgraded to jeep Cherokees,
which was really cool. But it's like, you got the
paddle shifters on. You gotta go into the low gear.
You got to use one and two on the paddles.
And we don't know what the hell he's talking about,
and he start showing us the paddles. We're at the
booth for a half hour. We pull out of the
booth and the other car is gone. They're gone. They
didn't wait for us. They claimed they didn't see us
(16:40):
talking to the park ranger. And we're me, my wife
and the other couple like, these motherfuckers, man, they just
took off, Like this is the first thing we're doing.
Is this what this trip's going to be? Like, they
take off and we don't know where they are. There's
no cell phone service, and we're driving up this mountain
now for forty minutes, and.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
We're stopping a little bit.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We're taking pictures and as the higher up you go,
the steeper the edges get, the more beautiful the views are.
And we're like, we can't believe we can't get pictures
with our friends here, Ikey, believe they fucking took off.
And we're driving forty minutes. We get to the top
(17:23):
and we find our friends and they're all doubled over.
They all have altitude sickness, okay. We're just cursing them,
saying how they left us. They're like, we didn't see you.
We don't know if we could drive down. We're all sick,
we're all dazzy. We like, let's take a picture that
we can't get out of the car. Oh my god,
(17:46):
what is happening here? I turn around and there's an
elk staring at me five feet away, munching on a
piece of grass right near a rock. Then I turn
I see my friends about the puke. I go, listen, guys,
I'm going inside. I haven't eaten since this morning in
New York. You're gonna be fine. Breathe through your nose.
(18:09):
I'm gonna go get a snack.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So I go into the visitors center at the top.
I get some potato chips, I get some food. I
come out and they're like, we gotta go. We got
we're going. They start driving down, and I guess at
that point we're taking a lead. And my wife drove
up the mountain, and then my friend Dave with the scooter,
(18:33):
drove down the mountain and Dave. The reason Dave drove
out drove down the mountain is he was familiar with
how to use the paddles in the car. The car
with all the sick people were behind us and Dave driving.
I understand it was steep and there was big cliffs,
but he's driving like four miles an hour down this thing,
(18:58):
and you could tell Dave's nerve as hell. And the
guys behind us and the couple behind us, they're like
raising their hands.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
In the air, like what are you doing? Come on?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
But Dave's doing what he's doing. And I see something
to my left. It's a beautiful thing. I point, and
Dave yells at me, don't point, don't point. I'm driving.
I need to concentrate. And then he says to his wife, Ronda,
stop talking. Stop talking. I gotta concentrate. So the personalities
are coming out, and we're driving four miles an hour
(19:33):
down the mountain, and we finally get halfway down and
we all pull over by the side of a cliff
and we take an amazing picture of the eight of us.
And if you look at that picture, it looks like
we hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. Okay, And that's the picture we're
all gonna frame and put up who's who we can.
(19:56):
We're not gonna put it up. We're gonna put it
on the phone and never look at it. But that
was day one and it was really amazing. Now the
other thing I did as we were making this itinerary
and after I booked the cars, I was really curious
to see who was looking at the itinerary and who
was doing the work. So on the Monday after the concert,
(20:20):
I used an AI program to help me write up
a fake tour that I put in the itinerary, and
I said, next to whatever you enter in the itinerary,
you would write your name if you're the one who
booked that tour. So instead of writing my name this
(20:42):
was a fake tour that wasn't really happening, I wrote Ross,
who was one of.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The guys on the trip. He's married to Karen.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And on the Monday before we were going to fly out,
I wrote up a fake tour called the Magic Mushroom Experience,
and it was really fleshed out to the point where
I was like, I should probably open this up as
a business. We had a guide come to the house.
Now this wasn't real, guys, but I pretended I booked
(21:14):
a guide to come to the home and feed us
magic mushrooms at seven in the morning, and I.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Gave a whole step by step.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Outline of what the five hour experience would be, including
making you feel like you were flying over the Colorado Mountains.
It was almost like that ride at Epcot, I forget
the name of it, where soaring, you know, but you're
on mushrooms and you're not even on a ride, but
it makes you think you're on a ride.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And I in.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
The tour, I tell them what lunches to pack and
this whole thing, and I say, Ross book the tour.
I put that in April. It wasn't into the beginning
of July. People will call in and say, Ross, I
never agreed to do mushrooms right. So three months later
(22:11):
they finally started looking at the itinerary of Ross is like,
I don't know what you're talking about. And I just
played dumb and said I don't know how it got there.
But that was my prank on the gang. And it
seemed like by the end of it, they were all
interested in doing magic mushrooms, but we didn't end up
doing it.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
What else?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So Ross booked us an airbnb. We were supposed to
stay in downtown Denver, but something happened. When Ross booked it,
he was going through something site. It was actually a
place my wife and I stayed at the year before
called the Kava.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Which was.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Kind of like an apartment building that you could rent
for short term and it makes you feel like you're
embedded in the community and you're living like a local.
And Ross was in charge of booking that. And it
turns out the person he googled to book it was
not a person affiliated with the apartment building at all.
(23:16):
It was someone trying to scam his money, and by
the time we realized it, luckily enough, he didn't lose
any money, but we lost the apartment. So Ross found
us an airbnb that could host eight people in Rhino.
Rhino is like North of the River district or something
(23:39):
like that, and it's a cool part of town.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Most of it.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
It's pretty big, and when I say most of it,
we were not in the most of its section. We
were our air andbnb was beautiful inside three floors, washing machine,
parking spots, roof deck, hot tub, across the street from
(24:04):
a homeless shelter, which by day looked amazing by now
by night it looked like skid row.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
In Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And we realized that when my wife and I were
trying to go to sleep the first night and we
heard motherfucker, I'll slit your fucking throw motherfucker for three hours.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I peeked through the curtain and there's hundreds and hundreds
of people online and just screaming and yelling, and that's
my tent.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
No, that's my tent. And I'm like, I can't believe this.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And the next morning when we go downstairs, we asked
people if they heard it. No one heard it except us,
and they accused us of dreaming and making shit up.
And I'm telling you, we didn't make it up. But
it was a nice apartment. It ended up being a
good place to have a home base. Then we had
(25:04):
to go shopping. Okay, here's a good one. So now
we go to outfit the airbnb with what food we're
going to have in the apartment, and we kind of
split up. I go to the Safeway supermarket with two
of the girls and another guy who happens to be
ross again, and we buy like two wagons worth of
(25:32):
alcohol and food and alcohol and wine and alcohol. I
know wine's alcohol, but I would say three quarters of
the wagons with alcohol and then we got like some
chips and then some healthy things like.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Plane chips.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
So we got an uber home because we didn't drive
to the safeway, and I call the uber on my
phone and.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We're waiting for the uber.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
We're waiting and he pulls up and on my phone
it says license plate x y Z one two three.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Right. So Ross and Karen go up to the uber
and they go, who a you're here for? They gotta
go what? They go, who A you're here for? What
you mean?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And they go, are you picking someone up? He goes yeah,
They go who is it? He goes, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Who is it? They go are you Uber? And any
guy looks at him and go are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Me?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Go who you're here for?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And he fucking speeds away and I'm like, guys, what
are you doing? You got to ask the uber who
they're here for? And I'm like, I've heard that before.
But I've got the color of the car, the make
a model of the car right here. I've got the
license plate that matches the license plate on the Uber
app versus the fucking license played here on the actual car.
(27:02):
And you guys are acting like your fucking FBI agents
interrogating this guy. He doesn't want to deal with your shit,
and he fucking takes off. He should have taken off.
I wouldn't want to drive you people around. So now
we got to wait another forty five minutes for an uber.
So my question to you guys is you always ask
the uber who they're here for. I don't I feel like, Hey, man,
(27:26):
I'm Jim. I just saw your license played on my
app and the color of your car and the make
and model. You must be Jerry. Are you Jerry? I'm Jim,
You're here for me? Okay, let's go. Well that didn't happen,
so I made sure if I was taking ubers that
(27:48):
Ross was in a different uber than me. All right,
So then we go around. We have some amazing dinners.
We got a lot of foodies listening. I would say
the food in Denver is outstanding. We can't even cover
all the amazing food we had there.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Chinese Vietnamese restaurant called The Ginger Pig in Lohigh. Some
of the best Asian food I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I highly recommend The Ginger Pig. In Rhino.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
We went to the Greenwich, which was very close to
the apartment we were staying at. They had pizzas Neapolitan
slash New York inspired pizzas, very good. I would recommend
the Greenwich to anyone who's going to.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Denver.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
What else happened on this trip, Let's see. Okay, here's
another thing I don't know about you, guys. I wear
my shoes inside my house. If you're traveling with people
and you wear shoes or you don't wear shoes, I
would advise you to have a conversation with your friends
(29:06):
and said, do you come from a no shoe home
or a shoe home? Because I don't want to be
told personally me on vacation. I'm a guy who sometimes
bakes into one in the morning and I'm about to
fall down. I'll go to sleep with caked flour on
my forehead. Okay, and my shoes is still on. Let alone.
(29:29):
I'm not taking my shoes off in my own house. Now,
I may be a pig, and maybe again there's something
wrong with me. But dysfunctional family I grew up in.
I never heard of taking your shoes off when you
come into the house. I do have a good friend,
Tom who has inside shoes. When he goes into his house,
(29:51):
he takes off his outside shoes puts on an inside shoes.
And when I was complaining about this to my wife,
she says, I do that. We're married thirty one years.
How do you not know I have inside shoes? And
I said, if I knew that thirty one years ago,
I probably wouldn't have married you. I'm glad I didn't
know that until now. It's too late. We're going to
stay married. But I am not taking my shoes off. Okay, now,
(30:15):
when you go to the airbnb with three other couples,
I got to say, in the nicest possible way I can,
I'm not fucking taking my fucking shoes off, guys, That's
the nicest way I could say it. And they didn't
make me take my shoes off, but some of them did.
(30:37):
And then when I left the room and then came back,
I would see them sweeping or wiping with a rag.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
It wasn't everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
I would say, it was three out of the eight
or anti shoe wearing inside the Airbnb. And what about this,
sandals or sliders, whatever you want to call them, what
do you guys think is it okay to go on
a plane in sandals with no socks on?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Or does that?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Is that on the line of being barefoot and making
this plane smell like feet? What is your feeling on this, Guys,
when you go out in the world, what is your
feeling about wearing sliders with socks on? Is that appropriate?
I know my son told me that when you wear sliders,
(31:35):
you're supposed to wear socks. When I grew up, you
didn't wear socks with sliders. He says, if you wear
crocs with a clothes toe, you don't. You could be barefoot.
But if you're wearing anything that's open in the front,
you need to wear socks. So this is new to me.
Where do you guys sit with this? Do you feel
uncomfortable if your friends are wearing, well, you're not wearing
(32:00):
they're wearing sandals. We had socks Los Angeles without socks.
Then we scheduled a beer tour for the city of Denver.
That was a great day. We got to experience four
breweries and we drank a total of ten different types
(32:21):
of beer, each as much as we wanted. Of those
ten beers, they would put pictures on the table and.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Back to Dave.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
One of the reasons Dave originally wanted the raft four was,
as I said, to put the scooter in because he
needed the scooter because his feet hurt and he was
going on this beer tour with us. And first of all,
he made it clear about a thousand times he said,
you know, I'm not a day drinker, but I'm going
(32:50):
to go my feet hurt, I'm going to scuote on
the scooter. I'm not gonna drink that much. And then
when it came down to it, Dave did not scoot
on the scooter. He didn't even bring the scooter. He
walked the beer tour. And not only did he walk,
this guy was looked like he was ready to do
a marathon. He was running back and forth between breweries guys,
(33:13):
and for a guy who doesn't they drink, I never
saw anybody drink this much. We had, like I said,
ten different types of beer a person, the ones that
he liked, which was probably three of the ten. I
think he drank a picture each and the more he drank,
the more he could run, and the more his feet
didn't hurt.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And it was crazy. You know, he was cured.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
He was cured, but then when he sold it up,
his feet hurt again, so I don't know if there's
something to that. And around that time, while we were
in Denver, my friend Ross and I started getting to
a thing. We read a story about Bill Maher and
Steve Oh. And that's one of the great things about
(34:00):
traveling with friends. You get different perspectives and you respect
each other enough to have a civil conversation about it.
We didn't get into politics that much, but if we did,
we could respect each other's opinions and we're going to
stay friends. But this one was a good one. I'd
(34:22):
love to get your feedback. Bill Maher has a podcast
and he invited Steve O on the podcast, and Steve
O is sixteen years sober. You had a big drug
problem that he's very open about, and he's proud that
he's fought the fight, but it's never easy and it's
(34:45):
not a given that he won't go back and his
demons won't get the best of them. And Steve O said,
I'd love to do your podcast, but I know you
smoke weed on your podcast, and I would appre ciated
if for that episode you didn't, because it's very hard
for me to be around people smoking weed in my face,
(35:09):
and Bill Maher said, no, man, it's my podcast. I'll
do what I do. If you can't handle it, it's
not my problem, don't come on. And then Steve O
went online and bashed Bill Maher as being insensitive, and
Bill started getting a bed rap. Now my feeling, I'm
(35:31):
on the Steve O side. I'm like, listen, you invite
the guy on your podcast. He's got a problem. I'm empathetic.
I'm especially empathetic to drug and alcohol problems.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I have. Not necessarily.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I drink, I occasionally smoke, okay, But at the same time,
I am very respectful of people who don't. I don't judge,
and I want people who drugs and alcohol have impacted
their life. I'm rooting for them to win, and I'm
going to try to set them up in situations that
help them win. And if you're coming on my podcast
(36:18):
and you ask that request of me, there is no
possible way I'm doing anything that's going to put you
in a vulnerable position. And that's my feeling. I think
that Bill Maher could have done that. My friend says,
wait a second, that's not the case. This is his
He sets the rules for his show, and he says
(36:40):
it's like David Letterman, who's notorious for keeping the theater
and the studio ice cold. If whoever is coming on
the show says, hey, I need you to turn up
the temperature to at least seventy two degrees, Dave Letterman
(37:02):
is going to say, no, this is how it is.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
You come to my.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Studio it's fifty eight degrees, or you don't do my show.
It's up to you. So that's the analogy Ross uses,
which I respect. I think it's apples to oranges. I
don't think it's the same thing. I don't necessarily think
it's putting the David Letterman situation is putting the guest's
life in danger. But I kind of respect Ross's argument there,
(37:32):
and some other people I've talked to also respected. I
wonder what you guys think if it's your restaurant, and
I'm trying to think of another situation like that where
somebody asks a request of you, would you bend, would
you change the rules? Or is a restaurant not a
(37:52):
good example? I would say if I owned a restaurant
and someone asked me not to serve booze, I would
say no, that's not how goes. My business model is
I'm serving booze. But I don't think this was the same.
I don't think it was the same at all. So
I'm curious to see what you guys think. That's the
(38:14):
bill maher thing. We went to the concert. It was
a good show. We got to experience three seasons in
the night at Red Rocks. It was cold, it rained,
the rain cleared up, got warmer, got dark, got hot,
(38:35):
got cold again.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Every show.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
I've only seen two so far at Red Rocks, but
it is something I kind of look forward to. I
love that place. At the end of the day. I
loved traveling with my friends. I loved traveling with my wife.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I loved.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
The different personalities work together to get along and not
only make the trip happen, but make the trip fun.
And I highly recommend if you have close friends to
take this shot.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And let your mind go, let everyone.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Be who they are and just be make it happen,
and take a break from reality. Love you guys, have
a great week. Blessed be the bread
Welcome to Bread for the People. It's me Jim Surperco.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
All right, we're nearing one hundred episodes everyone. I think
this is episode ninety six. I'm so excited. I've been
doing this for a.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Couple of years, and I really appreciate you.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
All for tuning in and listening, and we've been climbing
up the iTunes charts. Just this week, we're at number
seventy on the Food podcast. So I'm grateful to you
for listening. I am grateful to you for spreading it
the word to your friends. Please, if you have not
yet rated the show on iTunes, please go give me
(00:43):
a five star review if you think it deserves one.
I know I do well, not really because I have
a lot of self doubt and I don't think I'm
not good. But give me a five star review anyway.
I appreciate it. This is gonna be a great episode
because I am going to be talking to myself with myself.
(01:06):
It's a solo It's a solo Bread for the People.
I just got back from Denver. I needed some time
off my wife, Sherry. It's very important to her that
we get a break in the summer. She not only
helped run side hustle artisanal bread. But she's a school
(01:27):
psychologist and she works school hours during the year, and
you know, summers are short, man, summers are short, and
we still kind of go by the school calendar even
though our kids are out of school, and we realize
how fast it went. And back in November. We're recording
(01:49):
this now in August. But back in November, a group
of our friends said, Hey, why don't we travel to
Denver to go to Red Rocks.
Speaker 1 (01:59):
To see Oh.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
I don't know if you guys know who Oir is
there a band that had some hits twenty years ago.
They're kind of relevant now, but not so irrelevant. They
don't get a lot of airplay on the radio, but
they're a good band. The other three couples that we
hang out with in a larger group, but these three
couples in particular love Oar, and so does my wife Sherry.
(02:23):
I kind of go along. I like OAR. I can't
say I love OAR, but always happy to go to
Colorado because Colorado to me is a spiritual place, and
specifically Red Rocks, the venue is spiritual. I could see
anything at Red Rocks, and I'm not a particularly religious person,
(02:49):
but I feel something when I'm in that amphitheater. I
could watch a movie, I could watch a speaker, I
could watch a cover band, I could watch oar, or
I could go there to see Tedesky trucks, who I
do love at Red Rocks, And it's all amazing to me,
just sitting in that venue, watching the sun go down,
(03:10):
looking at the big city behind you, looking at the clouds.
It's usually a lightning storm somewhere in the distance. Then
it gets darker and darker as it goes and they
light up the rocks on the side of you, and
the sound that is natural from bouncing off the rocks
is acoustically amazing, and it is one of my favorite
(03:32):
places in the world. But you know, I don't know
about you guys running your own businesses, but it's not
always so easy to say, okay, let's take off. You know,
is the business going to run without me? Or in
my case, do I have to shut down the business
(03:53):
because I am currently the main baker with some people
that help me but don't really know how to drive
this ship.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
And we're small. We're small right now.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
And then I have other friends with bigger operations and
they feel like if they go, what's going to happen
to the business. And it's not always easy for a
small business person to take off. But you know what
I've learned from taking mac Bousch's Unsliced Restaurants System class
is that if you're in that situation where you really
(04:29):
believe you have to do everything and the business won't
run without you, you're doing something wrong.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
You're doing something wrong.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
And I am a true believer of that, and it
was important for me to take this vacation. That being said,
I had to think about it when we were asked
because traveling. I love traveling. I've been traveling my whole life.
From my early twenties, I was road manager for comedians
(05:02):
and particularly Dennis Leary, and then traveled a lot for
my career. I love flying. I'm not afraid of flying.
I love the feel of going somewhere new and experiencing
somewhere new. But traveling with one other person is interesting.
(05:22):
I'm sure all you have traveled with your friend or
spouse or someone you might have been engaged to your fiance.
It's not always easy, and I would say this if
you're thinking about getting married, travel with that person for
(05:45):
at least a week and make sure that this person
is not fucking crazy. Okay, So that is my advice
to you. If you get nothing else out of this podcast.
If you're a young person you're thinking about marrying someone,
travel with that person because that could make or break it.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Man, that is the test.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
I've been traveling with my wife for years, and it's
taken me a while to realize that maybe I'm the
fucking crazy person. Maybe I'm the one causing the problems.
Maybe I have more anxiety than I realized I have.
And at the age I'm at fifty six, I'm starting
(06:32):
to realize my parents were crazy.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Man.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
I didn't know how crazy they were when I was
in my twenties. I looked up to them like they
were the shit. They were better than all the parents.
And now I'm starting to think I grew up in
such way more dysfunctional home than I ever realized that
(06:56):
I grew up in. My mom is eighty one. My
dad passed away at fifty five. He was seven years
older than my mom. You know, she doesn't know how
to listen to podcasts, so I think I'm clear on this,
but she's a little looney man, and I'm realizing that
(07:17):
now that she's eighty one. And I say all this
to say.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
A lot of.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
People are crazy, maybe even you guys who are listening
to this, because I know I'm crazy. I'm not so
easy to live with. I'm not so easy to travel with.
But listen, we're all different and that's what makes us
who we are. But when you travel with your family,
your immediate family, everyone has different personalities. And we've always
(07:48):
taken my three kids away since they were born. My
son James, it would be my wife and I and James,
and then two years later Cole was born, and then
it would be the four of us, and then four
years later Miles was born, it would be the three
of us. And now they're adult children and they have
their own personalities and we love going on vacation together.
(08:08):
But that being said, it's not always easy on those
vacations because everyone, you know, there's a point where one
person is pissed at everybody and storms away, and then
another person is upset because who said what storms away? Well,
one person gets drunk and gets in a fight with
(08:31):
a security guard who doesn't speak English. I mean, it's
crazy what happens on the family vacations.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I don't know if it's just my.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
Family that fight security guards that just don't speak English,
but it happens to us all the time. And when
we were asked to go with three other couples to
see this band that Sherry loves and they love and
I think it's just okay. And I knew it was
(09:02):
in the height of the farmers' market season, which is
where I sell most of my bread for the year,
and I'm working hard on doing something bigger.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
But I bit the bullet and I agreed to go.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Man, I was nervous about it, but from the very beginning.
We got together at my house, we had some drinks
in the backyard in November of twenty twenty three, and
we talked about what we were going to do, what
we could possibly do. We wanted to take everyone's ideas
(09:41):
into consideration and try to make all eight people happy.
You know, we knew Denver was going to be the
hub because this concert on Sunday night was the anchor
of the trip and the one thing I really do
believe it's nice to take a trip that has an
anchor that most of the people are looking forward to,
you know, like You could say that we were going
(10:03):
to Red Rocks to see Oar, But you know what,
it was just an anchor to get to Denver and
explore and do things we would never do, and drive
in a car and see things we would never see
because we live in Long Island, New York, and all
(10:23):
we see is Mercadise. Is that how you say it?
That fancy car with the star in the hood. Some
people call it Mercedes, some people call it Mercodise. I
know it's Mercedes, guys, I'm kidding.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Ah.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
We see nothing but strip malls and pizzerius. Every four
hundred feet. There's an Anthony's, there's a Frank East, there's
a Tony's. There's a place called Pizza. Then there's another
place called pizza too. Everywhere you drive around and then
you see dunkin Donuts. When you go out to Denver,
you don't see any of that. You see mountains, you
(11:04):
see on the highway, just as much traffic as you
see here on the four ninety five, which surprised the
shit out of me. There's a bumper to bumper in traffic.
I don't know what's going on out there in Denver.
But when you get off the highway. You see beauty,
you see nature. So we decided we were going to
(11:26):
go Land on a Thursday, go to the concert at
Red Rocks in Denver on Sunday, and fly home on Tuesday.
And we had a lot of different personalities on this trip.
And how does this relate to food? Listen, we're all people,
we're all in the food business, or we'd like to
(11:47):
eat food. And maybe you listen to this show because
you're interested in hearing me talk to people about sourdough.
But I think we could all relate to some form
of travel with others. Travel is one thing. Traveling with
your spouse, your family, or your friends is another. And
this episode really is about traveling with a group. And
(12:12):
there are some rewarding reasons to consider traveling with a group.
And I have to say that the shared of experience
that you have with your friends when things go right
is amazing. And at the end of the day, I
did feel that, and I felt a bond and a
(12:35):
camaraderie by the end. But it wasn't so easy to
get there. Okay, Now, when we first met and somebody
mentioned they wanted to go to Colorado Springs and maybe
stay there one night. I had never been to Colorado Springs,
(12:57):
so I thought that might be a good idea, And
we kind of assigned tasks to one of the eight,
and it was interesting to see who followed through with
their tasks and who didn't, who was on top of
their game. We had a Google doc with a share
(13:17):
itinerary that everyone would fill in, and the truth is,
it wasn't until June that one fucking thing was filled in.
Other than the air, everyone booked their own air. But
after we had that meeting in November, no one did shit. Okay,
(13:38):
so let's that says a lot about these eight people.
I think everyone had good intentions, but there wasn't much
followed through, including me, usually on top of things, but
for whatever reason, we realized that June we got to
make stuff happen. So by that time, one of the
guys booked the whole hotel in Colorado Springs and we
(14:05):
had to figure out what we're gonna do. And somebody
mentioned that's close to Pike's Peak, So we want to
go to the Pike's Peak. Now I'm gonna jump a
little out of order. So now we're in Colorado Springs. Okay,
it's late July August. We just got back this week.
We rented two cars. I have this corporate account with
these discounts, and we got a couple of cameras, which,
(14:28):
by the way, there's another a good example of how
hard it is.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
There's so many logistics.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
I said, guys, we're gonna rent a CAMERI We're gonna
get two cameras. I got this amazing rate for five days.
It's gonna be two hundred and twenty five dollars a car.
You're all okay with a camera. Everyone said, yeah, get
booked the cavalry. Put it down on my credit card.
The night before we go, and one of the guys
calls up and goes, hey, uh, I just want to
make sure the car you rented was a Toyota rav
four like the one I have, because I got to
(14:54):
put you know, my scooter in it.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
Scooter.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
He goes, yeah, you know, you know, I'm having the
problems with my feet. I got to fold up the
school and put it in the Raft four. I go, dude, man,
I booked this fucking car three months ago. I got
a camera. You said, yes, and specifically like RAF four.
I don't't even know what that is no, we have
a Toyota camera, and he never he never responds until
(15:20):
three days later he goes, the camera's fine, it'll fit
in in the Uh, the scooter will fit in the camera.
I don't even know what he's talking about, but anyway,
so we put four and four in a car, two
couples and two couples, and we decided to go to
Pike's Peak, which is one of the tallest mountains in Denver,
I'm sorry, in Colorado, and it's it's like a state
(15:44):
park and you pull up to the gates and there's
a tall booth and one guy's in the in the
booth on the right and he's talking to the park
ranger and they're taking the money from everybody.
Speaker 1 (15:56):
It's like ten bucks a person.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
And then we're in a booth to the left and
our guy is like giving us the whole thing. He goes, listen,
you can't drive too fast going up this mountain, and
you got to go even slower coming down.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
And I like this car that you have.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
And by the way, we were upgraded to jeep Cherokees,
which was really cool. But it's like, you got the
paddle shifters on. You gotta go into the low gear.
You got to use one and two on the paddles.
And we don't know what the hell he's talking about,
and he start showing us the paddles. We're at the
booth for a half hour. We pull out of the
booth and the other car is gone. They're gone. They
didn't wait for us. They claimed they didn't see us
(16:40):
talking to the park ranger. And we're me, my wife
and the other couple like, these motherfuckers, man, they just
took off, Like this is the first thing we're doing.
Is this what this trip's going to be? Like, they
take off and we don't know where they are. There's
no cell phone service, and we're driving up this mountain
now for forty minutes, and.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
We're stopping a little bit.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We're taking pictures and as the higher up you go,
the steeper the edges get, the more beautiful the views are.
And we're like, we can't believe we can't get pictures
with our friends here, Ikey, believe they fucking took off.
And we're driving forty minutes. We get to the top
(17:23):
and we find our friends and they're all doubled over.
They all have altitude sickness, okay. We're just cursing them,
saying how they left us. They're like, we didn't see you.
We don't know if we could drive down. We're all sick,
we're all dazzy. We like, let's take a picture that
we can't get out of the car. Oh my god,
(17:46):
what is happening here? I turn around and there's an
elk staring at me five feet away, munching on a
piece of grass right near a rock. Then I turn
I see my friends about the puke. I go, listen, guys,
I'm going inside. I haven't eaten since this morning in
New York. You're gonna be fine. Breathe through your nose.
(18:09):
I'm gonna go get a snack.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So I go into the visitors center at the top.
I get some potato chips, I get some food. I
come out and they're like, we gotta go. We got
we're going. They start driving down, and I guess at
that point we're taking a lead. And my wife drove
up the mountain, and then my friend Dave with the scooter,
(18:33):
drove down the mountain and Dave. The reason Dave drove
out drove down the mountain is he was familiar with
how to use the paddles in the car. The car
with all the sick people were behind us and Dave driving.
I understand it was steep and there was big cliffs,
but he's driving like four miles an hour down this thing,
(18:58):
and you could tell Dave's nerve as hell. And the
guys behind us and the couple behind us, they're like
raising their hands.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
In the air, like what are you doing? Come on?
Speaker 2 (19:11):
But Dave's doing what he's doing. And I see something
to my left. It's a beautiful thing. I point, and
Dave yells at me, don't point, don't point. I'm driving.
I need to concentrate. And then he says to his wife, Ronda,
stop talking. Stop talking. I gotta concentrate. So the personalities
are coming out, and we're driving four miles an hour
(19:33):
down the mountain, and we finally get halfway down and
we all pull over by the side of a cliff
and we take an amazing picture of the eight of us.
And if you look at that picture, it looks like
we hiked Mount Kilimanjaro. Okay, And that's the picture we're
all gonna frame and put up who's who we can.
(19:56):
We're not gonna put it up. We're gonna put it
on the phone and never look at it. But that
was day one and it was really amazing. Now the
other thing I did as we were making this itinerary
and after I booked the cars, I was really curious
to see who was looking at the itinerary and who
was doing the work. So on the Monday after the concert,
(20:20):
I used an AI program to help me write up
a fake tour that I put in the itinerary, and
I said, next to whatever you enter in the itinerary,
you would write your name if you're the one who
booked that tour. So instead of writing my name this
(20:42):
was a fake tour that wasn't really happening, I wrote Ross,
who was one of.
Speaker 1 (20:48):
The guys on the trip. He's married to Karen.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
And on the Monday before we were going to fly out,
I wrote up a fake tour called the Magic Mushroom Experience,
and it was really fleshed out to the point where
I was like, I should probably open this up as
a business. We had a guide come to the house.
Now this wasn't real, guys, but I pretended I booked
(21:14):
a guide to come to the home and feed us
magic mushrooms at seven in the morning, and I.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Gave a whole step by step.
Speaker 2 (21:27):
Outline of what the five hour experience would be, including
making you feel like you were flying over the Colorado Mountains.
It was almost like that ride at Epcot, I forget
the name of it, where soaring, you know, but you're
on mushrooms and you're not even on a ride, but
it makes you think you're on a ride.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And I in.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
The tour, I tell them what lunches to pack and
this whole thing, and I say, Ross book the tour.
I put that in April. It wasn't into the beginning
of July. People will call in and say, Ross, I
never agreed to do mushrooms right. So three months later
(22:11):
they finally started looking at the itinerary of Ross is like,
I don't know what you're talking about. And I just
played dumb and said I don't know how it got there.
But that was my prank on the gang. And it
seemed like by the end of it, they were all
interested in doing magic mushrooms, but we didn't end up
doing it.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
What else?
Speaker 2 (22:33):
So Ross booked us an airbnb. We were supposed to
stay in downtown Denver, but something happened. When Ross booked it,
he was going through something site. It was actually a
place my wife and I stayed at the year before
called the Kava.
Speaker 1 (22:53):
Which was.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Kind of like an apartment building that you could rent
for short term and it makes you feel like you're
embedded in the community and you're living like a local.
And Ross was in charge of booking that. And it
turns out the person he googled to book it was
not a person affiliated with the apartment building at all.
(23:16):
It was someone trying to scam his money, and by
the time we realized it, luckily enough, he didn't lose
any money, but we lost the apartment. So Ross found
us an airbnb that could host eight people in Rhino.
Rhino is like North of the River district or something
(23:39):
like that, and it's a cool part of town.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Most of it.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
It's pretty big, and when I say most of it,
we were not in the most of its section. We
were our air andbnb was beautiful inside three floors, washing machine,
parking spots, roof deck, hot tub, across the street from
(24:04):
a homeless shelter, which by day looked amazing by now
by night it looked like skid row.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
In Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
And we realized that when my wife and I were
trying to go to sleep the first night and we
heard motherfucker, I'll slit your fucking throw motherfucker for three hours.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
I peeked through the curtain and there's hundreds and hundreds
of people online and just screaming and yelling, and that's
my tent.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
No, that's my tent. And I'm like, I can't believe this.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
And the next morning when we go downstairs, we asked
people if they heard it. No one heard it except us,
and they accused us of dreaming and making shit up.
And I'm telling you, we didn't make it up. But
it was a nice apartment. It ended up being a
good place to have a home base. Then we had
(25:04):
to go shopping. Okay, here's a good one. So now
we go to outfit the airbnb with what food we're
going to have in the apartment, and we kind of
split up. I go to the Safeway supermarket with two
of the girls and another guy who happens to be
ross again, and we buy like two wagons worth of
(25:32):
alcohol and food and alcohol and wine and alcohol. I
know wine's alcohol, but I would say three quarters of
the wagons with alcohol and then we got like some
chips and then some healthy things like.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Plane chips.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
So we got an uber home because we didn't drive
to the safeway, and I call the uber on my
phone and.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
We're waiting for the uber.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
We're waiting and he pulls up and on my phone
it says license plate x y Z one two three.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Right. So Ross and Karen go up to the uber
and they go, who a you're here for? They gotta
go what? They go, who A you're here for? What
you mean?
Speaker 2 (26:26):
And they go, are you picking someone up? He goes yeah,
They go who is it? He goes, what do you mean?
Speaker 1 (26:32):
Who is it? They go are you Uber? And any
guy looks at him and go are you kidding?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Me?
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Go who you're here for?
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And he fucking speeds away and I'm like, guys, what
are you doing? You got to ask the uber who
they're here for? And I'm like, I've heard that before.
But I've got the color of the car, the make
a model of the car right here. I've got the
license plate that matches the license plate on the Uber
app versus the fucking license played here on the actual car.
(27:02):
And you guys are acting like your fucking FBI agents
interrogating this guy. He doesn't want to deal with your shit,
and he fucking takes off. He should have taken off.
I wouldn't want to drive you people around. So now
we got to wait another forty five minutes for an uber.
So my question to you guys is you always ask
the uber who they're here for. I don't I feel like, Hey, man,
(27:26):
I'm Jim. I just saw your license played on my
app and the color of your car and the make
and model. You must be Jerry. Are you Jerry? I'm Jim,
You're here for me? Okay, let's go. Well that didn't happen,
so I made sure if I was taking ubers that
(27:48):
Ross was in a different uber than me. All right,
So then we go around. We have some amazing dinners.
We got a lot of foodies listening. I would say
the food in Denver is outstanding. We can't even cover
all the amazing food we had there.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
There was a.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Chinese Vietnamese restaurant called The Ginger Pig in Lohigh. Some
of the best Asian food I've ever had in my life.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I highly recommend The Ginger Pig. In Rhino.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
We went to the Greenwich, which was very close to
the apartment we were staying at. They had pizzas Neapolitan
slash New York inspired pizzas, very good. I would recommend
the Greenwich to anyone who's going to.
Speaker 1 (28:43):
Denver.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
What else happened on this trip, Let's see. Okay, here's
another thing I don't know about you, guys. I wear
my shoes inside my house. If you're traveling with people
and you wear shoes or you don't wear shoes, I
would advise you to have a conversation with your friends
(29:06):
and said, do you come from a no shoe home
or a shoe home? Because I don't want to be
told personally me on vacation. I'm a guy who sometimes
bakes into one in the morning and I'm about to
fall down. I'll go to sleep with caked flour on
my forehead. Okay, and my shoes is still on. Let alone.
(29:29):
I'm not taking my shoes off in my own house. Now,
I may be a pig, and maybe again there's something
wrong with me. But dysfunctional family I grew up in.
I never heard of taking your shoes off when you
come into the house. I do have a good friend,
Tom who has inside shoes. When he goes into his house,
(29:51):
he takes off his outside shoes puts on an inside shoes.
And when I was complaining about this to my wife,
she says, I do that. We're married thirty one years.
How do you not know I have inside shoes? And
I said, if I knew that thirty one years ago,
I probably wouldn't have married you. I'm glad I didn't
know that until now. It's too late. We're going to
stay married. But I am not taking my shoes off. Okay, now,
(30:15):
when you go to the airbnb with three other couples,
I got to say, in the nicest possible way I can,
I'm not fucking taking my fucking shoes off, guys, That's
the nicest way I could say it. And they didn't
make me take my shoes off, but some of them did.
(30:37):
And then when I left the room and then came back,
I would see them sweeping or wiping with a rag.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
It wasn't everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
I would say, it was three out of the eight
or anti shoe wearing inside the Airbnb. And what about this,
sandals or sliders, whatever you want to call them, what
do you guys think is it okay to go on
a plane in sandals with no socks on?
Speaker 1 (31:10):
Or does that?
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Is that on the line of being barefoot and making
this plane smell like feet? What is your feeling on this, Guys,
when you go out in the world, what is your
feeling about wearing sliders with socks on? Is that appropriate?
I know my son told me that when you wear sliders,
(31:35):
you're supposed to wear socks. When I grew up, you
didn't wear socks with sliders. He says, if you wear
crocs with a clothes toe, you don't. You could be barefoot.
But if you're wearing anything that's open in the front,
you need to wear socks. So this is new to me.
Where do you guys sit with this? Do you feel
uncomfortable if your friends are wearing, well, you're not wearing
(32:00):
they're wearing sandals. We had socks Los Angeles without socks.
Then we scheduled a beer tour for the city of Denver.
That was a great day. We got to experience four
breweries and we drank a total of ten different types
(32:21):
of beer, each as much as we wanted. Of those
ten beers, they would put pictures on the table and.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
Back to Dave.
Speaker 2 (32:30):
One of the reasons Dave originally wanted the raft four was,
as I said, to put the scooter in because he
needed the scooter because his feet hurt and he was
going on this beer tour with us. And first of all,
he made it clear about a thousand times he said,
you know, I'm not a day drinker, but I'm going
(32:50):
to go my feet hurt, I'm going to scuote on
the scooter. I'm not gonna drink that much. And then
when it came down to it, Dave did not scoot
on the scooter. He didn't even bring the scooter. He
walked the beer tour. And not only did he walk,
this guy was looked like he was ready to do
a marathon. He was running back and forth between breweries guys,
(33:13):
and for a guy who doesn't they drink, I never
saw anybody drink this much. We had, like I said,
ten different types of beer a person, the ones that
he liked, which was probably three of the ten. I
think he drank a picture each and the more he drank,
the more he could run, and the more his feet
didn't hurt.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
And it was crazy. You know, he was cured.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
He was cured, but then when he sold it up,
his feet hurt again, so I don't know if there's
something to that. And around that time, while we were
in Denver, my friend Ross and I started getting to
a thing. We read a story about Bill Maher and
Steve Oh. And that's one of the great things about
(34:00):
traveling with friends. You get different perspectives and you respect
each other enough to have a civil conversation about it.
We didn't get into politics that much, but if we did,
we could respect each other's opinions and we're going to
stay friends. But this one was a good one. I'd
(34:22):
love to get your feedback. Bill Maher has a podcast
and he invited Steve O on the podcast, and Steve
O is sixteen years sober. You had a big drug
problem that he's very open about, and he's proud that
he's fought the fight, but it's never easy and it's
(34:45):
not a given that he won't go back and his
demons won't get the best of them. And Steve O said,
I'd love to do your podcast, but I know you
smoke weed on your podcast, and I would appre ciated
if for that episode you didn't, because it's very hard
for me to be around people smoking weed in my face,
(35:09):
and Bill Maher said, no, man, it's my podcast. I'll
do what I do. If you can't handle it, it's
not my problem, don't come on. And then Steve O
went online and bashed Bill Maher as being insensitive, and
Bill started getting a bed rap. Now my feeling, I'm
(35:31):
on the Steve O side. I'm like, listen, you invite
the guy on your podcast. He's got a problem. I'm empathetic.
I'm especially empathetic to drug and alcohol problems.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
I have. Not necessarily.
Speaker 2 (35:56):
I drink, I occasionally smoke, okay, But at the same time,
I am very respectful of people who don't. I don't judge,
and I want people who drugs and alcohol have impacted
their life. I'm rooting for them to win, and I'm
going to try to set them up in situations that
help them win. And if you're coming on my podcast
(36:18):
and you ask that request of me, there is no
possible way I'm doing anything that's going to put you
in a vulnerable position. And that's my feeling. I think
that Bill Maher could have done that. My friend says,
wait a second, that's not the case. This is his
He sets the rules for his show, and he says
(36:40):
it's like David Letterman, who's notorious for keeping the theater
and the studio ice cold. If whoever is coming on
the show says, hey, I need you to turn up
the temperature to at least seventy two degrees, Dave Letterman
(37:02):
is going to say, no, this is how it is.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
You come to my.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Studio it's fifty eight degrees, or you don't do my show.
It's up to you. So that's the analogy Ross uses,
which I respect. I think it's apples to oranges. I
don't think it's the same thing. I don't necessarily think
it's putting the David Letterman situation is putting the guest's
life in danger. But I kind of respect Ross's argument there,
(37:32):
and some other people I've talked to also respected. I
wonder what you guys think if it's your restaurant, and
I'm trying to think of another situation like that where
somebody asks a request of you, would you bend, would
you change the rules? Or is a restaurant not a
(37:52):
good example? I would say if I owned a restaurant
and someone asked me not to serve booze, I would
say no, that's not how goes. My business model is
I'm serving booze. But I don't think this was the same.
I don't think it was the same at all. So
I'm curious to see what you guys think. That's the
(38:14):
bill maher thing. We went to the concert. It was
a good show. We got to experience three seasons in
the night at Red Rocks. It was cold, it rained,
the rain cleared up, got warmer, got dark, got hot,
(38:35):
got cold again.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
Every show.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
I've only seen two so far at Red Rocks, but
it is something I kind of look forward to. I
love that place. At the end of the day. I
loved traveling with my friends. I loved traveling with my wife.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
I loved.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
The different personalities work together to get along and not
only make the trip happen, but make the trip fun.
And I highly recommend if you have close friends to
take this shot.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
And let your mind go, let everyone.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Be who they are and just be make it happen,
and take a break from reality. Love you guys, have
a great week. Blessed be the bread
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