Transcript of Armchair Anonymous: Camping

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dax Shepard. I'm joined by Monica Padman.

Hello.

Your favorite topic, your favorite activity, camping.

I don't love it.

Yeah, I need to go in a tent. The bus life is fun, but having this prompt made me realize, no, I need to unzip that thing in the morning, crawl out. You're like, oh, fuck, I just woke up in a plastic bag. Yeah, but then you're like, oh, well, let's make some coffee. And then everything just starts getting better and better.

Now, have you gone tent camping since you stop drinking. Yeah, you have? Oh yeah, yeah. Oh nice.

Okay, not a ton. Oh, you're right, drinking helps camping so much.

It helps.

It's almost one of those activities where it's like, is there an activity of drinking? Like snowmobiling. They tried to crack down on drinking and riding snowmobiles in the northern Michigan and Wisconsin. I'm like, guys, you're not gonna have an activity.

It's all connecto.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so this is crazy camping stories and they deliver. Please enjoy. Crazy Camping. Hi, Emmy. Hi, how are you?

I'm great, how are you guys?

Good, where are you at?

I'm in Ontario, Canada. Beautiful.

London, Toronto, where are we at?

I live in Orangeville. It's just a small town, maybe an hour and a half north of Toronto, en route to Muskoka. Kind of a bypass, but yeah, it's sort of on the way.

Okay. And have you spent any time on those lakes?

Yeah, we've been up there a few times camping, topical camping. Yeah, I have friends with cottages up in that area too, so yeah, I spent a lot of time up there.

Yeah, you Canadians got that figured out, lake life. So where does your camping story take place?

Tell us.

My camping story takes place in Grundy Lake. It's an Ontario provincial park that's maybe 2 hours north of Muskoka. It's a little ways up. This takes place around 15 years ago. So my husband, then boyfriend, in June will have been together for 18 years.

Congrats. You seem very young to have been with someone for 18 years. I agree.

I get that a lot. We started dating when I was 17.

Our wedding anniversary is January 2nd.

Oh, that's a peculiar day to get married.

No, I like it.

We were gonna try and do a New Year's wedding, but nobody would take us because they're all booked up. So we were like, well, the 2nd is a Saturday. So as much as I feel like you complain about people not loving your birthday, like, we made people go to a wedding on January 2nd.

Yeah, after they just quit drinking.

But I love that because then it's like we're starting off the year with a party.

That's nice.

And love. That's nice because beginning of January can be tough mentally.

Well, also, if one of your resolutions is like get married, you knock that out. Oh yeah. Day 2.

Yeah. His name's Nolan. So when we met, he was super into camping. I had done some trips, but not a ton. So he really got me into it. He was more of like a portage guy.

Is that with canoeing?

Yeah. And like you would put all your food in a barrel and you have your backpack and you canoe in.

Oh, wow. Cool.

He and I had done a couple of trips like in Ongonkwin and we had done things like that before. But in this particular case, we were going to Grundy. So it's car camping. So you would drive up and park your car on the site, right? And you set up your tent and away you go. So we were used to food barrel, string up your stuff in a tree, absolutely isolate everything from animals because when you're further north, you have to worry more about the wildlife. So we were kind of more in line with that. But then when you go car camping, you're basically only as tidy as your nearest neighbor. So you can't do a whole heck of a lot there. We've been camping and we've seen like raccoons eating hot dogs at the picnic table next to us.

Sure, sure, sure.

You're describing Michigan camping perfectly. We always drive right to the spot. Wake up, there's raccoons everywhere, there's empty bags from the hot dog buns that they got into.

Exactly. So in this particular case, we were there for a couple days and it was really beautiful. We hadn't been there yet, and lots of really great hiking, amazing swimming. It was like really typical Canadian Shield, like a Group of Seven painting. It was so beautiful. We had done a lot of hiking and we had noticed a lot more animal signs than we had expected, given that it was a car campsite.

What kind of animals are up there? What do we got to be nervous about?

Not so much moose in that area, but you'd be more thinking about bears.

No wolves?

I don't think so. Maybe like, there's tons of coyotes around here, but they're not really going to do much, right?

Although we did hear that crazy coyote story, you know, it was in Toronto or a suburb.

Lady got killed.

What?

It was like some kind of weird hybrid, wasn't it, of a coyote?

Wolf coyote?

That was the story we heard. Is that what you're talking about?

It was an armchair anonymous.

Oh, I know, but then also we looked up, a coyote did kill someone once.

Oh, one time in the history of coyotes in California. Yeah, the person might been dead. But anyways, any—

they eat a lot of dogs. Like, if you have your dog in your backyard around here, you have to be careful, stuff like that. But yeah, it was one particular day, we had already been there a bit and it had been raining all day, and so we were kind of cooped up under our tarp. And then it cleared up and we thought, okay, let's go down to the water, let's enjoy the scenery. It was a gorgeous sunset, we wanted to watch the stars cuz there's no light pollution in that area. So we went down to the beach area just by our campsite, and we were kind of hanging on this rock, and it was this like big kind of sweeping rock that went down into the water, scenery all around, and it was gorgeous. And then at one point while we were laying there, we could kind of hear some rustling in the bushes beside us. Nolan was like, "What was that?" And he was kind of freaking out about it. I should tell you too, he's insufferable when it comes to like camping and wildlife. Whenever we would go places, he would sleep with a 12-inch knife.

He would have like an ax in case like something happened.

Borderline paranoid.

Definitely.

100%.

Okay.

Not even borderline.

Yeah.

But he likes it, which is interesting.

I know. It's like he wants it. So I just was like, "Shh, it's nothing. Leave it alone." And then it's kind of rustling a little bit more, and he's like, "No, Em, like, I think that's actually properly something." And I'm like, "You need to relax and chill 'cause you're ruining my experience. Stop it." And so at some point, he goes, "Stand up!" And, like, before I could even really react, he had, like, grabbed me by the scruff of my back and had, like, hoisted me up to a standing position. And I kind of looked over, and a meter and a half away from in the bush is this huge bear.

Oh, no! Emmonica, a meter and a half away.

A meter is 3 feet. That's the length of our coffee table. No, describe for me how big this bear is.

What color?

Black bear. It was not small.

Bigger than a Newfoundland?

Oh, definitely. Yeah, 100%.

Okay, great. So a Newfoundland's a 200-pound dog, Monica.

Okay, Monica, just so you know.

Yeah.

Do you know how about weights and measures?

Dax is an honorary Canadian. Anyway, so the rest of the story, it has to be from his point of view because honestly, I blacked out. I don't remember any of it. What Nolan says is that I stood up and like saw the bear, and then he said that it was like the Roadrunner legs. He said that my feet went so fast and I just started sprinting as like fast as I could.

Big no-no.

You're supposed to play dead.

Do you know what running is, Monica? When you sprint away from something?

You're not supposed to do that. And that's exactly what I did. I knew not to do that. I've watched Bear Grylls and like, I know about these things and I had been camping and I knew that, but like my flight response.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes your body takes over.

Who can be thinking in those moments?

You don't know how you're gonna react in any of these situations until you're in them. You think you can model it out, and then you got to be in them.

Oh, I ran, and then because I ran, the bear was chasing me.

Yes! Oh my God.

And then Nolan started chasing the bear.

Oh Jesus.

And was like trying to like get it to like stop chasing me.

Like a cartoon.

I know. He like threw some stuff on it, and he eventually kind of got in between me and the bear, and he started doing what you're supposed to do, which was clapping and like, whoa bear! And it stopped. I don't think it wanted to eat me. We probably startled it.

Again, you both triggered both of your instincts, which is like The bear just knows to chase anything that runs away from it. It doesn't even have to think about it.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I just went sprinting and it chased. So it stopped and then Nolan chased it back.

I don't know how he did this.

He was just waiting for his opportunity. Like he was ready.

This is what I'm always training for, Monica.

Oh my God.

Do you think he like paid for this? Like this is a service you can do?

Platinum experience.

So yeah, I chased it up the tree and it was kind of hanging up there. And then the first thing that I actually remember was that he grabbed my forearm and he was like, "Stop running!" He grabbed me to stop, and then I saw the bear. My legs turned to Jell-O and I fell over because I was, like, so—

Overadrenalized. Yeah.

It was freaky. So the bear went back up the tree, and then we were like, "Okay, we gotta get back to our campsite, but now this bear is up in the tree that we need to pass to get back to our campsite." Oh, boy.

Nope.

And we were like, "Well, it chased me once, so I don't know, maybe it'll chase me again." So we just backtracked basically around the other way to get back to the campsite and thinking, you know, "Okay, we'll go back." But then on our way back, we saw two more bears.

Jesus Christ!

One was further up on the trail, and it kind of scooted across in front of us. And then we saw another one, like, in the periphery of a campsite. So we're like, "We're out. We're not doing this anymore." So we got back to the site, and we packed up our sleeping bags, and we just slept in the RAV4 that night because we were like, "I'm not sleeping inside anymore." Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

We packed up and we drove home. I think we had another night we were supposed to spend, and we were like, "No, it's not happening.

We're not doing it." Nolan had fulfilled his fantasy. He was like, "I don't need a round two of this. I've got enough to brag about." I don't need to press my luck.

Well, that's exactly it. For years and years and years, he was like insufferable and he was so annoying and we would like stop and he got vindicated in it, which is so annoying.

Yeah, he's got the leverage now for life, probably.

Well, for a little bit, couple years.

He was even remarking how the couple nights before, as we were walking back, he was like, I told you that I heard something and like, that was probably a bear. And I'm like, okay.

I kind of understand that because Then he had to get in the middle. He almost got mauled.

I gotta applaud Nolan when he was met with this situation.

He did the right thing.

And by the way, I would argue his response was probably heavily weighted by you being there. Him on his own, I don't know that he exhibits this kind of chasing a bear.

He's pretty intense like that. Like, we've had situations where, like, not necessarily same animals, like if a dog is running in the park towards him, he's like, yeah, I'll just put up my foot and kick. Like, he's not the kind of guy who would run away. If my response is flight, his is definitely fight. Ah, the two of a pair. Exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah, you found each other.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I left him to die. Did anybody think about him for one second?

When you walked back and you walked by the other two bears, like, you just walked right by it?

Well, we were sketchy about it, but the one that we saw, like, we were walking and it just, like, skirted across the trail and we're like, well, the whole thing was very heightened. I've talked to people who go there all the time and they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about. We've never really encountered— and it definitely is bear country and they're probably super used to humans, especially in that general area, but we've not been back.

Well, listen, if it had brown bear, we're not talking, Tammy, right? Yeah, remember the brown bear story? That guy was hunting moose, and those things are fucking gnarly.

I think there are brown bears in Ontario. I think you have to go a lot further north to really get involved with them. They're definitely around here, like, they're not far from where I live either, but they're not coming into where people are.

Yeah, I saw footage on Instagram 2 days ago. I'm pretty certain it wasn't AI. Yeah, it was a guy on a four-wheeler driving down a trail, and he came around a corner, there's just 2 2 fucking brown bears, like 1,200-pounders. The way they ran right up to the four-wheeler and hit it and then backed up, it was the scariest approach I've ever seen. Like, the way they run when you're looking at them is fucking terrifying.

Oh yeah, I wouldn't go anywhere where there's brown bears. We've had lots of moose encounters in like Algonquin, and they're pretty chill if you don't get in their way.

They're dangerous moose, but not intentionally, right? They don't see you until they're on top of you.

Deer are—

we did get trapped one time in like a river inlet because there was a mom moose and like a baby on either side, and we had to just hang out there for like an hour because like you wouldn't cut them off, right?

Yeah.

Oh my God, I don't know enough.

And like, uh, and Monica, have you ever seen a moose in real life?

I feel like it.

They're impossibly big. They're so tall.

Yeah, they'll be standing in the water and you see them, and then they kind of come out on the bank and you're like, oh my gosh, they're 12 feet tall.

And I think they can get up to 1,800 pounds. I told you this story where Uncle Grandpa and I, Tom Hansen, were in his backyard in Wyoming, and we're just shooting the shit and we're letting the dogs out out, and there's only like 8 feet between him and the lake behind him, and he's facing me, and it's night. And then all of a sudden, just the whole background behind him changes to black, and a moose is running through the backyard and just went between the gap of him and the lake. Tom's like, oh my God, what was that? And I'm like, dude, a fucking bull just ran behind you. You were almost gone. Let's go camping.

I'm good.

We still camp all the time. We're super pro camping. Like, we have a 5-year-old and we take him out. Loves it, but we definitely don't go to those areas because I think Nolan wouldn't sleep at all.

He'd have to have a machine gun with him or something. And doing the canoeing still, the portage?

Gosh, we haven't done that for years and years and years. It's kind of one of those things where the joy in it is maybe like the peace and the tranquility. Some people go hard, but with a 5-year-old, it kind of sounds like my worst nightmare.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's really lovely meeting you.

Lovely to talk to you guys too. Thanks a lot for hearing my story.

Yeah, tell Nolan we say thanks for his role in this. Yeah, without him, we have no account of what the fuck you did.

He's the best.

We love him.

All right, take care. Oh my God, your best friend's calling. Callie?

Yeah, maybe it's about the time she saw Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. Oh my God, you kept it quiet until now.

Callie?

I am Callie.

Yes, Callie is an important name to me. My best friend's name is Callie.

Spelled the same?

No, she spells with a K. Understood.

Have you met a lot of Callies in your travels?

I have not met a lot of Callies, but people do like to say, like, California, what is it short for? Or they tell me that they had a cat when they were a kid named Callie. Every time I say, well, was it a calico cat? And the answer is always yes. Yeah.

And where are you, Callie?

I am in Plano, Texas. I guess we call it a suburb of Dallas, but it feels like it has All the things. It's grown so much.

I was there last year with my best friend Aaron Weekly at a Sprouts or a Total Wine.

We have both of those. I'm telling you, we have everything.

Yeah, Plano's where it's at.

So Plano, Texas, that's not where the story takes place. So October 2014, my husband and I had been married about a year and a half at this time, living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and my older brother and sister-in-law who lived in Oklahoma City, they decided along with us to buy tickets to a concert in St. Louis, and we were gonna make like a whole road trip of it. But being the young, not wealthy, poor married couples that we were, we decided we would go camping for the first night to like save on the hotel room. So we had figured out campgrounds at the Miramack Caverns in Missouri, about an hour outside of St. Louis. And so we kind of picked that place out ahead of time and we all packed into our 2007 Toyota Prius that we had at the time. I feel like it's worth a small pause because I just want to put in the detail that my brother is like 6'7", and so I just want you to get the full picture of 4 grown adults in the Prius for 6 hours.

With camping gear as well.

Yes, of course. So we made it to the Miramack Caverns and had a short hike, ate over the fire, were up late talking and drinking around the fire. At some point, my sister-in-law and I decided that we were tired, so we went into the tent. Like, this is very legitimate tent camping. We're not in a cabin or an RV. It's not glamping.

Do you have two 2-man tents or do you have one 4-person tent?

I have one 4-person, which again, sort of like the Toyota Prius.

It's like you can fit 4 people and zero other things and you must lay very near each other. My sister-in-law and I go to bed and we leave my brother and husband up finishing visiting. And this is 2014 after all, so none of us have really great cameras on our phones, but many of us have bought a Canon and believe that they are professional photographers.

Oh yeah.

They're up late and they have their telescope telescope and their time lapse, and they're looking at the stars and trying to take amazing photos.

They're nerdy now.

Yeah, they're having their astronomy course out there, and we are already passed out in the tent. At some point in the night, they get tired and also come to the tent and go to sleep. And then I don't know what time it is now. I happen to know it was around 2 AM, but at the time I don't know what time it is. I just know that I wake up to a Something to also pause on is my older brother and I have sort of similar personalities in that there's a bit of like anxiety mixed in there, like a heightened awareness of danger. And so I wake up and I hear a sound that I realize is sirens in the distance. And so I'm awake and I see that across the tent, my brother and my sister-in-law and my husband, they're all still asleep. So I sit up and And the sirens are kind of getting louder. And this campground where we are at is actually, I don't know if we can call it a mountain. It's probably like some kind of foothills. Okay, I don't know the geography of Missouri super well, but there's a mountain-esque thing and you're going down switchbacks.

So I'm sure we're familiar with like, you don't just go straight down a mountain, you're doing the back and forth to kind of cut the elevation. Easily. And so I start hearing sirens, but also there's like an engine, but it's not a constant engine. It's like revving, like it gets really loud and then it cuts. And I realize that it's like somebody driving very quickly down these switchbacks and they're revving the engine every time they make it around one of the turns. At this point, I sort of noticed that my brother was awake and I hear that it sounds like there's two engines and there's sirens. And so I look to my brother, we're both sitting up now. Of course, of course, our spouses. They are more of the balance us out type. I can't say that my husband is laid back in any way because that is certainly not the case, but definitely not jumping to the worst case scenario the way my brother and I are. So we happen to be the ones that are awake, my brother and I, and I look to him and I say, is that not a fucking police chase coming down the mountainside?

Yeah, yeah.

He starts looking out the little netted windows. Kind of a foggy night. Late this night, but we've got headlights and we've got flashing police lights he's seeing. And so we start to wake up my husband and sister-in-law. And the way that this campground is set up is it's down these switchbacks. And when you get to the bottom of the switchbacks, it's just simple state campgrounds. And so there's like a gravel oval and tent spots and there's RV spots. We happened to be the only ones that were tent camping. It wasn't super busy and there was a couple of RVs like a little further away from us. The Miramack River is just maybe about 15 or 20 yards from our tent. Like it's just right over there and you can hear the water trickling all through the night. And so these headlights are coming down. When they get down there, all there is is the campground. It's the only thing the road leads to. And so, okay, I think it's time to wake them up. So we go to wake them up. Their first thing is doubt. Like, oh sure guys, I'm sure it is definitely a police chase coming down the mountain because Y'all don't tend to jump to these worst case scenarios or anything.

So they were kind of doubting. And then about that time, the car is now in the campground, police car's chasing it. My brother has fully stepped out of the tent at this time and is like watching it.

And he's like, guys, we gotta go down past the RVs.

The police chase has ended now. Then we've got more deputies like showing up. They've turned their sirens off. There's lots of shouting. And it is at this time that it becomes very evident that we have a foot chase on our hands.

Oh, wow.

We don't know what this person has done. We just know that they've been chased directly down the way from us. So we decide that we need to get in the car and we need to get in the car quickly. And so we're trying to hurry, get our shoes on and everything. And about the time that all 4 of us are outside of the tent, you can hear splashing in the water. And this is the river that has been completely calm, just like a peaceful trickle all night, is suddenly splashing. And so we're like, oh my gosh, he's in the water.

He's just right there. He's in the water.

And of course, you're not thinking that it's a drunk driver. You're thinking that this This is a hardened, violent criminal fleeing a murder scene. Yes, absolutely. We are now really trying to get to the car, and we all get in the Prius and lock the doors, and my husband turns it on and hits the gas.

It's an emasculating thing to hide in. It's like you're already hiding, but you're also hiding in a Prius.

So all of us are in the Prius and he's hitting the gas and nothing's happening. And so this is like exactly like a scary movie at this point. We are all completely screaming. The fog has set in, so the headlights are hitting the fog. I don't know the science behind it, but The air outside is chilly and there's 4 big upset, heavy breathing individuals in the car. And so the windows are fogging on the inside.

Jesus Christ.

You can't see anything.

Why is the car not working? It felt long, of course, but probably like 40 seconds of this. Like he doesn't know what's wrong. He reaches down and he finds that the tripod from them being professional photographers the night before, he had put it in the car before he went to bed, put the camera and the tripod away, and it was on the floorboard of the driver's feet and it was up against the brake. Well, since this was a Toyota Prius, you're not hearing an engine revving and thinking, oh, something must be on the brake. Nothing's happening. Like the electric engine isn't engaging because the brake is fully pressed down.

Also, you gotta push the brake to turn it on maybe even too. I think with the Prius, you gotta like have your foot— Yeah, I think so. The brake's gotta be depressed for the engine to turn on.

If we weren't in a panicked moment, perhaps he noticed the tripod all along trying to put his feet down there. But so after like 45 seconds, finally he ripped that thing and we decided like, okay, we just need to leave the campgrounds for now. And on our way out of like the gate, we tell the police, hey, 'cause they set up like a checkpoint and we think, hey, we think he was in the river, like right by our tent over there. And we just drive on up the switchbacks out of the mountain. On our way up, we pass a fire department truck that's pulling a boat on a trailer 'cause they're about to start their water search.

Oh, this is great.

Wow. We have left our tent and our bags and all of our gear that's like around the fire. We've left everything and driven back up to like the nearest town, like 15 minutes probably. Got some terrible motel and just kind of like woke up in disbelief the next morning and drove down there and there was no sign of anything. Everything looked peaceful and normal. Normal. And we packed up our stuff and drove on to St. Louis and had our weekend. It was a Sunday night concert, so I went to the concert. And then I think it was at some point on the drive back, or maybe like the day after we got back, we're like, we should look up and see like if there was a news story, figure out what actually happened. There was no sign of anything. And the guy was not a violent criminal. They apparently just refused to stop for a traffic stop. Up earlier in the night and then they crossed counties and you know how it is out there, you lose your jurisdiction. And so the one deputy had let him go and then somebody else tried to stop him later in the night because they had heard the call from earlier.

And that's where that chase started. And they just had multiple traffic violations. I don't know why. I'm sure they were in a lot more trouble afterwards, but no reason to be running.

Well, I would just think if he already has 3 DUIs and he's not supposed to be driving, you're looking at prison time. You're like, well, fuck, if they catch me, they don't know who was driving the car. I mean, you make a lot of smart decisions in that moment.

There's a lot of reasons, but point being, there was not really a crime listed other than like resisting arrest. But he was found in an empty campsite under a tent wearing nothing but boxer shorts.

Oh my God, wait, what?

There's been a lot of debate through the years of like, was it under a tent Was it under the COVID of a tent? Does that mean that he was in our tent? Should we be concerned that he was in one of our sleeping bags, or was he like between the tarp and the ground?

I feel like that. Like, I feel like he was under the entire tent.

He just dove under. That's a good hiding spot, actually.

Yeah, he must have not dug out enough or something, because somehow they found him.

Wow. Wow.

That's our camping story.

Oh, wow. And have you done much camping since? Since then?

I have 3 little kids, so I'm kind of in like a hiatus from camping. My husband does take our 2 older kids. Once the baby gets older, then I think I'll be back to camping. But yes, we continue to camp after that and even have had a couple of family camping trips, but I'm taking a break from it because it's too much chaos.

Yeah, it's a lot to keep your eye on. It does make me crave camping, being next to a river, hearing it babbling, brooks. Yeah, some police sirens, some maniacs, some police sirens. The guy with nothing to lose.

Wow, that's wild.

Yeah, well, Callie, that's wonderful. I mean, not for you, but for us.

Thank you guys for having me, and hopefully y'all get lots of good ones for this one.

Yeah, thank you so much. Hi, Kevin. Hi, how are you? I'm wonderful, how are you?

I'm probably the most nervous I've ever been.

Oh my goodness.

I've been inside house fires before, so that says a lot.

Wow, we're flattered, but you should not be nervous.

No, there's nothing intimidating about Monica or me?

Well, I'm scary.

It's definitely calming me down, so it's good.

Where are you, Kevin?

I live in Crete, Greece, in the Mediterranean.

You're lying! How does an American end up in Crete?

I'm the safety director for a Navy base out here, for a U.S. Navy base.

Oh, you are? Cool. Have you guys been busier than normal?

You know, I thought you're gonna ask that, and business has picked up a little bit. We're doing good. We're staying safe out here.

Okay, good.

How long have you been in Crete.

This is our second time living here, but I've been here recently for about 2 years. Before that, we were in Okinawa, Japan. We like to travel, we like to get out and move around.

You're seeing it.

Say we— you have a wife and some kids, is that what's happening?

Yeah, I've got a wife and we've got 6 kids. 3 of them are a little bit older.

Oh man, what a life you guys are living! This is awesome.

6 kids! How are they liking that adventure?

My 17-year-old son is kind of ready to be done with it. He's sick of moving his room around. The younger 2 that are with us now, they enjoy it. They get a lot of good opportunities, man. A lot of things that people normally don't get to see.

Yeah, Shaquille O'Neal was discovered on a military base, if you recall that story, Monica. Yeah, maybe they'll be discovered by a visiting coach.

We'll see. My kids are very unathletic, so yeah, it's probably not gonna happen.

They need statisticians.

Yeah, maybe it'll be a math coach or something that comes.

It could. Maybe biology, I think, is where we're going.

Okay, great.

Is your wife also enlisted?

No, I'm actually a civilian. I'm not in the military, and she She's got the hard job. She's been homeschooling these kids for past 10 years.

Oh, that's hard.

She's living her best life out here in Crete though.

Oh God, you have a camping story?

Yes. So this takes place long time ago, 2003. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. I see you, Monica.

Cedar Point, Kings Island, Cedar Point. You were very close to Kings Island.

Let's get it out now.

Very close. We got it out.

Sorry, the Beast?

The Beast?

Yeah, of course, the Beast.

Thing will break your neck. So we would typically go down to Red River Gorge to go camping.

Is that in Kentucky?

Yes, probably like southeast of Lexington. Beautiful place, lots of like old like sandstone arches everywhere, lots of good hiking. So we'd probably been down there 10 times by this point, and there was a group of us. I want to say there was 8 or 9 of us, good mixture of guys and girls.

What age were you at this time?

I was 22. My buddy Josh, he had just been dating this girl for, I think, 2 or 3 weeks, and she gracefully said, I'll go camping with you guys. None of us had really ever met her before.

It's a lot because, by the way, I've been in this exact situation. She's joining a group that's already done this a million times, right?

Yes.

Good for her.

The first look we got of her, she did not look like she was an avid camper.

Okay.

Already she was a little out of place. So we get down there Friday, everything's good. You know, it's usually cooler full of beer, fire, sit around, tell stories, get up Saturday morning and go on a hike, try to look for some new stuff. So we're out, we're all doing our thing, hiking, having a fun time, and we'd run into this other group of hikers and we start talking. They start telling us about this cave that they had just been to. We're like, this checks out, we'll go. So this is something I believe they called it Moonshiner's Cave. That tells you anything. Some stuff was going on there at point. So we get on the trail, we find this place, and it's got this low opening, and we've got our flashlights with us. And the guy had told us that we can go all the way through it, there's an opening, go out the opening and come back around the end. So we're going through, it's pretty dark, it's caving. Guys are trying to be macho, girls are not liking it, but they're putting up with it.

When they're stuck, yeah.

Yes, they're stuck, they don't want to go back. It's pretty dark. We get to this point called like Fat Man's Misery, something like that.

Oh my God, I hate it.

Oh no, no, very narrow.

You've just stumbled into one of my great fears, which is claustrophobia. Yes, when I see spelunking, I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with you that you would enjoy enjoy that.

I don't know, some people love that stuff.

Yeah, they do, they do. Good for them.

Our group was half and half. Half of us liked it, the other half was not too happy. So we're all squeezing through this thing, we all make it through, everybody's kind of happy. The new girlfriend Molly, I think she was probably a little bit claustrophobic, so she's kind of getting a little bit nervous, a little bit antsy. And we start walking, we finally see sunlight. The problem was the sunlight was coming from above us. Oh, there's definitely an opening there, but it's like a sinkhole. What? So we're looking up probably 12 to 15 feet, jagged sandstone all over it. And my buddy Joe's like, look, I think we could climb out of this.

Oh no, Joe, no, no, no. Joe was that guy though.

Joe was that guy. Everybody's got the friend Joe. He attempts to scale it first. He gets up, no issues. It looked like other people had done it before, so you can kind of see where people were putting their hands. I went up, my buddy Pete goes up, and then two of the girls come up, no issues. Up at the top, it's kind of slippery, got wet leaves, a little bit of mud and stuff. And it's Molly's turn to come up.

No, no, Molly, Molly! I feel horrible for Molly.

Has anyone considered like tying a bunch of shirts together or any kind of rope system to throw down?

No, there wasn't even a thought. No, it was like, we're all just going to muscle through this climb. Time out. So she gets on there, we're kind of guiding her where to put her feet, where to put her hands. She gets up to the top, she comes up to me, I grab her hand and I say, you know, you're going to go behind me but go to the left, don't go to the right, it's slick. For whatever reason, she ignored it, she didn't hear it, she steps to the right and she slips. Have you guys ever seen those like Nestea plunge commercials? No, no, they just fall backwards into the pool. Oh my God, she went straight down down this hole. Oh, oh, head first.

Oh no.

Oh my God. Doesn't hit the side miraculously. Oh, lands on her back. Eyes roll back. We all freeze. It's dead silence. Everything's going through my head. I'm like, is this girl dead?

Is she paralyzed?

How are we gonna get EMS here? Like, this is kind of before cell phones.

Also, climbing out of a shaft is much easier than climbing down a shaft.

We still had a few people down there. Josh, her boyfriend, was down Okay. And I just remember screaming down like, don't touch her, don't move her. Let's give her a second. It felt like eternity. Her eyes opened up and you hear, she had gotten the wind like severely knocked out of her.

Yeah.

And she laid there after like 30 seconds. My beta blockers kicking in and my mouth is getting all dry here. After about 30 seconds, she sits up. Up, she starts feeling around. She was visibly like terrified, but she stood up. We started checking her, everything was good. And we're like, look, you got two options. We can go back through the cave to get out, to get back to the camp, or bad option, climb again.

Oh boy.

This girl was a trooper though. She ended up climbing out. We got her out. Everybody got up safely. We're all kind of just like racking our brains like, what just happened. Go back to the campsite, everybody kind of goes to their tents, people are cracking beers. She goes in there and we start hearing like crying, like weeping. We're like, oh no, she's in a bad way.

The shock is worn off.

Yeah, yeah.

The other girls go in there and she came out of the tent, she lifted up her shirt, her entire back, everything was bruised, like the worst bruising I've ever seen in my life. We got out of there safely, nobody was seriously injured. I doubt she ever went camping again. I don't think that relationship lasted too long.

Right, it doesn't sound like a match to me.

Yeah, no, no, no, no, no, no. But we all dodged a bullet that day for sure.

Yeah, big time.

So there's photos.

Yeah, take a look at those photos. So one of them is the entrance.

Oh, okay, the entrance doesn't look inviting at all. Yeah, for the listener, this is like, I don't know, there's a 3-foot gap at best to get in, and it's just miles of shale above you. Oh my God. And then the next photo is someone looking down down into this hole. Fuck that. Also, what she landed on is just covered in fucking sharp rocks.

It was a miracle.

I wonder if she did break anything and she just ignored it.

I'm surprised she didn't have internal bleeding. She probably did, and you guys just didn't do anything about it.

Dax mentioned the whole shock aspect. She was probably in shock. She gets that flight or fight thing going on, and she's not really feeling anything.

Yeah, not to bore you, but I had this pretty horrific motorcycle accident in Santa Monica, and I didn't have insurance, so I refused the ambulance. And then I actually rode the broken motorcycle 10 blocks home, and I'm thinking I'm fine. And then I got in the shower, and boy, once I got in the shower, I was like, oh boy, I think I have some broken things. It's crazy how long it can be delayed like that.

Yeah, well, it's a little bit of denial mentally, and then obviously you're like, I do not want to go to the hospital, that's just another ordeal, can't afford it.

I hope I hope Holly is thriving. Oh, she is, in her big city job where she never has to go camping ever again.

Probably an injury attorney somewhere.

Wow. Well, Kevin, I don't know why you were nervous. You told that story like a pro.

Beautifully.

But let me ask you this: you have beta blockers on demand, which makes me think, do you do public speaking or something? When do you need them?

Yeah, with my position, it's called the AFN, like the Armed Forces Network. We do have a radio show that I'll go on and promote different safety things And then I've got to get up in front of the command a lot and just give speeches and, you know, talk about risk management, all that kind of fun stuff.

Yeah. Wow. I've never— and I have a lot of friends that obviously take beta blockers because they're performers, but I've not heard the dry mouth thing. Like, Kristen takes them before she sings.

That's exactly what I thought. I was like, oh my God, if that's a side effect, well, how is she doing that?

Yeah, what if she got dry mouth right before a big thing?

Guys, we're all different. Our bodies react differently.

You're right.

You're so right.

You're right about that, Kevin.

Hey, can I give a quick shout out shout out? Yeah, my beautiful wife Tenille. It's 1 o'clock in the morning here. She tried to stay up. Oh, she apologizes. She wanted to come see you.

No, we apologize that this is the timing.

This is the best Zoom call I've ever been on, so I really appreciate it.

Well, please send her our love. Yes, she is a true angel on earth if she is homeschooling all these children. We did it for whatever it was, 2 months during COVID and it was almost family ending, you know.

She's definitely the rock of this family. She keeps it all together. So much love to her. I wish she was here.

Oh, lovely.

Have fun in Greece.

Yeah, yeah, we're gonna stay as long as we can.

Well, lovely meeting you, Kevin.

Take care. Kalinikta. Kalinikta.

Bye.

What's that mean?

It was definitely goodbye in Greece.

Was it goodbye or love you? Or like, it could have been a lot of things. You guys are so Hello!

Are you in an RV?

I am, actually. It felt very fitting considering it's a camping story.

Exactly.

Sim. I'm actually packing to go camping this evening. Oh my God!

Ding, ding, ding! Are you in Canada?

Yes, I'm definitely in Canada. You clearly picked up on that.

Yeah. Are you in Ontario?

I am in BC. I'm on Vancouver Island.

Oh, the beautiful Vancouver Island. Are you in a motorhome or are you in a trailer? Trailer?

I'm in a trailer, so I guess it could be loosely considered camping considering it's 30 feet long and has a number of very nice amenities.

Well, don't you think that there is a trajectory for all of us campers, which is like you do a lot of tent time and then eventually as you get older you get weaker, right?

It's true. I did the sort of natural progression from tenting to the little camperette to a fifth wheel and now what feels like a very bougie trailer.

Congratulations. Yeah, it's good living. We drive a bus around, but yeah, to be able to be in nature and then also come in and cook food is pretty damn nice.

And hear the rain as opposed to experience it.

Yeah, good distinction. So will you go camping somewhere on Vancouver Island?

I'm in Cowichan Valley, and we do a load of camping at Cowichan Lake. We are situated in a pristine location. We have rivers and oceans and Gulf Islands and lakes galore to visit, which we sort of rotate between.

You also have brown bears.

More black bears, cougars. I actually had a bear in my garbage can 2 nights ago, which sent the dog right through the ceiling and was a wonderful mess to clean up.

Oh my God.

Oh wow.

Okay. So you have a camping story. Tell us about it. When did it happen?

I have many camping stories. I'll tell you the best. It happened 3 years ago, 2023. I scheduled a week-long trip to Couchin Lake. It's one of my favorite spots. You're out of cell service, beautiful swimming, et cetera. And a good sort of kickoff is the first week of July. So school's wrapped. I was really looking forward to, you know, a much needed break from work.

How many kids do you have?

Two kids. The story is essentially about my son Brenner. He was 9 at the time, and I have my daughter Ruby, who was 5 at the time, and my husband and our dog joining me. So my son's a big sports player. So he was on a number of baseball teams and the sports team scheduled a tournament over the same weekend. So we quickly realized we're going to have to commute from the campground. So for the first 3 days, we're going to have about 3 or 4 games that we'll travel to and from to play, and then I'll have the remainder of the week to relax. And so the first night Friday night, we stayed in town for a game, drove up, it was very uneventful, got to our site, settled in, and I decided to call it a night. I wanted to get in early. It was a big week packing and doing all the things. And so I said I'd hang out with my daughter Ruby, reading a book and having a glass of wine and finally, you know, unclenching my jaw. The boys have recognized some friends from town. They're camping next door, so they decided to join their campfire.

So I'm hanging out and not too much later, I'd say 45 minutes to an hour, I hear a big a bit of a commotion outside of the trailer door and my husband and son kind of crash into the trailer and I immediately can tell something's gone wrong. Oh boy. And so I'm trying to get a bit of understanding. It's quite chaotic. I, of note, have experienced many, many emergent situations with my son at this point. We have had enough head wounds and poison control calls that I can now sort of—

Oh, okay.

Kind of flag them as, okay, that's glue, those are stitches, here's where we're at.

So I'm trying to remain calm and just kind of get scope of what's happened.

And they tell me that he's burnt himself and he might have burnt his eye. And I go, "What?" What?

What?

And so he says they're next door, decide to do the standard camping thing and make some s'mores. And so he's handed this two-prong metal roasting stick. As if you've made s'mores, you know, sometimes when you get it from the previous user, there's a little bit of marshmallow leftover. So he put it in the fire to burn it off. Fell off and he picked it back up and went to blow out whatever was still attached to it, and he dropped the hot metal poker onto his face and into his open eye.

What?

Oh my God, this is like a torture scene in a kidnapping movie, right? Oh my God, I can't think of anything worse than getting a hot poker to the eyeball.

And was it the sharp part Yeah, this is my understanding.

This is what I'm told. I've dropped the hot poker onto my face. So I'm like, okay, what is happening? What have you guys done? There's two dads. They grab cell phone flashlights and are like, hold open your eye, let me see, and pour in some cold water from a bottle of water and just see, you know, are you sure you burnt your eye? My instinct is I'm like, how are you not on the ceiling screaming bloody murder right now if you've burnt your eyeball? I cannot imagine the intensity of that pain. And he's pretty cool. I'm looking at him immediately. There is a small pink mark at the highest point of his cheek. And as you know, burns, they don't really develop right away, but I noticed that, okay, there's enough visibly there. There's no mark near his eyelashes and he's these beautiful, long, dark lashes. So I think, well, surely they would've melted. His cheek being a little bit younger at 9 were a little bit fuller. And so they stuck out further than there. So I'm just trying to apply as much logic as I can. He's not letting me look in his eyeball.

It's really bright.

So I turn off all the lights and I kind of do a little sidelight, I look and I truly can't see anything.

So at this point, I don't think he has, perhaps, maybe he just closed it in time. I give him Tylenol, Advil, and what's called Rescue Remedy. It's like a little homeopathic thing to sort of settle your nerves. And so I get him settled and I say, what do you wanna do? And he just wants to go to bed. And I'm like, okay, for sure. So I'm like, I'm gonna sleep with you. If anything happens or you're not feeling good, let me know. And it's important to note the campground closes their gate. Late at about, I think, 11 o'clock, 10 or 11. And we are 40 minutes away from any sort of healthcare center as well. So I eventually fall asleep. I'm very surprised to see he goes to sleep quite quickly. He's barely cried. He was more than anything quite embarrassed because this was, you know, a friend and he was a little bit older, was probably gonna be on his hockey team that fall. And so I get everybody settled and in the morning, very first light, I look at him and I see that, okay, that burn on his cheek has developed. It's that dark purple.

You can see it's a bit of a shallow scab forming. I kind of I gently check on him and I say, how you doing, buddy? Do you mind if I just double check your eye? I wanna see, I just wanna make sure you're okay. So I cracked the blinds a little bit and it's all filtered through the ferns and trees. It's low light and gentle. And he cracks his eye open and there's this white line right down the center of his eyeball.

Oh my God.

The color, the pupil, everything. And he looks like this insane snake. Oh my God. I was like, he's immediately blind. This is all happening. He's never gonna play sports again. Almost throw up, but have to show up every single part of that.

Yeah, you don't want to freak him out.

No, right? So I'm like, oh, okay, well, you know what, I think it might be worth a try this morning. Why don't we load up? We'll make it a thing. We'll grab breakfast. And I'm trying to be as calm as possible, making absolutely wild eye contact to my husband, who's like asleep still. And I don't even know what time frame I get everybody loaded into the car. I get him in the back seat, kind of recline. I say, why don't you just keep a blanket over your head? You probably You don't want light on you. I'm like whisper-hissed what's actually happened and what I saw to my husband. And I'm like, get it together. So we are driving and I'm trying also not to drive at like 180 kilometers per hour like I want to.

That'd be 104 miles an hour for our American listeners. Just so everyone knows.

I'm driving along and my husband in the front seat is just kind of seesawing between gagging and throwing up to like weeping. And I am karate chopping him being like, shut up.

Oh, wow. He was losing it. He was unraveling on you. Is he hungover?

He could have been, although I'm sure the amount of adrenaline might have washed all that out. I've learned now, as I said, we've been through quite a few emergent moments. I thought for sure I would be the weaker one. I fainted with the first head wound and then realized, okay, no, I'm going to have to be the one who digs deep and deal with it later. And so I was like, you get your shit together. You keep your blanket on your head. And I just continued gentle coaching, like, hey buddy, we're just going to get it checked out. You never know if we want to keep camping for the week, maybe we need a little medicine. Whatever happens today, we're gonna be fine. Yeah, we're gonna figure it out.

You're paving the way to say like, your life's gonna change dramatically and we've got to slowly start easing into that new reality. Well, you'll have no depth perception.

Is he saying like, it hurts at this point?

No, like it hurt the night, but he was more mad about everything and I think because it was so mishandled and he was just kind of overwhelmed. But on the drive, completely cool as a cucumber, just laying back, blanket on his head. But in my head, I'm like, "Hey, what's the cool one-eyed nickname?" Or, "Maybe we'll never play any sports again, and maybe we'll never have depth perception." Or, "Oh my God, could I be a mom with a glass eye? Like, could I ever try to support that? That's gonna be a 90-degree learning curve." We finally get there. I don't park. I just leave the door open, throw the keys at my husband. I'm like, "Take her home. I'll return." I gotta go. And thankfully I get inside emergency. They triage him. They recognize clearly this is a pretty legit injury. They give him this kind of an eye cover, which keeps air off of it, wrap his head up. And we are put back into the second portion. We have a phenomenal group of staff members that provide exceptional care in a very small and dated hospital in our community. So we were in essentially a supply closet with the lights out, but with a stretcher.

And so we had a nurse, very sweet nurse, and lovely man come in first. He provided some more pain management and then it didn't take long at all for a doctor to come in who was able to do sort of a physical inspection, confirm, okay, obviously there's the burn on the cheek and confirmed, yeah, you have a shallow cornea burn. With that, the treatment plan, they were gonna explore calling in an ophthalmologist. They sent out, you know, the notes, et cetera. She decided based on the description, it was shallow enough that a follow-up would be sufficient. So that was scheduled for 2 days later. We got freezing on eye drops and antibiotic eye drops, 'cause your next risk of course is infection. Yeah. And a nice handful of some eye patches to take with us. And we were discharged. So we went home and I kind of got him settled. He ended up having a nap and he wakes up and he's just feeling fine and said, you know what? I still wanna go cheer my team on. 'Cause he knows he can't play the game now. So I'm at the ballgame with him. He's in the dugout with this head wrap and eye catch on.

Looks like he was attacked by a brown bear.

Oh, I was like, you gotta come up with a really good story. He's had 2 trophies now for sportsmanship. He just really wanted to be there and cheer on his team. They ended up winning. We ended up going back camping. We spent the night, and then the next morning, you know, we were following all of the things. And I guess it must be similar to a mouth, but it healed so quickly and essentially just kind of sloughed off. That's rather gross.

Yeah.

That same day, he ended up He was fine, and we put a ton of sunscreen on the actual cheek burn, and a hat, and sunglasses, and he went out, and he played the final game. Oh my God. And scored an in-park home run, and the whole team won, and it was just most insane weekend ever.

This is a movie. All right, I've got photos.

Yeah.

Okay, here's the championship team.

There's the team. You can see his little white spot. And then we've got some of the actual injury.

Here we go with his contraption over his face. And then his cheek. This cute little burn on his cheek. What did he get on his ankle? What's going on with the ankle?

I've actually written in a few times and everybody that are all armchairers, thanks to me, immediately said, well, what story? And in that week alone, so I mentioned we went back camping and he finishes the game. The next day I fell down the stairs and I absolutely annihilated this one leg. And then I thought, that's fine, let's just keep on going. And then 2 days after that, that is my leg. I got bit by a dog.

Oh my God, that's bad for a dog bite. It's like in there.

And I was so frustrated. I was like, I have gone to the hospital 4 times already this week. I only have 5 days off and I just taped it up and I'm actually just not even addressing this at this point.

Wow.

Yeah, you guys need like a nickname, like the Ouchies or something. Like the whole family's, uh, really vulnerable to—

yeah.

Injury. Accident-prone.

We're a bit of a chaos crew, for sure.

I see the snake.

Yeah, yeah, it's cool actually, now that we know his eyes stayed intact. Well, Anna, I burnt my cornea as well one time. Stop it! Yeah, Monica already knows the story, but I was in high school, I was a senior. I was in a girl's yard, in her front yard. I was smoking a cigarette, and I jokingly— I don't even really know what I was thinking, but I, I was gonna like ash my cigarette by flicking it, and I flicked it and it went straight up, flew up in the air, and went straight into my eye. And I blinked at the worst time. Like, it'd been better if I just didn't even blink, but when I blinked, it pinched the cherry end of the cigarette where I had to smack the cigarette out of my eyelids because it was pinched in there holding it. And then you had to go to the doctor. They said you burnt your cornea. They gave me drops and a patch.

How long did you wear the patch?

A few hours.

Did you score a home run?

I did not. I wasn't, uh, on a on any championship teams. Yeah, I probably wouldn't smoke more cigarettes.

Yeah, I am grateful at 9 it wasn't from a cigarette and only a s'more. But do you want to meet him? Oh yes, this is Dax and Monica, but you know them.

Yeah, Brenner. Yeah, yeah, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too.

Are you a Blue Jays fan?

Yeah.

And you're still talking to us even though we're from Los Angeles. I appreciate it.

How does your eye feel now? All better? Yes, fine. And it's like, all better.

Oh good, you still playing baseball? Yeah. What position do you play?

Pitcher, shortstop, and back catcher.

These are all the roles that pay the most money if you get into the major leagues, so keep at it.

Good choices. Well, we're proud of you for going back to your game and that story. It's really good.

Big time.

Thank you.

And you're about to go camping again. Are you gonna make some marshmallows?

Probably, but not with the marshmallow stick.

Okay, okay, we've learned our lesson there, right?

Have you ever made a s'more with a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup instead of a Hershey's chocolate bar? Yeah, we've probably live before. Yeah, that's where it's at. That's where it's at. Thanks for chatting with us.

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

Yeah, you can see in one of the photos he's got another scar right above the burn from the 6 stitches a day before kindergarten from a motorbike into the fence.

Whiskey throttle.

You guys have been through it.

Anna, nice meeting you. Such a lovely family.

Thanks so much. Take care.

All right, have fun.

Oh, cuties.

I want to go camping now. I really do. Now I want to go— yes, I want to I can't. All right, love you, love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something? We don't have a theme song. Oh, okay, great. We don't have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to ask some random questions, and with the help of our cherries, we'll get some suggestions on the fly. Rhyme dish, on the fly rhyme dish.

Enjoy.