Transcript of Best of Friday 2024

Wndri Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now. Join WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple podcast, or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcast. Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous Best Of 2024.

What a batch of stories you guys gave us this year.

I got to say, of all our best ofs, I think Armchair Anonymous lends itself very to this format because it's just the banger story after another.

This was really hard to narrow down. And again, like the other ones, there's just a million amazing stories this year. We can only pick a few. Yes.

So enjoy the craziest moments from 2024. From WNDYR, I'm Raza Jeffrey. And in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the case file on Monse Klubin, the spy who gave London its Christmas tree. If you stand in London's Trivago Square at Christmas, you'll see a towering, sparkling tree. What you won't see is the story behind it. The story of Monse Klubin, 007 author, Ian Fleming, and a secret mission to Norway. This is how wartime espionage gave Britain's capital city a much cherished, festive tradition. Follow the Spy Who on the WNDYRI app or wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who gave London its Christmas tree early and ad-free with WNDYRI Plus. He's an archeric spirit.

He's an archeric spirit. He's an archeric spirit. He's an archeric spirit. He's an archeric spirit. From 682 Crazy Gym Stories.

Hello. Hi. How are you?

Is this nick? This is, yes. I love that we're in your bedroom or a guest bedroom. I like that we're in a bedroom. We're rarely in a bedroom with anyone.

It's funny. About five minutes ago, I was in my daughter's bedroom, which is a little smaller and probably better for the sound. Our neighbor across the street is doing a construction project and just whipped up their drywall mixer.

Do you live across the street from me? Yeah.

In the last five minutes, I've been frantic. Oh, no. I brought blankets in and comfy pillows.

No, you're in an ideal room already. There's a lot of soft fabrics around you. You don't want to be close to walls. Shocking. That's the echo chamber. So you're golden. You're wearing a soft sweatshirt, a hoodie. That's going to help. You have a little bit of stub that's going to break up the sound waves. Right. Where are you at, nick?

Sanoma County, California.

Oh, okay. Are you in any tangential way associated with the wine industry?

I have been. I was working in the wine industry for almost 20 years. Oh, look at that.

What's your favorite wine? Were you a sales rep? Were you a vintner? What were you?

I worked in marketing, social media.

And are you ever over at Sanoma Raceway? I'm not.

I had a feeling you'd ask me about that.

That's the site of my huge crash that caused all the surgeries. So what are you doing now?

So now I work at our regional food bank called the Roadwood Empire Food Bank, and I do grant writing and corporate partnerships.

Busy time of year?

Yeah, we do half of our fundraising between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

Wow. Well, thanks for taking the time to tell us your crazy gym story. I'm sure you're busy.

Yeah, we're excited. Hit us.

Where does this take place? Are we in Sanoma? Does Sanoma have gyms?

We do. This takes place in a little town called Winsor, just north of Santa Rosa.

That's the home of Charles Schultz. That's right.

Yeah, Charles Schultz Museum, Home of peanuts.

And they had a nice pageant for a while, but that's been gotten rid of... You're so... Sorry, nick. I just I just want to hear it. I know, but I want to get a rhythm going there. This is foreplay. I want to join sexual energies. I know. You can ask foreplay so much. Okay. Whatever. Do they do ice skating there anymore?

No. I do. They have an ice skating rink.

Okay. Charlie Brown, important person. I do. Vinz Guraldi, the holidays.

Tis the season.

Tis the season. Okay, sorry.

It's January 2000. I'm 18 years old. In between my semesters at my freshman year of college, I was going to the junior college here in town. Most of my friends had already left to go back to their schools. Some post-holiday blues, post-Y2K excitement.

Oh, yeah. New Year's resolution. What was that? New Year's resolution.

Oh, was going to the gym?

This is relevant to the gym. I'm just laughing. I hate Monica. Do you need a co-host? Do you need a new co-host, nick?

I'm available. Okay, go on.

So I was just moping around the house, and my sister lived at home. She was a little bit older than me, and she loved going to the gym. So she dragged me to the gym one day. Put on a new pair of warm-up pants that I had, a big hooded sweatshirt. Exactly what I thought someone who would go to the gym would wear, but not at all. It's not a very big gym. It was the first time I'd ever been to a public gym. They had the check area and the machines in the front and then tucked in the back were a few treadmills and all the free weights. So we went in, hopped up on a couple of the tread to do a little warm up. We were jogging for a few minutes, and my sister, she hopped off and went to go do her routine, whatever she was going to do. And I decided to stay on the treadmill. I did a little running in high school. So I started building my confidence a little bit, putting up the speed, trying to get familiar with being on a treadmill. Probably five minutes go by and I'm going pretty fast and feeling good.

Of course, I've got lined sweat pants on and a big hooded sweatshirt, so I'm getting hot. I'm way overdressed. I decided to take my sweatshirt off. The thought does not even cross my mind to stop the treadmill, take my sweatshirt off and start up again. I'm going to just I'll go ahead and try and take my sweatshirt off while I'm on the trip.

Absolutely. I can see myself making the same call.

Well, yeah, you can't stop.

Yeah, you know that move in the car where you're driving, and you take a sweatshirt off or something, and you can do it real quick?

Can I tell you, nick, the first thing I thought of when you painted this picture was how many times I've taken a hoodie off in the car and then miscalculated and realized I don't have either arm now, and now I'm driving with my knee.

And that's exactly what happened here. I got one arm out.

Hold on, nick. And sorry, Monica. Are there any girls around? Have you locked eyes with anyone and had anything in your mind going like, oh, I see you and you see me?

No. If anything, I wanted to be anonymous. I was a pretty shy kid. Luckily, I wasn't very busy. I was off on my own. Got one arm out of the sweatshirt, pulled the sweatshirt over my head, and that was when I lost sight for the first time.

Oh.

And immediately stopped feet. I am fly off the back of the train.

Oh, no.

And I wish it would have ended there, and that would have been fine. I probably would have been okay. But the way this gym was set up was that... It was 2000. It was pre-plat-screen TV. So the TVs were hanging on the ceiling, and they were the big tube TVs, and they were down the middle of the gym. So the treadmills were turned to face the middle of the gym, backed against a wall.

Oh, no. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Bounced off the wall, landed back in the treadmill. No. Back on the wall.

Wait, what? No, no, no, no, no, So I'm basically in a dryer in a tumble cycle is what it felt like. Are you still blinded by the sweatshirt?

Completely blinded. The sweatshirt is completely halfway over my head. Can't see anything. I'm just bouncing back and forth between the treadmill and the wall over and over again. This is like an America's Funiest Home video.

Or even a Simpson's cartoon, like Homer Simpson on a treadmill.

Yes. So eventually, I hear my sister screaming, not really helping, but she's screaming from the other side of the room. Somebody All this is happening so fast, too. It's probably only 30 seconds, but it feels like 10 minutes that I'm just bouncing back and forth between treadmill and the wall. Eventually, somebody came and stopped the treadmill. I took inventory outside of my torn warm-up pants.

Oh, no, this is so sad. Wait, your warm-up pants tore? Oh, yeah.

Total rug burn.

Oh, my God.

You're lucky they stayed on. You could have been in your skivgies. I imagine also people helping pull the hoodie off of you. Yeah.

I mean, I feel fortunate that it wasn't too busy. There wasn't that many people there. I pretty much left immediately after that. I was like, I'll wait in the car while you finish your workout. I'm not hanging out anymore. I'm done with the workout.

I've never ever going to exercise again.

I have a feeling that people who work there probably have that on security footage and probably got a real charge.

Oh, they probably watch that over and over and over again.

It was shown to many, many people.

Did they have at that time on the treadmills, the pull? You know, now they have Probably. But you couldn't see.

But no one ever hooks themselves.

Oh, because you're supposed to wear it.

You're supposed to wear it, but nobody does. No one's ever going to wear that thing. And this is why you're supposed to wear it. What was the extent of the injuries? When you got in the car and the adrenaline subsided, did you start feeling like, Oh, I got my ass kicked by that thing.

I was pretty sore the next day. Burned up knees a little bit, but more bruised ego than anything.

Oh, my God. It's like falling onto a belt sander.

If I was your sister from across It's the room.

Help, call 911. I called her last night to corroborate the story, and she was like, what I remember is I was working out and all of a sudden I hear this big flood, and then I turn around, I see her arms flailing around on the treadmill.

Oh, my gosh.

I really want to see this ping-pong person.

I wonder if you thought maybe it was rolling, too. There could have been some... Oh, nick, I'm glad you survived that.

Luckily, nobody got to her.

Well, that was fun.

What a great story. I'm sorry that happened to you. You really went through the spin cycle, as you said.

I really did.

Did you revisit exercise? I have.

Stayed outside for my running for a while. Not jump on a treadmill for many years.

Yeah, at least when you fall down there, you stay put.

Exactly. Unless there's an earthquake happening at the same time.

Yeah, or you falling in a ravine?

I wouldn't say I'm the most graceful person either. So I've been known to trip just on the sidewalk.

You're terribly cute, though. I think it works perfectly with what you're presenting. Thank you.

Yeah, you have a Steve Karelle.

He's got a sweetness.

Yeah, and a Steve Karelle.

A Steve Karelle-ness. Yeah. Who do people tell you you look like?

Monchichies.

You ever heard of those guys? Monchichies Munchy cheese, Munchies, they're so soft and cuddly. You know, we used to call Delta Munchy cheese. Yeah, we did. I think she had a Munchy cheese.

She did. She had a little one. Yeah.

I don't get a lot of prompts to celebrities that I can think of.

Tell people Steve Carel.

You I just start telling people, You know who I look like?

I do need to give a quick shout out to my daughter Grace and my son Sam. I let them listen to a very choice view of these.

Did they like the story of the man decomposing at brunch? Which in Canada? We haven't heard that one.

Oh, God. I'll wait till they're a little older for that one.

You should use that as punishment. If one of them fucks up, you're like, you get in that room and you listen that nine minutes, and you listen to it over and over again.

That's the most rough one. I'll I'll bookmark that one for later.

Okay, we'll give our love to your babies. Yes.

Thanks for sharing. All right. Thanks, guys.

Take care. From 759 Near Death Experiences.

Rob, our burritos are ready.

All right. I'll let Steve in and I'll go grab them.

Hello. Hi, Steve. Can you hear us?

Yes, I can. You can hear me, eh?

Yeah. Oh, you're Canadian.

No, but good guess.

Oh, okay. You threw an A in there, didn't Did I hear an A? You did.

Can't tell you why.

Are you married to a Canadian?

I'm not. Sometimes people just say it.

Okay. Where are you from?

St. Louis, Missouri.

Yeah, that's pretty far from Canada.

Now, of course, I live in Monterey, California.

Oh, you do. That's an enviable location.

Yes, it is. Garden Spot of the World. Spectacular.

Okay, Steve, you have a near-death experience, and you've made it because we're talking to you.

Yeah, that's the good news about these stories. We do know everyone's made it.

Unless we talk to a medium, we talk to someone beyond the Set the scene for us. What year is this? Where is it at?

This was end of June in 2022. Oh, recent. It was at the Southern end of the Monterey Bay. It was a sunny, clear, beautiful day. No wind, no waves, no chop. So I thought, I'll go for an ocean swim. I swim in the ocean for a dozen years. I had retired a year and a half earlier. In that year and a half of retirement, I had organized my life around outdoor group activities. I was running with the Wednesday night laundry runners, and I was riding with the Velo Club, and I was swimming with the kelp crawlers. Well, this incredibly gorgeous day, I had to swim. I went to the beach, and unfortunately, nobody else was there. You'd usually get half a dozen people on a Wednesday morning, but this time, I was the only one there. So I got on my wetsuit and my hat and booties. It's very cold. The water's 55 degrees. Got in the water and the beach is about 100 yards wide. As I started to swim out from the beach as a jetty on the left, sticks out about 75 yards. And I went out around that jetty, and I went to the left and hug the Coast around Lovers Point.

Now, before you get too many ideas about Lovers Point, its full name is Lovers of Jesus Point. Oh, wow. Not everybody knows.

Wow.

Not as romantic as I thought.

I just don't associate that with seafarers. That's an interesting mashup.

I went about three quarters of a mile, hugging the Coast the whole way. Then I turned around, came swimming back. No waves, no chop. When it's sunny, you see all the kelp and the fish and all the sea grasses flowing back and forth and the sea stars. It's just gorgeous.

Do you see seals out there ever? You do.

Seals sometimes like to swim under you, which can be a little disconcerting. You're swimming along and there's this gray shape that all of a sudden appears under you.

Yeah, because don't they hunt within the sea kelp?

They absolutely do. I came back around the point and I'm heading towards the jetty when all of a sudden, wham, just out of nowhere. I just got tossed up in the air and turned and I didn't know what was going on. Then I was plunged back into the water. I look and I am arm's length length from the enormous head of a great white shark.

No, no, no, no, no. No. No.

No. The water there is about 20 feet deep, and the shark came from below and grabbed me and fully breached up into the air. You've seen photos of a great white with a seal in its mouth? Yes. But it breaches out of the water? That was me. No. Oh, my God. I didn't know all that at the time. There were people on the beach who saw it. So some of this is reconstructed later. But pull it back down under the water, and then it spit me out.

What? Do you think it was a wetsuit?

Turns out great Whites will oftentimes bite the prey and then back off and let it bleed the death. Oh, my. You can imagine they eat seals and sea lions and elephant seals wheels. These things have teeth and they have claws and they can fight back. So oftentimes, they'll let the thing bleed. All I know for sure, I was underwater, maybe, I don't know, 5 feet, I'm guessing. I could see light, so I knew which way it was up. Unfortunately, I had air in my lungs, probably because it lifted me into the air and I got a good breath, I don't know. Then it was right there, arm's length away from me, the left side of its head. I can't tell you how enormous this thing is. I'm looking at that black eye and you could see this white and gray body and its teeth from its lower jaw sticking up. I could see it's bobbing its head back and forth as if it was deciding whether to bite me again or not.

Really quick, did you immediately recognize it as a great white, or was it taking you a meant like, Is that a whale? Is of this, or did you immediately know what it was?

I instantly knew. I'm a docent at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. I show people hammerheads and seven gill sharks and all these things.

I knew it was a great wife. Your mind goes very quickly at that moment. Do you get to the point where you surrender? You're like, I'm going to die. This is it. No.

I was calm. I knew I was very badly hurt. I didn't know exactly where it had bit me yet, but looking at it, I was thinking, Hey, I taste of neopreid. I'm wearing a white hat and my goggles. I'm not a seal. I am not your food. Please don't bite me again. At that point, I thought, I'm going to punch it. Yeah. My fist didn't quite reach its lower jaw, but when I stuck up my fingers, I jabbed and hit its lower jaw.

Tell me this now. You work at the aquarium. I had always heard you want to hit them on the nose. You went lower jaw. That's what I could reach. If you had had your druthers, is the nose the right thing?

I don't know. There's some notion that that's the right thing to do.

There's these There are videos where they come up on the side of the boat and they rub their nose in a weird way. And have you seen this? It puts them in a suspended state for 20 seconds. They'll float back down and then they come to. Something with their nose. There's so much stuff packed in the end of that nose. Anyways, you hit it in the jaw with your fingers.

I tried to kick at it, although my injuries were such that probably I couldn't. I don't know. I think I kicked at it. Then it was just gone. I don't remember it swimming away, but I got myself up to the surface. There was a security camera in the distance that captured this whole thing. No way. It captured the shark breaching. Then 12 seconds later, I come up and start yelling. When I got to the surface, I knew I was badly hurt. I didn't know how bad. I leaned back to try to get my legs up. I thought, Don't let your legs hang down. It'll just bite you again. As I lifted my knees up, I could see my left leg where there should have been a wetsuit or skin. It was just nothing but hamburger red. Oh, my God. And the water was red. I knew I was in horrible trouble. I just swam a mile and a half. There was absolutely no way I could swim the remaining 150 yards to the beach. All I could do was yell for help and hope that there are brave, kind, skilled strangers that can hear me and are willing to come out and risk their lives.

And that's what happened. I was really unlucky to be bitten by the shark. And then some things happened that are just hard to believe. I'm yelling, Help, help, just as loud as I can. You can actually hear it on that security camera. I could hear the emotion in my voice. I was not in terrible pain, but I knew I'm not going to make it. I was yelling for help, and I couldn't see anybody coming. There was so much blood.

I thought, I don't want to die like this.

That was awful.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Finally, I looked to the right and saw a paddleboarder, and I yelled some more, and I looked again, and he was coming right at me and closer. I thought, Okay, I've got a chance. It turns out that there was a couple on an anniversary trip. They lived three hours away in Sacramento, Amy and Paul. They'd done paddleboarding, and and they heard me, and they started coming my way. They were a couple of hundred yards away. He is a police officer, a first responder. No. She is a nurse, a health care professional.

Impossible luck on top of impossible, terrible luck.

That's exactly right. They knew it was a shark. They could tell from the way I was yelling, there was something was way wrong. They were mentally preparing. Paul was thinking, If it is a shark, I'm going to take the paddle and put it down his throat. He's a first responder. He does this for a living. He said, No question I was coming to save. And then is if that wasn't enough, off. From the beach, there was a group of school kids from Kansas who were out here for a weekend. It's called Blue Theology. They were here to learn about the ocean and how to take care of it. There was a guy teaching them ocean appreciation. This guy is a surfer, a former lifeguard, a surf rescue guy. One of the dads of the Kansas kids saw the shark and yelled to Heath, Hey, Heath, there's a guy out there. He needs you. So Heath, the surf rescue guy, he grabbed two surfboards, stacked one on top of the other, and paddled out to me.

Oh, my My God.

Jeez, Louise.

Can you imagine? A healthcare professional, a first responder, and a surf safety guy were the three people who heard me, and they all came rushing to me.

Did they get you on top of one of these surfboards? That must have been very hard.

Paul, the police officer, got to me first and tried to get me on the board. I don't remember this. I was in and out of consciousness. He could not get me on his board. Then Keith put the second surfboard in the water for me. They tried to get me on that board. It didn't work. Finally, they said, Look, you're going to have to help. I remember I reached up with my arm and I helped pull myself up onto the board. The injury was the shark's mouth bit me across my thighs and back across my lower abdomen. Because it's a U-shaped bite. So it got me from the right side. There's a big gouged just above my right knee and then across my left thigh. And then there are teeth marks along my left hip, and then a big scar across my belly. It looks like a C-section scar now. But at the time, it was flared open. My belly was just wide open.

It's like you've got 14 huge punctures is what you have, right? I mean, that's how it does it.

The bottom teeth puncture and hold. So across my backside are just a bunch of puncture marks, but the top teeth cut. So it's just all ripped.

Oh, my God.

They did get me onto the surfboard, and I was lying face down on the surfboard, and Keith was yelling, Grab my heel. So with my left arm, I grabbed his heel. He was face down on his board, and he starts paddling and pulling me in. Amy, the nurse, realized that I was going to fall off the board. My legs didn't work, my belly didn't work. I was unconscious. She left the relative safety of her paddle board and jumped into the water, got half on the back of the board, holding my legs on the board, and the other half of her is in the water, blood pouring off of me. She held my legs on the board and kicked while he was paddling to get me to the shore. Meanwhile, Paul ever prepared the police officer, he had his phone with him. He pulled on his phone and called 911.

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Is there an ambulance waiting when they get you to shore?

From the time I started yelling until the time you can see the ambulance on the street, three minutes.

Wow. That feels impossible.

The city really prioritizes public health, and so they have an ambulance station in the middle of the town. It happens to be six blocks from where I was. There's a hospital five miles away, but the taxpayers pay to keep the ambulance close, so I got to thank everybody. But there's another step in between that It was equally amazing. They got me to the beach, and of course, I'm bleeding. My left arm is all ripped up, both thighs and my abdomen. I need tourniquets on the beach, vacationing independently. We're two ICU nurses and a doctor.

Oh, my God.

Doctor from Detroit, ICU nurse from Kansas, ICU nurse from North Carolina. What?

Well, I do have to put a little bit of a socioeconomic spin on this. Good place to get injured in Monterey, where professionals go on their vacation. It's true. This happens at Where's Beach or Dayton. You might not have the same staff on hand. Pretty good point.

Wow.

So everyone just starts tourniqueting you up.

It's exactly right. Noelle, we've had with her, one of the ICU nurses. She got halfway in the water and accepted the surfboard. There were six or eight people around me as they rolled me over, and she saw my leg, and she thought, Well, he's going to lose the leg. She looked at my face and saw that I was in my 60s, and my face, she said, was gray. She thought I would not make it.

Yeah, yeah.

She thought, even if you do make it, you're going to be badly brain damaged from lack of blood to the brain. Then she saw my wedding ring and she thought, Oh, how terrible for the house. Yeah. Then they got me into the ambulance and drove the 28 miles to Natividad Trauma Center. I was on the operating room table with the surgeons ready to go, scalpels in hand, 59 minutes after the shark bite. Wow.

It's crazy you lived that long. I know. You must have lost so much blood. They start pumping blood into you immediately.

I'm not sure. I do know the anesthesiologist the day after the surgery, he stopped by my room and he said, When I heard that the incoming trauma victim was a 62-year-old shark bite victim with massive blood loss, he said, I didn't have a lot of hope for you, but your heart and lungs responded like you were in your 20s, and that's why you survived. I had been doing all this outdoor group exercise. Yes. That really helped. Of course, if I hadn't been exercising, I wouldn't have been out there.

It's six half dozen. A double-edged sword. How long was the recovery from that?

I was in the hospital for three weeks. I was in the ICU for only one day because the wounds, although they were really bad, they were quite repairable. The surgery took about two hours. They had to just stop the bleeding in my legs. They looked all through my belly, and amazingly, it did not break I went through this sheath called the peritoneum that separates all the muscle and fat and whatnot from the internal organs. So no internal organ damage. There was a chip off of my left femur, but no broken bones. And amazingly, it missed the big arteries to the leg. According to the surgeon, the big artery that runs down the front of your body into the leg, the iliac artery, he said it missed the artery by a millimeter, like the 20th of an inch. It's amazing. The iliac, this artery is literally touching the big nerve that goes down into the leg that you use for your quads. That nerve was completely destroyed, unusable. My right quads don't work, but the blood vessel that's touching it untouched. The surgeon said, Look, if it had been a millimeter over, you would have bled the death before you got to the beach.

Yeah. Oh, my God.

The surgeon who's been a trauma emergency room surgeon for a dozen years said, I'm the lucky The biggest patient he's ever seen. Fuck.

Wow. Would you ever swim in the ocean again? No. Yeah, good. I'm so glad to hear you say that. I think a lot of you folks would be like, No, still love it. I respect the shark. I know. I'm back in.

I'm proud of you. I'm glad you're staying away.

Yeah, fuck that. There's other places to swim.

Don't test fate again.

Yeah, I swim at the swimming pool at the community college.

Yeah, there we go.

Wow, Steve.

We've only heard one story comparable to that. We talked to a guy attacked by a grizzly bear once, and it's on that level.

Let me give you a sense of how big that shark is. They figured this out by looking at the inter-tooth distance. And the expert says that the shark was 15 feet. I googled that, and it says that's probably 2,000 pounds. No way I'm getting back in that water.

Good. Yeah, good. Let's stay out of there.

Oh, boy. What a story. That is going to sit with everyone.

Might even show up tonight during our slumber.

Exactly.

Wow.

I was afraid of that. It's part of why I don't go back in the water. Every now and then I close my eyes, I do see a shark.

No, Steve, we're born with a fear of monsters, and you actually got bit by a monster.

Yeah, you were attacked by a monster. Thank you for sharing that. That was really harrowing. You're welcome.

I do also want to say thank you to the blood donors. In that two-hour operation, I took 28 units of blood, which in round numbers is twice what a body holds.

We're lucky to have you. We're lucky to still have you here.

Yeah, and you have such a good attitude.

It's been two years and I'm mostly better I still have some nerve damage in my legs, so they're prickly, and I'm on medicine. My right quads don't work at this point. I had some surgery. Maybe it can come back. Don't know.

Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I can walk pretty well, and I can even ride a bicycle, so I'm doing great.

Okay, Wonderful. Well, Steve, thanks so much.

Yeah. Have a great rest of your day. We appreciate it.

Yeah, stay out of the water. Yeah, I will, too. Okay. Bye. Bye. From 721, Delivery Driver Stories. Hello. Hello there. Now, Rags, this is a great name. Is that your nickname or just one you made up for this interview?

That's my childhood nickname I got when I was about 10, 11 years old.

What instigated that nickname?

Probably derived from my last name. It's an Italian last name, so they just shortened it up a little bit.

I like it.

Even my parents called me that when I was a kid. It's a good nickname.

Okay, now, listen, can I attribute this great vascularity in your left bicep to the fact that you're carrying a lot of packages? Or are you in the gym also?

I do gym also. I mean, this job will keep you young, that's for sure.

Yeah, my grandpa-Sip my toes. Sorry, go ahead. I'm going to tell you about my grandpa's, your time. You don't want to hear about my grandpa.

I'll listen to your grandpa. I love grandpa's stories Well, he carried these 60-pound bags of flour at Wonder Bread for like 40 years.

So his biceps were like fucking bowling balls, and he never in his life, lift it away. But what glorious biceps he had.

Right. It was a different generation back then. They all worked hard like that.

You had earn your biceps back then.

I have a feeling your story is going to have to do with the shirt you're wearing. I don't know if we're allowed to say.

We should probably not say.

Yeah, we shouldn't say.

Unless you want to. But I'm making that assumption, too.

Probably keep that under wrap. Okay, great. Because I'm taking a little lunch break. We'll just say one of the big three delivery companies.

Okay, great.

Okay, so hit us with your crazy delivery story. Well, let me back up. Without saying who you work for, we've had a pizza delivery person, we've had a flour delivery. I would imagine for them, they're going to hit like 15 customers a shift. You must hit what, like 40, 70, 100 houses a day or something?

150, 160 a day, somewhere around there. Plus business is tied in. It's a busy business.

You're constantly walking up to people's houses. I would love this, by the way.

It's a great job. I love the physicality of it. I love that there's not a boss with you all day. They leave you alone for the most part, unless you're fucking up.

Do people ever tip? I have, but I don't know how common that is.

Well, you know what? On my old route, which I loved, I was there for 18, 19 years. It was a little small town. I knew everybody. He was great. This guy would give me a $20 bill every time.

Every time?

Oh, that's so nice.

You can sit there and try to reject it. He would just be like, I don't want it. You take it. Super nice dude. But yeah, we get tips every once. Christmas time, especially. People give gift cards and leave snacks out on the porch. Whoever's out there, listen, leave snacks out for the Christmas. We appreciate that stuff.

So I interrupted you. There's one that was crazy among, I'm sure, many you have.

Yeah, I have a lot of them, but yeah, one is crazy. It was about 10 years ago in a rural part of Ohio, on a back road, I found a guy dead outside of his house.

Oh, that he jumped right to the punchline. Oh my God.

He lived on this back road, and when you pull up to his house, he had a long driveway that went down in.

He had a camera up top. By the time he got to the back of the truck and grabbed the package, he would have already walked up the driveway. And then by the time he got out, you just handed it to him, and he went on his way, and then I would go on my way. So it was probably 10th, 15th time I delivered to him. I pull up there, and he doesn't show up. So I give a little double tap on the horn, give him a little bit extra time. And this guy's a hoarder. He's got a lot of junk and a lot of stuff. And you can't even see the house from the top of the road. So when he doesn't show up, I'm sitting here going, Well, I'll just fucking walk this thing down. So I'm heading down the driveway, and my head's on a swivel because this guy's got so much junk. And the first thing I'm thinking about is if who's got this much stuff, he's probably got a dog to protect it. You know what I mean? I don't want to get bit. I'm on high alert. It's like sensory overload at this point.

It's like November, so it's cold in Ohio, and all the leaves are off the tree. So It's eerie walking down this drive.

Yeah, this sounds a little bit like a zombie Apocalypse. For sure.

So I'm walking down there and I hear this radio playing from the house, and it's 150, 200 yards away from it. So I don't think anything of it. I'm walking down there and the leaves are swirling and shit. It's just a creepy atmosphere. I get down there and I see this guy laying outside. It's like by a workbench. Blue collar people are always tinkering outside, so I don't think anything of it. And so I yell his name out, and he doesn't respond to me. And I'm like, well, maybe you can't hear because of the radio's on. I'm getting closer, and all I see is his legs sticking out from this workbench. I'm like, you know what? Halloween just passed. Maybe somebody stuffed a pair of jeans with some leaves or something. It's like a scarecrow. I'm looking around like, now this fucking guy doesn't decorate. So I'm getting closer, and he's still not responding to me. And I noticed his arm was behind his back. I could see his hand was like a grayish blue coat. Oh, no. So then I'm like, either this guy is dying right now or he's already dead. And then it's swirling.

You're like, what the fuck do I do? I might have to save this guy's life. When I was a boy scout when I was a kid, I took a lifeguard class. I know CPR, but that shit goes right out the window. So I get closer and get closer. This is where it gets fucked up.

Wait, this is where it gets fucked up.

Yeah, this is where it gets even more fucked up. So he's got a lot of cats. I mean, they're everywhere. Top of the roof of the house, they're in broke down washer and dryer that's in the yard.

Wow.

And they're all doing this weird meowing and shit. And I'm just like, what the fuck? So as I get closer, I definitely realize that he's dead. And when I get closer, the cats are up by his head and they are chewing.

No.

No.

This is what's crazy. The day I responded, am I allowed to name drop the lady that got a hold of me through the email?

Yeah.

Okay. Props to Emma.

Big props. No. Emma is this secret weapon that no one meets. Yeah, she's incredible.

Absolutely. She did a great job. So when I'm responding this email, I like Theovon. A little quick thing pops up on my phone about him, and it's about cats will eat their owners if they die inside the house.

I read the same post from Theo. Yeah. Fuck.

Yeah. He goes, They won't even wait. They'll just start. So I get up there. There's probably 5 to 10 cats up there. Eew. I just got a brief look because I didn't want to see anymore, and I could see what they were doing, and it just wasn't ready. And I clap my hands a little bit.

Just make them scatter.

Shoe, scream, scream. And they did to a degree. And then at that point, I'm like, well, what the fuck do I do now? And I was like, well, I'm probably call the sheriff.

Really quick question. This is such a low priority given what you're dealing with. But did it cross your mind like, well, I can keep this package?

No, that never crossed my mind.

Oh, my God. I think that would have crossed my mind. Like, well, he's dead. He doesn't need this package.

I was just trying not to get eaten alive by the cats. That's all I was worried about, just getting the fuck out of there.

How long did you think it was? Were you like, this is over a day?

Being in November, it was It's probably 40-some degrees, so it probably preserved the body a little bit. When the sheriff showed up or the deputy, he comes down. I don't mean to think this is funny, but he walks up and goes, Yeah, he's dead.

Oh, my God.

You get desensitized in this job.

And so he said it was probably a few days he was out there. If this was August, you guys, you probably would have smelt him from the top of the driveway.

How old was this gentleman?

Probably mid '60s, somewhere around. He was an older gentleman.

Was the theory maybe he dropped dead of a heart attack or had he injured himself on this saw?

I'm thinking he had a heart attack and then just felt dead on the spot because I didn't want to touch him either. In case something crazy did happen, somebody showed up, murdered him.

My imagination might have ran away with me when I had already felt scared walking down. It's a very creepy property. Too many washing machines and rusted out cars and tractors. You see the dead body, you might think, is there a murderer in the house?

You just never know. It was crazy.

Total sidebar. But at first glance, the thing about the cats, it feeds my narrative that I don't like cats, and I like dogs. But then I was just thinking about this. If I died and Rob and Monica wanted to eat me, I'd also be extremely flattered by that.

No, that's disgusting.

You wouldn't be flattered if you died and Rob and I wanted to eat you?

No, that's so disrespectful.

I see both your guys' points.

Wait, no, you don't.

No one sees Dax's point on this.

If we're on an island and we have no food, maybe. Well, that's fine. That's different. I just think it would mean like, you guys loved me so much, you wanted to consume me after I died.

No.

Muscle's too tough.

We wouldn't have anything to eat. It would be terrible. There's no debate there. It's just I think I'd feel flattered. If a cat ate me, I'd be like, you, motherfucker, you never love me. But what I'm saying is if you guys chose to eat me, I would feel very loved by that. Okay.

This is a eating ceremony.

You're probably not going to be doing that.

So is this a part of your job you like, too? If you're an accountant every day, you're going to come across some crazy receipts eats one day, but you're not going to probably wander upon a dead body with cats. I would like that part of your job.

I do. That's why I've done it for so long. There's always something new around the corner that you've never seen, whether it pisses you off or you're like, wow, that was pretty fucking cool.

Have you ever caught people making love?

I've heard it, but I've never really seen it. I mean, I've had people open the doors, snake and shit. It's always usually the dudes that do it.

Oh, come on, dudes.

Dudes need to get their shit together.

It is a real problem.

He answered the door like an adult.

I know. Oh, my God. Oh, Rags, this is a showstopper. This was incredible. Yeah, I mean, fucking the cast.

This is top five. Shit. Thank you.

Let's just all agree that nothing will ever, ever pass the woman in a marathon who shit herself and then had an orgasm. I will never hear a story as long as I live.

I didn't expect to top that one.

Yeah, there's no beating that.

Mine doesn't even hold that jockstrap for that one.

Yeah, she's the Jordan. Well, great meeting you, Rags.

This was a party.

Yes, thanks for sharing No, thank you guys so much. You guys made this easy. And also another thing, when I was going through that whole story, props to EMTs and shit to have to deal with that stuff on a regular basis to keep their cool. Shout out to those guys for sure.

Yeah, when she gets too heavy for us, we have people we call, and then they show up and deal with- And those are other people.

They're other humans on Earth.

Well, great meeting you, right? I hope we're keeping you company on the road there.

Yeah, you guys made my day.

Okay, wonderful. Thank you. All right, take care, brother. Bye.

They say Hollywood is where dreams are made, a seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America.

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Hi.

We have dueling dog pictures behind our heads. You've got a golden retriever or two. Those are different? Yeah, two.

Nelly on the left, I can't even tell left or right from your view, but Rooney is the other one. One is like a sweet angel, and the other is like crackhead.

They sound alternative. Rooney and Ellie, they sound like they're into alternative stuff.

Nelly, short for Penelope. Also a cute alternative name.

I love these names.

Do you have any children? I do not. Right. I would have guessed that because the care with which you've given these dogs names, most people just like, Oh, fucking whatever. We'll call them Gus. This is meticulous.

Well, I feel like I'll always have these photos now that I print to them, so they'll always have their space, whether we have kids or not.

I hope you use Framebridge to mount and display those.

I wanted to. This was a cheap approach.

Okay, so Jane, you had one of your greatest fears come true. Is this true?

Yes, I did. Going to be a little cringeworthy.

Okay, we're excited.

It's my favorite kind.

A little backstory. My husband and I had gone to visit my parents for a long weekend. We had a wedding. My parents were selling their house, so they were State sale, no furniture in the house, no bed, except for the one they were sleeping in. So my husband and I basically slept on the floor one night because the air mattress deflated. And then the next night, patio cushions makeshift bed in the family room with my sister. It was a long weekend with that not sleeping well. And then we were driving home and we were like, We haven't done the deed in a while. The long weekend, whatever happened the week before, it had been a while.

I just want to point out that I'm proud of you that a long weekend without was a long time.

No, she said the week before.

Oh, she did. Yeah. Okay. I thought you hadn't banged on the weekend, and that had been a long time. That was an exciting timetable.

But normally the weekend, we We had to make time for each other. We're not working or stressed. So the week before and then the weekend, we were horny. We were on the ride home. We were like, All right, we got to stretch the itch when we get home. We get home, we unpack a little bit. And I think I was just scrolling on my phone on the couch, and my husband gave me the eye. We made our way to the bedroom and went from there. I think for those earlier reasons, I was a bit more vocal than normal.

Okay, because of the build up.

Yes. I had even... I really rarely do this, but gave a little instruction, a little to the less.

Wonderful. This is the dream.

Yeah, I should be doing that. Right.

A great experience. And then we're nearing the end and my phone starts to vibrate like I'm getting a call. I just ignore it. I'm like, Oh, my sister's probably calling me. And then my husband's phone starts to buzz as well. But we're so close to the end. We're like, We're just going to power through and figure it out after.

We finish I'm having Aaron weekly flashbacks, but please continue.

So immediately after, he looks up and sees my phone is towards the head of the bed by the pillows, and he goes, Are you on Instagram Live right now? No.

You are You are kidding me. No.

No. I panicked. I've never flipped over so fast to grab my phone.

Oh, my God.

I knew Monica would do it.

This Yeah, I love it. Wow. And even worse, I'd be, Oh, my God, panic. And then you'd be like, Well, I only have so many followers, probably no one saw. But then you're like, Well, no, people are already warning us. The people I know have seen this.

I'm immediately like, Our phones were buzzing. So I flip over. I see it's like, face up. The camera is facing to the ceiling. It's on live. There's a few names underneath. You can only see a few who are in the lie.

Of course, one of the only ones I saw was an ex-boyfriend and an old friend.

That's all I see before I just ponic exit out of everything.

Flush your phone down the toilet.

I want to. I immediately was just running around the house naked. What do I do with myself? I can't even fathom. I got a call from a friend I hadn't talked to in forever, and She was like, I know we haven't talked in a long time, but I would have wanted you to call me if you noticed. And I was like, I have no words. I'm so embarrassed. She was like, I joined and immediately left and started calling you. People got messages like, Jamie went live. Yes, of course.

That's what happens.

On their phone.

I've seen that. When people I'm following go live, I get alerted.

Piecing it together. I call my sister, freaking out. My husband just was like, oh, gosh, jumps in the shower.

Doesn't give a fuck. Oh, my God.

Well, he killed it. It sounds like he was killing it. He's proud as a peac. I'm glad your ex-boyfriend heard that. I brought it home.

What do you think people saw? If it was facing this, do you think they just heard? He heard.

So they just heard.

Okay, thank God.

I'm not typically noisy. I just happen to be like, You know what? Screw it. This is a great experience. I'm going to be louder. I can't.

But you know what's interesting really quick? So for me, on the outside and acknowledging I'm a man, if I had to get caught having sex, that would be the version I'd want, which is like, I'm a Hellcat and a lot of fun.

Honestly, he's in the shower. I'm just pacing. He was like, You should just post on your story. Well, hope you enjoyed the show. I really contemplated it. I was like, I guess we can own it, whatever. But my sister was like, Ignore it. It never happened. Don't talk about it.

Think how much different it could have gone. The conversation they could overheard is like, I know. Yeah, get lube. Oh, where's the lube? Oh, do you need a minute? Do I need to help? It could have been impotence, and it could have been dryness, and it could have been maybe an ouch. Look, we all know how it can go. Yeah.

I've replayed the sex in my mind so many many times. What exactly was I saying? I have nightmares. I will often, this happens honestly, every other time now, if I don't leave my phone outside of the room, I mid-sext, I'm like, I have to look at my phone and make sure it's off. Oh my God, scarring.

That is so scarring.

I It's hard to get the anxiety. But mostly it seems like it was just girlfriends, which whatever, that's fine. But the ex, I don't know.

The ex-boyfriend was just even more wishing he was still with you. I got. That's a win.

It should be harder to go live.

Yeah, you should have to type in a code. You should give your password.

I've never gone live before.

You have to swipe up, hit start.

I don't know how my hand... I just threw my phone on the bed. So I got a notification from Instagram shortly after, you've been flagged for sexual activities. Oh, wow. Well, my sister's friend reported it because she thought it would end it.

It would get cut off. That makes sense. Although now you're a registered sex offender.

Thank God I'm I don't know what coworkers thought. I have no idea. I'm a nurse. There could have been doctors that I work with on. And I don't know. Nobody has brought it up to me.

And I imagine all your interactions for the next week, you're hyper-focused on, are they acting differently among me, which makes you act differently, which then could make them act differently.

The flag on Instagram took it off and it said 7M underneath. Seven minutes?

No, that is long.

Oh, no.

I was like, maybe it was seven minutes ago. And then the longer I thought, I was like, no, that was the entire experience. Seven whole minutes, people going in and out, in and out of the live. I have no words. It was so scary in the moment, but I mean, I laugh about it. I tell everybody now. Yeah.

It's a great story. It's fantastic. Did you happen to hear my best friend Aaron Winkley's story about being on a Zoom AA meeting in the morning, and he had no idea his microphone on? Diarrheas. Yes, yelling at his dog, coughing.

Yeah, I think about it all the time.

That's worse because he was as gross as he can possibly be.

Right. And I was like, What did I sound hot? Yeah. I was calling friends like, Did it sound good or was I like a beach whale?

From what you described, it sounds really hot.

I like to think so. I'm sure it was. I really almost posted. Hope you enjoyed the show.

Oh, that's great.

Oh, that's a good one.

I'll never not think about it when I'm having sex. Hopefully in a year, I'll not I'll think about it.

Since you have these two dogs, are you guys ever having sex and you look away from your husband, you notice one of your dogs just staring you directly in the eye?

Well, that or they start licking toes.

Oh, God.

We usually lock them out, but sometimes it's random. They're there.

We used to have a dog, Lola, that would try to get right in the action. All of a sudden, you're like, What's my leg? There's something hairy. Oh, man. She's Louisa. Oh, Jane, thanks for that.

That was wonderful. It's a good cautionary tale, too. Keep your phones away.

Out of the room. Well, I wanted to say thank you, guys. We had a really rough year last year, and this year is starting off better, and we are going into a fertility treatment in a couple of days. And I just feel so positive and happy and so excited. You guys really did that for me, and that means more than you know going into this process.

Did you listen to Race to 35?

A hundred %, I did. It felt really good to hear people talking about it because you just see the same stories. You Google, it's the same people. There's not a lot. I appreciate you guys so much.

Well, thank you so much.

Sending you lots of luck and love.

Triple fingers crossed. Thank you. All right. Great meeting you, Jane. Good luck with everything. Youthank you. Okay. Bye-bye. From 747, House Sitting Stories. Tyler.

Hi. Yes.

How are you doing?

I'm doing really well. It's really great to meet you right now. Yeah. Where are you at? I'm in Paletine, Illinois.

Right next to where I grew up.

Oh, Robbie Rob said that's right where he grew up. Neighbors. I went to high school at Fremd. At where? Fremd? Fremd. Fremd. Do you know Fremd High School?

I don't think I have even passed that one.

Okay. Did you move here as an adult?

Once I married my wife, we moved to Paletine, Illinois.

Neighbor to Wabiwab. Yeah. Maybe one day you'll have children that'll end up going to-Fremd. Fremd. That terrible name for a school. What name is Yeah. It's like, is it friend? Yes. But did they misspell friend? It's the last name, William Fremd. Fremd? It's terrible. Yeah, it's really bad. How did you spell that Wabiwab? F-r-e-m-d. Fuck that. Terrible. Okay. Tyler, please. You have a house sitting story for us.

Yes, I do. So this takes place in Sugar Grove, Illinois. That's really close to Naperville, Illinois, if you're familiar with that.

I know it very well. Bob Odenkerk is from there.

Perfect. So Sugar Grove is just 15 minutes west. I was asked to watch my best friend's family's house, and I was also to watch their family dog while they were gone. They would be gone for a full week. I've watched their house quite a few time, so there was nothing new about this. The first few days went completely fine. It was Thursday night that things went a little bit different. I went to sleep with a movie on. It was late, and it was approximately 2:00 AM. I had woken up. To explain a little bit of the layout of the house, it is an open concept living room, and it's a conjoined dining room and kitchen. I had the dog with me on the couch. I wake up and I see that the dog is going crazy. She's just a small shitsu. She's barking up a storm, and I just slowly turn around. There is just glass shrapnel all over the ground of the dining room. There's dishware all over. What? I look at the appliances in the kitchen, and where the dishwasher is, it's just pulverized. The door is off the hinge.

Oh, my God. Hold on. We were just handed photos of the scene. I don't think the listener can even imagine the amount of destruction that has happened in this kitchen. And I'm immediately curious how the fuck you slept through whatever happened.

It's like a demo. It feels like it was demolished.

Yes, they were demoing the kitchen.

Oh, my God.

Okay, so the dog's freaking out. You look over, there's shit everywhere.

I'm trying to comprehend what I'm seeing. I had come from a very deep sleep, and I did sleep through whatever the initial noise was. And I'm looking at the kitchen and I'm thinking to myself, what caused this? I smell some gas in the air. Maybe there was an earthquake that came through because I could hear some rumblings going on.

Yeah, that's what it looks like.

Well, like a 9.6. Yeah.

I can't really think very well, but at the same time, I'm like, I got to call my friend Tim. I give him a call. They're in New Jersey.

Hold on a second, Tyler. What on earth are you going to tell them?

But Tim's the- The friend. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Looking at these pictures, again, we're going to have to somehow post them or something. There's no explanation. You got to have an explanation before you call Tim, right?

So that's the part that is really funny, this voicemail that I left because they're in New Jersey. So they're definitely asleep at this time. And I'm like, Hey, Tim, I hope that your vacation is going well. Things are getting weird here. So if you can give me a call back, that would be great. Thanks. Bye.

Oh, my God. It's of poltergeises in the house.

Okay, I smell gas. Oh, no. Did I leave the oven on? Did I blow up the oven and destroy the kitchen? But a moment later, I hear a knock at the door, a little unsettling because it's really early. And I just make my way to the door and I'm like, Oh, it's a neighbor. They're probably checking. They probably heard the explosion. I open the door and I can see his face is a little concerned. He's like, Hey, you know that there's a car in your house right now? I'm like, What do you mean? A car went through your house.

Oh my God.

You mean that other picture? Oh my God. Oh my God, look in the garage. There's a fucking car buried in the corner. Okay.

Immediately, I just go like, Man, that is so much better. I thought I blew up the kitchen.

This is way better.

He's like, No, it's a car through your garage. We can see that the red and blue lights are coming into the subdivision. I go inside, I grab a shirt, I grab the dog, and I wait for the ambulance to approach. The fire chief comes to me, and he's like, Are you all right? Is Is everything fine? I'm like, Well, things are damaged in there, but I'm fine. He's like, We got to make sure that the house isn't compromised in any way. So he goes in. As I'm standing outside, another neighbor comes over to me, and he's like, Hey, are you the homeowner? I'm like, No, I'm actually just house sitting. He's like, Well, I'm the one that called 911. I was awake at the time of the collision, so I ran outside, and I can see that there's a young guy coming out of the wall of the home, and he looks like he's about to run. And so I tell him, Stop right there. We need to wait for the cops to come. Moments later, my buddy Tim finally gives me a call back. This is where I finally get a chance to go around the house and check the damage.

As we put it together later, what the driver did was he came from the entrance of the subdivision. It's a curved road, and it goes into a straight. Instead of taking that straight, he went through the curve, he went over an empty grass lot, and he went over a curb, a road, another curve, up into the yard, and through the bushes, and nailed the one car garage that's attached to the house.

So he blew through the side of the garage, not the garage door. Yes. Oh, my fucking God. Right. Yeah, right there is a huge hole behind that bush.

He came in there. Okay. He made it through that first wall, and he obliterated all the tools that are in there. That was mostly the garage was used for.

Climbed out of the wall.

The car stops its impact at the final wall, which is the shared wall between the kitchen and that garage. So that destroyed the oven and threw all that trash capital through the kitchen.

I cannot believe you did not wake up. How on earth, Tyler, did you not wake up? A car literally drove through a house. That's a joke you'd say to your partner, You sleep so deep, a fucking The truck could run through here and you wouldn't even wake up. I even wonder if the dog hadn't been barking, if you would have just woke up the next day.

I usually tell the story as I had the movie up very loud. There was an action movie going on.

Okay. Watching Die Hard.

Oh my God. Wow.

Holy fuck.

The fire chief comes back out. He's like, Hey, do you have anywhere you can stay for the night? And I'm like, No, the dog's got all her stuff in there, so I got to stay here. He's like, Okay, that's fine. If you're fine with a hole in the house, we cut the gas, so that should be fine for tonight, at least. The next morning comes. He did inform me that an inspector would be coming in to check the house to see how it was compromised. An inspector comes. He goes down into the basement. He comes back up stairs, and he's like, We're going to wait for the homeowner so I can speak to him and go through all the insurance stuff that needs to be done. And so he leaves. About a couple hours later, Tim's dad finally arrives.

They have cut their trip short, obviously, to come deal with this. Yes.

He actually came back by himself. He left the rest of the family in New Jersey to finish the vacation. He just wanted to get a jump on all of the insurance stuff, and he was just so overwhelmed. He comes in and he's so happy that I'm fine. I was sleeping on the couch. Yeah.

He was going another 30 miles an hour. Still wouldn't have woke up.

The shrapnel definitely hit the back of the couch. Oh my God. So he was just so happy that everything was fine on my end. But as we're reminiscing, he's like, Do you smell some gas? I'm like, They said they cut the gas. We go outside. There were many people that day just driving by looking at the hole in the house. So the police officer was there. We flag him down, and we're like, Hey, we smell some gas. Right away, he calls the fire department. The fire department that was there earlier in the morning, they come back, they check, and they see that the inspector that was there, he had thought that the gas was still on, so he turned it off, but he really just turned back on.

Oh, my God. Okay. Oopsies. That's a mistake that shouldn't really be able to be made because a gas line, if the thing's in line with the gas pipe, it's on, and if it's perpendicular, it's off. That's how they're made.

Yeah. I was in my mid 20s, so I didn't know how any of that really worked. We had learned a week later about what happened to the driver. The driver's blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit, and he had cocaine in his system.

Oh, he should have been more alert. He should have seen that curve coming.

They found a scale in in his car, and they had said that he was probably connected to some of the local drug dealing around the area. He actually lived just a few doors down. That is probably where he would have ran off to, but he did not have a great time that evening. Oh, wow.

So he got arrested. Yeah. Oh, boy. Well, hopefully, he ended up in treatment. That's a pretty good low. It's a good story in an AA meeting. Did you get eyes on him that night?

I saw the kid just sitting there on the curb, and the cops were over him just watching him. So he was fine from what I could see. What I learned later on was I heard rumbling happening in what I thought it was an earthquake. That was actually the kid trying to get out of the car.

For sure. Yeah, you got to get out of it.Yeah..

Nice.oh my God.

Let's go. Wow. Are we allowed to post those pictures? Do you think the homeowner would be fine with that? Yeah. I think we got to post those. I don't think anyone would realize how insanely damaging this event is. How funny though, you're trying to make- You think you're He's trying to make sense of the kitchen that literally just self-detonated.

I'm really sad we didn't have the voicemail. We kept that voicemail that I had left to my buddy Tim for about a year or two, but when he changed phones, he forgot to keep it. Damn it. We listened to it so many times, and every time it's just like something weird is going on. I can't comprehend what I'm seeing, but it's not good.

I'm so glad I saw it in the order I did, too. Yeah, that was great. Well, this is great. Oh, Tyler, that's a fucking home run of a story. That was a good one. Yeah, man, all the drawers are thrown out. The island has been shoved forward.

But it would be so confusing because it's not like a robber. There is no way to piece together what could have possibly- You're The explanation was smart, which is like, Oh, there was a gas explosion.

It does look like everything exploded off the wall.

And that far wall is where the oven is, so it's gone. I can't even tell that it's an oven anymore. And I classically do leave an oven on once in a while, and my wife finds that. So it wouldn't be beyond me to do that.

The oven is gone. It's nowhere.

I love that you were relieved that it was a car.

Oh, I would have been, too. Me, too. That wasn't my fault. Oh, thank God. Just a car drove through the house. That was a blessing.

It's very Stephanie Tanner from Full House. She drove the car- Through the home? Into the home, yeah.

On coke and drunk?

No, unfortunately, just childish- Old-fashioned way?

Yeah. Okay. Oh, Tyler, thank you so much for sharing that story with us. That was great.

Of course. If you wouldn't mind, I would love to give a shout out to my wife. She was the original arm cherry that got me into listening to you all a couple of years ago. She was listening for this prompt, specifically. I said, If there is a house sitting story, I will submit it, and I will try to tell it. And what's her name? Her name is Zohar.

Well, thank you, Zohar, for turning Tyler onto the show. I'm so delighted you guys listen.

Thank you so much for listening the story. I appreciate it. All right. Take care, brother. Thank you.

From 806 Hotel Stories. Hi there. Hi. Hi. It's Ari. We were saying naughty stuff right as you signed on.

It makes me happy. I love it.

Are you in a bunk bed with a sheet?

I am in a blanket floor bunk bed. Absolutely. It's my best option. This is a first.

This is good. This sounds great.

A lot of ingenuity happening. What do you do for a living?

I own a beach resort on the Jersey Shore with my family.

What? Cool. Have you ever seen this situation in the gang?

No, we're not that type of Jersey Shore. We're the quaint, family-friendly, low-key Jersey Shore.

Were you ever curious when they were shooting that show to wander up there and see if you could see them? I was obsessed with them.

Not really our vibe. We like to stay a couple of islands down, but they're fun to watch, I guess.

That's fair. Am I right to think that the season is coming to an end? Is it a good time for you or a sad time?

No, it's great. A couple We got four weeks to go, and then we're done.

Got it. Oh, I have a feeling this story is about- Their own. Your own.

Oh, that would be a first. A proprietor.

It is. It's about our hotel, and as low-key as it normally is, we see our fair share of crazy stuff. So I've got a doosy for you guys today.

How many rooms are there? I want to get an idea of what we're looking at.

Fifty-three. So we're pretty tiny. We're like a restaurant, nightclub, wedding venue.

Oh, wow. This sounds- A lot of fun. Very nice. Really quickly, my grandparents owned a motel, and I was just telling Monica that my grandma You've now many times found dead bodies.

Does that happen to you? No dead bodies for us. Knock on wood.

Okay, great. Oh, sorry. Knock, knock, knock. There we go. Okay.

All right. Well, I'm just going to dive on into it. It's a Friday morning. I'm coming in to work, and we work some late night hours, usually. Sometimes in the morning, I come in around checkout time for the hotel. I walk in, I open the front door right to our lobby, and normally, it would be a pretty low-key scene. It would be a couple of people checking out, people gathering their stuff, getting ready to go, and Immediately, I can tell that is not the case for this morning. It is a zoo in the lobby. There is pretty much the entire hotels worth of people standing around our tiny little lobby, and they are losing their minds. I can immediately sense the tension in the room, and I'm overhearing people going like, What did you lose? I lost my beach towels. They were pottery barn. They're martyrammed. We lost all our life jackets. So I am on high alert. I lock eyes with our front desk receptionist, and she just gives me that nod, like, Go to the office. I'm going to meet in there. She presents me with a full yellow legal pad of missing items from hotel rooms.

What?

Side note, we are that idyllic little town where people leave all their stuff outside of the room at night. You leave your car doors unlocked. Everybody puts their beach Their beach gear, outside of their beach gear outside of their room. Never been an issue. Apparently, today was not that day because almost every single hotel room had come down and reported something from outside of their room missing. Nothing like this has ever happened before. So I am in a semi-panic mode. We want to keep our guests happy and don't know what to do, so I'm real in trying to think, what's our next step here? In walks two of our managers, and I have a manager, Heather, who does our front desk and a manager, Tina, who does our housekeeping. They come in and they were in earlier than me, and we've got a story for you. One of our housekeepers had walked by one of the other rooms and noticed as she looked through an open door, a boatload of beach stuff, like mountains of beach gear in a certain hotel room. So she's like, all right, we've got an issue. So it was like 10:45 when I got in there, check It's 11:00.

So I'm like, All right, let's go upstairs. I gather my girls. We head up the stairs. Some of our rooms are oceanfront, and they've got private balconies. So we go to the one next to this room who's already been checked out of. And I walk out on the balcony and I'm peeking over to the next room, and I'm trying to figure out, Oh, my God, is this it? And I just see mountains of things, all the beach towels stacked up, puddle jumpers, beach gear, I mean, everything. It's now 11:01, and this is no longer this lady's room. So I'm like, All All right, let's go. I leave my girls down the hallway. I go up, I knock on the door. Little side note about this lady, she's already been an issue in the hotel. We've got bars, we've got a nightclub. We've had a lot of complaints about her so far already.

Ranging from just she's nosy or she's aggressive, loud?

Loud, aggressive, too drunk, causing scenes, chirping up people at the bar, being rude to the security guard, you name it, she was doing it. She's been a handful. I knock on the door, tell her who I them, give her the old, Hey, had a couple of complaints about some hotel rooms. Are you missing anything? She's like, Oh, no. What are you talking about? As she steps to the side, I look over her shoulder and I'm like, How many towels did you bring with you on this vacation? At this point, I'm like, I'm coming in the room. So I just walk past her. Our rooms have a little bit of an entry hallway, and then they open up into the larger space. So I'm coming in and I'm clocking all the stuff. I'm seeing the towel with Olivia's name on it. Oh my God. The huddle jumper with the mermaids on it that's been reported missing. I have the list with me, and I'm like, This is it. We've got a kleptomaniak on her hand. As I walk through the threshold to the room, I look to my right and I catch eyes with somebody I know in her bed.

Oh, oh, oh, oh. We have a lot of different bands that play at our resort, and some play weekly. I look over and one of the trombone players from a band who plays at the resort a lot is tucked up to his chin in her bed.

And just surrounded with merch.

Endless gear. I mean, a hotels' fault. You could have a whole camp with the amount of gear for children that is in this room. I look at him and we're just eyes on each other. We know each other, and he's a deer in headlights. I look over at her and I'm like, Hey, do you guys have any kids registered with your reservation? Because I know it's just her in this room. She goes, Oh, he has kids.

She's thinking on her feet.

She's moving quick. She's trying. But I know this guy, and he does not have children of this age, and I've never seen him with any family of anybody at the resort. I look right at her and I go, That's not true. Come on. He is still just stone cold. I'm like, Listen, guys, I'm under the assumption that you've stolen all this stuff from all of our hotel guests. I go, I'm going to take it back. I go out to the hallway, I hoody-hoop my staff, and I ask them to come down, and they bring a whole crew of housekeepers. I mean, this is five, six ladies, arms full of stuff, just taking it all At this moment in your mind, have you tried to figure out?

Because I'm immediately thinking this is the act of a super hammered person that didn't really know what they were doing. Not so much that they actually are a thief that wants this stuff. My guess right now is she woke up and was just as surprised as you are that all that stuff was in her room.

She was absolutely drinking the night before. But the reason that's not the case is because everything was nicely folded. She had mounds of towels rolled up perfectly and was loading them into her suitcase.

How's she getting this out here without people noticing?

Also, what the hell are you going to do with all this stuff? It's not like it's highly resellable.

I don't think it's about that. It's just about the stealing.

Also, she is so far on left field. I've just accused her of robbing the entire hotel. She could care less. She's smiling, she's joking with me. She is not defensive at all. I'm just like, Okay. So we get all this stuff out of the room and I look at the guy and I go, Listen, I'm going to step out of the hallway. I'm going to give you two minutes to get decent. And after that, I'm coming in. You guys are getting out of the room. I walk out. I'm not out there 30 seconds. He comes barreling out the door, down the hallway, won't even look at me. He's gone. So I'm like, All right, I'll deal with this guy the other day. I know who this guy is. So I go back in and I'm trying to just get the ball rolling for this lady. I'm like, You got to go.

We're not going to call the cops. You're like, I'm not interested in that.

I'm not even there. I'm just like, You got to get out of this place. We have reclaimed everything. We're not going to make a big deal out of this, but you got to get out of here. So I'm grabbing her stuff for her. I'm literally she brought a Keurig machine. I'm holding a Keurig that she stole from the last hotel. Probably. She's joking be about the weather. She's saying how much she loves our resort. And I'm just like, We got to go, lady. I get her down the hallway, out to her car. As we're walking, she's detailing her plans to go to the next hotel down the street and check in. And I'm like, Oh, God. So I get her in her car. I'm immediately calling the other hotel owner because we're a small town and being like, Hey, this is coming your way. Absolutely do not let this lady check in. Before I can even get off the phone, I'm beeping through with another call from our housekeeping manager, and she's like, You need to get back up here right away. What the fuck? I'm like, did this lady sneak back in the other side?

What am I getting back into? So I hustle back up there and I get in there and there's a team of housekeepers in there. They'd come in. It's already past checkout. They're trying to get in there and clean the room. We've got a full hotel to flip over, and they are just shocked. I'm like, what's going on? They pull back the sheets and poop stains all over the sheets. That same bed Mr. Trombone player was just laying in. We don't have cameras in the so we'll never know what really happened.

So he was covered in the poop when he was in the sheets?

There was just poop stains, like poop juice all over the sheets.

Yeah. Oh, baby.

I don't know if I was so flicked out by the situation of the theft originally, that he didn't smell it, didn't notice it, like the balcony door was open. But I looked down and there's one of the little maps we give out of our island that gives tourist spots and restaurant recommendations. Somebody moves that with a gloved hand, pile of poop juice. Oh, my God. We look in the bathroom, poop, washcloths, everything. But we had deducted that they must have got in, absolutely hammered the night before, gone on a drunken rage of ransacking the hotel, and then probably celebrated with a big round of butt sacks right before they left. Yes.

Oh, my God. Who else lays in those sheets?

You're not going to lay in poop sheets if you're not a part of it.

A hundred %. By the way, we got on with you and we said we were just talking about naughty stuff. It was anal.

It was that. It was someone walked in at their dad, pounding mom, bent over the bed. It was like 6:15 in the morning. I said, Well, no one would have anal sex in the morning, but now we're hearing this story.

We don't know if it was morning or night or-Celebrated with a big round of butt sex.

Poop everywhere. That's the whole story. It ended in a good note. We have a great team. They clean the room. We have professional carpet cleaner machines. We took care of it. All the guests were happy just to get their stuff back, so it was a happy ending.

Oh, my God. I wonder if there was any poop on any of the stuff.

People are animal It was nuts.

It's been six, seven years since this story, and we still call the trombone guy, Roto-Ruder.

So he stayed under your employ. Did you guys ever have any follow-up conversation about that whole sitch?

He left the band for a few years, and then he's been back recently. I don't give him shit. I just give him a little side eye when I see him. I know.

He has the audacity to show his face again.

Well, I would say to him, Listen, Carl, I'm going to let you work here, but you She shouldn't have sex with the guests. That's off the table. But if it does happen, be mildly respectful.

Clean up a little bit.

Clean up.

Oh, wow. Made to throw away all the sheets, all the towels, everything. I mean, the room got stripped down to bare bones and started over, but it was nasty.

Talk about insult and injury.

Also, the juice description is really something.

This might not shock you, but in my 20 plus years in AA, this is the story I hear. This is generally someone's bottom. Yeah, pun intended.

I just want to thank you guys for this. This was so much fun. I'm obsessed with your podcast. I listen every week, all the shows.

Thank you. That was incredible. What a morning you had.

I love that.

Great start to my weekend.

And all the guests, they were delighted when they got their stuff back. Everything was fine.

Everybody was happy. Nobody caused a ruckus or anything. They were just happy to get their stuff and go to the beach that day.

Oh, God. That poor woman, she's really hanging on by a thread.

Let's hope she turned it around.

Yeah, hopefully she's doing better things with her life.

Oh, boy. Well, Brittany, thank you. That was a blast.

Before I leave, my friend Heather, who was a part of the story and who turned me on to your podcast, is here. Do you care if she says hi real quick?

Of course. Let's say hi to Heather.

She's our front desk manager. She was one of the ones that was a part of the beginning. Hi.

Hi, Heather.

Oh, my God, it's so exciting.

Now, did you also go take a look at the wreckage in the bed, or did you take everyone's word for it?

You got eyes on that. I got eyes on all of it.

It was pretty nasty.

Would you also describe it as juice?

Yeah, I would say juice and then some.

Okay, sure. Well, it's so nice meeting both of you. This was incredible. You, too. All right. Thanks so much. Take care, ladies. Follow Armchair Expert on the Wundry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to every episode of Armchair Expert early and ad-free right now by joining WNDRI Plus in the WNDRI app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at wundri. Com/survey.