Matter of Facts: Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful...

[00:00:06] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at MWFPodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Ravelet, Andrew, Nick are on the other side of the mic, and here's your show.

[00:00:30] Welcome back to the Matter of Facts Podcast. We all survived Christmas, no one got murked by their spouses, which means you at least did an acceptable job of delivering presents. So congrats for that.

[00:00:41] I know, right? It can be a tough one sometimes.

[00:00:44] I mean...

[00:00:46] Yeah. Every... not to sound extraordinary or stereotypical, but I doubt any of you men are going to find me on this, but sometimes we husbands have our hands absolutely freaking full of trying to find a gift for our wife that is not going to get us banished to the doghouse for at least until their birthday.

[00:01:04] Oh, man. Mine sets me up for success every time. She gives me a list in prioritized order, and I start top down.

[00:01:12] Mine did that for me this year, and like, I'm going to tell you, I am the... and I deserve... I need it because I am the worst gift giver on earth.

[00:01:20] I'm really good about, like, planning ahead. I'm really good about ordering stuff well in advance. I'm good at...

[00:01:26] Oh, yeah. It will be there well in advance.

[00:01:28] So, yeah. All of, like, the logistics of get the gift under the tree, I am on top of all that.

[00:01:35] The whole... under all of the things under the sky that I could possibly get my wife that would make her happy, you might as well ask me to color Picasso with crayons because it's just not within my immediate skill set.

[00:01:49] But my wife gave me a list and then gave me the wife look. You all know what the wife look looks like.

[00:01:55] And said, Phil, I love you. Do not deviate from this list.

[00:02:01] And I said, yes, honey.

[00:02:05] I can work with those requirements.

[00:02:07] Yes. Those are requirements that I could certainly, like, I can work with that.

[00:02:14] Absolutely.

[00:02:14] So, yes. My wife spared me the indignity of getting her something that she would have to give me the smile like, oh, Jesus Christ.

[00:02:23] I'm not going to yell at you in front of your child, but, oh, it's coming.

[00:02:26] Oh, yes.

[00:02:31] Yes, Joe, I have a storm coming my way.

[00:02:34] You know, it's winter in the south, which is really no different than fall or spring or summer.

[00:02:40] Summer in the south?

[00:02:41] Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, it's a storm.

[00:02:44] Another one, another kind of storm.

[00:02:46] Instead of this one coming up from the Gulf, this one's coming over from Texas.

[00:02:49] So, hopefully our redneck friend in Houston, like, you know, took the edge off it.

[00:02:55] Sweet-talked it a little bit so it'll come through here and not tear anything up.

[00:03:00] Maybe.

[00:03:02] Maybe.

[00:03:02] But, admin work.

[00:03:04] Thanks to the patrons for keeping the show running.

[00:03:07] Thank you all for tolerating, and I would say tolerate.

[00:03:10] Y'all encourage our sociopathy.

[00:03:12] So, if anybody doesn't like the show and doesn't like what we talk about, you can blame about 30 of those people because I am not responsible for my actions.

[00:03:20] I need adult supervision at all times.

[00:03:22] And I have that, we have that group of people that are constantly, like, you know, provoking more bad behavior and bad decision making.

[00:03:29] So, it's not my fault.

[00:03:31] I mean, you know, you lock a drunk in a brewery.

[00:03:34] What do you think is going to happen?

[00:03:36] Fun.

[00:03:38] Fun, mayhem, same thing.

[00:03:40] So, merch.

[00:03:41] The links are down in the show description for the merch.

[00:03:44] This is actually not merch.

[00:03:46] I'm wearing my first ugly Christmas sweater.

[00:03:49] I've never had one before.

[00:03:51] Oh, dude, I got one from one of the patrons for Secret Santa.

[00:03:55] Okay, so that is, like, the first topic.

[00:03:58] So, let's say Cypress Survivalist, the link's in the show description.

[00:04:03] First event will be March 8th in southeast Louisiana.

[00:04:05] Santa enter about the Mandeville area.

[00:04:08] And we will start advertising for that very, very shortly.

[00:04:11] My wife has been taking the Christmas break off of school to work on promotional materials, which will be forthcoming very, very soon.

[00:04:21] Now, we were not nice.

[00:04:24] We were extremely naughty.

[00:04:25] But, somehow, Santa has a sick sense of humor because we still got gifts.

[00:04:32] Mm-hmm.

[00:04:33] That we did.

[00:04:34] So, like I said, this is my first ugly Christmas sweater.

[00:04:41] That's fantastic.

[00:04:43] Yes.

[00:04:43] This was for my younger brother.

[00:04:46] And now I'm just wondering if I can get away with wearing this at the office.

[00:04:50] A hundred percent yes.

[00:04:51] I mean, I wanted this one to my in-law's Christmas party.

[00:04:54] Oh.

[00:04:54] I definitely got some disapproving glares from the ants.

[00:04:58] It was fantastic.

[00:05:00] That is freaking awesome.

[00:05:02] So, there was that.

[00:05:04] I got a camping, a solar-powered camping lantern, which, like, you can never have too many of those because, come on, solar-powered camping lantern.

[00:05:11] My wife got me an Aztec shotgun card and then immediately announced how aggravated she was to find out that I already had five of them.

[00:05:19] And I had to explain to her, I'm like, honey.

[00:05:21] Five is a minimum.

[00:05:23] Well, but, like, that's like saying, oh, Phil already has bourbon in the liquor cabinet.

[00:05:28] I can't get him any more bourbon.

[00:05:30] Yes, you can.

[00:05:31] There's no such thing as too much bourbon in the liquor cabinet.

[00:05:33] I will go buy another cabinet if necessary to make room for more bourbon.

[00:05:38] And, like, another bottle of really good booze is –

[00:05:41] It doesn't go bad.

[00:05:42] It doesn't go bad.

[00:05:43] I mean, they're shotgun cards.

[00:05:44] It's like magazines.

[00:05:45] I literally told her, if you have no earthly idea what to get me, go find a sale for, like, AR-15 mags.

[00:05:52] I would say CZ mags, but that can get a little funny really quickly.

[00:05:56] They're never on sale.

[00:05:57] They're never on sale.

[00:05:58] And, like, you can pretty much go buy AR-15 mags with impunity and I will find a way to use them.

[00:06:05] But she could buy about four different kinds of CZ magazines that I don't have a gun to fit, which wouldn't be a horrible thing because then I'd have to go buy the gun.

[00:06:13] That's the wildcat rule.

[00:06:14] If you have more than three rounds for any cartridge, you now have to build a rifle for that cartridge.

[00:06:20] Remember that, boys.

[00:06:20] That might come in handy for later.

[00:06:23] Oh, and so, as is traditional, Stuart Keith, one of our patrons, ran a secret Santa for the Matter of Facts patrons.

[00:06:36] And I have to admit that, no offense to anybody in past years, but our favorite little Irish lass outdid herself.

[00:06:44] She sent me one of her challenge coins, which I was, like, I having been enlisted, I know what it means to get one of these.

[00:06:53] And usually you get it for doing something really, really stupid.

[00:06:58] Or you get it for being really, really reliable and usually from a fairly high-ranking officer or dignitary.

[00:07:04] So, like, the fact that she sent me this, I told my wife, I'm like, this has to go in a shadow box.

[00:07:09] Like, this can't be a stash it in a drawer or something.

[00:07:14] Like, it's got to be displayed.

[00:07:16] It's noteworthy.

[00:07:17] And she also sent me, like, three bags of Irish coffee.

[00:07:22] Nice.

[00:07:23] Irish coffee.

[00:07:24] Coffee is always a win.

[00:07:25] Yeah, coffee is always a win.

[00:07:27] Like, I don't know.

[00:07:30] I'm sure there's some sad, sad person out there that doesn't drink coffee.

[00:07:34] And I don't know what to tell you.

[00:07:36] Like, my heart breaks for you.

[00:07:38] My brother, he's, I love him, but I'm worried about the boy.

[00:07:44] I mean, does he chase women or drink booze?

[00:07:48] He's getting married this spring and he drinks very rarely.

[00:07:53] He's incredibly stray-laced.

[00:07:54] It's a wonder we're related.

[00:07:55] Well, okay, but to get married, you usually have to do some women chasing to a point.

[00:08:02] So, there is, he has at least one redeeming quality to him.

[00:08:05] He did chase at least one woman.

[00:08:06] I can confirm that, yes.

[00:08:09] Okay.

[00:08:10] So, what was your haul like?

[00:08:12] Was it, were you nice this year or were you naughty?

[00:08:15] I don't even have to ask.

[00:08:16] Actually, it was pretty fantastic.

[00:08:17] My wife got me some sweet clothes, which I'm actually really looking forward to.

[00:08:22] Because I trash 95% of my clothes with my occupation.

[00:08:26] Having metal chips flying everywhere.

[00:08:28] And all of my hobbies involve metal chips flying everywhere.

[00:08:32] Yeah.

[00:08:33] Or firearms.

[00:08:34] So, having some nice clothes to be able to wear and not look like a hobo is fantastic.

[00:08:40] And one of my in-laws, they got me some miniatures for 40K.

[00:08:45] Some transports for my guard.

[00:08:47] Some chimeras, which is awesome.

[00:08:49] My brother will regret this, which is fantastic.

[00:08:52] And we haven't had Christmas with my family yet.

[00:08:55] That's coming up this Sunday.

[00:08:57] Gotta spread it out, man.

[00:08:58] Because all the grandparents are still doing Christmas.

[00:09:01] And my God.

[00:09:02] It just, it makes for like a whole two-week affair.

[00:09:06] Which is fantastic, but exhausting.

[00:09:10] Doesn't sound.

[00:09:10] I'm not hearing the downside to any of this, though.

[00:09:13] No, no.

[00:09:14] The amount of pie and cookies I have eaten makes up for all of the lack of sleep.

[00:09:20] Yeah.

[00:09:21] My, so my funny story.

[00:09:23] My half-sister got me a, she got me a cookbook, but it's all baking recipes because I'm a baker.

[00:09:30] And yeah, it didn't even make it home before my daughter claimed it as hers and spent the next two days baking cookies out of that book.

[00:09:38] Nice.

[00:09:39] She has also informed me that.

[00:09:40] That's a win.

[00:09:41] She doesn't want me to be like super involved in the process.

[00:09:44] She wants me to like stand back and like let her do the baking.

[00:09:48] Nice.

[00:09:49] So, I, you know, she's 12.

[00:09:51] So I'm finally, we're finally at the age where she doesn't need my constant assistance.

[00:09:56] And I can like pour a drink and sit there at the island and just stay out of her way and let her do things.

[00:10:00] It's pretty cool.

[00:10:01] Make sure the house is not on fire and tastes whatever comes out.

[00:10:05] Yeah.

[00:10:05] I get to be the spoon licker and the fire guard.

[00:10:11] Hey, nothing wrong with that.

[00:10:13] That's a very relaxing job with small periods of extreme excitement.

[00:10:18] Thank you for that, Nick.

[00:10:19] Hopefully not a lot of, not a lot of excitement.

[00:10:22] Look, who hasn't set their kitchen at least mildly on fire at least once in their life?

[00:10:27] I haven't yet.

[00:10:29] But I attempted to deep fry things in a not deep fryer.

[00:10:33] It was only a small fire.

[00:10:35] See, it stayed on the stove.

[00:10:37] But I am way too much of a rule follower.

[00:10:39] So, like.

[00:10:40] Oh, God, no.

[00:10:41] Yeah.

[00:10:42] Well, okay.

[00:10:43] So, this is what I tried to explain to my wife one time because my wife, bless her heart, she cannot, she has a difficult time baking.

[00:10:50] She can cook like a maniac, but baking is not her thing.

[00:10:54] And that's what I explained to her.

[00:10:55] I'm like, okay.

[00:10:56] So, like, my personality, bear in mind that, like, my hobbies are, like, reloading ammo and doing things that involve, like, you know, very specific recipes and measuring and following instructions and following a process.

[00:11:07] And that kind of, like, nerdy OCD thing and coffee roasting, which is, like, reloading, but you get to drink your results.

[00:11:15] Which I guess you could do.

[00:11:16] You could do that with reloading ammo, but it wouldn't work out as well.

[00:11:19] Small calibers.

[00:11:20] Yeah.

[00:11:21] But, like I explained to her, I'm like, if you have that really nerdy OCD rule following, you know, behavior embedded in you, then baking's your thing because it's all very precise and very measured and very time sensitive.

[00:11:34] But my wife is a cook, so she just grabs the salt and shakes it over the pot until her ancestors say that's enough.

[00:11:41] And you can do that and do things by taste and, like, you know, just kind of, like, figure it out as you go.

[00:11:47] You could do that with cooking, but that does not work with baking because you end up with a thing that probably isn't what you set out to bake.

[00:11:56] Like, so my daughter, I'm learning that my daughter now, somehow between me and my wife, my daughter has wound up dead center in the middle of the two of us.

[00:12:05] She can bake.

[00:12:05] She can cook.

[00:12:06] She's going to end up a totally functional adult.

[00:12:11] Impressive.

[00:12:12] Impressive.

[00:12:13] I don't know how I feel about being able to help raise a totally functional adult because I'm barely a functional adult than 42.

[00:12:19] Hey, man, it means you didn't make her worse.

[00:12:20] You didn't make her worse.

[00:12:23] That's the best a parent can hope for, right?

[00:12:25] Your wife is tattling on you.

[00:12:27] Nick doesn't follow the rules.

[00:12:28] I'm a baby.

[00:12:30] Yeah.

[00:12:31] But see.

[00:12:31] She is absolutely correct.

[00:12:32] I season with my soul and sometimes we get a bit aggressive.

[00:12:37] But you see, that's what I don't get about your personality is because, like, as a machinist, it's all about, like, fine measurements and rules and procedures.

[00:12:46] Sometimes.

[00:12:48] Sometimes.

[00:12:49] No, sometimes.

[00:12:50] Well, okay.

[00:12:51] So, you got to remember, Phil, with machining, you can follow the rules perfectly and get the good results.

[00:13:00] Yes.

[00:13:01] You can also use your ability to hear how the material and color are reacting and feel positive feedback in the case of manual equipment, like what's behind me here.

[00:13:12] And you can push things considerably harder than the rules allow.

[00:13:16] Get the same results faster and just as good.

[00:13:20] Okay.

[00:13:20] But it requires the artistry.

[00:13:23] So, I was about to say, this sounds like the collision point between art and science.

[00:13:27] It is.

[00:13:28] A little bit.

[00:13:29] Which is what I tell everybody all the time about, like, roasting coffee beans.

[00:13:34] Mm-hmm.

[00:13:34] To roast a single batch of coffee beans to a desired result is not science.

[00:13:41] No.

[00:13:41] It is.

[00:13:41] It is pure art.

[00:13:42] It is.

[00:13:43] You are looking at the beans.

[00:13:45] You're listening to them.

[00:13:46] You're literally listening to them because of the noise they make.

[00:13:49] Yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:49] As weird as that sounds for anybody who's never tried to roast coffee, like, they make noises while they're roasting.

[00:13:54] It's like popcorn.

[00:13:55] To a degree, yeah.

[00:13:56] Yeah, yeah.

[00:13:57] But you're listening for the certain sounds.

[00:13:59] But there's different kinds of noises they make at different points in the roast.

[00:14:01] It's interesting.

[00:14:02] But anyway, so, like, you're looking.

[00:14:05] You're listening.

[00:14:06] You're – the volume of smoke coming off.

[00:14:09] How even the roast is.

[00:14:10] It's very much an art.

[00:14:12] Now, the science of coffee roasting comes in when you try to make, like, 2,000 pounds of coffee, 100 pounds, 50 pounds at a time.

[00:14:22] And every one of those batches is exactly the same.

[00:14:25] That's when the science comes in.

[00:14:27] See, that's where I think you're missing.

[00:14:28] That's the – I think the key difference you're missing from my profession.

[00:14:31] Okay.

[00:14:32] Machinist.

[00:14:33] Yes.

[00:14:34] Technically, I am a machinist.

[00:14:35] What I am, though, is a specialist in machining.

[00:14:38] I'm a tool and die maker.

[00:14:40] Yeah.

[00:14:40] Which means I make one.

[00:14:43] Sometimes I make up to, like, 16.

[00:14:46] That is such a small quantity of production shop would never touch it.

[00:14:52] Production is when you're starting to get into the hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands.

[00:14:56] Those are the guys that are the scientific machinists that can tell you to the minute when their cutter is going to go out of spec.

[00:15:04] I can't do that.

[00:15:06] I can't do that.

[00:15:07] That's not what I do.

[00:15:07] I do the artistry side of machining a little bit.

[00:15:11] Yeah, it's still a lot of science because you've got your feeds and speeds.

[00:15:14] Material science, absolutely.

[00:15:15] But I have the luxury of pushing things a little bit harder, a little bit faster, or a little bit closer, tighter tolerance than they do.

[00:15:24] Because I'm only making one or two or 16.

[00:15:29] But I also don't get any spares.

[00:15:32] That actually makes a tremendous amount of sense now.

[00:15:36] Mm-hmm.

[00:15:38] Okay, so before we get to the topic, can I just say, now, Nick, how...

[00:15:49] I noticed this one, but I'm not sure where you're going with it because I've been out of the loop.

[00:15:52] Okay, so you try to stay off of social media as much as humanly possible, I assume?

[00:15:58] Okay.

[00:15:58] Man, I hit it for the memes and Facebook Marketplace because some of the deals, man.

[00:16:05] Okay, so I also indulge in social media mostly for the memes and the stupidity.

[00:16:11] But in my travels, I've come across some absolute freaking, like, just high school drama in the gun-tuber, pew-tuber space

[00:16:21] in the last, like, couple of months.

[00:16:23] Oh, man.

[00:16:24] Apparently.

[00:16:26] Apparently.

[00:16:27] Like, there's this big thing going on right now where, like, Grantham may or may not have, you know,

[00:16:33] hung the horns on his wife and they're splitting up.

[00:16:36] And she's insisting that there was no infidelity, but there's other people that are insisting there was.

[00:16:43] And, like, the internet has bifurcated into all of Grantham's, you know, little pee-pee writers and all the people that can't stand him.

[00:16:52] And they've lined up, like, on – they've lined up, like, a scene out of Warriors from the 1970s where it's, like, the two gangs that are just squaring off with each other.

[00:17:01] And somewhere in the background is the guy with the bottles on his fingers.

[00:17:05] Like, it's just – it's insane.

[00:17:08] And then, in the midst of all that going on, you know who Lucas Botkin is, right?

[00:17:12] T-Rex Orbs?

[00:17:14] Yes.

[00:17:14] Okay.

[00:17:15] I know him as Lucas.

[00:17:16] I wouldn't have known his last name.

[00:17:18] Yeah.

[00:17:18] So, same kind of thing.

[00:17:23] He apparently – like, the internet is split between him because you have the guys who –

[00:17:30] Diehards.

[00:17:31] Well, yeah, you have his fans, and then you have people, I think, that are, like, looking at him as a – he's a great technical shooter.

[00:17:38] He's a – you know, he does a lot of training, this, that, and the air, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:17:42] And then he has –

[00:17:43] The man's got skills.

[00:17:43] He does.

[00:17:44] You've got to give it to him.

[00:17:45] And it's hard to debate that.

[00:17:46] But then on the opposite side of things, you have the people who are saying he wasn't in the military, therefore he's not in authority, which I don't know why the hell that's a requirement.

[00:17:57] I'm not in the military, but I out-shoot a heck of a lot of military individuals.

[00:18:01] Jerry Mitchell, like to the best of my knowledge, has never been on a two-way range, but I don't want to get on the air side of him.

[00:18:05] He makes me look like a toddler with a BB gun.

[00:18:08] Yes.

[00:18:09] And then you get the people who, like, get rubbed the wrong way because, like, he's very outspoken Christian.

[00:18:14] Sure.

[00:18:15] And I'm also a Christian.

[00:18:17] I'm not super outspoken about it, but a lot of people get really rubbed the wrong way by, you know, his kind of brand of Christianity, the way he advocates for it.

[00:18:26] And recently he had some comments to make about Mr. Thumb.

[00:18:31] And then Iraq veteran 8888 came in over, you know, jumped over the top rope in the middle of the ring.

[00:18:38] Forgot about that guy.

[00:18:39] Yeah.

[00:18:40] I forgot about him too, thankfully.

[00:18:41] But he jumped in the middle.

[00:18:42] I mean, they made some good stuff back in the day when I was watching YouTube for that kind of thing.

[00:18:48] Yeah.

[00:18:49] Well, he decided to throw his hat in the ring and offer to fight Lucas in an MMA match to defend Grand Thumb's honor.

[00:18:58] It's just, it has been absolute.

[00:19:00] Because the guy needs someone else to fight for him.

[00:19:03] Well, but it has been like, okay, so I just, I have in the name of full disclosure, I don't consider myself to be a gun tuber.

[00:19:15] I've made a couple of freaking YouTube videos, but I did as a hobby.

[00:19:18] I'm not serious about this.

[00:19:19] I don't care.

[00:19:20] I am so far removed from all this freaking nonsense.

[00:19:24] I don't have a dog in the fight for anybody.

[00:19:26] I genuinely do not care.

[00:19:28] The number of people any of y'all have ever met on social media that I would die on the hill of their honor is about this many.

[00:19:35] I don't care.

[00:19:37] Well, I don't, I don't.

[00:19:38] First off, I don't know those people.

[00:19:40] Yeah.

[00:19:42] Like, okay, great.

[00:19:45] But even the ones I do know.

[00:19:46] Their televised persona.

[00:19:47] Even the ones I do know, really.

[00:19:49] Even the ones I've met.

[00:19:50] Like, look, Sean Heron and I have talked a good handful of times.

[00:19:52] And Sean doesn't need me to friggin' ride his peepee or defend his honor if someone comes out of the woodwork's mad at him.

[00:20:00] He's a grown man and he's freaking unapologetically hilarious, by the way.

[00:20:04] So, like, I just, I don't, I don't know where all of this nonsense is coming from.

[00:20:13] I do not understand this weird cult of personality that's grown up around some of these social media personalities where people feel the need to make themselves look like retards.

[00:20:24] And I'm using that word and I don't care if it's not socially correct anymore.

[00:20:27] I don't care.

[00:20:28] Retards.

[00:20:30] I don't understand why all of this drama and nonsense is getting vetted out in the court of public opinion over these people.

[00:20:41] I really don't.

[00:20:44] Well, it's the standard, man.

[00:20:46] It's just like celebrities back in the day and people being, oh, I'm hard for X politician and never for Y politician.

[00:20:55] It's people want to feel like they are a part of something, which is understandable.

[00:21:00] All of us want to feel like we're a part of something.

[00:21:02] But a lot of people don't have positive things to attach themselves to.

[00:21:07] I have my family, my work, and my hobbies.

[00:21:10] And guess this podcast now.

[00:21:11] This is a fantastic part of my week.

[00:21:14] I enjoy doing this.

[00:21:16] I enjoy communicating with the patrons.

[00:21:17] I have for a long time.

[00:21:18] I don't feel the need to attach myself to a celebrity I've never met who has no idea who I am, who couldn't care if I was dead.

[00:21:29] I have positive things in my life to attach myself to.

[00:21:32] I don't think a lot of people do, unfortunately.

[00:21:34] And that's terrible.

[00:21:36] So they latch on to these things.

[00:21:43] I don't know.

[00:21:44] Maybe the fact that I'm as hyper-independent as I am just makes this all very weird to me.

[00:21:50] Because I just...

[00:21:51] It could be your personality type.

[00:21:53] I mean, there are some people that don't attach to causes.

[00:21:55] They just don't.

[00:21:56] Well, but causes...

[00:21:57] But you have your cause.

[00:21:58] Causes I do attach to, but I guess my thing is like I don't...

[00:22:01] I have this personality where like the minute there is drama around anything, I want out.

[00:22:07] Like push the eject button.

[00:22:10] I'm done.

[00:22:11] I'm out of this.

[00:22:12] I want nothing to do with it.

[00:22:13] I have...

[00:22:14] There is enough crap in the world.

[00:22:18] There's enough heartache, enough aggravation.

[00:22:20] There's enough stress.

[00:22:22] Every one of us has a nine to...

[00:22:24] Okay, almost every one of us has a freaking nine to five that most of us don't like that much.

[00:22:29] We have to deal with people.

[00:22:30] Oh, I love my job.

[00:22:30] Yeah.

[00:22:31] You're...

[00:22:31] Okay, first of all, screw you.

[00:22:33] I'm a sociopath.

[00:22:33] It's fine.

[00:22:34] First of all, screw you.

[00:22:36] I love you, Death Nick, but screw you.

[00:22:38] Most of us don't care for our job in the best of times and detest it in the worst of times.

[00:22:46] That's normal, you freaking sociopath.

[00:22:49] But anyway, so...

[00:22:50] You get to cut steel and play with robots, man.

[00:22:53] Come on.

[00:22:53] Don't make me hate you.

[00:22:55] I like you.

[00:22:55] Don't screw that up.

[00:22:56] Tell me you have an annoying co-worker or something.

[00:22:59] Something that, like, lets me...

[00:23:01] Sure, but he shuts himself in his office all the time.

[00:23:03] I don't have to deal with him.

[00:23:05] If only I could get my annoying co-workers to lock themselves in their office.

[00:23:08] If we had offices, that'd be a nice story.

[00:23:11] Put a chair in front of the door.

[00:23:13] Yeah.

[00:23:14] Cubicle hells don't work that well.

[00:23:17] No, they don't.

[00:23:18] But I digress.

[00:23:19] I just...

[00:23:21] I just had to get it off my chest because...

[00:23:25] Ooh, that was fun.

[00:23:26] That was weird.

[00:23:29] Anyway, but I just...

[00:23:30] I had to get it off my chest because Jesus Christ, there's been a bunch of people fighting like teenage girls on the internet over who their favorite...

[00:23:39] Who their favorite autistic knucklehead is.

[00:23:43] And it's just freaking ridiculous.

[00:23:47] So if you are one of those people fighting over who your favorite autistic knucklehead is on social media, unless I'm your favorite autistic knucklehead, that's a different situation.

[00:23:58] We will take your weaponized autism.

[00:24:00] That's fine.

[00:24:01] No, I'm just saying.

[00:24:04] Like, just knock off the nonsense.

[00:24:06] But also, I kind of lay a lot of this, honestly, at the feet of gun tubers themselves because so many of them, they take themselves entirely too seriously.

[00:24:14] They make...

[00:24:15] They portray a character on their channel.

[00:24:19] And whether or not any of them will admit that, a lot of them will not.

[00:24:23] They portray a character in front of the cameras.

[00:24:27] They do.

[00:24:27] I think it's arguable that you and I even portray a character on here.

[00:24:32] I'm going to be honest.

[00:24:33] There are aspects of our personality we would not bring to this stream because it's unacceptable.

[00:24:38] For whatever reason.

[00:24:40] No, seriously.

[00:24:41] There is probably something in our lives that would offend our audience.

[00:24:46] Or is not relevant to what we're talking about.

[00:24:49] Hmm.

[00:24:51] Let me chew on that for a second.

[00:24:53] Think about it.

[00:24:53] I mean, it's just like oppo research against a politician, man.

[00:24:58] This is Irish whiskey and Coke, by the way.

[00:25:00] So, like, I'm...

[00:25:02] I've had enough of this.

[00:25:03] I finished my whiskey before we went on.

[00:25:04] Fairly well lubricated.

[00:25:07] I don't know.

[00:25:08] Like, I guess my whole thought process is, like, as far as, like, whether or not we, quote unquote, play character on this show.

[00:25:14] It was just like, first of all, I just don't...

[00:25:18] I don't want to say I don't care because I love this show and I love talking to the audience.

[00:25:22] I just...

[00:25:23] I don't care enough about popularity, fame, money, or anything to put myself through the aggravation of being anybody I'm not.

[00:25:34] I refuse...

[00:25:35] Oh, I'm not saying we're being something we're not.

[00:25:38] But I'm just saying there are portions of our lives, I'm sure, that are not relevant to what we talk about.

[00:25:45] I mean, just the parts that my...

[00:25:46] And I think that's any channel.

[00:25:47] Just the parts that my wife tells me not to ever discuss on the show.

[00:25:51] Sure.

[00:25:51] Those are fair.

[00:25:54] I can't go any further down that road or she'll kick the door in and beat the crap out of me.

[00:25:57] But that's still, to some extent, playing a character.

[00:26:01] I guess my thought process is, like, it's one thing to say that there are parts of my life that need to stay private.

[00:26:08] Because, like, that was one thing I really respected from, like, Demolition Ranch, Matt, character.

[00:26:14] And I've never met the guy.

[00:26:16] Never even talked to him.

[00:26:16] He doesn't know I exist.

[00:26:17] But, like, I really respect the fact that he, in the course of all the content he created, he intentionally kept, like, his family separate from it.

[00:26:26] Sure.

[00:26:26] Because he didn't want them to be super recognizable to a huge group of people.

[00:26:32] And I totally understand that.

[00:26:34] Totally get it.

[00:26:35] Respect it.

[00:26:35] I'm cool with that.

[00:26:38] But I feel like that's a different thing than I am portraying a persona.

[00:26:43] I'm playing a part.

[00:26:45] And then they get so invested in that part that gets them the attention, the clicks, the money.

[00:26:50] They become that caricature of who they really are.

[00:26:54] That's fair.

[00:26:55] I suppose I was thinking about it from a different angle.

[00:26:58] I think you were thinking about it like, if I'm not, like, wide open, pedal to the metal, then I'm playing a character.

[00:27:03] I'm saying that there are people in social media land that the person that they are when the camera turns off is not the person they are when the camera turns off.

[00:27:13] Oh, I see.

[00:27:13] Okay.

[00:27:14] Okay.

[00:27:14] Yep.

[00:27:14] I was thinking about it a little sideways.

[00:27:16] Yeah.

[00:27:17] Yeah.

[00:27:18] That makes sense.

[00:27:19] No, that makes a lot of sense.

[00:27:21] But in any case, just freaking high school drama, dude.

[00:27:24] It's been ridiculous.

[00:27:27] Well, you're always going to get some people that are going to be my team good, your team bad.

[00:27:32] Because you're not my team.

[00:27:33] And they have nothing else to occupy their time or energy.

[00:27:38] And I think that's a shame.

[00:27:40] Because there's plenty to do.

[00:27:44] Just saying, guys.

[00:27:45] Please, please don't attach.

[00:27:46] Please don't make your entire personality about defending somebody else's entire personality that is made up to get them attention clicks and money off the internet.

[00:27:55] Just don't do that.

[00:27:56] Go out.

[00:27:56] Turn off Instagram for, like, a week and go touch grass and you'll be so much of a happier person.

[00:28:02] I can't even tell you.

[00:28:03] Oh, yeah.

[00:28:04] Oh, yeah.

[00:28:06] Undoubtedly.

[00:28:06] So, Nick is going to talk to the audience about something that I know very little about because it doesn't get that daggum cold down here.

[00:28:15] And like I told Nick.

[00:28:16] Oh, it gets plenty cold.

[00:28:17] No.

[00:28:18] No, no, no.

[00:28:19] I've heard numbers come out of y'all that start with the word negative.

[00:28:22] And none of that is okay.

[00:28:25] Like, my winter preps include don't move to places where it is negative anything because negative is bad.

[00:28:31] I learned that in school.

[00:28:33] Negative is bad.

[00:28:35] Well, negative can be bad, yes.

[00:28:38] Negative can be dangerous.

[00:28:39] Negative.

[00:28:40] No, no, no.

[00:28:41] Let's take the worst.

[00:28:42] Come on, Nick.

[00:28:42] Meet me in the middle.

[00:28:43] Negative is bad.

[00:28:45] Like, it's been in the teens.

[00:28:47] One time I can remember down here in Louisiana and that was catastrophic.

[00:28:52] That was damn there apocalyptic.

[00:28:53] The idea that it would be below zero.

[00:29:01] Man, you get used to it.

[00:29:02] And you have clothing for it and your house is still different.

[00:29:05] Oh, baloney.

[00:29:06] No, you do.

[00:29:06] No, no, no, no.

[00:29:07] You do get used to it.

[00:29:08] Listen, I have used that line.

[00:29:11] I have lied to people with that exact same line about the heat.

[00:29:14] Is that what you're talking about?

[00:29:15] The mosquitoes and the humidity, huh?

[00:29:16] Yes.

[00:29:16] Whenever I talk about the mosquitoes the size of chickens that'll carry your kids off if they're not fed well enough,

[00:29:23] I am lying to you.

[00:29:25] Whenever I talk about it, you'll get used to the heat when it's 95 degrees and 200% relative humidity.

[00:29:30] I am lying to you.

[00:29:32] So when Nick tells me you'll get used to the winter, he is lying to me.

[00:29:36] I have heard those words and that tone.

[00:29:39] He is a liar.

[00:29:41] A liar.

[00:29:42] Well, look, man.

[00:29:43] It's what I grew up with.

[00:29:45] I don't know anything different.

[00:29:46] So I just, I dress for it.

[00:29:50] I prepare my vehicle for it.

[00:29:52] Our houses are insulated so much better to some extent than you guys down south, especially our attics.

[00:30:00] Okay.

[00:30:00] So it's massively different.

[00:30:02] So I will say that home construction, I would say that insulation-wise, our houses are probably insulated fairly similar because at the end of the day,

[00:30:11] well, energy conservation is energy conservation and down here.

[00:30:16] Our big problem is keeping the houses cool in the summer and not letting the air conditioning leak out of your house.

[00:30:21] I will say one thing that is noteworthy before we get to like what winter hazards are is I didn't realize this until I started venturing further north.

[00:30:31] I started seeing air conditioning vents.

[00:30:33] I call them air conditioning vents because that's what comes out of them down here all the time.

[00:30:36] But I started seeing HVAC vents on the floor and they're not on the floor down here.

[00:30:42] They're all in the ceiling.

[00:30:43] And that was weird to me.

[00:30:45] And I started asking people like, why are the vents on the floor?

[00:30:47] That's weird.

[00:30:48] And everybody was like, because we use the heater more of the time and hot air rises.

[00:30:52] And I'm like, well, that makes perfect sense.

[00:30:54] Y'all live up here where it's hell.

[00:30:56] I live down south where the air conditioning-

[00:30:59] It's a different kind of hell.

[00:31:00] Yeah, where the air conditioning, cold air falls.

[00:31:03] So the air conditioning comes out of the top and then comes down.

[00:31:05] But seeing the heater vents on the floor, I was like, why in the hell do they put those crazy things there?

[00:31:12] Anyway, culture shock.

[00:31:13] It's easier to work on a heater in a basement than it is in an attic.

[00:31:16] Yeah.

[00:31:16] Although for the same reason, like I didn't know what snow chains looked like for the first half of my life.

[00:31:24] Still don't own a set.

[00:31:26] Thank Christ.

[00:31:27] I don't either.

[00:31:28] I own a four-wheel drive with rugged terrain tires.

[00:31:31] So, you know, it all helps.

[00:31:33] You know, it's-

[00:31:36] Yes.

[00:31:37] You know, you don't have as cold as I do, which is fantastic for you.

[00:31:42] Love it.

[00:31:43] Glad to hear it.

[00:31:44] My face hurts when I go outside for multiple months of the year.

[00:31:47] Not just because of the heat, but because of the cold.

[00:31:49] I mean, it-

[00:31:52] One of the things I wanted to bring up, you know, a few years ago we had that polar vortex.

[00:31:56] We had wind chills in the, I think, negative 40s, negative 50s for about a week.

[00:32:01] What a lot of people did not realize was just how dangerous, how quickly those temperatures can be.

[00:32:08] And even down by you guys who got into that, I think, in the teens there.

[00:32:11] In fact, I found this little handy-dandy chart here.

[00:32:16] As you guys who are watching on video can see, this chart has four different colors, ranging from purple, which is super bad, to a nice light blue, which is not so bad.

[00:32:27] And for the audience listeners, I will do my best to include a link in the show description so that y'all can view this chart.

[00:32:33] But if I don't, then you can yell at me because I forgot.

[00:32:37] Yeah.

[00:32:37] And if he doesn't, it is basically a NOAA wind chill chart, giving you approximations of when you can expect frostbite on exposed skin at various temperatures and various wind speeds.

[00:32:51] Okay.

[00:32:52] So, for instance, fills in the teens' temperature.

[00:32:55] Call it, let's say, 15 degrees.

[00:32:59] No, no, no.

[00:32:59] The lowest I have ever, ever, ever seen in southeast Louisiana was 19, and it was for one hour.

[00:33:06] Okay.

[00:33:06] So, 19 for one hour.

[00:33:09] You don't have to worry about frostbite at all within an hour.

[00:33:14] I didn't have to worry about frostbite at all because I was inside underneath heavy blankets with the heater running.

[00:33:19] It was glorious.

[00:33:19] Yes.

[00:33:20] That's snow shoveling weather.

[00:33:22] That's balmy.

[00:33:23] Oh.

[00:33:24] So, you know, even if you had a 60-mile-an-hour wind, according to this chart, at 19 degrees, we'll call it 20 for rounding's sake,

[00:33:31] you're only in a 60-mile-an-hour wind experiencing negative 4-degree temperatures.

[00:33:36] So, you will not get frostbite within 30 minutes.

[00:33:40] Fantastic.

[00:33:42] But you move on down the chart towards the middle here at zero.

[00:33:46] So, not negative, not positive, zero.

[00:33:50] At a 15-mile-an-hour wind, which is not uncommon, within 30 minutes, you could experience frostbite on exposed skin.

[00:34:00] Now, some of the temperatures we had a few years back, negative 48, negative 55, it was bouncing between negative 20, negative 25 in the thermometer with about a 20-25-mile-an-hour wind, depending on the day.

[00:34:14] So, at that point in the chart, you're getting towards the higher end of danger zone.

[00:34:21] Within 10 minutes of being outside, having exposed skin to that wind, you could experience frostbite.

[00:34:27] That is freaking stupid.

[00:34:29] 10 minutes.

[00:34:31] So, a walk, you know, down the block or a couple blocks over, depending on how fast you walk, you can experience frostbite.

[00:34:43] Now, we've never had into the purple zone over here.

[00:34:48] Weather is not gun chat, no.

[00:34:49] But your guns will stop working when the weather gets cold enough.

[00:34:54] Ask the Germans.

[00:34:57] You know, I've never seen it into the purple where you can get frostbite in under five minutes.

[00:35:02] So, you're talking like negative 15 with a 45-mile-an-hour wind, stuff like that.

[00:35:07] That is Alaska.

[00:35:09] That is North Canada.

[00:35:11] That is all the terrible places even I would not want to visit in the winter.

[00:35:16] It's called hell.

[00:35:17] Wow.

[00:35:18] It is frozen over hell.

[00:35:20] Technically, you live in hell as far as I'm concerned, but you know.

[00:35:23] It's fine.

[00:35:24] It's fine.

[00:35:24] It's warm today.

[00:35:25] It's like 33, 35 degrees.

[00:35:27] It's not a problem.

[00:35:29] It's foggy and kind of pissing rain.

[00:35:31] I'm sure it's going to freeze overnight and it's going to lead to a spicy commute.

[00:35:34] Dude, I was smoking my pipe on the back porch in short sleeves earlier.

[00:35:39] Yeah, no.

[00:35:40] No, we will not be doing that for a while now.

[00:35:44] But I just thought this was an interesting chart to bring up, you know, because if you're out shoveling snow

[00:35:49] and it is cold, you should take this into account for how cold it is.

[00:35:54] Take breaks.

[00:35:55] Warm your skin up.

[00:35:57] Frostbite can be pretty severe and it can lead to gangrene and skin death and amputations if you're really unfortunate

[00:36:06] and you happen to let it go too far.

[00:36:09] But, you know, a lot of us were doing some travel in December.

[00:36:13] I know December's haven't been super cold, but a lot of us are going to be traveling,

[00:36:16] probably seeing family for New Year's, car breakdown in extreme cold with wind, especially with wind.

[00:36:26] You're not going to want to leave your vehicle.

[00:36:28] And this is a perfect example of why, because say you're a few miles from, say, the gas station

[00:36:35] where you need to get gas to get your car that's on the side of the road.

[00:36:38] If it takes you more than 30 minutes and you're in the negative 20s, including wind chill,

[00:36:43] you could be experiencing frostbite.

[00:36:45] You could end up with some medical complications from that.

[00:36:49] You know, it does not take as long as people think.

[00:36:54] And this doesn't take into account hypothermia.

[00:36:57] Yeah.

[00:36:58] If your skin gets exposed to moisture or if you get dunked and your clothing is wet,

[00:37:05] like that's just a whole new level of can't keep yourself warm.

[00:37:08] I was going to say, like, fortunately, most of these temperatures,

[00:37:13] if I ever see most of these temperatures in my part of the country, like, humanity has ended.

[00:37:20] We're all dead.

[00:37:22] New ice age.

[00:37:22] But like you and I were talking about before the show, like, one of the winter hazards

[00:37:26] that we have to be on the watch for down here is black ice.

[00:37:31] Yes.

[00:37:32] Because in the peak of the winter, it does get cold enough, especially overnight,

[00:37:39] that you can get down to, you know, the frost point or freezing point.

[00:37:43] And yet it's still warm enough for most of the day that it will legit rain for a lot of the day or sleet.

[00:37:51] And especially in southeast Louisiana, like anybody from down here knows that, like,

[00:37:55] I literally cannot drive to the next town east or west from me without going over a bridge.

[00:38:00] It cannot be done.

[00:38:01] No back road will get you there without going over at least a short bridge.

[00:38:06] Right.

[00:38:06] Because of the incredible volume, no pun intended, of lakes and rivers in this area and swamps and everything else.

[00:38:14] It's just a thing.

[00:38:15] So, like, one of the things we have to be very cautious about when it gets really cold is black ice on elevated roadways.

[00:38:23] And you'll see those signs on every single one of those bridges.

[00:38:26] Warning, bridge ice is before the roadway because the interstate highway, because it's over land, kind of like heat sinks,

[00:38:33] and it will maintain its temperature into that cold part of the night longer than the elevated roadway will.

[00:38:41] It will.

[00:38:42] So I've had...

[00:38:43] We get that a lot around here.

[00:38:44] Yeah, so I've had a black ice experience one time in my life where...

[00:38:48] And then to tell you the story, it was wild.

[00:38:51] When I left my house in Slidell, for anybody that's down here, I was heading to Hammond to take a final of college.

[00:38:57] That tells you how long ago this was.

[00:38:59] It was 40 degrees and raining when I left Slidell.

[00:39:04] Before I got to Hammond, the temperature dropped 10 degrees because a front was coming in, and the rain turned to sleet.

[00:39:12] And then I drove over one of those dozen bridges you have to drive going over the interstate because that's where I live.

[00:39:19] And halfway across this little bitty bridge, the truck started yawing to the left.

[00:39:24] Like, it was the weirdest experience of my entire life because it wasn't like I was changing lanes or touched the brakes or did anything to provoke this.

[00:39:33] The truck just started pivoting on its axis towards the guardrail.

[00:39:39] And doing what I did, I started to counter-steer the slide like you're supposed to.

[00:39:43] Now, I had an old 94 Toyota pickup without power steering.

[00:39:48] A full manual rack.

[00:39:50] When I turned that wheel, even at highway speeds, you'll feel some resistance.

[00:39:54] I could have turned the whole wheel with my pinky.

[00:39:56] There was...

[00:39:57] Like, the tires were just gliding across black ice.

[00:40:00] Oh, absolutely.

[00:40:01] And as soon as I twisted the wheel, I was like, oh, shit.

[00:40:05] So I literally just...

[00:40:06] Nothing I could do except just, you know, literally press the back of my head against the seat back and just wait for the bang because I was going to hit the guardrail.

[00:40:15] And I did.

[00:40:15] And thankfully, nobody was around me to hit me after I hit the guardrail.

[00:40:18] And fortunately, I had a crowbar in my toolbox so I could pull the bumper off of the tire and not slice my tire.

[00:40:25] And I...

[00:40:26] That's nice.

[00:40:27] ...continued driving along my way to go take my final and got stuck in traffic for three and a half hours because two 18-wheelers also hit black ice and then spun off the interstate.

[00:40:38] But anyway, long story made short.

[00:40:40] Hey, you know what, man?

[00:40:41] That is why it is a time-honored pastime up here.

[00:40:45] Any time you don't see people in a parking lot, in a big parking lot, and you got a teenager you're teaching how to drive, you take them in there before the plows and you put them in a spin.

[00:41:01] Put them in a spin, throw them across an icy patch.

[00:41:04] They're going to slide to a stop before they hit anything in all these big parking lots.

[00:41:08] Heck, a big Walmart parking lot is perfect for that when they're closed.

[00:41:11] On the rare event that they're closed, but, you know, your farm and lawn stores, that sort of thing.

[00:41:16] Let them slide the car.

[00:41:17] Let them learn what it feels like to be out of control of the car and how to recover it.

[00:41:22] Or at the very least, how to make it less bad when they do stop.

[00:41:27] Yeah.

[00:41:28] Because unfortunately, on ice, there's nothing you can do.

[00:41:31] There's really not.

[00:41:32] No, I mean, I'm going to tell you that at the time I had this accident, I mean, I'd been autocrossing and road racing for a couple years.

[00:41:40] Yeah, so you understood how to handle a slide.

[00:41:42] I was very, very, and also because, like, you know, a lot of times, so, like, a lot of people don't understand that, like, when you do, like, road racing, like, at the big tracks, they'll close if it rains.

[00:41:56] Autocrossing, SCCA doesn't give a D-A-M-N at all if it's raining or not.

[00:42:01] So if you show up to an autocross and it's raining, you're going to autocross in the rain, and you're going to get very, very familiar, even at a front-wall drive car.

[00:42:10] You're going to get super familiar with what it feels like for the back end to slide out, and you're going to learn to live with it because that's just the way it is.

[00:42:16] Which, by the way...

[00:42:17] That's how it should be.

[00:42:17] Which, by the way, Mas Miatas get really, really fun on wet pavement.

[00:42:22] Just going to leave that right there.

[00:42:23] So do 1,500 pickups.

[00:42:24] Yeah.

[00:42:25] Well, needless to say, I had spent a couple years understanding exactly what it felt like and how to deal with a sliding car, but I'm going to tell you this was the first time I'd hit black ice.

[00:42:37] There was nothing to be done.

[00:42:39] Nope.

[00:42:40] There...

[00:42:40] Nothing.

[00:42:41] Literally, there was no input I could make to the truck to make it do what I wanted it to do.

[00:42:48] Once that truck twisted on that road at 70 miles an hour, I was just along for the ride.

[00:42:53] Well, you're on a near-zero friction surface.

[00:42:56] Yeah.

[00:42:57] And none of the controls of your vehicle work without friction against the roadway.

[00:43:01] That's the reality of it.

[00:43:03] And unfortunately, black ice is very, very smooth.

[00:43:06] And, I mean, to top it off, hell, I was in a 94 Toyota pickup, actually had really good, forget, like, all-season tires.

[00:43:15] Like, I don't know what I could have done differently to have not hit the... to have not encountered that problem other than to just realize there was black ice on that road.

[00:43:26] But, you know, like I said...

[00:43:28] Drive slower.

[00:43:29] That's it.

[00:43:29] Yeah.

[00:43:30] But like I said...

[00:43:30] That's all you can do.

[00:43:31] When I left home, 40 degrees and raining.

[00:43:36] In 20 minutes, the temperature dropped 10 degrees.

[00:43:39] Like, that's how...

[00:43:40] And then, by the way, this was...

[00:43:42] The end result of this front was that eight inches of snow fell in Hammond, Louisiana.

[00:43:47] Woo!

[00:43:48] It was...

[00:43:49] A lot of snow for you guys.

[00:43:50] Oh, it was the apocalypse as far as we were concerned.

[00:43:54] Like, dude, it knocked power out.

[00:43:55] It shut down interstates.

[00:43:56] It's like, I was going to take a final for 8 a.m. in the morning.

[00:44:01] I never made it to college because the campus closed.

[00:44:04] I found that out while I was stuck in traffic.

[00:44:07] And I didn't get home until 12.30, 12.45 in the afternoon.

[00:44:11] Like, it took that long.

[00:44:13] It was supposed to be a 45-minute drive.

[00:44:15] It took that long to, like, double back and make my way on the back roads back home.

[00:44:20] It was...

[00:44:20] It was a situation.

[00:44:22] But anyway.

[00:44:23] Well, that can happen up here.

[00:44:25] Even where we have plenty of snow plows.

[00:44:28] I mean, it...

[00:44:29] Was it three or four years ago?

[00:44:31] Eh, no, it might have been five years ago.

[00:44:33] New Year's Eve.

[00:44:34] We were coming home from my wife's family's houses.

[00:44:37] And there was 12 inches of snow that came down.

[00:44:41] Fortunately, I have a high ground clearance pickup.

[00:44:44] And I live in an area with fantastic amounts of snow plows.

[00:44:47] Because we get 12, 14-inch snowfalls at least once a year.

[00:44:51] So, yeah.

[00:44:53] The roads were shit.

[00:44:55] But, you know, between having a high ground clearance vehicle with better tires and them plowing intermittently, it wasn't a problem for us.

[00:45:06] As opposed to down here where I've never seen a snow plow in my entire life.

[00:45:10] There are no snow plows.

[00:45:12] Because why would there be?

[00:45:13] Because the two times in a decade that it snows that much, it melts within three days.

[00:45:19] Yeah, Joe.

[00:45:19] Nick is in Illinois.

[00:45:21] Illinois.

[00:45:22] We get 12, 14-inch snowfalls fairly regularly.

[00:45:26] I mean, it's pretty rare to have a year where we don't have at least 6 or 8-inch snowfall multiple times.

[00:45:33] So, before...

[00:45:34] It doesn't always stick around.

[00:45:36] Before we move on to winter preps, I wanted to ask, like, do you also...

[00:45:40] I know you get, like, legit blizzards.

[00:45:42] Do you also get...

[00:45:43] Do you also get ice storms where you're at?

[00:45:46] Yes.

[00:45:46] Okay.

[00:45:47] Yeah, we do.

[00:45:48] I ask because...

[00:45:49] We got one about three years ago.

[00:45:50] I know we get those in North Louisiana.

[00:45:51] I know those are not uncommon at all in, like, Arkansas in that area.

[00:45:55] I wasn't sure if you got them as far north as you are.

[00:45:58] We can.

[00:45:59] They're more rare.

[00:46:00] We tend to get more snow than that.

[00:46:02] Or if we do get rain, it tends to be, like, light freezing rain.

[00:46:07] But we did get...

[00:46:09] I think it was a half to three-eighths inch of ice buildup a couple, three years ago.

[00:46:15] Fortunately, I had just that year gotten my generator panel installed.

[00:46:21] And we had a very cozy three days next to our fireplace.

[00:46:27] So, you know, it's rare, but it does tend to take out power pretty much everywhere.

[00:46:34] Oh, yeah.

[00:46:34] There were some areas...

[00:46:37] Let's see.

[00:46:38] It was...

[00:46:39] So, it was three days for us.

[00:46:43] Some of the other people out of town near me, it was seven days.

[00:46:47] I know for a couple of neighborhoods by us, it was a week and a half.

[00:46:52] Sounds about right.

[00:46:54] My wife...

[00:46:55] My wife...

[00:46:56] So, ice storms were actually, like, one of her principal...

[00:46:59] One of her family's, like, principal preparedness scenarios growing up.

[00:47:03] And, again, my wife didn't grow up in a prepper family.

[00:47:06] Neither did I.

[00:47:07] We did the stuff we did because it's hurricanes down here.

[00:47:10] And they did stuff they did because it was ice storms up in north Louisiana.

[00:47:14] But, like, a lot of the things they did, like having extra food in the freezer and, you know, being able to kind of, like, shut up in your house, keep warm, and live off what you had.

[00:47:23] Like, that was all based around the fact that when you get a snowstorm up there in rural north Louisiana, you're going to sit at your house and live off what you have for probably anywhere from seven to 14 days.

[00:47:36] Yeah.

[00:47:37] Like, 10 years ago, we had the...

[00:47:40] Well, it was more than 10 years ago.

[00:47:42] 20...

[00:47:43] No, about 10 years ago.

[00:47:44] 2014, we got, like, 36 inches of snow or something like that.

[00:47:48] Oh, my.

[00:47:49] Overnight.

[00:47:50] 36 inches of snow with, I believe it was 35 to 45 mile-an-hour winds with gusts up to, I think, 55 was the peak.

[00:47:58] Yeah, I had a snow drift against my...

[00:48:01] I had a red Chevy pickup at the time.

[00:48:03] And when I woke up to go to work, I was told...

[00:48:06] I saw a text that said, hey, we're not going to work today.

[00:48:09] Fantastic.

[00:48:10] Excellent.

[00:48:10] Because when I looked out my bedroom window, I could not see the cab of my pickup.

[00:48:14] Because the drift had covered my pickup.

[00:48:16] Why haven't you moved down here to Louisiana yet?

[00:48:19] Oh, because it only happens, like...

[00:48:21] I think it's happened, like, twice in my life.

[00:48:23] Oh, you know, only twice in my life have I not been able to find my truck in the front yard because there was so much snow on the ground.

[00:48:30] Yeah, but, you know...

[00:48:32] I mean, I was born and raised here, man.

[00:48:34] The whole family's here.

[00:48:35] You know, it's interesting when that happens because you get to watch the entire landscape around you change.

[00:48:44] Over the course of, like, an hour and a half.

[00:48:47] You know, you used to...

[00:48:50] I don't know how many of you guys are interested in history, but that's another reason why I do not move right there.

[00:48:57] So, Nick...

[00:48:59] My wife loves the snow.

[00:49:00] I don't want you or your wife to take this the wrong way, but does she have, like, a history of mental illness in her family?

[00:49:06] I, like, you know...

[00:49:09] Unfortunately, several of her family members are Democrats.

[00:49:13] Oh, well...

[00:49:15] I had to make the Ron Swanson joke.

[00:49:17] I'm sorry.

[00:49:18] Well, that tears at your wife is insane.

[00:49:22] Lovely woman, but nuts.

[00:49:24] Yeah, she's a good kind of nuts.

[00:49:25] She's fun.

[00:49:27] But, um...

[00:49:29] You know, yes.

[00:49:30] Yes, we do get blizzards.

[00:49:32] We do get ice storms.

[00:49:33] And you are not going to leave when you get one of those.

[00:49:38] For instance, in our small neighborhood, it's less than half a mile from my house to the highway.

[00:49:44] And we had three different power lines down across the road from the ice storms, from trees taking out power lines.

[00:49:50] You're just not going to travel.

[00:49:52] And so you need to be reasonably self-sufficient for that.

[00:49:56] And fortunately for us, at least for our area at the time, it stayed in the upper 30s for the entirety of that ice storm a couple years ago.

[00:50:05] So it wasn't as bad for people.

[00:50:07] Their houses only got down into the upper 40s to upper 30s, depending on how bad your house insulation was.

[00:50:14] My neighbor up the hill from me said her house got down to about, I think, 39 or 38 degrees inside.

[00:50:19] So they didn't have to worry so much about pipes freezing.

[00:50:24] But, you know, at that point, you're well into temperature zones where even under blankets and in coats, you can get into hypothermia territory, which is getting very dangerous.

[00:50:35] You know, that's one of the things I wanted to bring up, just the symptoms of hypothermia.

[00:50:41] Shivering, slurred speech, clumsiness, weak pulse, lack of coordination, memory loss, dizziness, redness of the skin.

[00:50:50] And then, you know, obviously eventually loss of consciousness.

[00:50:53] I mean, the worst thing you can have if someone is cold is they're no longer shivering.

[00:50:58] Because, you know, they burn through their body's reserves of glucose and their body cannot keep themselves warm anymore.

[00:51:06] You know, that can happen indoors if your power is out and your heat is off.

[00:51:10] It's also worth pointing out that it happens at much higher temperatures than you would believe once you get soaking wet, once immersion happens.

[00:51:19] Like, I've seen someone get hypothermic on a 75 degree day with a light wind.

[00:51:24] Yeah.

[00:51:24] I was going to say, I've seen people have trouble maintaining their core temperature as high as like the high 50s.

[00:51:31] Yeah.

[00:51:32] And, I mean, that's why, like, and again, very different climb down here in southeast Louisiana.

[00:51:39] And I'm slurring my speech, but it's whiskey, not hypothermic.

[00:51:43] Blame the wassail.

[00:51:45] Yes.

[00:51:45] But, like, it's worth pointing out that, like, that's why in most, in any situation where a person's self-preservation is called into question, like, you have to keep them warm.

[00:51:59] You have to keep them dry.

[00:52:00] Those two things come ahead, almost come ahead of everything except, like, you know, severe arterial bleed or something that's going to take you out in the next 45 to 46 seconds to two minutes.

[00:52:12] It's like, you have to be hyper concerned and aware of a person's core temperature because if it gets too low, nothing else you do is going to offset the fact that they're hypothermic.

[00:52:22] Their body will start shutting down and their internal organs start failing.

[00:52:27] And their organ damage will accelerate faster from blood loss if they are also cold.

[00:52:31] Yeah.

[00:52:31] I mean, that was an interesting thing that we learned in GWAT from a lot of the trauma care.

[00:52:36] If you could keep, and believe it or not, in the desert, it does get freaking cold.

[00:52:40] If you could keep a casualty warm while you were evacuating them, you could keep their core body temperature up.

[00:52:48] They stood a much higher chance of survival even with, like, multiple limb loss.

[00:52:53] Well, and you and I.

[00:52:54] Multiple traumatic injuries.

[00:52:55] And you and I talked about this in central Iraq where I was.

[00:52:58] Like, in the winter, I can remember the lows being in the high teens.

[00:53:04] Yeah.

[00:53:05] Which, and because I worked the night shift, I was out on active flight line in the teens.

[00:53:12] And in the desert.

[00:53:13] With 10 to 15 mile an hour winds.

[00:53:15] I'm going to tell you that the coldest I've been in my life was when I was trying to service a de-icing ring on the top of a rotor head.

[00:53:23] So, on top of the fact that I'm on a flight line, it's like midnight.

[00:53:27] It's dark outside.

[00:53:28] I'm holding a flashlight in my teeth.

[00:53:30] I'm standing on top of an aircraft, so I have no freaking cover whatsoever.

[00:53:34] It is so godforsaken cold outside that I cannot feel my fingertips.

[00:53:38] But the thing I am trying to fix is so tiny and fiddly, I can't do it with gloves on.

[00:53:44] So, I had took my gloves off, put my hands down the front of my pants to warm them up.

[00:53:48] Too much information I know, but just stick with me on this.

[00:53:51] Until I had enough heat and feeling in my fingertips to pull my hands out and do as much as I could before my hands went numb again and back down the pants they went.

[00:53:58] And I repeated this until I eventually got everything threaded in and torqued and tight.

[00:54:05] And I swear to God, it's the coldest I've ever been in my life.

[00:54:10] That is an average weekend snow shoveling in the winter.

[00:54:13] Yeah, I would just die.

[00:54:16] I'd light myself on fire to not be that cold again.

[00:54:20] And unfortunately, that is a real danger up here.

[00:54:25] Especially with homeless populations.

[00:54:28] In Chicago, it happens.

[00:54:30] Every once in a while, you guys will see it on the news.

[00:54:32] Rockford, Illinois.

[00:54:33] It happened a couple times last year.

[00:54:35] An abandoned building with some homeless individuals.

[00:54:39] They set a fire in a burn barrel.

[00:54:41] And it got out of control.

[00:54:42] And it led to a structure fire.

[00:54:44] And a couple of people died.

[00:54:45] Well, and I don't know if you count this as a winter hazard.

[00:54:48] But I mean, how many times has a person given themselves carbon monoxide poisoning from running heaters in an enclosed area?

[00:54:57] It happens.

[00:54:58] Propane heaters, kerosene heaters.

[00:55:00] Because firing up your stove and opening the door or firing up your oven and opening the door to heat your house can lead to carbon monoxide poisoning.

[00:55:09] We see it all the time.

[00:55:11] We see it all the time.

[00:55:12] It is a real shame.

[00:55:13] And it is something that they talk about on the news up here fairly regularly.

[00:55:18] That you cannot heat your house with those things.

[00:55:21] And that's part of where the winter preps come in.

[00:55:23] I mean, making sure you have, at least up here, enough blankets, jackets, snow gear to keep yourself warm inside your house or even inside your car.

[00:55:34] One of the things I insist for my wife, because we drive country roads coming home and you could slide off into a ditch, is that she keeps a pair of insulated winter boots, insulated coveralls, and heavy gloves and a heavy hat.

[00:55:47] In addition to whatever else she's bringing with her for the day in her car.

[00:55:53] Just, you know, you leave for work in the morning, the weather might be just fine.

[00:55:57] We could have had 10 inches of snow while you're at work.

[00:56:01] And now you're driving down some roads that are less plowed.

[00:56:06] None.

[00:56:09] Well, and like winter preps down here is pretty freaking simple because it's like two things that I always try to impress upon people because there's not a lot of winter to prep for down here relatively.

[00:56:21] But the two things I always lean on a person about, and one of these will probably resonate really heavily with you.

[00:56:26] First of all, I keep a poncho in my vehicle at all times.

[00:56:31] Because again, for down here, for the weather we have, my bigger worry is not necessarily snow.

[00:56:37] Because if it's snow, the whole state shuts down.

[00:56:39] I stay home for a day.

[00:56:41] It's getting what?

[00:56:42] I turn on the fireplace and pour myself a drink and we ain't going anywhere until it's done.

[00:56:45] But the thing I'm much more worried about is if it's cold and raining, because that happens a lot.

[00:56:51] And if you get wet and cold, hypothermia is right around the corner.

[00:56:55] So like I would rather, even if I, and by the way, like I usually make a habit in the colder months of keeping a jacket in the truck at all times.

[00:57:04] Even if I don't keep it in the truck, I'll never go anywhere without having a jacket in the truck just to be on the safe side.

[00:57:09] But the poncho stays in there year round.

[00:57:12] Yeah.

[00:57:12] Because you would not believe how often you think you're just going across town and the next thing you know, like you catch a flat or something happens and you're out in the elements and you're getting rained on.

[00:57:22] So poncho, like rain gear is mandatory.

[00:57:25] And it doesn't sound like it'd be a winter prep, but it turns into that really fast.

[00:57:29] Not by you.

[00:57:30] It absolutely is.

[00:57:31] When it's like 40, 50 degrees and you're soaking wet.

[00:57:35] And the other thing is I don't go anywhere without twice as much fuel as I expect to burn.

[00:57:43] Yep.

[00:57:44] If I'm driving to New Orleans and back, I know that that round trip is a hundred miles.

[00:57:49] I will not pull out of my, I will not leave my hometown with less than 200 miles worth of fuel, period, end scutcheon.

[00:57:57] Because if you are in that situation like I was when I was driving to college and you're going to be stuck on the interstate for two and a half hours at a standstill waiting on the roads to get cleared.

[00:58:08] And it's freaking 30 degrees outside and it's snowing.

[00:58:12] The truck becomes a lifeline because it has a heater in it.

[00:58:16] It has a heater and it's a fantastic wind blocker.

[00:58:21] Yes.

[00:58:22] You really don't feel the wind when you're closed up inside of a car.

[00:58:25] Yeah.

[00:58:26] But one thing you need to be mindful of, if you're going to run that heater and there is snow, make sure that your exhaust stays clear.

[00:58:36] Because you can get carbon monoxide coming into the cab and you can asphyxiate yourself fairly rapidly that way.

[00:58:45] No, I mean, and that's a fair point.

[00:58:47] But I guess what I'm saying is like, it never fails when I watch the news and I see people that get stuck in a snow drift and they run out of fuel.

[00:58:54] And now like the thing that could have been a survival shelter just turned into a casket.

[00:59:00] Because it's very quickly.

[00:59:02] I mean, we were talking earlier about how homes are fairly well insulated.

[00:59:07] Cars really aren't.

[00:59:09] Because unlike a home, see a home, all it has to do is keep a roof over your head and keep walls around you.

[00:59:15] It could weigh frigging 100,000 pounds as long as the earth underneath it doesn't shift.

[00:59:20] Cars have competing priorities.

[00:59:22] Yeah, cars have competing priorities.

[00:59:24] And the heavier they are, the worse their gas mileage and the more their emissions.

[00:59:28] So auto manufacturers have to ride this weird line of it's got to be insulated enough to be energy efficient but not so insulated that it weighs too much.

[00:59:37] So if the heater stops, that vehicle is going to get outside room temperature very, very quickly.

[00:59:45] Yeah.

[00:59:45] So like that's just the biggest benefit you'll have then is you won't have the wind chill.

[00:59:48] Yeah.

[00:59:49] But even then, it's not going to be a huge benefit.

[00:59:51] And the other problem is that if you run out of fuel, now you're forced out of the vehicle to go find help.

[00:59:56] Or you're forced to wait there and hope help comes to you.

[00:59:58] Well, I can tell you this.

[01:00:00] If you do find yourself in a vehicle out of fuel and it is sub-zero temperatures or blizzard conditions, your best chance is to be in that vehicle staying right there.

[01:00:13] Because you are on the road where the plows and EMS are going to be coming eventually.

[01:00:19] Because they're not going to leave your car sitting in the middle of the road.

[01:00:23] They just won't.

[01:00:24] And conscious or unconscious, they're going to find conscious or unconscious or dead, I suppose.

[01:00:29] They're going to find your vehicle when they attempt to clear the road.

[01:00:33] And not being out in that wind chill or not being out in a blinding blizzard may be the difference.

[01:00:40] Because people have survived in unheated cars for days.

[01:00:44] They have.

[01:00:54] A blanket in your vehicle.

[01:00:56] You know, which another thing I like to recommend to people around here is a blanket in their vehicle.

[01:01:02] And have, speaking of winter preps, having a mechanic you trust look over your car before you go into winter.

[01:01:10] Make sure all your fluids are topped off.

[01:01:12] Make sure your tires are in good enough shape to make it through the icy, snowy conditions.

[01:01:20] And your summer street tires are not going to do in four inches of snow when you have a four inch ground clearance coupe.

[01:01:29] Well, that and I can tell you that if you haven't checked your tire pressures in six months, the first freeze you get, those tires are going to be below, well below operating pressure.

[01:01:40] Absolutely.

[01:01:41] Because, like, if you think, now, again, I hate to say it this way because most people, when I say this kind of stuff, they're like, no shit, Phil.

[01:01:46] But you wouldn't believe how many people don't think about it until I mentioned it.

[01:01:49] But you do understand that, like, air expands and contracts based on temperature.

[01:01:54] So when you drive your vehicle and the tires are running over the interstate, they heat up and your tire pressure will increase a little bit.

[01:02:01] And when you leave it parked in front of your house and it gets freaking cold outside, the temperature comes down, the pressure goes down.

[01:02:08] And tires, a completely perfect tire with not a hole in it, not a nail, will lose about a half a pressure, a half a pound of pressure per month on average.

[01:02:18] And that's normal.

[01:02:20] That's not a problem with the tire.

[01:02:22] That's with no temperature fluctuations.

[01:02:23] That's with no temperature fluctuations.

[01:02:25] That's without a leaking valve core or a leaking bead or a nail in the tire.

[01:02:29] That's if it's perfect.

[01:02:29] It's going to lose a half a pound because the pores in the tire are bigger than the air molecules are.

[01:02:35] That's just the way physics screwed us over.

[01:02:38] I don't know how else to tell you.

[01:02:39] But the problem is that if you haven't checked tire pressures in six months, the first time it gets down to the 30s, thank Christ for tire pressure monitoring systems these days warning people.

[01:02:51] But, like, I used to see it very regularly, that first hard freeze we would get every year.

[01:02:56] You'd see people line up on the side of the road with busted tires.

[01:03:01] Because, yeah, tire pressure got too low.

[01:03:04] They got down the road.

[01:03:05] The tire, you know, maybe it was a little suspect, was a little old, and you pushed it beyond its design characteristics and it popped.

[01:03:11] A little dry rotted.

[01:03:12] Yeah.

[01:03:13] So, I mean, that's...

[01:03:15] Yeah.

[01:03:16] And also, like, most people don't realize this, and it's not an issue for a lot of people because, like, they'll wear the tread off their tires before this comes up.

[01:03:23] But if you don't drive a lot, NHTSA, National Highway Transit Safety Authority, they've been recommending, since I worked in mechanic shops when I was putting myself through college,

[01:03:33] they have consistently recommended that if your tires are five years beyond their date of manufacture, they be changed.

[01:03:41] Yeah.

[01:03:41] And if you don't know when the tire was manufactured, there's a date code stamped on the side of it.

[01:03:47] But the cheat code is, if you bought the damn things five years ago, it's time to put a new set on.

[01:03:54] Yeah.

[01:03:55] With the understanding that even if you bought them five years ago, sometimes if it's a weird size or a brand that doesn't turn over very much,

[01:04:04] those tires could have been manufactured a year before you put them on your vehicle.

[01:04:08] So you might only have four years left.

[01:04:10] And again, if you buy a tire and you drive 30,000 miles a year, you're going to knock all the tread off them before that comes up.

[01:04:16] But if you're a person who works from home like I do a lot, I mean, the last set of tires I put on my truck, I put it on because the tires were dry rotting.

[01:04:28] They still had half their tread life on them.

[01:04:32] It's a shame.

[01:04:33] It's a shame.

[01:04:33] But, you know, the rubber degrades because of UV and oxygen exposure.

[01:04:38] Yeah.

[01:04:38] And there's nothing you can do about it, unfortunately.

[01:04:40] And car batteries.

[01:04:41] But you know what?

[01:04:41] Car batteries also love to die in the winter for biochemical reasons.

[01:04:45] That's what I was just going to bring up.

[01:04:47] Especially, especially when you get down into the negatives.

[01:04:50] You can have a brand new battery.

[01:04:52] And if it gets down to negative 50 with the wind chill, your car is going to struggle to start.

[01:04:57] It just is.

[01:04:59] The chemical reactions do not work at those extreme low temperatures as well.

[01:05:02] My chemical reactions don't work well at those temperatures.

[01:05:07] Well, that's fair, man.

[01:05:10] Humans don't really operate well in super cold temperatures or super hot temperatures.

[01:05:15] But that's why we have to take advantage of the technology we have and remember to bring with the clothing items we have or can have with us so that we have that extra cushion.

[01:05:28] You know, it's one thing that a lot of people don't think about, especially I noticed when after Hurricane Katrina, when a lot of families moved up to the Chicagoland area from New Orleans.

[01:05:39] Changing out your anti-France.

[01:05:41] Changing out your anti-freeze and your radiator fluid.

[01:05:45] Yeah.

[01:05:46] Your guys' radiator fluid freezes at a much higher temperature than it does than the radiator fluid they put into cars up here.

[01:05:55] That's a fair, I mean, that's fair.

[01:05:58] It's, I have seen people's radiators explode in my high school parking lot because their car came from up, from down south and they did not flush their radiator and put proper cold winter rated radiator fluid in.

[01:06:12] I will also say that, not that it applies to any of you say it is that choose to live up in those places, but for those of you who are moving to a place where it gets much colder, also bear in mind that the oil you put in your vehicle very often is dependent upon, the weight is dependent upon the ambient temperatures.

[01:06:30] Like down here, I guarantee you I probably put in a thinner grade of oil than, or a thicker grade of oil than what, yeah, what Nick does because down here it gets from, I mean, an average winter it might get as low as 30, maybe.

[01:06:46] And it'll get us.

[01:06:47] What, 20, 30?

[01:06:48] Hmm?

[01:06:49] 20, wait, 30?

[01:06:50] 10, 30.

[01:06:51] 10, 30.

[01:06:52] 10, 30.

[01:06:52] Yeah, 10, 30 is okay for most stuff.

[01:06:55] I mean, our snowblowers, we run with like 530 in them for the most part.

[01:07:00] But the, uh, another thing you got to watch out for, windshield washer fluid.

[01:07:05] Mm-hmm.

[01:07:06] Uh, windshield washer fluid, there are multiple blends and the all season blend is only good to about 15 or 20 degrees.

[01:07:14] I've, I've heard this, but honestly, down here, you can't even, like, I, you can't always find the winter blend everywhere around here because it just doesn't get cold enough often enough to justify it.

[01:07:28] Yeah.

[01:07:28] And personally, I have never seen windshield washer fluid down here freeze.

[01:07:33] I have watched it freeze coming out of my windshield washer nozzles with the winter blend in.

[01:07:39] That is stupid.

[01:07:40] Yeah.

[01:07:40] It'll, it'll hit your windshield and it'll, it'll glaze your windshield solid.

[01:07:44] Yeah.

[01:07:45] See, I use windshield washer fluid to like unglaze and un-ice my windshield because it just doesn't get that cold down here.

[01:07:51] It makes it worse.

[01:07:53] If your engine is not up to temperature and that fluid is not nice and, and warm, it will make it worse.

[01:07:59] See, that's what we call a hint.

[01:08:02] That's, that's when you should turn.

[01:08:04] To let your car warm up.

[01:08:05] No, no.

[01:08:06] That's when you should relocate.

[01:08:08] Come down, come down to the land and milk and honey.

[01:08:11] If you don't want to come.

[01:08:11] It's awful hard to go snowshoeing when mosquitoes are walking off with your children.

[01:08:16] I don't see a bad, I don't see.

[01:08:17] That's when you feed your kids so that they're heavy enough that the mosquitoes can carry them off.

[01:08:22] This is when having a chubby child is a benefit.

[01:08:25] Well, there is that.

[01:08:26] It's a survival thing.

[01:08:27] It's not the fact that we eat.

[01:08:28] It's not the fact that everything we eat is deep fried and battered in butter.

[01:08:33] Hey, that's just being delicious.

[01:08:34] But I know I brought this up when we were talking about the home improvement preps, but know where your water, water shutoffs are if you live in an only climate.

[01:08:42] Because if you do happen to lose power in the winter, you're going to need to drain down all of your water lines, hot, cold.

[01:08:50] If you have boiler heat like me, know how to drain your boiler.

[01:08:53] Because if it gets down below 30 and your boiler freezes, you will crack your heating element in your boiler.

[01:08:59] And then it's a whole new system.

[01:09:02] I mean, this bears pointing out, but our buddy Stuart, when they had the polar vortex in Houston.

[01:09:08] Yeah, the big freeze.

[01:09:09] If memory serves me, he was the only person on his entire street that did not have burst pipes.

[01:09:14] So when the temperature finally came back up, he was supplying water for the whole Daggum Street because everybody else had burst pipes.

[01:09:21] Well, and if I recall correctly, down there, their water pipes come in at grade level or above.

[01:09:30] Like they pop out like a gas line and come in the side of your house.

[01:09:33] Yeah, so that's not uncommon down here.

[01:09:38] But again, it all comes down to like, you know, you and me and me and Andrew have had this conversation over the years about how like.

[01:09:45] Sure.

[01:09:45] The way an individual or an area preps for winter is kind of dependent upon the area.

[01:09:52] And like down here with what our average temperature swings are, the polar vortex Texas felt, it's not an exaggeration to say it's record setting.

[01:10:01] Yes, it is.

[01:10:03] Yeah, it was, it reset people's expectation of what a polar vortex could or would ever be down here.

[01:10:11] It doesn't happen.

[01:10:13] I mean, it's no different than like, you know, we, the entire state shut down down here for two days because it got down to, I want to say like 19 degrees.

[01:10:23] And it didn't get back above freezing for 40 hours.

[01:10:27] And that was apocalyptic down here.

[01:10:30] Like.

[01:10:30] Yeah, your heaters are just not big enough.

[01:10:32] To handle that.

[01:10:33] My heater was fine.

[01:10:34] Like we were, we were okay.

[01:10:35] We were okay in my house.

[01:10:36] But when I say apocalyptic, I mean like the, the state declared a state of an emergency.

[01:10:43] The parish declared a, and for anybody that's not down here, like parish is y'all's county.

[01:10:48] It's the same thing.

[01:10:49] We just call it different stuff because we're weird.

[01:10:50] But like the parish cleared a state of emergency.

[01:10:54] People were told you will be, you will be escorted back to your house if you attempt to leave.

[01:10:59] Like we are serious about stay off of the freaking roads unless you were going to a hospital.

[01:11:05] And if you are, we would rather you call an ambulance and let us come get you rather than you get out on the roads.

[01:11:10] Like it was, it was all hands to battle stations.

[01:11:13] And by the way, at a moment like that where you would swear up and down, somebody would be screaming about how like the government is going to tell me what to do.

[01:11:21] No one argued.

[01:11:23] Well, it's very similar to when we had the polar, the polar vortex around here and it got to negative 50.

[01:11:28] Nobody argued with the travel restrictions of unless you're going to work or the, or a doctor, you do not travel.

[01:11:34] Because in your house, I mean, in my house, I lived in a house that was built in the 1940s at the time.

[01:11:40] It was a GI special.

[01:11:42] All right.

[01:11:42] You're familiar with that?

[01:11:44] Oh, yeah.

[01:11:45] Insulation wasn't great.

[01:11:47] We had frost forming on the interior walls of the house despite our, our, our temperature in the house being in like this 68, 69 region.

[01:11:58] Been frost forming on the exterior walls.

[01:12:02] That is belligerently ridiculous.

[01:12:04] Because the wind is just that cold.

[01:12:07] Yeah.

[01:12:08] So, I mean, is, is there anything else we can chuck in here for winter preps?

[01:12:12] I mean, you know what?

[01:12:15] Believe it or not, make sure your footwear, even if it's not insulated boots are rated for the temperatures you expect to experience.

[01:12:25] Summer shoes, the rubber in them is too hard for some winter temperatures and the, and the rubber can crack and come apart and delaminate.

[01:12:37] I've seen it happen.

[01:12:38] I had a pair of, uh, Phil, you'd be familiar with these, the, uh, the Danner Air Force tan boots from, from G Watt.

[01:12:47] A buddy of mine, the Air Force was giving away boots like you wouldn't believe.

[01:12:50] And we had the same shoe size and he was a chair force bat.

[01:12:53] So he, he kept shucking me shoes.

[01:12:55] Well, the problem was when you wear those desert boots and it's 15 degrees or below out, the rubber inner sole is too brittle and it cracks.

[01:13:06] And the sole starts to delaminate while you're walking down the street.

[01:13:11] I'm giving you this look that the, the audio listeners can't, can't, can't see because like the idea that is too cold for your shoe, for your rubber shoes doesn't compute in my brain because I've never.

[01:13:25] The harder the rubber.

[01:13:26] No, I mean like.

[01:13:27] The worse the traction in the cold and the, and the more brittle.

[01:13:30] But like, I'm not, I'm not mentally challenged.

[01:13:32] I understand physics.

[01:13:32] No, no, no.

[01:13:33] It's, it sucks.

[01:13:34] But it's, it's more of the like, what do you mean it gets that cold where you live?

[01:13:39] Cause it doesn't get that cold anywhere that I've ever lived.

[01:13:44] Everywhere.

[01:13:45] And, but really it only has to get down to like 15 degrees for it to be too cold for some shoe rubbers.

[01:13:51] Yeah, but 15 degrees is also too cold for Phil to be outside.

[01:13:55] That's fair.

[01:13:59] There's a terminal element that's upset with how cold my weather gets.

[01:14:03] I don't remember where he's from, but I'm guessing it's a place where like it's too cold for boots doesn't compute.

[01:14:11] Like there's just no, there's no part of that.

[01:14:14] There's no part of that that seemed called for.

[01:14:17] Somebody needs to have a discussion with mother nature about calming the hell down, but don't tell her to calm down.

[01:14:22] I drive a V8 pickup.

[01:14:23] I'm trying to help with the global warming.

[01:14:24] It's just not working very fast.

[01:14:26] I mean, I got a Toyota, but it's an old Toyota that giggles every time you say the word gas mileage around it.

[01:14:33] So like I'm doing everything I can think of.

[01:14:36] Right.

[01:14:37] I also eat lots of red meat.

[01:14:39] So like I'm doing my best to, I'm doing my best guys.

[01:14:41] I don't know what to tell you.

[01:14:43] To both boost and drop the cow population.

[01:14:46] Yes.

[01:14:49] Damn it.

[01:14:50] Good point, Nick.

[01:14:53] You're helping and hurting.

[01:14:54] But I'm making my.

[01:14:55] That's everything I can think of.

[01:14:56] But I'm making my own farts to offset the cow farts that are no longer being produced.

[01:15:00] So there is that.

[01:15:02] Bringing balance to the force.

[01:15:04] Balance to the force.

[01:15:06] Okay.

[01:15:08] So yeah, I mean, I, this was your idea to bring up.

[01:15:11] And like I told you from the word go, like anytime we have a discussion about winter preparedness,

[01:15:15] I'm pretty much going to sit here and make the jokes because I have no freaking, like my definition of winter preparedness is to have,

[01:15:23] to fill my Viking ale horn with bourbon and coke and sit by the fire because we're not going outside while it's winter.

[01:15:30] I'm not going outside until it's spring again.

[01:15:33] I'll hibernate for the winter.

[01:15:34] How about that?

[01:15:35] I'll be, I'll just be a bear.

[01:15:36] That's fair.

[01:15:37] That's probably the best way to deal with winter is just to, you know, Idaho gets cold.

[01:15:44] Idaho gets cold.

[01:15:46] But yeah, like you said, the Midwest cold, it really depends.

[01:15:50] I mean, we can have pretty mild winters.

[01:15:52] So far, our winter has been pretty mild.

[01:15:53] I think we've only had two or three days where we've been in the negative so far, but we're not to the cold part of the year yet.

[01:16:02] That's coming up after the new year.

[01:16:04] Only two or three days where it's been the negatives.

[01:16:07] Yeah.

[01:16:08] I mean, sometimes in December we'll have the entire, well, most of the month of December will be near zero to sub zero.

[01:16:16] We've had that quite fairly often.

[01:16:20] So Nick, not that I was ever considering moving to Illinois for a variety of reasons.

[01:16:25] For political reasons, I recommend you don't.

[01:16:27] Well, I'll put it to you this way.

[01:16:30] Like Gilly and I were talking about the Matter of Facts camping trip.

[01:16:33] And like, I have already picked my route to go around your home state.

[01:16:37] No offense.

[01:16:38] Do that.

[01:16:40] Do that.

[01:16:41] Yeah.

[01:16:42] There's nothing here that's worth it except for maybe the museums in Chicago make a separate trip.

[01:16:49] Nah.

[01:16:50] If you want to see those.

[01:16:51] I don't know.

[01:16:51] There's a German submarine you can walk through.

[01:16:53] It's pretty baller.

[01:16:54] Um, let's just say that I.

[01:16:56] We stole your submarine and put it on land.

[01:16:58] Let's just say that I don't drive across the country without taking a bag of party favors with me.

[01:17:02] And, um, I would really rather like not be in prison until my daughter gets married.

[01:17:10] Yeah.

[01:17:11] Illinois, like New York, likes to flaunt the safe travel laws of the federal government.

[01:17:21] So, be mindful of Illinois' firearms laws if you are going to come here.

[01:17:26] As much as I disagree with them, they will try to enforce them on you.

[01:17:29] And they will probably succeed because unlike us, their lawyers are paid for by millions and our lawyers are paid for by us.

[01:17:38] Well, technically, their lawyers are paid for by us too, which is.

[01:17:42] That's true.

[01:17:43] Incredibly freaking annoying.

[01:17:45] It's a deferred cost among a lot of us.

[01:17:48] That doesn't make it any better.

[01:17:51] Ooh, I haven't looked at the battle bunker.

[01:17:54] Joe makes a good point.

[01:17:55] I need to research the battle bunker.

[01:17:58] All right.

[01:17:59] GW.

[01:18:01] Well, let's go ahead and punt this one out the door.

[01:18:04] I've got, uh, I'm sure I have some nonsense I should be attending to.

[01:18:07] My wife said she was going to make red beans and rice for dinner, which will be interesting because she never voluntarily cooks or eats red beans and rice.

[01:18:15] I kind of ruin.

[01:18:16] I smell a home improvement project coming.

[01:18:18] Well, it's more because I ruined her when we first got married because we were freaking poor as hell.

[01:18:26] And, um, we had to eat red beans and rice and expired pork chops almost exclusively and peanut butter sandwiches for about two years to get up on her feet.

[01:18:36] You'll live on it.

[01:18:37] You won't be happy with it, but you'll live on it.

[01:18:39] Unfortunately, as soon as we were no longer dirt poor, she announced to me that she was never eating red beans and rice again for the rest of her life, which is a problem because I like red beans and rice.

[01:18:50] You're Cajun.

[01:18:53] Pretty sure that's required.

[01:18:54] Technically, she isn't, though.

[01:18:57] Joe, it's not just Chicago, man.

[01:18:59] It's not just Chicago.

[01:19:00] It's all the collar counties and and the stuff around St. Louis as well.

[01:19:06] Unfortunately, I mean, those areas are getting smaller, but what are you going to do?

[01:19:12] Yeah.

[01:19:12] I mean, bear in mind that there's oddballs like Naperville in the middle of a farming community.

[01:19:17] You got goddamn Naperville with their separate assault weapon ban because apparently Illinois's infringement is not good enough for them.

[01:19:27] Anyway, I'm just going to entertain this this fantasy I have of certain politicians getting syphilis for no reason because I'm a malicious person.

[01:19:36] But they deserve it.

[01:19:37] I mean, he's looking at congestive heart failure pretty quick based on what I can see.

[01:19:42] It's not going to get it.

[01:19:44] It's not going to be as unfortunate for him as syphilis would be, though.

[01:19:47] Anyway.

[01:19:48] True.

[01:19:49] Let's go ahead and punt this one out the door.

[01:19:51] Nick, thanks for talking us through cold weather preps.

[01:19:55] The top, I didn't even point it out at the top of the episode, but the episode is named,

[01:20:00] Oh, the weather outside is frightful and anytime it's in the teens or the negatives, I call it it's in the nopes for good reasons.

[01:20:08] Oh, it's fine.

[01:20:09] No, it is the opposite of fine.

[01:20:11] If it was fine, you'd be able to wear a short-sleeved t-shirt, smoke a pipe on the back porch like we can't do.

[01:20:16] I am wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt underneath my sweater.

[01:20:19] That's irrelevant.

[01:20:20] Anyway.

[01:20:22] Anyway, so next week we are going to be doing the stream, for those of you who like to watch on YouTube, on a Wednesday.

[01:20:30] Because I'm going to have to do some day juggling for the next few weeks while we deal with some family things.

[01:20:37] And I will do my best to let everybody know when we're going to be streaming.

[01:20:43] I'm hoping we keep to Thursdays most weeks, but next week will be Wednesday.

[01:20:48] Hey, man.

[01:20:49] You got to do what you got to do.

[01:20:50] Take care of family first.

[01:20:51] I'll be here when you need me.

[01:20:53] But for those of you who listen to the audio, it's going to come out on Friday pretty consistently, I think, I hope.

[01:20:59] Should be.

[01:21:01] We'll see.

[01:21:02] Matter of fact, this podcast is going out the door.

[01:21:03] Good night, everybody.

[01:21:04] Stay warm.

[01:21:05] Stay inside.

[01:21:05] And if it's in the nopes, don't go there.

[01:21:08] Bye, y'all.

[01:21:09] Bye.