Armchair Anonymous: Camping

I'm Dax Shepherd, I'm John Bobmonic, a bad man.

- Hello. - Your favorite topic, your favorite activity, camping. - I don't love it.

“- Yeah, I need to go in a tent, the bus life is fun,”

but having this prompt made me realize, no, I need to unzip that thing in the morning, crawl out y'all, fuck, guys, we'll go up in a plastic bag. But then you're like, let's make some coffee. And then everything just starts eating better and better.

- Now have you gone 10 camping since you stopped drinking? - Yeah. - You have, oh yeah. - Oh nice, okay. - Not a ton, you're right drinking helps.

- It helps. - It helps. - It helps. - Some of those activities where it's like, is there an activity of drinking?

- Like snowmobiling. They tried to crack down on drinking and riding snowmobiles in the northern Michigan and it was constant. Guys, you're not gonna have an activity at all.

- It's all connected. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Okay, so this is crazy camping stories and they deliver, please enjoy. - Crazy camping.

(upbeat music) - Hi, Emma. - Hi. - How are you? - I'm great, how are you guys?

- Good, where are you at? - I'm in Ontario, Canada. - Beautiful, London, Toronto, where are we at? - I live in Orangeville, it's just a small town, maybe an hour and a half north of Toronto.

- In route to Muscoca? - Kind of a bypass, but yeah, it's sort of on the way. - Okay, and if you spend any time on those lakes. - Yeah, we've been up there a few times camping, topical camping, camping, and ding, ding, ding, ding.

- Yeah, I have friends with cottageers up in that area too. So yeah, spend a lot of time up there. - Yeah, you Canadian's got that figured out lake life.

“So where does your camping story take place, tell us?”

- My camping story takes place in Grundy Lake. It's an Ontario provincial park that's maybe two hours north of Muscoca. It's a little ways up. This takes place around 15 years ago.

So my husband, then boyfriend, in June, will have been together for 18 years. - Congrats, you seem very young to have been with someone for 18 years. - I agree. - I get that a lot, we started dating when I was 17.

Our wedding anniversary is January 2nd. Oh, that's a peculiar day to get married now. - I like it. We were gonna try and do a New Year's wedding, but no one would take us because they're all booked up.

So we were like, well, the second is this Saturday.

So as much as I feel like you complain about people not living your birthday, like we made people go to a wedding on January 3rd. - Yeah, after they just quit drinking. - But I love that because then it's like,

we're starting off the year with a party. - That's nice. - And love, that's nice. 'Cause beginning of January can be tough mentally. - Also, one of your resolutions is like, get married, you knock that on a day, too.

- Yeah, this is named Nolan. So when we met, he was super into camping. I had done some trips, but not a time. So he really got me into it. He was more of like a poor Tosh guy.

- Is that with a canoeing? - Yeah, and like you would put all your food in a barrel, and you have your backpack, and you can you in. - Oh, wow, cool. - Yeah, and I had done a couple of trips

like in Ungonquin, and we had done things like that before, but in this particular case, we were going to Grundy, so it's car camping. So you would drive up and park your car on the site, right? And you said if you're 10, no way you'd go.

So we were used to food barrel, string up your stuff in a tree, absolutely isolated, everything from animals, because when you're further north,

“you have to worry more about the wildlife.”

So we were kind of more in line with that, but then when you go car camping, you're basically only as tidy as your nearest neighbor. So you can't do a whole heck of a lot there. We've been camping, and we've seen like raccoon seating

hot dogs at the picnic table. - Sure, sure, sure, sure. - You're describing Michigan camping perfectly.

We always drive right to the spot.

You wake up, there's raccoons everywhere. There's empty bags from the hot dog buns that they got into. - Exactly, so in this particular case, we were there for a couple of days, and it was really beautiful.

We hadn't been there yet, and lots of really great hiking, amazing swimming. It was like really typical Canadian chill, like a group of seven painting. It was so beautiful.

We had done a lot of hiking, and we had noticed a lot more animal science than we had expected, given that it was a car campsite. - What kind of animals are up there?

What do we got to be nervous about? - Not so much moose in that area, but you'd be more thinking about bears. - No wolves. - I don't think so, maybe,

like there's tons of coyotes around here, but they're not really gonna do much. - Right, although we did hear that crazy coyote story, you know, it was in Toronto. - Nobody got killed.

- What? - It was like some kind of weird hybrid, wasn't it, of a coyote? - Wolf coyote. - It was like a wolf coyote.

- It was a story we heard. Is that what your time at? - It was an armchair anonymous. - Oh, I know, but then also we looked up a coyote did kill some.

- One, four, one. - One time in the history of coyotes from California. The person might already been dead, but anyways.

- They eat a lot of dogs,

“like if you have your dog and your backyard”

around here, you'd be careful with the like that, but yeah. It was one particular day we had already been there a bit and it had been raining all day. And so we were kind of cooped up under our tarp. And then it cleared up and we thought,

okay, let's go down to the water, let's enjoy the scenery, it was a gorgeous sunset. We wanted to watch the stars 'cause there's no light pollution that area. So we went down to the beach area just by our campsite

and we were kind of hanging on this rock. And it was this big kind of sweeping rock that went down into the water, scenery all around, and it was gorgeous. And then at one point while we were laying there,

we could kind of hear some rustling and the bushes beside us. No one was like, whoa, is that? And he was kind of freaking out about it. I should tell you, too.

He's insufferable when it comes to camping and wildlife. Whenever we would go places, he would sleep with a 12 inch knife. He would have like an axe. And he's like something happened. - Borderline paranoid.

- Definitely. - Yeah, you're supposed to sit there. - And he'd borderline you. - But he likes it, which isn't interesting. I know, it's like he wants it.

So I was just like, it's nothing, leave it alone. And then it's kind of rustling a little bit more and he's like, no, I'm like, I think that's actually properly something.

“And I'm like, you need to relax and chill”

'cause you're ruining my experience in the carpet. (laughing) And so at some point he goes stand up and like before I could even really react. He had like grabbed me by the scruff of my back

and had like hoisted me up to a standing position. And I kind of looked over and a meter and a half away from in the bush is this huge bear. - Oh, no. - And Monica meters three feet.

That's the length of our coffee table. - No. - Just scribe for me how big the spare is. - What color, black bear? It was not small.

- Bigger than a newful in? - Oh, definitely, yeah, 100%. - Okay, great. - Newful is a 200 pound dog Monica. - Okay.

- Oh, Monica. - Just see now. - Yeah, do you know how about weights and measures? (laughing) - Dax is a donary Canadian.

(laughing) Anyway, so the rest of the story, it has to be from his point of view 'cause honestly I blocked out. I don't remember any of it.

What Nolan says is that I stood up and like saw the bear and then he said that it was like the roadrunner likes. He said that my feet went so fast and I just started sprinting and like asked as I could. - Big no, no.

- You're supposed to play dead or running as Monica when you sprint away from the-- - I see, I see, I see. - You're not supposed to do that and that's exactly what I did.

I knew not to do that. I've watched Bear Girls and like I know about these things and I had been camping and I knew that but like my flight response. - Yeah.

- Yeah, so never your body takes over.

- Who can be thinking in those mountains? - You don't know how you're gonna react in any situations until you're in them. If you think you can model it out and then you gotta be in them.

- Oh, I ran and then because I ran, the bear was chasing me. - Yes, oh my God. - And then Nolan started chasing the bear. - Oh, Jesus.

- And it was like trying to like get it to like start chasing me. - Like a cartoon. - I know, I hear like through some stuff on it and he eventually kind of got in between me and the bear

and he started doing what you're supposed to do which was clapping and like whoa bear. And it stopped. I don't think I wanted to eat me. We probably startled it.

- Again, you both triggered both of your instincts which is like the bear just knows to chase anything that runs away from. - Yep. - And then you have to think about it.

- Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I just went sprinting and it chased. So it stopped and then Nolan chased it back. - I don't know how he did this. - He was just waiting for his opportunity.

- Like he was ready.

- This is why I'm always training for my kind.

- Oh my God, do you think he like paid for this? Like this is a sort of experience to do? (laughing) - I have platinum experience. (laughing)

- So yeah, he chased it up the tree and it was kind of hanging up there. And then the first thing I actually remember was like he grabbed my forearm and he was like stop running, he grabbed me to stop

and then I saw the bear. My legs turned to jello and I fell over. - 'Cause I was like so over adrenalineized, yeah. - It was freaky. So the bear went back up the tree and then we were like,

okay, we got to get back to our campsite but now this bear is up in the tree that we need to pass to get back to our campsite. - Oh boy. - And we were like, well, it chased me once.

I don't know, maybe it will chase me again. So we just backtracked basically around the other way to get back to the campsite and thinking, okay, we'll go back. But then on our way back, we saw two more bears.

- Jesus Christ! - One was further up on the trail and it kind of scooted across in front of us. And then we saw another one like in the periphery of a campsite.

So we're like, we're doing this anymore. So we got back to the site and we packed up our sleeping bags and we just slept in the raft for that night because we were like, I'm not sleeping inside anymore. - Yeah, yeah.

- We packed up and we drove home.

“I think we had another night we were supposed to spend”

and we were like, no, it's not happening. We're not doing it. - No one had fulfilled his fantasies. I don't need to round two of this. I've got enough to brag about, I don't need to press my luck.

- Well, that's exactly it. For years and years and years, he was like insufferable and he was so annoying and we would like stop. And he got vindicated in it, which is so annoying. - Yeah, he's got the leverage now for life, probably.

- Well, for a little bit, a couple years. He was even remarking how the couple nights before

He was like, I told you that I heard something

and like, that was probably there and I'm like, okay. I kinda understand that because then he had to get in the middle, he almost got mulled. - Well, I got a plot knowing when he was met with the situation and by the way, I would argue

his response was probably heavily weighted by you being there. But him on his own, I don't know that he exhibits this kind of chasing a bear. - He's pretty intense like that. We've had situations where we're like not necessarily

seeing animals. Like if a dog is running in the park towards him, he's like, yeah, I'll just put on my foot and kick. Like he's not the kind of guy who would run away. If my response is flight, his is definitely fight.

- Well, that's the pair, exactly. - Yeah, you found each other. - Yeah. - Yeah, so I'd left him to die. Didn't you think about him for a while?

- When you walked back and he's walked by the other two bears, like you just walked right by it. - Well, we were sketchy about it, but the one that we saw, like we were walking and it just like skirted across the trailer really well.

The whole thing was very heightened. I've talked to people who go there all the time and they're like, I have no idea what you're talking about.

We've never really encountered.

And it definitely is bear country and they're probably super used to humans, especially in that general area, but we've not been back. - Well, listen, if it had been a brown bear, we're not talking to him.

- Right? - Yeah, remember the brown bear story that guy was hunting moose and those things are fucking gnarly. - I think there are brown bears in Ontario.

“I think you have to go a lot further north”

to really get involved with them. They're definitely around here, like they're not far from where I live either, but they're not coming into where people are. - Yeah, I saw footage on Instagram two days ago.

Pretty certain it wasn't AI. Yeah, it was a guy in a four wheeler drive and done a trail and he came around to corn. There was just two fucking brown bears, like 1200 pounders.

The way they ran right up to the four wheeler to hit it. And then backed up, it was the scariest approach of everything. The way they run when you're looking at them is fucking terrifying.

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

- They're dangerous moose, but not intentionally, right? They don't see you until they're untaught with you. - We did get trapped one time in like a river inlet 'cause there was a mom moose and like a baby on either side. And we had to just hang out there for like an hour

because like you wouldn't cut them off, right? - Yeah, yeah. - Oh my God. I don't know enough and like, oh.

“- And Monica, have you ever seen a moose in real life?”

- You feel like it. - They're impossibly big. They're so tall. - Yeah, they'll be standing in the water and you see them and then they kind of come out on the bank

and you're like, oh my gosh, they're 12 feet tall. - And I think they can get up to 1,800 pounds. I told you this story where Uncle Grandpa and I Tom Hansen were in his backyard in Wyoming and we're just shooting the shit

and we're letting the dogs out. And there's only like eight feet between him and the lake behind him. And he's facing me and it's night. And then all of a sudden, just the whole background

behind him changes to black. And a moose is running through the backyard and just went between the gap of him and the lake. - Tom's like, oh my God, what was that? And I'm like, dude, I'm fucking bald

just ran behind you, you're almost gone. - Uh-huh. - Let's go camping. - I'm good. (laughing)

- We still can't fall the time or super pro camping. Like we have a five year old and we take him out. He loves it, but we definitely don't go to those areas 'cause I think Nolan wouldn't sleep at all. - He'd have to have a machine gun with him.

- Oh my god. - And doing the canoeing still, the porridge. - Gosh, we haven't done that for years and years it's kind of one of those things where the joy in it is maybe like the peace and the tranquility.

Some people go hard, but with a five year old, it kind of sounds like my worst nightmare. - Yeah, absolutely. - Was really lovely meeting you. - Lovely to talk to you guys too.

Thanks a lot for hearing my story. - Yeah, tell Nolan, we say thanks for his role in this business without him. We have no account on what the fuck you did. (laughing)

- He's the best, we love him. - All right, thank you. - Bye. - Oh my God, your best friend's calling. - Callie?

- Yeah. - Maybe it's about a time she saw Matt Damon in Ben Affleck. - Oh my God, I kept it quiet until now. - Callie.

- I am Callie, yes. - Callie is an important name to me. My best friend's name is Callie. - Spell this day. - No, she spells with a K.

- Under shit. - Have you met a lot of Callie's in your travels? - I have not met a lot of Callie's, but people do like to say, like California, what is it, short for, or they tell me

“that they had a cat when they were a kid named Callie?”

Every time I say, well, was it a Callie co-cat?

And the answer is, all of a sudden, yes.

- Yes, yes, yes. - And where are you, Callie? - I am in Plano, Texas. I guess we call it a suburb of Dallas, but it feels like it has all the things.

It's grown so much. - I was there last year with my best friend, Aaron, weekly at a Sprouts or a Total Wine. - We have both of those. I'm telling you, we have everything.

- Yeah, Plano's where it's out. So Plano's Texas, that's not where the story takes place. So October 2014, my husband and I had been married for about a year and a half at this time.

and sister-in-law, who lived in Oklahoma City,

“they decided along with us to buy tickets to a concert”

in St. Louis, and we were gonna make like a whole road trip of it. But being the young, not wealthy poor Mary couples that we were, we decided we would go camping

for the first night till like save on the hotel room.

So we had figured out campgrounds at the Miramat Caverns and Missouri, about an hour outside of St. Louis. And so we kind of picked that place out ahead of time and we all packed into our 2007 Toyota Prius that we had at the time.

Feel like it's worth a small pause because I just wanna put in the detail that my brother is like six to seven. And so I just want you to get the full picture of four grown adults in the Prius for six hours.

- With camping gear as well. - Yes, of course. (upbeat music) - So we made it to the Miramat caverns and had a short hike, eight over the fire,

“we're up late talking and drinking around the fire.”

At some point my sister-in-law and I decided that we were tired

so we went into the tent like this is very legitimate tent camping, we're not in a cabin or an RV. It's not glambine. - Do you have two, two mantents? Or do you have one four person tent?

- One four person which, again, sort of like the Toyota Prius. (laughing) It's like you can fit four people and zero other things and you must late very near each other. My sister-in-law and I go to bed and we leave my brother

and husband up, finishing visiting. And this is 2014 after all. So none of us have really great cameras on our phones but many of us have bought a Canon and believe that they are professional photographers.

- Oh yeah. - They're ugly and they have their telescope and their time lapse and they're looking at the stars

and trying to take amazing photos.

- They're nerdy now. - Yeah, they're having their astronomy course out there and we are already passed out in the tent. At some point in the night, they get tired and also come to the tent and go to sleep.

And then I don't know what time it is now. I haven't been out was around 2 a.m. But at the time, I don't know what time it is. I just know that I wake up to a sound. Something that also falls on is my older brother and I had

some sort of similar personalities and that there's a bit of like anxiety mixed in there like a heightened awareness of danger. And so I wake up and I hear a sound that I realize is sirens in the distance.

And so I'm awake and I see that across the tent my brother and my sister-in-law and my husband they're all still asleep. So I set up and the sirens are kind of getting louder in this cube ground where we are at is actually,

I don't know if we can call it a mountain. Let's probably some kind of foothills, okay? I don't know, the geography of Missouri super well. But there's a mountain-esque thing and you're going down switchbacks.

So sure we're familiar with like, you don't just go straight down a mountain. You're doing the back and forth. It kind of cut the elevation easily. And so I start hearing sirens, but also there's like

an engine, but it's not a constant engine. It's like revving or it gets really loud and then it cuts and I realize that it's like somebody driving very quickly down these switchbacks and they're revving the engine.

Every time they make it around more of the turns, at this point I sort of noticed that my brother was awake and I hear that it sounds like there's two engines on their sirens. And so I look at that to my brother,

we're both sitting up now. Of course our spouses, they are more of the balances out time. I can't say that my husband is laid back in anyway 'cause that is certainly not the case, but definitely not jumping to the worst case scenario.

Going in my brother and I. So we happened to be the ones that are awake, my brother and I and I looked at him and I said,

“is that not a fucking police chase coming down the mountainside?”

- Yeah, yeah. - He starts looking out the little net and windows, kind of a foggy night this night, but we've got headlights and we've got flashing police lights you've seen.

And so we start to wake up my husband and sister-in-law and the way that this can't we're gonna set up is that it's down the switchbacks. And when you get to the bottom of the switchbacks, it's just simple state campgrounds.

So there's like a gravel oval and tent spots and there's RV spots. We happen to be the only ones that were tank camping. It wasn't super busy and there was a couple of RVs

The mirror McRiver is just maybe about 15 or 20 yards from our tent like it's just right over there and you can hear the water tripling all through the night. And so these headlights are coming down. When they get down there, all there is the campground.

It's the only thing the road leads to.

“And so, okay, I think it's time to wake them up.”

So we can go to wake them up there first thing is down.

Like, oh, sure guys, I'm sure it is definitely a police chase coming down the mountain because y'all don't tend to jump to these worst-facing areas or anything. So they were kind of doubting and then about that time. McRiver is now in the campground, police cars should see it.

My brother has fully stepped out of the tent at this time and is like watching it and he's like, guys, we gotta go down past the RVs, the police chase is ended now. Then we've got more deputies like showing up.

They've turned the triums off. There's lots of shotting in it. Is at this time that it becomes very evident that we have a foot chase on our hands. Oh, wow.

We don't know what this person has done. We just know that they've been chased directly down the way for muscle. We decide that we need to get in the car

and we need to get in the car quickly.

And so we're trying to hurry and get our shoes on and everything.

“They've got the time that all four of us are outside of the tent.”

You can hear a splash in and the water. And this is the river that has been completely calm, just like a peaceful trip all night is suddenly splashing. And so we're like, oh, my gosh, he's in the water. He's just right there, he's in the water.

And of course, yeah, thinking that it's a drunk driver, you're thinking that this is a hurt and violent criminal. Clean a murder scene. Yes, absolutely. We are now really trying to get to the car and we all get in the preas and lock the doors

and husband turns it on and hits the gas. It's an emasculating thing to hide in. So you're already hiding, but you're also hiding in a preas. All of a sudden, he's hitting us and nothing's happening. And so this is like exactly like a scary movie.

At this point, you're all completely screaming. The fog has set in. So the hell that's hiding in the fog? I don't know the science behind it, but the air outside is chilly.

And there's for being upset heavy breathing individuals in the car. And so the windows are fogging on the inside. She's just couldn't find anything. Why is the car not working?

It felt long, of course. But probably like 40 seconds of this like he doesn't know what's wrong. He reaches down and he finds that the tried pod from them being professional with the hungry person

like before he had put it in the car before he went to bed, at the camera and the tried pod away. And it was on the floor board of the driver's feet. And it was up against the brake. Well, since this was a Toyota Prius,

you're not hearing an engine revving and thinking, oh, something must be on the brake. Nothing's happening. Like the electric engine isn't engaging because the brake is fully ground.

Well, so you've got to push the brake to turn it on, maybe even to, I think, with the Prius, you've got to have your foot, the brakes got to be depressing for the engine to turn on. If we weren't in a panic moment, perhaps you'd have noticed

the tried pod all along, trying to find his feet down there. But so after like 40 times thing,

it's finally he rips that thing.

And we decided like, okay, we just leave the campground for now on our way, out of like the gate. We tell them the police, hey, because they set up like a checkpoint, everything, hey, we think he was in the river like right by our tent

over there. And we just drive on up the switchbacks, out of the mountain, on our way up, we pass a fire department truck that's pulling a boat on a trailer. 'Cause they're, I'll go start their water search.

Oh, this is great. We have left our tent and our bags and all of our gear that's like around the fire we've left everything and driven back up for like the nearest town like 15 minutes,

probably got some terrible motel and just kind of like woke up and displayed the next morning and drove down there. And there was no sign of anything. Everything looked peaceful and normal and we backed up our stuff and drove onto St. Louis

and had, are we again, there was a Sunday night concert.

“So I went to the concert and then I think it was at some point”

on the drive back or maybe like the day off we got back. Right, we should look out and see like if there was a news story, figure out what actually happens and there was no sign of anything. And the guy was not a violent criminal.

They apparently just refused to stop for a traffic stop earlier in the night and then they crossed counties and you know how it is out there. You lose your jurisdiction. And so the one deputy, a lot of them go

and then somebody else tried to stop them later in the night because they'd heard the call from earlier and that's where that chase started. And they just had multiple traffic violations. I don't want to make a lot more trouble

after heard some news in the view of running. Oh, I would just think if he already has three DUIs and he's not supposed to be driving or looking at prison time you're like, well, fuck, they don't catch me. They don't know who was driving the car.

There's a lot of reasons.

“But by being there was not really a crime listed other”

than like, resisting arrest. But he was found in an empty campsite under a tent wearing nothing but boxer shorts. Oh, my God. Wait, what?

There's been a lot of debate through the years of like, was it under the cover of a tent? Does that mean that he was in our tent? Should we be concerned that he was at one of our sleeping bags and they were like, he and that's far up in the ground.

I feel like that. Like, I feel like he was under the entire tent. He just dove under. That's a good hideous spot, actually. He must have not dug out enough or something.

Just somehow they found me. Wow. Wow. That's our camping story. Oh, wow.

And if you've done much camp being sent them. I have three little kids. So I'm kind of like a tiredest from camping. My husband does take part to older kids. Once the baby gets older, then I think I'll be back to camping.

But yes, we continue to camp after that. And even if had a couple of family camping tricks, but I'm taking a break from it because it's too much chaos. Yeah, it's a lot to keep your eye on. It does make me crave camping.

Be next to a river hearing it. Babbling Brooks? Yes, some police sirens, some maniacs. Some peaceful police sirens. The guy with nothing to lose.

Wow. That's wild. Yeah, well, Kelly, that's wonderful. I mean, not for you, but for us. Thank you guys for having me.

And hopefully, I'll get what's a good one for this one. Yeah, thank you so much. Hi, Kevin. Hi, how are you? I have wonderful.

How are you? I'm probably the most nervous I've ever been. Oh, my goodness. I've been inside house fires before. And that says a lot.

“Wow, it's lattered, but you should not be nervous.”

No, there's nothing intimidating about Monica or me. Well, I'm scary. It's definitely called me down, so it's good. Where are you, Kevin? I live in Crete, Greece, the Mediterranean.

You're lying. How about an American end up in Crete? I'm the safety director for a Navy base out here for a US Navy base. Oh, you are.

Cool. Have you guys been busier than normal? You know, I thought you're going to ask that and business has picked up a little bit. We're doing good.

We're staying safe out here. OK, good. How long have you been in Crete?

This is our second time living here.

But I've been here recently for about two years. Before that, we were in Okenau, Japan. We like to travel. We like to get out and move around. And we just say we, you have a wife and some kids.

Is that what's happening? Yeah, I've got a wife and we've got six kids. Three of them are a little bit older. Oh, man. What a wife, guys are living.

This is awesome. Six kids. How are they liking that adventure? My 17-year-old son is kind of ready to be done with it. He's sick and moving his room around.

The younger two that are with us now, they enjoy it. They get a lot of good opportunities, man. A lot of things that people normally don't get to see. Yeah. So Kielo Niel was discovered on a military base.

If you recall that story, Monica? Yeah, maybe we discovered by a visiting coach. We'll see. And my kids are very un-athletics. Yeah, right.

I'm not going to happen. They need statisticians. Yeah, maybe a mask coach or something like that comes. Yeah. Maybe he's a biology.

I think is where we're going. OK. And is your wife also enlisted? No, I'm actually a civilian. I'm not in the military.

And she's got the hard job. She's been homeschooling these kids for past 10 years. Oh, it's hard. She's living her best life out here in Crete, though. Oh, God.

You have a camping story. Yes. So this takes place long time ago, 2003. I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. I see you.

Monica, Cedar Point. Kings Island, Cedar Point. You were very close to Kings Island. Let's get it out now. Very close.

We got it out. Yeah. The beast. The beast, yeah, of course. Single break your neck.

So we would typically go down to Red River Gorge to go camping. Is that in Kentucky? Yes, probably like southeast of Lexington. Beautiful place.

Lots of old sandstone archers everywhere. Lots of good hiking. So we'd probably been down there 10 times by this point. And there was a group of us. I want to say there was eight or nine of us.

Good mixture of guys and girls. What age were you at this time? I was 22. My buddy, Josh.

“He had just been dating this girl for, I think, two or three weeks.”

And she gracefully said, I'll go camping, which guys. Not of us had really ever met her before. It's a lot because, by the way, I've been in this exact situation.

She's joining a group that's already done this a million times, right?

Yes. Good for her. The first look we got over. She did not look like she was a avid camper. Oh, okay.

Already she was a little out of place. So we get down there Friday, everything's good. You know, it's usually cooler full of beer, fire, sitting around tell stories, get up Saturday morning and go and hike, try to look for some new stuff. So we're out.

We're all doing our thing, hike in, having a fun time, and we'd run into this other group of hikers.

They start telling us about this cave that they had just been to.

Mm-hmm. We're like, this checks it out. We'll go.

“So this is something I believe they called it Moon Shiner's Cave.”

That tells you anything, some stuff was going on there at some point. So we get on the trail. We find this place and it's got this low opening, and we've got our flashlights with us. And the guy had told us that we can go all the way through it.

There's an opening, go out the opening, come back around yet. So we're going through, it's pretty dark. It's caving. Guys are trying to be macho, girls are not liking it, but they're putting up with it. I'm stuck.

Yeah. Yes. They're stuck. We get this points called like Fatman's Misery, something like that guy. And I hate it.

No, no. No. Very narrow. You've just stumbled into one of my great fears, which is claustrophobic. Yes.

When I see speedlunking, I'm like, "Oh, man, I hate it."

No. No. Very narrow. You've just stumbled into one of my great fears. Which is claustrophobic.

Yes. When I see speedlunking, I'm like, "Oh, man. Which is claustrophobic." Yes. When I see speedlunking, I'm like, "What the fuck is wrong with you that you would enjoy

that?" I don't know. Some people love that. Yeah, they do. They do.

Good for them. Our group was half and half. Half of us liked it. The other half is not too happy. So we're all squeezing through this thing.

We all make it through. Everybody's kind of happy.

“The new girlfriend Molly, I think she's probably a little bit claustrophobic.”

So she's kind of getting a little bit nervous, a little bit antsy. And we start walking. We finally see sunlight. The problem was, the sunlight was coming from above us. There's definitely an opening there, but it's like a sinkhole.

What? So we're looking up probably 12 to 15 feet. Jagged, sandstone all over it, and my buddy Joe's like, "Look, I think we can climb out of the stone. No, Joe.

No, no. Joe was that guy. Everybody's got the friend, Joe.

He attempts to scale it first.

He gets up. No issues. It looked like other people had done it before. She can kind of see where people were putting their hands. I went up, my buddy Pete goes up, and then two of the girls come up, no issues.

Up at the top, it's kind of slippery, got wet leaves, a little bit of mud and stuff. And it's Molly's turn to come up. No. Molly. I feel horrible from Molly.

Is anyone considered like tying a bunch of shirts together? Any kind of rope system to throw down? No. There wasn't even a thought. No.

It was like, we're all just going to muscle through this climb out. So she gets on there, we're kind of guiding her where to put her feet, where to put her hands. She gets up to the top. She comes up to me, I grab her hand, and I say, you know, you're going to go behind

me, but go to the left. Don't go to the right. It's slick. For whatever reason, she ignored it. She didn't hear it.

She steps to the right and she slips.

“Have you guys ever seen those like Nestey Plunge commercials?”

No. No. They just fall back into the pool. Oh my God. She went straight down this hole.

Oh, oh, oh my God, doesn't hit the side miraculously. Lands on her back, I roll back. We all freeze. It's dead silence. Everything's going through my head.

I'm like, is this girl dead? Is she paralyzed? Yes. How are we going to get EMS here? Like, this is kind of before cell phones.

Also, climbing out of un-shaft is much easier than climbing down a shaft. We still had a few people down there. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Okay.

And I just remember screaming down like, don't touch her. Don't move her. Let's give her a second. It felt like eternity. Her eyes opened up and you hear, she had gotten the winds like severely knocked out

over. Yeah. And she was like, after like 30 seconds, my beta blocker's kicking in and my mouth has gotten all dry here. After about 30 seconds, she sits up.

She starts feeling around. She was visibly terrified, but she stood up and started checking her everything was good. And we're like, look, you got two options. We can go back through the cave to get out, to get back to the camp or bad option climbing again.

Oh, boy. This girl was a trooper though. She ended up climbing out, we got her out, everybody got up safely. We're all kind of just like racking our brains like what just happened. Go back to the camp site, everybody kind of goes to their tents, people are cracking beers.

She goes in there and we start here and like crying, like weeping, we're like, oh, no. She's in a bad way. The shock is warm on. Yeah. The shock.

Yeah. The other girls go in there and she came out of the tent. She lifted up her shirt, her entire back. Everything was bruised. Like the worst bruising I've ever seen in my life.

Oh, God. We got out of there safely. Nobody was seriously injured. I doubt she ever went camping again. I don't think that relationship lasted too long.

Right. Doesn't sound like a match to me. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah. They're alive. So there's photos. Yeah.

Take a look at those photos.

So one of them is the entrance. Oh. Okay. The entrance doesn't look inviting at all for for the listener. The entrance is like, I don't know, there's a three-foot gap, best to get in.

And it's just miles of shale above you. Oh my God. And then the next photo is someone looking down into this whole fuck that. Also what she landed on is just covered in fucking sharp rocks. It was a miracle.

“What if she did break anything and she just ignored it?”

I'm surprised she didn't have internal bleeding. She probably did and you guys just didn't do anything about it. I just mentioned the whole shock aspect, she was probably in shock. She gets that plight or fight thing going on and she's not really feeling anything. Yeah.

And I had to bore you, but I had this pretty horrific motorcycle accident in Santa Monica. And I didn't have insurance. So I refused the ambulance and then I actually rode the broken motorcycle 10 blocks home. And I'm think I'm fine and then I got in the shower and boy once I got in the shower was like, oh boy, I think I have some broken things.

It's crazy how long it can be the way to like that. Yeah, well, it's a little bit of denial mentally and then obviously you're like, I do not want to go to the hospital. That's just another ordeal. Can't afford it?

I hope Molly is thriving. Oh, she is.

In her big city job, or she never has to go camping ever again, probably an injury attorney

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

But the man I see this, you have beta blockers on demand, which makes me think, do you public speaking or something when do you need them? Yeah, with my position, it's called the AFN, like the Armed Forces Network. We do have a radio show that I'll go on and promote different safety things. And then I've got to get up in front of the command a lot and just give speeches and talk

about risk management, all that kind of fun stuff. Yeah. Wow. I've never, and I have a lot of friends that obviously take beta blockers because they're performers.

But I've not heard the dry mouth thing like Kristen takes them before she sings. That's exactly what I thought. I was like, oh my god, that's a side effect. Well, how is she doing?

“What if she got dry mouth right before a big thing?”

Guys, we're all different.

Our bodies react differently.

You're right. You're so right. You're right about that camera. Can I give a quick shout out? Yeah.

My beautiful wife, Teneo, it's one o'clock in the morning here. She tried to stay up. She apologized. Is she want to come see you? No, we apologize that this is the timing.

This is the best Zoom call I've ever been on, so really if we can. Well, please send her our love. Yes. True angel on earth if she is home schooling, all these children. We did it for whatever it was to monster COVID, and it was almost family ending.

You know? She's definitely the rock of this family. She keeps it all together, so much love to her. I wish you was here. Oh, love.

That's fun and grease. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to stay as long as we can. Well, lovely meeting you Kevin. Take care.

Callie Nicta, callie Nicta. Bye. Bye. Bye. Does that mean that way?

It was definitely goodbye, and grease. Was it goodbye? I love you. Or like, it could have been a lot of things, but you guys are so hot. Hello.

Are you in an RV? I am actually, it felt very 17 considering it's a camping story. Exactly. Sim. I'm actually packing to go camping this evening.

Oh, my God. Ding ding are you in Canada? Yes. I'm definitely in Canada. You clearly picked up on that.

Yeah. Are you an Ontario? Hi, I'm in BC, I'm on Vancouver Island. Oh, the beautiful Vancouver Island. Are you in a motorhome?

Are you in a trailer? A minute trailer. So I guess it could be loosely considered camping, considering it's 30 feet long and has a number of very nice amenities. Well, that you think that there is a trajectory for all of us campers, which is like

“you do a lot of tent time, and then eventually, as you get older, you get weaker, right?”

It's true. The sort of natural progression from tenting to the little camparad to a fifth wheel, and now, what feels like a very bougie trailer. Congratulations. Yeah, it's good, Levin.

We drive a bus around, but yeah, to be able to be in nature, and then also come in and cook food is pretty damn nice. And here, the rain, as opposed to experience it. Yeah, good distinction. So will you go camping somewhere on Vancouver Island?

I'm in Country Valley, and we do a load of camping at Coach and Lake. We are situated in a pristine location. We have rivers and oceans and Gulf Islands, and Lake Skullorts, and it's at which we sort of rotate between. You're so brown bears.

More black bears, coogers, actually, to bear in my garbage can two nights ago, which had the dog right through the ceiling, and was a wonderful mess to clean up. Oh, my God. Oh, wow. Okay, so you have a camping story.

Tell us about it when did it happen? I have many camping stories.

It happened three years ago, 2023.

“I scheduled a week long trip to Coach and Lake.”

It's one of my favorite spots. You're out of cell service, beautiful swimming, et cetera, and a good sort of kickoff.

It's the first week of July, so school's wrapped.

I was really looking forward to a much needed break from work. How many kids do you have? Two kids. That story is essentially about my son, Brenner. He was nine at the time, and I have my daughter Ruby, which is five at the time, and my

husband and our dog joining me. So my son's a big sports player, so he was on a number of baseball teams, and the sports team scheduled a tournament over the same weekend. So we quickly realized we're going to have to commute from the campground. So for the first three days, we're going to have about three or four games that we'll

travel to and from to play, and then I'll have the remainder of the week to relax. And so the first night, Friday night, we stayed in town for a game, drove up, as very inventful, got to recite, settled in, and I decided to call it a night. I wanted to get in early, it was a big week packing and doing all the things. And so I said, I'd hang out with my daughter Ruby, or reading a book, and have an

a glass of wine, and finally, you know, unclenching my jaw.

The boys have recognized some friends from town. They're camping next door, so they decided to join their campfire. So I'm hanging out, and not too much later, I'd say 45 minutes through an hour. I hear a bit of a commotion outside of the trailer door in my husband and son, kind of crossing to the trailer, and I immediately can tell something's from my boy.

And so I'm trying to get a bit of understanding it's quite chaotic. I of no, have experienced many, many emergent situations with my son at this point. We have had enough headwins and poison control calls, so I can now sort of. Okay. Kind of flagged them.

Is that okay? That's glue. Those are stitches. So I'm trying to remain calm and just kind of get scope of what's happened, and they tell me that he's burned himself, and he might have burned his eye.

And they look so wet. What? And so he says there are next door, decide to do the standard camping thing and make some s'mores, and so he's handed this two-prong metal roasting stick. As if you've made s'mores, you know, sometimes when you get it from the previous user,

there's a little bit of marshmallow leftover, so he put in the fire to burn it off. And he picked it back up and went to blow out whatever was still attached to it. And he dropped the hot metal poker onto his face and into his open eye.

“Oh my god, this is like a torture scene in a kidnapping movie, right?”

Oh my god. I can't think of anything worse in getting a hot poker to the eyeball. Hmm, it wasn't the sharp part, too. This is my understanding, this is what I'm told. I've dropped the hot poker onto my face, so I'm like, "What is happening? What have you guys done? There's two dads. They grab cell phone flashlights, and they're like,

"Hold open your eye, let me see," and scoring them cold water from a bottle of water, and just see, you know, "Are you sure you're burnt your eye?" My instinct is I'm like, "How are you not on the sailing, screaming, bloody burger right now? If you've burnt your eyeball, I cannot imagine the intensity of that pain." And he's pretty cool. I'm looking at him immediately.

There is a small pink mark at the highest point of his cheek, and as you know, burns, they don't really develop right away, but I notice that, okay, there's enough visibility there. There's no mark near his eyelashes, and he's viewed a full long, dark clashes, I think. Well, surely they would have melted his cheek a little bit younger at nine or a little bit fuller, and so they stuck out further than theirs, so I'm just trying to play as much

logic as I can. He's not letting me look in his eyeball. He's really bright, so I turn off all the lights, and I kind of do the subtle side light. I look, and I truly can't see anything, so at this point, I don't think he has, perhaps. Maybe he just closed it in time. I give him Tylenol Advil, and what's called rescue remedy. It's like a little homeyopathic thing to sort of settle their nerves.

And so I get him settled, and I say, "What do you want to do when he just wants to go to bed?" And I'm like, "Okay, for sure," so I'm like, "I'm gonna sleep with you." Anything happens, or you're not feeling good, let me know.

“And it's important to note, the camp run closes their gate at about, I think, 11 o'clock, 10 or 11.”

And we are 40 minutes away from any sort of healthcare center as well. So I eventually fall asleep. I'm very surprised to see he goes to sleep quite quickly. He's barely cried. He was more than anything quite embarrassed because this was a friend, and he was a little bit older, it was probably going to be out of hockey team that fall.

And so I get everybody settled, and in the morning, very first light, I look at him,

and I see that, okay, that burn on his cheek has developed, that dark purple. You can see it's a bit of a shell-scad forming. I kind of gently check on him and I say, "How you doing, buddy?" Do you mind if I just double check your eye? I want to see. I just want to make sure you're okay. So I cracked the blind a little bit, and it's all filtered through the ferns and trees that's low light and gentle.

Oh, he cracks his eye open, and there's this white line right down the center of his eye,

Oh, my God. I was like, he's immediately blind. This is all happening. He's never

hey, sports again. I almost throw up, but I have to shut up every single part of that.

“Yeah, you don't want to freak him out. No, right? So I'm like, "Oh, okay." Well, you know what?”

I think it might be worth to try this morning. Why do we load up? We'll make it a thing. We'll grab breakfast, and I'm trying to be as calm as possible, making absolutely wild eye contact to my husband. Just like, that sleeps no. And I don't even know what timeframe I get. Everybody loaded into the car. I get him in the backseat, kind of recline. I said, "Why don't you just keep a blanket every head? You probably don't want light on you." I like whisper, hissed, what's actually happened,

and what I saw to my husband, and I'm like, "Get it together." So we're driving, and I'm trying also not to drive at like 180 callers for hour. Like, I want to. There'd be 104 miles an hour for American listeners just to everyone knows. I'm driving along, and my husband, in the front, he's just kind of seizing between gagging and throwing up to like weeping. And I am karate chopping him, being like shut up. Oh, wow. Oh, he's really unraveling on you. Is he hung over?

“It could have been, although I'm sure the amount of adrenaline might have washed all that out.”

I've learned now as I saw. We've been through quite a few emergent moments. I thought, for sure,

I would be the weaker one. I fainted with the first head wound, and then realized, "Okay,

no, I'm going to have to be the one who dig steep and deal with it later." And so I was like, "You get your shirt together. You keep your blanket on your head." And I just continued gentle coaching. Like, "Hey, buddy, we're just going to get a check-out. You ever know, if we want to keep camping for the week, maybe we need a little medicine, and we're happens today. We're going to be fine. We're going to figure it out." You're paving the way to say like,

"Your life's going to change dramatically." And we've got to slowly start easing into that new reality. Well, you'll have no depth for something. Is he saying like, "It is a hurt hurt." At this point, no. Like, it hurt the night, but he was more mad about everything,

“and I think, because it was so mishandles, and he was just kind of overwhelmed. But on the drive”

completely, he calls a cucumber to slain back, blanket on his head, put in my head. I'm like,

"Hey, what's so cool when I nickname, or maybe we'll never play any sports again,

and maybe we'll never have depth perception, or, "Oh my god, could I be a mom with a glass eye?" Like, "Could I ever try to support that?" That's going to be an, "I need a green learning curve." We finally get that. I don't park. I just leave the door open, throw the keys in my husband and I'm like, "Digger home, I'll reach out later." I gotta go. And thankfully, again, inside emergency, they triage him. They recognize clearly.

This is a pretty legit entry. They give him this kind of an eye cover, which keeps air off of it. Wrap his head up, and we are back into the second portion. We have a phenomenal group of staff members that provide exceptional care and a very small and dated hospital in our community. So we were in essentially a supply closet with the lights out, but with a stretcher. And so we had a nurse, very lovely man, come in first, he provided some more pain management, and then it

didn't take long at all for a doctor to come in who was able to do sort of the physical inspection, confirm, okay, obviously, there's the burn on the cheek, and can from, yeah, you have a shallow cornea burn. With that, the treatment plan, they were going to explore calling in and off the ologist. They sent out, you know, the notes, etc., as she decided based on the description. It was shallow enough that a follow-up would be sufficient. So that was scheduled for two days later.

We got freezing eye drops, and antibiotic eye drops, because you're next risk of courses infection, and a nice handful of some eye patches to take with us, and we were discharged. So we went home, and I kind of got him settled, he ended up having a nap, and he wakes up, and he's just feeling fine, and said, you know what, I still want to go cheer my team on, because you know, as you can't play the game now. So I'm at the ballgame with him. He's in the dugout with his head wrap, and I patched on.

Looks like he was attacked by a brown bear. Oh, it's like you're going to come over with a really good story, because he's had two trophies now for sportsmanship. He just really wanted to be there, and cheer on his team. They ended up winning. We ended up going back campaign. We spent the night, and then the next morning, you know, we were following all of the things, and I guess it must be similar to a mouth, but it healed so quickly, and essentially just kind of slothed off. Let's rather gross.

That same day, he ended up deciding he was fine, and we put a ton of sunscreen on the actual cheekburn, and a hatch, and sunglasses, and he went out, and he played the final game. Oh, like and sword in Barcomron and the whole team won, and it was just most insane weekend ever. This is a movie. All right. I've got photos. Okay. Here's the championship team. There's the team. You can see

his face, and then his cute little burn on his cheek. What did he get on his ankle? What's going

“on with the ankle? I've actually written in a few times in everybody that are, oh, I'm cherries,”

thanks to me. Immediately said, well, what's the story? And in that week alone, so I mentioned we went back campaign, and he finishes the game. The next day, I fell down the stairs. Oh, I really annihilated this one leg, and then I thought that's fine. Let's just keep on going, and then two days after that. That is my leg. I got bit by a dog. Oh. Oh my god. That's bad for a dog, but it's like in there. And I was so frustrated. There was like,

I have gone to the hospital four times already this week. I only had five days off,

and I just tasted it. Actually, just not even addressing this at this point. Wow. Yeah, you guys need like a nickname, like the outcheezers. I'm like the whole family is a really vulnerable to an accident. We're benefiting chaos crew for sure. I see the snake. Yeah. Yeah, it's cool. Actually, now that we know as I say the attack. Well, Anna, I burnt my corny as well one time. Yeah, Monica already knows the story, but I was in high school, as a senior, I was in a girl's yard,

and her front yard, I was smoking a cigarette, and I jokingly, I don't even really know what I was

thinking, but I was going to like ask my cigarette by flicking it, and I flicked it, and it went straight

up, flew up in the air, and went straight into my eye, and I blinked at the worst time. I could have been better if I just didn't even blink, but when I blinked, it pinched the cherry end of the cigarette, where I had to smack the cigarette out of my eyelids, because it was pinched in their holding it, and then you had to go to the doctor. They said, you burnt your cornea, the gave me drops in a patch. How long did you read the patch? Few hours. Here's a real one, Ryan.

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

“I am grateful at night, it wasn't from a cigarette at all. Do you want to meet me?”

Oh, yes. The system's in Monica, but you know them. Yeah, Brenner. Yeah, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Are you a blue jays fan? Yeah. And you're still talking to us, even though we're from Los Angeles, I appreciate it. How does your eye feel now? All better? Yes, fun. It's like all better. Oh, good. You still playing baseball? Yeah. What position do you play? Picture, shortstop, and back, picture. These are all the roles that pay the most money if you

get in major leagues, so keep that. Good choices. Well, we're proud of you for going back to your game, and that's story. It's really good. Big time. Thank you. And you're about to go camping again, are you going to make some marshmallows? Probably, but not with the marshmallows thing. Okay. We've learned our lesson, right? If you ever made a s'more with a Reese's peanut butter cup instead of a Hershey's chocolate bar. Yeah, we probably don't lie before. Yeah, that's where it's that. That's where

it's that. Well, nice meeting you. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, you can see in one of the photos, he's got another scar right above the burn from the six stitches a day before kindergarten. Motorbike, you see the fence. Whiskey throttle. You guys have been through it. And a nice meeting you. So nice to lovely family. Thanks so much. Take care. Bye. All right. Bye. Oh, cuties. Oh, I want to go camping now. I really do. Oh, I want to go. Yes, I want to

“camp. All right. Love you. I love you. Do you want to sing a tune or something with him?”

Okay. Great. We don't have a book. So for this new show, so here I go, go, go. We're going to and some random questions in the hell. Oh, oh, oh, Gary's book. It's just beautiful. I'm a fire-rime-ish. I'm a fire-rime-ish. Enjoy.