Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2019-10-21

Hello everybody this is Shane Arman row you're in the passenger seat with me passengers seed radio. It is October 21 2019 It's Monday. You are on my 13 mile commute Whoa, welcome to the show. Yes, it's been a long time since we've had a show. I was in Wenatchee Washington for almost a week Hey Travis Travis first one in so yeah so I've got a ton of shit to talk about mostly about my trip I'll I'll share some details Yeah, let's see I got some other crap I want to talk about to may not make it that far talking about the Wenatchee trip so. So yeah, so when actually Washington is located pretty much dab smack center of Washington State. It is where I spent my formidable years from sixth grade. Through a partial year of college, and then I returned back after my Navy hitch. I came back and spend about a year and a half there met my current wife. And yeah, and then I left for Phoenix. So hey Justin. So I spent that time I spent that time and when he and so when he is a four season city, so it's got spring, summer, winter and fall so they get they get snow. The summers are fairly warm, I'd say that gets in the mid hundreds hundred and five ish, maybe at the top. But for the most part, it's it's fair, fairly fair weather in the summer, especially compared to Phoenix. So my goal, my son and I went up my wife stayed behind this time. My my wife and my mother are the closest of friends and my son. My son has Been up several times to Wenatchee in the recent years, but I have not been up there and probably a good 15 years. And for some place that you spend most of your teenage years kicking around. It's it's sort of an important place, right? So my parents lived there. My aunt's my uncle's. Well, one of my uncle's, one of my aunts, one of my uncle's. Bunch of my cousins still live there. And I've got a couple of friends that still live up there, Stacy and john BARDA, john Barnes, the guy always talking about that seemingly always had the greatest toys, despite the fact that we lived in Wenatchee, and he was on a fixed income. So I don't know where he managed to get like the first CD ROM drive the one speed CD ROM drive in an external case, that costs like 1500 bucks. I don't know where he had that kind of money laying around. This is the guy that had the ice pick. Commodore 64 flash card. Like the day it came out, I don't know how he had that. But anyway, he always had the coolest toys he had he had and still has his entire house wired to x 10. Remember that? That's that guy. So, other than that, though, some of my teachers still live up there from high school, right, but ones that I really liked. But for the most part, most of my friends had moved away. Obviously, they've moved on to their own lives and the town itself, let's let's talk about that. So we flew into Seattle, and my dad came over to pick us up. And he's got a Prius. I've written the Prius, but only like to go out at lunchtime with a co worker type scenario. Never really never really spent any time in a Prius. So it was kind of fun and educational to see how the Prius worked. I'll talk about that in a minute. But, so we flew Delta. And I can honestly say I've maybe flown Delta once I always fly cheap, right? I fly American, I fly Southwest I flown Alaska. But in all honesty, I haven't flown Delta in a very long time. So the last flight I had was on, I think Alaska. And then the time before that was American. And so the difference in flying delta is like night and day, at least from a technology standpoint. I'll get to that in a minute. Now, a lot of stuff to get to. So first off there for terminals at Phoenix, Sky Harbor International Airport, right. And most of the cheap ass flights go out of terminal four. And if you're lucky, you get to go at a terminal two, which is Alaska, just because it's quieter. Terminal four is like a zoo. There's a billion people there. There's a billion flights going in and out of it every day. It's just it's man. It's madness. its sheer madness. security's madness. The gates are mad. Everything's madness. I got to go to terminal three, which is delta. And let me tell you something. That terminal is like sin. It's quiet there's not a ton of people we got there so what we ended up doing is we parked at a place called the parking spot. I park there dozens of different times fairly inexpensive covered parking in end up being like I think 42 bucks for the entire vacation time. I don't know what that is like seven bucks a day or whatever. And so we go there, you get a shuttle, the shuttle takes you over to the terminal. And so we had one bag to check I usually don't check bags, I usually just carry everything on a carry on if possible. But in this case, I decided to go ahead and sorry, my car was freaking out. I didn't like how fast I was coming up to this car. Second here, which semi auto cruise Tic Tac so we pulled me so we get into delta I'm like, this can't be the right place. This place is so quiet. It's so serene. So we get in line to check the bag and the light, dude. So we had to be there our flight left at like 6am we had to be there. We left the house at 315 in the morning, I think or 345, something like that. So it was it was a day to travel on Friday. So we get there. It's like 545 or something. And we're checking our bag. The place is packed. I mean, the line to check luggage is packed. It's like Who the hell is flying other than us? Is everyone on the same flight or what? See what we get up there. I got this really nice guy. Pretty sure it was gay. Not that it matters. It's just you know, one of those things you notice and you talk about. And so he wants who's gonna check my bag and it was gonna be 30 bucks. And I'd already checked I already checked in I paid my baggage fee already. And he's like, so are you remember first sky miles program? I'm like, No, No, I'm not. I don't fly Delta very often. And he's like, You know, I could sign you up like right now it takes like two seconds. Right? That's, that's what gay people tell you. It takes two seconds. It's all lies. He said, it'll take like two seconds. And, you know, you'll get your bag check for free both ways. I'm like, Oh, well, shit, sign me up. He's like, just let me have your driver's license, and I'll take care of everything. And you just have to, you know, sign the form at the end. I'm like, Okay, so we're filling on, you know, he's typing in my stuff. I'm talking to my son trying to keep him from getting bored. And he's like, okay, you're all set here, just, you know, sign this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's like, I've reversed your baggage fee. You'll get that return, you know, and he said, I've already taken care of your bags on the way back. So you're good. You're good. They'll be no fee. I'm like, Yeah, all right. Nice and just save 60 bucks. Things are going great. So we get on the flight. Holy shit. I have not been on a modern aircraft in a long ass time. And what do I mean by modern every seat has a full blown entertainment center. I'm talking about having like your own private Plex server at every single seat. So I've seen screens in the back of the seats right where you can watch like the briefings or whatever. But there's never anything interesting on there. This was a full blown deal. movies, TV shows, tv live streaming TV, games that tons and tons of games you can play on the screen as a touchscreen, earphone jack USB port. I mean, listen, I may be going on and on about something you all know about. I have not seen one of these in a plane to this degree to this level. And I was like totally blown away. Now I had my tablet. I had my wireless earbuds. I had my Plex server packed with cream show, Mr. Robot Goldberg's I had everything I had South Park episodes. I was ready for a three hour Flight Meanwhile, my son ended up watching the damn he ended up watching rush hour to on the his Plex seat server you know what I'm saying? It was crazy. So the flight itself went uneventful unlike the time I went to see Chad which was not an eventful at all quite quiet, uneventful and landed okay. My dad came and picked us up. And we stopped at North Bend right outside of Seattle. had a little bit of lunch at this little diner. It was nice and drove to Wenatchee it's about a three three and a half hour car trip so I literally all day long travel, travel travel. I think we ended up getting to the House about two ish and just kind of settled in. And so what was I doing there for a week so I brought everything I brought the switch. Oh hey, bunch of people showed up turns Whoa, turbo to access is here. Bruce Willard Xen, they say Justin was into because he's into. Yeah. So I brought the quest, right. I wanted to bring VR with me. I brought my switch. I brought my tablets, and I brought clothes. That was pretty much it. And so my goal, so I was there pretty much to visit my folks with my son, right. And my mom, of course, had planned some sort of a family get together. Now. One of my favorite haunts and when actually I've talked about it several times is a place called taco time. And it is a Northwest type thing. You can find one in Nevada in Las Vegas, Nevada. And there's some in Oregon and there's a handful in Washington and if there's two oddly enough in one answer, you wouldn't want to ask you want a nice financial. So my mother made plans for my family, my little extended family to meet at Taco time. The next day on Saturday. And so that was really the only event that was planned. Everything else was just going to be hanging out chatting, visiting. My grandmother. My grandmother was winning to get a pacemaker put in. Oh, St. George has went to I forgot about that. Thank you. Travis. has a taco time. But my grandmother a couple weeks back went in for a rather routine pacemaker installation, right. And when they were in there, like her heart tore open. Unbelievable, right? So she started having this massive bleeding and they stitched her up. And so she in the whole time I was there she was in a not a convalescent home, right but she was in like a rehabilitation community. So, the other thing we did is we went and visited her and she we actually broke her out of jail. We checked her out of the facility and brought her to Taco time. So, my two cousins sunny and April, which I've talked about numerous times here on the show, a lot of childhood time I spent with them out of their place in Rock Island and they were there. Their kids were there their kids kids were there in some cases. My other two cousins that I didn't grow up much knowing because they were like infants at the time. Teresa and Rachel were there. My uncle Ron, the guy Remember I told you about my uncle Ron, the front man in the band, rock and roll band. He was there. And he was at the house for a few a couple of days staying. And let's see who else was there. My aunt Sandra and Uncle Don, my uncle Don got Parkinson's. I did not know this. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2006. And he's he's, he's looking ragged. He had the deep, like a deep brain implant of some sort or something like that. Basically, they drill a hole in the top of your head and They stick this probe into your brain which removes apparently a lot of the the the shakes and the tremors and stuff with Parkinson's. I learned a lot and they actually it's crazy. They actually run this wire under the scalp through the skin, down to some little battery device in the chest absolutely crazy. I had no idea that sort of thing was going on. And you know, my aunt's, my aunt's considerably older, all of these people I remember a snapshot in my head like 30 years ago, right? They were 40 I was you know, 20 something, you know what I'm saying? It's just, it's weird. All of the people you remember are all snapshot in your memory as they were like 20 something years ago, you know? Who else was there a guy there was a handful of other external family members. Hey, JK, what's up, man? So yeah, so I told My mom, I said, I don't want to big thing. I don't want to be the center of attention. I just, I mean, I just want to hang out and maybe have a little taco salad or something I don't want to be like on a pedestal with the, you know, center of attention. Now my son's birthday also fell during his vacation time. So we'd had plans to purchase Overwatch for the switch for him for his birthday. He also got Modern Warfare pre ordered for his birthday so we could play the beta. And so my parents my mother took him shopping, he got a boatload of Pokemon cards. For that part of the birthday. We bought them a German chocolate cake and I found the coolest square balloon, you know, they make square balloons. I did not know this. I did not know that. So we got him a square balloon. That was really cool. So we celebrated his birthday there. And one of the birthday festivities was to go to a place called Abby's pizza. Now, Abby's pizza now when listen remember when I lived in Washington when I lived in Wenatchee with my wife and my daughters, it we were very poor. My wife managed a Joanne's fabric, and I worked a computer land making a $19,000 a year. Fantastic money for 1995 right? Yeah, so we were poor so going out to dinner was a luxury that happened very infrequently. So Abby's pizza was a rare treat we went like once or twice a year. It's not cheap pizza, the pizza you know good pizza is not cheap if you want. If you want Little Caesars or you want dominoes or Pizza Hut, you can get that for a decent price. You know a cheap price. If you want something like streets of New York or NYPD or Abby's pizza, you're going to pay for it. You want a Pepsi pie? You're going to pay for it. So we went to Abby's pizza on the day before his birthday. We just went on a walk there's an Abby's pizza When Angie and one in East Wenatchee and we went there's one literally two blocks from my parents house up on Western and so we walk there one time to go to lunch and now of course I didn't get to have pizza my son had Abby's pizza I had Abby's world famous salad bar and sorry if there's not a sarcasm in their world famous they're great pizza but their salad bar palatable but you know certainly not something you know, I wouldn't recommend going there for the salad bar. But anyway, so he I got him a little personal pizza and I had one little bite and it was it was amazing. My stomach did not like that one little bite of pizza folks. I am not a tuned for that shit anymore. But it tasted great. They have lots of pepperoni and they almost burn the pepperoni I know that sounds terrible. But you know pepperoni curls up with the cheese. You know, it curls up to the top. They almost they almost burned the tips of the pepperoni and it gives it this unique flavor that simply amazing. So then he said Because his birthday was the next day he said can we have my birthday dinner at Abby's and I'm like great. So I took my mom and my dad and the two of us and we went to Abby's again bought a nice big fat pizza for my dad my Of course my mommy's like me. So we had we had a salad bar while they scarf down a frickin giant pepperoni pizza. So that was fun. But other than that, those were really the only sort of evolutions everything else was just hanging out. But one of the things that I really wanted to do while I was in Wenatchee because I tell stories here all the time, right? I tell stories about the Columbia street property right the Columbia street house that had the ghost upstairs. I talked about the crescent street property where the demon crawled into my room and sat on my bed. I talked about breaking in and and spelunking in love. It's mine. Sneaking under the bridge, getting arrested for trespassing under the Wenatchee River Bridge or the Columbia River Bridge. All of these I have all these stories, but I don't really have pictures of a lot of these places, right? So I decided while I was in Wenatchee for this visit, I would take a day and I would go to every point of interest in when actually that I could possibly remember and take pictures. So I did. So I went everywhere that was significant. I found my my my buddy Troy's house, right. Troy moved out to Kashmir, which is about 10 miles out of Wenatchee. Most of the time, we went to junior high school together, we went to two grades in junior high school together. And then we went to we went to seventh and eighth together and then in ninth grade, he moved to Kashmir. So I found his old house on like, it's not Crawford or I don't remember where it was, but I used to walk to his house every single morning, uphill both both directions up hill to his house, I'd pick him up and we'd walk to school together to pioneer Junior High every single day, every school day. So I found his old house, I took a picture of it. So I have that and then he moved out to Kashmir. So every weekend he'd be spending the weekend at my house. I'd be spending the weekend at his house. Once I was old enough to drive Of course, it was even better because you know, we could we could just move back and forth. He got that cool Camaro. I got my shitty little rusting out Toyota Celica. And it was great. I mean, listen, that was that was that that was the best right? I'd go out to his place. I'd spend the whole weekend there with he and his brothers would sit up and watch Saturday Night Live. We program on the Commodore 64 play load runner. Yeah, all all great times. So I even went all the way out to Kashmir. And we got up to cash when I was going to take a picture of Troy's old house which is still there. A lot of things aren't there anymore, went out to Troy's house in Kashmir got a picture of it. And on the way back, my son who was in the backseat bored out of his mind. said oh my god, there's a ton of Pokemon stops, right? He's playing Pokemon Go. So he's like, Can you just let me out and let me walk around? I'm going with his cashmere. I mean, it's not like downtown Phoenix or south Phoenix where you would want to let your kid run around a lotus cashmere. So we found a coffee shop, my dad and I, we dropped him off at the top end of town. And we, we I plugged in the GPS coordinates of the the coffee shop we were at. And I said, Okay, you've got the 45 minutes, go walk around and get go collect all your Pokemon. And then use the GPS use maps to come walk your ass back to the coffee shop, excuse me the coffee shop. So my dad and I sat and drank coffee and shot the shit. Well, Brian walked around beautiful downtown Kashmir and collected Pokemon. Now, I'm not an idiot. I signed into his Google account and I was tracking his phone the whole time. I knew exactly where he was every second of the time. And Kashmir has two different main entrances. One of the entrances but both of them cross cross the Wenatchee river but one of them is was nearby the top of the top of town. And I noted that he was getting close to the river. I didn't want him crossing the bridge, because that's where the highway is right across the bridge. So I didn't want him crossing that on foot. So I texted him. I said don't cross the river, head back the other way. And I'll tell you what, I tell my son that I can track him. I tell them I can get to his email. I tell him I can look at his accounts. But he knows I wouldn't do it without good reason. Right? I don't spy on my kids. But I they need to know that. I'm trying I can I can. I got the power. The power Don't. Don't don't. So of course he writes right back and he's like, how do you know where I am? I'm like, dude, I'm tracking your phone. He's like, what do you spying on me? I'm like, Yeah, I am. spying on you, you're running around a strange town by yourself. You're 1214 now and you're 13 years old, of course, I'm tracking your phone. I told you this. So it was nice. It's nice every now and then to project a wake up call on your children that you can find out what they're doing. You can it keeps them in order every now and then you have to exert your power if you plan to keep it. So that was a fun little bit. He managed to capture all sorts of weird and rare Pokemon. It was great. Who knew that cashmere was the Kashmir Washington's the Pokemon hotbed for Pokemon ago, right. Gotta have something to bring people there. So yeah, I went everywhere. I went everywhere. I went to the Columbia street house, I went to the crescent street property. I went out to love it. Mine love it. Mine is still there. Obviously it's not going anywhere. And of course I didn't break in or anything. I took some exterior shots. But it was really cool. There's a front face about when you're on the road. The front face of the mind of that mind has like six levels and we explored almost all of them dumbest idea ever to break into a mind with no training with no gear pretty much not you know not knowing whether there was oxygen you know I look back at that shit of us breaking into an abandoned I don't even know if it was a ban it was inactive mine I don't think was actually abandoned but you break into a mind and you're exploring all these shafts you know there's air in there you don't know if there's poisonous gas in there you don't know anything. We were a bunch of stupid asshole kids. And yeah, so at the front there is there is a hole in the side of the mountain that you can see outside from within the cavern of the mind. And I think it was right along a track right like for an order car track. So hang on a second. Yeah. So you can look out there and see the highway, right and we would look out there while we were in there running around on that level we would look outside. Now we didn't look out very often because the offices from the mines could see that hole too. But the cool part was is that hole is still there, I managed to capture it on film, and digital. I managed to capture a photo of it and now I actually have a relatable photo of love at mine. I wish I could have shot a picture of the entrance right that would have been cool, but the entrance that we used was one towards the rear side of the mountain where we couldn't be seen of course by the offices. So I wasn't going to haul my ass up and risk getting fucking shot so I could get a picture of their mind entrance. The view Dale drive in right one of the plate the place that I actually saw screen the movie screen for the first time. It was scary as hell I told that story before because it was dark and it was kind of drizzly outside of spooky as hell and you're watching scream inside your car so the view Dale driving is still there, but it is no longer showing movies. It is now an RV parking facility. I went out to Rock Island which is about another 10 miles out of town the other way along the way, where I've gotten an almost fatal car accident. I managed to turn away at the last second otherwise I wouldn't be here right now. I took a picture of that stretch of road. I went out to Rock Island we lived in two different homes out in Rock Island one was this cute little house that had like no, like no space at all. It was like too small for one person is like a studio apartment but a house. And then we moved next door the people who own that property, owned the house next door will be called the White House. It isn't white anymore. But that was the house ladies and gentlemen that had the very large big fucking aggressiveness, Hill wolf spiders. And yes, those were the spiders that would chase us down the hallway. Those were the spiders that would my wife would wake up in the middle of the night and picking them up. Pick them up off her face. These things were like, you know, they were the size of a quarter, maybe a little bigger. These things were scary, aggressive, mean little shits. And that house was sitting on a nest of them. Surprisingly enough that house is not occupied. Oh right now, I wonder why. Because we called in exterminators and they blasted the shit out of that spider factory underneath that house. And yeah, they were back within a week. And essentially, the exterminator said, well, you're not going to get rid of them. So learn to live in love them. Apparently. We moved out we moved to a place on Monroe street in Wenatchee. Another rental I got a picture of that rental too. And we had some rather asshole landlords there and that was unpleasant. That was the place that we couldn't sleep with our windows open because the asshole right next door to us smoked on their back porch, and every single night they would be fucking cigarette smoking. right inside of our fucking window every single night, we couldn't sleep with the windows open. That didn't make us happy either. A picture that I got pictures of when he high school I got pictures of Pioneer middle school, middle school now what else I get pictures of my, you know, my parents property. I got pictures of everything. So I so what I did was I made it I made a Google photo albums out of it. And I went through and I documented I told a little story with each picture. So what I may do is I may open that up and share it with my listeners. So you guys can go and see some of these photos and read some of the stories or I might make like a slideshow like an animated slideshow and I'll tell stories about each slide. And I'll put it up on YouTube right so it'd be a cool narrated slideshow of my trip to imagine how would that be but people would people be interested in seeing that that'd be fun. I put that together. Alright, so that's Sort of encompasses my trip to an ashy. Totally there's anything like out of the ordinary that happened. So we went to get Overwatch on the switch. Well it turns out that Overwatch on the switch first of all pretty much kicks ass. I mean, listen, it runs it a fixed 30 frames per second, and I'll tell you what, it can be a little jarring to play it. But to see Overwatch in its entirety, the real game not some light version, not some scaled back version. Not some version only has five characters instead of 40 care. And then the full blown game of Overwatch running one on a Nintendo platform to on a Nintendo portable platform and full and complete voice lines, animations, everything is there. Totally frickin a bit surreal. It is to Totally surreal to see Overwatch running on a switch. Just it's mind blowing. So the idea was is that we were going to get up, my son and I were going to go to Game Stop when it opens and because my parents Wi Fi kind of sucked. We decided to go to a coffee shop near Game Stop. And second here, we decided to go to a coffee shop near Game Stop and download the game. Okay? Because we found out that the game did not come in cars Brian wanted to own the game and physical media god bless his soul. I love my son. He wanted a physical copy of Overwatch. And he was very sad to find out they were not offering a physical copy that was only a digital download. But he did get the box which is what he wanted. He wanted the box for Overwatch. He wanted to own a game on the switch himself, right? Not something that, you know, it's a shared game or a game that we work together, that sort of thing. So he was excited to have the box. So we go over to the coffee shop, we order these big giant frickin americanos. We're settled in, right, we're nestled in for a long winters nap. And so he goes to punch the code in. You can't redeem this code yet. We're like, once, because because I pre loaded, for Christ's sake, I bought the game like two weeks ago, I pre loaded I was ready to roll. Right? He could not enter the code. I'm like, son of a bitch. So we waited around 15 2030 minutes hoping that maybe the game would unlock and you can enter the code. And no, it turned out that it wasn't going to unlock until like noon or some shit, right? So it's like, okay, let's just let's just go back to the house and we'll just download it when we can. Right. So that was a bust. But anyway, so it's a turned out even though I pre wrote it. I had to download a day one patch So both of us, both of us sat on my parents Wi Fi, which is which is not exceptional. And we sat there I had to download the day one patch, he downloaded the entire game and they both finished at roughly the same time. So pre loading did absolutely nothing for me. But we do I got a picture of my son finally being able to boot it up. I let him boot his up first and he actually got to play. I had to go out to have lunch or meet my friend john BARDA at the igloo tavern, sort of a mainstay whenever he and I would meet up. It would be at the igloo. He drinks beer, I don't but I had a diet coke and, and we sat and chat. We chat. We said shot the ship for three hours. His wife was there. his lovely wife, Linda. She's, she's in chanting. And so we all sat around. We talked and we talked politics. We talked the old days. We talked about photography. He got some, he has, I don't know where he gets this kind of money. He He's got a $14,000 lens for his camera. So he's in a photography right so he's got a you know, a standard, you know D SLR, but he's got he showed me pictures of this goddamn lens. This lens is like four feet long. Maybe it's not quite four feet long. It looks four feet long and the pictures it's $14,000 for this lens. Unbelievable. So we were talking about photography we were talking about the old days, he'd had some big flood that took out a whole bunch of his basement where he had a lot of unfortunately yet a lot of great computer equipment down there a lot of old stuff. But we shot the breeze on my son was able to rack up to like level seven and Overwatch while I was breaking bread, so to speak with john at the igloo. So I got a picture of he and I so awesome. And let's see. So Overwatch Yeah, so Overwatch literally it's the real game. I mean, it's not it's hard to believe that. It's not Not some scaled down version of it it's literally it's literally Overwatch on the go we played Overwatch in the airport waiting for the plane back it was awesome the controls again for my I haven't played a lot with the gyro controls yet but you know me and the switch controls right my hands My hands are are big man hands I had trouble with those little tiny joy cons but I made do and we had a lot of fun playing Overwatch on the go while we were in Washington was great. So yes, Overwatch is a good it's a good pickup I would recommend it. Again the 30 frames per second is going to charge you a little bit but the fantasy of playing a triple A PC game on your switch will blow you away. It blew me away awesome. Great stuff great stuff. And someplace else that my blue boxes can give me more ship but I don't you know more ship for players. I don't play fantastic Stick I love it. And my Witcher three unfortunately I pre ordered and it was on its way home so I didn't get a chance to play Witcher three in Washington, which is probably for the best because I could get all caught up in that. I did bring it up when I got home. played it just through like the opening act when you're getting ready to go and train with Siri. Got it? I needed to see Jennifer naked. Okay. And I gotta admit, they did what I've seen so far first class job. It's all again, surreal as hell to see Witcher three booting on your switch. Absolutely betcha. But I'll get back to get back to you on that. When I have a little more, more time to talk about time to play it. So I have more of a reference to talk about. Let's see. I had some other crap on my list to talk about to I don't know if I'm going to get to it all. I'm almost home. made good time. Yeah, I might cut the show off here. We'll have another show either tomorrow or Wednesday. Because I do have a laundry list of things to talk about. So we'll get back Then nice to be home. Nice to be back on the show. This is Shane Armin row passenger seat radio. We'll see you next time. Take care, everybody.