This is that story show where we never wore a bike helmet. Hey, podcast people, I’m your host. My name is James Kennison.

And I am Jon Steinklauber. And today on that story show, our bike show, Tim almost kills himself flying off a 5 foot mound of dirt. Veronica shreds her knees and gets a real treat after the ER visit. Bill’s brother finds delight at the fire safety highlight AJ’s bike meets a snowy plight. Shelby’s tandem ride with love in view ends with pain and things askew. Asher had a crash on a concrete wall. A passport saves it all. Scott was hanged on by a friend. He flew and crashed but felt a hero’s end.

I hate you.

Myron’s homemade toe straps tied and tight leaving him stuck in the ditch that night.

This is not something you should do.

No. But you did it. Dr. Seuss wrote

these. Can you tell go ahead just leave off the last 2 and just read the rest of it? Because we’re not reading those last 2 stories

All right And for the patreon bonus show stick around for Veronica’s high heels and Drew’s fibula fragment

sounds awesome today as John mentioned is our bicycle Theme show and we’ve been waiting for it for quite a bit. So thank you for joining us. We haven’t done a bicycle theme show since 2007. Episode, I want to say 16. So 16.

Yeah. Ali, I wasn’t even part of the show back then.

I wasn’t even born then.

I don’t think anybody that listened to the show back then is around either.

So no, they’re dead and in the grave. Like we should be.

Oh, jeez. Our condolences.

We’re too old to be doing podcasts, you know. Podcasts is a young man’s game. So, yeah, we always start with an opening story. And here is 1. It’s from Tim from Ossilor, Saskatchewan. Canada. It’s Canadian to you and me. It’s called Dirt Pond Dive. About 2 years ago when I was 15, I was riding into town on my bike with my brother to go to the general store. Apparently, they still have those in Canada.

Did you ride a horse on the way to and or a buffalo?

Did you bring a buggy whip or something? Did you get some firecrackers?

No, sir. I was there to get myself some pomade.

I don’t know. Some Werther’s original. I don’t know. How old are those?

I feel like they’re ancient. So that’s only 2 years ago and they have a general. Man, I want to move to Canada and go to a general store.

On the way there, I saw a 5 foot pile of dirt. Now, usually I’m not a risk taker, but I don’t know what was going through my mind. Well, you were 15, so not a whole lot. Yeah, that’s true. Our brains were not developed

at that age, were they?

No. The last thing I remember was saying to my brother, look, Levi, watch this.

Same as last words.

And proceeded to hit the jump, not knowing what the other side even looked like. Oh, yeah. It’s 1 of the things you might want to do is ride around the side and have a little look-see. But this is how this is how we weed out, you know, the dumb people in life. If there was just a bunch of spikes on the other side of that thing. And Tim died. First of all, we wouldn’t miss out on a great story. Yeah. But it also would have thinned the herd a little, you know, there’d be 1 less stupid

person out there. So, yeah, watch this from what I was told. I hit the start fine, but the back of the jump was bumpy and I flew off and my bike landed on top of me.

Ah, I can relate to that.

I’ve had things land on me before. I had a go-kart.

Oh, it

was 1 of the first episodes of the show. I told the story of this go-kart that I hit weird and it kind of turned in the air and I landed. And then the thing landed on top of me. Like the engine hit me in the back. It was weird. Eww. So I got up in a daze and my brother said, I kept repeating the phrase, where am I? Where am I? So it’s pretty awesome that you’re a, you know, you’re a walking meme, you know. Went to heaven. So stereotypical. Like I was bloody with a broken

nose, sprained shoulder, massive concussion that left me out of it for an hour and a half. Yeah, that means your brain got bruised, buddy. It sloshed around inside your head skull.

Massive concussion.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hour and a half.

Dang. Whoa. I am lucky. We’re lucky to have this story. Thankfully, the ramp was in front of a car dealership in our small town on the way to the general store. Part

of the ship.

Yeah, it’s probably 1 of those they drive the trucks up on to make them look cool. So I woke up to find myself in an ambulance for the first time, And I noticed my dad was driving my brother’s new red Mustang behind us. Oh, the things your mind are on, you know, when you’re when you’re concussed. Yeah. Have you ever been concussed, John?

Yes. I have, too. Yeah. When my head went through the window in that car that I had, I had a concussion for a bit.

Yeah. But I

don’t remember not being able to remember anything, if that makes any sense.

Well, it doesn’t actually. I was concussed when I went down a hill on some roller skates and tried to stop.

Oh man.

Yeah. I’d lived in Florida my whole life and roller skated with no problem, but I put them on in Kansas city and experienced a hill. And the things with hills is you don’t realize the longer you go, the faster you go. And there was a point where I’m like, I’m going to get hurt. I’m not

point of no return.

Yeah, I’m not. I mean, the chance to get off of this was way back there and I’m going to get hurt. And so I tried to take 1 skate and drag it behind the other to kind of slow myself down. But all it did was trip me up and I hit my head straight on. I bounced off the asphalt and My wife kept telling me not to go to sleep, and I laid in bed and there were fish swimming over my head. Wait, so like the cartoons were correct and like birds flying around the head except

you had fish. I had fish. They weren’t in a circle, but they were swimming in front of my eyes a couple feet out. Yeah. Dude, that’s like 3D fish.

They

were transparent 3D fish. Yeah, different colors.

Like you’re watching a fish tank kind of?

Yeah, except they were just in the air. That’s weird. You remember the little fish that we used to put on our hands and they would curl up? You remember those? Yeah, yeah, yeah, the little paper. Yeah, it was kind of like that, But different colors of them swimming around each other. Yeah. When you were concussed, did you hallucinate at all?

No, that I remember.

Yeah, you were really concussed. I was just slightly concussed. I didn’t even go to the doctor.

Huh? I do remember like they tell you not to, not to, like watch TV or get on your phone and stuff like that after, after a head injury like that, because I don’t know. And I remember I’d forgot the instructions they gave me and I was at home and I was trying to watch TV. Man, I just got this headache and I felt like I was going to vomit. So I stopped watching.

There it is proof that TV is only good. It’s bad for you. And the only reason you can handle is because you’re not concussed. Anyway, so he notices his dad’s driving the brother’s new red Mustang. And at the hospital, I got to try VR goggles while I waited. That’s the medical system there in Canada. It’s a vote for social health care as you get to try on VR goggles. So much for concussed and not using TV and, you know, video equipment. You can can experience VR and see fish swimming for real. Right in front of

you. Was I contest?

Well, in my day, we didn’t need VR. That’s right.

We brought

our own. So my favorite part was riding home in my brother’s Mustang.

Sweet.

The next day, my youth leader brought Tim bits, which were very painful to eat since my mouth was swollen. Hopes this makes it on the show. Tim from Canada.

Wait a second. Is that does that story come to us from him Horton himself?

Yeah, probably. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I think. I think Tim Horton knows about our show. Yeah. And he is definitely still alive.

Yep. And he’s also a millionaire.

And he’s in middle school or was in middle school about 2 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks, Tim Horton. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know how you did it.

I love your coffee.

I love the fact that you tried to open up 2 stores in St. Louis and the minute they opened, you demanded a big revamp. And they they had to close it down rather than redecorate everything. Why? So it was fun having Timbets for like 2 weeks. Oh, man. Yeah, that’s exactly what happened.

That sounds like another story.

Yeah, I had to a little while back. I mean, it’s just the guy opened these 2 restaurants and.

Yeah, Tim Hortons.

Yeah. And they were great. I tried it out as soon as I could, because I’ve, you know, heard about it my whole life. And yeah, so we go by and then they’re closed. And then why, why is it closed? Well, Tim Horton’s had this big remodel and all the people had to do it. And he’s like, I can’t do it. I put all my money into things so you had to close them down. Brand new, brand new buildings, brand new furniture, brand new everything. Wow. Why did they not tell him?

That’s not cool. Not cool Tim Horton.

Not cool at all. So We’re going to delete your story from our show.

So can’t be the same 1.

If you if you heard it on the show, actually, then I didn’t do my editing right. So there we go. Let’s rewind the week. OK, so I happen to have a weekly rewind that is bicycle based. Really? Yeah. Because over Thanksgiving holiday, I went to a location, a rural location out 30 minutes north of Charlotte, North Carolina, to my brother-in-law’s and my sister’s house. And he is always doing something healthy every year. He’s always doing something sporty. And this year, it was mountain biking. And I was like, before I went, I was like, you know, I’ve

always been fat when I go there. And now that I’m skinny, I’m going to do whatever he does, whatever it is. And so it was mountain biking. And I’m like, I want to go. And he’s like, OK, so I got bundled up. I got all this gear. I felt like an idiot because I had elbow pads on. I had shin guards. I had knee pads. I had gloves. I had a helmet. I had special eye goggles, and he hooked us up and took us there. And it was I fell off 3 times in the woods and

times every every guard, every pad that I had on saved me every time I was knocked off because 1 time I ditched the bike and grabbed a tree that would have shredded my hand. Another times I went over the handlebars and landed right on my knee on a stick like a big stick, almost a log, but not quite a log, maybe a branch. And it hurt, but it didn’t like hurt her. And then another time I was going across a small bridge across a little river and I made it across. I thought I was going to

die, but then I couldn’t get up the hill and I rolled backwards and fell over the back. And then the wheel ran over my daddy bits. So the part that makes that made me a father someday.

Ouch.

Yeah, You didn’t have that. I didn’t have that covered at all. No. You wouldn’t think you’d need to. You wouldn’t think so. It makes you wonder sometimes if evolution might not be true, Because usually I’m usually wink wink. I’m like, yeah, evolution is is true. And then I hit my shin on a coffee table and I’m like, think I would have evolved some padding on my shin.

Some like thick skin on your shin.

Yeah, and it seems like we would have solved this boy bit problem way before now. But no, I did have a guy tell me 1 time, I’m like, that’s the reasons I don’t believe in evolution. He goes, that’s the reason I don’t believe in God. I was like, oh,

good point. Okay. Maybe maybe there’s other ways to keep you humble then, huh? All righty then.

So anyway, I made it. I made it through about halfway and I’d fallen and I’d hit my knee and I was like, I’m fine. I’m fine. But just let me sit here while I’m being fine and recover from the pain. I’m not going to let you know I’m having. But I said, I think I’m done. I think I’m done. And I knew what he was going to say before he said it. He looked at me and he says, you know, we’re about the halfway point, so you can go back. But you might as well go through

and I’m like,

might as well go forward.

Dang it. Cuss word, Cuss word, cuss word. I didn’t even think cuss words. I just thought dank, I’m stupid piece of crap. That’s that’s my worst, worst player up. Daggum’s kind of piece of crap.

And maybe giving him a minor curse.

So I was driven, I was driven and I, I left them all behind because he was, he was with my wife and his son and they were slowing everybody down. And I was like the heck with this. The only way to get done is to go through.

That’s right.

And I rode. I rode over several things. I rode past a stream that was trying to suck me down into it. I rode past a fence that was trying to grab my handlebars the whole time. I don’t know why I was feeling like this, but it was like they were drawing me to them. Yeah. I know what you mean. And I made it past a couple other bridges. I did have to stop a couple of times to catch my breath, but I was done and I made it to the thing and then The nephew was next

and then the father or brother in law and the wife were last. And they started talking. They’re like, man, I’m glad you made it out that you did good. And I’m like, I’m feeling good. And then my nephew says, I was looking for a body the whole time we were driving. Why? He’s out in the woods? Because, yeah, he thought I would just be dead on the side of

the trail. He was looking for your body.

Yeah, I kept looking for a body. So he did. They believed in me, but he did not. So but how messed up would it have been if I had not been at the car when they came out?

You know, oh, see, that was a perfect placement for a prank.

Yeah, I should have. But I was of his 2. Yeah, that was great. I was too, too set on getting done. Like this needed to end.

So here’s a, here’s a thing that you might consider. Take up a hobby that you don’t really want to do and you’ll get it done every time.

No, like I’m never going to go mountain biking again. I did it. I made it through. I survived. I proved myself. I hate it. My butt hurt in the butt hurt places of the seat, you know, for like a week. And just the tailbone parts, you know, the little part where the pelvis needles or razors come down. Yeah. I don’t know why bicycle seats have gotten so thin and small. What in the heck is that?

I’m not sure. Like they should be like the opposite direction of where they go.

Remember beach cruisers? Yeah. Nice big padded seat with a couch. Had had springs on it, if I’m not mistaken.

They do. Yeah. Yeah, you can still get those.

And not on a daggum mountain bike. No. You get these giant wheels, but you get this hard bike seat. I guess the whole point is you’re not supposed to be on it that much. And every time I hit a root or something, the wheels would roll right over it. But my my butt would just get. I don’t want to say pounded.

Why not?

I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s nothing wrong with that. But yeah. So anyway, John, what about you?

What about me? I Don’t have a bike 1 to share. That’s fine As long as you’ve got

something what

I do have a it would be a weekly update, but it would be like probably 30 years too late.

Okay.

So I’ll tell it like I, it just happened last week.

All right.

All right. So I was riding my bike. I was riding it into this neighborhood that my friends lived in. And my friend’s dad was pulling into the neighborhood at the same time. And he said, Hey, what’s up? And I was like, Oh, I’m just riding my bike with my friends. And he rode real close. And so I put my hand on his car, on his van and held on. And it was like, hey, I don’t have to pedal. And then I know this sounds like a scene from the Goonies, but this really happened. He’s like, Hey,

let’s see how fast we can go. He held my hand

down for a little bit

and he, he got, I mean, he wasn’t going that fast, but maybe like 10, 15 miles an hour. Oh man. It seems like a hundred when you’re actually on the bike. Yes. And so I’m like, oh, okay,

I will let go now.

And so I let go and I’m flying. And this particular neighborhood, you would know this, this is, what was it? It was over there by, it was in St. Mary’s. Anyways, it was down, I don’t even remember, it was near the base. Okay. But anyways, this, this, this neighborhood had a median in the middle, right? So like in the front of the neighborhood, there’s this, this area where the road split off into 2 roads and there’s this nice median and there are signs and there was bushes and stuff like that. It was all there. And so

I let go and I’m like, I’m too fast to be on the roadside. I veer over trying to slow down and I go into that median and there was a bush. There was a bush there and I hit that bush and I flew over the handlebars and forward. But as I was doing that, a word came out of my mouth and I’m not allowed to repeat. And my friend’s dad heard me and he was also a member of our church. And so he had a lot of fun telling all of my family members and anybody that

would listen to the story about the bush word.

Oh my gosh.

It’s his fault.

You can’t be doing that to kids. Not these days.

Now. I mean, I was adult, see, because

this week, last week ago,

I drove way down to St. Mary’s. So what was the name of that neighborhood? I can’t remember. Gosh. Anyways. Wow. You knew people that live there.

Yes, I did. And it was the cool place to live in St. Mary’s. Unless you lived in Pointe Peter.

I can’t remember

the name of it either. It’s weird.

Yeah, I feel like it was Creekwood, but that’s the road that I lived on. So it’s definitely wasn’t that, but. Well,

let’s share a review. This is from Ooski and this review is brought to you by podgagement.com. Amazing! 5 stars. This podcast is so hilarious. Podcasts may contain childish humor, i.e. Farts and poo and inside jokes from old episodes. P.S. I’m a middle schooler from Canadian. We love our middle school listeners and we love it when they leave amazing reviews. So, leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify. It makes us really happy and it really helps the show. Review.thatstorieshow.com. It’s time for us to celebrate the LBB of the week.

1 of the many tools of the devil.

All right, Marcella writes in, I’m not sure if this counts as a bike story, but here it goes. 2 rules of bike riding is that you’re supposed to ride with the flow of traffic and 2, you do not ride your bike on the sidewalk. That’s those are the grown up rules. Because kids probably shouldn’t be on the road and they should be on sidewalks. So I was pulling out of my neighborhood in my car and this guy was riding his bike against traffic and on the sidewalk, Breaking both cardinal rules as he came off the 1

part of the sidewalk, crossing the street where my car was sitting, waiting for traffic so I could turn. He was angry that I was in his way. So as he rode his bike behind my car, he pounded bang, bang, bang on the trunk of my car with his fist and he was yelling at me furiously in a language that I don’t speak nor understand. Yeah. He continued to back up onto the sidewalk and kept on writing. So after I turned and drove down the street a bit, I was catching up near him and he was still

screaming at me. So I rolled down my window, I stuck out my tongue and went, yeah,

that’s telling them.

I don’t think that’s what he expected me to do because he had the most confused look on his face and he quit yelling and kind of slowed down and let me pass. As I drove off laughing hysterically, I’m pretty sure that when my render rolled down, he was expecting a finger, not a tongue. Oh, gosh, I did that to a guy, a homeless guy on a bike. And I pulled out and he was just riding along. I didn’t see him, you know. And so he rode behind me, but he stopped and he got behind my car

like he was waiting in line behind me. And then he just I felt it. He hit the back of my car with his bicycle wheel and then took off. And I got out of the car. I’m like, what the heck? And I look and sure enough, there’s this little dirt mark that wiped right off of the black bumper. I’m like, what did what point did you prove? You know, he was passive aggressive. If I had seen him, I would have slowed down, you know, I would have stopped and let him pass, but he was, I had

already been there, you know, yeah, so I don’t know. I don’t know. Maybe he was high. I don’t know. Maybe he was mad. Maybe he

was in your area.

Maybe he had. I don’t know. It was it was not. Yes, actually, it was it was in St. It was in Kansas City. So no, it was in St. Pete. It was in St. Petersburg. Oh, a Florida guy. Yeah, it was. And we have a lot of homeless in the wintertime because they come down there to survive. So the harsh weather.

Wait, they go back north when when is the homeless people go back north during the winter?

I’m going to tell you, we had a lot more of them in the winter than we had the rest of the year. I don’t know what they do.

But migratory homelessness.

Yeah, it makes sense if you think about it.

I mean,

let’s do some featured stories.

Let me tell you a story. Let me tell you a story.

All right. This is Veronica Ripknee Reunion. I have never been the skinniest kid in class. When I was about 12, I was on a bike ride up the canyon to Girl Scout Camp in Utah. We had already ridden down the canyon, so I knew how far we had to go. I was out of breath and I was dreading the upcoming uphill miles. I don’t know whether it was my physical exhaustion or my mental exhaustion that contributed to it, but I absolutely wiped out at full speed going down a gravel encrusted hill below a busy road. Oh

no. I have a vivid memory of looking up the instant after I crashed and seeing the silhouette of a girl behind me freeze framed. She was at the crest of the hill about to barrel down on top of me. She tried to avoid me yet still crashed into me in the process. And after the dust settled, the other kids and the counselors were surrounding me with sympathy because both of my knees looked like fresh ground pork. No.

Why? Why that a visual?

Well, I was high on adrenaline. The other girl was beside herself because she thought she had made my knees go into chopped liver and not the gravel. So luckily we were just down the road from a fire station. So the 2 of us and a counselor walk limp over there to wash off in the bathroom. The other girl went back to ride with the group and I went with the camp counselor to the ER to get my knees looked at. What was left? The pork knees weren’t actively sliding down my shins and into my socks. I

can still feel the steel wool exploring my knees. What? As the doctor cleaned out the embedded gravel. Steel wool? The metal sponge winded through the peaks and valleys of torn up skin in Muswell. Muswell. I cannot. My camp counselor reached out her hand when she saw me wincing and I squeezed it so tight. To this day, my knees have cookie sized scars.

Oh my goodness. What kind of cookies? Oreos are the big ones that you get from the.

Yeah, I’m sure they’re Oreo. They have a logo embedded in them, you know, with all this graphic design going on. I’m sure that’s what she meant. And if you scrape off the bandage, there’s a cream filling. So, oh, no. Years later, when I was a CIT coordinator on staff at the same camp, I was telling this story to a fellow counselor, and I had said that I would never forget the sympathy of that camp counselor, how she had held my hand in the yard and brought me candy at the pharmacy where we were getting my prescription.

The camp director interrupted me and asked what kind of candy I had gotten. And I said it was peanut butter M&Ms, and she said, I was that counselor. After 10 years, we had completely forgotten what each other looked like. But we both remembered the peanut M&Ms. That’s awesome. Veronica. So, yeah, Veronica is like, you remember me now after she puts 2 uncooked hamburger patties on each knee. Oh, I recognize you. Yeah, Veronica! The girl with the torn up knees. Yeah, it was like ground pork. I still have scars on my hand from when you squeeze them

so tight with your fingernails.

I can’t use my thumb anymore. I’m surprised I forgot what you looked like.

I’ll never forget that counselor. That’s me. Also, also me. Cam, Casper standing behind her. Yeah.

She had moved up from counselor to coordinator.

Freaking coordinator of the whole camp director. She was camp director. Camp

director. Right. Right. That’s pretty amazing. All right. Good story. It’s a

good story, Veronica. Thanks for sending it in. Yeah. It’s a good bike story.

I got a good bike story.

Okay.

And it involves a fire station. Okay. This comes from Bill in Indiana. So here we go. The church my family attended back in 1985 had a small private school for grades K through 8. My twin brother and I were in kindergarten at the time. And 1 day our school held a day for fire safety

quote I quote. Those were the best days.

Weren’t they? Cause I mean, you got out of class and you got to see the good stuff.

Yeah.

Everything. My favorite thing was when they would put the whole gear on.

Yeah.

They would do that so that you wouldn’t be afraid of them when they came to rescue you.

Right, because they looked like monsters.

They did and they got the, and all that stuff.

And a little Darth Vader thing going on.

Right. And then a little, yeah, that was cool. I enjoyed, I enjoyed fire safety day in my little Christian school when I was a kid too. Well, the local fire department came with their truck and gear to educate us about the dangers of fire and the importance of fire safety. And at the beginning of the day’s events, they held a pep rally of sorts to explain what we would be doing throughout the day and to reveal that there was going to be a prize given away at the end of the day.

What did we miss out on, John? There’s so many perks to being born in the 70s, right?

Yeah.

But our fire department came in and like showed us their truck. Yeah. And there was no pep rally. No, there was no prize. The prize was we got to meet a firefighter. That was a prize. I don’t know.

I mean, and this is 1985. So what I think we missed out on, James,

being in a rich, open, rich area.

Yeah. I was going to say we didn’t grow up in Indiana because apparently in Indiana

they had going on. Yeah. I forgot about the 1985 part. I was I was trying to blast on the kids of the day, but no, they had it together. 1985, I was like wishing I had a 4 by 4.

I was 10, so I was wishing I had a candy bar.

There’s something. A Whatchamacallit. Those were new.

A Whatchamacallit, that’s right, or Snickers. Whatchamacallit. Probably was Whatchamacallit though. That would have been, Yeah. But you know what the prize was that they were giving away that these firemen were giving away? No games. It was a brand new BMX bicycle.

A BMX! Those were the only good bicycles you could have as a kid in the 80s.

In the 80s, a BMX bicycle was the greatest status symbol, especially if you had 1 with the mag wheels. Do you remember the mag?

Oh, yeah, they were plastic instead of plastic

instead of metal spokes is a plastic spokes

So, do you know what MX or BMX stands for? I? Did at 1 point I don’t either I have no idea What did BMX stand for I think it was just random it just sounded cool it was like the dot-com of that day I don’t know.

No, here’s what it stands for.

Okay.

Bicycle moto cross BMX.

It was for something cool.

It was an abbreviation. It says cycle sport performed on BMX bike, either in competitive BMX racing or freestyle BMX.

See, my cousin was into BMX racing and he had a dirt track with, with little mountains and little valleys and little banks and turns and stuff. And then he moved into motorcycling and he just turned it into a bigger track.

But exactly.

He started on BMX bicycles. That’s crazy. That was a bicycle machine.

What bicycle motocross

motocross. Yeah.

So in the Cross.

So it’s really BM Cross. BM Cross. Bicycle. We were saying it wrong all these years. Yeah.

BMX, BMX, BMX. Freaking Lucky Kids. Yeah. Indiana Kids. Yeah. It wasn’t just a plane. It was brand new. And it was all black with gold pin striping.

Oh, this is from a movie.

I know it, right? I bet you it had the black mags and it had the seat. It probably even had the pegs. Remember getting pegs on the back of your front of bike, just depending how cool.

I never had pegs. I missed out on pegs.

I wanted them so bad, but I never got to have them either. Well, needless to say, we were all in awe of the thought of winning such a great prize. The day was filled with fun activities as we learned about what firefighters do, what gear they had to keep them safe and what they used to put out fires. It was so much fun seeing the big red truck and getting to sit on it and even hear the siren howl and watch the lights flash. It was almost enough to make us forget about that awesome prize. Almost.

As the day concluded, we all gathered back for the closing activities. Much hype was presented as they prepared to draw the winning name from the hat. We all sat at the edge of our seats, eager to hear our name called. Finally, a slip of paper was pulled, opened, and they called out my twin brother’s name. He was shocked to hear that he had won. I still remember the look on his face as he went forward to claim his prize. Of course I was jealous that he won the bike and not me, But I couldn’t help but

be excited that that such a cool prize was coming to our home with us.

Yeah, such

an awesome memory. My brother and I put lots of miles on that bike over the years. Love the show, guys. Thank you, Bill from Indiana. That was a great story

Yeah, Bill man. Oh a big shout out to my twin brother Marion for letting me know about this show several years ago I’m glad that I got to send this story in before you did ha ha Nice. It’s funny cuz he sent me a story and he mentioned that his brother got on the show before he did, even though he was the 1 that told him about it. So we’ll have to share his story next time.

Made me want to BMX bike all over again.

I know, right. Do they even make those for adults anymore? I’m sure BMX racing is still a thing, and I’m sure it’s not just for teenagers.

Yeah. The big brands when I was a kid was Mongoose, GT and Diamond Diamondback.

Now, when I was a kid, Huffy was all that I saw.

Huffy. That’s what I had. A Huffy. Nowadays, like Diamondback and Mongoose, you can buy them at Walmart.

I paid so much money for a Mongoose 1 time. So much money. And then, yeah, years later, I’m going through and this is a Walmart bike. What the heck?

Yeah. Mongoose, man. That was the name brand. Mongoose with yellow mags. My cousin had 1. He’s like so jealous. Ugh. What?

Anyway, thanks, Bill.

Thanks, Bill.

Bill brings up a good point, though. And people have done this for years with kids, is when you give a prize, you can’t give a prize that is so wonderful that 1 kid’s life is made perfect and all the other kids’ lives is ruined.

Made envious.

No, I mean ruined. Like, kids will cry. Yeah. And maybe they didn’t care back in 1985. Nobody cared if kids cried back then, but in my children’s church, at least, I was a little more fair. Like everybody started by winning a prize. You could only lose the prize if you were bad and then we weren’t taking it from you. You were telling us you didn’t want it. Huh. And whenever we did do a drawing or something, it was just good enough to want, but not so great that first your parents could pocket. I worked in the

inner city church, so we weren’t giving away any segas or anything like that back then. Because I’m going to I’m going to pay the electric bill with that Sega. So But we would have to give away something that wouldn’t break the freaking kids’ hearts, you know? So anyway, bicycles were definitely not something we gave away for drawings. Now, we did Christmas wish trees and stuff like that. And we hooked kids up.

I

had to keep freaking squirrel, not a squirrel, a hamster in my office for a week because this little girl asked for a hamster for Christmas and I had to take care of the hamster until it was Christmas Eve and take it to her house.

Man, I hope that the parents of said little girl approved such a gift.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. We were in tune with everybody and it had a pink cage. I got her a pink cage for her little hamster.

I wonder if she still has it. I don’t think that hamster is alive.

Yeah, that’s a good little children’s pastor. Anyway, this is called Snowball Smash, and it is my favorite story. OK, James from Glasgow, Kentucky. Way back in the day, my friends and I would race our BMX bikes through the neighborhood until the streetlights came on. Most of us were in middle school, junior high back then. But 1 of the kids was an 18 year old high school graduate named AJ.

Wow.

While my middle school friends and I all rode standard BMX bikes, AJ had a much bigger bike. He would always brag about the fact that it was a 10 speed and how expensive it was and how he had special thinner tires that made it so he could go faster. Looking back, I think it was a little odd for AJ to be hanging out with us so much. Yeah, AJ needed that for his ego. AJ peaked in high school. He needed to be cool in front of the other kids. Yeah, AJ probably still lives in that same

cul-de-sac with his mom. OK, and he’s got that same 10 speed and he’s still bragging about it to this day. Things custom.

Yeah, go fast.

I go fast. Gotta go fast. Anyway, it was Christmas break in Southwest Wisconsin State and we were blessed with about 8 inches of snow, which is considered a lot for that area. My friends and I tried to make the biggest snowball we could, which ended up being 2 foot tall before we could not move it anymore.

That is in the base of a snowman.

That is great. It’s the biggest snowball I’ve ever heard of. Well, anyway, AJ wasn’t around when we’d rolled this snowball down the sidewalk. And the next day we told him about it and AJ gets this big grin on his face and exclaimed, I’m all slicing it in half with my bike.

AJ watched too many cartoons.

Yes, he did.

I have a feeling this is.

I told you he peeked in high school. Apparently not very smart either.

That’s all the education he got.

So he races off at it at full speed. Well, it turns out the giant snowballs aren’t as soft and fluffy as the cartoons make them out to be. You call it, John. This snowball is hard packed. AJ hit that thing at nearly full speed and he flies right over the handlebars face first into the snow covered sidewalk. That’s like landing on 80 grit sandpaper right there.

Yeah, but it had snow on the sidewalk.

Hopefully it will. Snow is like 80 grit sandpaper. Have you ever been in the snow? It’s not much. It’s not as fluffy as the cartoons would lead you to believe is what I’m saying. Few seconds later, he gets up from a now bright red patch of snow. Oh, he staggers over to his bike and he yells, my bike, you jerks broke my bike. Oh, man, His front wheel was completely smashed and bent. He hobbles off, dragging his bike, and we can hear him muttering some big high school words we had never heard before. Hey, it wasn’t

our fault. We didn’t tell him to ride his bike into what was essentially a giant ice ball.

The A.J.

I hope this makes it on the show. There we go. I love the theme shows. I think they’re a great way to help people remember stories they haven’t thought of for a long time like this 1. Thanks for all the work you guys do putting on these shows. James from Glasgow. Thank you, buddy.

That was great.

Thanks for listening and thanks for sending in a great story. Yeah. People that know ice or don’t know snow, don’t know how sucky snow is. You know, in the South, it comes once every 10 years for like 15 minutes, you know, and it melts by the time the snow comes up or the sun comes up. My wife has all these beautiful stories of snow, you know, because she grew up in Pennsylvania and they slided and they made snowmen and all this kind of stuff. I moved here to the Midwest as an adult and snow is terrible.

It is the worst. Driving stinks. Shoveling it stinks. Slipping in it stinks. And it is like little shards of ice. It is not this beautiful, wonderfully stuffy stuff. I mean, as soon as you hard pack it and you throw a snowball at somebody, it hurts. So, yeah. And I don’t know why he was riding a 10-speed and 8 inches of snow anyway

yeah that that it’s aj where this is a we’re talking

about that’s true you know all day

he blamed them for breaking his bike

Not the brightest duck on the pond.

So, oh, hey, Jay,

he’s going

to find the show and he’s going to be like, no, they really did talk me into it. James from Glasgow’s fault.

All right. Hit us with another story, John.

Alright, Tandem Teens. This comes to us from our friend Shelby in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

This is another great story, by the way.

Yes. Yes, it is. Here is a story from when me and my husband went on our first trip together back when we were dating. We went to Florida. I have this thing with trips where we do 1 thing planned for each day or it won’t feel like it’s a vacation.

Yeah. My wife’s like that, dude. I have to, I have to demand a down day. Yeah. Otherwise we’ll go to Disney World every freaking day that where they’re out or we will go hiking every day and swimming and some sort of snorkeling adventure. And, yeah. So I feel that.

So what’s a down day look like to you?

To where we stay in the hotel.

In the hotel.

And then we can go out and eat and stuff, but we’re just going to rest. We’re going to rest up.

You do the down day in the middle of your vacation

at

the beginning?

Yes. Yeah. It’s my vacation’s vacation.

Yeah. Yeah. I got you. I can, I can, I can dig that? Usually when we go on quote unquote vacation, it’s like somewhere family is already. So we’re actually staying at their house. So

that’s not vacation. That’s a family trip.

Yeah. That’s a good point.

Yeah.

So I guess I don’t go on vacation very often.

There you go. Once your kids are gone, you’ll have a chance. Yeah. And you can get a special, wonderful day where every day is an adventure. OK. Kind of like this story.

The story on well on this fateful day, James, they were in Destin, Florida. You ever been to Destin?

I have actually. Yeah. In the Panhandle, right? Panhandle, yeah. It’s part of the Redneck Riviera.

Yes, yes, Destin is. Yeah, that’s why I sound so familiar. Yep, that’s right down there.

Yeah, we went there this past summer. Yeah.

OK. Yeah. Up on the. Oh, gosh, is it the A1A or? I

don’t even remember. I had never been in the Panhandle before that day.

Okay. For

that trip. Like, they’re straight Florida, straight up and down Florida. And that’s the only Florida I knew.

Yep. Side

to side Florida? I don’t know. I didn’t even know that was the panhandle. People had been talking about the panhandle and I’m like, Florida’s not shaped like a pan. I don’t know what that means.

Yeah, the panhandle. It’s the area above the Gulf of Mexico. I mean,

I guess if you were holding the pan and the handle broke and the pan was still hanging, then it would look like Florida.

Yeah. Like what’s hanging off the bottom of that pan that creates the Florida Peninsula that we’re so used to? I don’t know.

That would be the pan. That would be the pan broken.

Oh, yeah. OK. Got you. That it flopped over.

Yeah.

That’s that makes sense. I got you now.

It’s kind of what I had said.

Like Oklahoma has a pan handle to doesn’t it? Isn’t that the toothbrush looking state, Oklahoma?

Yes. And they have a pan handle and it makes sense to call it a panhandle because it looks like you could put it on like a hat, like a freaking Jack, Jackie, not Jackie Chan. Who am I thinking? Johnny Appleseed. I get the 2 confused quite often.

Yeah, Jackie Chan, Johnny Appleseed.

Johnny Appleseed was kicking butt and taking names, and Jackie Chan planted a bunch of orchards.

Yeah, you got that close. Yeah. Maybe Florida got jealous and they’re like, we need a panhandle, too.

Yeah, maybe they just tagged it on. Yeah. I think Florida just got left with all the land that Georgia and Alabama hated.

That’s right.

Because Florida started from the bottom up. I mean, is there any doubt that it started from the bottom and worked its way up? Because you think about the biggest cities. I mean, Georgia came down a little bit, but the Spanish influence starts, you know, at the coast and then the down part of it. So, yeah, anyway, that the middle and the top didn’t take off. You can you can pinpoint it to when they popularized home air conditioning. That’s why all of Lakeland, you’re familiar with Lakeland, looks like it was built in the 50s because it was.

Because that’s when all the people moved there and needed a Dairy Queen. You know.

What should we call this Providence that we have found? Let’s call it Lakeland. It’s got a bunch of lakes.

Got a bunch of lakes.

Yeah, there’s 1 everywhere.

And if you look at Lakeland from the air, like from like from Google maps with the satellite turned on, all of the lakes are perfectly round because they’re all sinkholes. That’s a good point. It is.

Florida is the sinkhole state. Yeah. Back to Shelby’s from Oklahoma story. They were in Destin. They decided that they were going to get a tandem bike. You know what that is James?

Yeah, it’s a bicycle built for 2.

Built for 2. One’s up front and one’s in the other’s in the back. They’re going to have a romantic ride for 2 down to the beach. Mind you, I’ve never ridden a tandem bike before we got to the hotel and got ready to go to the beach. And by the time we got back on the bike for our ride, it was already 05:00. And you know what comes with 05:00?

Shadowing. Oh,

yeah. If you’re yeah, there’s a 05:00 shadow, but this was 05:00 traffic.

OK, my bad.

So we decided to ride along the sidewalk until we were able to safely cross the road. We were biking in front of a gas station in this SUV stops. And my husband, who was at that time, my boyfriend, thought the SUV saw us. So he being on the front of the bike started biking because we had slowed down for the car. But the driver did not see 2 teenagers on a massive tandem bike. No, sir. So he started pulling out. Oh, my honey. My honey, she says, sees him move with us still in front of the

vehicle and he starts pedaling faster Now he cleared the SUV But that put me right in the middle of the front of the car and I got bumped into the road. I fell off of the bike into oncoming.

Oh my gosh.

Thankful that the driver saw me fall. He stopped in stop traffic.

Oh, good.

My loving husband was an avid biker and has been hit by many a car. Turns his loving eyes towards me and says, get up. You’re going to get hit by a car.

And at

the time we didn’t know, but my knee was really messed up. I looked up And all I could say is I can’t and this man whom I love so much says no seriously get up Lucky for me there were firemen who were staying at a hotel that was located behind the gas station and they came over to help A fireman came over to me and lifted me up out of the road. Oh. And you should have seen the daggers. My boyfriend was shooting at this fireman.

He deserved that. He said,

get up. You’re going to get hit by a car.

The theme from bodyguard is playing, you know.

He set me up on the curb and then got the mangled bike out of the road. We went to urgent care. They gave me painkillers and not to be deterred. We continued our vacation with me on painkillers. And a

broken knee.

And a broken knee. Once we got home, we found out that indeed I had broke my knee. And now I have 5 screws in my knee. 5, James. 5 screws in my knee is a little memento of this adventure.

5 screws.

5. Hope this makes it on the show. Oh, have a blessed day.

Have a blessed day yourself, Shelby, telling us about your screws. How does that work? I don’t know. Because, okay, I’m still a child in so many ways, right? And so to me, a knee is the wiggle part.

Right. The patella, the little, the little piece that moves around.

The little kneecap. That’s what a knee is to me. I hurt my knee. Mommy, I fell and scraped my knee. Now I know as an adult that the knee is this whole thing. There’s a meniscus, There’s a, you know, a cup and a ball and this whole thing. I know because 1 of mine hurts me when I go up the stairs and, and so where are the screws? They’re not getting scraped upon. You know what I’m saying? If it’s just the knee cap, how many screws does it take to put a knee cap back together? Secondly,

if it’s not, how do you keep them free from from poking out? Oh, the other side.

Yeah, I have a feeling that 1 of the bones either the Was it the

fibula or the tibia? Fibula or the tibula? Yeah, I

don’t know. Or the femur, the femur bone, maybe something on the femur bone cracked and I don’t know. That’s a Shelby. If you want to send information on how that works,

send us some photos of your X-ray.

Yeah, that would work. That would work. I’m sorry about your vacation.

John also off off the air asked for pictures of your knee scars. Who are you earlier in the show? Yeah, Veronica. Oh, Veronica wants to see your cookie scars. So yeah, remember when you said that?

So I don’t, But I will. I am interested to see because are they the size of of, you know.

He wants to know if they look like Oreos. So that was his big thing. Is the

Oreos or chocolate chip or maybe Maybe they’re like the peanut butter cookies that have the little cross hatch design on the top.

Put a fork into the top. Sprinkle a little sugar on it. Yeah. This is from Asher from White Salmon, Miss Washington. Sorry, I can’t read Passport protection is what it’s called. The other day, I had to go and renew my passport in a nearby town. And after my appointment, I was done and I figured I’d go explore the city and see what I could ride my bike on. This is not unusual because I ride street BMX. And now we know what that stands for. Oh, yeah.

It’s like skateboarding

on a bike. You didn’t need to explain it to us. We know what BMX is. We knew about it before your parents were born.

We invented it. Maybe.

Right. We We jumped off jumps and we put plywood on concrete blocks and we did cool stuff and fell off a lot. And hurt ourselves. So anyway, He found a good spot down the hills a little way. Someone in someone’s front yard was being supported by a big concrete retaining wall that was slightly slanted, which I thought would be fun to ride. The top had a pretty sharp corner to it, but I wasn’t weary of it as I should have been. Leary is the word you’re looking for. I warmed up with a few basic tricks and

I got used to the texture of the wall. And by the way, he’s talking about wall writing. This is not something that we did back in our day. There was no such thing. We didn’t even think of it.

So he is pretty extreme with his BMX skills.

Everything is so extreme. It should be BMX XX. It’s so extreme. It’s offensive. So.

So his stream is offensive.

So anyway, I set up my camera to film some more technical tricks. So I was getting closer and closer to landing this trick. And after about 15 tries, I was going back up the wall on my bike and both tires slipped out from under me. That’s cause you’re riding up a wall, you moron.

He’s got his camera though. We could see this happen.

Yeah, that’s true. Do you have a video? Do you have a video?

Send it.

Send the video. Send the video, please.

Is it in on the cast.com?

Yes. Yes. In all cast that story show at gmail.com. Whatever. Whatever you want to do. It slipped out from under me as we happened to have multiple times. This time, though, I didn’t have time or space to jump clear of the bike and or the wall, but instead I slammed into it sideways and my upper thigh came sharp and sharp contact with the top corner of that wall that I wasn’t weary of before. Now I am weary of it and leery. I immediately knew this was going to hurt and bruise pretty badly. I stumbled around thinking

maybe I could walk it off, but I ended up needing to sit down and I turned off the camera because it wasn’t fun anymore. You should have live streamed it. The pain was ebbing away faster than I thought it would have though. So I reached down and I felt the area on my leg a bit. Suddenly I realized my passport book was in the pocket over my leg. I took it out and there was a major crease across the width of the book, putting a zigzag in the binding and saving me from what was surely going

to be a serious injury. Man, you know, the movies when they get shot and they fall down and they get up and their Marshall badge saved them. Yeah. Or a phone saved them.

Yeah, the bullets in the phone.

Yeah, yeah. I never fell for that, but this is kind of proven that it’s possibly true. Right. You remember when I put a book in my pants? Yeah. In the story. So it would help me not get a spanking that hurt. Yeah. Yeah. I didn’t want to do the pain dance. So I put a book in my pants. Yeah. This is 1 instance where a book in the pants actually did save him from doing the pain dance. Yeah.

You

know, Congratulations, Asher.

Maybe he got that that advice from you. Actually, no, he didn’t because he would have used a bigger book. James, you know what would have saved you from doing the pain dance? What? Passports. You should have put passports in your pants.

You should have had it when my mom came. My mom was a big lady. She came up with that belt. I should have said to somebody, we’re going to need a bigger book.

We’re going to need a bigger book.

Can I go get

that reference? You’re awesome.

Can I get the S encyclopedia from from the World Book Encyclopedias that you bought from a salesman last year?

Door to door salesmen selling encyclopedias.

That was our Internet, John.

Yep. Yes, it was.

The World book encyclopedia.

Analog Internet, as I like to call it. Oh,

all right. Shoot us up the ramp of respect.

Oh, the ramp of respect. This is a long 1, James. So buckle up. This comes to us from Scott in Lexington, Virginia. When I was young, living in Seattle, Washington and unknowing of life and impressionable, as he puts in quotes, stupid, actually that’s an ellipsis weather, Stupid, impressionable, young and impressionable, also known as stupid. I tried to impress others. And in this instance, it was the neighbor. I wanted to impress my neighbor. That’s what he’s saying.

Yeah. We

got out our Schwinn’s 1 day. What? And James. Whoa, whoa,

whoa, whoa, wait, stop. Stop right there. I did not apparently censor this. What did you just say?

Yeah, we got out our Schwinn.

No, no, no. Well, let me see how that spelled SCHWINNS0, wait a minute. Those were bikes. Yeah. What did you think I was talking about? I I

don’t know. Maybe they maybe thought they were talking about their shoes

He did say please explain what a Schwinn is John. Do you want to do the honors or do we want to tag team it?

I think we should tag

team. Okay, you start you start So when amazing before the days of BMX

before the days of the BMX there was the Schwinn

The Schwinn

when I was a child actually my first bike without training wheels was a Schwinn. It was a small kind of goldenish bike. Now, I always thought in my mind, the Schwinn was what my grandparents would have rode as a bike.

But no,

that’s not exactly the case. But a Schwinn was a brand name. Yes. And it was Ornate, wasn’t it? What do you

call it Ornate? It was so sweet. It had a

banana seat. The banana seat. Explain what the banana seat’s all about.

It was like a

seat, but it was more seat. And you could have your sister or friend right behind you.

Yeah, and they would fit. Yes. Because it was a long seat.

Or you could sit way back on it because the handlebars were what, John? They had they had these would you I would call them ape hangers if you’re familiar with the you know, Harley’s like a chopper, like a motorcycle. I could buy

Those those handlebars would go way up in the air.

Yes. Or you could pivot them down and out. Yeah. So you could sit way back on the bike. Yeah.

Loosen, loosen that that nut up on the front of the bike and just lower that handlebar back.

Yep. Yep. Loosen that nut up on that Schwinn.

Yeah, that would help you to customize the way that bike rides.

Yeah. And did yours have tassels?

I did not have tassels because my bike was a hand me down. I don’t even know where I got it from, to be honest.

Some of them had tassels coming out of the handlebars.

Yeah, tassels on the white plastic handlebar grips.

Yep. Yep.

To give you kind of an idea, if you’ve if you’ve seen like a beach comber bike where the frame kind of has like extra bars on it, So to speak, you know, that’s kind of what a Schwinn. Just Google it.

Just Google it. Just Google it. It was the coolest bike in the world.

It was. It was a very nice bike. But no, it’s not made for like riding, you know, BMX.

But you can put up to 2 friends on this thing with you, because 1 could ride on the handlebars and 1 could ride behind you.

Yeah. Sometimes the kids would have a basket on the front of their Schwinn. Yes. You put your homework or something in. Yeah. And mine had like a little thing over the back. Oh, they had fenders, too. Yes.

Oh, yeah. The fenders and a chain guard

and a chain guard.

Speaking of which, I want you to listen to this and tell me if it brings back any memories. Yeah. So what is that the sound of, John?

That is the sound of your chain rubbing against your chain guard. Isn’t it?

Because it’s an old bicycle, it’s a piece

of crap. And whoever put the bike away last, they leaned it up on something. And then that chain guard got a little bit dented. Yeah. It was pressing into the chains.

Yeah. Sometimes the pedal would grind against the chain guard too, you know? Yeah. So It could have been either 1 of those here. Air. What about this 1?

Bike pump.

Yeah. Pumping those tires. Yeah. Had to make sure we never knew how much air was supposed to get in them. I just know that you would just put so much in until you couldn’t even pinch it. You know, you’re right. Right. The tubes would explode and then I don’t know. I don’t know. And then what about this sound here? See if you can hear this. Let me play it again. Let me play it again. It’s kind of an awkward 1, but you’ll know it when I say it. That, my friend, is the coolest trick that we

knew how to do on a bike. The skid.

The skid.

And if you were really cool, you did the skid like they did at the end of ET. When they were flying in the air, you remember that moment? Yep. Dude, in the theater and the bikes started taking off and the cops with the shotguns didn’t even shoot the kids down out of the air and they’re flying. And 1 kid’s like, oh, I can’t look. And they landed and each of them skidded into place.

Skidded into place, side skid.

This is the raddest part of that movie. Dude,

I feel that moment. And I’m feeling quite nostalgic now. I don’t know if

I can finish the story. Well, I think we can together.

Okay.

I’ll read 1 paragraph. You read 1 paragraph because it is long as crap.

All right. Well, we’ve explained the the Schwinn. Right. And So they were headed to their neighborhood ring. And this was a dirt track that was oval, like a racetrack. And it was used by horse trainers and general equestrians of all sorts. And there was a horse barn near the track.

I was about 9 or 10 and of average height. My neighbor was about 14 or 15 and very tall. My Schwinn was comfortable with a banana seat, the holder bar for the back seat. I forgot about that part. The little ring that came up that so somebody could hold on behind them. Yeah. Like If you had friends that was on roller skates, they could hold on to the holder bar. And you could put your nameplate on the back of it. Yes, because they would sell those and they always were sold out of James’.

I never we didn’t get that part when I was

the little license plates that you could put on the back of your.

Yeah, I never got 1.

Man, I never got 1 either, but that’s because they were always sold out. And that’s

what they told you.

I had a card with a clothespin to make it sound cool. Yes. And because the spoke feel 1 of the

1 of the playing cards.

Yeah, I was proud of my psychedelic bike. My friend’s bike was cool too, but he

didn’t have the cool noise like mine does because what you do with that card, right? You’d stick it just a little bit into the spokes and you’d use that clothes pin to hold it onto the back of the frame of the bike.

Yeah. I wish I had that sound. Yeah, that was

pretty awesome. Yeah, but my friend’s bike, he didn’t have that. He was a teenager and noisemakers were for kids. Also, his bike was tall and he had the cool biker handlebars that kind of reach high over your head and out in front like a chopper motorcycle.

We rode around the track a few times and my friend saw an old wood jump in the long grass in the middle of the ring. He decided he wanted to fly high, but not me. I was scared.

Well, he set up the jump anyway, which was about 1 and a half feet high in the middle of the path and then began to ride around the ring, building a bit of speed. He even passed the jump. I may have yelled something like, you’re crazy. After a good lap and a good amount of speed, he rode up the jump, flew a while, and then landed

with style. Certainly he had done this before. Evil Knievel would have been proud, and only heaven knows I was a bit envious, but I wasn’t about to tell him when he stopped. He was raving about how fun and easy it was that he egged me on.

Now, James to egg someone on means to encourage, provoke or urge someone to do something often in the mischievous and reckless manner. This phrase is used when someone pushes someone else to take action or make a decision, even if it might be not the wisest choice. Egging on someone can be done through persuasion or taunting, And that’s what we know at 63. It’s good

that he explained it though, because I forget that we have youngsters and to egg someone on would mean nothing. If you didn’t know. Yeah. Anyway. Oh, No, I was scared. That jump was 1 third of my height. Besides, I was too young to die. But of course, after 3 or 4 or 20 tries,

I finally gave in.

But my bike was too sissy. Oh, There’s a word I haven’t heard for a while. Yeah. Can you explain sissy? I don’t like that word.

And no, some people call their daughters sissy.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. My mom would not have that, by the way. But no, sissy. I don’t know if people call it sissies, but it was a boy that was like a girl. And so it’s so out of style now because being a girl is not necessarily bad. But when we were boys, if you acted like a girl, yeah, It was the worst thing ever that you could do because girls sucked. They were stupid and dumb. And you were a sissy if you were too scared to do something like a dumb girl.

That’s that was making me think of the Christmas story vibes where you know, the boys are the egging the guy on

his tongue. Are you yellow?

Yeah, yellow. Yeah. Double dog dare. Yeah.

Well, in our days In our days, you were sissy.

Yeah, sissy. And so because my bike was sissy, I had to ride his bike. So he held the Schwinn as I climbed up on top of the seat, barely reaching the pedals with my toes and then looking up to see the handlebars were actually in the clouds above me. I reached up and I think my fingers touched the handles, but with a push from him, I was off. With much wobbling, I got the first lap completed. The second lap built some momentum, but the third lap got me going with a bit of confidence. The fourth lap,

though, that got him yelling for me to jump. But this was not this did not help my nerves. But lap 5 was going to be it. But 5 came and went and so did 6.

I’m 7 was here now And I was determined. I mustered a bit more speed with my toes, which was how I was pedaling. And I know it wasn’t enough. I approached the ramp and stopped pedaling. Another mistake. I hit the ramp and the bike began to rise, but with the grace of a penguin, I landed nose front tire first. I rode around the rink for about a fourth of the distance like this with my butt in the air and my front wheel on the ground. It seemed to me like I might have been doing it on

purpose, but I was too scared to know what I was doing. I must have crashed in the tall grass on the side. The bike was undamaged. Thank God. All I remember is that my friend came over wide-eyed with a smile, not caring if I was injured and said, that was great. He bellowed like I was deaf.

My leg, arm and head were hurting, but I was a hero. If not in the neighborhood, at least in my mind.

That’s right.

We walked our bikes home, me with a slight limp. And it’s 63 years. This is my memory. True or type typed up. It is my adventure and my memory.

Scott, thank you so much for sharing that story.

Great story.

It was long, but it

was worth it. It was worth it.

Totally was.

And you helped us remember Schwinn’s man.

Yeah, you might have introduced Schwinn’s to a whole new generation, Scott.

So, yeah, I bet

I bet you find 1 of

those jokers now in an antique store or a flea market. They’d probably charge you several hundred dollars for that joker, if not a thousand for 1 in a good shape.

Oh man, I wish I still had the 1 that I had as a kid. It was it went fast. They had the it had like big white walls on the tires. That makes sense. You know, yeah, black tire would have white walls on it. It was came straight from the 50s. Probably was My dad’s bike when he was a kid. I have no

idea. Who knows, man. I don’t remember how I got mine because we were not wealthy. But anyway, scratch made shoe straps from Myron in Sugar Creek, Ohio. This is probably my second favorite first favorite story. Anyway, years ago when my twin brother and I were in high school, it’s another twin brother show. Yeah. Yeah. We had a small group of friends. 1 day we were talking about riding bikes and my brother and I had recently purchased toe straps and put them on our bikes. In case you don’t know, toe straps are like a cage that bolts

onto the bike pedals that you slip your front of your shoe into. Yeah, they’re called seriously dangerous straps.

Yeah. The intention of them is so that you can

on the. Well, it says it says there is there’s also a strap. It’s a strap that can be tightened against your shoe with a quick release mechanism to get your foot out easily. This keeps your foot firmly in the pedal, allows you to pull up with 1 foot while the other is pressing down. And we found that they greatly increased our peddling efficiency. So it’s a twin thing because they’ve discussed this later. 1 of our friends decided he wanted to try it out as well. But being the mad scientist of the group and apparently poor, the

group decided he decided that he wasn’t going to buy them. He was going to make his own. So he decided to use bailing twine, which was in abundance as he lived in a farmhouse. So he took the twine, he wrapped it around the pedal and his foot. So he basically lashed himself to the pedal. He did the same for the other foot. How he did this, I did not know because it is impossible to balance a bike without moving, But at any rate, he got them both strapped in and he took off down the road. The

first few pedals were great, but then he noticed something with each pedal. The straps were getting tighter. He tried pedaling backwards, but see if that would loosen them. No luck. He had to decide what to do because apparently that wire had gotten caught in the pedal. Remember when your shoestring would do that? Yeah, I was thinking that. It’s the worst. Your string or your pant leg would get stuck in

the chain.

Yeah. Or in the in the pedal mechanism, you know, and you would turn and every time you would turn, it would just pull that thing tighter and tighter. So

your foot got permanently became a part of the pedal.

The first few pedals were great, but no luck. He had to decide what to do. Turning around to try to get back home wasn’t going to work as it had a slight incline, which meant more pedaling. So he kept coasting and only pedaled enough to keep his balance. The road leveled and he slowed more and more. And when he could no longer balance the bike and he felt like his toes were about to be cut off, he laid the bike over and fell into the ditch. Now he was stuck in a ditch contemplating his poor life

choices with his feet firmly attached to the bike’s pedals. He finally got his feet out of his shoes and just pushed his bike back home. He never did get real toe straps. He also never tried bailing wire again. We also never saw him outside of his home. He didn’t have any feet left because the bailing wire. He had no toes. He took his shoes off and the toes stayed in the shoes.

He went on to create clips that you clip your shoes into.

He went from a size 10 down to a size 8. He lost 2 inches of toes that day.

We called him Pinky from there. But no,

it doesn’t make sense. Oh, maybe his pinky toe survived. I

don’t know.

I know a

man that only has half of his big toe because he was pushing a lawnmower up a ditch and then tripped and fell back. And the thing rolled back over his foot. And you just hear he heard this little tink. And his toe tip went flying off into the ditch and yeah, he’s got

half a toe.

No, he still has half a toe to this day.

He’s cutting in like his bare feet?

Yeah, I think so.

Oh, she… OK.

You never cut the lawn in your bare feet as a child? No. Oh, boy. No way. I did. My mom was

a nurse. She’d tell me horror stories about people getting hurt.

I didn’t want to do anything

as a kid.

Oh, yeah. You you you had a mom that loved you. That’s the thing. My mom just wanted the grass cut. Yeah, I got the grass. I don’t care if you put shoes on. Oh, man. Yeah, my mom would not. I don’t know. She wouldn’t even make us bring our bikes in. She’s like, if

they get stalled, if they get out there and get rusty, it’s year back.

Oh, man. How many times did your bike get run over? Because you left it on the driveway.

In the driveway.

Yeah,

I don’t know, but I remember getting cussed out more than once by my stepdad. See, he was the 1 that would never look. Yep. I think moms know to look

Yeah well, I would put mine behind the car in such a way that you couldn’t see it at all apparently and I Can’t tell you how many times

I had wobbly tires because just the tire would get run over. Yeah. But as long as it didn’t touch that fork in the front, that tire can wobble. It had room for wobble. I have it. Right. I have a room. It reminds me of a story of a friend of mine. He had kids and they were, you know, 6 and 8. And he would yell at him, bring the bikes in the garage. And they would. And he gets to work and he notices somebody must have keyed his car. So he’s kind of mad about it. He

was talking about it at his staff meeting. But every day the scratches would get worse. And he just happened to be out there and he told his kids, bring your bikes in the garage. Don’t leave them out there. I told you. And they’re walking them in and that handlebar scraping down the side of that car, leading to nice, fresh, scratched, down that black, shiny car. Kids, man,

kids don’t care. They don’t know

they’re the worst. They’re the ones

that open their car doors into my vehicle in the parking lot.

I was riding my kid on my daughter, my sister, my sister on my Schwinn, and we were going to go around the block. Never allowed to go around the block, but I knew we couldn’t get lost because as long as I kept going right,

you know,

we’re just going to end up right back at the house. Sure. So makes sense. She’s got no shoes on. I’ve got no shoes on. She’s sitting there. She’s holding on to that back handle behind her. She’s got her legs splayed out, right? Everything is going great. I take that first turn. It’s the first of 4, right? And I take that second turn. We are as far away from the house as possible. Everything is going fine. That third turn, we’re starting to come back toward the house and all of a sudden the bike just stops. It’s skidded

to a stop. And my sister goes, and I try to go forward. It won’t go forward. I try to go back. It won’t go back. I get off the bike. I look because she’s screaming and pointing. Her foot. Had gotten caught in the spokes. Huh? Oh, she must have been clicking or flailing. And the spokes had dug into her flesh like a fillet of filleted fish. It was pink skin. Why are you telling me this? Because it was gross and it hadn’t started bleeding yet.

It hadn’t started bleeding yet.

And of course, my first thought was we got to get home. Yeah. So I pulled her foot out of the spokes and I said, just

keep your, keep your legs out.

Cause I still talk like a hillbilly back then. And my second thought was we just went around the block And my sister got hurt. We got to make up a story. Oh, no. And I’m stupid, right? Because I’m a stupid kid. And it couldn’t just be that we were riding back and forth in front of the house. And this happened. No, of course not. I hadn’t find a way to explain why we had been around the block. For some stupid reason, I couldn’t lie about it. Like a normal human. I had to try to explain it.

So I came up with this story that someone had tried to steal my bike and me and Amy had chased them around the corner and ended up on the wrong side of the block. And then when we caught him, he ran away and we had to ride the bike home. And unfortunately, Amy’s foot got caught in the spokes. Huh. Yeah. Did she buy it? No, not even a little bit. So she took care of Amy. Amy got off fine. Amy was the youngest. Did you have stitches? No, butterfly band-aids. My mom never took us to the

hospital. Okay. Couldn’t afford that. So about 4 or 5 butterfly band-aids later, James got his butt tore up for going around the block on a bicycle.

If only you had a passport to put back

there. If only I had been a better liar. I became a better liar, but I was not a better liar at that point. So anyway, I got some more stories, but I’m going to save them for the, for the after party. A quick announcement, check out our merchant merch dot that story show.com. Especially if your kid loves this show, maybe it’s time for you to buy him a t-shirt or hoodie or something like that.

Ooh, something fun.

Announcing our next theme show is going to be at the end of January. It’s holiday stories. So you’re making these stories right now. Maybe you’ve got something from Thanksgiving. Christmas is coming up soon. Merry Christmas, by the way. Happy Kwanzaa. Happy holidays, happy Hanukkah, whatever you’re celebrating. I hope it goes very well for you, but you’re making stories right now. New Year’s Day is coming and gonna go, and we want your stories. So as they happen, write them down, put them in your, in your to-do list and remind yourself, leave a Google keep or a notepad

open or, or talk into your phone and tell Siri, you need to remember this thing that happened. Cause you’re going to send it in to thatstorieshow.com and go to submit a story and send that story in. It’ll be great. What was your worst gift that you ever got? Maybe you got 1 from childhood. Maybe you’re making 1 this year. What was your best surprise? What was the best or worst white elephant gift you ever gave or got? How did you find out about Santa? What kind of weird family traditions do you have? What about Christmas play

drama?

Yeah, Man, I got a couple of those.

Misheard Christmas carol lyrics, you know? Snowball fights? You ever, I don’t have any snowball fight stories, but maybe you do. Sneaking in to find presents? I did that a few times.

My wife was the queen of it.

I was quite successful once I found out my parents had a closet. So, oh, yeah,

you would get to them before they were wrapped.

We also have something we’re wanting to do at the beginning of the year because we’re going to be down December 26th and January 2nd. We’ll be back on the 29th. And we are gonna give away as many free gift memberships as we can get. Here’s

the deal.

You can join Patreon or give the gift of membership at patreon.com slash that story show slash gift. Okay, we’ve already gotten 4 of these. Nice. People have reached out and they said, James, I wanna bless the middle schoolers. I said, well, we have a lot of middle school listeners, about 40% of our audience is middle schoolers and they can’t afford to become a full member. They can’t be a supporting listener. So Maybe some of the adults out there would sponsor a few middle schoolers. We got 4 right now. I’d love to give away 5 to 8

to 10. Okay.

Well that’d be

fun. So middle schoolers you underprivileged poor little people that listen to our show. How do you get 1 of these? Well, this is the deal. We’re going to announce it on the 9th. Okay. So between now and then all you have to do is submit a story. The trick is it has to be a story that makes me LOL. Oh, so you can’t pull it, put in your usual crap.

I thought I’d my bike. I hope this makes it on the show. Dang.

You have to tell me a good story that makes me laugh. And we have 4 right now. The first 4 good stories will win those first 4 Memberships if we have 5 the first 5 if we have 10 the first 10 So how do you know if you’re going to win 1? You’ll find out when I read your story and announce your name and the person who sponsored you on the show on January 9th, 2025. How does that sound?

That sounds like a…

Like 1 of the greatest things we’ve ever done. I think so.

Yeah. On January 9th, 2025, We will give them all away. All of that. Man. So that means they need to be sending in stories all over their Christmas break.

Oh yeah. Starting now. Starting now. Pause the show. Send in a good story.

Don’t wait until January 8th to send your story in either because it might be too late.

Oh, 0, definitely. Don’t wait till the ninth that I don’t read stories on the ninth. I put the show together a couple of days before the ninth. So do not wait. And if you are someone that wants to sponsor, please do so. Go to patreon.com slash that story show slash gift and sit and you’ll sign up, say for the cheapest, you know, 1 do it. And it’s an annual gift. So you’ll do annual. And then you will email me the link and that gives me your name. And if you want to write a message for me

to read, do that as well. So far, like I said, 4 people have done that. We have 4 to give away. I’d love to do 10. I’d love to give away 10 middle schoolers the opportunity to hear all of our bonus content and all that kind of stuff. I think it would be great.

Yeah, we teach many great things in that bonus show.

Yeah, it is a teachable moment. Matter of fact, last episode, You know that because I released the secret behind the scenes footage. Oh, I haven’t from the last 2 episodes. Yeah. So if you like what you hear, man, you want to be part of our bonus content. So join or give the gift of membership, patreon.com slash that story show slash gift. This podcast is made possible because of our supporting listeners on Patreon, supporting listeners get ad free listening swag and a weekly bonus podcast. Try it out free for 7 days. Support dot that story show dot

com. Thank you to Michelle for becoming our latest Patreon and supporting listeners. Thanks to our producers, James Spangler, Kerry Wright and Christopher Tynan. Guys, it’s time for us to get out of here. Do you have a story that you’d like featured in a future episode? Submit your story at thatstorieshow.com And while you’re there, join our mailing list for the latest updates. Take a moment and leave a review on iTunes or Spotify. And remember when something weird, annoying, embarrassing, or painful happens to you, don’t get stressed. Don’t get depressed. Just think, hey, This belongs on that story

show.

We’ll see you guys next week. God bless It was just me and sweetie, we were both on a bike. I thought we were safe, but I said, oh, Mike, there’s a SUV and it’s looking at me. You better drive real fast or it’ll bump me on my butt. I wish it wasn’t this way but it is cuz every day I gotta plan something or it’s not a visitation for me cuz I’m a little B. I gotta move it like I move it every day I see I didn’t mean it that way It meant like a buzzing

bee But John heard it and I said it accidentally But now a big fireman’s coming to get me and my daggers are coming out my boyfriend’s eyes like me jagger and now I’m done. Got no more rhymes to give. Bicycle stories, that’s just the way that we live. And every single 1

was great in its own way. But I got to go because I can no longer stay. That’s what you get when I don’t have time to write 1. Are you kidding? I thought you did. Oh, no, dude. I was so impressed that you saw

me laughing. It’s like, wow,

he knew I was going to laugh. Because everything came together. No, it didn’t. It was terrible. Thank you.

You’ll have to go back and listen to it. Oh,

that was it.

Even made the vein pop out of my forehead.

That’s funny. That’s great. Well, let’s jump right back into it.

Hey, welcome to Stuff

That Didn’t Fit on the Show, where we put stuff that didn’t fit on the show. It was our bike theme episode today. I’m James.

I’m John.

And just in case you didn’t know, we’re doing a special thing for the middle schoolers. I want to talk about it just a little bit because we didn’t talk about it enough in the show. Yeah.

You might not listen to the main show. So you might only listen to this.

Yeah, that’s true. We are trying to help as many underprivileged middle schoolers as possible. And when you are a middle schooler, you are underprivileged in my mind because you’re kind of stupid and they need our help. And I want to make them supporting listeners, but they can’t do it themselves. They need your help. So if you’re a patron, I would love for you to sponsor 1 of our middle schoolers.

Sponsor. I feel like we need to play a song.

Yeah, you can you can adopt 1. We’ll send you a picture of them with flies on their face. Yeah. Sarah McLaughlin can sing you a song, you know. Yeah. Make you feel guilty. Get Come to That Story Show today. Support.thastorieshow.com.