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Foreign special bonus edition. The travelogue St. Barts should have been St. Barts and maybe other parts. But you're going to hear it kind of diary style running through it. A place that I've always wanted to go to and a nice origin story about a time I thought I was going there before. This episode is brought to you by Square. Your favorite neighborhood spots run on Square. Man, if I had my own place, picture this. A bookshop that's also a bar. Great reads, cold beer, everybody's welcome at Pages and pints. And with Square, I can make sure I have a clear plan of what's next. Because Square knocks out today's to do's and unlocks tomorrow's what ifs. Go to square.com go to R Y E N Ryan to learn more. That's S Q u a r e.com go/ryan square. Meet you there. This episode is brought to you by Frank's Red Hot. Bring everybody to life with the perfect blend of flavor and heat. You can put Frank's Red Hot on everything and believe me, you will. A world where wings bring out the flavor of game day any day. Where buffalo chicken dip takes a party up a notch. Where any slice of pizza instantly becomes the world's best slice of pizza. Visit franksredhot.com shake to learn more. It's travelog time. Time to explore and share with you. All right, so the plan is to go to St. Barts. I am here now. We'll run through some stuff. I'll admit some of these trips, I am hot coming in. Red hot. And this one, I don't know. I don't know why. It's obviously a place I've wanted to come to for a long time, which we will cover. It might be because I went up to Vermont and was already away from home for quite a while. I did have some second job work that had to be done. I guess I can call it a second job because I'm being paid. But it is. I will tell you this, if you want to be a writer, good luck because you get to write all the time. So yeah, I went up to Vermont and hung out in Stowe for a little bit to just be away from everybody, which I'm pretty familiar with. To get some work done. Got everything done way ahead of time. Was able to get in some fly fishing in Stowe a few days. Mostly three, four weight stuff. Just technical, small stream. We won't. We won't get into all the details. But then leaving Vermont, we had some issues with the Flights. I don't know what is going on. I was having some bad luck with the flights, but had a delay alert at like 4am When I woke up. So obviously right back to bed and then realized that the delay was information on the second flight. So that meant I left Vermont and had to go to Atlanta because Atlanta is probably the best place to get to St. Martin, which is the major airport here in the Caribbean. And I wanted nothing to do with St. Martin and even less to do with Atlanta. So I think having to go to Atlanta and just hang out in an Atlanta airport by myself for, I don't know, 16 hours wasn't putting me in the best mindset. I did look to see how far away. Northside Tavern was great, great bar. And I was like, 35 minutes and you have to be up at 7am Maybe if that Allman Brothers tribute band was playing, I probably would have done it, but they were not playing. So right to bed up early. Right to the airport in Atlanta, which boasts the most efficient airport in the world. Has anyone checked on that? I imagine they're leaving out the efficiency of the QDoBA, so I don't know how those rankings work. Anyway, great news, though. Starting to feel a little bit better. Upgraded to first class. Very excited about that. Little ominous, though. As I was actually walking to hand in my. Well, not scan my boarding pass, there was an alert on the screen right over my head telling me about a delayed flight to Jackson Hole. Just haunting. So land in St. Martin. So the airport, you've probably seen the videos where there's that beach and the planes land, like, right over your head. That's the main town strip that there on the Dutch side. The airport is on the Dutch side. I hung out in St. Martin many, many years ago. Obviously, the Dutch side and the French side. Look, the. The town with the main area there, that's not that far from the airport. It feels a bit like the Caribbean. For people that love Epcot, there's plenty of really nice places. There's some extraordinary beaches. I did a full lap around it. Like I said, many years ago. I stayed on the French side. Um, and it was, you know, look, it was a beautiful resort. I mean, all you have to do is go outside and look at the beach and you're like, all right, you know, this is really great. But the town part of it wasn't all that thrilling. It was just a little too commercial for me. It just felt like, I don't know. Like I said, I think the Epcot thing explains itself. So I was planning on going to Saint Barts on that trip, but then something happened. So I was out at the beach, was reading, and I saw this huge catamaran anchored not that far into the harbor. And it looked like so much fun. And I was sitting there and I'm like, you know what? Let's be a little adventurous again. This is a long time ago. I would never do any of this now. Music blaring from the catamaran, people dancing around. And I was like, they look friendly enough. So I ordered a bottle of champagne at the beach and then swam all the way to the catamaran and just started climbing up the ladder and handed him the bottle of champagne. And this group thought it was the coolest thing they've ever seen. So we all just started high fiving. I was using whatever broken French I had left over from my years of barely studying it, you know, hanging out. And earlier throughout the beach day, that day, I'd noticed this area where all these guys are diving off of this cliff. I was like, man, that looks like something kind of like a bucket list thing to do. It doesn't look that high. And here's the thing with cliffs, they never look that high when you're not near them. So we were hanging out, and I was talking to em, and I was like, you know, I think I want to jump off of that. And they were like, really? I was like, yeah, I think I do. So, you know, vibes are high. I try not to use the word vibes a million times. And I swam from the catamaran over to this, like, inlet where you could walk up the side of this cliff and then dive off into this area. And I would say with each step, my confidence decreased. And then when I got to the top, I looked down and was like, I don't really think I want to do this now. And look, it wasn't that high. This isn't like the old 76er, okay? So I'm not claiming to be some badass cliff diver, but I was up there. Then I started thinking, like, you didn't even really look at, like, the landing area. You don't have any kind of, like, map for shoals or anything in your back pocket. But then when you look back at a catamaran just raging to deadmau and people cheering you on. What are you going to do, not jump? So at that point, I was all in. Even if mentally I wasn't all in. I jumped off the cliff. It was over in a second. It wasn't that big. Of a deal. Land, no problem. And then the easier thing to do would be to climb back up on the rocks, walk back to kind of the inlet area, and then swim back to the catamaran, as opposed to swimming all the way back from where I had landed. And that's where the problem kicked in, because then once I was climbing up the rocks, walking over to the inlet. No issues at this point. Swim back to the catamaran. High fives and celebrations everywhere. More champagne. I looked down. I don't know if he was the captain. I don't know what his license was, but my feet are bleeding everywhere. Now, I'm not talking, like, you know, movie scene, theater, you know, whatever. I don't even know what I was just trying to say there. It was just a nice little, like, flow of blood from my feet. So I'm trying to figure out, like, why are my feet bleeding like this? And I'm looking. I can't really quite see anything. And they're hosing it off again. It wasn't teak. It was, you know, just standard catamaran decking. So I wasn't necessarily staying anything. But the blood did kill the vibe a little bit. It did. I'm not gonna lie. And then all of a sudden, I'm kind of like, what is. Why are my feet bleeding? So, you know, I respect the hell out of boats. As a boat owner, I respected boat ownership prior to owning a boat. So I felt bad that I was kind of bleeding. The champagne was done, and I was like, okay, that was your adventure for the day. Swim back to the beach and kind of hang out and read a little bit more. And then I was like, all right, whatever. I'm gonna take a nap. Take a nap. Wake up. First couple steps, I'm like, oh, my God. Just this intense, sharp pain all through both of my feet. I'm like, what the is going on? And then I look down, and I start to see these, like, little black dots, Some in my feet, some exposed in my feet. And they were sea urchin needles, I guess. So I call the front desk, and I'm like, hey, what do we got here? And this guy shows up. Great spirits out of him. He starts telling me, like, yeah, you have all these needles in your feet, so we're just gonna have to soak your feet in vinegar for a bunch of days. And then if you can't, then you'll have to go to the hospital to get him removed. And then I was like, you know, I don't know that I want to Hit up a podiatrist here in St. Martin. So, you know, we tried the vinegar thing. That didn't work. I was trying to find ways to just walk around the pain on my feet. So, like, the sides of my feet and all these different steps, and I can tell you that's terrible for your back. So I woke up the next day, it was like this. No Saint Barts. I got on a flight right back to Atlanta, to Hartford, and then was at the doctor the next day. And he pulled all the needles out of my feet. It was fine for me. It wasn't really that big of a deal. I don't know how good of a time he had, but he picked podiatry. So, you know, he's probably. Probably not the worst thing he ever had to do. Obviously, very soon after that, I went to go work out and I was doing some sort of shoulder exercise. And because my back and my entire alignment was so messed up from walking around with needles in my feet for a couple, couple days that I don't even know how many exercises it might have been the third set of the day. And everything just immediately seized up and my back was more up than it had been in a really long time. And I wasn't even thinking about the needles because once the needles were out, my feet were fine. But now my back was super messed up. So there's a lesson for you, a lot of lessons in there. If you're going to cliff dive, understand where you're landing, understand potential dangers. You know, I think you still have to. If it's a catamaran full of French people that you swam out to cheering you on, I think you do have to jump. But, you know, the other thing I've always thought about since that time was if there's a place where you probably want to get sea urchin needles removed, it's probably in the Caribbean. You know, it wasn't like I was getting major surgery there, so maybe I could have just sucked it up, but I just couldn't walk, at least well. So as soon as that happened, I'm like, all right, am I really going to take a ferry now to Saint Barts with all of this stuff? Am I going to stay an x Ray in St. Martin, go to the hospital in the St. Bart? So St. Bart's was done. It was a big tease. A tease I've been thinking about for over a decade. St. Barts, we're here. Let's run through some history. Population 11,420. That was July 25th. We got new numbers for you. Eight square miles, GDP, 367 million euros. And it is now part of the French Oct. So a thousand years ago, you know, I guess you could go back further if you're a geologist. The Arawaks kind of run into play some confusion amongst scholars on the difference between the Arawaks of South America and the Taino, which I think the Taino deserve their recognition as they were. You know, you can't just say, hey, everything south of here is all the same tribe. That seems to be a bit of a generalization. So anyway, you've got indigenous people here on record, because this island, again, we'll get to kind of like the lack of value this island has. It wasn't even close to being something like, hey, let's definitely go to that place, as opposed to all these other islands. 1493, Chris Columbus, you probably heard of him, he shows up, names it after his brother Bartholomew. So it's Saint Barts. And again, the island, historically, because it's kind of volcanic, is not really anything worth, like, back then, right? They didn't have beach clubs back then. Maybe they did, but there is. The soil is terrible. You drive around and I've been here, like monitoring the soil, going, yeah, this is tough soil. There's no fresh water source. So it's this beautiful area. But at least back in olden times, you're like, what are we doing with this place? So 1648, it's settled by the French and then it's attacked by the Caribbean. The beer is pronounced Carib, at least I believe, but I. I don't think that that's the correct pronunciation again. Sometimes you're going to make mistakes on that. So that's tacked. And people are kind of like, what are we even doing with that place anyway? What was the point? So then it was sort of abandoned. There's a stretch of the West India Company being involved, but when the natives are warning everybody from even attempting to show up, they line the harbor with the heads of anyone that tries to visit. Then French colonization happens in 1763. The place still basically sucks. It became kind of a pirate haven, meant bars, the exterminator if you want to look him up. Great names back then, just the pirate names. They did not fuck around with branding. So the harbor, which I've been to in Gustavia, which is the main town, and it's kind of close to where the airport is again, I landed yesterday. And if you want to look at that approach, I think you have to have a special rating As a pilot, to even be allowed to fly in here. It is, it is gnarly, man. I mean, that New Zealand thing that I did in the Sound was pretty crazy because you had to go 7,000ft up to clear the mountains and then you had to come back down inside of this massive water source. But there were mountains on both sides. So we came down from 7,000ft, but we couldn't make the landing, no one can. And you have to go in this valley, do a U turn, come back, get lower, do another U turn and then land with like insane crosswinds. When we landed in New Zealand after that trip, like other pilots were watching the guy, like cheering him on, that kind of thing. So this isn't maybe as extreme because it's so quick, but it looks like you're about to crash right into the top of this little peak with all of this traffic near this rotary and you just slide in behind it. And then the landing is actually pretty quick even for the strip. And it's only a 15 minute flight from St. Martin. So yeah, Gustavia is the main harbor and it's a great harbor, well positioned, deep. Spent a lot of time looking at it yesterday. Didn't run any depth tests, but I trust history on this one. But a big pirate hangout because the French ships would attack the Spanish ships and then they would trade their plunder for supplies. So it was kind of a good little hangout there. So French colonization from 1763 on, although the British tried to take it over prior to that. The British attack a few different times here. Back to the French in 1784. Then the French, it's back to the French in 1758. Excuse me. Then in 1784, the French sell it to the Swedes for trading rights, plus I believe, cash considerations for trading rights in Gothenburg. So it was this place that, I mean, the irony of Saint Barts now becoming one of the top luxury destinations in the world because I don't know, the rock Rockefellers got involved. Rothschilds have some history here. And then, you know that Jimmy Buffett, SNL on and on and on. There was some note that I saw somewhere where they didn't have electricity for a long time. But I just have a hard, hard time believing like the Rockefellers would set up here and be like, oh, time to go to bed, it's seven o'. Clock. But it was a place every, you know, it's not every hundred years, but for a thousand years there was this quest to own it. And yet no one could really do anything with it. So the Swedes take it on. They do a great job of the harbor. It's named Gustavia because of King Gustav iii. And for a while it was like this free port. There weren't. I know tariffs are pretty hot right now. Apparently it led to a lot of really good trade because there was a lack of restrictions on the whole thing. British attack again. 1801. Swedes surrender. And then it's kind of like, I don't even really know who owns it at that point. But technically the Swedes sold it back to the French in 1877 with a note that it was much national shame that they could not sustain this port and then obviously had a surrender, even though it had some nice little. It sounds like a nice little shipping community, nice little stop. But there's just so many other places that are more fertile, that made more sense, way more natural resources. I drove around some of the industrial stuff a little bit today and, you know, there's salt farming, I think there's some zinc things going on here. Again, you know, I don't know if they're hiring or anything like that. But yeah, again, the irony is that of all of these islands with so many resources, this one had almost none. Yet people, man's thirst to conquer, they were like, hey, maybe we'll just attack that. And then they have it. It's like, what's the point? So anyway, things settled down. We stopped invading each other as much as we did back then. French control. And then everyone here. French Citizens 1946 full report tomorrow. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn ads. If you're in B2B marketing, you want to make sure you're not wasting your ads on the wrong people. I remember when I was younger and I would watch games on television and I thought, man, a lot of ads about retirement, who's this for? And then I got older and I understood it. I was like, oh, now it makes sense. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from the other ad buys. You can target your buyers based on job title, industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue, all the professionals you need to reach in one place. Stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign, so you can try it out yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com rrs that's LinkedIn.com rrs Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. This episode is brought to you by Verizon Rookie debuts Underdog stories Bold trades. Talk about refreshing. You know what else is refreshing? A brand new phone with Verizon. Get a new phone on any plan with select phone. Trade in and my plan and lock down a low price for three years. This is a deal for everyone whether you're a new or existing customer. Swing by Verizon today. Three year price guarantee applies to then current base monthly rate only. Additional terms and conditions apply for all offers. St. Bart's Part 2 wanted to give a shout out to my guy Gregory running the airport shuttle to the hotel again. The shuttle is from the hotel. I didn't even realize. I guess it's because it's so upscaled. They wanted all the information on my plane and they sent the shuttle over. I'm probably going to get charged for that though. But my guy was awesome. Just incredible juices displayed out in a case. Nuts, nectars, whatever you needed. Damp towels. 20 minutes from the airport to the resort. I'm staying on the eastern side of the island inside of this harbor. The hotel is located on this thin strip of land where there's a body of water in between where the. It's not a peninsula. It's. It's connected but there's water on both sides. And I look out into this majestic harbor with these little islands. Uninhabited, very small islands. Rough seas. I would say to the right a bunch of smaller boats all anchored right in front of the hotel. So really cool. Some kite surfing over there. I have always wanted to try it, shout out to the Douglas brothers, but it just feels like it'd be more equipment that I'd be buying and getting excited about and then buying the first equipment and be like, actually, I need these buckles instead. These are titanium. And then I'd be like, you're not very good at this. So what else? What else? So yeah, I'm in this harbor. It's great. I upgraded to the jacuzzi room with an outdoor patio that walks out into the pool. It's not the high. You can actually get like some beach villas that are right on the beach. Those are a little, little bit more than I wanted to spend the extra jacuzzi deal. Whole thing with this outdoor access, I think it's like €500 more a night. Is it worth it? Probably not. Reading list what am I reading? I'm reading Lonesome Dove. Shout out to the fiction readers out there. Larry McMurtry. Never read it. Will Kane bought a gun and like moved. He was so inspired by this book. A lot of people inspired by it. A lot of fiction. That Lorena, man, she must have been something else. Dudes are freaking out about her. 250 pages in. So I don't want to just do all gym and salad updates for you because I know that a lot of you are like, hey, cool, you went to where? Pretoria. And you talked about the gym and the salads real quick. The gym feels like it's going to be a high rep type of gym. Planet Fitness would be jealous that the dumbbell's only going to 22kg. I did. I'm sorry. When I got to the hotel, right to the beach cabana, reading the book. Did order a salad. Wanted something healthy. Had been traveling, you know, was in Atlanta for 16 hours, which was still in my dome a little bit. And I ordered the fresh, healthy garden salad with chicken on the top, poulet. You know how when you go to Chipotle and there's like that one bite of chicken where you're like, oh, man, that got hacked up into this. I don't know what was going on. The salad, it was like a collection. Now I also used to have a rule about Sunday salads. I don't know if the produce supply is. Is to blame for this. I think it's just a chicken selection decision. So it wasn't very good at all borderline gross. And it seems like people love their pickled onions on top of everything down here. So look, Salad Jim got it out of the way quick. So again, the cab driver was like, you got to go to Nikki beach for the beach party. That's the huge thing on Sunday. It goes all night. Don't go to Gustavia tonight. Because I was like, I think I'm actually. I think I owe it to the audience to at least go out one night. So we'll see. Because I don't even know if the first night counts, but I did. I went out for a little bit taxi from my Hotel of St. John, which is the other smaller town, Gustavi is the harbor. More going on there. St. John is this rotary with a bunch of restaurants, a few different bars, a little bit of shopping. Nikki beach is right over there. A couple other different beach clubs, a few hotels, but it is really small. Like if you blink through the rotary, you are through the town. And so I wasn't going to go to the Nikki beach party even though by the time I was going to get settled and then get back into town. And then just solo, sober, winding down epic beach party with DJs inside of this like restaurant bar thing just wasn't going to be a good fit for me right now. So did hit up a restaurant again. The taxi there was €57, like 11 minute drive. I didn't have a timer. Maybe it's 12. Sat down at the bar at this pasta place. Don't worry, I'll do seafood for you guys. Hammer, dude next to me telling me I have to get the truffle cream deal. I was just like, yeah, okay, whatever, whatever, Claude. And then I noticed a woman by herself. She was having a big fancy drink. Looked like it may have taken 20 minutes to prepare. And she was reading a book. She was just sitting there reading a book. I don't know what her deadlift numbers were, but she seemed to just, you know, she was, she had a cigarette, a book, a look was exchanged. Yeah, and I was kind of looking at her. It's funny because I'm by myself all the time. I'm like, ah, poor thing. And then I was like, yeah, whatever. She probably thinks you suck. So headed over to La Piment. I think I have that wrong. We'll correct it later in the week. And it is just this kind of bar deal. They do serve food. It. I sat in this area where the stools, where the scooters are two, three feet behind you. If somebody had a horrible mirror on like a dually, it may even hit you in the back. There was a couple other bars. I walked up, I saw one place, there's a bunch of English guys, two in particular, super red faced. I don't know if it was from the booze or the sun, but usually traveling international, I try to avoid the rowdy English and UFC fights were being re aired. I think, well, it was UFC so it wasn't live. So I was like, I'm not going to go into there. So I sat and talked to some old waitress who came over and was like, you know, what do you want? I was like, just give me whatever your lightest beer is. So we had some caribbes, had like four of those. Had a glass of Sav at dinner. I think it was Sav. I don't know, I'm not sure. I think he just kind of looked at me like, all right, whatever dude. But then when you tip, everybody like loves you. They're like, oh, that's right. These American guys tip. Now the bar was younger, but again it wasn't like a full blown. It Was still kind of a restaurant, but then there was like a little bar area off to the side. So it wasn't like I went to Shellbacks in Saint Barts and just sat there, although that's possible too. And then I saw this guy, just like, unbelievable. Shirt completely undone, cabana type shirt, gilligan hat on, well groomed mustache, cigarettes going, beers going, just running the place. Then there was like a birthday celebration and somebody came out with some sparklers or something like that. And I was like, is that guy like the guy? You know? Imagine being able to say, like, yeah, I've got a place where you just go down and say parts for the week. Is that guy 2000 Rosillo? I don't know. The scooter thing is insane because the mile per hour, I should say kilometer per hour speed limit posted everywhere, constant reminding you 30 kilometers an hour, that is incredibly slow. No one goes 30. Although there's so many times where you're watching stuff happen, you're like, I can't believe how fast that guy is going while it's on the rotary. And I think the cool thing to do is if you're younger, just have one of those scooters and live dangerously. So, yeah, these are somewhat. These travel pods always feel a little self absorbed because I guess it's just me. And as I said at the top, like, I don't know. I don't know how much more I had in me in doing these because I don't know if I'm enjoying them the same way. I don't know if backstory helps Sometimes I think backstory helps with TV and film characters, but I've been talking for a long time, so I don't know that you need a ton of backstory on me. But yeah, like, I thought I was actually planning this trip to not be solo. Didn't happen. It's okay. Things happen. Professionally, I have, like a bunch of great things, but there's also a lot of professional uncertainty, which I actually kind of look forward to. I enjoy the twists and turns of not knowing. But this is a different place for me to be in than probably some of the other times that I've done this where I know exactly kind of like where I'm at. It could be that I'm even sharing that because I love Paul Thoreau so much. My favorite travel writer and the best travel book I've ever read, Happy Isles of the Oceana, where he basically starts that book with like, I think my wife wants a divorce and I may be sick. Even though his doctor tells him he's not sick because you're like, why is this guy kayaking from Australia, New Zealand, and then into these, these islands? Like, where's this guy's head at? I mean, he is, he is kayaking to places that I don't know if you can send mail to. And he's just like, yep, posting up here. We'll see what happens. And then locals would come over and be like, what the fuck is up with this guy? It's like, well, if you read the beginning of the book, you would know where his head was at. So let's rent a car because the taxi back. So I spent €107 and tips €127 on a round trip taxi trip. Again, if I was going to go out, I wasn't going to drive anyway. But I'm like, all right, we need to rent a car. Hotel does it for you. They were like, what do you want? And I said, you know what? I actually want something small. I don't need a Land Rover. I don't even know where you park at. Every turn, every corner, all these blind corners, trying to back out of stuff. No way. The streets are so small and stuff is constantly happening. And if you go the wrong way and you have to get back the other way, you just feel like, how am I going to back out of this without having a scooter fly by me? And next thing you know, you know, making headlines. So I got a Mini Cooper convertible, dominating. Love it. It's got a little pickup up these hills and you need it because some of these cars feel like they're going to stall out all the time. So next day, drove around in the Mini Cooper, just loving it. Little Almond brothers. Although I'll admit, I've heard some of this Caribbean music down here. And you're like, I wonder what that song is. And then you just can't. You can't. Series, just not quick enough. Sometimes there's construction everywhere on the streets, so sometimes one side will be closed. It's not that traffic is necessarily bad. You're never really waiting that long. And then when you think about the houses and the, you know, end of the pod when we do the categories. Could I live here? If you don't have, like, something that's away from the road and so many of these houses, it's just you're on this road, you're flying down, and then you just pull off immediately and you're in this driveway and then there's your house just right there. I haven't seen any yards anywhere. So do love driving around, especially with the top down. It's my first convertible. I think I probably did some stupid Mustang thing in my 20s thinking it was awesome. But I shot over to Nikki beach the next day to eat to see what it was like and it was great. The food was great. We had some wahoo tacos for the fish people out there and then some ponzu thing. I thought I was a little salty myself, but St. John is really cool. It's very just, it's just really little. But there's these beach clubs that immediately you take a right down some path from the sidewalk and then it's just paradise. And it's like two minutes away. So it's, it's perfect. Shot over to Gustavia Major Harbor. More going on in that town except the entire town shuts down from like 1 to 4, 1 to 5. That's 1300 hours for some of the others where the town other than a couple cheeseburger stands that I stopped at one, it was awful. It's. There's nothing. So they have Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Brunello, they've got Rolex, Patek, they've got everything. Nothing's open. Although you know the high end watch places, it's not like rich people come here and be like hey, all these watches that no one can ever get, you have them all available. Just going in there is like hey, is there a 30 millimeter you have for sale? So not really. It didn't even matter. Any of this stuff was closed. I wasn't buying anything anyway. And going into some of the high end watch shops last few years, pretty pointless. I would say the Karl Lagerfeld collection was the best I've ever seen. Gustavia is also just really cool, but much bigger than St. John. So it's the major town, the major harbor. I did as I was having my cheeseburger fire off at WNBA salary tweet if you were worried. Look, I've been very consistent about this throughout the years. When the NBA would argue that half the teams were losing money. That was a big David Stern thing, not an Adam Silver thing. It was like okay, but if I'm going to buy something for 300 million, this worth $6 billion 20 years later. I don't care about your operating cost year to year. It doesn't guarantee you a profit when you know you're going to make. So look, when the WNBA team's part of the TV package was packaged in through ESPN having to do it, some of the ads are done because it's a partnership with the NBA. I didn't have a ton of sympathy for some of the arguments about the player pay. But look, it's likely because of one person in Caitlin Clark that this thing has blown up. The TV deal has gone from 60 million to I think over $200 million a year. The players make 9% of the basketball related revenue. And they got away with that because over the years I'd heard enough to know how not profitable it was. But if the Las Vegas Aces sell for what, $2 million in 21 and it's valued at 290 to 310 million now by multiple places that do this kind of stuff. Of the expansion fees that Golden State paid 50 million for the Valkyries two years ago and the next three expansion teams, the WNBA are 250 million. Like, I'm a little less sympathetic about operating costs when it's looking like this is a growing business. And so, yes, I think the women should be able to make more than 9% of the basketball related revenue. Caitlin Clark makes $78,000 this year. Like, in what world is anything, anyone that's that important to what they're doing? What world? Does it make any sense that you make $78,000 a year? All right, so ESPN W I got you. After all the little hopping around in the rain and just trying to, you know, get my bearings, I like to kind of do as much as I can when I first get to a place, see as much because I then I just like being in my routine and being kind of settled. I headed over to Governor beach and it was incredible. Maybe it was the rain that scared some people away, but everything broke. And the sun does set a little bit earlier here, but from about 5 to 6:30, I had this entire lagoon just entirely to myself. So I'll be hitting that one up again. Same bar. It's part three. Okay. We've made some moves and things have happened, so we'll cover all of it. I'm staying at Le Bartholomew, which I would recommend if you're ever interested in coming down here. The staff was incredible. A lot of Parisians that don't want to ever go back to Paris. Like I said, almost too helpful for somebody like me who's just not organized enough. Like, I still don't know where the next leg of this trip is going. I keep looking at flights. What gets me into St. Martin and out of St. Martin in the quickest amount of time. It would make way more sense to just suck it up and go to St. Martin for the last night of this trip so that I'd be ready to get the flight and be able to take my time. But I'm trying to thread the needle here so that I can get to St. Martin, get to the airport and. And then leave on the back end. So St. Kitts, Nevis, obviously Alexander Hamilton, a huge part of that reason why I want to do it. Just feel like I owe the guy. If we do go there, we'll talk about his upbringing. You think your dad didn't listen to you? You think because you were the oldest, he was too hard on you? You were the youngest. You weren't given enough direction? How about shitting yourself in a bed next to your mom while she dies? All right? That's what old Hamilton was dealing with. So I do want to go there, but I'm a little worried that it may be a little inconvenient. And everyone here, I was like, okay, give me the other islands. Like, if we're just here and we're going to start island hopping, what are the other options? And Anguilla keeps coming up over and over and over again. But then again, you're staying at this resort. And then the front desk is like, yeah, just take a helicopter over. You know, like, really, just take a helicopter over. We looked at that. Like, look, your guy's doing all right, but I'm not. You know, it was funny, too, because when I started asking about other hotels and other resorts, Charlotte, who was just a gem. I don't know if she knows that her name, even though she's French and that's how it's pronounced, is the name of a mispronounced shoe town in Vermont. But she was like, I don't know. Just stay at this place. And it was like €5,500 for two nights. I was like, yeah, Charlotte. Like, that's a lot. That's a lot. It was like, what the fuck? Somebody in Saint Barts is actually worried. So, no, it's not necessarily a budget, but, I mean, come on, who are we kidding? And on top of everything else, the helicopter, I think, was five grand, is private. That's cool, but I just don't think I'm gonna do that. So look, that's all just kind of lingering in the background of all of this stuff. So we talked about Governor beach the next day at the resort. This is something. I don't know the last time I've ever done this, if I've ever done it. But when I was at Bartholomew, I had a couple Hours of phone stuff. I had about two hours of work I had to do. And obviously it's not ideal. It's not what I would normally want to plan out for something like this, but it just had to happen. And then I was kind of thinking about the moves I was going to make and driving around, I thought, you know what, this place is so sick that you're staying at that. If you knew that this place existed, you would, if you were staying somewhere else in a different part of the island, you would drive here and spend the day here. That's how sick this is. And guess what? You're already here. So I did a full day. And part of it was influenced by the fact that I had to get some work done. And it just ended up being a lot of work calls that I just was like, look, I'm. I'm posted up here the entire day. And that's what we did. So that meant the next day I couldn't wait to get out. And we tried to do four beaches in one day for you. And that's technically what we did. So there was a western part of the island where it's Columbia Beach. And I was given a heads up that the seaweed season is upon us here. And based on currents, wind direction and just where the tides are at, it's a tough time. It's been a bad seaweed season. So this beach you drive all the way through, this other part of the island, there is kind of this thing that I guess would pass for a town. I did see a basketball court. I did bring my Devin Bookers shout out to the extension. I have not bought a basketball, which is usually something I do on this kind of trip, just to get some shots up and say, hey, when you went to St. Bart's did you get shots up? Yeah, I did. Did you try to dunk? Maybe. Did it work? No, but I looked at the court. It's a turf basketball court, which means they're playing soccer, but there are two rims. So I can only imagine. I'm like, I bet you would fuck yourself up so bad playing on that. I haven't ruled it out. But I didn't do anything that day. So I make it over to Columbier and like I said, you park about 15 minutes. Well, I would say you park and then it's about a 15, 20 minute hike. As I went to the parking area, it smelled like the worst waste plant, just rancid, awful. And it's just this seaweed that is stuck in these lagoons and you can see it, it's like red. You could even see it on the flight when I came into St. Martin, you could see these lines, you know, I mean, obviously a captain's always looking for things. Always trying to just scan the horizon, but you would see these lines and like, man, looks like heavy seaweed season. That's what I was thinking. And then of course backed up by the locals. So felt good about that visual. But as I parked and then loaded up the old pack to take some pictures, water bottle book. I'm like, it smells like. So are you gonna do, you know, a hike post op? This is gonna be an hour out of the day. We're trying to get four beaches in one day. So that's the one that technically I don't feel like I got. Although I do think I maybe saw a part of town that was worth checking out. So then I went back to Gustavia to check out Shell Beach. Now Shell beach is exactly that. It's not sand, it's just crushed shells. It is right, like a right and a left and another block from the town. So it's super convenient to the town. You can walk up. There was a lot of families there. A little bit of some topless action, which, you know, to me it's just sort of head down, but that's an American thing. Like if I were Italian, I would just be like thumbs up, you know, so that's probably really the approach. But, you know, head down by yourself. Lonesome Dove and hung out of Shell beach for a little bit. Nothing really happened there. It was just after Governor Beach, I'm like, okay, well, in the back of my head I'm like, I just want to get back to Governor Beach. If I'm really going to do this in post up, I don't know that this is going to be the place. Shell beach hanging out. They did have kind of like a JV version of Nikki beach with the DJ and the food going. I actually went to go up to like get some food and they. I could just tell they were kind of like, dude, where's your party? You know, we're doing bottle service here in the middle of the day. Even though there was families at the actual beach area, because you could just walk down to the beach area and have nothing to do with the kind of. It wasn't. Again, it wasn't any kind of like beach club. But I think they were trying to pull that off because the DJ looked a little bit like Dieven Dorf. So I could see what they were going For. And no one came to the hostess station for 10 minutes. And finally I was like, well, fuck this, I'll just go eat somewhere else. As I was leaving, this was actually interesting. I was leaving and there was a valet there where you could valet to go and eat there and then go to the beach if you didn't want to find a parking spot. You can usually find a parking spot at least in the middle of the day. Because again, Gestapia in the middle of the day is like completely shut down. And this dude, white kid, 20s, he was valeting cars. And I was walking back to my sick Mini Cooper convertible, and he was parking another Mini Cooper convertible, and he rammed it right into a wooden fence, like, loud. But the people that had given him the car, they didn't see. Who knows how mad they would have been. They likely were renting it. He wasn't upset with himself, and it was so loud, but nobody else was really around except for just me. And he got out of the car, stared straight in my eyes and just gave me that Raymond Felton look like you want. And I look back at him like, I have so much respect for how much you're trying to pretend you didn't just crash that car into a fence. You. Although, again, you know, whatever. Different cars, it's a lot like boats. I think I have a respect for people that have to park cars now, because if I had to dock your boat and I don't know the controls, I don't know the touch, even with a license up to 51ft, I'm not sure that I'd feel great about it the first time. So, yeah, he and I just locked eyes. And again, you'd have to just understand Raymond Felton's face, which I once described as the I banged your mom face that he played with throughout his entire career. It's not even a criticism, it's just supreme confidence After a turnover. So left Gustavia and shot over Governor Beach. And it was everything I wanted it to be. It is so far, my favorite beach here. Little sandy, little sandstorm, you know, I don't know if it was like a Texas flat just north of the Rio Grande, but it was nasty enough that it was. It was kind of some. Scaring some people off. But look, I can handle an intermittent sandstorm. If you're talking sandstorm is going to dust up once every 30 minutes. I can handle that. So I handled that. Jumped in and out of the water a couple different times and headed back because I was like, you know what? I'm Going to do, going to eat on a different part of St. John on the way back. And then I'm going to go back to my resort and just hit sundown. So that's what we did. Drove back there after a quick bite and made it back for sunset. It's not the greatest sunset spot, but in a way because the sun is blocked out over this kind of, you know, again, it is a bit mountainous here. They're not like high peaks, but it's just such undulating topography. It's just all over the place. Like these roads that feel like you're going down a roller coaster and then wondering if your car is going to make it up the other side. And I have got my bearings here a little bit because I did get lost a few times. I think I went down the one way street the wrong way. And then again when you have to back out of the whole thing, like all you're doing is just being like, please, if you're a scooter, don't be going twice the speed limit because the scooter's not give a. They actually run. I don't know if it's official, like elected office, but they run the show here, the people on scooters. So back to the resort for that. And I did something, I don't think I've also, I don't know I've ever done this before. But because my room and the WI fi was so strong throughout the resort, I grabbed a pool chair right on the edge of the infinity pool which was then right to the sand know, very close to the beach, watching the sun go down. And I threw on Skyfall on my laptop because I was like, yeah, maybe I'll just kind of chill out and watch a movie for an hour. And I go, wait a minute, why don't you do it outside in St. Barts? And I'm telling you right now, I'm gonna start doing stuff like that more often. It was, I was just having a blast. I was just sitting here, I was like, this is just so relaxing. Great. So I was going to eat at the resort that night. Let's talk about the food a little bit and if you'll allow me a moment, a minute or two on sinks between Vermont and now the resort I'm at, people are getting really creative about sinks. And as a guy that grew up installing a few of these things, I don't know what happened whenever we got to the kind of accepted, hey, let's have a sink that's a basin. This kind of pitch on both sides, it all funnels to the middle. Then everything kind of drains. And that seems to be good. What's the fucking point of anything else? And then design people got involved. And the last three places that I've stayed, two places in Vermont, this resort I'm at now, they're so aggressive with the sinks that they're trying to develop and install that what you notice is, is these don't really work. Like, yeah, they look modern and it's kind of cool, but they don't work. Like there's always shit in them. If you spit out your toothpaste and you don't go like right to the funnel, then you know, the sinks before this was never an issue. I don't remember this. I don't remember toothpaste residue all over everybody's house and used to go visit. And now it's like some, I don't know what it, like a Red Bull car jump idea within this metal tray that goes over the other part that then means stuff is stuck on there all the time because it's not getting constant water flow. I don't know, man. And the reason why I think of sinks and wanted to share that with you, one, because it's just important. I mean, we could end the pot now and I think the message would be clear and it would be a valuable podcast. But there's a thing that's also happened with food for a really long time, especially at the higher end. Places where they take simple things that have worked forever and then just decide to make them way more complicated and it's not as great of a dining experience. It's fucking stupid. I ordered the fish tacos and guess what? It was an open faced tortilla that I had to cut up with a knife and fork because it was just taco stuff with some sort of guacamole deal and then of course onions. And yet it was like this open faced thing and it was just fucking stupid. And the tortilla actually tasted really good. And you're thinking like all you had to do was just make the taco in this tortilla. But no, no, no, this is a five star resort. We have to take food that has generally been accepted as simple, just like sinks and we have to make it more complicated. And then dinner, I got the I think mahi sampler or whatever and they cut it into a thousand diced pieces like I was 3 years old and then put toothpicks in all of them when you were like, you know what, just a piece of fish probably Would have been really good. And I do think when I ordered the filet, they gave me the kid size to the point where I even asked. I was like, is this a kid size filet? And they were like, of course not, sir. And I think it was like €79. And it was like two thimbles across. So you run into that at some of the higher end places. There was a lounge singer. I went to the bar and talked to my guy, Lucas. I had a sav. And then he asked me if I had tried this Belgian beer ever. And I was like, I'm game. So he cracked one of those open for me. I left a tip, so that meant beer was free because he was so excited that somebody tipped him. And then it was just me and the lounge singer, just the two of us. And then I was like, well, is she looking at me because I'm the only one in here, or is this a bit like what happens when you go to those places that stay open a little bit later and they pretend they like you? Should I not look at my phone? Should I stop outlining this podcast? Is she going to ask if you're a writer? What do you say? Because you actually are writing down a legal pad in a resort in Saint Barts by yourself, like a weirdo. How do you handle this? This could be like a scene out of Casablanca. Lucas and I are talking. He also never wants to go back to Paris unless he's going to visit family. So I don't know. I don't want to break news here in case there's someone in his extended family that's listening to this podcast. So you know what? Nothing happened. Nothing happened. But I wanted to share those thoughts with you as I ran through all of them. So to bed up early, checking out. They're like, what are you doing with your rental car? And I was like, I'm just keeping it. They're like, do you want to shuttle back to the other place? I was like, I could just drive my rental car to the other place. What's going on here? What's going on there? Tons of questions. They didn't know what to do with me. Like I said, they just kept sending text after text. Mr. Rosillo, Mr. Rosillo. They weren't upset about anything. They just couldn't understand why I didn't care more about any of these things. And I just was like, look, here's a $20 bill. Bring me my car. And I'm just going to drive to the hotel and check in when I need to check in. And they were like, all right, you've never experienced anything like this guy. So I did see a gym that feels a bit like it wants to be like the jungle gym there in Tulum, which I have hit up. That was strange during that weird kind of COVID trip that I went on. And I was like, I'm going to hit up a real gym here for a little bit, roll in €45 for just a day pass. And they had the wooden stuff, but honestly, that wooden stuff for it to be heavy is just a massive pain in the ass. Like all it is really is like, hey, I have these mammoth pieces of wood dumbbells in my hands. And it looks like it's £300, but it's maybe 65 and it's just a pain in the ass. And they actually had normal stuff in there, which was great because the Tulum thing is strictly a photo shoot you get your workout in, but it's kind of a gimmick more than anyone. I. Not that I'm even knocking it, but let's just say you wouldn't want to be. If you lived in Tulum, you'd probably want a different gym and wouldn't want to do that every single day. This one was nice because it had traditional equipment and then it had all the photo op stuff, if you'd want to do that. And they even had some heavy bags, throwing some 12 ounces. Those gloves stunk wicked bad. Took them off pretty quick because I was like, how much of a hardo do you want to be at this place? Threw on tons of kilograms of weight. I'm not even sure if I've done the conversion, which sometimes can be good because you don't even know what you're putting on. You're like, hey, can I do this right now? That was pretty good. And then the cool part was they had. And I don't mean that to be funny, they had a cold tub, they had some plunge tubs in there. So we hit up the 6 degree Celsius one for a 3 plus minute stretch, which was terrific. Then checked into a new hotel, the Tropical, which I was kind of on the fence about. But the girls, Bartholomew were like, no, you have to go to that one if you're going to go to stay in Saint John. And that's where I'm staying now, and had a work zoom. Have a nice room. This place is fantastic. It's a little closer to the action because I'm going to a bit. Yeah. Go get a big dinner and then we'll see what happens and report back and hopefully by tomorrow we'll have made a decision on the next stop. 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So as soon as I went to walk down with my beach chair and book bag, it started pouring rain and, you know, a lot of pay it forward. Kevin Spacey's not a huge inspiration, but I saw a construction van parked outside of the resort, windows down, and it was just about to downpour. You can tell, too. It's kind of cool. I don't know if it's the sailor atmosphere, but you just kind of look up at the sky a lot, like Dietz in Lonesome Dove. Sorry. I keep referencing this book nonstop, and you just kind of look up and you're like, oh, storms are brewing. Probably going to be southwest, perhaps maybe 30 minutes. So just as it was about to start, a little light sprinkling, because it warns you and say St. Bart's I mean, how accommodating is that? Hey, the weather's about to turn, but here's just a few droplets so you can get all your affairs in order. And I saw the van with the windows down. I go, you know what? You know, it'd be an awesome thing to do is roll the windows up for these guys so they're not coming back to wet seats in their van. And considering the lack of crime on the island, you know, there's some places maybe you're like, if it makes it look like you're breaking into somebody's car and going through the van, you might not want to do that. But in St. Barts, I felt safe doing it. Rolled up the windows, felt really good about myself. Walked back through this little garden sort of overhang thing, entrance into the resort, and cracked my head on the top of it so bad that I started bleeding. So if you can figure that one out, I mean, it was within 60 seconds of rolling up the windows. And then immediately I cut up my head. It's not like I'm that tall, but I'm just thinking, like, why? Who designed this? You know? And then it was bad. I mean, it actually hurt. And enough where there was a couple people that saw it, that worked there that were like, ah, speaking of my head, I wanted to get a haircut. I didn't pack the clippers. I don't know what it is. About £50. I see a lot of people complain. It's perhaps an obesity criticism where it'll be like, you know, £50 for your piece of checked in luggage, but if it's 52, maybe they let you slide. It feels like north of 53 is where they start getting a little weird. If you have enough status sometimes I'll let it fly. No pun intended there. But there's something about just north of that where it becomes an issue, especially when you're traveling and hopping all over the place, especially when you're on some of these smaller planes too. Because if you start doing that, and that's happened in the past where they're just really, really strict about it. So usually domestic flights, they'll let you get away with it a little bit, unless you're just egregious. I do wonder if is it all of us would be fine at £55, but if 55 were accepted, would we all push it to 60? Human nature kicks in because it always feels like for me it's just always at like 52, no matter what I do. It's like always 52 pounds, especially when I'm going to be gone, you know, almost. Coming up on three weeks now, there's just no way to avoid it. And I've got the podcast equipment and I have my Devin bookers know, so a lot of the essentials. So anyway, I didn't bring clippers to shave my head and it's getting a little weird, like almost does he think that looks good? But you know what? I'm not. I'm not here on the scene the way I would have been when I was younger. So I don't give that much of a fuck. But at the same time, I would like to shave the head and get things tightened up here a bit. So now I have scab in the top of my head After I helped out the guys with the windows. That took a little too long. So here's the plan. I promised that I would try to make a run in it at least one night. I mean, it's Saint Barts, right? It's a festive place. It's a lifetime destination. A lot of people are going to go there maybe one time in their life, right? I know that some of it's been pre retirement scouting for myself, which I've hinted at in the past. Again, that probably sounds good out loud. Maybe I'm lying to myself, but it's, let's just say on my radar, hey, could you ever do this? So I asked the hotel about getting a haircut because their Salon on site wanted to charge me $100 and it's going to take two minutes. And I was like, you know, that just feels like it's a little excessive. And then the guy who valets the cars was like, I know a girl, she'll come to your room. I was like, wait, so slowdown. He's like, to cut your hair. €30, no problem. I was like, all right, great. And then they wanted to do it at 8am I was like, I don't know that I want to do that at 8:00am because again, the promise to myself and the audience was that I would try to make a run at it one night, no matter what the night presented, just go for it. So also to step up the food part of it for you, because, look, I think I deserve all the criticism post San Sebastian that's on the hand up. No one else to blame, obviously. So there is a place called Le Papillon Oeuvre, which means the Drunk Butterfly. It's a Parisian style tapas restaurant right in St. Jean, one of the 38 sections of St. Bart's that I learned. It's a really small place to have 38 different sections, but it does. I believe they're called courtiers, maybe. Uh, so I make it over to Le Papillon solo. You never know. It wasn't like super busy, but people were at the tables, people were outside, and the menu was like, incredible. It was all in French. Everybody's super, super French. The owner, she was from Paris. The waitress was from Paris. Everybody that I've met is basically from Paris. And I haven't met one person that's from Paris that says anything nice about Paris, like every one of them. Now, granted, if this is the kind of person that wants to move to Saint Barts from Paris, then there was nothing in Paris. But this is a continuing theme of everyone that I've met. And they're all service industry people. It's not like I'm like meeting people socially. But hey, where are you from? Even one guy was like, are you from Paris? He's like, how could you tell? I was like, I don't know, something about it. Maybe I'm getting used to it. And none of them have anything nice to say about Paris. It is across the board. So the Papillon, I went with the beef tartare. And here's the thing with beef tartare, it needs to be cold. The meat has to be cold. If it's warm, it's just fucking ground beef on a piece of toast. And this was so cold, so refreshing. A shaved parmesan thing on the top that actually worked. A little bit of hot sauce, some lemon juice, some capers, and just a feel of actually eating real beef in tartar style. And it was, it was great. I went with six oysters. I'm a little. I. I know this is shocking to you when it comes to oysters. I'm really particular about them. I love the Rhode island stuff. I love the briny kind of smaller size things. I don't like the golf ball ones that are just huge because then it kind of crosses over into. This actually feels a little gross. But if you have the right accoutrements with it, I'm just flying right now. And you know, you can just make an oyster a great experience. But again, speaking to temperature, based on serving temperature, they need to be cold. And there's something about French food with oysters. Sometimes I've seen this a couple times, they just came out in like a bed of hay. So they were a little gamier than what I'm used to, which is fine. The duck confit. Unbelievable. Don't normally eat duck, but this was basically the fanciest shepherd's pie I've ever had. It was duck that actually tasted like short rib with this very light whipped mashed potato that wasn't even close to being dense enough to be considered mashed potato. So what did I drink? I told you, I tried to go for it. No sa. What do we do? We picked pivot to Vermintino, one of the most underrated sources of liquid grape. I believe in the entire industry. Do not sleep on a nice Vermintino. And I went for it. I had five glasses of it. And oddly enough, because I ate so much food, because I ordered a second beef tartare, because they were like, three things will be fine. And I was like, I'm gonna have five. They were like, oh, okay. Who brought this guy? Must be American. Did he serve? So I ate so much food that shockingly enough, even after five glasses of Verntino, I didn't feel a thing. I even started joking with him. I was like, I don't. Was like, are you guys with me? Is this some non alcoholic thing that I ordered by mistake? That's a SOB substitute. What's going on? And they were like, oh my God, we have three. We're shitfaced. And then the owner came over and she was really funny about the whole thing. So. Because I'm just sitting there by myself pounding Vermintino and trying to Make a night of it. They came over and they were like, you have to have dessert. You have to have dessert. I was like, not normally the biggest dessert guy. I didn't expect key lime pie here. Not Le Papillon, but they brought out apple pie. And it was one of the coolest apple pie experiences I've ever had in my entire life. It was almost zero pie crust. So a very, very thin thing where it was the slicing of the apples in such a thin way and then caramelized and kind of sauteed in this design that it almost felt like eating some sort of caramel thing. And then, of course, to top it all off, homemade fresh cream on top. Again, don't want to go in. Glorious bastards. I don't want to be compared to a Nazi because I enjoyed the fresh cream so much, but it was worth it. So then walked back across the street towards the hotel to La Piment, where we spent a few hours. When I first got to town, like, let's see what's going on here. Had one karib again and was like, okay, there's no point. There's nothing to do. Go home, go to bed, workout. And that's what I did. Got up the next day, worked out again at Zion, did after the second workout, was asked by the hotel, hey, where are you working out? I was like, at Zion. Like, we have a deal with them. I'm like, great, I'm out a hundred bucks already. A hundred euros working there, back to back days. So if it was free, it sort of sucks. A hundred bucks isn't going to ruin my year, but you get the point. And they were like, well, how much did you pay? And I was like, it's €45 per visit. And they were like, oh, we get it for €43. So a win. I didn't even feel bad anymore. I was like, oh, wow, that's. They really hook you guys up. €2 off if you're staying here at the resort. What else? What else? We covered the haircut part of it. I shot over to Gustavia. The. Actually, before I went to work out, I went early because again, we talked about the two days that happened in Gustavia where I was wondering, it's so dead from 1 to 4, 1 to 5. Is it possible that it's just dead because it's the off season and it isn't. The town was lively. Everybody's out there, they're shopping. I mean, because again, some of the luxury goods are to the point where you could argue it's worth it. Because of no taxes. Depending on. Depending on what you're going for, but I hope you declare it. And I just kind of walked around, but it was cool to see it a little bit more lively. I did go into Brunello, check it out. I got to be honest with you. Some of these high end clothing lines, which, you know, if. If you're guilty of. Of dabbling into some stuff that I'm embarrassed to say, I even own, whatever, but 500 for some of these hats, you know, painter's cap, 650 Louis Vuitton. You're just like, who the. Then you got to really ask yourself, you're like, why would I even buy this? And you know what? I didn't. Although I did notice, and this was sort of shocking for a line as. As elite. I mean, if we're talking tier status. God. Tier status for Bonello. They had a Brett Favre oil painting which was maybe 4ft long, 3ft wide. It was massive. And it was just his face. Early Favre, a wispy mustache, which I don't necessarily remember. And then him and his shoulder pads so you could see the packers jersey. So it was like mid numbers up his face. And then I thought it was just kind of off to the side, like maybe a manager's son or daughter did this oil painting. And it was for sale inside of the store. €12,000, if you're interested. I took a picture of it. May post it a little bit later. So yes, left a more active morning. Gustavia. I did go there to try to get a haircut because I found a place online and guess what? That guy just decided to be closed for the day. My French is not very good. It's getting worse because I even looked and was like, okay, that's a day. That's a day of the week. It isn't Lundy, though, so we'll have to see because I'd expect them to be closed on Dimash. So then, yeah, headed to the gym. I got to admit, I mean, I know I feel like a bit of a. I'm too old to be taking pre workout, but I fucking love it. Sorry. And scooping some pre workout into a pre workout concoction that I put together on the road in a parking lot in Gustavia in the harbor as people are walking inside Louis Vuitton. I was like, you're either the fucking coolest or the least cool. You can decide on that one. So workout. Nothing to report much there. Back to the hotel. Reset and let's head back down to Nikki beach, because Nikki beach, that was the plan to spend a good chunk of the day there. Yesterday. I did go down. There's this just incredible little harbor from Eden Rock over to another beach club. Nikki beach is kind of right in the middle of it, the hotel that I'm at. I mean, if you can't afford Nikki beach or Eden Rock, which almost like nobody can, to go to Tropical and walk across the street and then not have to deal with any of the parking stuff, it's actually a huge St. Bart's hack if you end up doing it. So walk in there, sit down, read. Not much to report. Although there was an Instagram model, I believe. Shoot. I need to check the tag locations where it was about a 40 foot turquoise boat. Just beautiful outboard setup. I don't even know what the make was, but it was gorgeous. And there was a model who, again, I couldn't tell how old she was because, you know, I just, I didn't have. I didn't have a great sight line. And she was on the bow of the boat. And then there was a dude, a photographer in like a raft maybe, you know, 12, 14 foot, maybe something a local beach would have for a rescue type of deal. And the photographer, the photog was in the raft taking pictures of her on the bow. And then the boat had to keep like spinning around the entire time. So it was about 30 minutes. And I just kind of thought, either she's like a real person and this was the job, or because of the way this whole thing set up, she may have just paid for all this. Some guy she's dating, but at least he didn't have to sit there and take the pictures the entire time. So good for him. Little lunch at Nikki Beach. It was very, very slow. The waitress came over, talked about it. She's like, Sunday, Sunday's the day you have to come. Sunday. I was like, I don't know. I don't know. Because I would admit. And again, it's not because it's anything that's wrong with beach clubs or wrong with DJs or loud music or getting after it. Middle of the day. I'm not sounding like that guy, but I'm telling you, if you've done it enough times, it's just kind of the same thing all the time. But if you got the right crew and you want to go for it, go for it. Full endorsement for me on that one. Quesadilla for lunch and some sliders. Not bad, not spectacular. Checked out the gift shop, walked away and got Some work done back at the hotel. Really loving the outdoor movie watching on the laptop of the AirPods in and still debating what to do with St. Kitts next. So for dinner, I was not going to try to go for it another night. One and done after the Verentino night, even though nothing. Like it didn't even work. Very weird, didn't work on me. So I went out to the hotel lobby, checked in with Jasmine and said, hey, how's this sushi place down there? And she's like, oh, it's my favorite sushi place. St. Bart's Best, no problem. So walk across. And then I start realizing, like, as I'm looking at my phone, which isn't always the greatest source because sometimes the signal works, sometimes it doesn't. And I'm looking for this sushi place and the pictures look good. It was fine. And you walk down to Nikki beach and then you cut across and I'm going across Nikki beach, which closes really early, by the way, so it's not even open at night. And I'm looking at my location. It's like, I think I'm walking past it, but I don't see it anywhere. So then I walked over to this other beach club where I walk into the front of it from the beach, which is sort of weird because it's super dark and by the way, there's no street lights anywhere in St. Barnes. And I walk up into the bar and I'm pretty sure I was crashing some sort of wedding reception. Everybody was dressed up really nice. It wasn't just a St. Bart's thing. There were a few looks. I was not dressed up and they looked at me. I looked at them and I assessed the situation was like, all right, I wasn't going to stay there anyway. And it wasn't the sushi place. So I finally can't. I can't find it in this little cove of. It shouldn't be missing. A restaurant shouldn't be fucking missing. I can't find it. Everything's dark. I'm like, all right, maybe it's just. Let me call the number I call. The place was closed. So I walk over to Eden Rock, which is the other legendary spot there in St. John. Even more expensive to stay, I would say, there than maybe anywhere else. Certainly there's villas that were far more expensive. But if you look at this place like peak season, I don't think you would ever get a room there. Less than six or €7,000 a night. So I was a little curious and it actually worked. Out. Great. Because I'm like, well instead of going to this random sushi place, I'm going to kind of one of the other standard stops that are like it's, it's very famous and you walk in and it's all red and they have their little Instagram backdrop of let's rock Eden, rock St. Barts. And it's this incredible room, awesome bar, two tier dining room, another kind of social area off to the right side. All opened up to waves just crashing down to this lit beach where again the water in this little lagoon in this area is just crystal blue. It's perfect. And so you're looking at the room and the red is something about that old school red that just pops and makes you think about like imagine when this place is rolling that week before Christmas, New Year's Eve, what this must be like to see Baz Luhrmann next to, I don't know, Ben Bird and April Watson just mapping out the next major motion picture. It was inspiring. Went to the bar, sat by myself. They were totally cool with it. Very helpful. Again, all Parisian had the lobster. A lobster ravioli for you. It was good, not great. There was one ravioli where it was so much better than the other five raviolis that it kind of hurt the meal because each one was fine. I gotta be honest, you, I think they may have been frozen at some point. A great lobster ravioli. You can just see the meat break off inside of the ravioli. These felt a little too packaged down. Then this one ravioli was better than the rest of them. I appreciated that it was served in a broth. It wasn't really seafoody. It was kind of a lemon wine butter thing. It wasn't a cream sauce. I don't know how you kids do it. A big healthy bisque and then you're supposed to go out. Who the does that? North of 30. So this was nice. It was appreciated. There was a broth couple Vermintinos and then over to the gift shop where you're walking around and you're like you're going to buy something that you're going to wear none times. And I bought a red t shirt for €100. Totally. I just, I had to, I feel like I had to. At least I didn't buy the von Dutch style Eden Rock trucker cap that I think was €250 because you're like, you're never wearing that. That actually looks stupid. At least. This is a very simple red shirt. Kind of classy but a little thick, bit Like a goose tour shirt. You know, if you guys could dial down the thickness of some of the shirts, that would be appreciated. Although some of this oversized, thicker cotton is kind of back in now. If you look at the trends, I don't know if you're on this stuff. You kind of have to be if you're still staying in the game. So I did buy that shirt, and then when I woke up today, I was like, you ever gonna wear that? But I am glad I went to Eden Rock, because I wasn't even really planning on doing it. I looked at rooms there. It was, for the most part, it. It was sold out the nights that I was trying to get there. So it wasn't really going to work anyway. But it was clearly one of the coolest. It makes sense why that place is so famous and so many people go there. Because you imagine when it is peak season. I saw zero celebrities, by the way. Maybe other people saw one. But you get the point. Like, you could just walk into this room and totally get how it must be sick for all the people that have access to be able to get into there during the peak season and just all be socializing and heading back to their just expansive villas. So will I make it to St. Kitts? No, I will not make it to St. Kitts. I'm fucking over it. It's been about three weeks since I've been home. I have a quick turnaround where I have to go back to the East Coast. I have a million things going on. I'm sick of pulling over in my rental car and then parking someplace and then talking about business. And so I am going to kind of regret this a little bit. But I also. Looking at the St. Martin flight thing, I'm like, this sucks. And then you're going to do all of this to get to St. Kitts for like, two days. So I'm going to be really disappointed in myself when I get home, but I'm going home. Categories. All right. Could I live here? The retirement plan, after spending a week here, is taking a bit of a hit. I don't even know if it was, like, really possible, but I don't. Again, what do we say on this show? Don't put a salary cap on your life. So I've looked at real estate here just to see, and now that I've driven around and got to know the areas, and I do think you could do like four days here, and you got it. You know, even if you're not a huge explorer type person, like, within three or Four days. It was actually kind of cool. Like, the second day, I had my bearings, and I was like, okay, all right, I know where I'm going now. And I mean, you can take a left turn and it's wrong, but it's just going to filter you somewhere else that fixes it for you, because the place is so small. But to do it right, to have a place that you were really excited about, it's an astronomical number. All right, so there's that. And despite my ability to function in isolation, even that might be too isolated for me. And you got to remember, the people that live there live there basically because they're in hospitality and then whoever is working to make sure the toilet's flush. But so much of it is tourism, and so much of it is people buy these expensive villas, then hire villa management companies. There's villa management companies all over the place. I might've seen 20 different offices that specialize in that, because I think that's such a huge part of the industry, is you buy something and then you're renting it out and paying property managers, the whole thing. So maybe you could argue if you had that kind of money that you could pull something like that off and make back some of it on renting it out religiously. But living there, I think it's even a little too slow. And it's not that there's nothing, right, because there's a couple real towns. Gustavia's a harbor village, right. St. John's just basically a rotary with stuff in two directions. But it's not like you're walking up and down all these streets or anything. I mean, you can walk through St. John from, like, the end of it in less than 10 minutes, one end to the other. But even if you had a sick house, infinity pool, the whole deal, even with beach access and you had the boat, let's just say the retirement option has been downgraded. I don't know what it is, but it's been downgraded. And it also. Well, again, I don't want to put a salary cap in my life, so I'm not going to say it's not even attainable. Boating. I'm disappointed in myself. I scouted it a little bit, and I was like, okay, is it going to be worth €2,000 to take out a center console that's going to get its ass kicked in the break trying to get out of a couple of these different areas to then poke around and look at a beach that you could have just driven to? I mean, Some could argue I traveled. I took three flights to go to a beach that is not even as nice as the one in my backyard, but whatever. My backyard is in a foreign country. I want to check it out. I've thought about this place for a long time. So to take the boat out to spend that much money, and when I would look at how the wind would pick up on a couple of days, I'm like, I don't even know if you could get out in a center console again. To rent something that's huge just by yourself, that's just a waste of money. And then it's like, where could I actually anchor my orc? It made all the sense in the world because even though it wasn't the biggest boat, it was like 27 foot center console. Maybe it was 24, I don't remember. But it wasn't that hard to get out of this huge, huge lagoon. It was basically like a mini bay. And then I worked over Beyonce and found a private beach that you can't get to. You can't drive there, you can't really walk to it, but you can anchor a boat and then you can swim to this beach and it's like, this is awesome. So it felt entirely worth it when I did it there. And then again in Lucerne, Switzerland. I mean, you can't walk next to that lake and go, how you know, you would never go, like, why wouldn't you get a boat here? So with St. Barts, it felt a little more complicated and just didn't really feel like it was worth it. If I had a massive, massive catamaran. If I had sailing skills, maybe. All right, this is immature, but we're doing it. Toughness scale from Clint Eastwood, High Plains Drifter Clint. Although maybe we just to keep it nicer, say Pale Rider Clint to d' Angelo Barksdale. So a scale of, of toughness there. How did I feel? I did hit the bag. Did some movie tie at the gym, looked around a little bit. There's a couple decent sized guys. A lot of AB guys, though, with some hair accessories that I didn't love. I would give it a lot of skinny Parisians, honestly. Some of the biggest. The Parisian guys were awesome. Some of the biggest dorks were like the rich American guys that are even a little bit older than me that I would just overhear talking and I was just like, jesus, I hope this guy doesn't want to make some sort of connection with me whatsoever. Because, you know, I might not be the coolest guy, but whatever. So, yeah, I'll give myself a 7 out of 10 on that one. Also side note, at the gym I had an acai bowl. I was like, let's see how they do this in Saint Barts. It was soup. People got to stop. Like if you can't make the fucking bowl have any kind of consistency to the texture, then just get out of the bowl game. Well, we're doing this because it's what some guys want to hear. Women scale of con to the track side of Winooski, Vermont. It's a lot of just younger service industry men and women and it's pretty good. This guy from Switzerland waited on me just, you know, like this guy must just like deer season 12 months a year for this guy. So yeah, good, good. But not that night that I had in the south of France. Let's see, beach ranking. I think the top two spots are Formentera off of Ibiza and the Club 55 in San Tropez. Although Negril is its own category. But I was so much younger. When I talk about like ranking and my experiences, nothing's ever going to top the grill. But I'm never going to be a 23 year old DJ again. It's not. I didn't go to any beach that was better than Formentera or LA Club 55. 5 Governor beach was awesome because I had it to myself. It was beautiful. The Nikki beach thing is fine. The water is gorgeous. It's not so warm even at that longitude latitude marker, you know, because sometimes you go down to south beach and you walk into the water. Although I haven't gone to south beach in a long time and you just go, oh cool, I'm taking a bath and I feel grosser than when I was sitting on the beach. See, my French is getting worse. Oh, this is something that's important. Import export deficit, very concerning. I was looking into the numbers here. Out of 226 ranked countries recognized bordered nations. I don't know how you would frame that because I mean, I feel like we've got more than 226. But a according to who's, you know, he's like, I guess D1.226 territories. St. Bart's their deficit ranks at 208 in the bad way. Refined copper coming in at number one. 13.2 million in 2023. These are 2023 numbers. I don't have the 25 data yet, but again, you know, we're not through the year. My guess is that refined copper number is probably going down too. And Then you balance that with. All right, so you're sending out 13.2 million in refined copper. They brought in in 2023, just over 17 million in watches, both precious metal watches and base metal watches. So I'm not an econ major, but it's like, fuck you guys. You know, let's get the salt farm pumping, find more copper. But I guess the watches, I mean, they must be moving product down there to be bringing in that kind of number. But I don't. I don't like those. Let's end on something positive, though, because even if I mentioned the retirement planning again, I don't know that I'd ever want to, like, retire, retire and do nothing. I. That would drive me crazy. And it's probably too early for me to even be thinking about this. I'm a planner if I'm anything, right? So I love. I love thinking about scenarios, playing them out. But I want to talk about the. From Lonesome Dove, Lorena again. That's the term they use for her in the book. So I just want to be accurate historically in there. Although we could call her a sporting woman, too. That would probably be nicer. So let's. Let's use that term. So Jake Spoon shows up, right? And Jake Spoon used to run with Call and Gus, who were all Texas Rangers. Is that name offensive? And they were kind of just, you know, trying to settle Texas in the border a little bit. A lot of horse thieving going on, cattle thieving, a lot of hanging and, you know, look, just showing up, basically, Texas colonization. So Jake Spoon is somebody who makes a great first impression. I think a bad second impression, a third impression is probably like, this guy kind of sucks. But he shows up to Xavier's establishment. Xavier is the owner of the bar, and Lippy's the piano player there. And Lonesome Dove. And Lorena has got a room upstairs and entertains men that. That need to be entertained. And so Jake rolls in, and he's on the run. He had shot a dentist by mistake somehow in Arkansas. And he shows back up to Lonesome Dove, hooks back up with Call and Gus, who then are thinking about making a move up to Montana based on Jake's recommendation of, like, saying, hey, Montana, look, I would agree with Jake. Montana's great, but little less. Little less refined, perhaps, than today. No Big sky resort, no Yellowstone Resort. So Jake and Lorena hit it off immediately. You know, you don't get this a lot after the services are compensated, but they end up cuddling. He's, like, moved in. He's like sleeping there. And Lorena, desperately. And she's had an awful, awful life to this point, but apparently she's just stunning. And cowboys come from all over asking about the blonde and Jake. She picks Jake because Jake is someone that can potentially provide her with the means, not necessarily money, but, like, she wants to make it to San Francisco. And at this time period, it's not super realistic that Lorena would just get in a horse and ride from Lonesome Dove to San Francisco. Not going to work out. So she needs to go with somebody. And Jake Spoon's like, I'll do that. But Jake's, you know, he's a gambler, he likes to drink, telling her everything she wants to hear. And, like, the first few nights are magical, right? And so I thought that this was really telling and something we should all Remember from page 149, hardcover, obviously. Immediately, Jake Spoon began to change the way her thinking worked. Before he even brought his bottle to the table to sit with her, she began to want him. If he had taken the bottle and gone to sit by himself, she would have felt disappointed. But of course, he didn't. He sat down, asked her if she'd like some refreshments, and looked her right in the face. And for a while, in a friendly, easygoing way, it seemed a miracle to Lori that a man had walked in who could figure that out so quick, because he had said to her, we didn't see this much beauty when I lived in these parts. Now, if this was San Francisco, I wouldn't be so surprised. I reckon that's where you really belong. I laid into that a little bit more towards the end. So it seemed a miracle that someone could figure her out so quickly. In the last year, she began to doubt her own ability to get to San Francisco and even to doubt that it was as cool and nice as she had been imagining it to be. And yet she didn't want to give up the notion. And here's the part that matters, because she had no other notion to put in its place. It might be silly to even think about it, but it was the best she had. I hope you enjoyed that episode enough to listen to the whole thing. I'm sorry it wasn't more exciting. Ringer Spotify. They were gonna name me Michael Jordan. My dad was like, I don't think he can live up to it. So they named me Michael. Jared must be 21 and older and present in select states for Kansas. In affiliation with Kansas, Stark is casino or 18 + in present D.C. kentucky or Wyoming. Gambling problem, call 100 Gambler or visit rg-help.com, call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org chat in Connecticut or visit MD gamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is there. Visit gamblinghelp linema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24. 7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-87-7-8, Hope NY or text Hope NY in New York.