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Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly
The Very First Episode of "Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe" Podcast
00:43:17
People often tell me they love the storytelling in Under the Influence. One of my favourite storytellers of all time is the late, great Stuart McLean. Which is…
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- [00:02]
Podcast Host
Did you know that if you subscribe to our But Wait, There's More option, you get a bonus story in every episode of under the Influence. But Wait, there's more. For the price of a cup of coffee every month, you get early access so you hear every episode a full week before everybody else. Plus you enjoy that episode ad free. Tsk tsk. And by subscribing, you support our podcast. Just go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe to under the Influences. But Wait, there's more.
- [00:40]
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- [00:57]
Narrator
Acast Powers the World's Best Podcasts Here's a show that we recommend.
- [01:05]
Robert Mayes
Hey everyone, I'm Robert Mayes, host of the Athletic Football show and I'm excited to welcome you to the 2025 season and everything new we've got going at Tafs. First and foremost, get ready for a whole new look. We're coming to you from the Athletic Football show studio in Chicago. Get the full experience by checking us out on our YouTube channel. Second, whether you watch on YouTube or listen to us on your podcast platform of choice, you'll hear a new voice. Dave Hellman joins Derek Klassen and myself as the third host on the show, bringing a different perspective to the conversation. Finally, Dane Brugler is back with year round NFL Draft coverage with Building the Beast. No matter what type of NFL fan you are, there's something for you on the Athletic Football Show. Join us Monday Through Friday on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:52]
Narrator
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- [02:03]
Podcast Host
People often tell me they love the storytelling on under the Influence, but one of my favorite storytellers of all time is the late great Stuart MacLean. Which is why it's been such a joy for our network to partner with Stewart's longtime producer Jess Milton and the Vinyl Cafe team to bring you the podcast titled Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. Each week you get to hear two of Stuart's original stories and Jess shares the behind the scenes story from their times on the road together or what inspired one of the stories. Today we're sharing the very first episode of the podcast, which was released in 2023. Not only are there two hilarious Dave and Morley stories but it's a great introduction to the show. There's already over 100 episodes for you to enjoy, and the next season, which is season six, starts in a couple of weeks. So we hope you enjoy this one as much as I do. And you can find even more stories by searching for Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe on your podcast, Apple from the Apostrophe Podcast Network.
- [03:11]
Jess Milton
Hello, I'm Jess Milton and this is Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe. It feels good to be back. I wish you were Stuart in this chair, not me. Sorry. But I am super happy to be here and happy that you are here, too. Thank you. Thanks for listening and thanks for joining us. And don't fret. It'll be mostly Stuart's voice you hear on this podcast, not mine. But, you know, I'll have a few stories, too. I'll have some stories about what it was like to live life out on the road, crammed into a tour bus with and 12 other people. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the longtime producer of the Vinyl Cafe. For those of you that have tuned into the Vinyl Cafe regularly, you might know me. Welcome back. For those of you listening for the first time, I'm so glad you're here. Welcome. Let's just jump right in, shall we? We have two stories for you today on the podcast. Oh, and that's kind of what we're going to do every week. We're going to have two David Morley stories every week. This week, we have two stories about fitness. Because it's January and because we're talking about our pal Dave. It's about fitness gone wrong. It happens to the best of us. We're going to start with this one. This is my friend, the late, great Stuart maclean with Tour de Dave.
- [04:46]
Narrator
Dave's neighbor, Ted Anderson bought his first bike about 10 years ago. Ted bought it to ride to work. It's a modest bike, a commuter with three speeds and a saddlebag. And because he didn't know any better, that bike made Ted modestly happy. Bike to work when the weather was warm and the roads were dry. And that was more or less that for more or less the summer, until Ted figured bikes out. Today, 10 years later, Ted owns seven bikes. They hang from hooks in a sparkling row in his basement as if he was running a bike store. Down there, closest to the door, his go to machine, a classic Italian road bike, a Pinarello with a leather saddle, drop handlebars and campy components. The bike Ted uses to get around beside the Pinarello. It's polar opposite, a three speed Dutch bike. Ted uses it when it's snowing. Next is the off road Trek, Ted's only American bike. His homage to Lance Armstrong. And beside that, in the place of honor, his pride and joy, his racing bike, his baby blue artisan built carbon fiber Torelli. It cost him $12,000. Everything on the Torelli is handmade, right down to the $200 ultra light carbon fiber water bottle. It's all about saving weight, shaving grams. It's what you do if you're a serious cyclist. And Ted is serious. Ted made the leap from riding to racing on his 40th birthday. It's nothing for him to come home on a weeknight, jump on his bike and go for a 50 kilometer ride. Every Sunday he hauls the bike out to the country on top of his car and hammers out a century. That's a 100 kilometer ride. Ted always starts and finishes his rides with an espresso at Kenny Wong's cafe. Wong's Scottish Meat Pies. He doesn't have go to Kenny's. He has his own espresso machine at home. But since Kenny got his machine, dropping in has become Ted's ritual. He likes it there, likes to tell Kenny the latest news about his bike or if Kenny is busy. Anyone else who makes the mistake of looking remotely interested. Ted says being on the Torelli is more like dancing than riding. He says he and his bike know each other so well, they react to each other's moods. It's like it has a personality. He was saying to a man who sat down beside him the other day. There are times when the bike is totally in control of me, when I'm not even steering. Like I'm just along for the ride. When it comes to biking, Ted has the enthusiasm of a convert. He's not a proponent of cycling. He's a proselytizer. He's not an enthusiast. He's an evangelist. Think of it as an investment, he preached to Arnie Shellenberger one afternoon, his empty espresso cup on the counter in front of him. You can't be serious, said Arnie. A $12,000 bike? It's an investment in your health, said Ted. Arnie rolled his eyes and then Ted pounced. Bikes don't appreciate the way cars do, said Ted. Arnie had just bought himself a new car. Ted has this preacher's zeal for zeroing in on people's weak spots. A bike's the very best way to unwind, he once told Mary Turlington I always insist my wife Polly, go for a ride when she gets as grumpy as you get. Always calms her down. He believes he's doing people a favor. But when Ted talks about his bike, he manages to make just about everyone in the neighborhood feel bad about themselves. Everyone, strangely, except for Dave. Have you ever felt his bike? Said Dave to Kenny one day. Well, you can lift it off the ground with one finger. It's as light as a piece of paper. I can't imagine what it would be like to ride it. Well, that's a lie. Dave spent altogether too much time imagining what it might be like to ride Ted's bike. He's imagined leaning into a corner, riding the wind, standing up, swaying from side to side, actually feeling the road beneath him. So one Saturday afternoon, when Dave came upon a yard sale and spotted a set of racing gear for sale. The spandex shorts, the colorful jersey, the helmet and the gloves. He bought the lot of it. Even bought himself a pair of cycling shoes. Guy selling the stuff couldn't have been nicer. You have to watch these, he said, flipping one of the black leather shoes over. And he showed Dave the silver cleat on the sole and explained to him how it locked onto the pedal like a ski boot onto a ski, he said. Then he said, be careful walking around. These could be very slippery. When Dave left, he owned everything a cyclist would need. Except, of course, a bike. But before an expenditure like that, it's good to do a little research to get a feel for the thing, to push your dreams against the wheel of reality. One day, Dave tried to bring that up with Ted. Not directly. He sort of hinted around it. Would Ted loan his bike to someone, say, for a weekend or something? Ted looked so horrified, Dave dropped it right away. But he kept thinking if he could just get even 15 minutes on the bike, he'd be able to tell if he liked it. And then one afternoon, Dave spotted Ted's car parked in the lane behind his store. He knew it was Ted's car because Ted's bike was on the roof rack. Dave ran upstairs and changed into his bike clothes, the whole kit, and he tiptoed carefully out to the alley in his cycling shoes, the way the guy had showed him. He knew he had time for this. Ted was inside having his coffee. Dave wasn't gonna ride the bike. He just wanted to sit on it. So he walked out into the alley and he climbed up onto the roof of Ted's car. He swung himself onto the saddle of Ted's pride and joy. And he leaned over the handlebars, feeling amazingly good. This was something he could do. He could totally do this. He waved his hands over his head, just like the guys in the Tour de France. And that is when Ted walked out the back door of the restaurant. Dave holding his hands over his head, Ted with his head down, staring at a map. And Dave thought, okay, okay, I can get off the bike and slip down the other side of the car before Ted sees me. So he shifted all his weight onto his right foot so he could step off the bike. And there was an ominous click. The paddle grabbed the cleat of his shoe just like the man told him it would. Like a ski grabbing a ski boot. And it wouldn't let go. So Dave pushed with the other foot. There was a second click. Then Dave heard the car door slam and the engine. And they began rolling down the alley. This was a Sunday morning. Ted was heading to the country. Dave was perched on his roof. Dave looked like the space shuttle bolted on top of a 747. Ted pulled out of the alley and onto the street, right in front of a taxi. The taxi driver pointed at Ted's roof and shouted. This was not unusual. This happens to Ted frequently. People who know bikes often point at his roof. Ted smiled at the cabby and waved back. Then he stepped on the gas, and he pulled into the traffic. More than the usual number of people honked their horns that day. And each time they did, Ted smiled proudly and honked back while Dave clung on for dear life, his hair pushed back in the wind, his mouth frozen open. He looked like a kid on a roller coaster, but not one of the happy ones. And then Ted hit the highway, and he picked up ahead of speed, and the bike's wheels began to spin in the wind. Pretty soon, Dave was pedaling his heart out. He actually looked like one of the guys on the Tour de France, but not one of the happy guys. Unfortunately, Ted's bike rack hadn't been designed for Dave's added weight. It began to work loose. So as they flew along, Dave started to sway from side to side on top of that car. Panic can be a wonderful thing. It helps you get a lot done in a short period, period of time, often without a lot of extra thought. Dave, who had been twisting his feet this way and that, was finally seized completely by panic. And he twisted one of his feet the correct way. His right foot flew urgently free. It was caught by the wind and began flapping behind him like a windsaw. The other foot popped out almost immediately. It Flapped around too. And for a moment Dave lost sight of what was happening. He turned and stared in amazement at his legs flapping behind him. He had no idea he was that flexible. And then he did the only thing he could think of doing. He swung his left leg over the frame and he stepped onto the roof, clinging onto the bike like a wing walker from the days of the barnstorming biplanes. His colorful jersey was flapping in the wind as he dropped down to his knees and grabbed the straps that held the bike rack to the roof. Then he began to inch his way toward the front windshield. Below him and oblivious to the drama on his roof, Ted was having the time of his life. He just slipped his all time favorite album into the CD player. The Best of John Denver. Ted was driving down the road without a care in the world, tapping the steering wheel and singing along with the music. Take Me Home, Country Roads. He was just coming to the chorus. Almost heaven, West Virginia. Take me home, country roads. When out of nowhere, there was a face on the windshield staring at him. An upside down face obscuring his vision. Ted screamed in terror. Take me home. Sang John Denver.
- [18:02]
Robert Mayes
No.
- [18:03]
Narrator
Screamed Ted. And then Ted slammed on the brakes. A number of things happened all at once. The car screeched to an abrupt stop. The paper light baby blue Torelli lifted off the roof and floated up in the air like a piece of paper seemed to hover there for a moment. It hit the pavement just in front of Ted's front wheels. He barely felt it as he rolled over it. At that exact instant, Dave, who had a death grip on the rack's straps, flipped over the windshield and landed on the hood. And Ted finally knew what had happened. It was his worst nightmare. He had killed a cyclist. And the cyclists look oddly familiar. This was all several weeks ago now. Time heals many wounds. Dave quietly dropped his cycling clothes in a Goodwill box. The next week, Ted got himself a new bike with the insurance money. He doesn't talk about the new bike nearly as much as he talked about the old one. If you press him, he will tell you that he still feels a good bike can be a man's salvation. But that really depends on who he's talking to. Ted's discovered the problem with proselytizing. When you preach, you never know who your converts will be.
- [19:56]
Jess Milton
Doesn't it feel so good to hear his voice again? It does for me. That was the late great Stuart Maclean with the story we called Tour de Dive. We recorded that in Gander, Newfoundland. That was a really fun night. Back in maybe 2010, I think it was. I remember that night we did a question and answer on stage. And inevitably, when we did that, one of the questions that people would always scream out from the audience was, where do you get your ideas? And honestly, it kind of drove Stuart crazy, because ideas are sort of the easy part. Writing it was always the hard part. But, yeah, we would often get that question. And I can tell you, you don't always know where the idea is, what sparked the idea for a story, but I can tell you exactly what sparked the idea for that story. And if Stuart were here, he'd be kicking me under the table and giving me stink eye, because he would know exactly where I'm going with this. Stuart, Josh and I. Josh is my husband. Stuart, Josh and I would. We had this nice little routine. We'd go down to Maine once a year. We called it the Planning Session. And the idea behind it was Stuart and I would plan the year ahead. We'd figure out where we're going to tour. We'd come up with story ideas. We would figure out which areas of the country we hadn't been to enough and how to get there. And we'd play on the season, and at night we'd all get together and cook dinner and walk on the beach and that sort of thing. It was the highlight of every year. And as I say it now, I realize it's also pretty weird because Stuart and I would spend, like, 150 days a year together on tour, and then we would go on these bizarre family vacations together on top of it. But anyway, I don't know. It worked. So this particular year, we were going down to Maine, and we had really complicated travel plans. I won't get into the details, but essentially we were trying to do it in one car. So we'd come up with this elaborate plan where we would drive and pick up Stuart. Not at his house. He was leaving his car with his son. So we were driving to his son's camp, picking him up there. And in theory, that makes sense, but in practice, we had a problem because Stuart was a horrendous packer. Like, horrible. He always had too much stuff. You'd think that after spending decades living out of a suitcase, you'd be better at it, but it kind of. It seemed to go the opposite way for him. He wanted to have every single Creature Comfort out on the road with him, which I guess kind of makes sense. Anyway, this particular year was really egregious because he'd been having some back pain and he'd gone to a physiotherapist, and the physiotherapist had said, oh, it's no problem. We can totally solve this. You just have to stop sitting at a desk, which is kind of a bit of an issue when you need to write stories for, like, 18 hours a day. So he had gotten this, like. I don't even know how to describe it. It was a giant piece of foam that he would use as a backrest. It looked kind of like. Like, picture a wedge of cheese, you know, like, I don't know, a wedge of Brie. That's what it looked like. But it was made out of foam, by the way. Later, like, five years later, when I was pregnant with my. My first daughter, Eloise, I was in a. I went to a birthing class. You know how you go to those pregnancy classes. And, like, night one, they whipped out this giant foam wedge of cheese. And I was like, oh, my God. Stuart's desk chair is actually a birthing pillow. And I came home and I said to Josh, my husband, I was like, there are so many reasons why I miss Stuart and wish that he were here with us. But today, at the top of that list is just think of how much I could make fun of him for using a birthing pillow as a desk chair. It would have been amazing. Anyway, he would drag this thing around with him. We were constantly trying to fit this wedge of cheese, like, into the back of our trailer, into his bunk on the tour bus, and then in this particular case, into the back of our car to drive down to Maine. So we're at the cottage, we're packing our car, we're assessing. How much square footage do we have for Stuart's luggage. What about the wedge of cheese? What are we going to do? And I'm, like, kind of complaining and muttering under my breath. And my dad was there with me, and, you know, I told him the whole story and how Stuart overpacks. And it's going to be crazy because we'll have no backup plan. We'll be at this camp parking lot, nowhere to put his stuff. And my dad looked up at the top of our car where Josh and I had our racing bikes. We like to ride bikes. And so our bikes were strapped to the roof of the car. And he said, well, if you get there and he has too much stuff, just tell him he's got to ride on top of the car strapped into one of those bikes. And that was that. I mean, sometimes that's all it takes. A little comment, a tiny crumb of an idea, and off you go. We got to the parking lot at the camp, and sure enough, he had the wedge of cheese and he brought it to Maine. But we did manage to get everything in the back of the car. And when we got there, Josh unpacked the car and Stuart and I took Spring, the dog, for a long walk on the beach. And by the time we got back to the cabin, Josh had unpacked the car, including that wedge of cheese, and Stuart and I had a rough outline of the story, and by the end of the week, he had a first draft written. The stories rarely came that easy, and they certainly were very rarely that much fun for him to write. But I don't know. I guess that's what happens when you travel with friends. Good things happen. And also, every single time I see one of those birthing pillows, I think of him. We're gonna take a short break now, but we'll be back in a minute or so with another story, Attack of the Treadmill. So stick around.
- [26:00]
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- [26:18]
Narrator
No.
- [26:18]
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- [26:20]
Podcast Host
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- [26:30]
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- [26:31]
Narrator
Meet Lisa.
- [26:32]
Jess Milton
Hey there.
- [26:33]
Narrator
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- [26:40]
Jess Milton
Yep. I recorded a quick ad targeted listener interested in fashion and sustainability using acast's audience attributes targeting feature and set my budget. Before I knew it, people all over were hearing about my shop.
- [26:52]
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- [26:54]
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- [26:56]
Jess Milton
Shopping sustainably. And my sales, of course.
- [26:58]
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- [27:20]
Jess Milton
Welcome back. I told you we had two stories for you today, so we're gonna get to the second one now. This is Stuart McLean with Attack of the Treadmill.
- [27:30]
Narrator
This story began the Saturday morning. Dave's shoelace Brock began like this. Dave and Morley were on their way to the market. The idea was to go early and get back before Sam woke up. They were running late, of course, Morley at least three steps ahead of Dave, and he could feel her frustration beginning to simmer. He was hurrying to catch up. He was trying to make it to the door before the simmer became a boil. He had to run upstairs for his wallet, and then after he'd done that, he couldn't find the car keys anywhere. He looked at Morley and grinned painfully, said, I'm sure I left them here. He was pointing at the basket by the back door. Of course he hadn't left them in the basket by the back door. Anyone could see that, and if you knew him you could tell by the way he said, I'm sure I left them here, that he wasn't sure at all, that he didn't have a clue where he left them. The keys, it turned out, were upstairs in the laundry basket in the pocket of jeans he was wearing on Thursday, which is the last time he drove the car. That took about five more minutes to work out Morley waiting by the door through all this, through the discovery that they were missing and the searching and the working out, waiting still, when he came down the stairs for the third time with the keys in his triumphant little hand. I have no idea what they were doing there, he said, genuinely mystified. And then he stepped into his sneakers and he sat on the stairs to do them up. Go on, he said, as if she hadn't been waiting since this began. I'll be right out, he said. And that's when he pulled the laces tight, and that's when the left lace snapped, and that is the exact moment this story began, that moment by the back door when Dave's shoelace broke. And Dave said, just a minute, and he ran to the basement and he grabbed the very first thing that he saw down there that had laces, which happened to be a pair of skates, and he ripped the long waxed lace out of one of the skates and he stuffed it in his pocket and he tripped out to the car, one shoe half on and half off. When they got to the market, Dave headed for the little cafe by the entrance and he sat there and he threaded the hockey lace into his sneaker. When he was finished there was a lot of lace left over, so he did a double knot and he stuffed the leftover lace into the shoe and he was good to go. Sam was awake when they got home, but it was Saturday and he was watching television, not even close to feeding himself, so technically they made it in time and no harm was done. Two weeks went by. It was a Friday twilight, that sweet moment of indifference between day and night. Dave and Morley and Sam, sitting in the backseat, were in the sweetest place you can be for that great gray cosmic side. They were on the road in between here and there, trying to decide where they were going to pull off the highway for the night. I don't care, said Sam, as long as it has a pool. They were in upstate New York on a spur of the moment road trip. Up ahead, on the outskirts of one of those little highway towns that you never heard of, there was a motel with a vacancy sign all lit up, blue and green neon flickering against a purple sky. Sam looked up from the back seat and read the sign and gasped, and then he began to read it out loud. Look, he said. Indoor, and Morley cut him off and finished his sentence for him. Pooled, she said. It means pool. Indoor pool. The L has burned out, sam said. Can we take a picture? The Totem Motor Inn indoor Pool. Dave pulled in five minutes later. Dave and Sam were heading for the pool. There was already a kid in the water. He was older than Sam, but he was acting a lot younger. He was loud and splashy. He was obnoxious. Moment Dave walked into the room. The kid got out of the water and ran across the pool deck and jumped back into the water right in front of Dave. Cannonball. Hey, said Dave, jumping back, too late. He was already soaked. The kid ruined their swim and Sam took off. Dave lingered behind and waited for Sam to get out of earshot, and soon as he was, he walked over to the kid, leaned over and said, you know what? He said. You are old enough to know better. Next morning Dave woke up first. He lay in bed for a while, but Morley wasn't stirring. After a few minutes he propped himself up on an elbow and whispered in his sleeping wife's ear. He said, I'm going to go have a walkabout. I'll bring you coffee. Morley mumbled, don't hurry, and she rolled over and went back to sleep. Dave pulled on the pants and T shirt he was wearing the night before and patted to the door. When he got to the lobby, saw a girl behind the desk wearing a brown tunic. Morning, she said. Cheery Saturday smile. She pointed down the hall. Complimentary coffee in the Crockett Room. Dave set off past the elevators and the rack with the brochures, past the dark bar where he and Morley had had a beer by the fireplace the night before, past the pool. And there was the Crockett Room, a right Turn after the the fitness center. He had to use his room key to open the fitness center door. He went in backwards, pushing the door with his hip, coffee in one hand and a surprisingly delicious cinnamon bun in the other. Room was bigger than you would have expected. Small nonetheless. A couple of Nautilus machines, a rowing machine, and one of those, whatever you call them, running machines. Dave had never tried one, and he wasn't about to now, except it was early and no one else was around, so he climbed tentatively up onto the black treadmill. That's what you call them, treadmills. He balanced his coffee on the arm of the machine. There was an LED control panel with a daunting number of choices. Age, weight, aerobic, anaerobic, fitness level. What did that mean? They make these things unnecessarily complicated, thought Dave. They should just have on and off. Dave took a sip of his coffee and stared at the screen. Personalized program. Now that was promising. He reached out and pressed personalized program, and a voice said, good morning, Brandon. And then the belt he was standing on lurched and what was left of his coffee flew out of his hand and splashed onto the control panel. And then the voice, which Dave now realized was coming out of the machine, was saying in 10. It was saying in 9, 8, 7. Little too much was happening at once, and it was all happening a little too quickly. The treadmill was speeding up and making Dave walk a little faster than was comfortable, and he was puffing a bit and scanning the control panel as he puffed. He was looking for the off button. There must be an off button, when suddenly there was a bang and hey, someone had grabbed Dave's left foot. He lurched forward, almost falling, regaining his balance at the last moment. Hey, said Dave for the second time. He's hopping along the treadmill on his right foot, now pulling with the left, but his left foot won't come, and it's not because someone's grabbed it. It's because both ends of that overlong hockey lace were disappearing into the bowels of the machine. Dave's shoelace was wrapping itself around the treadmill rollers, and he couldn't pull it loose. He was trapped. And then the voice from the machine was saying, in 3, 2, 1, and there was a flourish of trumpets. Maybe it was the theme from Rocky. And the treadmill began to rise up in the air. Dave was running uphill now, hopping actually, his heart pounding, his leg pumping, his mind racing. Just who was this Brandon, and why on earth would he choose to do this to himself? And then Dave Felt a wave of relief. There was a stop button. It was right in front of him, as plain as day. He smiled and he reached out and he pressed it and nothing happened. Which is what happens when you soak a solid state circuit board in coffee. But Dave didn't know that. And that's not all he didn't know. He didn't know, for instance, that the mysterious Brendan, who had carelessly left his computer chip in training preferences, was training for the Boston Marathon. And the Dave was about to re experience Brandon's last training session, a simulated 23 kilometer run through the Adirondack Mountains. All Dave knew was that he was literally running for his life. He was running the Boston Marathon with his left foot in a leg hole trap. And as he hopped along, he was staring right at a big poster on the wall in front of him. Start out slowly, said the poster. Talk to your doctor before exercising. Dave pounded along for 12 long minutes until he couldn't pound anymore. And then he managed to hop his right foot onto the side platform. He had to leave his left foot foot behind. And he stood there on the side of this machine, his free foot on the platform on the side, and his trapped foot flipping and flopping like Brian Mulroney with a bag full of money. Desperate times, and desperate times require desperate measures. So Dave began to bend over slowly. He bent down until he was almost squatting and he stared at that treadmill going round and around. And he reached out with both his hands and he grabbed it. He actually managed to stop it for an instant. Then there was a bang and he was catapulted back onto the belt. Sadly, he was facing the wrong way. He was running backwards now up an Adirondack mountain faster than he'd ever run forwards in his life. And then the voice on the machine said, let's take it up a notch, Brendan. And that is when the fitness room door opened. In the name of God, croaked Dave, help me. And then he looked over his shoulder to see who had come in. And he looked right into the eyes of the kid from the swimming pool. The plug, gasped Dave. Pull the plug. And the kid from the swimming pool walked right over to him and he looked right into his eyes and he said, you know what? You are old enough to know better. Then he turned around and he walked right out of the room. Dave kept hopping for another 10 minutes. And during those 10 minutes, he made his peace with God and the fates. He should have guessed he was going to die like this. At any moment, he was going to fall over from exhaustion. Not quite the dignified exit he had imagined. Probably his whole body would get sucked into the roller. Probably he'd get flattened like some sort of cartoon character. That's what he was thinking anyway. When the fitness room door opened again and someone said, hey, man, I think I left my chip in your machine. Dave tried to summon up as much dignity as he could. Whatever, said Dave. I was just finishing. It's all yours. And Brendan, maybe 25, 27, certainly not 30, walked across the room and he reached out and he flipped up a plastic cover and he removed his chip. And the machine stopped abruptly, just like that. Unfortunately, Dave kept running. It was barely 9:30 when he limped back into his bedroom. Morley was sitting on the bed. She was surrounded by tourist brochures. She looked up when she saw him and smiled and said, hey, did you know we're in the Adirondacks? There's some wonderful hikes around here. I was thinking we could have breakfast and go for a hike. Thank you.
- [42:46]
Jess Milton
That was the story we call Attack of the Treadmill. I love that story. But my favorite part is hotel pool with the L burnt out. Like, so funny to this day when I hear that, I burst out laughing. Hotel pool with the L burnt out. If you haven't gotten it, I'll give you a second. You got it? Yeah. Okay, good. We recorded that at the Stephen Leacock Theatre. How appropriate is that? In Keswick, Ontario. All right, we're gonna take a short break now, but we'll be back in a couple of minutes and we'll have a sneak peek of next week's episode. So stick. Okay, that's it for this week. First episode done in the bag. But we will be back here next week with two more Dave and Morley stories, including this one, a story about a discovery Dave makes while cleaning his car.
- [43:58]
Narrator
With growing despondency, Dave realized he would never be able to return his car to its pre child state. And in a way, it no longer mattered. Once, there was a time when he cared, but he didn't care anymore. He was on his knees by the back door on the driver's side, trying to pluck a reluctant pencil out of a crevice when he noticed a slight haze of green between the driver's seat and the front door. When he reached out to wipe the haze, it felt soft and fluttery, not sticky like he expected. And he leant forward and he squinted. And then he leant forward more and blinked in amazement when he realized that something had taken root in the sand. In the bottom of his car. There was a tiny plantlet growing there. Dave's first impulse was to pluck the little green thing off the floor. But he hesitated for a moment, and in the moment of hesitation, he was overcome with the miracle of it. Somehow a seed had landed on the floor of his car and it had found enough dirt and sand and decomposing organic matter to germinate. It amazed him. A flower in the desert. Life affirming life. It was reproduction, and it was happening. In his car. He took the chamois and dripped some water into the well by the door, and he frowned. There was dirt and sand there, but hardly a medium for healthy growth. He went to the front garden and came back with a handful of soil.
- [45:44]
Jess Milton
Oh, Dave. That's a sneak peek the of next week's episode. We will be back here next week with two more David Morley stories. In the meantime, if you want to find out more you can go to our website vinylcafe.com or you can find us on Facebook or Instagram. Backstage at the Vinyl Cafe is part of the Apostrophe podcast network. Our awesome theme music is by my friend Danny Michelle. The show was recorded by Greg de Kloot and produced by Louise Curtis and me, Jess Milton. This has been fun. Thank you so much for being here. It means a lot. Let's meet again next week. Until then, so long. For now.
- [46:35]
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Jess Milton
Yep.
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- [47:05]
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- [47:20]
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- [47:59]
Narrator
I need a coffee.
- [48:01]
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