180 - When in Rome

You travel a lot, but you do not travel a lot for pleasure. It seems like you're always going places for work. When I first met you, the way you traveled really confused me. What do you mean?

Well, I didn't travel much for work at all back then. I mean, I had the occasional trip to go and do a church thing, or to do a learning thing like a three-day seminar or something. I didn't travel much for my job. You were traveling all the time for your job.

You'd tell me where you were going. I'm going to Houston. I'm like, oh dude, there's this thing in Houston, and there's this other thing in Houston. How long are you going to be there?

And you just look at me like I was an idiot. And your answer would always be, you're not understanding. I'm going to be there for the least amount of time possible. And I don't think it's because you hate Houston, or whatever cities you were going to.

My theory, I guess, is why you were in and out so quick. But maybe instead of saying my theory, I'll just ask you, why do you always get in and out of places so dang fast when you pay the money to be there anyway? First of all, I'm not even self aware that I do that. I guess it's because I want to be home with a family.

So just go to the place, do the thing, even better, if I can tack on two or three things. Like I can think of videos where I've gone to a place for a thing, and I just shot two other videos that were within 50 miles. Yeah. So I try to do that kind of thing a lot.

Family is the thing. I like to sleep in my own bed and I like to be around my kids. And yeah, that's why I do that. And that would have been my guess, more or less.

But you are ruthlessly efficient with your travel. You do not leave yourself a lot of wiggle room in between. Again, I don't know if you know this about yourself. But when I'm like, oh, tell me more.

What are you going to do? Cool, you're making a video. What are you going to do? And you will reel off your itinerary.

You're like from 7.57 AM until 10.45. I'll be filming this interview. Then I will be going to this thing. Then I'll have 10 minutes to quick film a horse that's standing on one leg in this museum that I've always wanted to see.

And then I will quickly be going to this thing. I'm not going to do a second video from 2 in the afternoon to 4.30. And then my flight is at 4.31. Yeah, recently I did that.

I went to Idaho. And I went from Idaho to LA. And yeah, I did exactly that. It's ruthless.

You're on flights a lot. But I don't know. Do you have fun? I was going to say it doesn't seem like you're having any fun.

But maybe you should get to speak to that. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you telling me about this because I didn't realize this about myself. But there's no criticism.

Well, it's different. So I'm not traveling for pleasure. I'm traveling for work. But at the same time, maybe a thing I really wanted to see.

And then there's targets of opportunity along the way. Because recently I did a video about metal forming, this new thing called Roboforming. I had a two-hour block. And I heard about this thing.

And I called them. I was like, can I come do the thing? Or maybe the guy emailed me or I forget. But I was like, hey, I'm going to LA.

Let me put up the spreadsheet. Because I have a spreadsheet. People will contact stuff this Monday of day. And I say, hey, would you like to come see your thing?

And I organize it by city. And if I'm going to the city, I will look at the spreadsheet and be like, oh, I have this much time. There's a thing there. I can go do that thing.

And so I try to maximize the efficiency. What do you do when you travel? Well, when it's for work, I do the same thing. I try to maximize for efficiency, but not as hard as you.

So I did a series of videos in St. Augustine that I filmed about a year ago as we're talking right now. And I left myself a lot of wiggle room to look at plants, fish, and to sit super long meals on a rooftop in St. Augustine and watch the people go by.

And I guess, thank the hots. I like this. I like this time. I want to feel the place a little bit.

I want to. You know this about me. You know that I feel like I sort of have a place in my hip pocket as soon as I have a mental map of it. The street goes here.

That cathedral is right there. Oh, and there's that cool park right across the way. It's important to me for whatever reason. It's kind of how I organize a big part of my invisible life, the life of the mind for me.

It's a very place oriented, for geography and map. It's very fish oriented as well. I know this about you. Yeah, that's true fish.

Tennis church. Those are all things that I care about when I travel. And so if I didn't line the right things up and I get to a town, I'm like, oh, I'm going to go interview these people who are doing a religious thing. That's nothing like what I do or what I'm into.

But I just want to know. So I'm going to their house of faith or whatever. And then I see a really cool one while I'm driving in that I didn't catch in my research. I feel huge regret.

Oh, I could be getting that as well. So sometimes real creepy. Like I'll just go into churches where I didn't call them in advance and just kind of mill around and seem friendly. And I just hope somebody's going to come up and be like, so what, you just looking at the church?

Yeah, I like looking at churches. I'm at sometimes I make videos about churches. I like to learn about other people's churches. And my fantasy is that someday somebody's going to be like, well, let's just do it right now.

What do you want to know? Do you have a microphone? No, I couldn't possibly. I insist.

OK. Just pull the flute out of your sleeve like an anchor man. Yeah, exactly. I'm not talking about that.

I'm not talking at all. I'm jazzed, literally, to go. Yeah, I'd go real hard on my travel as well. And I leave a lot of room in between, but it never seems to help me because what I do requires advance planning and all of that.

You're just a ruthless advance planner. You're getting so much. What I have noticed, though, is that I think I travel for pleasure more than you. I am more likely to put the family in the vehicle and take a week off and drive somewhere that makes no sense.

Whereas you're more likely to put the family in the vehicle and do 36 hours of super intense adventuring, dead ventures, I believe you call them. Or work travel. Those seem to be the two things. I mean, I don't know.

It just seems like you haven't had the time for the pure pleasure travel stuff that maybe some other folks prioritize. I just wonder, do you feel like you're missing out on stuff? Are there places that you want to go see that you haven't had the opportunity to yet? Yeah, there are.

And one of those places forever was Italy. And you convinced me to do that. I don't know if convinced is the right word. You weren't like, you should do this.

It's the end of there, man. But I mean, it was our 20th anniversary. And Tara and I decided we were going to go somewhere. For us, just for the marriage.

Did you do anything for work? Yeah. I mean, I recorded some stuff. I took a camera because I was like, you know, if I don't take a camera and I see the most amazing thing ever, and I don't record it, I will always regret that.

Yeah. I took some orders along the way. Just a couple. Hey, do you work on a thing?

Where are you at right now? There should be a sculpture of a guy with wings and he's by a sign. Could you take it at like six in the evening from this angle, please? Thank you.

You know, that was my contribution to your trip. Work orders the whole way. It was a unique thing because we, like you said, we don't do that. We don't travel for pleasure.

We usually have a thing we're doing. All I've got is road trip to see us. I've got Iceland for an anniversary trip with your wife. Last significant anniversary ago.

And then your most recent significant anniversary, you went to Italy. I've known you for a long time. Yeah. I think that those are the only big ones that I can really think of.

I think that's it. We did a, I think it was like four days in Costa Rica, a language school. Yeah, but that was practical. You were doing something.

You were getting into the skill. Yeah. But I think that's it. I think it's because, I don't know if this sounds stupid, even say it, I'm nervous, even talking about this.

Feels guilty? Like I feel guilty for taking time off and doing, I don't know, time off is the thing, but like I'm going to go do this thing. I don't know. That feels strange.

That feels strange. Does travel make you feel refreshed when you do it for fun? Yeah. Do you want me to do it more?

Yeah, I don't know. Did your Italy trip make you feel refreshed when you were done? I was tired because we walked a lot, but yeah. I'd say mentally refreshed because it exposed us.

So one of my favorite things to do in my entire life is be in a place with my wife. I mean, like it's like me and Tara versus the thing and we don't speak the language. You know what I'm saying? I do.

What about you? Yeah. Same thing. I would use a little different illustration.

You went with combat. I'm going to go with Christmas. But I mean for us, it's like unwrapping the present. I can only unwrap the present of each place once.

And so before I go, I try to read a whole bunch of history and literature about a place, familiarize myself with art and poetry and who these people are and where do they come from and how do they think of themselves and what is the oldest historical through line that I can trace that I understand the story of from a given place I'm visiting back to things I know on the history family tree. I like to know that stuff. But can I have the antenna out for connections? And then my favorite thing to do is get dropped in a city for the first part of the trip and figure it out.

No idea. Just solve it. Well, one thing I know about you is that when we first started talking, you were talking about ancient Rome and you were talking about the history of thought in the West, I think is the way you said it. Right?

Yeah. And then you had told me about going to Rome and why it was important to you and you had told me about wanting to go back and look at certain things. Like I can remember you made a video where Paul was in prison. Yeah.

And you were explaining all that to me. You're telling me why this specific spot is interesting. You said, well, you know, the Catholic church says this happened there. We don't really know.

But then this is tradition says and you're telling me all those things and I thought it was fascinating. And I don't know when it came time to, hey, we're going to go to a place hearing you pun intended romanticize all of this for so long. I was like, man, I've got to see that. Yeah.

You just tapped into the word that I have in mind. And then I kind of wanted to pick a brain about knowing that you went on this trip. For me, the romantic joy of going to a place with Camilla is I just like seeing her in a different culture. I like seeing her quite literally in a different light.

Every town, every great city is lit different. It feels different and almost like a little imperceptible details of people you know real well are a little bit different as they adapt to that over the course of a couple of days into the climate and culture and everything. I mean, I've never seen Camilla against the backdrop of Prague and I really want to take her there. I've had the opportunity to go to Prague for work things on my own.

I want to unwrap the present without her. Then if we go, it's asymmetrical. Now I'm the knower and I'm introducing her to a thing as though I have ownership of it. I'm the ownership of Prague because I go once and I go on.

I want whatever ownership I have, I want to be shared completely equally with her. I want to earn that ownership not by going and ticking the boxes of the tourist destinations you're supposed to see. I want to earn it by getting lost and taking risks and getting into weird corners of things and going to the places that aren't even really that interesting and that don't make the tourist guides but that have some obscure connection to some goofy little thing that only I care about from forever ago. I think she thrives on seeing me get excited about that stuff.

I thrive on her savoring the beauty of things and the carefree spirit that she has when we travel. It's a pretty carefree lady but there's a lot of burdens to raising three kids and keeping track of all the dumb stuff I'm doing. She's so light in the shoulders when I take her places. There's an elegance and a youthfulness and a lightness that traveling together and unwraping the present together brings out of her and to me that is the pinnacle of romance for us.

New fresh stuff that is rooted in old things we haven't encountered yet. We love that. What? What?

I don't get it. I'm just thinking about romance and the pinnacle of romance and... Why? I'm sorry.

I'm sorry. The day-to-day marriage stuff. I saw something online and I was like, I'm going to try this. There's a guy.

There's a guy who's like, hey, honey come in here. There's an exposed stud in here. Talking about, you know, like... Yes, well I know.

I get it. It's so tarot comes around the corner and he's like, what are you doing? So maybe I need to work on the romance. That's serious in your follow-up story.

This heartfelt crap about... No, you're dropping the mysteries of the old world together. No. Connecting with our ancient roots.

Check it out babe, I'm naked. Hey, y'all. It's like the streak. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ray Stevens. Yes. No, there's something about breaking free of the day-to-day, like the everyday monotony of feeling like ships in the night passing. Also, we did something with this trip to Italy that was very rare.

We said, how many days should we go? And so we called in all the favors, all the... Not babysitting favors, but you know our parents are awesome and they love their grandchildren. But we just said, hey, we're gonna do this.

Will you help us? And they're like, yeah, of course. We went for 14 days, which was nuts. Impressive.

I think it was 14. Did that feel... Maybe it was 10? Maybe it was 10.

Maybe it was too. Maybe it was too. Maybe you feel nervous and apprehensive because we're used to traveling for 11 hours when you take flights to go places and then coming right back. 1000%.

Yeah. Yeah. The open-endedness was weird. The financial investment was something we had prepared for for a really long time.

Yeah. And so, that was nerve-wracking. With you... I know you make a decision.

Like, this is a big part of your finances for your life is making these investments on the experience with your family. This is valuable to you and you choose to live in a smaller house so you can do more of of these types of things and I don't know about the way that sounded but you don't understand. But it's true, no, you live modestly. We prioritize this, I have strategic reasons parenting wise also, it keeps my brain from getting stale.

I wanna see the things I talk about from the past. I wanna feel the things I talk about. So you've told me all about Rome. You can only imagine the amount of prep I did going in.

So I listened to Rubicon by Tom Holland, great book. You put me on a Persian fire. So I feel like I had this whole experience of learning about Persia, how that morphs into Greek power and then Greek, you know, kind of transforms the Romans, the rise of the Romans. And so I'm trying to understand all this.

And so I go to Rome, we ended our trip in Rome. And I was like, man, I wanna see where Julius Caesar was killed. I don't wanna see that. I mean, that was a big, you know, YouTube, Brutus.

I mean, it's a big deal. Yeah. Do you feel you found it? Do I understand correctly that it is a cat pound?

Like it's a place for abandoned cats now? Do I understand that? It's a pretty quirky spot tucked in the middle of all of this stuff. The theater Pompeii, is that what it was called?

It's just that's where stray cats are now. Yes, I mean, there's stray cats everywhere. But okay, I have a question for you about the form. But before I go there, to me, it sounds like the first objective of your Italy trip was romance.

It just goes somewhere beautiful and romantic and different and savor being with somebody you love. Fair statement? Absolutely. That was the point.

And it could have been anywhere on the planet. That was what we wanted to do. We wanted to go somewhere where we were uncomfortable and we found comfort in each other. And then we also tried to navigate something that we didn't know how to do together.

That was the point. So if you could have gone anywhere, why was Italy a good fit for drawing those things out? Because we didn't speak the language. And I can navigate in Spanish.

I wouldn't say I speak Spanish, but I can do it really well. I can get by. Germany, we've done that. Tara's mother grew up speaking German and programmer.

You're fairly handy on the basics of German as well. There's not much there. Thank you for the compliment. But I told you about the time I called the young man handicapped on the train to just take the compliment and move on.

Okay. So, so, but Italy, it's just different. We just want to see what the culture was. Plus we like Italian food as we understood it to be from the American perspective.

It sounds like maybe you learned lessons maybe. Maybe. Okay. Okay.

So you plan a very unusual trip. I do not know you to take these kind of trips. Clearly you put a ton of thought into it. I mean, Tara was asking questions about Italy by year in advance of this trip?

Maybe? Was it that far? Yeah. Yeah.

Selling her on the idea of Italy was hard because we had thought about other places. But when we shifted to Italy, it was a hard time in our lives. We were trying to just logistically, we've had a lot going on. And so the idea of breaking free from the day to day and doing this was difficult for both of us.

Yeah, it was hard. But once she decided, he's like, we're in. Once she made that decision, we got the Bible, which is the Rick Steeves travel book for Italy. And then you know about Rick Steeves.

I do. He's amazing. And so once we got that, it was on like Donkey Kong, man. We're like, we're gonna figure this out.

It was gonna be great. And it was. It was awesome. Where I want to end up here is I just know this question is coming.

I want your opinion on what somebody should look for, if they want to do the romantic trip of lifetime. Okay. I'm very interested in what you learned about breaking free from all the normal stuff and going and doing something that you love with someone you love. But also I really like Italy.

I don't want to be afraid about that. Did you go to Rome at the beginning of your trip or at the end? We ended in Rome. We started in Venice.

And then we, if I'm looking at the boot, with the toe facing to the left, we started at the top right of the boot. Okay. Like as you pulled up on your leg, that's where Venice is, right? And then we crossed the top of the boot and then went to the other side, I think.

Pisa, Milan? Like for two hours. Okay. We drove across Tuscany.

And then we went to Florence. Is Florence and Tuscany? As-ish. So, Northern, this is what I would say.

But Tuscany, Umbria, Lazio, is north to south from Florence down to Rome. I think. See, I recognize all those words. I would say the purpose of the trip was familiarization, not mastery.

That's a phrase we said recently. We took the kids to Washington, D.C. for their like, Hey, let's talk about our government trip. And Tara said, Hey, the point here is familiarization not mastery.

We did that. And so I don't really have a good vibe for everything in Italy. You don't have a mental map yet. I don't.

Not of the whole nation. In fact, we didn't even get to the Southern coast. I don't think. I've never been to the Southern coast.

We started in Venice, which I loved. And then we went over to Florence. That's right. So went over to Florence.

And then I don't know where we went from there. I do know I drove across Tuscany. Did you go to Sienna? Yes.

You did? Yes. That's the walled city. It's awesome.

Coolest town. We spent about, I mean, is that top 10 for you? Coolest town to you've ever been to? Yes.

Yeah, no doubt. So they have this thing in Sienna. Correct me if I'm wrong, because you're the authority. They have this thing called Paolo.

That sounds right. This is the horse thing. Dude. So being from Alabama, we have Alabama versus Auburn, which I think is a very significant rivalry.

Maybe Ohio State, Michigan is up there as well. Your in-state rivalry affects relationships and how people talk with each other. Yeah. In the state.

It pushes right to the limit your Southern hospitality and charm. So Sienna is a walled city. And each section of the city has its own team, so to speak. You have this horse that you root for.

And they have a horse race in the center of the city. They bring in all this sand and it's not a square. It's like a weird dodeca-gon shape. It's weird.

They have this horse race around the center of the city for like four minutes or maybe it's less. And that's it. That's the whole thing. That's the whole thing.

But like they, I think they have two of them a year if I'm not mistaken. Were you there for one? No, I wish. God, that would be awesome.

But we chose teams while we were there. Oh, who do you root for? The goose, the one with the, there's a flag and it has a goose on it. And I used to know the name of it.

I hate the goose one. I'm with the team Wolf like the Wolf one. Really? I think Tara was going for the shell one.

But he didn't know if there was a Wolf one. I just, whatever you said, I was gonna hate your team. That's just what it was. That's what it was.

Your team could have been like, there's one with a drawing of a guy. It looks just like you and I still would have hated it. Oh, exactly. Yeah.

Okay. They all have these teams that they root for and it's just awesome. It's just so, and they care and it matters. And they said, in Sienna, you're born and then Paolo and then you die.

That's how they say it. So like, that's really all that matters. There's not life. There's Paolo.

Do you see the Quantum of Solace, the James Bond movie? No, it's not good. It's maybe the second Daniel Craig James Bond movie. Okay.

But it opens during, if it's called this Paolo. Yeah. I don't know what you said, but it opens with that going on in the background and then there's a spy versus spy combat running across Hericata roofs and chute guns. The famous ending of that chase sequence is in a church bell tower that's under construction and the lines are taking them up and down and they're doing like this weightless shoot at each other.

One goes up and one goes down kind of thing and ultimately Bond gets wrapped up around the waist in one. He lets himself roll down like an unfurling scroll and then freezes three feet before he lands in the bottom and bang shoots the other spy. Yeah, it's obviously a small train for that sort of thing. Yeah, that's perfectly more.

Now in the, what do you call, what do you call big churches in Italy? They have a name. Duomo? Okay, in the Duomo in Sienna, it was a big deal, I was told.

They were uncovering the floor for the first time in a really, really long time. What were they looking for? Well, it was, they were mosaics. They had restored some of the mosaics.

The mosaics on the floor in Sienna were some of the most intricate designs out of tile and stone in all of Italy. It was a big deal. They're like, hey, you got here at the right time because you can go to the Duomo and you can see the floor. I'm like, okay, whatever, whatever.

That sounds great. Okay, we'll go see it. We went, dude, I'm not Catholic. And so I don't get into some of the, it feels like sometimes people are praying to statues and stuff for like light and candles and stuff.

I don't do all that. I mean, that's not a terrible characterization. The Protestants have more of a belief that people die and then they are present with the Lord and not exactly accessible when somebody's dead. So if you run into just a random American Christian, that'll tend to be how they think about dead Christians.

We'll be reunited later. So for example, my kid brother, Christian, is dead. I don't, theologically believe myself to have any kind of access to him through a media area or anything like that. I mean, it still hasn't stopped me a couple of times in moments of grief from being like, I don't know if you pass along messages or whatever, but if the Catholics are right on that one, like, did you just say to my brother, whatever, I think time works probably different there.

But just miss him today. I don't know. Just miss him. Just miss him.

Just make your brother. Don't have another one. So if you don't relay messages, it's cool because of how you're like the divine sustainer of all of existence and everything. And I'm sure your plan and reasoning for not doing like message relays is a super good one.

So that's fine. Did you ask to like pass along a nuggy or something like that? No, but like a couple of jokes that I thought would be funny and that were maybe right on the edge for God to hear. So like, I don't know.

I'm not sure. I'm sure you're probably knew what you're thinking. I'm understanding is that the all knowing creator and sustainer of all things is pretty aware of all the jokes. So I'm just trying to pass on a nuggy.

I just figured I could offend him. I'll try. I don't know. I think if you're Catholic, you're allowed to do that.

So at any rate, the Catholics and the Orthodox have more of an understanding of everybody being alive at the same time for something that transcends time a little bit more. And so the role of the saints is very different. Whereas a Protestant would be like, I really respect all of these people from the history of the Bible and the church. That was a really honorable person.

The Catholics and Orthodox have more of a structure and a criteria for that. And in Orthodoxy, the Eastern version of the church of Eastern Europe, the idea is that that person can be represented, drawn as an icon. And somehow that is a point of communion with that person. I'm not an Orthodoxy.

I'm not saying it right. It's a mystery. Catholics don't do the icons the same way, but representations of saints, statues and things like that. I mean, all of these different groups, they say the same creeds.

Like I believe in God the Father, stuff that you probably say in church. These are ancient words that are the boundaries of Christian faith. But one of the real differences between these groups that can be very disorienting when you travel in Italy, if you're in around this much, is their understanding of our relationship with the dead and what the timeline looks like on that. And so for the Catholics, the dead are a little bit closer.

And for the Orthodox, the dead are a lot closer. And for the Protestants, it's more of a wait a little while, and we'll be back together. And so the art, it just hits different. It feels different.

And I assume that's what you were referencing when you were talking about not being a Catholic in the stuff that you were seeing there. Yeah, exactly. Thanks for protecting me for myself there. Sorry.

No, absolutely. So the spiritual connection with the rooms and the art in the room maybe doesn't hit us hard for me. However, some of the things on the floor in Sienna, the mosaics, really stirred my soul. What was different about them?

It was just unapologetically gruesome. I know that sounds crazy, but like- It doesn't keep going. So like in the Bible, there's this Messiah that's been born, this king, right? And he's over here in this little town, bit like that.

And then there's this dude, he's like, hey, so there's this king, another king? Here, the great. Yeah. So where's he at?

Tell me, wise men, where's he at? Okay, cool, no problem. And then there's this order to kill all the innocents, kill all these little kids. If there's a boy under this age, what was it?

Two, three. Yeah, a couple years of age in this town. Yeah, go kill him. You know, you're reading the Christmas story.

That's a few lines. No. You make a mosaic of all these soldiers marching on this town, grabbing these babies, holding them up by their foot and stabbing them with a sword and just like blood going everywhere and the mom screaming. And then I thought to myself, oh yeah, that was just a few lines in the Bible.

But if that order was executed, there was a soldier that had to do it. Yeah. And there was a mother that felt the pain. And then there was, yeah, I got it that, you know, Joseph took Jesus and Mary and fled to Egypt and then- And his generational hole for that town.

Yeah. And so it was, I don't know, it just, it brought the humanity to it in a way that I had never considered. And so I was like, whoa, okay. Huh.

Yeah, they didn't have YouTube videos of that event, did they? But this is a pretty good representation. Granted, all of the people in the art, they were Lily White. They were European looking.

They weren't of Middle Eastern descent, which everywhere Christianity is gone, people depict the characters to look like themselves. We've got Native American churches. I mean, we live in a very Native American part of the Mountain West. And there's a ton of church, Episcopal, Lutheran, evangelical, Baptist, and the portrayals of all of these characters look native in their art.

Why the heck wouldn't it? Yeah. And so the idea of things being incarnational in Christianity lends itself to people, seeing themselves and their physical attributes and their environment in the stories of the Bible. I'd publish a couple teeny tiny little shorts, no big deal, from an Easter procession that I went to in Costa Rica last year, studying Spanish down there.

My kids do a good Friday procession. That's a parade that does the Easter story, the story of the good Friday story of Jesus' conviction under Pontius. And I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm going to be the oak tree story of... Well, very good Friday story of Jesus' conviction under Pontius Pilate and all of the abuse he takes as he walks through Catholic nations of the cross.

We don't have that. Protestantism. Most of them are in the Bible. That's powerful man.

We walked along with all of that. It affected my kids deeply. One of my favourite things about it was the Roman soldiers. Their helmets, and what goes on top of a Roman soldiers helmet?

The Red mole. The red cone, but it's not. For them, the super long exotic bird of paradise feathers. Oh, and that's coming in your mind like Mayan or Aztec or something.

That's cool. Why'd they do that? Well, I don't know, cause it's super incarnational. everybody everywhere is gonna make the people in these stories look like them East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa.

So, yeah, they were all really white bits because it was in Siena, so it makes sense to me. It was neat. I liked it. Seeing the old art was really interesting.

I really liked that. The one thing from the whole trip that was, you know, we had a couple of things we wanted to do. For me, the thing was bucket list item was Pompeii. Did you make it?

We did. Cool. I don't know that we should talk about that. I mean, it's like a whole thing.

Like, we could talk just, just don't pump it. Let me just ask you this question. Okay. How did it make you feel?

It made me think about the whole Bible differently. Really? Yes. Everybody knows what the deal is with Pompeii.

The very quick version is in the 70s, 80s, 79. Yep. 80, is that right? August, maybe.

Mount Vesuvius erupted, which is a big volcano right next to Naples. That's the big famous city there. It's also the Sorrento-ish area, right? Yeah, and more or less buried two towns.

I can never say right here. Herculaneum. Herculaneum. That sounded good.

And Pompeii, and Pompeii, Pliny the Elder, was there, shuttling people back and forth out of the bay to try to save people. And so it was a very vivid description, maybe written by Pliny the Younger. Well, they might have both been there. And so it captured the imagination of everybody forever.

And all the way up into the 1700s, everybody's like, something from the era of the Bible is still just sitting there underneath somewhere right around here. And I think in the 1700s they figure out where it was. And they've been excavating since they're not done. It's a whole city that's just frozen in time from the first century idea.

It's just insane that that could exist. Yeah. I'll just give you a snapshot. So I told Tara, I was like, this is the thing.

This is the one thing I would like to do. She's like, absolutely. So she plans this beautiful itinerary. She's really gotten good at this where she'll say, okay, we're gonna do this.

And when we went to Iceland for our 15th anniversary, she's like, we're gonna go to this place for this amount of time. And then our next waypoint is here. And then she plans in randomness for me. Good.

She's like, structure, and then there's your randomness. You do whatever you want. We can sit on a beach or we can go to a bookstore or whatever it is. That's what we did the whole trip.

But in Pompeii, that was the only thing I asked for. It was amazing. But you asked how it made me feel. When we started, we walked in to where the port would have been.

And the person that was with us said, okay, this is the, how do I? Well, I mean, this is the brothel. You're gonna walk in the brothel. Were you seriously looking for a tamer way to say that than brothel?

Yeah, because I think that's as easy as it goes. Yeah. This is where the women of the night. I figured out this is the brothel.

And so I was like, how do you know it's a brothel? And the guy that was with us said, you'll see. And I was like, okay. Whoa, whatever.

And so we walk in and imagine, this is all episode did. Long story short, it was very clear it was a brothel. We can talk about that later. But what it did for me, what Visiting That Town did for me is it made me realize that the culture we think today, oh man, the culture so awful, we're, no, we're nothing.

We got nothing. The culture was so vile back then. And so when I think of Sunday school flannel graphs of Bible stories and oh look there he is with his coat, you know, the many colors, you know, and yeah, we're thinking about Bible stories and like, oh, how tame it was. Heck no, dude.

This was a vile culture. It's a snapshot from 79 AD. So that's 40 years after Christ. It just brought it, I guess more like 50 years.

It just to me, it made it real. It's like, I'm walking the streets. I'm seeing the engineering. I can imagine myself to be a Roman engineer.

How would I solve this problem? They did pretty good. Huh. Oh, you know what?

In that case, they did better than I would have done. The only difference between me and them is that I have more technology at my disposal. There's been more errors made in engineering between them and me to learn from. That's the difference.

It was life altering, I think, seeing that. And you told me it would be. Yeah. It is for me.

It was when I unwrap the present and it has been when I've had the opportunity to go back. I've been lucky enough to get to Italy a handful of times. Almost all of them have been for work. Yeah, that's what you do.

I mean, you go and you've researched stuff when you go. I know why you go. It was great. You were able to point me in certain places because this is, I don't know.

I hope we get to go back, but I don't know that we will. It's weird to think that way, man. What? I've just started doing that too though.

I never ever ever ever, even five years ago would have said as I leave a place. Well, that could be the last time I ever see this. Maybe look back one more time, man. Maybe just take it in, not through a camera.

Look at it because you're not coming back. And that is a function of math. Well, I mean, it is. It's a fatalistic approach.

It's not fatalistic. Okay, it could be. Somebody could say that because they're like, I'm getting old. I'm going to die.

I don't feel that way. I'm saying that with a lot of these places I'm seeing because it was really meaningful and I really enjoyed meeting you. Little town on the Caribbean coast of Costa Rica at the very end of the road where only a couple hundred people live. I really enjoyed meeting you.

This was wonderful. But this world is so very big. And I really want to go see other parts of it. But I don't know that I'll be coming back this way again.

So I should retain it. For me, it isn't super fatalistic. It's more optimistic. For all the beauty I've seen, there's still so many more prisons to unwrap.

But I am starting to think that way a little bit. I kind of want to get after this other place. Well, the big reason I was thinking that way is it was such a financial stroke to do it. Yeah.

Dude, it's a thing, man. Like, it's not just something you're like, oh, we're going to go do this. No, you've got to like mean it. Yes.

Okay, so this is now a priority for us. And I got to say it was worth it for the investment in our marriage. I mean, I got to say it was I can think of a moment when I was walking down the street in the city, I think it's called Chincuetere or the five cities or whatever. Okay, that's kind of up north in the armpit sounds negative, but you'll under it.

I mean, sort of the northwest armpit of the boot. Uh huh. Like moreover, on the piece of side is inquiry. Did you get over there after Pisa?

I don't know the order of what we did things. I just remember walking down the street with a little paper bowl that had bow tie pasta and like very light tomato sauce. And I was like, man, I'm hungry. I can, so I walk in this little, I was like, hey, I need, you know, what do you have to eat?

Like, we've got this to go. I was like, yes. And so I'm eating it with my little wooden spoon. Yeah, I hate the way it feels.

I do. Yeah. And then just walking down the street and Tara went and got something else and we're like, hey, we're going to meet down at the port. You go get some food.

I get some food. And we'll just like explore a little bit and see what you know. And yeah, that was, I just remember that moment where the sun is setting over the water to the west. And we both got our little pasta and we're sitting there and we're eating it.

Then I went and jumped off the cliffs. That was pretty cool. Unintered? Unintered?