The Clubhouse – Episode 10

It is 7-0-1 on the East Coast.
It is 4-0-1 on the West Coast.
It is the 17th of September in the year of our Lord 2017.
Season 8, Episode 10, 413 times this voice has welcomed you to the Clubhouse Podcast live
every Sunday night, 7 Eastern 4 Pacific.
You are one stop shop for all things pop culture.
And yes, we are back.
Been off for a couple of weeks due to vacation, we're going to get into that in just a minute.
My name is Rob, I'm the executive producer of the Clubhouse Podcast, and tonight's
going to be a different show.
I'm going to give you a couple of headlines that just kind of stick out to me, but we're
going to be focused on something a little bit different tonight.
But let me introduce you to the players in the room joining me in the co-host chair tonight
is the lady of the house and a woman who is rolling in a new ride because that's how she
rolls.
She is Jen Roan.
Welcome, son, my friend.
Hello and shout out to Lute Raleigh Honda.
Honda, Mark Dupri.
Took really good care of me.
Thank you.
I'm doing Lute Raleigh Honda.
There's people around the world going, I have no idea what it is.
That's their jingle.
It's their jingle.
It's a car dealership, but they took really good care of me, and I'm really pleased with
that I am now safe on the road again.
Ending next to her is the official fact checker of this show.
And a man who's probably going to have a little bit of a bone of contention to me as
tonight goes on because we talked about it in pre-show.
You may know him as fun, don't go, but his mama named him Don Ford.
I'm going to call him Don Ford.
Welcome, sir.
Bone of contention.
We'll get there.
You know what, Lexicon, that's all I'm going to say.
You'll know when we get there.
Okay.
Alright.
Just a couple of things I want to say, first of all, quick wrestling note, shout out to
Christy Hemie, former WWE Diva and former Impact Wrestling Knockout, pregnant with quadruplets.
Woohoo!
Oh, four.
They were having the gender reveal this weekend, I did not see it, but yeah, she's having
quadruplets.
She's an healthy woman, and I bow down at her greatness.
So congratulations to her.
She's going to need a lot of diapers.
Yeah.
That's going to be a rough deal.
So I read that this week.
I think we're getting ready to start the playoffs for NASCAR.
We'll get back to all that in a couple of weeks.
Next week will be WWE No Mercy, so we'll be doing our pre-show for that.
If I sound a little froggy, it's because after I got back from vacation, my allergies
decided to stage an all-out assault on my system, knocked me down for a couple of days.
My voice was shot yesterday morning, so we're going to do everything we can to get through
this tonight.
But we were not going to miss this episode tonight.
Hope you guys enjoyed the episodes that we aired what we're going.
We've never done that before, where we actually had content while we were on vacation.
So I apologize for last week's episode showing up at Day Late, but we're going to talk
about why that happened.
I don't normally like to talk about me.
I've never been that guy.
But before we get to that, Jen, you did have one correction that you wanted to do real
quick.
Yes, I had mentioned that on the last show we taped, my Wonder Woman Blue Ray DVD would
be here by the time we taped.
No, it doesn't in fact arrive till Tuesday.
This coming Tuesday is the release date.
Make sure you order your copy.
I know Target has a special edition.
I ordered mine through Amazon.
Don't take my target special edition because I couldn't order it online.
I shouldn't have mentioned that.
It's okay.
Make sure you save one for Rob if you love Rob.
That's right.
Save one for me.
But that is my one correction.
Okay.
Christy Hemi, quadruplets, three boys and one girl.
Oh, wow.
She already has a daughter.
Yeah.
She has a daughter.
Those are going to be some very safe little girls.
They're going to have big girls.
They're going to be out.
It's going to be a big household full of people.
Also you didn't want to say before we get into this, there's only one you want to talk
about coming up this weekend locally.
Yes.
It's going to be one center is having their richest in Texas and richest in Texas.
The Isman Center for Performing Arts 15th anniversary.
It is Cheetah Rivera and Tommy Tune performing.
So that should take away back into the old school.
Oh, yes.
But it's going to be wonderful.
I'm looking forward to it.
That's going to be on Friday night.
Contact Isman Center EISEMAN to see if there are still tickets available.
All right.
Anything else?
Anything else?
Any other?
I do want to say one thing real quick before we get rolling.
This coming Saturday.
My church, the block church, will be having a block party in Mesquite.
We'll put some details up later today.
Grace these first performance.
The return.
Ooh.
The boys are back.
We're going to be playing two half hour sets this coming Saturday.
The first set will be from one 30 to two.
Second set will be from 245 to 315.
The block party itself goes from noon to four.
We're going to have bounce houses, games for the kids.
Come find out what the block church is all about.
I love saying that I'm a member of the block church.
We're having our grand opening with our brand new facility to us October 1st.
And there's rumors of bounding that maybe Grace Deal be providing some praise and worship
that day.
So our normal services are Sunday morning at 10 a.m. at the Rutherford Rec Center in
Mesquite, which is over near Crete Crossing.
So we'd love for you guys to come out and hang out with the boys.
We're going to be playing some Christian rock and roll and having a good time.
Well, one thing I want to add also that because we love Kelly Kitchens, one of our favorite
people in the entire area.
She's a beautiful person.
In my business.
In this show, there are two people that without them, this show is not what it is.
One of them is Gary Murray, God rest your soul.
We miss you every day, sir.
And the other is Kelly Kitchens.
Is that she's working at Arlington Film Festival next weekend?
That is correct.
And we all have some stuff coming up about that that I did this weekend and it's like film
plus music and all that.
So after you do the Grace D thing, head over to Arlington and do that.
Yeah.
I might be doing some red carpet possibly.
That'd be great.
And we'll have that feature as well.
And one other thing, the fabulous faith forward, she's, she's, she's, she's feeling my pain
is she.
She's feeling my pain right now.
She's under the weather.
So I got her chicken soup for the last two nights.
Yeah.
I'm glad to hear she has someone taking care of her.
I had chicken soup with her for me about a decade ago.
Fantastic.
I can't do chicken soup anymore.
It was really for me about a decade ago.
All right.
So let's get into this thing.
As I said earlier, I'm, I don't like to talk about me.
I just, I'm not that guy.
I'm the guy that likes to highlight what everybody else is doing and tell me, tell me what
you're going through.
And then let me, let me put you on that pedestal.
But after my vacation, I, I thought we'd talk about it.
And this is going to be weird for me.
I'm already getting a little emotional.
So y'all have to bear with me.
For those of you that, that don't know, I was in South Florida during Hurricane Irma.
And we're going to talk about how we got to that point, what happened during that time.
What happened after that point and what got us to today.
But before we get there, I just want to start by saying thank you to everybody that reached
out, that was checking on me, even, you know, even Harvey for people back home.
They weren't, you know, because not everybody understands Texas geography.
Right.
So when Hurricane Harvey became a thing and if you haven't done your part, whether you're
giving money for the relief efforts or if you've been involved, get involved, help out
because there are still people even suffering from Harvey that are still displaced.
Don works for the state and they've been working so much to try to help everybody get the
benefits they need.
And you know, you don't get thanked enough for what you do.
Let me kind of put a note out to this that those, when I had the fire a few years back,
you did.
I was right around my birthday.
Yeah.
And that those little things mean a lot, like you're talking about the Red Cross, I can
imagine.
Well, these people, I deal with the snap or food stamps and Medicaid and the, for the
state of Texas, for the state of Texas, the issue is there is disaster relief and we're
in the process of that.
But this thing has been three and a half, four weeks.
They just started implementing disaster relief snap for just a few counties this week.
It's taking that long where we could be able to help them.
So think about four weeks.
And to tell people what snap is because not everyone knows it's like basically food stamps
and there's disaster relief snap where people who are different states call it different
things.
Yes.
But basically where disaster relief is where people who would not normally be eligible
for food stamps can get two months of food stamps, two months, that's it.
It's a temporary thing.
But we don't do the normal thing of what you're ongoing income.
They'll say, how much will you make this month?
Because we understand your job's not going to be there.
We could take client statements, three page application.
Have you been displaced?
Now they have to, you know, say yes, I was displaced.
I lived in this county at the time that's considered a disaster relief area, yadi yadi.
But which is a lot easier to prove now than it used to be.
Yeah.
Right.
You know, these people, you know, it will give them two months of, you know, of help where
they could get possibly if they're eligible and stuff to get some food put in their new
homes or where they're staying at and, you know, help them out.
But the thing is it's been almost four weeks and they're still roughly 40 counties that
we're still trying to get that process of getting them going.
Now, if I take an absence, I'd let you know I'll be possibly going to the Houston or
that area where I'll be working seven days a week.
And let's be clear on this when he says that, like, he is actually volunteering to do
things.
Like he was the first person in his group to say, yes, if you need me to go, I will go
and you should be recognized.
Yes, sir.
But I mean, where I'd be doing these disaster relief applications, you know, seven days
a week, eight, 10 hours a day.
So, but if you're, if you want to get, if you've been affected, please be patient.
Yeah.
Because there's a lot of people and they're doing everything they can to get everybody
to take care of.
People that haven't been affected, those little things, a toothbrush, toothpaste, a blanket,
warm, warm, clean clothes, food for the day.
We're going to talk about that as the night goes on as well.
That can mean the in the red process.
Go ahead.
And there's other products that get forgotten a lot, people have pets, people have health
issues.
So sometimes even just band aids, yeah, products that email you all the time.
I mean, there's things they get forgotten that it's the little thing that those things
done ahead of time, because we're going to talk about that tonight too, because there
was a time, there was about a 36 hour period, no one got in, no one got out.
So to have those things ahead of time, so that you have those supplies there and ready
when something like this happens, you know, we're going to, we're going to get into the
entire story tonight.
But we're going to talk about the whole thing tonight.
So you tell me what, what 10 packs of playing cards of a deck of cards could do for a shelter.
But it's just one of the things that we did was we played cards, but I think we're getting
a little bit ahead of it.
Yeah, we got.
So back to what I was saying is people that don't understand Texas geography, when Harvey
came through Houston, we're very inland and very north of Houston.
But the fact that people were reaching out going, dude, were you affected, are you okay?
Like that meant something to me.
And for me to be able to say, you know what, we're cool, Jen's got family down there,
they were taken care of.
That would be his wife, Jen.
Yes, my wife.
I have in-laws in that area and everybody's okay in checking in.
And seeing the way Texas kind of pulled together, you know, people that were here locally
in Dallas that were putting up posts on social media saying, does anybody have a flat bottom
boat?
I can borrow for a couple of days, because I want to head down there.
And not even just Texas, Louisiana, the case of the Cajun Navy was.
The Cajun Navy was a big player.
Oh, yeah.
They were like, you helped us.
Let's help you.
And nobody cared what anybody looked like.
So let's set this up.
Ever since I was a kid, many, many years ago, let's call it 1987.
I was able to, for the first time, go to something called Night of Joy.
Night of Joy is a two-night Christian.
It used to be two weekends, but now it's just two nights, different lineups on each night.
That's put on by the Walt Disney World Resort.
It's always the weekend after Labor Day.
And it gives you an opportunity to see some of your favorite Christian artists.
Now, until last year, they actually did it in the Magic Kingdom.
There were five different stages around the Magic Kingdom, so you could ride rides and
you can hear the music.
Starting last year, they've changed it up, and the whole thing is now being held at
wide world of sports.
Which on one hand is kind of a bummer, because you don't get them, you know, you're kind
of cutting off the outreach part of it because kids are in the park.
You still get to go to the park, but it's a one-day pass.
The upside to it, for somebody who's what I call a man of a certain age, is one of the
venues is the baseball stadium, where my beloved Atlanta Braves do spring training.
So now I get to actually sit in the stands and watch the concerts.
And I've been lucky, and fortunate that all the bands I've wanted to see are playing
at the baseball stadium and not the indoor stadium where there's a lot of standing remotely.
So I get to sit in the stadium and enjoy a nice night, watch some great Christian bands,
come fans of bands that maybe I wouldn't have otherwise.
So as a kid, I went to this seven years running with my youth group.
When I moved to Texas, kind of, of course, you know, lose track of things.
So two years ago, I got a phone call from Patty Hansen, who is the wife of my youth director
from when I was a kid.
He and I are still very, very close.
He helped me through some really rough times I had as a teenager.
And his kids are kids anymore, they're 24 and 22.
By the way, this is his daughter, Gabby's birthday weekend.
Happy birthday.
Happy birthday Gabby.
Love you so much, and I'm sorry we missed you.
They were the first humans to ever call me Uncle Rob.
So I have a very, very deep attachment to this family.
Two years ago, Patty called me out of the blue and said, hey, we've got an extra ticket
tonight.
And I, okay, did it by the wife.
And so this would be the third year that we've kept the tradition up where normally the
last two years, the way it's worked is I've flown it and I have joy as Friday, Saturday
after Labor Day.
So I would fly in Thursday night, Friday, like last year, Friday, we went to Blizzard
Beach because you get a day at the water park and the day at the one of the regular parks
and you pick it.
Then we go to the night of joy and Friday night, Saturday, we went to Hollywood studios
went to the concerts and then I would fly out Sunday night, take Monday off of work.
Well, I didn't get to take a summer break this year.
So I decided, you know what, I'm just going to take Labor Day week off and just kind of
just get my head right because the rest of this year is going to be nuts.
So I called Tom, Tom is my youth director.
His name is Tom Hansen, which growing up with that name in the late 80s is a tough deal
because that was Johnny Depp's character on 21 Jump Street spelled differently.
I called Tom and I said, hey, I'm just going to take, you know, Labor Day week off.
So if you guys decide, if you guys decide to go up early and it's cheaper to fly me to
Orlando for that, then I'm totally on board.
So Tom called me back and he said, you know what, why don't we just fly you in the Saturday
before Labor Day, you can spend the week with us at our house, beautiful house in Girl
Springs, which is probably 20 minutes northwest of Fort Lauderdale.
You can see some of your friends while you're here will go do night of joy, will drive
back Sunday, will fly you back to Dallas Monday.
I said, that's perfect.
And then I'll take Tuesday off as my decompress day, go back to work the following Wednesday.
So of course, I'm as giddy as a school girl.
We get to September 2nd, get on the plane, I actually finished reading Ready Player One
on the plane.
Oh good.
I will say watching the trailer again after reading the book.
There's a lot of embellishment.
There's whole sections of the trailer.
I'm like, that's not even the book.
Let's see, I haven't seen the trailer.
So I'm still looking forward to the film coming in March.
It's Spielberg.
So it's not going to be terrible.
Landed on the plane.
Oh, landed on the plane.
Landed at Fort Lauderdale International Airport.
Got off.
They were there to greet me.
Very excited.
We had heard rumblings about Irma.
But there was nothing like the focus was still on Harvey at that point, as well as it
should be because our Harvey had made land.
This was the whole deal.
But we were keeping an eye on Irma.
Irma was still way out.
Oh, yeah.
And it was fluctuating.
What?
She was very, very unpredictable.
We thought maybe she'd hit the Caribbean and cut North avoiding landfall.
Here's where my, oh, and yeah, believe me, Hunter was not happy that his daddy was gone
for two weeks.
Oh, when I was a kid, we don't mean we don't.
I grew up in Fort.
You do with hurricanes.
It's part of the deal.
Yeah.
You watch the news.
This is what it's going to do.
Here you go.
Now, there's like 13 different models out there.
And they're all different.
Oh, yeah.
Can we just get a meeting of the five families together?
I know, Hunter, stop it.
And so we can agree on one model that we can look at and say, this is the deal.
Because there were models that had her S curving back going up the West Coast back across
the state, then hitting the Carolinas.
There were other ones where she missed us completely.
Let's just get together and just average this thing out.
Now most people will use the European model, who are most people we're going by.
So having a great time going through Labor Day weekend, got to go to church with them.
And see what they've got going on down there.
Got to spend Labor Day with a very, very, very good friend of mine named Heather Fogelman,
who I am a huge fan of, even though she's a Seahawks fan, but we all have her faults.
And she knows I love her.
She took shots at me last year, and then my fucking ears beat her.
But got to spend Labor Day with her and her family, and we cooked out, and we people
watched at the pool, which I haven't, I haven't done that in many, many, many years.
And in Florida, that's got to be interesting.
Oh, I had an apartment complex pool.
Oh, you better believe it.
Oh, you better believe it.
There were some characters.
The way I put it was on the six o'clock Eastern version of Sports Center with Jamel Hill
and Michael Smith, they have a segment called Hashtag doing too much.
Oh, there was a lot of out of the pool.
And they gave me a nice plate to bring home with me, which actually worked out later because
I could eat it later when I needed it.
Had a wonderful time.
So Tuesday comes around, and things are starting to look serious.
So we're starting to make plans.
We're trying to figure out, are we going to go to Disney?
Are we not going to go to Disney?
Because now I had put gas in my nephew's car on Labor Day on my way back to the house.
I had just come from Dallas, where we had our own gas panic right after Harvey.
So it's like, OK, this is not my first rodeo of this month, you know.
So we're starting to make plans.
Do we go?
Do we not go?
Do we go and just stay at the resort?
Because we always stay at the old Key West, which is a vacation club, resort, beautiful.
You're basically an apartment.
Oh, yeah.
A two bedroom apartment, two bathrooms got a laundry room, everything in it, right on the
golf course.
So we're now starting to have serious conversations.
Because if she hits, they're having some roof work done.
So it's kind of a crap shoot on if the roof is going to hold up.
Because at this point, she's no doubt going to become a category five.
It's going to happen.
Category five for those of you that don't know is 150 miles an hour or faster.
Winds.
She's moving at 15 miles an hour, but she's 420 miles across.
Now let me reiterate that she's 420 miles across Florida and the peninsula at its widest
is 120 miles.
So she's if she's within shooting distance, we're getting hit.
It's going to happen.
Yeah.
She didn't get real for me until I saw a picture comparing the size of her to the size
of Andrew in 92.
Now we got the, I was, I, we got the outskirts of Andrew.
I actually slept through Andrew.
I was a lot ahead of me becoming, doing youth ministry makes you a very light sleeper.
Back then I was a very heavy sleep.
Okay.
I remember at one point I woke up and I was like, wow, it's raining kind of hard by the
side.
I went back to sleep.
Then my mom came in to wake me up and she's like, I'm like, it's still dark.
Outside.
She's like, hey, dummy, there was a hurricane coming through.
Get up.
It's 130 in the afternoon.
So we lost power for about a day and a half.
So I've been through hurricanes before.
This is nothing.
This is not something that's new to me.
The thing about Irma that was weird and I'm jumping ahead a little bit, but we'll come
back.
Irma had these things called dirty zones in her.
The problem with the dirty zone is a dirty zone brings tornadoes with it.
Now my friend Heather Fogelman who we just talked about a little while ago, her area did
get hit by a tornado.
Florida has the opposite issue that Texas has.
Outside of Houston people in Texas don't really understand hurricanes well enough.
People here like in Dallas when the panic was having like the gas thing, I kind of get
at it because 60% of the oil that comes out of Texas uses comes from an area in Houston
that got hit.
Water and stuff like that.
A hurricane would have to be like, revelation style for it to do any damage because we're
so far inland.
Yeah.
We're like, we're going to need 300 miles.
Yeah.
We might hurricanes need water to gain steam.
Yeah.
That's why places like Houston get hit or New Orleans gets hit or the Carolinas.
Or Florida because it's nothing but water right along the coast and for us to get hit,
basically it has to hit Houston and be head straight towards us if it hits us by
that time.
And it's got to be moving pretty quick.
Yeah.
And by that time we're so far 300 miles, 250, 300 miles away from Houston that by the time
it hits us, it's just going to be a bigger storm.
You'd be lucky if it's a cat one, you're lucky if it's a tropical storm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just be a big thunderstorm.
So Florida has the exact opposite problem.
Like in Texas, we can deal with tornadoes.
Tornados is kind of what happens here in the spring.
It's part of the bit.
I don't like tornadoes because with hurricanes, you have time.
With tornadoes, it's, hi, I'm here.
Yeah.
Well, when the dirty zones came through, people weren't prepared for tornadoes because
number one, you can't have basements in Florida because it's all coral.
You can't dig that deep.
Right.
Number two, they're just not prepared for it.
Now you have structures that were built after Andrew and we'll get to that here in a minute
that are built to sustain a category five because cat five is the top ones you can't go
higher than a cat five.
So the build, the structures are built to be able to withstand it.
But that doesn't mean you can withstand a tornado.
So there was, I mean, there was some, some rightfully justified panic there.
So Tuesday, we start to make contingency plans.
To this point that I start to make phone calls, I have to call my wife, I have to call my
mom.
My mom had no clue.
My mom was in the Pacific Northwest.
So and there were people here that were like, that called me much later that were like,
dude, I didn't even realize you were still there.
You know, we just, it was just out of our mind, which under, it's understandable.
I wasn't mad at anybody.
Let's just put this out there.
I was never angry with anybody that, that maybe didn't check up on me in a manner
that they felt was timely.
The fact that the people checked in, that was enough for me.
So Wednesday night, we make the decision because Tom and I were supposed to leave Thursday
morning for Orlando and Patty and my nephew Josh were going to drive up that night because
Josh has night school.
Well, Wednesday, they announced that the college would be close to the weekend because it was
pretty apparent that she was headed towards us at that point with Jose fairly close behind
her.
Side note, Jose would end up taking a Northern, John wouldn't come anywhere near thank
God, because I might still be there.
So we make the decision, all right, Wednesday night, get a hold of Gabby.
We're going to cancel the flights because the gas panic had already happened.
So because of that, we had gas in all the vehicles.
Tom and I got lucky Wednesday night.
We were in Josh's car and we found a Cumberland farms that we actually got through in less
than 15 minutes.
Oh, fantastic.
I mean, there were gas stations that were three, four blocks deep in the right lane, like
much like we saw here right before I left.
So we got that taken care of now, this Cumberland farms, which for those of you in South
Florida's located on Atlantic Boulevard just near 66, they used to have a very incline
stop sign next to it.
That intersection is where I learned, because I learned how to drive on a five speed.
I learned how to drive on a stick.
That intersection is how I learned to go from a dead stop on an incline with a clutch.
They have leveled that street and I'm very upset about it because more people need to use
that.
This will also come back into play later.
So we get home, Patty makes a great Mexican food dinner and we're putting together a plan.
The plan says, if it gets bad, we already know what shelter we're going to go to because
there's a high school right around the corner from them.
Coral Glades High School, home of the Jaguars, that was built in 0405.
So it is a labeled shelter.
We can go there.
That's where we're going to go.
We're not going to make that call until Wednesday night.
I'm sorry, till Thursday night because we need to make sure that we're in a direct path.
So Thursday morning, we get up, we have lunch and we're talking and we decide, okay,
we're going to go Friday because we're watching the news.
At this point, my wife is here at the house.
She's glued to the, to the weather channel till 3, 4 in the morning.
I'm, I'm constantly talking to her saying, we're okay, you know, don't panic.
You know, we're, we have a plan.
It's, we're not just flying by the seat of our pants.
We've already gone to the grocery store, gotten what we need.
I've been able to get my public sub at this point had a nice chicken cord on blue, wonderful.
But something just, just a side tip for people, we, if you're in an area that experiences
extreme weather that affects your power, they did this thing.
And I don't know why I've never heard of this, but it's gene because other people have.
Get a cup of water, like a solo cup of water, freeze it.
Once it freezes, put a coin on top of the ice.
So when you get back home, if the coin has sunk into the ice, it means you have lost power
in extended period of time because the ice will have melted, thus the, the coin sinking
in the water.
So that will help you make good decisions on, do I keep the food in the freezer or don't
I?
Just a little tip.
And it doesn't take a hurricane to lose power.
You can do that with some of the thunderstorms that come to Texas.
Exactly.
So just something just to keep in mind, to help you understand to make good decisions
because you don't want to get yourself sick because you've had meat that's thought
out and then re-frozen and then you have those kinds of problems too.
So we decide, okay, we're going to do this thing on Friday.
Thursday was the opening night for the NFL, Thursday night football, Patriots Chiefs.
My nephew is a big Patriots fan, we all have our faults.
He'll live in South Florida son, I'm just saying.
So I'm going to give props to the NBC affiliate in South Florida because it's all we've been
watching all week is hurricane coverage everywhere, which is the smart thing to do because
you want people to be informed.
You know, the governor's having press conferences, the county has a mayor, which I thought was
weird.
Yeah.
So the county mayor is coming on the, you know, people coming, it's like this is what
you need to do.
This is the preparations.
The local NBC affiliates said we're bringing you the game tonight.
They did not cut in one time, not during a commercial, not during half time, not during
pregame.
They played the game in its entirety, which I respected people needed a time out from
the seriousness.
And plus, and they probably figured you know what everybody else is carrying the coverage
anyway.
But if something had changed and was urgent, they would have broken in and it gave us
a chance to all sit together and just watch the game together and not talk about Irma
for two or three hours.
You needed the break.
Right.
So Friday morning comes around.
I get up, you know, because the discussion becomes, when do we go to the shelter?
I get up probably 10 o'clock or so.
Tom tells me he's already been to the shelter and registered us with the Red Cross.
So the discussion becomes, when do we actually go?
We come to the decision that we're going to go, we're going to have lunch together at
the house and then we're going to go.
So we get to the shelter Friday about one o'clock.
Tom said he had gone that morning and you could have fired a cannon through the parking
lot and not hit a soul.
So our thought process is, all right, people are going because there's shelters everywhere.
Maybe we're just going to get there before everybody else does, not so much.
We get there.
There are two lines to go into the shelter.
One is for people who have pre-registered and we're probably 20, 30 people back in that
line.
The other line is for people who have not registered, that's 40 to 50 people long.
The Red Cross has a table set up inside the cafeteria at the high school where they're
handling both.
The problem you face is number one, it's warm.
I'm not going to say it's hot because I got sick of people.
It's so hot.
It's the Dallas where we can always tell you hot.
But they're having to filter people.
They couldn't just let everybody from one line go one place and one line to the other because
both lines were so long.
So we were in line for probably a half an hour.
Not a problem.
I'm still getting the Disney experience because I'm standing in line.
I was going to say it's shorter than a Disney line.
Exactly.
Even if you do your ticket pass or your fast pass.
Right.
So we get to the front and we're deciding, you know, what are we going to bring with us?
In this particular trip, all we brought with us were the sleeping bags.
There were two air mattresses in possession, but we didn't know what kind of real estate
we were going to have because I've got two concerns at this point.
Concert one is how much rumor are we going to have for four of us?
Concert two is what is our proximity to electricity?
Because that's going to play a big role too because everybody's got cell phones, everybody's
got iPads, everybody's got headphones that are wireless or whatever.
How is this going to work?
We get inside.
They got us all down.
My nephew is still back at the house because he has migraines and he was having one so
we want to give him a chance to rest before we could get to this chaos.
Well we find out after we get, let me back up a little bit.
Because we're going in, there's a lady in front of us in line who has, now this is a
no pet shelter because there are certain shelters that said you can bring pets.
This was a no pet shelter.
Now she had a small dog, it was an emotional support animal.
I can roll with you on this.
Just as long as your dog don't keep me up all night, don't pee on me, we can roll.
Two ladies walk up who I, by the end of this experience, would dub the titanium girls because
they're not the golden girls, they're older.
One of these ladies loses her mind about this dog.
This is a no pet shelter.
I mean, I wish I was exaggerating.
It's South Florida.
You need to take this dog as to go to a pet shelter.
This is a no pet shelter and I normally am very passive about these things.
But I was just kind of in that place.
Is she one of those workers or just one of those?
No, she was somebody that was trying to get in.
But you also have to factor in people with allergies breathing and I understand service
animals.
Does Florida recognize emotional support or is that?
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Here in Texas, it's not recognized as an actual working animal, even though people try
to make it as well.
Oh, we're going to get to that in a minute.
And so I said, man, it's an emotional support animal.
It's been very tame as long as I've been here.
She wouldn't have any part of it.
As they're walking away, her little friend made a, I'm not even going to say what the
comment was, but it was so off color and so just absolutely inappropriate.
It's hard to catch me off guard.
My jaw hit the ground.
It was every part of my being not to turn around and go, are you insane?
Like this situation is rough enough on everybody who need you up here stirring things.
So we get inside.
We tell them there's three of us.
There's four of us total one of them still back in the house.
The guy says no problem.
Just when you, when you bring him back, just let us know perfect.
So we're walking towards the gym and we get stopped right before the end of the cafeteria.
And there's a young lady, again, shout out to the American Red Cross.
They really, I mean, in a tough situation, they really made things work.
I'm not going to complain about the Red Cross.
I'm not going to complain about Kroll Springs Parkland police.
I'm not going to complain about Kroll Springs Parkland fire.
I'm not going to complain about the Broad Sheriff's Department.
Everybody on that front was amazing.
Excuse me.
All of our public servants, first responders, amazing job.
And I'm glad to hear that.
And one of my closest friends is a first responder.
He actually is down in Key West right now helping people.
His department went down there.
Sorry about that.
I'm still getting over being sick.
So we're told that the gym's full.
This is a concern because we have pre-registered, but they told us they're not going to put
people on the cafeteria.
The gym is full.
Then we get told you have to have your whole party present.
So now Tom has to go back to the house and get Josh and come back.
Now she puts a sign up, she, we're second in line.
Of course, now I have to listen to more of the titanium girls complaining about how this
is the most unorganized thing they've ever done and they should have been in a hotel
and they...
And this sounds way more organized than things I've heard.
And the Red Cross is doing everything possible.
Yeah.
I mean, a lot of things when you deal with shelters in schools, you kind of have to book
on the fly.
So you have to be patient.
Getting mad is going to do nothing but make you more mad.
Right.
So just be cool.
Don't be, you know, don't be a douche.
Be cool.
We're going to get through this thing together.
So we now need to add another category of the highly emotionally agitated and that we're
going with the flow and appreciate you.
Exactly.
And we're doing our best to let her know, hey, it's cool.
Don't worry about these idiots.
You're doing everything you can.
We totally get it.
So Tom gets back with my nephew.
They actually get him in pretty quickly.
So we're all together.
They call our name.
We go into the gym.
The gym is covered in tarps.
The floor is covered in tarps, which makes sense because you don't want this chaos
to ruin your gym floor.
It is a full, full sized high school gym that has, as we walked in, there was a hallway
we walked down and this will come into play because this entire hallway would be filled
with people on one side because you have one side is the walkway and the other side is
just filled with people.
We get into the gym.
They were just starting to rope off the hallway.
We got one of the last spots in the gym.
The gym on the far side has what I call an airlock system.
When you go to two sets of doors, you'll go out to a Fourier type area where the restrooms
are and then another set of doors that you'll go to the outside.
Those doors were blocked off.
The in and out was only in two doors, both doors in the cafeteria.
So we get our little plot of land, which was big enough for the four of us to sleep
to to a side barely with feet not touching and then a little spot above my head where
we would store our bags.
I will say everybody was really respectful of other people's stuff.
There wasn't a lot of that problem.
And the 90210 blank, it was awesome.
Yes, those were the, those were the a, an Asian family next to us who we found out worked
at one of Tom and Patty's favorite Asian restaurants.
So there was a familiarity there, which is great.
However, be respectful of other people.
If there are two of you, do not bring a king size air mattress that's two feet tall
that you and one of their personal sleeping with while your four kids are on the floor
and sleeping bags.
That happened.
That happened.
So you're telling me to add to that.
You're telling me that these parents put the air mattress for them and had the kids on
the floor.
Absolutely.
That happened.
Now there were people that were trying to bring in physical mattresses that were getting
turned away.
Yes.
Because of disease and all that.
Well, not only that, but the room alone, yeah.
Now we decided not to bring in our air mattresses and it was a good decision because we wouldn't
have been able to fit both of them.
There were two of them that were probably super twins that wouldn't have fit.
We wouldn't have had any room to maneuver.
And I can understand if you have special needs with back hips, bones, joints, yes, accommodations
need to be made.
I do now.
But just because you have one doesn't mean you need to bring it.
Right.
But also be respectful to the people around you.
This same particular area.
You bring a gallon of milk but nothing to keep it cold in.
Ew.
That was still there the next day.
Ew.
Just saying.
Also.
Once at a 10 30 means lights out.
There were people that were one, two in the morning still talking like it was four in
the afternoon like that my voice right now is quiet in comparison.
I am a light sleeper as it is.
I'm worried about my nephew because he has some issues.
You know, he had to he had a mask and some ear plugs and I worry about Tom and Patty.
They were fine.
I can say in three days I got about six hours of sleep, which I think is part of why I'm
sick now.
But I don't care.
That's not what it's about.
It's about me making sure that everybody else is taking care of it, just the kind of
dude I am.
We were also very lucky in the fact that we got three meals a day.
There were a lot of shelters that were like, look, we can't feed you because they weren't
prepared to open them.
No time was also a rough deal.
They got it figured out the last meal we were there.
But like breakfast was at 7 30, lunch at noon, dinner at 5 30, it was a one hour window.
Well when you're camping with 1500 of your closest friends who you cannot wait to get farther
away as far away from as possible, people are lining up 45 minutes an hour beforehand.
Yeah.
That was rough too.
Because you had people that were trying to line up before they were trying to line up
if people with special needs, it's like, come on guys, just again, be respectful.
I mean, what are you going to hurry for it?
You're going to get fed, you know, combined that with the fact that not only did they end
up using the cafeteria, the cafeteria was full too.
Yeah.
So you're literally, as you're lining up, you're in an aisle between people who are still
sleeping in the morning.
So you've got that going for you.
Now as we're moving in the first day, this high school actually has vending machines.
So I was like, you know what, I need a lemonade and it has the kind of what you can put your
phone up and you can do your apple pay with.
So I got my lemonade and there was a quarter in the deal.
This is the quarter that I'm holding in my hand right now for those of you that can't
see.
This is my lucky quarter.
This quarter will never be spent.
This quarter has been with me ever since and I actually found it in the laundry today.
So I still have my quarter.
This would be the last beverage of taste I would consume for three days.
Now I'm not complaining because there was coffee and tea and they had cold water.
So I drink a lot of tea for three days.
Maybe I've conditioned my palate to handle unsweet tea.
So because, you know, sweetener what can happen and I can't have the sugar food.
It wasn't terrible.
It was a hybrid of red cross food and cafeteria food.
It was interesting to watch my nephew and Tom and Patty because I couldn't because of
the sugar content drink apple juice out of a bag.
Oh no.
But it was an actual bag.
It wasn't like a Capri Sun type deal.
It was a small bag.
It was supposed to puncture but the straw you got wasn't sharp.
So you kind of had to gnaw off the corner of it to stick this straw in.
Now were you allowed to bring packaged food in?
You could.
They let you do that.
There were people with hot plates which I thought was a little weird because again, you
got the electricity problem because we were literally sleeping at center court.
So we were nowhere close to an outlet.
Yeah.
You know, power is an issue because again, people are trying to get to their loved ones
and they're burning their self and stuff like that.
So as we're seeing there, I'm going to go back a little bit.
Get ready to go into the gym.
I make a conscious decision and this is based on a text conversation I have with my
friend Sarah earlier that day.
And she says something that I don't really publicize but I don't deny either.
She's like, how are you doing?
Are you guys okay?
I'm like, we're fine.
We're good.
And she says to me, I know how you tend to downplay things so people don't worry.
I need proof of life.
I said, you know, it's fair.
So I sent a selfie, sent it to her.
She's like, okay, I feel a little better.
So as we're sitting waiting to get into the gym, I make a decision more for the show
than anything else.
I say, you know what?
I'm going to go ahead and do a Facebook live right now just to let everybody know there's
a possibility that the secret origin show is not going to be up on time.
So I filmed my first of the series of Facebook lives that I did and I appreciated that.
And that originally I was just going to leave it on the clubhouse page.
That was going to be the deal.
But my spirit, when my spirit talks to me, I have to listen to it.
And my spirit said, you need to put this on your feet, you need to put this on the
graisty feet, too.
Of course.
Because my thought process was what I'm hoping is that this answers a lot of questions.
So people can see me, even though I don't like looking at myself on camera, I just don't.
But people can see that I'm okay.
This is the deal.
This is what's going on.
And so my thought process is I'll do this mid-morning while we're here.
Got a lot of really good responses on it.
So I was like, okay, this isn't, you know, this isn't a vanity thing, which is, you know,
people actually want to know so we'll keep doing this.
So the first one I did was as we were waiting to get into the gym.
The second one I did was from the gym itself, so you could see where we were.
And I don't want to say the chaos that surrounded it.
But there was a certain, we have breaking news, give me a minute.
I'll get to that just a second time, we have breaking news, breaking news.
But I wanted people to see what was going on.
So they could see that, yes, it's not an ideal situation, but we're all together, we're
all safe.
Pause breaking news, we have a, we have a celebrity debt to talk about real quick.
Bobby the Brain Heenan has passed away in the age of 73.
Just coming in from WWE.
So our deepest, we'll talk about Bobby next week, we don't let me forget Don, because we've
got no mercy next week.
I want to talk about the brain.
And plus we'll have everybody here to talk about it.
Of course.
Oh man, that sucks.
Okay, so I was at the gym, right?
Yes.
The video at the gym.
Yes, the first of the videos.
Because I want everybody to understand that it's not an ideal situation, but we are in
the best possible situation given what we're dealing with.
The only downside to being in the gym is that there were no, there was no TVs.
So we were having to rely on information we could get from our phones or people around
us that had certain apps that could tell us things, or we could go out to the cafeteria
where they had televisions, but the cafeteria is just packed full of people.
I will say from a climate standpoint, ACs were working fine.
So I was never real swampy, which was kind of nice because the humidity down there does
play a role.
Oh yeah.
Did you have any water, take showers and all that?
We did not, we were not allowed to use the showers.
Really?
No, I did not take a shower for three days.
Oh.
But you didn't have access to facilities, restrooms.
Restrooms, yes.
But not showers.
Oh.
Because again, there's 1,500 people here.
You don't have locker rooms that are going to be able to, you would have to constantly be
cycling people through 24 hours a day to get everybody through.
And there wasn't enough potable water here.
Right.
No, I brought changes of shirts.
I didn't bring anything else because I thought, you know what?
At that point, she was supposed to hit mid-day Saturday.
Right.
So we were like, okay, we'll be going home Saturday night, Sunday morning.
I'll bring a couple extra shirts.
It'll be fine.
Well, by the time she gets there, it's now Sunday night, Monday morning.
Oh.
So it's just like, well, hell.
This sucks.
But again, still could be a lot worse.
The volunteers, I mean, there were people that were in the shelter that were volunteering,
helping serve meals and helping people out, people that were local.
It's fine.
I'm not going to complain about anything because again, and it was one of the things that
I was reassuring to people that were calling me and texting me was like, we are literally
in the best situation we could possibly be in given the situation itself.
It sounds like it.
I mean, this building is secure.
It's going to hold up.
There was only one set of windows in the gym.
From where I was laying, when I would sit up, I would face the doors that we came in from
the hallway.
So to my right, there were a series of windows at the top of the gym.
And there were two trees that I could see through the window.
So I couldn't really see them well at night.
I could see the shadows of the trees.
So I was gauging what was going on outside by the movement of the trees through the window.
Because once this thing got real, I didn't want to be near anything because everybody was
going to be near everything.
And I wasn't sleeping anyway, so I didn't wake up.
I got up in the morning.
My body would just shut down for a couple of hours here and there, but I never really
slept.
Because again, I'm a light sleeper, and I'm on a hardwood floor.
And it's a high-tense environment.
But it really wasn't a high-tense environment.
I can't say that because everybody was really chill.
It was more of a feeling of we're in this thing together, we're in a good place.
Let's just all be cool.
Good.
People were playing board games, we were playing cards.
And I got to really spend some time with Tom and Patty and Josh.
Whereas had we been at Disney, I had been hanging out with Josh, but we'd been riding rides
and going on water slides and stuff, but I didn't, I wanted to spend time with him.
And I really got that opportunity.
And that for me was worth the whole thing.
We talked about everything.
We told stories, we laughed, and Tom was saying, and you think about from the aspect of
the cross-section of humanity in this gym, Tom kept saying, we're here for a reason.
I said, absolutely, some of these people we wouldn't run into in any other situation.
I'm not saying I got a bunch of pen pals out of the deal, don't give me wrong.
But from a people watching standpoint, it was fascinating, because you could see there
was a family on the other side of the gym was really neat, where they had brought their
grandmother with them.
And grandma was set up.
I couldn't tell if it was a cot or an air mattress, but she was on it.
Everyone else slept around her.
Everybody was there, and they all sat together, and they had this really cool family bonding
thing going on.
And then you had a young couple, a little ways over, who were just trying to figure the
deal out, but they were doing okay.
There was never a point where I felt like these people need somebody.
People came by, I want to ask questions or whatever.
I made it a point where when it was meal time, I always made sure I said thank you to every
volunteer I dealt with, you know, the people behind the counter.
One of the guys was a big giants fan, and I know they were playing the Cowboys on Sunday
night football.
And I was like, how are you going to watch the game?
He's like, I'm going to find a way.
I'm granted they got destroyed by the Cowboys, but it was part of that community of people.
We were all in this thing together.
We all had to be together.
So why not, you know, because I know people, I mean, there were people that were patients
with thin, with some people.
Oh, yeah.
Now, what the tough on ladies, the titanium girls, there was one guy who I know had to be
relocated because there is such a thing as an emotional support animal.
Yes.
This guy was a Vietnam veteran, older guy, very nice man.
Like he had to ask a question when we were in the line outside, he's like, I'm not trying
to cut.
I just need to ask a question.
We're like, no, it's fine.
We're all going to get in this thing.
When your emotional support animal is a full grown Doberman, that's a problem.
And a crowd like that, yes.
I mean, children could have ridden this thing like a horse.
Okay.
I haven't seen a Doberman in three dimensions in about two decades.
Yeah, there's insurance issues and all of that would do well on day two, the Doberman
got a little barky and they're like, yeah, we can't do this.
Ever since he was sitting in the cafeteria, like probably ten feet from where the meal
line was.
And I feel bad for the guy.
And the Doberman may have been reacting to him.
Right.
And again, like you're saying, some people, I'm allergic to cats.
I'm sorry.
If I'm in a shelter like that, they want to bring their fur balls in and happen in
the sea.
Yeah.
Well, and I think that was the understanding is like, look, for that other lady, like
you could bring this in, but there's a problem you're going to have to go.
So we get through day two.
We're still under the impression that she's coming through Saturday.
This is now, you know, actually, this is Saturday.
Saturday afternoon, we find out if you need your stuff, get it now, because we are on
curfew from Saturday afternoon until Monday, Monday night, basically, right.
Nobody gets in, nobody gets out.
We are on full blown lockdown.
You can't even leave the building.
Now there are smokers in here.
There were a couple of times where they came through and they're like, look, we've got
a break in the weather.
If you're a smoker, you've got five minutes.
Smoke them if you got them.
So now we find out we're going to be on complete lockdown for at least 36 hours, at
least.
Now we've got a case of water in the car, but water hasn't been that big of a deal.
There was a time where the city lost power.
And when the city loses power, they tell you don't drink the water because we don't know
how much it's going to filter through.
So at that point, I had no tea, which is kind of a rough deal, but we did bring some beverages
with us.
It kind of got us through because the city was up within a few hours.
We only lost power at the shelter five minutes because when you build a shelter, you build
generators that back everything up.
So we didn't, we never really had any power loss problems.
It was just a long 72 hours, especially once we went on lockdown.
Once we went on lockdown, that was it.
Now for from an electricity standpoint, I had a nice little genius plan.
Plan one was I would charge my phone, and I brought a couple of power banks with me.
One of one of which was Don's gift to me at the wedding.
So it did come into play, sir.
Good planning, Don.
Yeah.
Although it took me a while to figure out how to hook it up to my phone because there's
apparently a little plug I had to pull out of the thing, but I fixed, I didn't use it.
That's cool.
I did that after lights out because I could go sit in the Fourier by the bathroom while
everybody else was sleeping and charge my stuff.
Second night that didn't work out real well for me because other people had the same plan.
So what I ended up doing is I had my technology back with me.
So I pulled out my work laptop and I charged my phone and my power bank off of my laptop,
which then would drain the battery on my laptop, but I couldn't use my laptop because
there was no Wi-Fi anyway.
So I was able to do that and then charge up my laptop later.
So I had a plan because there was no way I was going to be unable to communicate with
my wife.
Oh, no.
Oh, yeah.
So that wasn't as big of a deal as it could.
And there were people that did bring surge protectors.
So you could have multiple people plug in at one time.
My power block actually has two USBs on it so I could charge two devices at one time.
So I had that going for me.
But once we went on lockdown, it kind of got real.
We were just trying to keep an eye on what she was doing.
We knew she was going to hit landfall.
We knew it at this point.
A lot of people, the consensus was if she hit Cuba, which she did, it was going to slow
her down.
It did for about an hour and a half.
Well then all of a sudden she takes a Western jaunt and she's going to hit Fort Myers.
The eye is going to pass Fort Myers.
My personal opinion was it's not going to matter where she hits.
She's three and a half times the width of the state.
The whole state is going to get it.
The entire peninsula is going to get it.
It's going to happen.
We just have to stay positive, stay together and just pray.
That's the main thing.
Be together, support each other.
Nobody freaked out.
Nobody had a panic mode.
Everybody was cool.
She came through Sunday night late.
I was awake.
Our understanding by Sunday was we were probably going to get released at dinner time on Monday.
So we were prepared for that to happen.
It was loud.
I could hear the storm hitting.
I could see the trees outside going crazy because it rained all day Sunday all day.
Now how strong were the winds going to hit you about a hundred miles an hour?
More because you got to remember she was over 150.
We were getting the Eastern bands up and since she was turning counterclockwise we were
getting the harder speeds because it comes up as it comes back around.
You're going to slow down when you're on the west side of the cycle because it's turning
counterclockwise.
So it's going to pick up speed when it gets to the south going back up to the north.
And again all the volunteers were being great because there were certain people that needed
to just go outside for just a minute.
So they would wait until the rains would back off like then get some fresh air for a
couple of minutes so people weren't freaking out.
The violent again I cannot speak highly enough for everybody that was a volunteer whether
you were a first responder whether you were with the American Red Cross they did amazing
work.
And anybody that would say otherwise in that experience could go pound sand.
It sounds like you had the best of the best.
We really did.
What that politician from Houston say and don't give them any money well don't even go
there.
Yeah.
So I heard her come through.
She was hardcore.
It to me I sat there just like I'm watching I'm watching the rafters and the rafters
are not moving.
This structure is sound we're going to be okay.
If anything I was worried about the windows by the roof but Tom told me no those are double
reinforced to design that way for a reason.
And in the air lock the doors are double paying to plus they opened out to a breezeway.
So it wasn't an open area.
So it would have it would have had to have ripped the breezeway into the glass for it to
do any damage.
Right.
So I'm like okay cool.
This is the third night we're there.
Every muscle in my body hurts.
I am a 40 something white guy sleeping on a hardwood floor well laying on a hardwood floor
I know attempting to sleep both of my hips are bruised my shoulders are bruised my tailbone
is bruised every time I try to roll over to get a better position my entire body is going
please don't do this.
So I'm like we're going to have to do this for another night.
We're just going to have to tough this out Homer.
Because I wasn't going to complain because there are people that were so much worse off.
There were reports in Miami of homeless people that were still in Miami that just didn't
get on the bus to go the shelter.
And it was just the lady that was reporting for the local station she's like this is the
first hurricane I've ever been through.
And this is killing me.
I just hope that some some first responders can circle back.
This is the intersection I saw this lady yet please go back and get her.
But again they have to choose to go and a lot of them are like no I'm just I mean I've
done it before I'll do it again.
It's like no you don't understand this is one of the worst storms this continent has ever
seen.
Well I know of someone that stayed in their house and luckily they were in a house right
because they are so worried they're their health issues and they're so worried about any
kind of an accident and being in a strange environment I mean and you've got those with
medical needs and it just you just can't imagine.
So now also remember I'm supposed to fly back Monday morning 11.50 flight back to Dallas
yeah that got canceled to take Tuesday off go back to work Wednesday.
They closed for Lauderdale International Friday night yeah what was about flights you're
saying about 3000 oh yeah people that were trying to get flights out at the last minute
yeah they were easily paying thousands of dollars to try to get out of there now I'm glad
you mentioned that because we're almost proud about that yes the traffic was as bad as
you think it was my executive VP was actually in town the same time I was yeah and my boss
told me so I sent her an email I was like look I know I've heard of you and your husband
on the air coastal if you need anything I'm down here let me know she sent me an email
back I said you're still there she goes we bailed but she said it took them nine hours
to get from Fort Lauderdale to Jacksonville that's five if you're doing it leisurely oh yeah
there were people that are on the west coast of Florida that were saying it took them 12
hours to go 300 miles so people that were texting me like get out of there I'm like no
I don't think you understand it's not logistically possible at this point in the airfare there
is no way it just wasn't going to happen and then they shut by the time we made the decision
they were saying we're shutting the airport down yeah the last flight out of Fort Lauderdale
International was Friday night at 7.45 they shut down my hands so if you went there Wednesday
and try to change your flight good luck right it was a logistic impossibility yeah I would
have had better luck walking it yeah so I was like you know what we're in this thing together
this is I'm I kept my boss my boss and I were in constant communication she knew what
was going on she's in Raleigh North Carolina she was keeping me in loop of what was going
on and you know at work in case there's anything I need what I didn't know was one of my co-workers
and I'm a neighbor by name because it was her birthday weekend this weekend Janet
T happy birthday to you she was actually emailing the people in my department saying if you're
not following Rob on social media here's what's going on oh wow so shout out to Janet for
that because that was that that kind of hit me where I lived when I was finally able to
get back to my emails I found that email um give me goosebumps yeah that was pretty awesome
I've got some amazing people that I work with so I hear a come through American Airlines
actually sends me a notification on Saturday saying your flight's been canceled kind of
figured that one go figure so my now in my head I'm like I've got to call them as soon
as we get out of here because I don't want to use cell power to be on hold because everybody's
trying to call American Airlines right now so I'm like it's cool Sunday afternoon I get
a phone call from an 800 number I'm like I'm not burning cell time for this whoever it is
if they're important now they'll leave a message turns out American called me I didn't
call them they called me to say we know your flight was canceled we're going to get you
on another flight call us back to verify my thought process I put the over under at third
day at the earliest because the number of flights that were being canceled what I didn't
take into account is probably the number of people that had flights out that just said
to hell with it I'll just rent a get a refund rent a car and drive it because they got
me out on Wednesday morning on the same exact flight I would have been on on Wednesday so
shout out to American Airlines who couldn't have been nicer because I called them I was like oh my
god this is going to kill myself on because I'm going to be on the whole three hours yeah I get
the thing and they're like hey do you want to just if you want us to call you back you won't lose
your place in line right now wait times six to nine minutes I said you know what let's do that
they called me between six and nine minutes back got a nice lady on the phone she's like
is this flight okay by you when I check with Patty can you take me to the airport she says
what I've got you taking care of done shout out to American Airlines because they didn't have to do
that they could have said you need to call us to reschedule your flight they went the extra mile
no pun intended to call me and say we're going to get you on a flight that's Providence really
pleased seeing some of the customer service I've seen from Harvey and Irma and all this some of
these companies have really stepped out I mean and I'm not even done with my shout outs yet
there's more coming so Sunday morning comes around and my thought process is this is the last day
Monday I'm sorry Monday morning I apologize Monday morning this is the last day we'll be home after
dinner one more day of this food again not bad what kind of food did they give you was at one point
I had a Jamaican meat pie for dinner I had one of those in many many moons obviously served by
the high school cafeteria yeah oh well I had cocoa puffs for the first time in the new millennium
and they're 40% less sugar okay I'm going to be buying some cocoa like cereal in the morning
well you had a choice most of the time you had two or three different choices okay two of the
three nights we had pizza like French bread pizzas for dinner which was you know hey
two school French bread pizza school French bread pizza brother they had it on the end it was
hot there were some some cup of fruits here and there which are always enjoyable was their fruit
leather no god no but again it was a it was a balanced meal you know it wasn't going to be you
know lobster brioche I don't know if there's even a thing I just picked two words together but
excuse me but it was serviceable you know and we would always grab what we need what we were
required to have and if it was something I couldn't have like Josh they had no sugar at an applesauce
greatest day ever so I would like give Josh my juice he gave me his applesauce you know and if
we didn't like if the juice is if we didn't finish the juices we just put them on our core right Josh
had enough apple juice came through three weeks by the time was over and he could put it in a cup
what he got home or get it get a straw that's got a little puncture thing in it but Monday morning
comes around and I again I don't wake up I get up but I'm hearing rustling nobody rustles at
6 a.m. at the shelter little little confused so I sit up and I see people packing now my first
thought is we're not even up from curfew for another 12 hours so if people are packing up they're
gonna have to unpack everything but maybe they're just packing up their bedding because we're not
spending another night in this joint and then I think to myself look behind you because behind
me is where the double doors are to go outside so I turn around and there are people outside with
stuff in hand so at this point it's about 6 30 Tom and Patty start to stir and Josh is starting
to stir a little bit because he's wearing a mask that earplugs he can't hear what's going on
so I look at Tom and I go dude and I point outside and he goes pack it up let's go
so we arrange it so it took us three or four trips to get everything in we're getting all this
out in one trip this is happening yeah it's like unloading the or loading leaving from a live remote
and we're gonna do something trip yeah and we're there letting us out the double doors through the
gym so we're not having to snake back through go through the cafeteria and go out because when we
first got there you had to get this stamp on your arm so if you could leave and come out if you
needed to so we get all the stuff in the car we put Patty and Josh in the van Tom and I go back
because they've got signs everywhere that says if you leave you need to sign out
so we find one of the one of the Broward Sheriff's Officers very nice man
and we say hey do we need to sign out he looks around the cafeteria and goes now you can just go
because everybody was was hauling I mean it was it was a mass exodus
luckily we were parked close enough to the exit date that we got out pretty quickly
like we were back at the house Monday morning by 715 oh wow but of course we're kind of taking our
time because we need to survey the damage we're looking out for flooding like some guy yeah there
could be yeah branches in the road guy had his boat in the middle of a field by the high school
what we figured was if it flooded he just getting the boat and drive away yeah it's actually kind
of smart if you think about it so we're seeing a lot of debris in the road a lot of down trees now
Patty was monitoring they live in a like I said they live in a development called Eagle Trace
Eagle Trace would is it's a little ritzy I'm not gonna lie to you Bobby and Whitney had a place
there at one time do you play a PGA tour event there it's a nice place she was reading the developments
people people were posting so they live right off of this this one road and this one road at one
end of it has this place called church by the glades beautiful church huge church I wouldn't say
mega church but they got multiple campuses people were at church by the glades were saying
we don't have power the other end of this road where there's a public that we went to quite a bit
because public is amazing in Texas find a way to get publics in Texas they had power their house
is smack dab halfway between these two points so I look at Tom and I go well you got a 50 50 shot
here brother oh yeah so we're more worried about just getting back to the house at this point
we'll deal with whatever is at the house when we get there we just we need to get home yeah
if for no other reason I need a mattress at this point at a shower shower yeah even at this
point the shower doesn't have preference over the mattress because I'm telling you everything hurts
oh yeah when we pull it back in the people across the street and I put this on Instagram one of the
trees in their yard split clean and half hanging out in the road but we're seeing street lights
so of course the first thought is what happens when we open the garage door
if it doesn't come up we don't have power Tom hits the button door opens
woohoo so far so good so patty looks at me and she says first priority go check the cup
because the cup was in the freezer in the garage right so I head to that way
Tom's gonna go walk around the house and look for any structural damage especially with the roof
Josh is just like I'm chilling dude like just stay here it's cool or just help organize
the stuff to bring in the house so I go to the freezer coins still on top of the ice nice
we know they lost power at one point because the alarm was constantly beeping like it had been reset
the only structural damage that they had was one piece of their screen came loose of their
screen in porch so they were very fortunate oh yeah still had power you know still had to go get
the dog because they had boarded their dog lucky who's one of the most wonderful dogs ever I love
lucky to death he's my friend so we got it got all the stuff in the house and that's what I did my
final my final video which I did from the room I was staying in after a shower the shower did
happen first I'm not gonna lie to you took a shower laid down for about six hours
woke up I didn't want to sleep too long because I didn't want to jack up my sleep patterns yeah
you okay brother yeah okay I said yeah okay I'm good some like man it's two o'clock in the afternoon
should probably see what's going on everybody was up lucky was home I'll say did you just sleep
because I slept I'm gonna tell you I slept now now they slept better than I did at the shelter though
so we're starting to talk about okay what are we gonna do because nobody wants to cook
but the challenges what's open because this is the immediate aftermath much less
yes even if you are open what do you have on hand yes the food good and is there staff and yeah so I go to
Facebook and there's a guy that I went to high school with who I want to give a huge shout out to
because I'm just this dude Mike B. Shinsky brother I've known you since we were 11 you you
amaze me all the time with your commitment to people and your willingness to serve he went out and
bought a hundred cases of water before the deal and he was selling them because he he literally
worked his way up there's a little plaza in front of my high school there's a place in there
called Beloroma to pizza place it was very popular when I was a kid he worked his way up and saved
his money and he bought it he owns the pizza he's open three more of them there's also a place
right next to Beloroma there's a little barber shop on the other end of it because it's a little
three space plus he has a burger place called burger stop amazing by the way he had all of his
all almost all of his milkshakes based on cereals he has a cinnamon toast crunch milkshake that
my nephew absolutely loves okay I need to get a Florida I bought a t-shirt I have a t-shirt
BRGR stop by the way I'm giving them free plugs because they were open I looked on Facebook and
Mike said both places are open limited menus but we're here now this is from where Tom and
Patty live it's probably about a 15 20-minute drive because it's by the high school and it's a
different city and I was like look that's my boy they're open this is the guy that got us I bought
two cases of water from him I'm like can we go and they're like you know what's probably gonna be
our best bet to find something to eat so we got there they're very limited menu but they had
burgers and hot dogs fine I'm good give me give me a tea let's do this thing just food of course
packed full of people but they still got as in and out of there I'm like 20 minutes oh wow
well we find out as we're getting there the very first Monday night football game is kicking off
so I get to see the national anthem and watch a little bit of saints Vikings while we're there
we find out it's probably 10 after 7 Coral Springs has an 8 o'clock curfew
it's like well crap so I'm talking to the guy by the way you'll be interested in this Don
yeah talking to the guy behind the counter he's a huge buffage fan yeah he's only like three behind
you in Buffett concert oh really and he's seen him here in Dallas okay did you ask about the
mermaid man he said he saw all kind because he said he dresses up too yeah but ask him about
the mermaid man he tell me but this was this was at the arena yeah he saw Buffett at the arena
and he's like yeah there's one of my favorite pizza places is right to call the pizza I'm
like yes right by the arena I know exactly where that is we have like a 20 minute conversation yeah
and of course he works from a boy so I'm like you know this is even better so I'm kind of
filling them in on the stuff that's we've got going on so that they're aware of what's going on
so I see Mike so I haven't seen Mike I didn't even make it to the reunion last year because he was
working so much so I said I'm like dude what's going on give him a hug he's like dude I have literally
been on a two hour wait for pizza all day I said but you know what dude you're doing it and you're
taking care of people and if you don't hear it today I want to thank you and he's like he's like
dude next time you come through holler at me we're gonna do lunch I said absolutely I said I have no
problem supporting you brother because you're doing you're doing the right thing and by the way
make sure that you thank your staff for me too because they were there and they were in good
spirits and they were shoveling food out the door and having a good time so shout out to everybody
of Bella Roman coconut cream I mean that staff being there they didn't have to be there they didn't
have to be but they were there and they were getting it done brother and they have an appetizer
at burger stop that's just nothing but bacon it was like an entire and I was like if I didn't
know that was there I would have done it but so patty went to go find food for Josh we ended up
giving Josh one of the burgers because no place else was really open we had to get back to the house
before eight o'clock yeah so we got back to the house and just kind of all enjoyed each other's
company still you know I got to spend so much time with them that again I do it all again just
because of that so now I know I have an extra day unfortunately I don't get to take my decompress
day because I fly back once they got to go back to work on Thursday I have to I got a bunch of big
projects going on so Tuesday there's still one thing that I haven't gotten to do doesn't mean
well that would be Disney World Disney World so I've gotten my public sub didn't get to do any
Cuban food but I can roll with that but I did love that I went to publics and there were croquettes
at the deli oh croquettes or some ham croquettes or some of my favorite things in the world
but I didn't get to do checkers because everybody said checkers has gone downhill okay I did
I actually did end up going to McDonald's once because it was late at night but the McDonald's
had one had a touch screen for you to put your order in a lobby it was great had some weird
drunk lady want to have me watch her phone while she went to the bathroom so it didn't get stolen
very strange um but I was bound to determine I got to find a way to get to permany brothers while
I'm here and they have one right on the beach by the way do they know right on a one a sunrise
Boulevard there's no way we were going to that one I don't know if you guys saw any of the pictures
from the beach there were actually pictures from the beach where the winds were so hardcore they had
blown sand and sand was covering a one a my buddy Mike Shinsky actually put that up there I mean
you can you can't see the road yeah in any piece of the picture not even down the road just
covered in sand so my nephew gets up and he has a late breakfast and I looked at him I go dude
you want to go on the adventure because I was supposed to have lunch with one of uh
I forgot to tell the story I'm with my youth director from when I was a kid one of my kids when
I was doing youth ministry sends me a Facebook message and says I'm right near you if you need
anything I said I said we're good right now but is there any way that we can have lunch on
Tuesday while I'm here she's like let she goes let me know tomorrow because I'm not sure what's
going on by the way go out in the for you I find out that not only am I in this high school gym
with my youth director but one of my kids from youth ministry was the original girls and boys
volleyball coach at Coral Glades high school their first year and I've got pictures from the lobby
of her pictures with the team and she still teaches there sometimes the circle of life um
such a fan Liz I love you to death and we have got to get to get some of the old gang together
the next time I come to town so I I I am during that morning and she's like I got a bunch of people
at the house I don't think I can break away I said no problem we're gonna catch it next go around
so I look at my nephew and I say you want to go in an adventure he goes what do you think
it I'm like let's just go down to Permanian see what's going on it's university and sunrise
Boulevard it's not that far away like how many miles 15 minutes okay not that far
because we'll take the saw graphs down and by the way another big shout out to the state of Florida
when everything was getting crazy the governor lifted all the tolls on all the toll roads to help
alleviate some of the traffic yeah brilliant he I can't do enough for everything I saw and heard
of him doing it was for all the things that people give him grief about he did really well his people
came first yeah so we hop on the saw graphs expressway zip on down and we get there and there's
a couple of cars in the parking lot it's like 12 30 in the afternoon I'm like I'm turning it
anyway because maybe we've come this far away yeah pull up to the pull up to the door and there's
two signs in the door that says will open tomorrow but my question is when did the signs go up
because it's like you every time you draw a joke Joe's crab check it's just free to free at crab
tomorrow he's like let me go look at the sign I'm like cool so he gets out and he walks up and
gets back in the car he goes they're open at one o'clock today I go it's 12 35 we can find
something to do for the next 25 minutes he goes heck yeah because he was with me last year
where we went was that his first time going there oh yeah they they never even knew about
from Annie because when I put that post up on Instagram patty was at their house in North Carolina
yeah and she put a comment on it like what are you getting my family to eat yeah I'm like it's
just how I roll so they can thank me for that now yeah so yeah there was a goodwill store next door
yeah so we just browse in the good was did find that they were selling a VCR cassette rewinder
they did have one of those oh my gosh we were we were walking through party goodwill is such a
strange animal yeah but we had so much fun just walking around looking at stuff so about five
till he's like let's just go and we'll wait outside so we walk back next door doors were open
they sat us down and we hear the dreaded words we're on a limited menu so I'm like okay just
I'm gonna roll with you I said I'm leaving back for Texas tomorrow yeah we understand this was one
of my this is the thing one of things I have to do when I'm here I go hit me with it she goes
we can do an 18 inch pizza we have our sandwiches available oh I go I go that's are the fries
available she goes yeah we can do the fries I go chili cheese fries let's get this done and my
nephew's just looking at me like oh my god so they bring us and I have this I feel go to my
Instagram yes that Rob Irvin ERV I N I have a picture of the chili cheese fries now at this
point I'm texting Don I'm like we're in we're in now he's he's giving me grief because I'm not
ordering the sandwich but I'm like I'm already getting the fries and they put the fries on the sandwich
I'm having a pizza because I have my friend Heather Fogelman whom I love dearly she preaches by their
pizza well that's fine get a pizza but still get a sandwich to go I'm getting there okay so I go
because I'm a huge fan of the garlic rolls at this point hold on I want a size of your head I want to say one
thing okay I still think it's un-American to go to permaneys and not get a sandwich I still think
you're communist well I will live in my communist way that's fine I said about that please garlic
rolls the size of your head and as you're chewing them you are you are biting into cloves of garlic
this is and I want to say this then you will drive home with the windows just know the way to
about the garlic rolls because you went there last year I did and then I went to
Panties after you when I went to Pittsburgh right up for Buffett and then once in Pittsburgh they
didn't have the garlic rolls it's only yeah it's like that's into you man yeah I know okay but go ahead so
she's like we don't have the garlic rolls right now it's like all right just fine so we got a pizza
with every conceivable meat on it it's got sausage pepperoni chicken meatball and we had a side of
meat balls to their meatballs are amazing by the way and it served in a bowl that looks like it
was like a bowl that you would put lots of balls in so they had the sauce on top of it oh it was
amazing so my nephews like I don't know if I can eat this pizza I had like breakfast and we had
all those fries I'm like we're taking it home son are you sick so I ate about a third of the pizza
and it was and I actually had them bring me a little Buffalo sauce to dip my my crust in great
Buffalo sauce that's nothing a little bit next time you up there Don the Buffalo sauce the Buffalo
sauce is excellent okay so I don't know if the guy was a manager or if he was the cook or
whatever because I mean we're still kind of in that post-Urma yeah you know we're just trying to
get back out there I do want to see in 12 weeks from tonight I'll be in Pittsburgh at the
steeler game all right that's what we can have my third from any sandwich at the steeler game
I'm gonna have one the night before at the islanders game at console energy and then when I
two days before that when I get off the plane we're going straight from any brothers so I'm gonna
have it three times go do okay thank you go back to me so we're talking no they don't ship well yeah
so this guy comes by and we're talking I'll send you a picture one that I've headed back to Dallas
the next day and he was like oh one of my suppliers is in Dallas so we were talking back and forth
about things and he was saying how he had some friends that were helping out with with Harvey relief
a really nice conversation you know so we're wrapping up the meal and
the waitress comes over and she goes they told me to tell you we got to get the car of the girls
I said you better get six of those bad boys to go I'm not leaving this restaurant knowing that
they're there without them because we saw right after she said that did a little they delivered
order to the the table next to us who had just sat down and me and my nephew you were like
yeah so they bring us they bring us the box for the for the other two third to the pizza and they
bring us the thing for the garlic rolls and the coolest thing happened my nephew has XM in his car
preset two is 80s on eight they raised this kid right so we're driving down sunrise boulevard
headed back towards sawgrass and sweet child of mine comes on me and my nephew who's 20 years and a
day younger than me he was born a day after my 20th birthday singing sweet child of mine at the
top of our lungs as we're driving home is one of the coolest experiences I've had in years
I don't get to see him enough I've spent a lot of his life living by proxy because they lived in
Florida then they lived in Baltimore and then they lived in North Carolina and now they're back
in Florida he's my little buddy and belting out hair metal in the car the day after
or less than 48 hours after a cat five hurricane came through is something that I will take with
me for the rest of my life so what you saw Port Lauderdale they didn't get it that bad I didn't
see a lot of structural damage a lot of it was trees trees now earlier when I mentioned I can't
believe we're already an hour and a half I've been talking about this yeah that's our show when I
told you about the Cumberland farm so we got gas there's a plaza across the street from the Cumberland
farms that has a curb that probably comes up I would say about two two and a half feet I did see a
tree that was on top of that curb that had been ripped completely out and was leaning over that was
one of the worst things I saw but structurally not a lot of damage a lot of power out I just
saw a friend of mine this morning down there said I'm in day nine without power but FPL is doing
everything they can but I did see something really cool there were certain certain lights and
I've never seen this before lights that were out but in the middle of the intersection was a
a traffic light probably about two feet tall hooked up to two car batteries and a solar panel
so like a portable it was a portable street light or portable traffic light so you still had
traffic flowing and not having to do the blinking red blinking yellow thing some of them had left
turn signals on but they weren't allowing a lot of left turns in some of those areas they were
making you turn right and then make a you turn but I'm like I don't know who did this I don't
know who invented this but they don't get enough credit it sounds like there was a lot learned
back with Andrew in 92 and with Wilma and everything else that's come through right and it sounds
like finally you know these brains that have been doing these engineering and designs and architects
and you know I sing their praises because it sounds like between Harvey and Irma there was a lot
less than we've seen other places I've been getting and I still got to spend some time with some
of my friends I went to a place called four river smokehouse and I want to send them a shout out
as well it's a little barbecue chain being from Texas I am very picky about my barbecue this
was excellent very much enjoyed it but this is a faith based organization I found out I ate
there twice once with my buddy Brian and his lovely wife Jody and I was with their son Gavin but
I did get to see my niece Presley who is the most most precious thing in the world I actually got
to see her the last night she couldn't sleep and she just loves her Uncle Rob and I don't know
what I did to earn that love but I will keep it and I will treasure it and apparently she said to
her mom she said I hope Uncle Rob doesn't forget what I look like I will and Jody said to her honey
we can FaceTime him anytime you want and her eyes just lit up like we can he has that he's like
he's had it longer than I think I think these companies are smart enough to realize that like
especially the power start putting the lines underground that's and that's a part of like what's
save time in patty's house because where they live all the lines are underground and I think that's
probably saved their their particular power system yeah all this you know you know I think that
over time they're starting to realize it's like you know when you get these winter storms and all
that the trees hit and they you know the limbs go down they hit the power lines boom if they're
underground then a lot of this won't happen but that also depends on the flooding too yeah because
I mean there's no perfect way to do it yeah but doing it underground you still have a much better
chance yeah but the thing about four rivers when I ate there the second time with some friends Mary
and Charlie I'm so glad I got to see them because I didn't get to spend enough time with them last
year when I was home we're walking out and I'm here in the music I'm like is that Chris Tomlin
walking out of which place at four rivers okay like is that Chris Tomlin they're like oh yeah this
is a faith-based organization they're closed on Sunday they play Christian I was like signing off on
this and they had some barbecue was pretty good long a lot to you very much enjoyed my time there
so then we get to Wednesday whenever I travel I get a little antsy because I'm very OCD
and I need to be here specific time got to the airport I cannot tell you the last time
I I had an airport experience getting to the gate this smooth
four large-dollar national airport just opened the day before at four in the morning
from the time I got out of the van to the time I sat my butt in the gate
15 minutes oh my eyes 15 minutes I don't know how long it's been since I got through that fast I
got in I went to the kiosk the kiosk that I had to go to the counter because they had rescheduled my
flight went up to the kiosk the people working there were in amazing spirits they were like this
process has been so like we've had it we've been busy but nobody's been crappy everybody's been
great everybody's been understanding it's the best kind of busy we could possibly have
so we're having some great banter I get my stuff turned in I go to security there's one person
in front of me in line two days after the hurricane like I said I what I figure is a lot of people
just refunded their flights and drove it that's the only thing I can figure yeah you figure there
be you know an hour hour and a half to get through it took me longer to get my shoes off and get
my laptops in the things and put them through the belt then it took the entire rest of the process
get to the gate I'm on the aisle which is even better because I don't I despise sure I'm in the
last row the plane but I don't care because I'm on the aisle and you're on the plane and I'm on
the plane and I'm coming home get home lienshul who I'm a huge fan of she's one of my church leaders
was there to pick me up and she knew that there were two things I gotta get my bag and I gotta
get some water burger that was the list water burger happened the strangest thing we get in
the car and there's this noise in the back of the car and she thinks that maybe one of the fans
and the AC is going bad and she's stressed out about it we find out that as I put my suitcase in
there I had turned my electric toothbrush on not afraid that that happened and hurt it the whole
way home got home the boys were at the door
but again I do it all over again because I can't say nothing ruined my vacation I had an amazing
vacation there were some speed bumps Irma kind of changed the plan but it's okay
it's okay I had a wonderful time I got to see some friends that I didn't get to see last year
which was amazing I got to see my best friend and spend time with his kids that are just adorable
and they love their Uncle Rob something fierce which again I don't know how I earned it but I
will treasure it I got to see my buddy Brian I got to catch up with friends I got to spend time
with people I didn't think I get to spend as much time with which was amazing because I have
amazing people in my life I got to I got to witness a level of love from people that I still
can't fathom the number of people that were keeping up with me and making sure that I had everything
that I needed and whether it was a text message whether it was a Facebook message whether it was a
comment on one of my stupid videos whether it was people that because they were checking on me
were also checking on each other which I couldn't have been happier about
it's it's one of those things that
it just stores my faith in humanity sometimes because they have a lot of crap going on man
and when stuff like this happens to watch people come together and just be humans
it just keeps me going and I never lost my zen I never there were times where I looked at the
panic button but I never got close enough to it to hit it but part of that's because
the people that were around me were calm and that we just kept each other in that place
it's I do it all again you know I called you a couple times you did which I greatly appreciate it
and I in I really meant if you need something you let me know and I know that and I greatly
appreciated that you know and the thing was that I could tell you were by the number of times I
called it's like you were it was tough on you I was holding it together yeah but that chimp that
chimp for yeah you know but you know there's but I actually talked to my original co-host Cody called
me okay he texted me was was really late and he was like you up I was like yeah
I am he's like can you talk and I said give me 30 seconds get out to the airlock
and he and I talked for 20 minutes and he was like it's weird how calm you said I said that's
the weirdest thing dude my zen is completely intact and see I didn't panic or freak or stress any
further than I already was because of how your videos were going and I think I texted once or twice
you did at the same time it was I knew you had other people checking on you and I didn't want it
to be where so many of us were there but that was the smartest thing you did was start putting
us post up yeah and I appreciate because again I felt we're doing it no no no no no but no I knew
like the fantastic thing fourth was she was always checking your page I'm being honest with you
and I appreciate she's always and I wanted to let you know that she kept on asking how you're
doing and when I'd call you and you called me on the speaker phone I got to hear her yeah
well and I had people telling me hey did you know Rob posted a video because they know I've got
limited access where I'm at work so they would actually send me a text so I could go outside
the building and see what was going on and that was nice to have people who knew you matter to
me and let me know hey he's got a new video up and if you want to go if you if you haven't heard
enough of this story by now they're still out there you can go see them and watch them as they
happened I won't say you'll see my descent into madness because it was never that but there's
definitely a vibe difference between days three and four because day four is when we were back at
the house and I'm thankful to Tom and Patty for not only including me on these things but
just for them being them you know we've known each other now almost 30 years and I'm just
proud of my wife you know and to have the opportunities that I do to get some of the cool stuff
that I get to do it's because I have amazing people in my life you know and people that think
enough of me to want to include me in these things it's it's one of the coolest things about
being me that I have amazing because I'm not me without the amazing people in my life I want to
see that I saw Kelly kitchen yesterday and she thought you're out there she did because I she
had sent us an email about it is some stuff that we're gonna be playing coming up and I was like
Kelly I want you know I'm not ignoring your email and she thought I was volunteering yeah
I was like no I'm in it and she's like oh my goodness it's like you didn't have to call me I'm like
no I want you to understand that you know I'm not ignoring you know it's just just dealt with a cat
five there's there's one thing I have to bring up please do sir because you're talking about the
greatness he's got them from anything no no one that you know it's been noted now and
spend said this last week that the Attorney General Thursday Texas is already filing charges for
the price gougers and I don't I know we're not supposed to be political and all that stuff but
you know the people that you know make comments about this I know there's right about
Hulk Hogan on one comment already that said but those people that take advantage of those
situations that did the price gouging here in Texas because of Harvey well that's that needs to
be taken case by case let me explain to you yeah yeah because my friend Mike who bought all those
cases of water yeah yeah he bought them for seven bucks a piece yeah he was selling them for 10
yeah that's not a plus yeah with me yeah because half of those 50 of the hundred cases he gave
away to his family and people that were close to him that's not a problem and markup didn't bother
me at all no no no because I said I'm a Facebook dude if you have them hold two I'm on my way
but because when he posted that I was like oh no no there's no no what I'm talking about is
like that one where best buy sorry I just got a text from patty she just said I listening to
the podcast hurricane Maria's coming you want to come back well played my friend well played
no patty we're glad you and yours are okay thank you for taking care of Rob for us and keeping him
calm and being the amazing woman it has been said at least once in this life that taking care of
me as a short itself but you know the gas stations that were charging $20 a gallon oh absolutely
the that best buy that was charging water for four fifty dollars for a case of water I'm selling
you know and I hope the attorney general goes after those people you know those people we're
is the money worth that much to you I can say in the experience that we had
there were certain places where certain things were a little more specific but no that's
the point where I was like do you serious and on the gasoline like here those gas stations
already had that gas in their machines in their system yeah they already paid one price for it yeah
so it's not like their supply cost went up when they're charging six seven ten dollars a gallon
and they're charging you know a place in garland was ten you know no yeah well and there's the sign
one of them the sign said like it was two something or three set my gallon and the mom who doesn't
even really speak English is getting charged six something a gallon because they're not putting it
on their sign but they're having on the receipt now that one has been the Abbott's already filed
as charges on it but it's just amazing because if you think about it that supply didn't cost them
anything extra they're making money off people yeah who are unfortunate I get praising a little
to keep people from buying more than they need seeing people putting gas in plastic trash can
open containers that happen here water but oh it was crazy what I think I'm surprised we didn't have
we didn't have explosions on the road getting gas home in non-gas containers because Walmart target
the gas containers were sold out well patty was telling me that we were talking about all these
people that were buying water were they going to try to to return it if you've gone out and you
have bought bottle water don't because they can't resell they can't put that back on the shelves
so either donate it to somebody yourself or just hold on to it's good forever I bottle water I'm
a huge water it's not gonna go back so and patty you clear by my boss we'll do it all again
so I'm saying but again I just have such amazing people that and that was part of it too especially
when it came to like my mom she knew who I was with so that helps her a lot too because she's like I
know because she knows them so she's like I know who you're with I know you're good
that's that's that makes it easier on me it gave her a little extra piece PEAC and to have to
people in my life that that want me around to do cool stuff it's just there's a lot of us that
want you around I know it's just it's just crazy for me to to see it sometimes you know
because I try to I just I just try to live with positivity is the example and to have people
that are in my life that do these cool things for me that think me enough to say you know what
Rob would really like to be with us for this like that's just that's amazing to me and I can't
thank everybody enough that's checked on me um I hope we haven't bored you to tears for the last
hour and 50 minutes I really didn't think this was going to go this long um but this is a
cool episode but I wanted I wanted to get out there and tell the people wanting to know what's
like there you know the wind what was you know that Sunday night I'm telling you it was like the
wrath of God kind of outside where you just it was it to go back to that the worst part of that is
and a lot of people's like being in the gym just letting your imagination run wild that wasn't
the weirdest part of it the weirdest part of it for me was when I walked down the cafeteria and I
looked out the windows and just saw the rain just coming in sheets and the trees going crazy that
was the weirdest part for me but to see it and know that you're protected from it where it's like
this has to be so much worse to even pierce this glass I mean what would be like in their house
it probably would have been about the same because you have to understand houses down there
are built for this are they now okay they are now yeah that's what I was saying with Andrew and 92
and everything architecture and design and eagle traces a fairly new development where they live too
so like I said structural damage from what I saw was minimal I didn't see everything people in
Key West there's a lot of problems down south Miami there's going to be a lot of problems with
their right there on the water so don't think that everything's hunky dory please continue to support
these things I'm just talking speaking to what I saw personally in the Quad City area of Marguerite
Coconut Creek Coral Springs Tamarack North Lauderdale that whole area the majority of what I saw was
more tree and plant oriented you know my buddy Brian who like I said right now with
Davie police is down in Key West helping people get back into what's left of their homes right it's
bad down there and they need to help so make sure that you're contributing as much as you can
and it doesn't have to be financial look for other opportunities if your money is tight see how you
can do time you know I had an opportunity to help prepare food packets and half of those are going
down to Harvey yeah go go to go through your pantry what kind of canned goods that that you bought
that you thought you'd use and you haven't used them that are still good yeah check today send them
down there the dates are good send them down there toothpaste if you're an extreme coupon don't have
a bunch of stuff in your pantry because you went extreme couping send it down there yeah if you
got like 80,000 gallons of detergent for a buck and a half take a couple of them send them down
there yeah you know get together with some people and send care packages because we have to do
that for each other is people because there's going to come a time where you're gonna be on the
other end of that this is where we can show what human kind is exactly like and likes like patty
said Maria's looking like she's gonna be a thing and we're gonna be monitoring that from here and
we're gonna keep all of our friends down there it's just hurricane season is a tough time oh yeah
and we've got what two more months left so keep supporting whether it's Texas whether it's I know at
one time patty was headed to Mexico City whether it's anybody on the coast that's being affected
reach out and help somebody and again not a normal episode of this show if you're tuning in for
the first time not normally what we do next week will be our official unofficial pre show for
WWE no mercy I will say I have not watched wrestling in three weeks so I will have to pay close
attention to Raw and Smackdown I do know well I know that Oscar's supposed to be joining the
Raw brand yeah suppose I read that but let me say this that you know you talked about the Red Cross
I had the same thing when I had that fire they were there you know three years ago now wouldn't it?
oh no that was in uh 13 when that happened was that four years ago yeah yeah and remember
these are volunteer organizations so sometimes it's the volunteer you're interacting with
that becomes a reflection of that campaign in that guy from the Houston area that city councilman
who says don't send a dollar to the Red Cross shut up okay I'm gonna say shut up just just
because you had a bad experience that make it a better organization right and that's why I'm saying
that's one of the reasons I'm willing to go down there and help you know I put my name on list
because I've been there where I didn't have a place to live for a week I know what it's like
I had to come and use your your laundry you did yeah and you're always welcome yeah so
and I've got laundry machines too if you ever need yeah all right let's get out of your show yeah
let's do the plugs again thanks to everybody you guys are amazing humans I've said it before I'll
say it again I'll keep saying it to all of my my friends in South Florida and my family down
there I love you guys like I said I do it all again just because I love y'all so much and I love
seeing you and we're gonna do it again because nothing's gonna keep us from doing this thing
and I want to thank the Empire for the love and support they've shown for you absolutely I think
that helped get you through it it helped others us that love and support you and it was just nice
to see that other people think as highly of you as we do overwhelming is the word I would use
absolutely overwhelmed you guys are amazing that being said make sure you're checking out our website
www.theclubhousepodcast.com we've got some new reviews up there for you there's some more come in
this week um follow us on social media twitter's clubhouse show everything else is the clubhouse
podcast all three words in that order or you will wind up somewhere else you can follow me on social
media if you haven't already please do I'd love to have you as part of our fold yes that rob
Irving ERV I NS how you spell that my normal coach Chad Walmick you can find him at chat npg69
I'm Jen Rome home on instagram I'm at fun don't go and you can email me at Don at theclubhousepodcast.com
email Don for information how we can come do a live show for you Don's gonna be at hanging out
of the Arlington Film Festival next weekend for us I'm I've previously committed because I'll be
doing the Grace D thing at the block church follow us on our social media to find out more about
that you can email me questions comments concerned some of the compounds sand I am rob at the clubhousepodcast.com
chat is chat at the clubhousepodcast.com Charla Parker is on Pinterest because we're morally
obligated to say that she's at the Gavin DeGraw concert tonight so I hope she's having a good time
Jewel's Walmick is where chat is and Faith Ford needs her husband to come take care of her because
you don't I got dinner in the crock pot right now I know her show every Sunday night seven eastern
four Pacific is your one-stop shop for all things pop culture and you can also make sure you're
subscribed to this show on your favorite podcast app because you get everything so until next week
for Don for Jen for the Empire I'm Rob clubhouse is closed I also find out this week that next year
is the last Brittany Palmer calendar ever I don't know what I'm gonna do about that