Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / On the Road with the Motoring Historian: Iconic Gixxer, LA Fires

Transcript

On the Road with the Motoring Historian: Iconic Gixxer, LA Fires · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

• 0:00
  Jon Summers is the motoring historian.
• 0:02
  He was a company car thrashing, technology sales rep that turned into
• 0:06
  a fairly inept sports bike rider.
• 0:08
  Hailing from California, he collects cars and bikes built with plenty of
• 0:12
  cheap and fast, and not much reliable.
• 0:15
  On his show, he gets together with various co hosts to talk about new
• 0:18
  and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
• 0:30
  Good day.
• 0:31
  Good morning.
• 0:32
  Good afternoon.
• 0:33
  It is John Summers, the motoring historian.
• 0:36
  Look behind the third wall.
• 0:38
  I'm using a new way of recording this.
• 0:40
  Is the sound quality going to be any good?
• 0:44
  Who knows?
• 0:44
  But look, there's still the snuffling and the rustling of pages and
• 0:49
  the general un BBC ness isn't it?
• 0:52
  And now there's that peculiar farting noise, which wasn't me, but was
• 0:56
  the, I think it's the vent doors.
• 0:58
  I'm sat in the tundra.
• 0:59
  I think that's the vent doors moving and I've spent a lot of
• 1:02
  time in the tundra recently.
• 1:04
  I've just done about 4, 000 miles in it now, kind of, kind
• 1:07
  of talk about that a little bit.
• 1:09
  Bought two bikes in as many weeks.
• 1:14
  When I was sat by the pool in Mexico, I was thinking, you know, when you get back
• 1:19
  you're really going to have to, you know, get your skates on with stuff, but like,
• 1:22
  to do two bikes and three pods in the space of a month, that is, uh, you know,
• 1:29
  that's unusual progress for me, candidly.
• 1:31
  It really is.
• 1:33
  So yeah, so you can tell by the title, can't you?
• 1:36
  This is about the English Gixxer and, and the LA Fires.
• 1:40
  And yeah, so I did go to LA when LA had the, the fires of, of 2025.
• 1:46
  And I guess part of the reason why I wanted to go was I wanted to sort of
• 1:50
  look at the, uh, my sort of former stomping ground of, uh, you know,
• 1:56
  Topanga and, and that if you, if you rode motorcycles in the LA area,
• 2:01
  everyone knew the rock store, that place up in, uh, up in the canyons there.
• 2:06
  I was never quite sure where it was.
• 2:08
  I only ever went there following, uh, following other people.
• 2:11
  Um, usually you were faster than me.
• 2:13
  So I was usually struggling to keep up and arrived like adrenalized
• 2:16
  and exhausted, but, but yeah.
• 2:18
  I wrote that area a lot and that's the area which has burned in, in the
• 2:23
  fires and, and it's kind of a, a, a thing, um, partly because you know
• 2:28
  the area, partly because you, you know people who've been, uh, who've been
• 2:32
  affected by it, it, it, it's, uh, yeah.
• 2:36
  So the L.
• 2:36
  A.
• 2:37
  fires.
• 2:38
  Obviously, that's not the only reason why I was in L.
• 2:40
  A.
• 2:41
  I won a motorcycle in an auction.
• 2:43
  That was the main reason why I was there.
• 2:44
  And, you know, when I realized the motorcycle was in Santa Monica, I
• 2:49
  thought it might have been when I won the auction, but I wasn't completely sure.
• 2:53
  I didn't really look at the description properly.
• 2:55
  I'm gonna hold up my hand and say that because it supposedly has frame
• 2:59
  damage, and I was a bit worried.
• 3:00
  But when you actually look at the bike, it's a really nice, clean bike.
• 3:04
  Which I paid low money for, however you slice it, you know, I paid, um,
• 3:10
  low money for, for it, but it, it's, uh, a third black 89 Gixxer 1100.
• 3:19
  I don't know why do you need three, I'm not even sure why I need three, but
• 3:22
  you, you, you pick this stuff up when it comes your way and the price is good.
• 3:27
  And, you know, uh, am I married to, to each one?
• 3:31
  Uh, uh, uh, the first one, very much so.
• 3:34
  The second one, yes.
• 3:36
  That third one, yes, less so.
• 3:38
  You know, I might ride it and think it's awesome.
• 3:40
  I quite like that it's English, but.
• 3:43
  is a bit rusty i'll include pictures and and you know what i'll include the
• 3:47
  whole like iconic description i guess they've taken they've probably taken
• 3:51
  the description down now but let me see what i can can include on it so so
• 3:56
  yeah i guess the the line that amused me about it in the description was that
• 4:01
  it ran when they put it in the crate in england But now, it had arrived in
• 4:07
  Santa Monica, it, it wasn't running.
• 4:10
  So I did the pick up in Santa Monica, and, and, you know, the traffic is
• 4:15
  normal traffic, and, you know, there was no sign or smell of the fires,
• 4:20
  I guess it was only a day or two.
• 4:22
  after the fires happened the fires happened in the week and and i went the
• 4:27
  following uh the following weekend so you know so the gist of this is to talk a
• 4:33
  little bit about that that trip so first i won the gixxer right great bike No price.
• 4:39
  The slingshots are royal cool.
• 4:41
  Just like the slabbies.
• 4:43
  I live in regret of letting things like Capri's and cheap Alfa Romeo's and
• 4:52
  Lancia's Fiat Strada 130TC's I live in bitter regret of letting those things go.
• 5:00
  With the bikes, you don't have to because they'll all fit in a, in a small space.
• 5:05
  So, you can have a dozen Capris if you want.
• 5:07
  You can have a dozen muscle cars.
• 5:09
  And, and that's what, um, I think, uh, I've, I've tried to do here.
• 5:13
  But, you know, as I say, with this 1100, I'm going to see how it feels.
• 5:17
  They, they are hard to ride, the Gixxas.
• 5:19
  You've said, you've heard me say this on, on the pod before.
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  But, it's worth, sort of, falling down that rat hole a little bit.
• 5:26
  What do I mean by that?
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  They are.
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  uncomfortable and difficult to use.
• 5:31
  The footpegs are high, the bikes which run most enthusiastically are
• 5:38
  the ones with the race carburettors on them and those bikes have stiff
• 5:43
  throttles and, and stiff clutches.
• 5:46
  When you first sit on it you're like, oh it's stiff but I can handle it.
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  But when you live in the city and you're through stupid stop signs
• 5:56
  and you're exercising that clutch.
• 5:59
  Oh my word, you are your your left hand, your fingers, my fingers
• 6:06
  are done before I've even got out of of the city riding them.
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  So when you've got your legs tucked up and the clutch is heavy and and if the bike's
• 6:15
  got Makuni flat slides, the throttle is going to be, it's going to be sticky too.
• 6:22
  It's really in sharp contrast to those two 2005 bikes I have the ZX.
• 6:27
  The ZX 10 and the K5 Gixxer, both of those are fuel injected, they've got
• 6:33
  still high foot pegs, but it's less of an uncompromising riding position, it's a
• 6:39
  better riding position, uh, the bike feels more controllable and, and flickable,
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  and the controls are just that much smoother, the clutches are, are lighter.
• 6:49
  The ZX 10, there's a funny lag when you turn, turn the throttle that it,
• 6:53
  it, there's, you know, I mean, it's a knacker 28, 000 mile bike, isn't it?
• 6:57
  So, you know, it has its foibles, but there's, there's, but once you
• 7:01
  get used to the fact that there's a bit of like play in the throttle,
• 7:04
  it's smooth and easy to use, like, like a microwave oven to use the.
• 7:09
  80s bikes, they are not like that.
• 7:11
  There's an viscerality about them, which is really rewarding.
• 7:16
  But you, you just like, you're riding around the block and you're like,
• 7:19
  fucking hell, that's all I need of that.
• 7:22
  You know, the, the thought of, of any kind of freeway work on it.
• 7:27
  I'm just like, I just can't imagine it now.
• 7:29
  It's, it, it, it's uh, you know, I guess that's 51, isn't it?
• 7:33
  Not uh, 51 imagining I'm still 31.
• 7:46
  I wasn't a gixxer.
• 7:48
  It was in Santa Monica.
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  Obviously, Highway 101, the normal way I'd go in, that way was, that's a longer
• 7:55
  drive, like six hours rather than five hours kind of thing, but that way was
• 8:00
  also potentially fucked by the fires.
• 8:03
  And, uh, the guys in Santa Monica where I was picking up, which is, I'll
• 8:07
  talk about them in a minute, they were like, everything's fine, come along.
• 8:11
  So, I was like, alright.
• 8:14
  So, I, I drove the road less travelled.
• 8:16
  My long, rambling, four hour And I'm sorry about that.
• 8:20
  I did that in two episodes.
• 8:21
  I should have just done shorter ones, but I should have just
• 8:25
  broken it up into two episodes.
• 8:27
  But anyway, the Pebble episode, in that I talk about a road trip that I took
• 8:31
  down Highway 25 south of Hollister.
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  This is in Northern California, close to the, to the Bay Area.
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  But, you know, it's a really remote, really cool, really
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  picturesque, empty road.
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  And I realized looking on the map, it ran parallel all the way with Highway 5.
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  So either way, the long and short is I did 25, then 198 to Coalinga, if you
• 8:56
  look on the map, and then 33 south, and then I stayed in, in Grapevine.
• 9:03
  Um, which is, uh, you know, where I stayed many, many years ago when
• 9:08
  I rode a Harley Softail up PCH.
• 9:15
  And then down Highway 5 in, at this time of year, in cold weather, and I wasn't
• 9:20
  expecting the cold weather, and I was, oh my word, I was fucking cold on this
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  Harley, and the weather was, it was raining in places, and it was literally
• 9:32
  run uncomfortably fast in the lane with the cars, or run on the bumpy piece of
• 9:38
  freeway, on the right lane that the trucks were using I didn't know at that time just
• 9:44
  how bumpy the right lane is that you're much better just getting left and holding
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  the throttle open the bumps oh my word the bumps and the cold uh yeah that was
• 9:55
  uh anyway I stayed in Grapevine after that horrific ride down highway five and in
• 10:00
  the morning it was absolutely beautiful and crisp and I rode up Grapevine and
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  over the top and there's a lake and it's beautiful and it's picturesque
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  and then you arrive in the hell hole, well, the city of angels, don't you?
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  Hell hole, it's an awesome place.
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  But I'm digressing, aren't I?
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  So 25 beautiful, could really recommend it, 198, twisty and awesome,
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  more of a road for the fiesta.
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  Um, but I'm, I mean, I, I just, I, I filmed the sunset, it, it, it's, you
• 10:29
  know, it's California the beautiful.
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  And, uh, 33 was kind of boring and straight.
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  25 was the, uh, was the find of the, of the road trip.
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  Anyway, then I rocked up at Iconic Motorsports, the blokes the Gixxer off.
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  I'll include a, a link to them.
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  You know, they, they were everything that the website makes them look as
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  if they are, you know, a bunch of guys really enthusiastic about 80s 90s sports
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  bikes Um, yeah a few harleys there Yeah, a few earlier things there, but
• 11:03
  but really an emphasis on on the kind of stuff that I I really enjoy Um,
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  warehouse in a nice pass and to Monica inside the warehouse, a workshop at
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  one end bikes, which have either been on auction or on a buy now, or they're
• 11:23
  getting ready for sale, knocking around on the sales floor on the, you know, on
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  the floor, their offices at the side.
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  And then like a little upstairs, like kind of museum that had.
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  just some really, uh, awesome bikes there.
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  Um, the kind of green frame Ducati old David Gooding always has.
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  They had a 900 SS, which I, you know, knew nothing about, but I, you know,
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  had a blue frame, but I preferred it's gold wheels kind of thing.
• 11:50
  That's how ignorant I am about Ducatis of that era.
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  Ducatis in general, I've got.
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  be uh, I've got to be candid.
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  But what did tickle my fancy?
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  A katana that they had, which had been looking like it had been seriously
• 12:06
  modified and really looked like it was the, uh, it was the business
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  that really had my, uh, about it.
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  Um, a number was knocked around that was, uh, a long way out of my budget, sadly.
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  Um, yeah, so they helped me get the Gixxer 1100 loaded, which I was worried about.
• 12:27
  I mean, candidly, like I'm shit with the whole business of pushing bikes up ramps.
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  And I bought a chalk, but the chalk didn't go in the bed
• 12:36
  probably because of the bed liner.
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  But you know, the dude was like, Cory Chris, I'll call him
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  out, like, great, great guy.
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  He helped me load, using ten foot ramps I'd got, six foot ones.
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  He loaded, helped me load, um, loaded with ten foot ones.
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  He was like, whatever, just put the chock against the back of the bed
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  and it'll be, uh, it'll be fine.
• 12:55
  But, you know, the suspension doesn't even sag on, on the truck.
• 12:59
  And when I was driving later, although I, like, like, I like to potter.
• 13:04
  in, in the truck a little bit.
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  I like to do like 65 in the right hand lane rather than my usual, you know,
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  faster than that in the left hand lane.
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  But you know, it would have done bloody 95 miles an hour, probably more than
• 13:18
  that with this Jitsa in the back of it.
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  It like didn't know it was there.
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  Couldn't resist rolling around PCH after I got loaded up in Santa Monica.
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  PCH itself was deserted.
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  It was about lunchtime on a Saturday and it was absolutely deserted.
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  So, although Santa Monica felt absolutely normal, the moment you
• 13:49
  dropped out of Santa Monica and down onto PCH, it was like 28 days.
• 13:55
  You know, it was like absolutely deserted.
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  So you drove along there thinking at some point the road is bound to be closed.
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  It just has to be.
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  And sure enough, soldiers and hummers.
• 14:07
  I, I wanna say, I can't remember the street that they forced me to, uh, to
• 14:13
  turn at, but, so they made me, like, turn in land, and then I just, like,
• 14:18
  ran along where all of the streets that went up in, into the hills there just
• 14:23
  had soldiers and hummers and, you know, move along there, sir, and unless you're
• 14:28
  a resident, go straight there, sir.
• 14:30
  Um, you know, when, and that was, was cool, interesting, uh, where that sort
• 14:37
  of dumped me out just as I was thinking, I, I've sort of seen enough of my sort of
• 14:43
  fires, uh, fire exploration such as, such as it was, because I don't want to like.
• 14:49
  poke around in a more macabre way than that.
• 14:53
  I more wanted to go to just see how it, it felt, you know, and, uh, you know, as
• 14:59
  I say, Santa Monica was business as usual.
• 15:02
  That's how Santa Monica felt, you know, and the four or five was, was open
• 15:07
  and quiet and no smoke in, in the air.
• 15:10
  Um, the guy did say there was a bit of more, a lot more dust on the bikes
• 15:14
  than there would normally be because of the fires, but, you know, that
• 15:18
  seemed, you know, that seemed pretty trivial, really, in comparison to what
• 15:21
  was happening just five miles away.
• 15:24
  Really, kind of, uh, kind of bonkers.
• 15:26
  So, I guess it all burned because it's all, A, up in the hills, and B, all of
• 15:31
  the houses were like bigger houses that were on plots of land that had trees and
• 15:36
  grass rather than, you know, concrete.
• 15:39
  I mean, that's the, the, the hypothesis that, that I formed driving along there,
• 15:46
  being moved along by soldiers less than half my age with machine guns.
• 15:52
  I had to do better on these road trips because I had a bit of a low
• 15:54
  blood sugar level moment and, uh, eventually organized myself a subway,
• 15:59
  got myself out on the road, got us far.
• 16:02
  I was like, there's no way I'm doing five flight on a.
• 16:06
  weekend night.
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  I'm just like, it's just too boring.
• 16:09
  I just can't.
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  But once it gets dark, there's nothing to see.
• 16:13
  So I thought, what am I going to try and do?
• 16:15
  And and I thought, I've never been to Ohio.
• 16:18
  I wonder if I could go to Ohio.
• 16:20
  I've heard about Ohio.
• 16:22
  Yeah, so I ran up 405 into the five as far as the 126, which I think is it.
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  Mhm.
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  Um, anyway, I trickled along that 126, and eventually it ended up in Ventura,
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  which I know I could have just gone along the freeway for, but, but, you know,
• 16:42
  if you have a look at the roads, it's better to stay on the main road than
• 16:46
  it is to cut down onto 101 on that, I think Highway 150, the really like windy
• 16:51
  one, I mean it would have been good in the day on a motorcycle, but I didn't,
• 16:56
  you know, I didn't want to be doing it.
• 16:59
  In a pickup truck with a load late at night when I was already, you know, I
• 17:04
  already had like a lot of miles under my belt for the day so, uh So, yeah,
• 17:10
  Ojai, uh, winding road down into almost Alpine, was already dark, you know, the
• 17:17
  sun was setting as the time, as I was there, and there were like people parked
• 17:21
  up enjoying the sunset and, you know, I was like, whatever, I parked up as well
• 17:26
  and, you know, finished up my subway.
• 17:29
  Sandwich from earlier in the day and uh, you know, beautiful sunset and you
• 17:34
  know, I did think of the Alps a little bit as I was looking at, you know, the
• 17:39
  town nestled in the valley kind of thing.
• 17:42
  Yeah, and it was a cutesy California town when I drove down, only it
• 17:46
  was dark so I couldn't see much.
• 17:48
  Yeah, I don't want to prejudice you about visiting Ojai one way or another, I'm
• 17:53
  just saying it seemed like a nicey town.
• 17:55
  To, uh, to me.
• 18:07
  So I did say to the iconic guys, uh, prices are damn right.
• 18:10
  And they went, yeah.
• 18:12
  And, uh, yeah, they are.
• 18:14
  You know, they really are.
• 18:15
  And, and, uh It's so funny that when the prices go up you're like great, my
• 18:20
  shit's worth more and when the prices go down you're like great, I can buy
• 18:24
  more easily, you know, stuff that I couldn't normally afford I can afford.
• 18:29
  Now it's time to buy and uh, that's sort of how I've been
• 18:32
  uh, how I've been feeling.
• 18:33
  It's not a coincidence it's January and I was like, you know,
• 18:37
  itchy to, to do something because I knew the prices were great.
• 18:40
  You know, low in this period.
• 18:44
  So this brings me to a slightly, you know, earlier conclusion than I normally come
• 18:48
  to on these things, but obviously the acquisition of a new bike was something
• 18:52
  I wanted to talk about and the fact that I'd been and looked at these LA Fires.
• 18:56
  I felt that that was worth talking about as well, and it seemed natural to sort
• 19:00
  of combine the two into this one episode.
• 19:02
  Although, as I was putting it together, I did find myself thinking,
• 19:05
  is this really worth talking about?
• 19:08
  But, you might wonder if anything that I talk about on these pods
• 19:11
  is really worth talking about.
• 19:12
  So, I guess you do, you probably think it's worthwhile because you've got
• 19:15
  right through to the end, haven't you?
• 19:16
  But this is all the most ridiculous, behind the third wall naval contemplation,
• 19:21
  so I'm going to end it like that.
• 19:23
  Thanks for the drive through.
• 19:37
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• 19:40
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