Beaches, Bikes and The Original Mr. Potato Head [Season 1, Episode 7]

Full Show Script [cough medicine] EVO: Copenhagen, like many metropolitan cities, isn’t very car-friendly. The city grew organically, with lots of tiny streets, wide-gapped cobblestones, and an extreme aversion to anything resembling a grid pattern. And with a car registration of tax of up to 180% -- yes, that’s 1.8x the value of the car as a tax -- keeps car ownership at pretty low levels. SHE: Instead, the preferred mode of transportation in Copenhagen is the bicycle. Every day, tens of thousands of people use their bikes to commute to work, take the kids to school, shop for groceries, or go out on the town. Even when it’s cold (which is now). Even when it’s wet (which is always). And even when it’s windy. (Which is…) [Uphill] SHE: That’s our buddy Alex Berger from Phoenix. He came over here about 3.5 years ago to get his Master’s degree -- and never left. He likes it that much! (He's got a great travel blog, too!) EVO: Before we left on this grand adventure, I too was a bike commuter, though the toughest weather condition I had to deal with was heat. To test my abilities on the other end of the thermometer, we borrowed the bikes from the couple we’re house sitting for and took a trip to the beach. It was just a couple of kilometers away from the house, and it would give Tego, their dog, a chance to do more than just walk. Getting ready to leave was -- and is -- a challenge in and of itself when you’re this close to the Arctic circle. [getting ready] SHE: Evo edited that audio down significantly. In real time, it took us 13 minutes to put on the necessary clothes just to leave the house. Living in the desert-southwest for 20 years has left us ill-prepared for life in the high latitudes. EVO: But once we and the dog were ready, it was a relative uneventful -- that means it makes for boring audio -- bike ride to the beach. Except for the little incident with the cat. [Tego finds a cat] SHE Wow. that sounded awful. But he wasn’t hurt, choking or anything like that. He was just really, REALLY excited about the prospect of tangling with that cat. The leash is attached to a full-body harness, not the collar around his neck, so he was perfectly safe. Evo, on the other hand, nearly took a header over the handlebars. But both boys made it, and we continued on our journey. [to the beach] EVO: That was heavily edited, because as pretty as it was, it made for crappy audio. We did record a video, however, if you’d like to see the beach. It’s a little stark, but something that anyone, even me, can appreciate. [beauty in all things] SHE: Yeah, it would have been nice if you’d adopted that attitude at the museum earlier in the week. I know I certainly would have had a more enjoyable time. [museum] EVO: I’m tempted to make an “in my defense” argument, but that audio’s pretty damning, and I’m the one that edited it. [I don’t get art] SHE: Clearly. EVO. But hey, I made it up to you in the end. SHE: How? EVO: Chocolate, remember? SHE: Oh. Ha! And such fancy chocolate at that. [chocolate] SHE: And I think I need a little more, because it’s been a rough week, and it ended pretty terribly. EVO:True enough, Lover. So I’ll take it from here. You can read Sheila’s posts from this week if you want the details on her medical issues and the passing of her grandfather. One last thing: I need your help solving a mystery on our Patreon page. Common sense and empirical evidence from other Patreon creators says that the cheapest pledge level -- $1 -- should have the highest number of supporters. But our distribution graph looks way WAY different. Maybe it’s because it’s only been up little more than a week. Or maybe our fans can’t be pinned in by standard deviation models. If so, that’s pretty cool, actually. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Statisticians! Anyhow… you can find links to our Patreon page all over our site. Seriously. Go look. You can’t miss it. We’ve another few days in Copenhagen, then a mini-vacation in