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[Vidcast] The Long Haul Podcast #1: Welcome All!
| >Then, the "Webcam" window was replaced with a video feed:
>The camera showed a video of two people, sitting inside the seats of what appeared to be an industrial semi-truck of some kind, with the picture showing a top bunk with a bed up on top behind the two people and a table below with two bench seats, and some bedding in one of the bench seats, as well as some bags below the bench.
>Behind the left seat was some cupboards and a wall-mounted TV in an indent in the wall.
| >Behind the right seat, which was the driver's seat, was a small fridge on the bottom, a microwave above it, and a shelf above with a printer on it, and with a small cupboard above those shelves.
>The entire truck had a brown and tan detail theme, and a custom carpet below in a striped pattern in the same colors. In the middle of the shot was the large manual shifter, which the person on the right held in his right hand. From the looks of the shot, it seems the truck was moving!
| >Finally, the people in the seats. The person on the right, the driver, had a shaved head with short brown hair and black sunglasses on, and a short beard. He wore a navy blue T-shirt with the name "White Star Moving & Storage" on it with a white star abive the name for the logo, and his tattooed right arm which held the shifter lifted up to wave to the camera with a quick acknowledging glance from the man before looking back to watchin front of him, which was clearly the road.
| >The person on the left, who must be the passenger, had a grey beanie over a long head of brown hair with the same logo and text on it and a longer, scraggly beard, as well as the same uniform as the driver, though he had no sunglasses to cover his bright blue eyes. He also had an earbud in his right ear connected to the laptop which he held on his lap, on a small black lap-table.
>It seems the camera was mounted on the dash of the truck, which flipped the image.
| >The man on the left then spoke:
"I saw the wave! The feed is...Live! And hello danger/u/, AugEyeLive, BTCBlog and QNet! My name is Christian-"
>Then, the driver:
"-and my name is Terence-"
>Left:
"-and we are:"
>Then finally, together:
"The Long Haul Podcast!"
>The driver then cringed.
"We are >>>never doing that again."
>Left:
"Oh come on dad, it wasn't >>>that bad."
"Are you kidding? That was terrible. This was a bad idea."
"No no no, this is an AWESOME idea. Just wait."
| >Then, Christian began typing on the laptop, while talking:
"In order to interact with us, simply type whatever you want your name to be in the 'Enter Name' field, and type your message in the 'Type a Message' field. Like so:
>Then, a message appeared in the chat which looked like this:
>TLH_Chris:
Hey guys! This is my message!
"Your name shows up above your message, and I can read them all from here. Made this site myself, so if there's any problems, let me know!"
| >Chris began to speak, looking at the camera:
"Now, you may be wondering who we are. We are truck drivers, more specifically, movers. We're the people who show up to your house, pack all your stuff in boxes, wrap all your furniture in protective pads, and load it on our truck to take to your home, or to storage. You can't see it, but behind us is a 53' trailer, made to hold all of your stuff. We load your stuff, drive it to wherever it needs to go, and unload it, everyday."
| >Terence:
"Well, we load the stuff, but I'm the driver. I'm also the boss, the one who runs this job. My son here next to me rolls with me on the road to help with the physical labor aspect of the job. All of what you see belongs to me, and together we run this ship and do our jobs.
>Chris:
"After doing this for enough years, we've realized that people really just don't know anything about the moving industry, and we've seen some pretty interesting stuff, so we figured..."
| "Well, that we've got enough stories, why not share them? We have some cool stuff to tell, some funny, some weird, some disturbing, but all interesting and worth listening to, in our humble opinions. So, I made this site myself to start this podcast, so that we can tell these stories in all of the right places."
>Terry:
"Well, in places where our bosses won't see at least."
>Chris chuckled.
"Yeah, that too. Figure corporate doesn't scroll through danger/u/ all that often."
| "So, here we are, and today, we wanted to basically just break down our job and how it works for you guys, so future listeners can be hipped to the lingo we use when we talk about our industry and aren't just completely lost. If you guys have any questions though, feel free to ask anything you want, we've got nothing to hide."
| >Terry:
"I would like to make one thing clear though: We are not with this 'politically correct' bullshit phase that all you kids are into nowadays, so if you get offended easily, this ain't a place where we give a shit about your feelings. You can go find your 'safe space' somewhere else-"
>Chris:
"Hey, hey! Dad, stop! What are you doing? You can't just insult people before we even have any listeners-"
>Terry:
"I don't care! I won't cater to these snowflake ass motherfuckers!"
| "I run my truck the same way I run my life: My own way. If you don't agree with my way, you can get the hell out of it, and that's final. We bust our ass to keep this ship running every day, and I don't need people who've never worked hard a day in their life judging mine, they can go to hell. I'm just gonna be me and do me, and I don't care what anybody else thinks about it."
>Chris sighed and looked into the laptop.
"Nobody's even here yet anyway, we have no viewers..."
| Hey. c'mon guys, calm down. I'm not going to get offended. If we disagree on anything, that's just how the world works.
- SciFox
| >Chris pointed at the laptop:
"Ohhh shit, we got one! Hey SciFox, nice to meet you! How's your day going today?"
>Terry waved to the camera.
"Hello...what'd you say the name was? SciFox?"
"Yeah, that's the handle."
"Handle? What's a handle?"
"Like a name, like that's the name they entered for themselves."
"Why not just say 'name'?"
"I mean...we could, it doesn't really matter..."
"I've never heard it called a 'handle'."
"You've never been on /u/..."
| >Terry:
"Well, what'd he say? I can't read the screen, I'm busy driving."
>Chris:
"He said 'Calm down, I'm not going to get offended, if we disagree on anything that's just how the world works."
"Ah, someone with some sense! Thank you SciFox! See, that's the thing about people these days, they can't figure out how to respectfully disagree with someone. We can be friends with someone who has different beliefs than me, we don't all have to agree."
"That, at least, I agree on..."
| I'm doing fine today. I just relocated from the USA to Glitch City and am settling in. Where do you guys operate?
Good to hear that, Chris. Too many people on all sides these days don't get this.
- SciFox
| I meant Terry sorry
- SciFox
| (Sorry, the format for the podcast is slightly different than a regular thread on /u/, I may not have made that clear. Go like this:
>Name:
"Message".
Was trying to be unique somehow, heheh ^-^ sorry.-Pirat3)
>Chris:
"SkyFox is doing fine, just moved to GC himself from the US, and asks where we operate."
>Terry:
"Well, luckily our truck floats and hovers, so we can go basically anywhere with enough time, but we mostly run the West Continents, which is North and South America."
| >Chris:
"We've occasionally gone to the East, but not often. Like he said, we mostly run the North and South Americas, and the Islands, from Hawaii to the Indies, you know, Cuba, Jamaica, Bahamas, the like."
>Terry:
"Our company, White Star Moving and Storage, is based out of Neo Las Vegas, Jamaica, but we live in Glitch City, which is where we mostly go to and from."
>Chris smiled:
"Good question though, and thanks for tuning in, hope you like the show so far!"
| >Terry then asked:
"Hey, SciFox: Who moved you, if you don't mind me asking? Did you hire movers, did a corporation or government pay for it, or did you just move yourself?"
| >SciFox "Heh. I like the name, because there was actually an old ocean liner company with the name White Star. Is that why you chose the name or am I just being a nerd?"
| >SciFox
"My grandpa helped me find a small company that could move my things. I didn't bring a lot of big furniture or anything so it wasn't crazy expensive, and I just took some of the smaller things with me.
One thing I really miss is my car. It was an old electric model from the 90s that me and my grandpa restored.
How much does it usually cost to ship a car overseas? In my case from Florida to GC."
| >Chris:
"They said...oh, heh, we didn't choose the name of our company SciFox, we just work for them. See, this is why we need to explain how our job works. Dad?"
>Terry:
"Basically, I'm an owner/operator, which means that I own this truck and I am my own boss, but I don't have the accounts to move people on my own, so I contract through White Star, who has corporate and government accounts, and they send their jobs to me. I drive for them, but I work for me, if that makes sense."
| >Chris:
"So yeah, we-we didn't know that White Star was an ocean liner company too, we just work for them...also, they moved with a small company and their grandpa's help, and they ask how much it costs to ship a car from Florida to GC?"
>Terry:
"Well, if you had a mover do it, it depends on the weight of the car, though a mover probably wouldn't do that for just a car. If you were just having it shipped, I'm not sure, that's not my industry."
| >SciFox:
Ah. Sorry for misunderstanding. And yeah, I wouldn't hire movers to move a car.
Sorry for being a nerd about the White Star thing. I spend too much time reading random facts on the internet.
I'm going to have to log off for the night. Best of luck to you both!
| >Uni:
At long last! Thank you for bringing your presence to my work day — as it has been duly monotonous. I will be tuning through the entire show and contribute a comment when appropriate.
| >C:
"Well, don't apologize, I think its cool that there's an old cruise line called White Star!"
>T:
"There was?"
>C:
"Yeah, apparently! Pretty neat, huh?"
>T:
"Yeah, didn't know that."
>C:
"Anyway, tune in next time you can Sci! That was cool. Oh, and look, someone else, someone from the test stream! Hello again Uni!"
| >Uni:
Hello! It's a pleasure to listen to the show. I pride myself as someone with interests of knowing copious amounts of adventures — travels, if you will — and do you perhaps have any interesting, odd, and such experiences during your work?
| >Terry waved at the camera again, before shifting the truck up a gear.
>Chris:
"So Uni asks if we have any interesting or odd experiences during our work."
>Terry chuckled.
"Pshh, plenty. Where to even begin..."
>C:
"Why not tell them the placenta story?"
>T:
"Wow, you wanna start with the heavy-hitters?"
>C:
"No other way to be, right?"
>T:
"Alright, sure. The placenta story."
| >Terry:
"So, one time we were doing this job up in Emerald Triangle area, northern California. Its called that because that area of north Cal and south Oregon is notorious for having some of the best cannabis in the world, the climate is perfect for growing weed there. Anyway, we were specifically moving a customer out of the mountains, so we needed to shuttle the job, meaning we had to drive a smaller truck 30 miles up into the mountains because our truck was too big to fit."
| >Terry:
"The truck we had was only a 26 footer, but the house was small, only about 12,000 lbs, which, for a comparison, the house only had two bedrooms and a shed in the back. There was four of us, we hired two local guys, Miguel and Jerry. Anyway, the customer was pretty cool, him and his girlfriend were joking around with us all day, so we were on pretty cool terms. One of the last things we loaded on the shuttle truck was an old chest freezer, which they said they defrosted."
| >Terry:
"See, we aren't allowed to take liquids, aerosols or perishables into storage, which this particular shipment was going in, so they have to empty the freezer for us to load it, and they told us it was empty. So, on our way back to the big truck to transfer the shipment, the customer calls me, and says 'Hey, uh, I realized I left some meat in the freezer on accident, could you throw it away for me when you get back to the truck?' Being me, I said 'Sure thing'."
| >Terry:
"Then, he said 'Ehh...You know, I was gonna lie about it, but I can't just do that to you.' I'm like, 'What does that mean?' To which he replies: 'Its not actually meat, its my wife's placenta.'"
>Chris can no longer contain his own laughter as he recalls the story in his own head.
>Terry:
"So, I figure we've been messing around with eachother all day, so I say 'You're shitting me, you're pulling my leg aren't you?' But he replies, 'No man, I'm being serious, really."
| >T:
"So this goes from a laughing moment to 'Uh, and you want me to do >>>what with it? No way, you can drive down to the truck and pick it up man, I'll leave the freezer off to the side, you can come pick up the placenta', but then he says 'No, see, the freezer's been defrosting for days, so its probably rotten now, and my girlfriend was gonna turn it into vitamins or some shit, but she doesn't want it now. I looked earlier and thought it was baking soda or something, I'm sorry."
| >T:
"So I'm like 'So...so what do you want me to do with it?' And he says 'Can you just throw it away or something?' So I mean, what can I do? At this point I needed to be in Nevada the next day, so I didn't really know what else to do but throw it away."
>Chris:
"It was so bad, guys. It was so bad."
>T:
"So we get to the parking lot of the hotel where we were staying, because there was enough room in the parking lot to park the big truck, and we get to the freezer and open it."
| >T:
"Sure enough, there's a red bag in the freezer with a biohazard symbol on it, and the girl's name. So I pick it up and toss it out of the trailer on the ground-"
>C:
"You guys should've heard the SPLAT noise it made, it was amazingly terrible."
>T:
"Yep, so we finish transfering the shipment, and at the end of the day, I pick up the bag, and carry it over to the hotel trash can, and just throw it away, since that's all I could really do."
>C:
"There was a freaking blood trail!"
| >T:
"In retrospect, it was probably illegal, like I think it qualified as biowaste at that point, but I mean, really what else could we have done with it? Couldn't just store it in storage, and he wasn't coming to pick it up, so..."
>C:
"That was, hands down, probably the strangest thing we've ever hauled."
>T:
"Yep, gotta admit, it most definitely was the weirdest thing I've ever put on my truck. So, if you're moving, please make sure to remove your placenta from wherever it is."
| >Uni:
Gah, I had my audio device set to a high volume — I think my Master may have overheard your story. She is doubling down her laughter and is now muffling herself.
Thank you for the fantastic and bizarre story, that made both of us here chuckle. I knew there is a strange tale trailing the occupation. -Uni
| >SciFox:
"Just checking back in for a bit before I head out for the day. Weird story, but I guess in your trade weird things like that are bound to happen.
I can't stay unfortunately. Best of luck on the road today!"
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| >A link in the title of this thread sends you to a tunnel, which finally winds you up on another site of sorts, which seems to be home-made.
>The webpage has a few windows: A black one labelled "Webcam" in the upper-left corner taking up most of the screen, a "Chat" on the upper-right side which has no messages, a "Type In Chat" in the bottom-right sight with a place to enter your name and a message, and "Archive" in the lower-left corner, with one link to "TLHP#0: Just Testing".