The episode dives into the latest automotive news, including the cancellation of the electric Charger Daytona RT due to poor sales and inventory issues. It also highlights the introduction of Slate Auto's $20,000 EV truck, set to launch in 2027, and the exciting new features of the 2026 Toyota RAV4, including a performance-oriented GR Sport trim. Additionally, the host shares personal experiences from a recent trip to Puerto Vallarta, discussing the importance of friendships and the local culture, while providing insights into the area's automotive scene.
Dodge / Stellantis has pulled the plug on at least one version of the Dodge Charger EV with over 3,500 still sitting on dealership lots. Slate auto has an EV truck you can design for under $20,000 USD after incentives, but with a release set for 2027 , will it be worth the wait?
We visit Puerto Vallarta , Mexico for the first time. Do you have friend groups or family you take trips with?
"... because of the excursions. When I saw like a BMW M4, I'm like, well, that's kind of a nice car. And i..."
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This is hard parking brought to you by right Hunt and right Toyota out of Scottsdale, AZ. I'm your host, Jay Finney.
This is Memorial Day weekend, so why don't we have Memorial Day?
So Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day.
And for those of you who are listening outside the United States, the reason why we celebrate this is because it is a day to kind of not really celebrate, but mourn and have really good sales, but mourn the lives of everyone who has died in the line of duty in the military, dying for the right for us to have these freedoms. Even those who are out there
protesting on Memorial Day weekend, you have that right because of those who have died to make this country as great as it is. So keep that in mind for those
of you who decide you do or do not like this country.
You are here because of those reasons.
Coming up on today's show, I recap my trip to Puerto Vallarta a little bit. I know how some of you love
those episodes. This is not an episode dedicated
to my vacation. Some of you hate those episodes.
So I try to talk about a little bit on why we were there, who we were with, some of the things that we saw, some of the things we liked, some of the things that were a little, I don't know, I wouldn't say we didn't like.
But I think it's important if you're planning a trip to Puerto Vallarta or you're just overall curious, what were the cars like? What were the people like?
And there's a lot of car news to get to.
So all that more coming up after this word from Arcus Foundry.
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get your first month free, upgrade your tech and get back to business. So for those of you who are here
specifically for the car news and the car content and couldn't care less about the other stuff, unless I have a guest in studio, I think we're going to do the car news first.
So cleaning up from the last episode, I'd mentioned that Montana has the highest speed limit in the United States.
Maybe at some point, but that is factually incorrect.
I decided and no one pointed that out.
I was like, do they? Do they have the fastest speed
limit anymore? And so I looked it up online and
of the fastest speed limits in the United States according to motorone.com. So if you have a faster posted
speed limit in your state let me know.
Only 9 states have an 80 mile an hour speed limit, but one will let drivers go 85 mile an hour somewhere.
In Idaho you can go 80 mile an hour 70 for semi trucks, Montana 80. As as mentioned Nevada has 80.
North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming all have 80 mile an hour posted speed limit.
I thought I saw that here in Arizona.
In fact, what's funny is when I'm driving around, especially my wife's MDX, we could do a certain stretch and it says 85, although I look in the poster. So what I mean by that is if
you're using the navigation that comes with the vehicle and so it shows up on your display, it said 85 mile an hour.
But when you're looking at one of the apps like Google, Waze, Apple Maps, or the posted speed limit, the posted speed limit will be like 50. And I'm looking at her car on
the display and it says 85. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I'm
not supposed to be going 85 here.
So I'm not quite sure where that disconnect is.
But I, I swear I've seen 80 at some point here in Arizona.
I could have looked it up, but it's not on this motorone.com
and I don't want to spend all day talking about that.
Yeah, 85 mile an hour posted here for Texas.
Texas has the highest posted speed limit of any state in the United States. A 41 mile stretch of Texas
Highway 130 between SH45 near Austin and Interstate 10 in Sequin, as opposed to be around 85 miles an hour.
It's also known as the Pickle Pkwy Crease.
Speed limits were approved in September of 2012, with a Parkway officially opened in 2012 as well.
Wow, 2012 they've been doing that.
That's nutty. The last time I was in Montana
was 2012. What Rd. has no speed limit?
The only Rd. in the world with no speed limit is Germany's
Autobahn, which we all know. The Autobahn network is 8197
miles long and has many unrestricted stretches of Rd.
I was going to say, I'm pretty sure I heard that.
It's not all like that, but a lot of it is like that, which is probably why people want to go to the autobahn.
A Michigan based startup automaker called Slate Auto has launched a $20,000 EV that's not coming out to 2027.
It's a small truck that you can configure.
It says 20,000. I decided to look it U first.
I went to the website and configured mine and I'll show you what I configured in a second.
But I went with whatever Edmunds had because Edmunds is obviously a very reputable car media outlet.
So let's see what Edmunds has to say about this Slate.
This article is by Kristen Shaw and edited by Nick.
Something like that. May 18th and they're the title
is the Slate. Is the Slate truck worth it?
How the competition stacks up. It's supposed to start at
20,000. While the Slate truck won't be
available, 2027 buyers might consider similarly priced compatible trucks or SUVs. We're intrigued by the Slate.
Is it worth the wait? So what I'm going to be talking
about is I'm going to paraphrase what I see on here and tell you what I configured. We're not going to go into the
competition. I don't care.
Realistically, I'm not even looking to buy one of these things, but just out of curiosity because the buzz has been all over, probably because Jeff Bezos of Amazon was one of the big backers of this project. I get it.
So what you get from Slate? Slate's new truck is 2 feet
shorter than the Ford Maverick. If you don't know what a Ford
Maverick looks like, look it up. Kind of a cool little truck has
a 5 foot bed, 7 cubic foot of funk.
Oh, so in the front funk funks are nice.
I wish I had a funk. Minus X doesn't have a funk.
People think it has a funk. If you don't know what a funk
is, it's like a storage space in the front and so the back trunk funk. Do you get it?
Buying the slate means exactly what's needed with no extras, which is true. So it's a 2 seater, has steel
wheels, climate control system. You can configure it to be an
SUV, which is what I did. I'll show that in a minute.
A range of 150 estimated, which isn't really a lot, but if it's your work truck, your Aaron truck like my Honda Z is, 150 is plenty. Especially if you plug it in at
night and it has a pack battery pack.
Allegedly they could give it up to 240.
Very small towing capacity, 1000 lbs and a payload of 1400 lbs.
Which means you can put a lot of stuff in the back from Home Depot. Go to Home Depot loaded up full
of cement if it's your work truck and bring it home.
Bags of cement so it can handle a lot in my opinion for what it is. But one thing that I was curious
of is the fact that it is allegedly $20,000 starting at.
So I went to slate dot auto slash EN and configured mine.
I'm going to tell you the summary and show you a picture of it here on the video. I built an SUV kit.
You can get an SUV, you can get an SUV Fastback, which is kind of the slant back SUV which is more popular.
So think of the traditional SUV as kind of the boxier one, like a like a Bronco. And then the Fastback 1 has like
almost any other SUV you see on the road, a commuter SUV like an Acura MDX or the car that I just sold an Infiniti QX or FX.
Those are kind of the slanted back, the Jaguar F Pace.
So I went with the SUV kit, the spare tire carrier, SUV rack, roof rack, some of the stuff that you would think it comes with, but it doesn't. Let's see, what else did I get?
The front bumper upgrade, rear bumper upgrade, Fender flares.
I did not get the lift kit because I wanted to configure it as if something I would use today.
As with everything I did add a slightly bigger tires to it in case we took it to the lake or the Salt River.
A better grill. What with whip dream is the
color whip dream for white. I'm guessing whip cool whip whip
dream sounds different. Let's see door panel wrap and
perforated black fog lights, tail light upgrade, integrated speaker for passenger and rear, more speakers.
And let's see seat covers, carpet formats, and what was carpet instead of rubber because road noise, especially with those tires, it makes a little bit of difference.
Climate control knobs when with so the climate control knobs, steering wheel, all those buttons, I got the gun metal accents, the $20,000 after incentives, whatever the incentives are. So maybe it starts more like
$25,000. According to this article by
Edmonds, the average transaction price for a new car in August of 2024 was $47,476. A different survey from Edmonds
in the same month unearthed an unrealistic dichotomy.
With that nearly 48,000 benchmark in mind, 50% of car shoppers prefer a new car, myself included.
But I just can't afford them, which is why I always buy used except for my NSX. But one in seven car shoppers
wants to spend $20,000 or less for a new car.
Not a lot of new cars out there that cost less than $20,000.
Just saying. So if you're part of the 14%,
the slate might be the answer for your prayers.
The company says it has more than 100,000 pre-orders on its books already. Why would you not pre-order it
if you think you want it? The pre-orders are only 50
dollars, $50.00 to pre-order or to put a deposit.
So when Tesla came out the Cybertruck their deposits were $100. Remember that?
But then they eventually moved to $1000.
The Cybertruck said it was going to be $40,000.
But now the best package Cybertruck you can get is $100,000. And I think the regular one, it
might be 60, somewhere between 6070 or 80 for a regular cyber truck, regular being loosely defined.
So I think that the one that I configured, it's probably going to cost more, closer to 45 or 50,000, just because I did a lot to it. I left a lot off.
But it comes with things or that doesn't come with things like a center console somewhere to put your elbow on.
Why would you not want a center console?
So I added a center console on there.
So those are like the little things, right?
Speakers added doesn't come with any audio.
You have to add the audio. I had an option to add a tablet
mount so it doesn't come with a screen.
So there's no none of that stuff.
So obviously no car play, no Android Auto, no proprietary.
And this is as of today in 2025 because it's not supposed to come out to 2027. So as of today, no proprietary
system. It's just going to play off your
tablet or your iPhone or whatever, but I don't know.
So go to state state. So go to slate dot auto slash in
and configure yours. Let me know what you think of
it. Kind of a cool look a thing.
Realistically, I probably wouldn't buy it because there's a lot of other things you can get like the Ford Maverick.
I think Hyundai makes a really cool vehicle that you can get if this is what you're looking for, it's probably going to be fun capable budget vehicle. But again, $20,000 always sounds
better than 50, and I think mine's going to be 50.
Again, I'm not really buying it anyway, but with a $50 reservation, why not? But I'm still not going to do
it, according to the drive and other media outlets.
Again, the drive is also pretty good.
Dodge confirms the electric Charger Daytona RT is dead as unsold cars pile up. I've been seeing a lot of people
talk online about this and I get it.
They're like well no shit, nobody wants an EV charger.
I think they're kind of cool. They probably cost more than you
would think for them to cost. At least they still look like a
muscle car. But the lineup is not entirely
dead. This is specific to the RT.
They still have plans on moving forward with the larger displacement model even in light of the tariffs.
This article by Ronan Glaan. Poor sales and the whole tariff
situation have doomed Dodge's entry level electric muscle car ahead of the six cylinders arrival later this year.
So they're still moving forward as of now, which that obviously could change, but there's a lot of these things just sitting around. Article says.
Well, that didn't last long. Dodge has confirmed the electric
Charger's base Daytona RT trim level will not return for the 2026 model year, leaving only the price for your Scat Pack version. The news comes shortly after the
brown. The news comes shortly after the
brand announced massive incentives on 2024 and 25 models in a bid to clear access inventory and a few weeks after the White House tariffs made the Canadian built coupe more expensive. I think we had talked about
previously Stalantis moving some of its operations here in the United States. This falls under the Stalantis
umbrella. So maybe they should move those
here. I'm not talking about building
new factories, but we could probably build those here.
Is it Michigan or Ohio where they built the Dodge Viper and the final one rolled off the assembly line a couple years ago so they have that place. It says the twin turbocharged 3
point O liters straight 6 powered 6 pack variants will land later in the second-half of this year.
Deals across the nations are sitting on an inventory of approximately 3500 of these things.
They can't give them away. In fact, some of their
incentives looks like they chopped them in half, almost 50% off. In fact, there says one of them,
Cameron Country Dodge is trying to offload a leftover 2024 with 13 miles on the odometer, 38,292 I think.
And I get the electronics, but when I look at this car, it's not a $70,000 car to me, especially if it's a base model.
I would have guessed, having not looked into this, this would have already been a $40,000 car, Maybe $45,000 car coming into it. No wonder they're sitting
around. They're just too damn expensive
for what you get. And there's a better one that's
supposedly coming out. Yeah, the base price on this was
61,595, including a rather hefty $2000 destination charge.
The scat pack that still has yet to arrive is a $76,000 car.
This is an article for Motor Trend, but it's being posted all over the place. I probably should get this first
hand from my friends over at Wright Toyota.
Joe and Jane are on the clock. The 2026 Toyota Rav 4's seven
must see new features and evolutions.
America's best selling SUV has some cool features we have not seen before from the Rav 4. What are these features?
3 flavors of Rav 43 flavors. So there's three different
trims. That's cool.
Yeah. I think it's usually like one
trim and something else. They have the core model, they
have the sport model, and they have the rugged model.
Rugged for the offroad that's retty cool.
The offroad model built for the trail getting chunky all terrain tires, a roof rack, crossbars, a built in tow hitch.
The basic model and the sporty model robably seaks for itself.
Sorting model has different body cladding and a rear spoiler #2A redesigned center console layout so that you can have your cups and everything in one place because apparently that was a big issue with the original X models that they've had.
They just haven't had what you needed, I guess.
A dual hinge center armrest. I think that's pretty popular in
most other vehicles. Digital instrument cluster for
all. Every Rav 4 now comes with a
standard 12312.3 inch digital cluster.
Sounds like it was probably an option.
There's nothing worse when a major car company that has a technology decides to only put certain things in certain trims like they should auger the trim. That was my big complaint with
our MDX. We have a nice MDX but if we
want the bird's eye view of the camera parking situation we need to have the advanced model. Keep in mind that my 2007
Infiniti FX35 Sport had bird's eye view and that's the biggest thing I missed from selling my 2009 Infinity FX50 is the bird's eye view. If you have it, give it to all
your models and then upgrade the speakers or do something else.
But a bird's eye view camera, a larger screen or any screen, those are kind of help. I mean, technology and safety,
right? The more shit you can see, the
less stuff you run over #5 wraps into #4 new larger infotainment displays. We don't need to go into the
specifications of why they're larger.
Oh, look, wireless Apple CarPlay, Android Auto are now standard across the board. It should always be standard in
my opinion. And you can get this thing
anywhere from 10 1/2 up to 12.9. I just said I wasn't going to go
over to the displays, but there you have it.
Not a lot of difference between a 10 inch display and a 13 inch display. Versatile cup holders comes in
at #6 tile. What's so versatile about these
cup holders? The center console.
Well, we're back to center console, so there's some overlap in these top 7, so I question it.
But the center console features a clever removable divider and the cup holders, allowing you to make room for those bigger bottles without a struggle #7A GR Sport.
You're going to bring a GR Sport trim?
That's pretty cool for an SUV says for the first time ever, US buyers get a bona fide performance variant package with a punchy 320 horsepower plug in hybrid powertrain that promises to add some serious zip. Has a massiver spoiler, 20 inch
wheels, 20 inch sports wheels, lowered and firmed up suspension. Toyota says the GR Sport was
crafted hand in hand with Gazoo Racing.
Is that what GR stands for? It must.
I didn't. I had no idea.
I'm not. I'm an accurate guy.
O we'll see what happens when these things finally hit the road. And most of that excet for my
really poor attempts at comedy is from Miguel Cortina at Motor Trend. And that concludes this week's
car segment. OK, so now we're going to talk a
little bit about Puerto Vallarta, our trip while we were there. So we went with our good friends
Alex and Jen. So 10 years ago we could not
make it to their wedding. We had just moved here, we had
two mortgages trying to sell our old house.
That was a nightmare in itself. So given the opportunity and the
invite, Yvette and I decided to go to Puerto Vallarta with Alex and Jim to celebrate their ten as I just said.
But one thing that's really unique about our friendships, Yvette and I, we both have multiple friend groups in.
I'm going to kind of turn this segment into a little bit about relationships. Everything in my life I feel is
less transactional and more relationship driven.
Relationships are important to me.
Less networking. Networking just kind of comes
along, but I don't jump into situations exclusively, just a network. I jump into them because they're
relationship driven. So this isn't a business
conversation, but Alex and I have been friends for a very long time, probably since 2002 thousand and one when we worked together at a bar in Grand Rapids, MI.
And then he met Jen later on and they got married and blah blah blah. The one thing that's great about
this trip is this is I consider this a friend's trip.
And again, Yvette and I have many friends groups and some of them overlap with each other. And I think, and maybe it's easy
for me to say this because I'm not rich.
I mean, look, rich, not rich. We are upper middle class.
So there's a difference. But I think that's the true, one
of the true definitions of wealth is having friends and people that you can share your experiences with because all the money in the world doesn't do anything for you, I'm sure of it, without people to share it with.
So yeah, you could be Jeff Bezos.
I guarantee you he has a crew of other rich people, but they could share these experiences together.
There's still a crew. Almost nobody has a soloist.
But on this trip, there was actually seven of us.
The other three that joined Ben Boozer and Kara.
We, we went on a trip with them, Alex and Jen and more people in Austin. I feel like it's two years ago
now. And so that made the trip even
cooler because now there's seven of us and no one's a stranger to anyone else. You know, at first it was like,
oh, hey, I remember you. I remember you.
Oh, yeah, I remember you. But less than two hours into
this trip, it's just like 7 best friends.
So we did everything together. So where did we stay?
We stayed in the romantic district of Puerto Vallarta.
One of the advantages, I think, with going with somebody or people that have been there before is they know where to go, where not to go. One of the, I hate to call it
disadvantages because at the end of the day, Yvette and I still had the freedom to do whatever we wanted to do.
But it's always more fun in my opinion, when you, if you're, if you're there with a group, things are better when you do them as a group. Because you know, Yvette and I
travel all the time and we could go back and we probably will go back to Puerto Vallarta, probably just by us ourselves.
But you know, when you travel with people that have done it before, you have input and what happens, of course, but there's less guesswork. And they know the suggestions.
Jen is the planner of the group. You know, where, where are we
going to go eat lunch? What are we going to do all day?
Where are we going to go eat dinner?
And I think there's a skill set in being that person that brings people together, in understanding everybody's personalities, what people like, what people don't like, what people are comfortable with spending.
You know, who wants to splurge here?
Who would rather do that there? And we had several days where we
just sat at the beach. And that sounds great, right?
It could because it was, but one of the, the places we went to is a place called like El Dorado, not to be confused with El Dorado, El Dorado because that's a completely different place down there in Mexico. But it was like El Dorado beach
club or restaurant. And So what we, what she would
do is she would call ahead of time and say, hey, tomorrow we're going to be there at, I don't know, 10:00 in the morning. It's going to be 7 of us.
And you walk down to the beach and you just lay there all day and you have full service, full shade, and the water's right there. And that was a blast.
That closes around 3:00 every day.
They start preparing for dinner. And then you get up and you do
the rest of your rest of your afternoon.
You walk up the hill, stop at the bar, go back to the hotels, change clothes, meet at someone's room, hang out at their balcony, have another drink, leave, go to dinner, walk around. And that's what we did one day.
We had an excursion day where we all, you know, booked a big cruise and it made three or four stops.
Snorkelling, the same thing you do at all these type of, you know, places. You do the snorkelling trip, you
do the the beach trip somewhere else, there's food, there's a boat ride and it was a lot of fun.
And so if you ever get that opportunity, do those things, don't wait. I know some of you were
listening or watching. It's like, well, our life is
busy. We got the kids, we got this, we
got that. Do it, it's fun and if you have
friends you could do it with, if you're invited to go on a trip, you know whether or not you can swing it.
Sometimes you have to rob Peter to pay Paul.
Not sound financial advice, but if you can do it, do it.
There's been things that we didn't do because of finances that once that event passed, you look back and you say, damn, I guess we we could have done that.
We would have been fine. But I think some of the
experiences that that we had just as a group, just chilling on the beach or going on excursions or just walking around like you just, you can't replace that.
And that's how relationships and friendships for life happen.
A lot of people I know have these groups.
They have these, hey, it's a guy's trip to XXX, it's a girls trip to XXX. It's a couples trip to this,
this, this. It's a friend's trip, which
doesn't matter if you're with somebody or not, which is the case here. A little bit about the area,
beautiful waters. It was jellyfish season or just
starting to be jellyfish season. So one of the excursions we went
on, there were small jellyfish about the size of a Lima bean or a pea if they weren't big, but they were large enough to be annoying. I think one of the bigger ones
we saw was probably, I saw a couple that were probably, I'm holding up the this thing a lid to the cameras like I always do, probably an inch and a half to 2 inch in circumference.
And those are not jellyfish you want to touch.
We were playing around with them without touching them.
Dangerous. One thing that was a little kind
of annoying on the beach, and I get it because this is number one, we're staying in a very popular touristy spot #2 some of these people who've lived there have nothing.
And so I bullshit you not, in a given 62nd cluster of time, people walk up and try to sell you stuff 15 times as many as sometimes maybe only 8 within a minute.
And they're cool stuff, you know?
Do you want to buy this hat? Do you want to buy this handmade
sterling silver jewelry? Do you want to buy this
wristband? Do you want to buy this?
Do you want to buy that? But it's constant nonstop and
even the people at the the Eldorado restaurant slash hotel, they brought out signs and they stuck them in front of you to kind of help you. It doesn't help just says no
Gracia, they look at the sign, they look at you and they still kind of like you want to buy this, you want to buy that.
So that got very annoying, but not to the point to where you would complain or it would disgust you because this is what it is. And we actually end up buying
some stuff. You know, my wife bought
something from my son. You know, we always buy
something. My friend Alex bought some
stuff. He's bought some stuff before.
But that in itself is definitely not a reason to not do this stuff. It's just something that you can
expect if you go to Puerto Vallarta, depending on where you stay, because again, we stayed in a very specific district.
It was about 30 minutes from the airport South and I think all the inclusive resorts are a lot closer, like the Marriotts and things are a lot closer to the actual airport itself.
And I don't know if you're shielded from that at the resorts. I would imagine the beaches are
public, so maybe not, but where we were at definitely was not a private area. So one thing about the romantic
zone is it is the LGBTQ plus zone of Puerto Vallarta.
So there are pride flags and pride stuff everywhere, and that's OK. It's kind of funny because you
know, when we were told that I go, oh, so it's clean, no crime.
Perfect. Probably a stereotype, but it's
an acceptable one for me. That just seems to be what comes
with that, right. But yeah, there's flags
everywhere and none of that matters.
You know, the, the Thursday night before we left there was it, it kicked off, I think it was Pride Fest.
So imagine that. So you're in the District
already and it's Pride Fest or Pride week.
And so we go out to the clubs and it's just like, you see more guys. I don't know why it is like
girls are gay too, but you see way more males.
So we go to the clubs and there's just all sorts of stuff that imagine, use your imagination.
Nobody in our crew was uncomfortable with who they are.
No one was bothering us. We didn't bother anybody else
and we had fun. It was fun.
You can just you have to let go of those things and just have fun and that made the trip great.
Food wise, the food was really good overall, not the best food we've ever had, but far from bad.
The the money, the American dollar, as you would expect goes pretty far in Mexico. And so like one of the nights we
had, we went to this really nice Italian, nice Asia Italian pizza place. And the cost I did the
conversion, I bought this really cool pizza is probably 14 inches in diameter. So kind of a personal pizza, but
we all shared different ones. And so it's like you had a combo
pizza. Anyway, come out to about 13
American dollars. And I don't know if you go to
those, those places where you can just kind of, I forgot the name of them. They're we, they're all over the
United States with the, the wood fire pizza ovens.
And you stand in line, you pick your toppings just like you would like a Subway or Chipotle. I don't know how much those are,
but they have to be at least $12.00.
There's no way you're getting a pizza for $7.00 unless it's
Little Caesars. But you know, I'm talking about
the wood fired stuff. And so that's, I mean, the money
added up because we drank a lot and did a lot of things.
But as far as raking it, rating it on the scale of expensive, it was far from it. So that's probably why people go
to Puerto Vallarta all the time, whether you go to the Romantic Zone or you go to the all inclusive resorts.
One of the things about the area, it is Mexico.
It is not an island in Mexico. It's the mainland ish.
So it's very poor. I don't know if there's much of
A middle class. If it is, it's very small.
So when you're like I said, it's about 30 minute ride from where we were staying to the hotel, I mean to the airport.
So all I do is look out the window, look at cars.
I didn't see really one nice car.
We made that trip several times because of the excursions.
When I saw like a BMW M4, I'm like, well, that's kind of a nice car. And it's got some old person who
probably is American. I was going to say some old
white guy, but I could get in trouble for that.
But yeah, it's like an old white guy who's probably an American who's probably his second or third home there.
There's a lot of that stuff there actually.
And so I know there's probably very expensive parts of Puerto Vallarta residential wise, but it wherever they are, it's definitely not on the way from the airport down to the romantic district. You don't feel bad, but it's
just a reality check of life. I make weird observations.
I noticed there's a lot of motorcycles, but they're not high motorcycle like fast, not not crotch rockers.
They're not like six 50s and seven hundreds and 1100s.
They're all like 150 to 250 CCI. Call them Jackie Chan bikes.
Jackie Chan bikes everywhere. I tried to look up on the
Internet, you know, is there a limit?
And it doesn't look like there appears to be 1.
So there's a lot of cobblestone in things that you're kind of, I guess makes sense to kind of have a dirt bike or something with some really good suspension.
Just a weird observation that I made.
Best food we ate there. We went to a Michelin star
restaurant and I don't really go to those very often, not because I have a problem with them. I just don't seek them out.
I wish I went to more, but this was in an old residence.
I forgot the exact name of the residence, but you may have seen pictures of it on social media. I'm adding it as an overlay to
this part. Beautiful.
And that was the last night where it was just myself, Yvette, Alex and Jen. The others have gone home
already. But it was, you know, they had a
band come out. Beautiful.
Overlooking the city. You can see the ocean in the
distance, and this place was just from the food, the service, the atmosphere. One of the best place I've ever
been walking around at night. I would say that one of the
things that because it really in the Romantic district wasn't really ran down. You felt safe.
Alex and Jen knew where they were going.
Again, they've probably been there 1213 times, maybe 11 times, but depending on where you're at, you know, little kids were coming up and trying to sell you stuff.
And what I mean by a little kid, I'm talking maybe 8 years old, seven years old. Do you want to buy this
necklace? Do you want to buy this candy
bars? Do you want to buy this?
And it definitely made my wife really uncomfortable because this was 10/30/11 at night when we were walking around in a group. But this is, and this is one of
the things you have to understand when you travel, this is what it is where you are at. So here in America, you would
not see that probably anywhere ever but in PV.
And to be fair, we've gone on vacation a lot in Mexico or the Caribbean, and we have not seen that before.
But when I see stuff like that, I'm just like, yeah, I mean, my initial reaction is, hey, I know you're a kid.
You're a cute kid. Absolutely not.
I'm not falling for it. I ain't buying shit from you.
But that's it. It's not like, Oh my God, I
can't believe it. They have this little kid and
it's so terrible because maybe that's just when we're talking Slumdog Millionaire stuff here, right?
So the kid, the kids are never by themselves.
There's always a parent or handler or something nearby keeping an eye on the child and the merchandise.
So that's one thing. If you go to PV, you may see it
might throw you off a little bit.
If you want to buy something from them, buy something from them, but you don't have to. Don't feel bad, don't hand them
money. It's just part of the scene.
It's just part of the experience.
Just do whatever you're there to do and have fun.
Will we go back again? Yes, we would.
We could chill at the beach all day like we did several days because again, it stops around 3330, so you still have the rest of the afternoon. We could do that.
Or we can maybe go somewhere else, try the all inclusive resort, see what else is around. But when you're going with
somebody who's been there a dozen times, they know probably what they're doing. And in this case, it was obvious
that they did. And so you trust the process,
you trust the people. And I look forward to the next
friends trip. We're going, we're going to go
on one. You know, we've gone with Alex
and Jen specifically with the Lake Tahoe a few years ago.
And it was for Valentine's Day and it's just the four of us in an Airbnb in Lake Tahoe and it was great.
So if you don't have friend groups, if you have the opportunity to join a friend group, this isn't an official thing. This is I guess a term, I didn't
make up the term obviously, but if you have groups of friends you hang out with every once in a while and if they travel, if they invite you, hey, Erica and Tony want us to go to XXX with them, Are we down? Are we not down?
If you like them enough to hang out with them on like a boat trip or do something else during the week or weekend at home, then there's no reason why you couldn't go on a vacation with them. Because we do it with a lot of
different couples and vacation wise and in groups and it's a great time. Takes a load off your shoulders
about maybe you're stressed out will work.
Maybe you're stressed out at life.
If you're financially strapped, don't do it.
But if you can afford to do it and recover the money later, do it. Thank you so much for listening.
I usually don't do holiday episodes just because no one ever watches or listens, but I had some stuff I want to talk about and I think it was fun. And some of you wanted to know
what happened in PV Puerto Vallarta.
Go go out there, experience, have fun, travel with people.
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Now it's stripping time. Ain't nobody got time for that.
Shut up.
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