Amtrekker

Hey Team,

I just spent the last week back out on the road again and I’m sad to report that in a lot of ways I felt more at home out traveling than I do back in Fresno. Granted I haven’t lived in Fresno since I graduate high school back in the day and traveling is still fresh in the brainscape but I was still a little surprised.

After the haunted house experience I hightailed it to Tempe, AZ to watch Katy compete in her second Ironman.

Let me explain something first: I have a peculiar personality quirk that only my close friends and family TRULY understand and I’m not even sure I can explain it properly without sounding like a tool. Basically, I blame 1980s cartoons. You couldn’t watch three episodes of any of those shows without being fed the line, “You can do anything you set your mind too.”

And like a sucker, I believed them.

As a result here I am at 27 and I still don’t take many activities seriously. I think, “Well, if it’s possible then why WOULDN’T I be able to do it? Let’s go!” Some things obviously take more work than others but to this day I feel as though if I’m willing to put the work in then I can make it happen. Period.

Even after watching 2200 people take on Ironman Arizona and seeing over 2000 of them actually finish (including Katy)…I don’t think I could do it.

You have no idea how much it kills me to see that in writing. It’s almost enough to make me give it a try anyway. And maybe I COULD technically do it…eventually. But…I don’t want to drown.

After 2.4 miles of swimming, 112 miles of biking and 26.2 miles of running Katy crossed the finish line exactly 12 hours and 15 minutes after the starting gun fired.

Amazing.

So glad I saw it all happen. Never in my life have I seen so many people so determined to do what their bodies are screaming at them to stop doing.

For a more first hand account you should check out Katy’s blog at http://ironkatyinaz.blogspot.com/. She writes JUST like she talks so it’s a fun read.

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

It’s been awhile since a new update has popped up here but a LOT has been going on behind the scene. I’ve been getting tons of “What’s next?” type questions and a lot of really great questions about wrap-ups. I decided to extend the party video to include some interviews from family members and their thoughts on Amtrekker so that has kind of been delayed…it should still make an appearance soon.

As far as other videos go there is plenty of excitement right around the corner and in the blog world there’s a lot to say about the past so those will occupy most of the updates for the next week or two. Keep your eyes peeled!

Okay…so what happened at the haunted house?

Brian, CJ, Stephen, Mike and I showed up at Wolfe Manor around 9:30 pm Friday night to set up shop and get ready to shoot our collective experience in what has been dubbed one of the most haunted properties in America. The anticipation alone had us all on edge. Standing outside one of the creepiest, most rundown places I’ve ever seen (outside of the Newark Greyhound terminal) the fog literally started to roll in.

To kill time while we were waiting for the last ghost tour to finish we started watching the Ghost Hunters episode that featured Wolfe Manor. On the episode they explained the difference between a sanitarium and a sanatorium. It turns out a sanatorium is where crazy people go and a sanitarium is where sick people go to wait for death.

Wolfe Manor used to be the Clovis Sanitarium.

THOUSANDS of people died there.

Before going in we interviewed Todd Wolfe, the owner of the property. He didn’t exactly go out of his way to make us more comfortable. After hearing some history of the place and more anecdotes about creepy events transpiring in the house than I would care to think about we got the warnings: Don’t leave anyone alone in the house, try not to leave anyone alone in a room…and DON’T sleep in the house.

The last one had me worried. Todd explained that he has never allowed anyone to stay overnight in the house before and that he had never been willing to sleep there since he started having unexplainable experiences but he wasn’t forbidding us so much as warning us that we would be extremely vulnerable. Sadly, vulnerable or not, I had a nine hour drive to Tempe to make first thing in the morning. I was going to have to sleep somewhere.

Our tour of the house started when Todd and our team each took a two-way radio and the five of us were shut inside. We spent the next hour wandering through a CREEPY FREAKING HOUSE with only the light from our flashlights and a narrator standing on the porch to guide us. It went a little something like this:
Us in the radio: “Okay, Todd. We’re in the room to the left of the entryway. There’s a torn yellow couch in the middle of the room and a chair on the left.”

Todd in the radio: “That’s the dining room. The ghost of a woman from the kitchen sometime wanders in there and occasionally children can be heard singing or playing–”

Us to each other: “What the hell was that!” Our heads snapped around, “The door slammed shut!”

Us in the radio: “Todd the door just slammed shut!”

Todd in the radio: “Okay.”

We slowly scooted over to the door as a group and opened it back up to see if it would do it again…it did. It was spring loaded. We felt dumb. Scared…but dumb.

The rest of the tour was more anticipation building creepiness as Todd explained all the weird crap that has gone down during the eleven years he has owned the property and when it concluded we were left to our own devices.

That mostly meant we wandered around the house trying to recreate the “experiments” the Ghost Hunters did while they were there. We spent quite a bit of time playing with a Digital Voice Recorder to try to capture some ghost voices but it was tough going in the beginning. Turns out Brian, CJ and I are all such attention whores we were having a hard time sitting still without talking for very long until we started setting an alarm.

We struck out with the dowsing rods and the bells too so eventually we decided it was time to set up camp and bust out the glow in the dark Ouija Board. The Ouija Board was frowned upon but we were allowed to use it at our own discretion and since nothing else had presented itself we decided to give it a whirl.

It’s pretty well documented however, that Ouija Boards only operate thanks to the Ideomotor Effect. So when it turned out that Brian and I couldn’t even get our subconscious to operate properly we decided to do a live stream at two in the morning over at stickam.com with the Ouija Board answering audience questions ranging from “Do you have any advice for my move out west?” to “Where are the Cheese-its?” (which, by the way, appear to be located at KEK7).

By the time those shenanigans were over it was WAY past my bedtime and we all bed down for the night. Morning brought reports of poor sleep and paranoia from most of the group (…maybe it’s just a function of spending a year and a half sleeping in sketchy bus stations with knife wielding hobos but I slept like a baby).

Daylight also brought with it my biggest scare of the adventure when CJ was lurking around a corner wearing a Leatherface mask. I don’t even know if he said anything when I walked by…I was too busy screaming like a little girl and doing a backwards summersault when I fell to the ground short one shoe I apparently kicked off in a “fit of joy.”

Final verdict: Nothing “paranormal” happened to our group but there is absolutely no doubt that Wolfe Manor is a creepy freaking place that I definitely recommend checking out if you’re in the Clovis, CA area. You can call about their ghost tours at (559) 307-4994 or check out their website for information on the live ghost hunting show they do every Sunday night.

Also, I should mention CJ DID catch a picture of an “orb.”

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

It looks like a new adventure has presented itself! It seems that just a couple weeks ago the team from Ghost Hunters dropped in to the old Clovis Sanitarium (soon to be Wolfe Manor) to do some…ghost hunting…

From what I hear they were blown away by what they saw. The episode will air on November 19th and we can all find out together what the details may be but you’re probably already asking, “What’s the big deal, Brett? Why do we care?”

Last week I got a call from some folks connected to the operation of this property who had heard my story and thought they could add a little something to my adventure. Naturally I jumped at the chance. Mostly because that’s what I’m good at…jumping into situations without thinking.

My first thought (which came well after agreeing to do an Amtrekker episode from what is proclaimed as one of the most haunted properties in America) was, “Well, I don’t believe in ghosts…but I’m also kind of a sissy who lets his imagination get away from him pretty regularly. This could very well be an incredibly creepy experience that I don’t want to run head first into alone.”

So, who do I know with similar sensibilities that can make this experience even MORE fun?

That’s right friends, Brian Brushwood, that pointy headed host of Scam School at Revision3, will be joining me for this dip into the realms of death, this creep through the crypt, this excursion into the ephemeral, this…rumble…in the jungle? (Okay, I’m all out of clever alliteration.)

Fair warning: Neither of us know what we’re doing and we’re both being left to our own devices during this haunted slumber party.

Brian called dibs on the Ouija Board. I’m bringing Twister.

It all goes down on November 21st. I’m crazy excited!

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

Lots of stuff going on. Plenty of adventures around the corner. A new literary agent. A book proposal to write. But MOST importantly…everyone’s favorite videos are BACK! Today it’s the horse through through the covered bridge, the video of the party will be out in a few days and then it will be back to the old Wednesday at 6pm Pacific schedule! Ah, the good old days.

There are literally a TON (okay, not literally…it’s all digital so it really doesn’t take up much space) of videos still to come! Things will take on a slightly different format now that I’m back but there are still a lot of “Tales From the Wayback Machine” I’ve yet to show you guys! I’m pretty excited to be able to sit somewhere for an extended period of time without being kicked out so I can ramp up the production quality as much as I can.

Okay, less talk more action. Here it is:

“Amtrekker travels to Atlanta, GA where with the help of Grayson from CNN’s News To Me team, Betty Ann, Ginger, Chase and a horse named Danket he finally gets to live out a cartoon!

Flaming pumpkins ensue.”

And here’s the YouTube link.

Thanks Team!

I’m done.

Brett.

Just for the record. Bookingbuddy really is a pretty rad website if you’re looking to plan a trip. It actually allows you to search most of the top website from one location. Pretty handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!

Hey Team,

Last Halloween my costume cost me less then ten bucks and not much more than ten minutes to fabricate. This year went a little bit differently. I still came in at under ten dollars but I spent HOURS trying to turn myself into the world’s largest cockroach.

The initial concept had me scurrying around on the ground thanks to a dolly strapped to my chest and a couple extra limbs flailing about. I should note however, the initial concept didn’t take into account the THREE DAYS it would take me just to make the mask for the costume.

As zero hour continued to approach I realized that not only would I be forced to cut some of the extra bits off the costume and cut more than a few corners on the parts I did still have time to work in but there was no way I was going to have enough time to help Katy with her costume…which was a stroke of genius.

As soon as I started talking up the giant cockroach costume at Amtrekkapalooza last week Katy jumped in head first with the bug spray idea. Little did we know what we were getting into.

After countless hours spent on these (let’s be fair here) EPIC costumes. We headed out to San Francisco with some other good friends, Nate the Construction Worker (not to be confused with any other first names followed by job titles), Saadia the female Mad Hater and Erica the Nurse. The party we intended to go to was WAY too crowded for a giant cockroach and a raid can to wander around in so we hit the streets in the Castro District.

That’s where all forward progress quickly ground to a halt. We couldn’t walk 20 feet without someone shouting, “RAID!” and jumping in to take a picture with us. And of course once we’re stopped and taking pictures everyone else within a quarter mile with a camera would start snapping shots too. It was actually a lot of fun to be nameless celebrities for the day.

More importantly, it made all the work that could have just as easily been totally pointless completely worth it. Thanks for the fun night, Katy et al.!

So…what do you guys think of the fancy threads? Lot’s more pictures here.

I’m done.

Brett.

Seriously, team. No joke. BookingBuddy is AWESOME. It’s like a travel website aggregator aggregator. (Yep, two aggregators.) I just used it to hunt down deals to get back to California from Atlanta and boy howdy was it handy! But more importantly…our new affiliation with bookingbuddy.com means all you have to do to help out Amtrekker is click on one of their ads and sign up for an awesome newsletter filled with travel deals! Thanks everyone!

Thanks!