Hello, friends, and welcome to the Bikes for Death podcast. As always, my name is Patrick,

and I am your host. And before we kick off today's episode, I would like to do something

a little different. I'd like to tell you a story, and it's about me. And I hope that it adds

just some context to me and what I'm doing behind a freaking microphone

talking to Lail and Sophie on and everybody else, really. The last episode that I released

with Lail and Rue got a lot of attention. I was expecting it to get attention. I just wasn't

quite ready for the amount of attention that it got. And with that, I'm sure that I have a lot of

new listeners and people who have no idea who I am or why I'm here. And so I thought it might

be worth just introducing myself real quick. I'd like to

introduce myself by telling you about my friend Brian. So many of you will know that my day job is a

real estate agent. I have to work a real job so that I can afford the luxury of hosting a podcast.

But that's another story.

So Brian was a client of mine probably started eight years ago.

I sold him his first property.

And he is the quintessential Texas redneck. He looks

like he works outside all day. He does work outside all day. He drives a big truck. He talks

like a redneck. He acts like a redneck. But Brian and I, despite our maybe outward differences, became very good friends.

See, the thing about Brian is that you would never know by looking at him, but he comes from a really troubled background with his family. His brother is in prison.

Sister has problems. Family is, anyway, I won't go into his whole personal history. But he came

from a hard life, and he at that time in our friendship had been struggling with crippling anxiety for many, many, many years.

And it was to the point that he was at many different times considering suicide because even though, you know, he was trying

everything. He was trying good drugs, bad drugs, alcohol, no alcohol, exercising, going to

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