Episode 215 - Bon bon voyage

— open the full-size cover

HostsMelissa Erbacher Scott Trickett

Show notes

From the Facebook post

Merry Christmas Eve parkrun adventurers!

We have an early Christmas gift for you: Episode 215 is HERE!

We have an old fave back to co-host with Mel for her last episode and plenty of dodgy bon bon jokes to tickle your festive fancies.

We'll save it for a later post to do all the thank yous and get sad and mushy about Mel leaving. For now, we'll simply say danke schön! And you can find said dodgy bon bon jokes here

From the podcast feed

The original parkrun adventurers team recap International Ugly Christmas Singlet or Shirt Day, open a time capsule and share some festive jokes. And Mel says goodbye after 5 years of adventuring.

In this episode

• Welcome starts at 0:18

  Christmas episode: Melissa Erbacher's final episode, with original co-host Scott Trickett back for one show only, the two reminiscing briefly about starting the podcast more than five years ago before handing over to Melissa Ellis and Ollie Spake. Neither did a parkrun this week: Mel stayed home with a sick household and a lurgy of her own, and Scotty still has no parkrun to go to, with hope of one on the horizon next year. Christmas bonbons and dad jokes promised.

• International Ugly Christmas Singlet Day starts at 6:29

  Scott and Mel recap the 2020 running of the day, which Mel created and designs the singlet for. Scott had no parkrun to go to but ran 5K with about 20 friends on a prospective new Melbourne course; Mel counts his group as the largest "tinsel" of 2020 at 15 people. Mel could not take part (illness in the house) so photographed herself and her boys Wes and Emmett in the backyard instead; her husband Adam has declined a singlet three years running. They argue over whether 2019 (koala hugging a pineapple) or 2020 (rainbow, emu, Christmas bells) is uglier, note the day is now being copied by other running groups, and Mel confirms she will keep designing the singlet after leaving the podcast. Scott tells a story about trying to enforce COVID track rules at his athletics club while wearing the singlet. Full name used on air this year is "International Ugly Christmas Singlet or Shirt Day".

• Dad joke starts at 21:15

  Scott's dad jokes run through the episode rather than sitting in one block: "What's blue and doesn't weigh very much? Light blue", the lost-penguin-with-no-ears extension, "you've heard of Murphy's Law, but have you heard of Cole's Law? It's just thinly sliced cabbage", and the Star Wars one ("why don't the Jedi take off their shirts to greet each other? Because only a Sith deals in absolutes"). Mel notes that Scott sending her dad jokes at inappropriate moments is one of the things she will miss most.

• The Channel 5 News crew starts at 21:58

  Pre-recorded Christmas greetings and bonbon/cracker jokes sent in by the crew, played back-to-back: an unidentified member ("tinselitis"), Ollie Spake with his children Zali and Ava, PK checking in from South Australia (who also reminisces about PALM 2020 at Mount Barker), Mark reporting in "from Wagyu Bridge", TOC, one unattributed dog/delighted joke, Greta with her two "little elves", and two further unidentified contributors. Scott back-announces admitting neither host had heard any of the jokes before recording. Melissa Erbacher thanks the whole crew by name, "Cam, Dave, Gary, Greta, Lyndell, Mark, Melissa, Ollie, PK and TOC [TOC]", crediting them not just as roving reporters but as the rotating co-hosts who filled the vacant seat for the past year.

• Christmas bonbon jokes starts at 28:55

  The hosts crack real Christmas bonbons on mic and read the jokes inside. Mel opens two (both containing mini Rubik's cubes, one containing a lollipop that has liquefied) and reads "What do you call a penguin in the Sahara Desert? Lost" and "Where do snowmen go to dance? To a snowball". The episode title "Bon bon voyage" is built on this bit. Mel notes the jokes are always repeats and that Scott should take up writing them professionally.

• parkrun adventurers time capsule starts at 33:01crystal ball predictions

  A segment Scott invents for this episode, riffing on all the segments they started over the years that "petered out", this one, he says, cannot peter out because it will never run again. He asks Mel where parkrun will be in two years: she predicts parkrun Switzerland, parkrun Fiji and parkrun on the International Space Station, and makes a case for not excluding astronauts. Scott predicts around 500 Australian events, an event in Alice Springs, and above all that parkrun will be recognised as a social intervention rather than a physical one, "a social group with a running problem". Mel corrects him that this is a crystal ball rather than a time capsule; they settle on "the parkrun adventurers Crystal Ball" and hand the job of opening it to Mel and Ollie in two years.

• Sign-off starts at 1:00:42

  Scott asked whether a complete 60 minutes of nonsense and bonbon jokes was a fitting swan song for Mel's career as a parkrun adventurers co-host, and she said they had always winged it, never planned or scripted, and that this was the raw natural them. Mel thanked him for joining her for the last episode and for bookending the podcast with her, which Scott called an absolute honour, and after he said his goodbye - 'see you, everyone, it's great to be back, you may never hear from me again' - she thanked everyone for tuning in and closed with the two words she had chosen from a book she reads to Wes: 'go adventurously'.