Being touched by The Northern Lights in Iceland

Our American Dream believer and resident financial wizard Leonard Raskin took a wintry winter vacation chasing lava, glaciers and The Northern Lights in Iceland. The aurora borealis never disappoints when the magic glow appears…

Nestor Aparicio discusses the Maryland crab cake tour, upcoming events, and the Ravens and Orioles’ recent news. Leonard Raskin shares his experience in Iceland, highlighting the Northern Lights, the Blue Lagoon, and the high cost of living. They discuss the significance of seeing the Northern Lights, the impact of Iceland’s volcanic eruptions, and the country’s tourism boom. The conversation shifts to sports, focusing on Alex Ovechkin’s pursuit of Wayne Gretzky’s goal-scoring record. They emphasize the importance of travel and experiencing new cultures, with Raskin advocating for making travel a priority.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Northern Lights, Iceland, travel, adventure, financial advisor, Baltimore, Maryland crab cake tour, Towson, Ravens, Orioles, Blue Lagoon, volcanic eruption, Reykjavik, Ovechkin, Gretzky.

SPEAKERS

Nestor Aparicio, Speaker 1, Leonard Raskin

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Nestor Aparicio  00:01

Welcome home. We are W N, S T, am 1570 Towson, Baltimore. We are Baltimore, positive, positively, getting the Maryland crab cake tour back out on the road. We’re going to be at the Charles village pub of Towson that C, V, P, Towson will be there on Friday. Hopefully the Towson Tigers will be there. You know, we’re taping this right before. You know championship style things are about to happen in the CAA, but either way, we’re gonna celebrate Towson. Have some Towson guests out. My buddy Chris Ford from the Towson torch is gonna be there as well. We will be at CVP one until four, until further notice. On Friday, next Friday, we’re gonna be at Pizza Johns and Essex. That is the 21st and then on the second of April, we return to faith. Leaves where we were last week giving out the magic eight ball scratch offs from the Maryland lottery while I was doing magic eight ball scratch offs, while the Ravens were signing Ronnie Stanley, while the Orioles were suffering more injuries to Grayson Rodriguez and Andrew Kittredge. You know, I don’t even know what else was even going on last week. We’re just, I have a new media kit and this really cool 26th anniversary thing we’re doing around here, and I’m trying to eat a crab cake and stay sane in the world of Trump Landia. But Leonard Raskin, our defending champion of all things money in the America dream, realized his American Dream by traveling over to Europe to see his son, who is studying abroad in Dublin, in Ireland. And they went to Iceland. And you know, you and I through this radio thing and knowing each other 2025 years and you being at Whiskey Joe’s, 24 years ago, now we’ve become, you know, financial advisor and this, and you’re on the show. We’re sponsored all that. But like the the Northern Lights came to me six months ago, and I distinctly remember you and I having a Northern Lights conversation, sir. And so I’m going to let you tell your story, because I got the northern lights in my backyard in October. I saw it in all its glory and grandeur. I said to my wife, it’s and I said to my financial advisor, who happens to be you, that saved me 10s of 1000s of dollars of chasing. I was going to go to Finland. I was going to get the glass igloo. I was going to freeze my ass off. I was going to do Alaska at the wrong time of the year to try to get underneath of all of it. You had you had an adventure? Did you not? You had

Leonard Raskin  02:19

an adventure. We did indeed. We went out little over a week ago and met the boy in Iceland for Kathy and I. It was a lovely five hour flight for him. It was two so

Nestor Aparicio  02:34

you didn’t even go into Europe proper. You just went to Iceland.

Leonard Raskin  02:36

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Just to Iceland. Oh, just Iceland. Okay, all right. Just flew to Iceland that’s

Nestor Aparicio  02:40

been through there a dozen times. When you land, it feels addiction, feels like you’re landing on the lunar surface. I mean, it’s a very unique, right, beautiful, but you usually land at five in the morning. Yes, you’re going to Europe. You land in in the morning, right? And then you get on the plane to Amsterdam, London. Bear, you know wherever you’re heading, you might exactly right. So that’s been my so we landed there 530

Leonard Raskin  03:04

in the morning, freezing cold, 50 mile an hour, winds about zero degrees. And this was Spring Break. Spring Break. It’s a lovely thing to do for spring break. So land, get to the hotel, didn’t I thought I was gonna fly away holding the suitcases. I thought they were gonna act as a sale, and I was gonna fly back,

Nestor Aparicio  03:28

dude. You read the Titanic thing, it’s sort of somewhere near there, and the future America of Greenland, but, but like, you’re in the beautiful of the northern Atlantic Ocean, Arctic Ocean and just getting, like whipsawed,

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Leonard Raskin  03:43

whipsawed wind, about an hour to the hotel. It’s real winter. There’s it’s real winter and and it is. If you are a conspiracy theorist of the we didn’t land on the moon variety, well, you are a Republican, go ahead. No, no. I’m talking about the we didn’t land on the moon, variety, conspiracy. I don’t know who. I know which way they voted, but go ahead, I don’t know. I don’t know who they are, but all I can tell you is, this is where they would have filmed it. It was, we were, we were hiking craters. We went into and hiked into a glacier, under the ice, when

Nestor Aparicio  04:22

you’re doing this, you went outside in Iceland in February, of

Leonard Raskin  04:26

course, of course. I had, I had hiking boots, I had ski pants, I had crampons, I had my ravens heavy coat. I had battery operated gloves, hat. I was out there. It was, it was magnificent. Was magnificent with the wife and boy, we any polar bears or anything. We didn’t see any polar bears. Saw reindeer, lots of reindeer, lots of sheep, lots of horses and and lots of snow and lots of ice, and really bizarre driving down the road. Dude, there’s a neighborhood there. It is a, I mean, it’s a full city. It’s an entire city, homes, businesses, they Reykjavik, sure. No, no, no. I’m talking about outside there, near, near the the famous Blue Lagoon. Okay, a city out near the Blue Lagoon that is completely abandoned. 2023, volcanic eruption took out the city. All the houses there are vacant. They were bought out by the government. The government said, we can’t protect you from the encroaching lava. And as you drive along the road through this city, the ground on either side of the road is smoldering. You can still see smoke coming up from the non cooled lava, yet it was the most bizarre occurrence I’ve ever seen in my life.

Nestor Aparicio  05:48

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What did Mark Twain say about traveling, making you, you know what? I mean, what? Whatever is the world, whatever the richness of all of that. It is an education,

Leonard Raskin  05:59

the likes of which you can’t get on TV or in a book. It is magnificent. See,

Nestor Aparicio  06:05

I did that on the South Side of New Zealand. I mean, I’ve been, yeah, right, but like the Iceland thing, I’ve been there a bunch. I had not until the last 10 years the Northern Lights didn’t become a thing for me. My friends were like going to World Series and going to the world doing things like that. And then once I experienced like the Great Wall of China and Asia and different languages, just you can’t imagine, and then different beaches and saying, What if Jamaica is this beautiful? How beautiful would Tahiti be? How beautiful a be? How beautiful would Bora, Bora be? So I tried to do all of that the Northern Lights. I wanted to say this for folks, it’s a thing. Don’t have it. You have to chase it. It doesn’t come to you unless it comes to fashion like it did. Yeah,

Leonard Raskin  06:50

it was amazing. I missed it. I was out of town. Didn’t see it.

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Nestor Aparicio  06:54

Okay? So give me your Northern Lights thing, like you’re a government collects money and has around people that collect money. Is was it a bucket list thing for you? Well, no, not particularly,

Leonard Raskin  07:04

but it was just something I wanted to do. Absolutely. Wanted to see it. We were in Alaska. Didn’t see it. When it happened here, I was out of town, didn’t see it. Saw it on everybody’s Facebook feed, didn’t see it and and when we were in Alaska last year, two years ago, the thing that struck me was, there were, there was, so there was this little gallery in a little town we visited that was kind of the town they modeled the show. Remember Northern Exposure? You told me this story. Yeah, they had beautiful on glass and on silver. This woman’s art of the Northern Lights, which was amazing. And I said to Kathy, I said, I’m not buying anything here, because I’ve never seen it, so I don’t know what peace would be like my mind of the Northern Lights, so I have to see it first. I’m not going back to Alaska to buy the art. I’ll tell you that. However, Wednesday night, we went out to dinner. We had a guide in in Iceland, we had a private guide, and we went out to dinner. And we have an app on the phone. I have an app on the phone, Aurora lights, and I think that’s what it’s called. Anyway. It sent us a text or an email that said, within the next x period of time given the the light of the sky and the clarity of the sky and whether or not there’s clouds, and it puts a probability on seeing it. And then you go out and drive around the country minute,

Nestor Aparicio  08:32

it’s a 30 minute forecast just, that’s right here. That’s right. I know a lot about this because I’m in northern lights

Leonard Raskin  08:38

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change. Well, this one, this one runs every 10 minutes. It’ll tell you in the next 10 minutes, you’re highly likely to see it and or not. So we get in the car after dinner, and we’re driving back to the hotel we stayed in, and you

Nestor Aparicio  08:53

don’t have to go anywhere special there, right? Like, no, you just drive here. If you were in Towson, you really would want to go north, away from the lights, right? You want to get away from light, if

Leonard Raskin  09:03

it ever exactly so. So you can’t have the light pollution of street lights and buildings and all that. It kind of dampens it. So we’re cruising along, coming back, and the most bizarre thing in the world, Nestor, I’ll tell you. So we’re driving along this two lane, one lane each way. What time is it? This is 1111, 30 at night.

Nestor Aparicio  09:22

When does? There’s not a lot of sunlight there this time of year, right? No, there’s plenty sunlight comes up at eight in the morning and such

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Leonard Raskin  09:30

the afternoon. Eight to six, we had a full day, full day, okay? But, but here’s the thing I may be thinking, side of the road has, I guess they’re maybe three, four feet tall every I want to call it, you know, 20 feet, 50 feet, I don’t know, reflectors on the side of the road. So our driver, our guide, there’s not a lot of cars out here. This is not Towson, okay. This is country, way out in the country. He turns the light. Off on the car and is driving by the moonlight, hitting these reflectors, driving down the road to see the Northern Lights. Because if your headlights are on and you got the bright lights on because you’re driving, you tend not to see it too well. So he’s trying to find him, and he turns the headlights off, and he’s only going like 10 miles an hour, but he’s still driving and going around curves by the reflectors on the road, very bizarre feeling, not being in control of the car. And then I’m sitting on the behind the driver, Matthew’s in the front, Kathy’s next to me in the back, and I say, Look to your left, and I see this cloud that shouldn’t be there. And he pulls off the side of the road, and we get out of the car, and it was there. And it was about a half an hour, 20 minutes, half an hour, maybe a little more of the most amazing dancing cloud features of There you go, blue, green, not blue. I’m sorry, green, purple, yellow, white, red, exactly. I mean, it was phenomenal. Well, the crazy

Nestor Aparicio  11:11

part is you can see the stars through it. Oh so clean. This looks like, like, like a screen saver.

Leonard Raskin  11:20

It does. It doesn’t look like that could be real, and yet, here they are. I sent you the pictures because I know you would, you would enjoy the fact that we found them.

Nestor Aparicio  11:30

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You said it to me the minute it happened, like the other thing, the other to me, it’s 7:43pm and I knew it was after midnight there, and I’m like, late watching the Northern Lights, right?

Leonard Raskin  11:43

Five hours difference there. So I took, we took these pictures. Were outside, and I got back to that. We got back to the hotel, and we settled in at the hotel. Get out of the car. You just like, Stop, oh yeah, stop on the side of the road. Get out of the car and

Nestor Aparicio  11:57

take pictures. And there’s no cars passing. There’s nothing. It’s just occasionally there’s a truck goes by the middle of the night. Did you stay out there to watch the Northern Lights dance about half hour 40 minutes, and did you get back in the car when they were still dancing? Or did you wait for them to end or

Leonard Raskin  12:15

they were just about subsided? So

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Nestor Aparicio  12:19

it’s a 30 to 40 minute dance. Yeah? Earthquake, no.

Leonard Raskin  12:23

It is unbelievable. Both sides of the road in front of us, over us to the right, to the left and back of us, 50 pictures. It’s

Nestor Aparicio  12:33

so what? You’re a man of money. What was that worth to you as an experience,

Leonard Raskin  12:37

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the entire cost of the trip, the whole trip, I mean, we, whatever we spent for the trip was, was irrelevant as to the experience. A, to have it. B, to have it with family, you know, have Matthew see it, and to be able to share that memory for the rest of our lives. I’ll

Nestor Aparicio  12:55

never forget when I’m sitting here and my wife and I were watching a playoff baseball game, yeah. And I knew it was, you know, possible that it was crazy, that it would be, we’re gonna drive, we were gonna drive to Westminster and go north right, thinking there’s no city there, Harrisburg here,

Leonard Raskin  13:13

and it’s right, when it’s bright, it takes over, yeah. I mean, it’s just, you could be anywhere. Here’s the other thing that I’ve heard. The other thing that I’ve heard, sometimes you can see the colors and the dancing and the moving with the naked eye. Sometimes your eye can’t, but your camera can, your phone can. Now, when it was here in Baltimore, were you able to see it without the camera, 100% Yeah, yeah. So. So the first time we saw it, it was just like a cloud riff. And without the phone, it was just white. But the second time, when we saw it and got out of the car and spent the 40 minutes the green and the purple, without the phone, it was right there, and you see it dancing and moving. It’s hard to catch on video.

Nestor Aparicio  14:08

On my video had a problem with the lighting, so I adjusted it right, and once I adjusted it, it was unbelievable. I do have some incredible video, but I’ll say this for us. My moment happened at 10 after seven on my Facebook page, because I said we were literally getting a cooler for drinks because we started showing it. We had flown to Spokane last year on a day’s notice to try to chase it, and it’s a really hard thing to chase, and we had points, and we’re kind of bored of this Saturday night, so we did it on a total lark, like beach. We did it and we didn’t get it, and then it happened here. But when it happened, I saw a picture from someone I know on right Linda. Linda said it’s in Towson, right now, Yep, yeah. And I’m like, let’s get in the car. Let’s do. Something. And I walked at the door without a jacket on, and it was

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Leonard Raskin  15:02

your place, your place you got, yeah, I

Nestor Aparicio  15:05

walked out, and I looked up, yep, and I saw it. And I opened my phone, and I turned my phone on, and I saw with my eye. And then I said it was definitely more on my phone, for sure. Oh, yeah, sure. Because, like, all I could say when I opened the video was holy, you know, like, yeah,

Leonard Raskin  15:23

was it, you know? So we, we, we did that. It was absolutely brilliant. It was phenomenal. The next morning, our guy, not the next morning, two, two days later, at another stop on our trip, our guide was talking to another gentleman, another guide, with with a couple that had been there for days, a number of days, that didn’t see it. They didn’t get there in time, and they didn’t see it when it was there. So they went to Iceland, and part of their trip was they literally were driving around, hunting it in the evenings, and they spent three days and however much money they spent, and nothing, and that’s what happens. It’s, it’s just a rare when it comes, not rare, but when it comes, it comes, and you gotta be there. You gotta catch it. So we did, and then we, we did a a Jeep Tour, which wasn’t really a jeep, it was a nine, no, not a 19, sorry, a 2005 Ford excursion, big old SUV with 40 inch tires that they drain the air out of and took us through rivers and over lava flows and through a foot of snow, six inches to a foot of Snow, and some of the most amazing, breathtaking scenery that I’ve ever experienced from a winter scape in my life, like you a lot of vacations, Australia, New Zealand, the islands, Hawaii, you know, beautiful places where it’s warm, yeah, and the beach and the cold drinks. Here we’re in glaciers. We were in caves. We were on ice flows, Glacier flows, and the drink of choice was hot chocolate with a little Baileys after getting back into a place where one could unzip the coat and not freeze to death. Well,

Nestor Aparicio  17:21

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one of the reasons I’ve ever gotten out of the car is really cold in Iceland, because it’s expensive. Like, yes, you know, like, Reykjavik is one of the most expensive places on

Leonard Raskin  17:32

earth ever you have to import just about everything.

Nestor Aparicio  17:34

So give, give me an example of going to get a cheeseburger and a beer and some french fries in downtown Reykjavik. Are we talking 40 bucks? What are we talking here? You

Leonard Raskin  17:45

know, I I don’t want to sound like an idiot, but we had a lot of it included in the trip. But let’s say this, we went out for a meal for four. We had a meal for four. That was, it’s called langoustine. Have you ever had langoustine? It’s like lobster. It’s like a mini lobster. It’s a mini little lobster that they eat, sort of like a crayfish, but not exactly. But we went to a langoustine boil, which was langoustine and baked potatoes and some crema langoustine soup, which I was going to say potatoes were going to be involved in Iceland. I knew potatoes, potatoes and langoustines and langoustine soup dinner for four was about $500 There you go. So it ain’t, it ain’t a cheap place to hang out. Yeah, this was not a five star restaurant. The food was five star. The food was phenomenal. You should have spent a lot more, right? Exactly. Oh yeah, this was not a high end place. This

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Nestor Aparicio  18:39

is the thing for me with Iceland is, like, they do everything they can do it. And Iceland, I partnered with Iceland there 25 years ago. We gave away a trip. I had a trip that I had that I never used, and I gave to Kevin Eck a million years ago with his wife to go over and enjoy this. But I’ve been through the Reykjavik, Keflavik airport. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, I bet I have a dozen passport stamps going through there to Scandinavia, somewhere else, sure, you know. And I landed there, and I’ve been in the three hours, like grabbing some food, you know. And it’s not like, expensive airport or whatever, no, no, um, but it. But I just know that if I stay there two days, it’s going to be way more expensive than anywhere I’ve reached

Leonard Raskin  19:23

in one of the things the guys, which was, which was very interesting, if you remember back, 2010 that was the last massive volcano eruption, and it It shut down European airspace for about a week because of the Sure, yeah. So what happens is this, the volcano is under the glacier, and when it blows that cold and that heat hit, and the smoke and the ash blow up in the atmosphere and travel, and they were afraid that you. If it gets in the engine of a jet, it clogs that engine, and down goes that plane. It doesn’t work well with that because it’s cold and it compresses in the engine, screws all the stuff up. But what the guy said was, which is really funny, was that was an amazing commercial for tourism for Iceland, because everybody’s like, What the hell is this little island country screwing up all the European travel? And so they, they like, didn’t come on the map, but they, they basically became this whole thing.

Nestor Aparicio  20:32

And they also had a soccer team. Went on a run a couple years. They

Leonard Raskin  20:35

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did, they did that didn’t hurt. And the, I think it was Brooke Shields, a little movie called Blue Lagoon, which didn’t hurt. Well, they

Nestor Aparicio  20:44

they stole that, but, yes, the Blue Lagoon was like an island, yeah, yes,

Leonard Raskin  20:48

but it was, but it’s Iceland. It’s in Iceland. And we did a few hours there, and that was an amazing experience. Floating outside.

Nestor Aparicio  20:58

Looks cheesy to me. When I didn’t video from there. I didn’t really dig it,

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Leonard Raskin  21:02

dude, it is an outside

Nestor Aparicio  21:04

I know people that love it. I know people that it like the Blue Lagoon thing. It is, is there outstanding?

Leonard Raskin  21:10

Yeah, it’s outside, and it’s, I don’t know, 2530 degrees. It’s not,

Nestor Aparicio  21:17

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I know, like, like 10 minutes. You could do it. You could do a day trip over, yeah, you do a day trip. You could say, I’m going to take the 7pm flight over to London and spend the day just blue lagooning and 600 bucks just doing that. And, you know, like a plane, yeah, yeah, I’d love to do that for you. So

Leonard Raskin  21:36

a couple drinks, uh, nice, nice hot water, silica bath and what looks like blue milk, a nice massage, the water in the water laying on like a beach, like a pool, float, not

Nestor Aparicio  21:53

a Justin Tucker thing, right? Just a regular

Leonard Raskin  21:56

No, no, no, no happy ending massage. No. No hopeful happy, heading massage, all right, but, but I imagine Ronnie Stanley could afford to go.

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Nestor Aparicio  22:05

Leonard Raskin is here, just edging Ronnie Stanley’s money at this as well as his own. He is Raskin global. We usually get together and talk about Alex aveshkin or talk about Ronnie. Talk about David rivers. By the way, I’m going to use my passport two weeks from now. Luke and I are going up to Canada for Okay, so we’re going to

Speaker 1  22:26

be there. So I, you know, I kind of, is getting, is getting going to be there? I got, I hope I

Nestor Aparicio  22:31

had Rick Emmett from triumph on the show this week. So he has a new book coming in. He’s a big baseball guy too, so we talk some blue jays. But yeah, I’m hoping get, he’s got this 72 baseball stories, right? So I’m really looking forward to that, but to get him while you’re out there, thing, I want to throw this at you, because Brian Adams, yeah, I’m a Brian Adams guy. He’s playing a show in Reykjavik in about six weeks, and I was, like, trying to rope myself into, like, figuring out a way to stop over and finally, finally, going into Reykjavik for a night, because I don’t want to do four days in Reykjavik. I don’t want to do it overnight in Reykjavik in three do

Leonard Raskin  23:05

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it overnight. Look, you don’t need a five star hotel. There’s lots of places there. Oh,

Nestor Aparicio  23:10

I know everything looks like Ikea there. I But, you know, I’ve flown over Iceland enough, it’s got the Navy. I love everything about that part of the world. I love the people. They all speak English. They’re all nice. They’re

Leonard Raskin  23:21

amazing. Link their language. The English is phenomenal. Their knowledge of of our culture and theirs. I mean, the military was there for years and years and years. They understand Americans. They understand English very well. The boy is potentially going to do a year of school over there. I can’t imagine a more lovely place. It is fantastic. While every night is he there in April, mid April, so it should be a little nicer. Should be a little was also

Nestor Aparicio  23:49

playing the Faroe Islands, and I was going to do that, which is a little bit harder to like, get to, as the nation said, I don’t think I’m doing any of it, because I just like, you know, the European Union last week prepared its people for war. So

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Leonard Raskin  24:05

that’s nonsense. Well, Putin’s got nonsense. Oh, well, well, you know, he could be a crazy guy. Yeah, we shouldn’t really be on his side, but that will say that we can do crazy things. Yeah, that’s another conversation. Yeah, for you with another goal, another day, another week, four more goals last week. Now that

Nestor Aparicio  24:21

you got the Northern Lights last week, are you going to chase a veteran next week?

Leonard Raskin  24:24

I got to chase the winning goal. Goal. 868, what is it? 885, you know what? They’re not going

Nestor Aparicio  24:31

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to let him do this on the road, right, like Leo. Just

Leonard Raskin  24:36

no choice, no choice. He’s going to do it where he does it. They gotta play. They gotta play first place recently, right? They did, but they just won last two, and they’re in first place in the in the league. They’re playing for the for the cup this year. And it’s really weird, if you think about it, not often, although it obviously happens, but not often, as a guy or an athlete going for a record of this. Magnitude with the team playing as well as they’re playing at the same time, because the focus gets lost, but they’re

Nestor Aparicio  25:07

not 2131 year. People don’t remember because it was 30 years ago, but they stunk. They weren’t right. Pete Rose was chasing hit records when he’s an expo and, yeah, you know, I almost went to see Tony gwynn’s big hit. He got his 3,000th hit in Montreal, and there was, you know, 1400 people there, right? You know, right? So, like you look back on some of these seminal moments when you happen, but

Leonard Raskin  25:31

this is going to be, this is going to be huge. The big thing now that we’re that the world is trying, the local world, the sports world is trying to figure out who’s going to be broadcasting the game, yeah, because Laughlin is the national wants it, of course, and what I think is they can have it. I really don’t care, but they can’t exclusive out the local. They can’t say, you can’t show it that way. If they want to do two broadcasts, great, let them do two broadcasts. I think sponsors may have something to say about I know, I know. I think it’s just, it would be horrible if the local guys can’t catch broadcast that game. You

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Nestor Aparicio  26:07

know, hockey is so personal, right? Absolutely being a fan of it, yeah. And I feel that way about hockey. I’ve had hockey in my life, my whole life. Yeah, for better word, it’d be

Leonard Raskin  26:16

amazing. It’s going to be amazing. I mean, and then here’s the thing, the guys got 33 goals, 34 goals this year. He’s just hit 1600 points, goals and assists in a career, and he’s chasing this goal record at 39 years old. That’s the most amazing part. If you look at Gretzky’s record, when he got it, the bulk of it. I mean, he added a couple goals here and there, but late in his career, he didn’t do anything. He didn’t score a lot. He was

Nestor Aparicio  26:49

a St Louis blue and in the Ranger, he forget a few goals, a few

Leonard Raskin  26:53

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goals a season, here and there to I don’t want to he did not pad the number. He just kept playing and he scored, well,

Nestor Aparicio  27:00

Mexicans not padding the number the way an old quarterback may get my point, lousy team, right? That’s

Leonard Raskin  27:05

my point. He is scoring like he’s relevant goals, right? Relevant? I think he’s third or fourth in the league at 39 years old in goal scoring right now, it’s ridiculous. And and he’s still hitting people. The guy still running into people on the ice, if you tally up the number of hits he has, and you look at his hits, nobody that scores goals half as many as him has as many hits as he does. Well, one

Nestor Aparicio  27:37

of the things that’s interesting from, I’m 56 now, and I feel like I’ve seen it all from the, you know, the late 60s. And even the lore of the 50s of Johnny Unitas and great players were Mickey Mantle and, you know, Willie Mays and Hank Aaron like that, that era of player, will Chamberlain, Bill Russell, I have appreciate Big O, you know, I have appreciation for great players. And it’s, this is all I’ve ever done for a living. Is about sports for 40 years. Yeah, I saw Gretzky in his prime, covered him in a time, was at his locker next. No one’s better, no one. I’m a Gretzky guy. I saw Jordan in his prime, then not in his prime. I mean, I was courtside when he’s a bull at the Chicago State and then a wizard. I experienced Kareem magic, Larry Bird at the end, Dr J at the end of the end active. I was at his locker, Barkley in his prime, like all these great players, and in those sports, you can give the Wilton and to the next to Dr J, to Larry Bird, to magic, to Jordan, to LeBron, right, like and you can make arguments about all of those players and all the next level down of really, really David Robinsons, and pick any tequila news, any of those players that you think are great players. Hockey has really bretsky Love you. And then you have the old Gordie Howe and, yeah, yeah, Bjorn Holland, like that. But there’s really great. There’s no one arguing Gretzky, no, there’s no one arguing Lemieux, if we’re Mount rushmoreing. And then there’s Ovechkin in this mix. Yeah, now has come on. And the Ovechkin parts amazing because you were around when the capitals were 871, and that’s right, in 1974 I remember Maru and Gardner, and I mean, the things that were so disrespectful as to why I don’t go to their games, and haven’t been to a game in eight years since I walked off the ice Stanley Cup champion with the party I’m like, after that, and the way that Kid Zach Leon just spoke to me in Baltimore, loving that team and loving that franchise, and like, how much of my life was spent around hockey? Yeah, this time a year that I’ve just over the last eight years I’ve just graduated, it’s just like, I don’t, right? I don’t do it anymore. I don’t spend time with it anymore, right? I love hockey. Loved all of it. It does what Ovechkin has done and what it’s meant here. And in regard to it being 40 miles away, and you having been to 100 games to see Ovechkin play, dude, I’ve seen Ovechkin play 100 times. Oh, I’ve seen him at least, at least so, like, I I’ve seen him fit. I mean, I’ve seen all the playoff games playing Toronto, Tampa. I mean, I’ve been in the locker room. He’s had, he’s grabbed a cup from me the night he left the party. He took the cup from Me. He literally, the cup was here. He walked out with his sandals in the ball cap, and went to tea with him, right? So, like, I mean, like, I am a I’m I’m that guy. I got video of it. So, like, I, what Ovechkin has done is I, like, we’re about to get to the point where, like, the white people had to do this in 1974 to say Aaron really passed Babe Ruth. I know, like, the Babe Ruth thing and all right, but it’s Aaron, and we haven’t gotten there with bonds on the home run thing, right? I don’t know that anybody’s ever gonna hit 57 games in a row for DiMaggio, and he ain’t here to hand it over, right? But like I when you start to talk about the grade of the grades, there will always be a LeBron Michael Jordan debate, sure, sure. And nobody’s wrong, nobody’s right. That’s right. Like timing hockey, even Lemieux would say Gretzky, you know, I mean, absolutely no, I don’t know, but he’s Lemieux and Gretzky get together. They both might have to say Ovechkin. They both might have,

8

Leonard Raskin  31:32

yeah, well, all around, all around, player, a hitter, endurance, goals, assists at a time when different than their world, the game is played differently. The guys are bigger, the goalies are bigger, and their equipment is massively bigger. Guy used to use a first baseman Smith to catch the buck and pads that barely covered his knees. Now these guys stand up. It’s like the Michelin man there trying to get a goal by these guys. You don’t see 100 goal scorers. You barely see 100 point getters in a season. The world and during his 20 years, the game has been revolutionized. And yet there he is, 39 years old, 33 goals, 1600 points just reached. More goalies scored against than anybody in history. It’s just ridiculous, and he just keeps on playing. And soon, to the chagrin of many, the Russian beast, the Russian machine, will break the great Gretzky’s goal scoring record. And in all likelihood, it’ll happen before the end of the season in the next you know, 20 days, 30 days,

Nestor Aparicio  32:53

Leonard Raskin is here. He is there at Raskin global managing money, managing the American dream and the Icelandic dream and the International dream of do it, the northern travel.

Leonard Raskin  33:03

Travel is education. You just don’t get anywhere else. Travel is a thing that sparks the mind. And everybody should do. I don’t care what’s on your bucket list. If you have that one place. I don’t care if it’s Disney World, Iceland, Alaska, Hawaii. Do it. You know, we’re only here for a limited time on this earth. Make it happen. That’s

Nestor Aparicio  33:23

a rush song. That’s a rush. You know, we’re only immortal for a limited time. Absolutely, we are young. There you go, uh, wandering the face of the earth, uh, wondering what our dreams would be worth learning that we’re only immortal for a limited time. There you go, amen. Uh, hey, for Canada, by the way, I was told by Rick Emmett that if I wear this hat, I might get better. I might do better in Canada when I’m there for the two or three days there, I think the oils, even though it’s red, even though it’s red, do they like Red Hats? They like Red Hat with Canada the maple leaf they like. There you go. There you go. No, I had Rick Emmett on the show this week. We’re talking some baseball opening days. Two weeks away, Luke and I are talking free agency. I’ve had John Palumbo on this week. We’ve done a lot on climate change. This week, there’s a big symposium at Loyola this week that I did a segment on that. So all of our work is up at Baltimore positive. You can find Leonard Raskin up there, and our friends at Raskin global. Get out travel, see the Northern Lights. Stay warm and get ready for baseball. I am Nestor. We are W, N, S D. Am 1570 Towson, Baltimore, we never stopped talking Baltimore. Positive you.