In this installment, the documenteur’s patience continues to erode as Bootstuck introduces yet another baffling innovation: the Personal Walking Association (or “PWA”). According to the locals, it’s an organized fitness initiative led by a man named Uber who walks people around “places.” Membership numbers stretch into the millions, and no one seems entirely sure what it’s for — except that it involves walking, sometimes sideways, and occasionally into trees.

From there, the topic of physical fitness meanders into Bootstuck’s unique exercise regimen: jumping over ropes that don’t move, kettlebells that don’t ring, and Halloween celebrations that occur the night before the night before Halloween. The documenteur, valiantly trying to keep up, finds himself listening to debates about dinner bells that no longer “ding” and movie productions that exist only in poster form.

By the time the conversation veers into a hopeful plan to film an “action-packed romance mystery” in a town that no one can actually find, silence briefly descends—only for the Bootstuck air itself to begin cracking and popping, blamed alternately on weather, ice, or Dave Braun’s backside. The documenteur ends the tape no closer to understanding anything, except perhaps that silence in Bootstuck is never truly silent.

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The documenteur, once again hanging by a thread of patience, tries to have a reasonable conversation while the residents of Bootstuck crawl around town “looking for scraps” and debating the difference between beets and beats. What begins as small talk about sore knees quickly dissolves into confusion about dance parties, water suppliers named River, and the discovery of Bootstuck’s newest local celebrity — Waving Tony, a man whose entire existence revolves around the art of waving.

Tony waves at everyone and everything, sometimes so fast it’s unclear whether he has one arm or four. The documenteur’s attempts to understand him — or anything — are met with Bootstuck’s signature logic: “Even when he’s not waving, he’s still Waving Tony.”

The conversation somehow spins further into news of a new “travel show,” which involves blindfolding participants, spinning them around, and abandoning them somewhere in the woods — Bootstuck’s idea of tourism. Amidst the chaos, a revelation emerges at last: the Bootstuck crew let slip that they’re actually in Ontario, a fact that sends the weary documenteur into near disbelief. After twelve weeks of uncertainty, he finally gets a concrete answer… only for the phone cord to cut out immediately afterward.

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The documenteur once again attempts to establish a thread of logic in Bootstuck, only to be derailed immediately by talk of sleep aids — ranging from chamomile tea to the rather more concerning chloroform and carbon monoxide. Dave, it seems, has been missing for six weeks, but nobody’s alarmed; apparently, he was just “sleeping under a tree."

When pressed about education in Bootstuck, the locals reveal their belief that everyone simply “comes with the knowledge,” meaning there are no schools, just an ever-growing pool of collective half-knowledge. The documenteur, visibly exasperated, tries to pivot toward nighttime — only to be informed that Bootstuck “gets night at nighttime, when it’s most popular.”

As if things weren’t disorienting enough, the tape ends with an abrupt advertisement for “Fizz” — a fizzy drink available in flavors like “black and white” and “bird’s eye” — leaving both the documenteur and the listener wondering whether they’ve stumbled into Bootstuck’s commercial break or its collective hallucination.

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The recording begins with confusion over who’s actually speaking—Dave has stepped away to rescue yet another burned pot of porridge, leaving the conversation in the hands of Hat Guy. What follows is an increasingly unhelpful brainstorming session about Post-it notes. Dave has been scattering them across fields, hoping the mysterious “Dropbox guy” might deliver peanuts. Suggestions arise that maybe, instead of begging for legumes, they could use the notes to ask where they actually are. Caleb is promptly assigned to line up the stickies into a giant field-wide message.

From there, matters only worsen. The townsfolk proudly explain their method of bottling water in the well itself, forcing anyone thirsty to rappel forty feet down. A basket-and-rope system is dismissed outright as too complicated. The sheds of Bootstuck also come under discussion: there’s the “two by four” shed (literally two feet by four feet), the massive hangar-like shed, and, of course, the “shed shed”—a shed specifically designed to store other sheds, mostly to keep the squirrels out.

By the end of the tape, the documenteur audibly falters, questioning the point of it all. The patience that once carried him through tales of waving systems and porridge disasters is beginning to fray. Bootstuck, it seems, is not just an archive of absurdity—it’s a test of endurance.

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This tape drifts between nonsense poetry, snack offerings, and unexpected town updates, stitched together by interference and interruptions. It opens with a ramble about dandelions, wishes, and snow cones, before a voice insists on offering the interviewer a peanut butter sandwich through the radio. Things derail into complaints about “wave and Tony,” which is either a person, a product, or both, depending on when you tune in.

The chaos continues: Bootstuck now boasts a Gary Pointing System (GPS), where a man named Gary literally tells you which way to go. Dave is concussed from a Black Friday sale gone wrong. Jerry the man and Jerry the dog have been rebranded for clarity. Toilets are being formally christened as Jonathan. And Timmy has opened a donut shop specializing in sprinkle-covered “celebration balls.”

The tape closes on the town’s latest innovation — Even Waving Tony, a method for standardized greetings where no one waves too much or too little. It’s democracy, Bootstuck-style: chaotic, confusing, and covered in sprinkles.

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Another one from the Sudbury box that reads like half a weather report and half a late-night infomercial. It begins with someone solemnly tuned to the “hot chocolate channel,” explaining how to make your cocoa the exact temperature you desire — and, when it cools, how to rescue it with a scoop of something Bootstuck calls hotener. Caleb is dispatched to “boil up another pot” while the rest of the room debates whether a glass will do the job.

The day turns stranger fast. Background noise (a “ruffle kerfuffle”) and what sound like two old ladies trading barbs bleed into a description of the morning: the speaker claims the sky was on fire, the woods briefly glowing red, then the birds coming out and singing in a language no one else understands. Our narrator’s job is revealed—self-appointed weather tracker and jacket-adviser for a town where everyone owns one jacket, so his utility is, at best, ceremonial.

Food and ritual thread through the tape: gravy with optional hotener becomes breakfast, and the idea of sipping medicinalized beverages is treated as perfectly ordinary. The recording collapses into familiar Bootstuck chaos — insults, a demand to “kick my ass,” and someone yelling they have to make coffee and toast — leaving the listener less informed than when they started, but oddly hungry and a little warmer for it.

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Bootstuck begins the day with a greeting both dramatic and obvious: “Here I am. Look at my face eyes.” From there, the conversation turns lunar. The townsfolk celebrate the moon depending on its fullness—full moons get full howls, half moons get hoots, and cloudy nights simply mean supper. This tradition, naturally, comes from a wild dog.

Dinner is also a focus, thanks to the arrival of 72 cans of dinosaur soup. The red-sauced noodles shaped like brontosauruses and spiky dinosaurs quickly become the new staple, though the question remains whether a brontosaurus tastes different from, say, a camel-shaped cracker.

Between meals and moonlight, Bootstuck’s radios start pulling in mysterious commercials, including one particularly insistent ad for “Ributon” or maybe “Rabutol,” promising to cure tiredness with suspicious zeal. The cross-talk raises questions about whether they’re speaking to the outside world or just another misfired frequency.

Finally, the town hints at its next big ambition: “Building Bootstuck”—a television program to document their expansion, exposure, and maybe even notoriety. Press is press, after all, and in Bootstuck there’s no such thing as bad publicity.

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Spring stirs something in Bootstuck, and apparently that something is an ocean under construction. What began as a single hole, diligently filled with Caleb’s 17 buckets of water, has now become a civic engineering project—one bucket per week until the town achieves “ocean status.” Skeptics suggest it’s more of a pond, but optimism prevails.

In equally practical fashion, the locals have invented short pants by cutting long ones in half, rotating them daily so that nobody has to fully commit to shorts or trousers. “Pants is pants is pants,” after all.

A sudden burst of applause interrupts, revealing the town-wide enthusiasm for Sacky Mac, a game involving chasing down a man named Mac and trying to stuff him into a sack. Cheers are mandatory, orchids are breathed upon, and Elvis—always Elvis—sings, fights, dances, and, inevitably, falls in love.

From there, the conversation drifts into top hats (“aren’t they all top hats, since you wear them on top?”), mistaken identity (a man endlessly confused with someone named Ted), and Bootstuck’s laissez-faire approach to airport management—whoever’s around that day is in charge. No flights today, but by Saturday two “whirlybirds” are expected to arrive as part of their spring migration. These aren’t helicopters, mind you, but flap-flapping, squiggly-tailed creatures that apparently choose Bootstuck as a seasonal stopover.

The episode closes with the promise of contact—though whether with machines, birds, or simply more buckets of water, remains uncertain.

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