Future Ted (Bob Saget) describes to his children a day near the beginning of his struggling solo architecture career, where a set of circumstances began his journey to meet their mother.
Ted takes a job from a chain restaurant company to design a building shaped like a Stetson hat.
He agrees to go out for a bagel, and Robin tells him to take an umbrella because her station's clown weatherman said it would rain.
Ted stops at the newsstand to check out the bodybuilding magazine Muscle Sexxy that Barney's number 200 is featured in.
This leads into Marshall's addiction to the charts that the GNB graphics department make up for him, including a list of presidents' last names by order of innuendo (complete with a "Filmore" misspelling), a Venn diagram based on Simon and Garfunkel's "Cecilia".
After the intervention, Marshall discovers the gang threw away all his charts, including the ones necessary for an important meeting on tax shelters.
[1] The episode features series regulars Josh Radnor as Ted Mosby, Jason Segel as Marshall Eriksen, Neil Patrick Harris as Barney Stinson, and Cobie Smulders as Robin Scherbatsky.
[2] Writer Chris Harris used to work on Late Show with David Letterman alongside the creators of How I Met Your Mother Craig Thomas and Carter Bays.