How did I end up at a ghost town dope deal?

you're going to a drug deal in a ghost town like is this an episode of scooby-doo [Music] [Applause] [Music] i've been riding motorcycles for pretty much all of my life and i've had many of them i believe i own nine of them right now but there's one that's been the most special of all those and this is the one that i had a lot of adventures on now the bike in question was a 1998 honda shadow arrow now i had a previous honda shadow to this one that was my college motorcycle and i abused this thing to within an inch of his life it just kept coming back for more so when i finally killed it drag racing it cracked the head did not hesitate to go buy another one this particular model was beautiful had white walls big balance fenders had a single pin crank in it which gave it a very lopey engine this was the motorcycle that harley davidson sued honda over over the sound of the bike but i love this thing and i wrote it i put almost 150 000 miles on this bike so those first few miles however were a bit problematic i had done one of my earlier cross-country trips on it uh there is something about the pacific ocean that just scares the hell out of a lot of my vehicles i've had three different vehicles over the years when i pulled up to the pacific ocean something went wrong similar thing to this bike i had been through san francisco went up the pacific coast highway a little bit got to that first big vista pulled up to the cliff and the entire electrical system just went but you know people northern california very friendly um you know i was able to push it down the hill get it started got it to a walmart went inside got a few i carried a pretty good tool kit but got a few other things i needed and you know proceeded to work on it through most evening this bike just has this sort of good karma bad karma sour and sweet sort of thing i had gone out there with a group of fellas on bikes i didn't really know these guys too well and i should have known them better because as soon as my bike broke they pretty much just ditched me they they claimed we were all going to meet back at the campsite that night but you know they want to go see the sights and they were the only thing they could do to help me fix the bike and i'm pretty good mechanic so i had it handled so they take off we're all going to meet back to campsite and i spend the rest of the evening working on this bike in this parking lot and uh i go somewhere up around like ukiah or somewhere up northern california and again just delightful people up there um the manager stuck around left the parking lights on for me the whole time i was in there working as people shoppers had gone in and out people would stop hey you need a trailer hey you need a park you need a driveway to work in you can camp in my front yard my brother's got a bike shop i mean just people just offering help offering places to stay really delightful folks i got the bike running enough to get it on the road made it to the campsite we're all supposed to meet at these guys are nowhere to be found so you know this is i don't know 2000 2001. you know we got cell phones but it's still a little digital you know old-school things so i start calling numbers nobody answers like five dudes somebody's got their phone on and again i'm a personable guy we didn't have any sort of beef or anything like that but they're just gone and now i'm worried about them i'm thinking like man maybe somebody got in a crash maybe something happened maybe they're out of range or something so i'm worried about these guys so you know gets late into the night i got a room for a couple hours get up first thing in the morning still calling can't get these guys on the phone uh my wife's with me and she's like you know you think they're avoiding us and i was like well i don't think so it really started out as a trip where everybody brought your girlfriend brought your wife but then all the other girls had dropped out and it was just me with the girl and then my bike broke and they were pretty eager they were going to meet up with some girls they had contacted so it seemed like a possibility so they're ignoring my cell phone so i went to a pay phone that's back when payphone's still around and i've called them from a pay phone when i'm answered right away so hey what's going on you know you guys weren't at the campsite last night they're like oh well we thought you were gonna ride back to georgia i'm like really that's a you know we're 3 000 miles from home and my bike broke you think i'm just going to ride back to georgia and they're like well we've already taken off on our part of the trip we're going to meet these girls and we got to go so we'll see you back in athens all right see this is gonna be the big problem is they had some of my stuff because after my bike broke you know my wife at the time was the er nurse so we had the first aid kit and i had the biggest bike so i had the tool kit i had the first aid kit and stuff like that so i had i think they had taken my camp stove they had the first day taking all the extra stuff off the bike to kind of lessen the weight up so i had less to push or work with whatever i was like well i want my stuff back so i'd gotten the bike running again but i'm looking at a map and i knew where they were going and i could see this spot out in the desert where the range of their bikes there was no way they were gonna not have to stop for gas in this one little town i'm at the very top of california they're at the very very southern tip of california but i know they got to stop for gas and guessing they're going to go down the coast here and there so i set off and i did my own personal cannonball i rode the length of california non-stop as fast as i could possibly go got to that one gas station and sure enough i hadn't been there an hour and they come rolling in and there i am sitting at the gas pump so they're on their way to vegas and you know i get my stuff back but the bike is is hanging by thread and as ticked off as i am at these guys i'm thinking you know i am out here in the middle of nowhere and i could tell they felt kind of bad like i think they were just excited to meet these girls and they felt like i was going to kind of dampen the party and i could tell they felt a little bad so they said look we'll all ride together get to vegas make sure your bike gets there without dying because we were going to go across death valley and you know again it's death valley cell phones early days of cell phones funnels don't work like it's not a great place to get stranded so i'm all right look we'll all stick together so begrudgingly we all get back on the road in our little motorcade and we take off and we're crossing death valley and we stopped at this little town out in the middle of death valley it's called stovepipe wells it's where the hottest temperature on earth was recorded at some point we stopped and you know just taking a water break and and if you've ever ridden a motorcycle through that kind of desert heat it's i think this is like around the fourth of july even the early middle summer just as hot as it could be it was 122 degrees in the shade my boots are sticking to the pavement when i was riding you know i had this leather jacket with all these vents and things on it you'd think that you know open all the vents up get enough air flowing would help but it's actually hotter to have the air blowing on you it's like somebody holding a hair dryer in your face and making it hot so i had my fleece jacket on my winter gloves i had tape around i was i'd gone from ventilation to oven mitt like it was so hot i was trying to insulate myself from the heat i finally understand why those guys in the middle east you see with the big heavy wool robes on out in the desert and you think oh my god aren't you guys burning to death you're actually more comfortable i would have put on a down parka and been more comfortable than i was without air blowing on me we stopped for some water you know of course you're just sweating it all out we'll just drink as much water as we can and as i'm waiting on the bike fiddling around with the thing i'd had to fix two of the guys in our group were talking to this other i say a couple this guy pulls in on a very custom motorcycle you know it's bright yellow big chopper it's got all this crazy kind of native american feathers and things dream catchers painted on and he is a native american fella uh very cheesy though he just kind of looked like a caricature almost you know he had this you know sleeveless denim shirt with his shoulders all conveniently frayed and it's all acid washed and the acid washed jeans and all this jewelry and the wraparound sunglasses like he just looked like an extra off a renegade or something yeah he was just very very gaudy cheesy guy but on the back of his motorcycle of his chopper he had this tiny little maybe pakistani kind of southern asian guy on the back of his bike and that guy just had like a duffel bag with him these these two did not go together at all some of the guys in my group are there talking to them and they seem to be engaged in some sort of not a transaction but some kind of deal and sun's going down so we get back on the bikes and that guy's since written off the guys that we're with they say okay we got to make a stop on the way to vegas a couple of these guys are going to buy some things from this guy and we gotta meet him out in this little ghost town it sounds pretty cool and i know y'all heard me say this in several stories the maverick story and whatnot i'm like you're going to a drug deal in a ghost town like is this an episode of scooby-doo like what are we doing here we're just getting dark we need to get to vegas like what are you they're like sorry the girls were meeting like we told them if you want to you want to go on by yourself but if you want to stay with the group and not get left out in death valley if your bike dies then you know this is what we're doing i'm just like okay fine now i am the only one in the group that has a gun and my wife with me has a gun as well so i'm thinking okay you know i'm just going to sit at the edge of town let them do their thing so we go outside of town a few ways we got some cryptic directions written on a piece of paper make a couple of turns we're on some gravel road we get way out of nowhere and and sure enough it's like sunset and it's a dang ghost town like it's the one main street where it looked like the shootouts would be and all these rickety old falling down buildings and there are some signs of modern life there's a bunch of signs that say like don't get off the road there's a bunch of open pit mines there's some but no trespassing signs there's sign says look out for rattlesnakes i mean so people obviously go out here um these days it'd be some instagram place but you know 20 years ago it was just an old ghost town so we ride into town and just like in a movie you know the chopper is just parked the yellow chopper is parked at the other end of the street just sitting in the middle of the road we don't see the guys now we are six uh early twenties year old people we're all on you know ten to fifteen thousand dollar motorcycles we've got cash we've got camping gear whatnot i mean you know if you were gonna rob a bunch of people there's probably a hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff that we all collectively have between us so immediately i'm like this is a really bad idea we're at one and they're like no no these guys seem cool but you stay back we're just gonna ride in and and like man i wouldn't go in there they're like no it's gonna be cool i just kind of stop at one end of this main street and they ride on up to where the the chopper is and everybody shuts off their motors you know i've got you know my hand on my gun in my jacket i can feel her behind sitting behind me she's got her hand on her gun and her jacket just in case something goes crazy and we're i'm back a wigs i'm not in like they're just right all these empty windows and stuff the first thing i hear when the bike shut off of course the desert is very still and very quiet i can hear this really tinny sounding like music like from the little guy like whatever from his country it's like some sort of foreign music playing out like a boom box but it's just like up in a window somewhere like it's just playing out the end of the town and then you know the indian guy his license plate said like zuni or something like that i went on the bike but anyway the indian guy a native american indian guy not ironic we have two different there's a asian indian guy with the duffel bag american indian guy with the chopper the chopper guy is like up in a window and he's like standing in a window kind of like leg back kind of posing he's like hey fellas you know says some line and uh he's up in the upstairs window i'm immediately checking all the other windows looking for somebody with a gun but but sure enough the smaller pakistani guy comes out the duffel bag these guys i'm with buy something i don't know what i didn't want to know they buy something from this guy and you know indian guy comes down gets on the chopper they shake hands and he and the guy right off in the other direction and nothing happened which i know might be kind of anticlimactic as a story but it was a drug deal in a ghost town and of course i'm mad because they took me to a drug deal in a ghost town it's just like you know my friend ryan with the maverick like how do i keep getting into these situations like i don't even smoke cigarettes how do i always seem to get in these situations we make it to vegas without incident and you know parted ways and they did their trip and i did mine but that was just one of those first times that you know that bike just seemed to have some weird karma around it finding your next dream car can be like searching for a needle in 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Channel: VINwiki

Views: 256,607

Keywords: VINwiki, Car Stories, Christopher Michaels, ghost town, motorcycle, trip, road trip, cross country, death valley, las vegas, friends, camping, repairs, roadside, breakdown, travel, automotive, california, pacific ocean, safety

Id: pU_uznx72c8

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020