"I'll pay double if you can scare me!"

he gives it the gas we just go through the yard across a two-lane asphalt road and just intuit about you [Music] we all love wheeled vehicles but this is a story involving speed and excitement but no wheels whatsoever i had gone to louisiana with my wife at the time and we were just staying in new orleans having a good time seeing the sights doing the thing and on the way in i had seen a billboard for an airboat tour and that looks pretty exciting i've never been on an airboat before so i thought oh that'd be fun so i find one of those little kiosks with all the little flyers and things and i get all the ones for air boats we get back hotel room and i'm looking through the mall and you know they're all just saying you know safe you know fun for the whole family you know relaxing day on the bayou and it don't look nice but that just wasn't really the type of experience i was particularly looking for so this is early 2000s the internet's early i i don't have like a computer with me it was before smart phones i got a little flip phone you know i proceeded to just get out a map and look at some roads and find some little towns out in the bayou out in the middle of nowhere so i proceeded to find this little town on the map and i call up the chamber of commerce you know chamber of commerce knows all the local businesses they know everybody in town and i called the chamber of commerce up and asked the lady i said ma'am i reckon you all know each other in your town she kind of laughs at oh yeah we all know each other is there anybody in your town that has an airboat that takes people out on airboat rides she said no i don't really know anybody so i proceeded to call another town and another town on the third town three's a charm sure enough she said oh yes you know there's beauregard papado he's got the fastest air boat on the bayou i said that sounds great can you give me his number says oh yes i go to church with him here is the number so i get the number and i call this guy just cold call him out of nowhere and i said hello i said the lady at the chamber of commerce said you got an airboat uk's to give people rides now he was did more like a hunting guy taking people out gator hunting that kind of thing he said you know of course good creole accent you know he's like you know what you hunting i said i'm just hunting to go fast he said well i got the fastest boat i said well when are you available he said why did you come out tomorrow morning i said yes sir he gave me the address worked it out again this is before smartphones but figured out on the map you know i get there so get up next morning i drive out of this guy's house he just lives at some little channel on the bayou his house is on the opposite side of the road from the little channel going into bayou and a knock on his door and he comes out and he's a nice older fella and i said uh hello i'm christopher i called you about the airbus ride oh yeah yeah yeah yeah come on come on let's go around back so she's taking around the back of the house and he's got an airboat sitting there just in the grass and what i noticed first about this airboat was that the motor on it was an old continental seven-cylinder radial which happened to be the same radial airplane engine that was on my granddad's steerman biplane so i made a comment that i'd worked on that engine before and of course he's an old fellow i'm 25 probably you know and he's like oh you wouldn't know anything about that motor that's before your time and i told him about the biplane and we proceeded to talk about the engine and its merits and he got real excited because nobody really had ever like he got to talk about that motor very much so we hit it off very well and i said well uh you know how much you charged me for a airboat ride and he said well i'm gonna probably let my son take you out you know my hands ain't what they used to be and i said well okay and the sun is kind of milling around and the sun is again i can't remember the guy's name bosefa something like that so we get it talking and he said how about uh how about 50 and i said i'll give you a hundred dollars if you can scare me he kind of sits back a second he looks over the sun and he goes both cevas go get the other boat bo stevens goes around back at the barn i'm thinking we're going to take this airboat with the old biplane engine on it oh no i think i felt this engine before i heard it just the ground shakes and i just hear this open header big block motor airboat just comes around the corner just in the grass across the gravel into the yard it's got just this ginormous bit it's black it just looks rusty and unsafe and just open header stacks on this boat great santa motor thing's idling guy hops off how's that kind of motor is that he said it's a 500 cube against cadillac out of a hearse i said now you're talking wife at the time is looking pretty skeptical at this point but i'm like it's gonna be okay yeah we proceeded to get in the boat and i said well where do we launch from he said we lost him right here so we get in the boat we buckle up he gives it the gas we just go through the yard across the two-lane asphalt road and just intuit about you the guy looks over he says you ready i was like punch it chewie he hits the gas and immediately it was like in the movies the whole world just became a green blur just we just take off and there was a bit of a lake and we take it across the lake you know after the time she was pretty adventurous she was good with going fast i taught her to drag race you know she's pretty brave but we're just jetting across this lake at whatever speed this thing was capable of which was a lot and there's a big wall of like the marsh grass coming which to anybody growing up around a lake that usually means the land and as we're getting closer to this like i can see her start to kind of get this panic there's nowhere to go but i can see her starting to panic like we're getting closer we're getting closer and we just hit the grass it well like it wasn't even there it was just marsh grass we hit it we're just skimming across the grass and we proceeded to have the most fantastic time we are jumping logs we're zooming in out of just banking it and skidding around we're you know almost hit alligator one time flying up these little channels now we're in the woods there's like these little channels they've cut through the forest we're flying through the forest they're all their little hunt trails just having a great time super fast at one point we get to a levee like big two three story grass levee and he just noses the nose up against it gives it the gas and this thing proceeds to just go right up the levee we get at the top levels out you can see down the levy the interstate is like their highway is like down below us and we're just on land and he just hits the gas turns around the grass and i was like i didn't know these things he'd go on land he said oh if the bottom had hold up we could take it to town gives it the gas again we just launch off the levee go skating down like sliding in wet grass on church shoes hit the water take off again we're flying along he does the obligatory 360. we jump a few more logs at one point i'm riding up top with him we're flying along and there's this you know over the lily pads there's this little clear being a big old alligator pops up we just hear this punk and he just looks at me and i looked at him and he just gave him more gas and we keep going so the the trip is we've been out about an hour we've had a fantastic time he's well earned his hundred dollars as we're getting a little closer getting back to where the guy lived i guess he figured we hadn't had the full experience so often out of nowhere he just cuts the motor to the airboat and while it is still slowing down he dives off the airboat into the water like just jumps off and by the time i'm trying to figure out what happens he pops up out of the water with a small like a four foot alligator like in a headlock just got the thing in the headlock it's thrashing he kind of reaches in his pocket he pulls out some tape and like wraps the thing's mouth up with the tape throws the tape throws the alligator into the boat with us and then climbs back into the boat and he motors over this little hunting fishing shack thing they have and we proceed to play with the alligator we're taking pictures with that we're posing with the guy you know anyway the alligator's not having it but again a four foot alligator three-foot alligator it's like i don't know how this thing was maybe three feet it's like this much alligator this much tail it wasn't it was like an iguana it wasn't anything dangerous but it's still exciting nonetheless so we take pictures with the alligator he untapes the alligator's mouth reaches under the scene he pulls out marshmallows and he's i said alligators like marshmallows he's like oh yeah you know the the the marsh lily that's like they eat that as little babies it's like it's like mother's milk to them and he feeds the thing a couple of marshmallows and lets it go and we get back in the boat and we go back to the house and he's like did i earn that hundred dollars and i gave him two hundred dollars because he dang sure earned his two hundred dollars and this is a funny story about an exciting day without four wheels underneath it but tells you the kind of excitement you can have if you just go a little ways off the map [Music] you

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 106,689

Keywords: vinwiki, car stories, christopher michaels, travel, adventure, airboat, animated, Louisiana, bayou, swamp, pappadeaux, alligator, wildlife, brochure, tour, referral

Id: MVocRVGLSe8

Length: 9min 23sec (563 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 23 2021