Solo Road Trip: 1000 miles Home on a Forgotten Police Harley

I'm riding this forgotten old police Harley 1,000 miles home. At least, that was the plan. I'm on a mission to master the u-turn on as many bikes as possible so that I can be the first YouTuber to train with motor police officers. So far, I've only ever ridden new bikes, my own bike, and press bikes I'd use for a 1 or 2,000 mile road trip and never see them again. My u-turn challenges can get a little rough, so something used, but gently so. I need help. I'm coming. No, I'm not. What better bike to continue this than on the Bikes and Beards Police Auction Harley? So I flew to Pennsylvania so I could ride it 1,000 miles home to Georgia. Okay, I think I'm here. This looks just like what I saw on YouTube. Hello! Sorry to blind you. I am in the right place. So worst case scenario is, if we don't like the way this one is, we can put you on the other one. I just have to pull the turbos off and put on a new exhaust system because we didn't really monkey with that. It was just turbos. Okay. Craig, I like how you say that slapping on a jank twin compound turbo setup on the bike does not constitute monkeying with it. In your book. Aww. You need to do this. What is going on there? Girl riding over a bunch of tires on a big Harley. Oh my, on a Harley. Oh, she's cool. Yeah, she is. So we just replaced the gasket cover here because it was blown and now Craig is going to replace this one without me because then he can do it in an hour instead of like five hours. We are doing head gaskets. So, uh, do I, I'm, I'm a little bit worried for my life riding this back home. Yeah, you should be. What? Yeah. The brakes, well, they won't even slow you down. I'm reminded of the few things that I didn't do, like changing out the old tires and tubes because if one of those blows, I'm dead. Are you keeping the nitrous on or are you taking it off? No, we're taking it off. I don't think that's even legal. Um, okay. There is a big stipulation about that motorcycle. And I probably should have told you before you took it. Um, do not, whatever you do, do not ride that motorcycle through Virginia. Yeah. I thought it was just what I thought was wearing a cop uniform. We just finished putting the bike back together. I did everything. Dan and Craig helped a little bit, but it's all back together. It's we're going to head over to the other shop now. It's in the trailer right now. Look at it. Isn't it so cool? I can't believe it. I'm so excited. Oh my gosh. I'm so excited. It's been so long since I rode a big Harley and let alone a police auction bike. This is, this is probably the coolest thing I've ever ridden. I haven't ridden it yet, but I am so excited. There's something I haven't mentioned yet. This bike is big, about 900 pounds. I am not. I am 5'3.75 inches tall. Tiptoeing on this bike. And it's been two years since I rode a bike this size. I told Craig I was prepared to trailer this bike home if it broke down from all its abuse and just being forgotten left in a corner in the shop. But what I didn't tell him was that I wasn't sure if I could ride a bike this size anymore. But I had to give it a shot. I had to practice and show my local police department that I was serious. Thank you for everything. That was so much fun. If you want to see the whole episode on fixing the bike with really good tips and ridiculous antics from the mechanic himself, check out Craig's channel, The Beard of Mechanic. He just released that video today. Bringing this bike home would be the final ring in a culmination of challenges. 100 U-turns a day for 90 days. 100 bike lifts a day for 30 days. And now I'll be doing 100 U-turns a day for 30 days on this bike, all in preparation to be able to train with my local police department. So we can see how some of the best riders in the world train. I haven't gotten a local police department to totally agree to this yet. But when I do, I'll be ready. So on my way back home, I wanted to backtrack a little bit because there's this town slightly north of SRK Cycles that I've been really wanting to go to. And I really don't want to go alone for reasons you'll find out in a minute. So I'm going to meet up with another YouTuber, Lolly. So we're going to meet at a gas station and then head over to something you may have heard of. It's a town that has been burning for 60 years. Now, the reason I was scared to go to Centralia alone. Centralia is known as the ghost town that has been burning for 60 years. It all started when the city had set a local landfill on fire to clean up the waste. Days after putting out the fire, it seemed to have ignited again. The local fire department put it out only for it to be ignited again days later. This happened again and again until finally they realized the fire was underneath. It had ignited the coal mines and spread through the unsealed tunnels beneath the town. On the surface, the town carried on with little to no signs of what was raging below at first. People started to feel the effects of carbon dioxide poisoning in their homes. A local gas station found smoke coming from cracks in the ground of the parking lot next door. And when he tested the temperature of his gas, found that it was dangerously hot and he had to shut down his gas station. Sinkholes started appearing unpredictably. A local child was playing in his backyard and the ground gave out from underneath him. He was surrounded by smoke and fire, hanging onto a branch to keep from falling in deeper. A family member helped pull him out, and the sinkhole beneath him still had over 100 feet to drop. The town residents slowly dwindled over the decades until a formal government eviction in 2009. Buildings and homes were demolished as the residents vacated. And today, it's a ghost town. This right here is the sponsor of today's video. Shout out to Cardo. I've got a discount code for you below. I can attest this has survived coastal flood warnings, dust storms, high wind advisories that would knock down semis. And it's still going strong, keeping me sane by listening to some music out on the road on my road trips. Good to see you. I'm so glad you made it. Look at your M207. It looks so beautiful. He's finally been tracked. Dude, look at this. I'm so proud of this. You look cool. You look so perfectly matched. Of course, gotta be a family member. You do too, actually. Thank you. And now that I see the jacket. Are you ready? I'm ready. Are you scared? No. No? No. I'm scared. Why? Like the ghosts and the haunted house? That we might like ride into a sinkhole, or there'll be ghosts or meth addicts in the bushes. Somehow, Lali and I used to be naked bike girls together, but somehow I've never ridden with her with my bike. It's always been on big Harley cruisers. All right. Your battery's low? It won't start? Oh no. So I got a friend at a gas station right next door at Sunoco. Her battery died. Do you guys have a portable battery charger? I'll go over with mine. I have my little... Thank you so much. Are you serious? Yeah, I'm leaving anyway. Thank you so much. Yeah, here, I'll ride you over. Okay. Highway, it's not exactly marked anywhere. So we had to kind of use our brains, so I let Lali do that. But we see some graffiti right here. That way is two miles to Centralia. So we think it's right over here based on Lali's Google Map satellite viewing. This is it! We found it. This was covered up because people were using this as like a place to party. So in order to stop that from happening, they covered it up in Lali's dirt mound. But this looks like a pretty sweet place for some dirt bikes. Some of the things I want to show you all is just so... Oh my gosh. Very rated R. I'm like, why can't people graffiti polite stuff? Oh my gosh, thank you. See? Who's that so hard? Here's the one church that was not demolished because it wasn't technically over the coal mines. And I'm pretty sure they do still hold services on Sundays. They may be a little sick of people. Coming here, treating this town like a spectacle. If you want to see videos just on these cool places I visit on road trips, I've partnered with a group of other YouTubers to make short videos every day sharing our favorite spots. You can see that on Motorcycle Destinations. Well, thanks for coming with me to Centralia, Lali. Of course. I'm so glad you could make it. You were like a better tour guide than I was, I feel like, because she had all the spots down on her map. She'd watch the videos. I was like, would you like to tell me about this place that I live in? I got us lost though. Never did find the vents. It's like just some spot in the woods and I'm like, the woods look the same everywhere. Yeah, I was looking while we were going through that last round but I couldn't see anything that was as smoky as what your picture showed. Yeah. And that was like two months ago I saw on the timestamp. Yeah. Well, we tried our best. Didn't see everything but it was pretty interesting. It's pretty neat. I'm glad you could come. No ghosts. We didn't see ghosts. No, I'm leaving before they come out. Get out of here before it gets dark. Yeah. Well, thanks for coming, Lali. I can see you through Doodle anytime. Next time it's my turn to come to your neck of the woods. Yes! Yes, go, go, Leona. Centralia was the opposite direction from home so I still had the entire thousand miles to go and I know some people say that if you can't lift a bike then it's too big for you. Don't let me go home with it, right? Even if I can't lift it? Maybe. At my size, that would mean almost every bike you've ever seen on this channel. That's almost 30 bikes and dozens of adventures. Personally, I'd rather just take the adventure and deal with challenges as they come. Mama didn't raise no wuss. Well, it started storming and I'm shocked to experience this on the east coast because last time I experienced this was through Tornado Valley in the center of the U.S. but the winds were getting really strong that I was actually moving across the lane which I'm really surprised because this bike is 900 pounds. My bike is 500 pounds so I could kind of see that happening. So it's a little sooner than I'd want to stop. Not that much sooner, honestly. Like 20 minutes, half an hour. So I think I'll just stop now. I'm supposed to keep going for the rest of the night and I'll just leave early tomorrow morning. Let me just talk about how insanely comfortable baggers are. I did not realize I was riding an hour and a half. Normally, it's very obvious because my butt is hurting, my back is hurting, my knees are hurting but I felt like I had plenty more in me. Man. Good news. That means it's storming. The good town gone bad. Bad news. This rain is supposed to keep coming for about two hours. I really wanted to walk around without getting all wet. It's such a bummer. The rain was not in the forecast until this evening when I checked this morning. Well, I would have come anyways but it's a bummer. This is the road that you can visit the town from but the park ranger said that it's very gravelly and there's a hairpin turn. Not to mention I'm on a bagger that I'm not used to and it's raining. So I'm just gonna walk and see the town that way. I don't want to chance it even though there are a ton of riders here today but they're trying to- they're gonna wait out the rain it looks like. My rain suit doesn't have a hood on it so I'm just gonna leave my helmet on. Walking around town looking like I came from out of space. That might be one of the few residences that still has someone living in it. So this was the bank which was in the lobby of the hotel and Captain Thurmond who's created this town, he- this is where the good town gone bad comes in. So he wanted Thurmond to be wholesome so he did not allow drinking and gambling. So across the river which you can't see right now, another hotel was made just outside the town and that allowed drinking and gambling and it became very popular since the residents of Thurmond wanted an outlet and that was the only place they could get it. It ended up having the longest poker game that lasted 14 years and it only ended because there was a fire. I actually thought the longest poker game was in Tombstone, Arizona but I guess not. Now I know Sean said under no circumstances should I ride through Virginia and going through West Virginia already helped me go around the bulk of it but there's this little piece of Virginia that was just sticking out right in my path and to go around it would have added several hundred more miles. That was time I didn't have and I wasn't sure if the bike had either so I decided to go through Virginia. I was really expecting to be severely struggling with this bike but because it's been two years since I last rode a bike this big. Since then I've ridden Harley Heritages and that's much lighter and I feel like it doesn't have a learning curve but the Electra Glide, the police model FLHTP, not only is it 900 pounds like the Street Glide, it also sits a little bit taller so my feet are totally tiptoeing on this 900 pound bike but it's been okay. My short rider tips from Jerry and Donna have been coming in handy. I have a video for that just like look up like short rider tips and I show how I handle not being flat foot on a big bagger. As long as the bike's moving it's super easy and feels like nothing. It's only when my feet are on the ground and luckily my feet are only on the ground when the bike's at like zero miles per hour so not a lot of damage can be done there even if I do go down but haven't had any issue and they're pretty set up for that. I mean it's got crash guards here and in the back so I have a feeling this bike can handle it. I know I can. There's something about riding an old beat-up police bike that seems to I don't know like instill respect. I don't know if people think I'm a cop or if seeing me on a like older bike makes it look like I've been riding a long time. But usually every time I'm at a gas station I'll usually get some kind of variation of what's a little girl like you doing on a big bike like that but I have not gotten that this whole trip. I've only gotten nice bike. Is that a police bike? A couple little kids were like what's the police doing here? Interesting. Today is the last day I think. I only have about 350 miles left so I'm planning on getting home today. I am amazed that this bike has had no problems. I was not expecting this. Knock on wood. I'm amazed like dang after all this bike has been through and it's just been smooth sailing. I'm impressed. I'm very impressed with the Boley's bike. What's that? No it's an old police bike. Yeah government auction. Yeah no I'm Sean's boss. Yeah behind the scenes. We did not think we'd make it home as smoothly as we did with just nothing but the heel shifter coming off. I'm impressed. This thing is tough. Check out one of these videos right over here and I will see you in the next one.