The Cannabis College was connected to a head shop called The Flying Dutchman, which bought all the glass we made for top dollar. They had a really nice shop, real high end expensive glass. I was very proud to have my own glass in my own display case with my company logo, which was DL GLASS.
I started dating a girl that worked at the Cannabis College and fell into a very normal life. I was just letting time go by, which is what it takes. Many miles and a lot of time had to go by to get where I wanted to be. Nothing good happens over night.
By now I was in love with my FXR. I rode it everywhere. I used to look at the kids in the town riding their scooters all year long, no matter how cold it was. I figured if they could do it then so could I.
I rode with the brothers from Holland to Belgium to Germany to Switzerland to France. Through the French Alps on the way to ‘Free Wheels,’ which is a big motorcycle rally in the South of France. The brothers I rode with would pass everyone and everything on the road. They would stay in the left lane and stay so close on the bumper of the vehicle in front of us until they moved. That’s European driving the left lane is for passing. We would pass whole packs of other brothers and just give a nod as we went flying by.
We left Holland and the weather was a combination of snow and rain. The further south we got the warmer it got. By the time we got to the French Alps everyone had gone from foul weather gear to just a T shirt and a vest. It took about a week to get where we were going. We would ride about seven hundred miles a day, which was from sun up to sun down, then the brothers would party till three or four in the morning. Then get up at the dawn and do it again.
After a week on the road I was comfortable, but I also did not have a clue where I really was, nor did I speak any language other than English. As we got further into the France we started riding into a series of winding roads that were moving through a forest. Some of the brothers started slowing down and kind of taking the scenic route. I was watching the front six guys getting further and further away from me. They were laying in to the turns hard and climbing up the highway. I started thinking about how I can’t get lost out here, how I don’t speak French and I would be screwed if I were to get lost here.
When I could hardly see the pack anymore I took off and passed the brothers that were taking the scenic route. I caught up with the pack and fell back in tight formation. I could see a few of the brothers see me in their rear view mirrors but the kept moving. They never stopped till they needed gas. Tank to tank that’s how we did it.
We finally pulled over and I walked up to one of the brothers. He seemed surprised to see me.
“Is it cool if I stay with the pack?”
“CAN you stay with the pack?” he asked me with one eye brow raised.
“Yes I can.” I said with a smile. He thought about that.
“Then I guess you can stay with the pack.” We filled up our tanks with gas and smoked a joint and took off for another seven hundred kilometers.
I used to have real long hair. A real hippie. I never cut my hair or my beard. When I arrived in Holland I had long hair. Now it was almost two years later. When I got to Free Wheels I met many brothers young and old from countries all over the world. I met brothers from Denmark France and Germany and they all had a buzz cut.
“This is the fighting trim.” One of the young Danish brothers told me.
“You can really control a guys head by his hair.” Another said.
“Where the head goes the body follows.” Another said and they all laughed.
One of the brothers from Denmark walked up to me.
“We’re Always Ready.” He said real serious.
“For what?”
“For whatever comes our way.” I took that in. He meant it. His guys were on point. They had this air of competence around them. Like there was nothing they couldn’t handle. They made a great impression upon me. I liked the way they all worked together, like they knew what the other one was thinking. They were all very focused.
After the run in the South of France we rode through the French Alps stopping at winery’s and doing cool stuff like going white water rafting. After about a month on the road we headed back North to Holland. It got colder and colder as we got closer to home, but it didn’t matter. It felt good to be getting back. We pulled into town and parked in front of the house next to the bar and the whole town came out. We had been gone over a month and they missed us. Everyone went into the bar for a drink and to unwind from the ride before they went home. I lived about two minutes from the house and I had one thing on my mind. I raced home and took out some scissors and cut all my hair off. I didn’t do the best job, in fact it looked like I recently had chemotherapy or something. Like my hair had started to fall out. I cut it as close as I could and tried to even it up. It was quite a change. I put on a baseball cap and went back to the bar. When I walked in only a couple of brothers noticed. One yelled out.
“What did you do?”
“Tragedy.” Another yelled. One of my favorite brothers walked up and took my hat off.
“Oh my gosh.” He said. He was imitating me. “Why did you do this?”
“Those young Danish Brothers made such an impression on me that I just felt it was time.” I said. He thought about that.
“I can understand that. But we are going to have to fix this mess.” He went home and came back with a hair clipper and shaved the rest of my hair off.
“Now at least it doesn’t look like you just had radiation.’ He said. I kept looking at myself and my new haircut in the mirror. It was clean, sharpish. And it was hard to get used to.
I stuck to my routine. I would wake up and go straight to the gym. I made my own money so my time was my own. Then I would go for a ride through the sluizen. That’s where the ships would come in from the sea and wait for the water to rise so they can pas in to the channel. The sluizen was a real narrow track that you could get to the other side of the channel with. It went back and forth in a criss cross pattern with these really sharp turns. It was great practice for riding my FXR.
I would do it as fast as I could make it across and back. I would time it and everything. It was definitely crazy because if you made a mistake you would go right in the water, or hit the crane, or the wall or something. It was just two lanes wide, two tight lanes of insanity at ninety miles an hour.
One time after I had just made another run across and back I was sitting on my bike rolling joint. I had been there awhile, almost two years and my riding had gotten a lot better. I had ridden across the continent with these guys twice. But I still knew I had lots to learn. A few of the brothers rode up and parked. One of them walked over to my bike and began looking it over. This guy was a real motor head. He knew the bike and he could really ride. He looked at my tires and pointed.
“That’s good.”
“What’s that?” I asked
“The wear on your tires goes up the side wall. That means you have been laying low in the turns. That’s good.”
I was way proud.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
We all put on our gear and went for a ride. I had much better gear than when I first got here. Four hundred dollar all weather gloves. Bell full face helmet with a complete HD rain /snow suit. Good equipment makes a hell of a lot of a difference. Riding was very different also. It was now like synchronized swimming at one hundred miles an hour. Winding S turn roads on great pavement. The roads in Holland are very good pavement, like a racetrack.
Having a chopper all those years was cool. Choppers are cool. Cool in a death race two thousand type of way. Now I was now really having fun on my bike. I was having fun before this was different. It was now precision racing, not surviving to the bar.
We got back to the house and we all sat around for a smoke and a drink. One of the brothers looked at me with a smile.
“I have to build a bigger motor.” He said to me.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I can’t lose you. You’re a
lways in my rear view.” He gave me a slap on the back. It was a compliment. A big compliment.
64
I still took the boat to work five days a week. I only took my bike once in awhile, mostly when it was sunny, which wasn’t that often. Parking was hell in Amsterdam and the boat was easy and quick and it dropped me right off at the central station. Then it was a quick five minute walk to my job making glass pipes at the Cannabis College.
Amsterdam is like New York City in the realm of that it is ALIVE all the time. The streets are always crowded. Girl’s are in the windows and bars open till late and filled with everyone from dread locked hippies to English drunks singing the songs of their favorite football team to drunken teenagers having a girl for their first time to the way rich consulate general discreetly breaking all his rules, to legions of navy men from all over the world on shore leave banging everything in sight then getting drunk and tattooed to the poor Italian tourist who did too much dope and O.D.’s right on the street. That’s Amsterdam.
The central station alone is like a huge shopping plaza with trains going through it to everywhere. As soon as you hit the street you can smell the aroma of hashish in the air. There were junkies everywhere, but much fewer than years before. They had now been regulated to one area called the nieuw market, and they stayed pretty much in that area. Anybody could still buy anything in that part of town, and not in a coffeeshop.
Life was better than good. I had a good job. I was dating a girl who worked at the shop, so I could come in whenever I wanted, or miss as many days as I needed. They always bought my glass for a good price. Then sold it for top dollar.
I was in the gym one day later than usual. Everyone was gone and I was the only one in the gym. I had the day off from work and the party the night before raged till the dawn, so I slept late.
I was on the bench press when the guys dad who owned the gym started banging on the window. I looked at him and he was waving at me frantically to walk towards him. I got off the machine and walked into the front of the gym. They had a little bar set up where you could get protein shakes and sandwiched and stuff. Above the counter was a television and it was on.
“Your country is under attack.” He said to me. I looked at the screen and the World Trade Center was on fire.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. I just turned the channel and there it was. Burning.”
We both stood there and watched for a minute trying to make sense of it when a second plane came crashing into the other tower.
“Now for sure you are under attack.” He said.
He started flipping the channels trying to find more news. I went and got my stuff and went home. I walked in my door and turned on the TV just in time to watch the towers fall. I took a shower and got cleaned up and went down to the bar. Everyone was watching the television. In every bar I passed, in every house that had the window open you could hear or see the broadcast. Later on in the evening on the news broadcast it showed some café’s where the patrons all jumped up and cheered as the towers came down. I wouldn’t know the difference from one religion to the next for most folks. I just never really paid attention before. I just always looked at everyone as people. But now it felt a little different to be an American abroad.
I took the boat to Amsterdam the next day and only two other people were on it. I thought that was kind of strange because it is usually full. I didn’t think much of it until I got off the boat at the central station. The streets were empty. There were a few cops standing on various corners but no one else. Amsterdam looked like a ghost town.
I walked through the empty streets and almost all the stores were closed. Everyone had their hatches battened down. I got to the Cannabis College and it was closed. I called the owner and he told me that he was closed indefinitely. He said that I had to find another job. I called my girl and she had also got fired. He fired everyone and closed his doors for good.
A lot of people thought World War Three was going to happen. Everything slowed down after 9-11. Nobody was spending money on glass or tattoos. I started to think about getting a normal job. I was so close to where I wanted to be just not there yet. I had an indoor crop that was just about ready to harvest. I would have gotten money from that which I thought would hold me over until everyone calmed down and people start spending again and I could get my job back. Or get a different job in another shop.
I went on with my life like business as usual. Until the lights didn’t come on in my house one day when I got home.
The electric meter reader must have come by and saw that I had tapped into the power by putting in a larger amp carrier fuse. He put a special lock on the electric box which I had to break into just to figure out he took my fuse. Fortunately for me I had an extra one so I turned the lights back on. But I had a bigger problem now. How long until the meter reader guy comes back to check it again? I had about ten to twenty days until harvest. Twenty would have been better. You always want to wait until the last possible minute.
I knew I had to figure out another way to make money. Everyone in town worked on the docks in one form or another. I started applying at all the fish canneries and on the docks and a dock worker. I applied everywhere I could and everywhere I applied they told me the same thing, that I needed a tax number.
I had no choice but to go back to the foreign police and try to get a tax number. In the end it’s me who makes all the decisions, and me who will reap the benefits or pay the consequences for my actions or lack there of.
I wanted to stay in Holland no matter what so I made a decision to go back and try to get that tax number. I knew I should have followed through with it when I was supposed to, but I didn’t. I had gotten comfortable. No one saw something like 9-11 coming, or knew how it would change things. But things got tighter everywhere.
I walked into the foreign police immigration office, it was the same one I had been in before, and it looked the same way. Every seat was full with every kind of person all trying to get their papers to stay. All a little more frantic about getting their paperwork in order than the last time I was here, about two years ago. I got a number and sat down. I knew I was going to be there for a while.
When my number finally got called I stepped up to the counter and it was the same immigration officer I had before. I don’t think he remembered me but I remembered him. I stood there quiet while he looked over my paperwork. He kept going back and forth like he was confused.
“How long have you been in Holland?”
“About two years.”
“Looks a bit more like three. Have you been working in Holland? Making money?”
“No Sir.”
“Then how do you survive?”
“I have a rich girlfriend.”
“Who is Dutch of course?”
“Of course.”
He looked back at my paperwork again then he began stamping it with a stamper.
“You were supposed to have checked in with us when you arrived, which is over two years ago. It says you were married to a Dutch girl. Is this the same girl who is subsidizing you?”
“No Sir.’ I could see this was going south fast. He handed me back my paperwork.
“You have seven days to produce the wife you are married to. If you can not produce her you will have to produce divorce papers from the country you got married in, and apply again for a tax number. In a year.”
“In a year?”
“Yes in a year. You lived here illegally for over two years. You must now wait to apply again for three hundred sixty five days. Starting today. NEXT.”
He was done with me.
I didn’t think I was public enemy number one. I didn’t think they would be coming to look for me when I didn’t show up in a week. I knew I had to at least harvest the crop. I could use that money to get most of my stuff back to the states.
I explained to the brothers what happened at the foreign police and how I had to go back to get divorced from the Dutc
h wife that I hadn’t seen in over eighteen years.
“If she saw you she would try to hit you with her car anyway.” One of the brothers told me who knew her.
The day before I had to harvest the plants, the electric man came back and took the high voltage fuse out again and this time he left a note on the electric box. It was all in Dutch but I found out it was a summons to come before the electric board for stealing electricity. When it rains it pours. The house was in a phony name so I knew I just had to get out of there. I cut all the plants down and moved all my stuff over to my friends house and hung the plants to dry. I decided I could always buy more tools. I sold my bike, my tools and anything else I didn’t need. While the plants dried. I kept my tattooing gear and shipped my glass tools and torch home. I sold all the weed within ten days and got everything ready to go. I didn’t feel that my dream was shattered. I was disappointed for sure that I had such a set back, but I just looked at it as a set back and that’s all it was. I never lost focus of my dream.
I had no real idea where I was going to go. That’s when you always go home. I called my friend Red in Miami and he said his next door neighbor was moving out so I put a hold on that apartment. Always good to have a place to land, and you know what they say, there’s no place like home. Miami Beach.
65
“What do you mean?” Red asked me.
“I mean I’m gonna put that shit back on the map.”
“South Beach Underground? SBU? For real?”
“Yup. We run this shit. Gonna let em know it. Again.”
“You are definitely back. Sign me up.” Red went fishing and I was sitting in my new place. It was on third street and Washington avenue in Miami Beach. A little two story building with six apartments. Four apartments on the bottom with two on top. Me and Red had the top so we had a deck.
Becoming A Son Page 32