Pontch's Dream

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Pontch's Dream....

This story's been burning me up to tell forever because one: it was a wild time and two: it's minibikes all over it and who else would understand? I'm a drummer in a casino band that's toured more than a thousand dates in most of CA, NV and AZ over the last ten years. Playing small towns on the venerable Sagebrush Circuit like Winnemucca, Jackpot, Eureka, Cache Creek, Pahrump, Yuma, Pinetop; Indian casinos in some of the most beautiful parts of the country. Some were opulent, rivaling the best Vegas has to offer, some were just big circus tents.

One casino we played for years was near a little town in very Northern California called Alturas, up near the Oregon border. Alturas is in Modoc county, which most Californians don't even know exists, but if you are not exactly within the 2 square mile village limits of Alturas, then you are in Modoc. Not county. Not Alturas. Modoc. Don't worry, you will be corrected if you ever misstate it. The Desert Rose casino is in Modoc. It consists of 24 mobile homes fit together into one big building with aluminum siding around it, filled with slot machines.

The 4th of July weekend and parade is among the biggest events there and a good time to play. Everybody just got their welfare checks, so da money be flowing and the parade and picnic in the park is packed. We were there once before on the 4th and it was crazy. This was 2009, and we had begun to bring my two Lil Indians on the road with us, lashed to a special platform we fitted to the truck. Most of these towns were middle of nowhere - meaning wide open spaces - and I would always say everywhere we went, "Awwww, we should bring the minibikes!"

Finally, we did. That year we were part of the casino's float and entourage riding the minibikes in the parade, with black leather jackets scrawled with "Heck's Angels" on the back. We were the shit! And the hit of the parade and subsequent picnic in the park. We were thronged by the people like rockstars. We were rockstars, but it was really the minibikes that got'em! Probably the first time most of them had ever seen anything like that, or at least in a long long time. Hey hey we're the Monkees!

The best place to ride, in fact, was in Modoc. We'd stay at the California Pines lodge about 9 miles outside Alturas. That's Modoc. Cal Pines was home to "Pontch's Dream." Remember back in the late 90s, a late night infomercial starring Erik Estrada from Chips fresh out of rehab the first time, advertising a lakefront retirement dream village in his first TV appearance? That was Cal Pines: 3500 acres of double wides, a retirement dream village that was never built. Well part built. They sold like a hundred and they're sparsed here and there throughout this huge development of thousands of fully graded house plots over dozens of paved streets. Then the lake dried up one day into a little blue green algae science experiment and Cal Pines retirement village idea was DOA. But when we were there, we'd ride all day, sleep, go do the show, come back at 2am and night ride, not bother nobody. Park 'em next to the bed and take in the hot clutch smell. (Ok so I'm a freak!)

That was Pontch's dream. Well I don't think he had minibikes on his mind. You can rent cabins at the Cal Pines lodge though. The Lodge is for real and very nice too. Beautiful area of the country, it's a nature preserve, the deer come right up to you. And the best minibike riding I ever had.

Catch Pontch's Dream on YouTube at Real Estate Bubble - Erik Estrada (California Pines) - YouTube
 
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