Evel Knievel inspired millions of us with his courage and perseverance. We're building a museum so you can relive those memories and be reinvigorated with that spirit of bravery. My name is Evel Knievel. I'm a professional daredevil. Along the way, we meet people involved in the life, the times, and the legacy of the King of Daredevils. Here with their stories is your host, Joe Friday. Thanks for coming to Topeka for the I love it here. goodbye. thing essentially was a an idea and then I ran it by my friend Robbie Hull and we just set this goal to get as much as we could a traveling show would something But, um, what kind of fascinated me the most was just the archaeology of it and finding everything. Once I found something, I put it away and went to the next it was essentially, that's all it was. And then, meeting his crew people along the way and becoming friends with them and learning their history was probably the most fascinating thing, besides the artifacts. You know, but, that's part of the journey. And it kind of revamped their legacies and, and their qualities and, their basically just their worth in his journey. So I think they were kind of set to the side for quite a while. But yeah, me and my friend Robbie Hull, and then we did a couple of shows. We met Marilyn Stemp, she jumped in on the truck, then we went to Evel Days and met the family, and that was just like a crash course in excitement. No, it really was. I mean, Alicia and the whole family, you could have fun with them at an insurance seminar, basically. The first, well, the idea, the first thing that spawned it was Snake River crew jacket online for sale, and I kept emailing the guy, and he was like, oh, it's not for sale Turned out to be Robbie's old manager. That was the first thing, and then that just made me start doing some homework. And I was like, why doesn't this guy have a museum? He's one of the most important people in history. So, that's what started it. I was like, wow, this stuff is everywhere. It's across the planet. And he gave it away, and gifted it, and it was sold. because I mean, he'd give away, like, a priceless helmet to a friend after a jump And that's how I found most of the stuff, was photographs and paperwork. The Snake River Leathers, the Sports Illustrated suit, for instance, um, I had a hunch, and I heard a rumor, and I was at a bar in Butte, and this guy's like, My friend has I was like, It's not Roberts, his grandson. And Roberts was his best friend. It let him store the truck at his automotive yard, back in the day. I was like, Okay, I gotta go find this guy, Cody. And that was how I tracked those down. It took years. That's the fascinating part of this, the archaeology. There was not a museum? Nothing. I mean, there was attempts. He tried five, six times. But he was dealing with people all the time that were, vice versa, either using him or he was using them. Who knows? Things went south all the time. And I've met these people and they're like, Oh, you know, this and that. They all had a story. But who knows what the truth is. That's part of the fascination with him One at the Maxim he was trying to do. Several places downtown, but What was at Niagara Falls? They called it an Evel Knievel Museum? Oh, Mark diMarco's place? He's, no, he's actually become a really good friend, but he's a character and we love him. but that's where we got this that took probably ten years to get that. And one of the XRs was there. This is the X2 1, actually. They were called 117 and 711 for code names. That one it's 711. I'm gonna get a big gulp. Some of the stuff slipped through the cracks in my head. Yeah, the plan was if this one had issues, they would replace instantly use the other Skycycle They had to have two, and they ended up shooting this one on the test. Yeah. And this one had a dummy and they did it quietly It went straight in the drink too. Same, Well, interestingly enough The guy who I bought the truck from was Jeff Lowe. And this is way before Tiger King's scandal and all that. And we had a decent rapport. Like I heard rumors, like don't deal with him, blah, blah, blah. But I called him on everything. And I said, I'm not, he's like, well, nobody's coming here. I said, I'm not giving you a cent unless I meet you and I get what I'm coming for. So I brought a truck. Kelly and Evel sold it to Tony long, long, long ago and Tony had plans to restore it, but he never saw it because it was sitting in Clearwater. rotting. So Jeff goes down there after he buys a helmet off of Tony, and he's like, "It's not worth scrap. It's worth nothing. you got screwed, like, you could never restore this," blah, blah, blah. Which is so, sort of true. Close. Yeah. But Tony, he was so upset because he sold it to Jeff for pretty much peanuts it's just a look at that thing. I, I looked at it and was like, I, I saw gold. I was like, I don't care what it takes. this thing's getting restored. My friend Rob and I just worked on him and worked on him and worked on him. And he kind of was fed up with this whole thing too, with dealing with the collecting and the process. But he finally was like, okay, okay, X amount of dollars. And I was like, are you, no BS, you know? And I was like, I'm not sending you any money without the title. So it was like a process for several days. And then he raised the price five grand at the last minute but he FedEx the title and, At this time I was buying leathers and things like that and bikes and pallets of Evel's photos and just, it filled up a U Haul. I remember it was a Halloween of '14 or '13. Yeah, I went, I flew out to South Carolina, rented a U Haul in Savannah, Georgia and drove down to Buford walked in there, shook his hand and he had all the things there. said, how much for this? And I brought cash. But he was like, "Oh, I'll ship that to you." I was like, no. So I had two duffel bags. Well, I had two duffel bags and I filled those with the leathers and the outfits important stuff. And the only things I left were Canyon bike, baskets and buckets full of photographs and things and photo albums. It's funny because I paid him for that, took what I had, took what I could carry and get on a plane with the first time. The second time I had a U-Haul The third time, he's like, oh, I'll ship this pallet out next week. Months went by and he didn't send it. I flew out there again. And I went in there and he's like, "Hey bro." And I was trying to get the curtain for the truck, the last piece of curtain so we could scan it and have it replicated for the truck. And I went in there the last time and he was"I know what you're here for." because I text him every day, I to get, he's like, no. And when I walked in there, he had it in his hand and he just gave it to me. Two days later, I flew to Elizabeth Trucking Center, where the truck was stored. Make sure, you know, I sent, me and Louis Re went there with his truck, went to the yard, and I couldn't believe all the interior was stacked in there, and the horseshoe was still there And that's thankfully, to the diligence of those guys. They piled everything up and locked it in So then I went up to this guy immediately and I was like, can you start restoration? He goes, yeah, give me three months. And I waited three months and he just never did anything. And then a year went by and I was about to explode. It was just really frustrating because it's expensive to move and the whole thing. So the former partner of mine that he had with in restoring Jerry Lee's bike said"Let me try this guy and I'll call him." I said "Where does he live?" And he's like, "Topeka." I was like, okay. So that's how it started. I mean, he, he called Mike and Mike can tell you what he said, but I flew here like a week later just went in his office and Hey, let's, you know, make eye contact I had a lot of people try to partner with me before along the way, and I just stayed away from it and just kept singularly focused on the goal, which was to plow through, hemorrhaging money. But yeah, I was looking for the right guy to have my back and to partner with, and it was him. And he immediately got it because he was a fan and he was at Hutchinson Jump when he was 7 years old. Four years old. I thought it was seven. Yeah, I was younger than I thought. Yeah. But no, it was, it was, it was the right thing and it was perfect and it made sense and it was the right people. And it was, you know, they believed in me. That was a huge part of it. So that's, that's it in a nutshell. The archeology aspect was the most fascinating That's what got me off was finding missing in the history, historical significance, but started with a phone call, and here we are. and yeah, to go back to the original thing, Rob Mariani and Brad Weick, they tried to restore the truck as well, but they didn't own it. And Jeff kept saying, yeah, here I'll, they were spending their own money, and they spent thousands of dollars. So they got to the point where Jeff just would ghost them, and they were finally like, we can't do anything, this isn't our truck. There's no way we're going to waste any more money on this, so I just kept hounding him. Rob would text him every day, I would text him. Rob would be like, "Sell the truck to Lathan. Sell it to him." And Rob had done the show American Trucker and had that whole thing where he went to Florida and excavated it. Well, yeah, but look how many people it took. 92 people throughout three years or I was like the interior decorator and did all the graphics. And Mike has got guys on the trailer and a guy on the wheels and. Endless donations. We're really appreciative of There's a guy, you know, what was that one guy that he just wanted to sand the top of the trailer All day long. Yeah, he wanted to come in and polish. People were just, they were so excited to throw in anything they had and that's what's so special about it I think. That's how it ended up here. He had it transported almost immediately. And we're off running. Well Jerry Lee's daughter said, let's call Mike Patterson. And was like, does he do, you know, oh he restored my daddy's bike. so, Mike can tell the rest of it because he's like, yep. We did. Uh, that's, um, you know, my family is a Harley Davidson dealership has a franchise and we've had it for, this year being 75 years. So we're one of the oldest family owned Harley in the top 10. One thing we do to embrace that history is we do restorations on bikes. We do jobs for people. All over the country, literally all over the world You. So We got called the Lewis family in about 2014 to do, Jerry Lee's 1958 Harley that, uh, he had been given by Harley Davidson. gifted him the Mm-Hmm.. Um, 'because you know, at that point he was like a, I guess what you consider a social influencer, know? He was, That's how they were utilizing him. Was there Elvis also? Elvis got a bike in that same time frame. They were both just bikes from Harley. Um, you know, things get changed and told and, it's awesome. Side covers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, great bike and, uh, he had kept it, and it had gone into disrepair, so they were brought somebody in to do the restoration work on it. The person did the, what we would consider the easy part, they disassembled it, and then, uh, then they left. So, they were kind of stuck with a pile of parts and, uh, that's when, uh, they called us, they found us, and The, uh, the call was made by, uh, his son in law to me and we said, sure, we'll, we'll restore the bike. Bruce Zimmerman and I, who's I've, you know, worked with here, For almost 40 years, we drove to Memphis, we took a film, film crew with us and we went and picked up the bike at Jerry Lee's house and went into his garage and the garage was Full of stuff. Cars, boats, stuff like packed. And in the garage um, were the motorcycle parts and they were in buckets, boxes, drawers, sacks, just kind of scattered throughout the So Bruce and I spent about an hour just looking for Harley parts and pulled them all out, put them all into buckets, and put them in the van and took them home, but before we left, we got to go inside and hang out with the killer. Yeah, had some tea with him. In his wood paneled living room with the piano and the gold records on the wall. He was in good health. He was tired that evening because he had been up the whole night before. And I said, are you still, you know, He was 76 at that point. I said, are you still partying like a madman? And he said, heck yeah. I'm not sure he said it exactly like that, but, um, great balls of fire. Yeah. And then he headed off to bed. So that was our, our visit with Jerry Lee. And it was really surreal and really cool. And he looked at me straight in the eye and pointed at me and said,"Killer, you better do a good job." That was pretty cool when he called me the killer. We took the bikes back, bike back and spread all the parts on the floor and took a picture and then went to work. And, you know, restorations take a while. It was about a year, maybe a year plus job. We brought it back to museum quality. They, uh, got it back to Jerry Lee. He was thrilled. He put it in his living room. Um, they, as a family, decided to sell it a couple of years later. And they sold it on Mecham Auctions. And Mecham made a really big deal of it. When the auction started, they brought Jerry Lee out. And he stopped the auction, played great balls of fire. And then they restarted the auction up. And, uh, with the, , consignment fee, the, the bike ended up going for 385,000 dollars, which was, uh, like a top 20 bike of all time for Harley at that point. just recently we saw a, uh, a little article on the internet come out and said, top five Harley Davidsons of all time. And it was on there. It was one of them. So, um, just, that was. Surprising. Yeah. So that, that kind of, uh, vaulted us even a little further with the restoration business. And then fast forward and about a year later, and I get a call from the Lewis family and they said, uh, "Hey, we have this friend, Lathan McKay, and he's the world's leading Evel Knievel collector." So my interest was piqued because, you know, I grew up in the Harley Davidson business. And, uh, I was a kid of the 70s, so I was obviously, like all other kids in the 70s, maybe even more so, I was into Evel Knievel. So I'm listening, and he said,"Yeah, Lathan, he bought Big Red, Evel's Mack truck and trailer.""And it's in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and they're looking at it, and they're not doing anything.""And we're trying to find somebody to restore this thing. And we know you guys restore motorcycles." Mhm."So, do you know anybody? Can you give us a referral for somebody that can restore a Mack truck?" I didn't think very long about it. And I just blurted out, we restore Mack trucks. Good answer. Restore anything you got. Yeah. And, uh, the irony was I'd never been in a Mack truck. but. you know, I knew that we could, we could pull people together, you know, the experts. I mean, our team is amazing of in restoring things is, you know, it's pretty much the same for anything. A Mack truck's just much bigger, but you know, there was a lot involved with an engine rebuild and chassis work and the body work. We had kind of experts for everything and there was, it ended up being 92 different people or businesses that had a hand in working on this thing. because there were so many different types of trades and expertise that were needed. Um, you know, from, the engine to the vinyl interior, the the carpeting, whatever, whatever it was. It was just a project that literally took every moment for me for the next two years of either working on or working with people to do the next part of the job. So kind of acted as the general contractor on it but a lot of the work was done in house to, by, by our team, the, the things that we could, we could accomplish. Took about two years, but it it came out really good. And I tell you when we started it, it was a matter of, you know, we were just going to put this thing back together. But as, as we started into the project, we realized that this was a piece of American history. And it meant a lot to a lot of people. So, it kind of, uh, went to a place where we knew we had to do everything really right. And, it was, it was pretty consuming. It was, it wasn't easy. I remember the, one of the craziest things was the floor being removed out of the trailer. The, the wood planks. That took forever. The guy was meticulous. He was taking little pieces out. Everything was done that way. I mean, we treated it as an artifact. I was just going to talk about when, when we met. The first time I met you, I walked in your office with my blue Agajanian jacket on. It was freezing outside. Yeah, we got to know each other and just started, you know, we were doing a job for the, the truck, you know, just a restoration job, just like we would. else. Um, so we didn't really have any thought of any plans after. It was just to get the job done and move on. And then Lathan and I got to know each other and became friends and realized that we really, uh, had similar ideas. I mean, we talk a lot of times about how, when we're thinking about something or how to do something, It always kind of matched up. Yeah. I would think of something and call you and you go, I was just thinking the same thing. Yeah. So it, it was, it was cool. Capricorn. Yeah. I mean, Lathan and I, I think our, our, our personalities are different and you know, our stories are different and everything, but, um, we're, we're in a lot of ways, very similar. And with this project, it just clicked, you know, and no giving up, tunnel vision, get the job done, period. Right. Right. Not easy, but just keep going. That's another thing people ask me all the time. And it's, it's not about just skin and bones of some man. It's his message. His message is what my dad told me. And that's what drives me. And getting off on doing impossible things. You can't give up. You can't quit. Yeah. Speaking of that, like I remember when the, um, the truck showed up, we had it shipped in from New Jersey. Yeah. And we were all excited and he came in on two different semis, you know, the coach on one and the trailer on another. And it showed up in North Topeka at and it pulled in and Todd Williams, the guy that was going to do all the body work on the truck, was standing there with me. And as soon as it pulled up, he took a look at it and he said, "I'm out." And I'm like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "That's not repairable. We can't do it." And I'm like, "No, Todd, too late. You're in. No choice here." Swiss cheese. Yeah. It was bad. And, uh, I was kind of shocked too, but you know, he's like, well, okay. But he wasn't too excited about the work that it was going to take. So it's also a testament to Todd because, them pulling that off, what they had to do to get that done. Cab. Just that cab. The cab was the worst part. I don't know. It was a long time. It was a lot of work. It was a lot of work. Every time I'd come to town, I was just like, it'd look a little better. Yeah. And then it was finally all sanded and you're just like, wow. Yeah. He, he did amazing work. And it was fun to go out and visit Chuck too, because he was tearing the engine down. And, you know, that engine went down to the block. The, the chassis went down to the frame. And. We blasted it and started over. I mean, every single piece on that, every nut and bolt was redone. The engine was completely rebuilt and went back to exactly how it was from the Mack factory. So yeah, it was a, it was a colossal project. but It was, the thought was who gets to do this? You know, I mean, it was like an honor, even though it was a ton of work, it was never bad. It was hard, but it wasn't bad. It was amazing. I really loved towards the tail end of it. We partnered with Mack trucks and John Walsh flew out here, the VP and saw it when it was getting closer and closer, but we set a deadline for a press conference and then the tour to go to Evel Days and Sturgis and the races and the Mack museum and everything. And it, they were what putting the tires on the night before. Yeah. It was just like, you know, you see all these shows where they're down to the last second and it was real though. It was real. We were there late that night in the press conference the next morning. And it rolls out and then goes on tour for months, but it was real though. It was like, wow, are we going to finish this thing in time? Yeah. The curtains were getting sewn up by the alterations lady down the street. There was like 10, 12 people working on it that night, you know, just doing different things. I think they're putting the window in, in the front. Chad Halopowska was wiring that thing till the night before. Yeah, there was a lot of wiring. Yeah. So, and the, the paint work too, which, you know, we brought in Evel's painter, his most famous painter, George Sedlak, and had him help with , the graphics on the, on it. And Lathan just spent a ton of time working on the exact graphics and, and not only just the graphics themselves, but how they were proportioned and sized, um, because I take for instance, the Harley number one was not the exact Same styling as the Harley number one that you see associated with Harley Davidson. It was kind of stretched. One of 'em was long short. Yeah, it was long because it was all hand painted. It was, yeah. So, and then we had the great Tex McDormand coming too. Pins strike, yeah. Tex McDormand. And, and Travis. Travis Charbonneau Travis killed it. Yeah. He had to do the most difficult stuff in, well, in my opinion, I don't wanna get beat up, but the gold bikes. Yeah. Took probably two, two days per gold motorcycle. And they just looked perfect. What I remember about how long it took was we brought these guys in, you know, and we hired them to come in and, uh, they said it was gonna take a week. No, it took two. Uh, so it was, now Todd Williams and his team painted the red and all the striping I just saw Todd the other day and he was reminiscing about it and it was, it was a hot day and they were laying that paint on and it was drying so fast. Remember And yeah, it was, it was an incredible job that they had to do so much paint, so much paint that took, um, to paint that, that, that huge truck. Each bit of lettering on the truck, I started out doing his stationery, like his circus logos and things. But look how many Icons are on that truck. There's hundreds. And so then we had to decide, it took months and months just to do that because we had to do it from pictures. So I had my guy Josh Rowe that I work with, he built an alphabet out of some of those fonts. So we could kind of do whatever, and that took months. But, I mean, it had to be done. And then we had templates from what you created to, uh, help, you know, Put them on the truck, which we sometimes projected so we could get it to the right size. And then, remember the other thing was, the question was, do, do we do the whole truck one scheme? because there was the early Seventies scheme. So we're like, let's do both sides. So we did the early version on the one side and the other side's got like Kings Island '75 era, because it's got the Kings Island announcement. And then we threw the movie thing on the back of the middle, the Hamilton thing. So it's a, it's a mix of every single era. Yes. So what Knievel did, he used it as a traveling billboard. So whatever was happening, it would get repainted, um, for that event. It's got a little bit of everything. Yeah. So yeah, we decided to mix it up. It's got Snake River Canyon jump on one side and King's Island on the other and a little mix here and there. Yeah. So yeah, would never been a situation where they had Snake River on one side and King's Island on the other, but that's. Tells the story. Yeah, told the story a little bit more. It was cool to have Mike Draper who probably did Lee Ratliff and him did most of the driving of Big Red. And, and Mike doesn't live very far from here in Wichita, Kansas. So, he would visit us regularly and really helped with the interior. Like, hey, you guys were doing it right. You know, we used pictures. To, to get it back, um, to what it was. because when we got that thing, the roof had caved in. There was no floor. It had been raining in that, into it. Um, so the, the cabinets were destroyed. We saved whatever we could. There was a family of skeletal remains of dead possums in the trailer. I remember getting in it that first day and just like, what have we done? I mean, the mouse sitting in the corner. It was, it was really bad. But a lot of people that had passion, you know, that's, I think the biggest thing that I could say about that restoration was the, the passion that came from the group of people that worked on it. Anybody that was working on it, it was a big deal to them. You almost had to turn people away. Yeah. I mean, it was Can I brush the carpet with my comb? I mean, it was that, down to that. It was like, it's awesome. Yeah, and that's how I felt every day that I got to work on it. You know, it was, I said it earlier, it was an honor. We had a lot of, uh, really cool help. Nice bills that came across oh, man, this across your desk This was a gigantic costly project, as it should be. I mean, there's a lot there and there's nothing we could expect it. I think, I think Maryland put the first boost in before you and I decided to do something. That, that, she put in a nice boost to help us get started. Marilyn Stemp was integral in making all this happen. Yeah, working with her was great and getting to know her through the project. Lathan and I, as we were working on this, and as I said earlier, you know, we became friends and kind of dreamers together. You know, the idea was to take this truck on the road. And Lathan had already done some shows where he took his artifacts out to different places and done events, but the idea was to take the truck out on the road. Yeah, my, my goal besides getting it finished, obviously, was to bring it to Evel Days. Yeah. To just a big, not middle finger, because of the people that thought we couldn't do it. And I think that was one of the best days of my life when we rolled into town and everyone's just like, wait, whoa, what? because it went down the same Evel loop, same parade that it did 73, 74. But that was, that was a huge highlight to prove everybody wrong. So the, the idea was, um, Hey, well, what are we going to do with this truck? You know, in the meantime, so I thought, you know, we have the Harley dealership here, I remember saying, well, let's just build a group, a big garage, you know, that's long enough for this. To fit in and we can set the truck in there and people can go down and look at it. That'd be fun to have here. That was the idea for quite a while. And then I think one day just said, "Lathan, where's the Evel Knievel Museum at?" I hadn't even really crossed my mind, you know, that there was, if there was one or not. And he's like, there isn't one. What do you think? And, uh, we just kind of agreed right at that moment. We just said, like, let's just do one. Well, I remember you said, what do you want to do with all this stuff? And I was like, what do you think? Yeah. We were thinking the same thing. We were thinking the same thing. So at first it was to get enough stuff to travel around with. And the guy we, we should probably mention, because I, I got stuff from people across the world, but it was usually one or two pieces or one or, you know, whatever, but this guy, Brian Hendricks that we found, we just lost him not long ago, sweetest guy in the world. There was a guy who did an auction at actually 20 minutes from where I live, Cruz Auctions. I was in high school. It was '95, I think, and this Brian Hendricks guy goes down there with$25-$30,000, that's all he had. And he bought 80 percent of the items at that auction. So we were able to get a huge majority of things that actually belonged to Evel. In that one swoop. He'd collected for 25 years. Through those toy collector magazines that had stamps and envelopes and just took, and when we went to his house, and I called him, I'd been there four times, and we made a deal that was really, really fair, but it's like the first time I took the most valuable stuff that I could fit in a car. Um, but it took us four trips and four years to get everything out of his house. I remember the last trip. And two U Hauls he sent Eddie. We sent Eddie Michael from the shop here to, back to Pennsylvania. And that gave us every toy in there. I mean, he had a lot of that stuff too. It's part of the archeology stories. And the rest of it was two pieces, one piece. I mean, I traveled to a truck stop in Indianapolis to get one parachute. That one parachute in the hall, because we had the other one from Draper. But I mean, that was, that was what had to be done. So there was a few shows we did with the truck. Um, but it was just so costly to move and it was hard to get any events or venues to, um, basically pony up to make it worth any type of while. And then, and then on top of that, it was a ton of work. You know, to, to actually, you know, put, it was like a rolling concert, you know, having to put everything out and, and without Mack, we wouldn't have been able to do it at all. No, no. So the idea then that's kind of where it backed up into a, maybe we should just do a static museum that's not on the road. And, uh, you save a lot of money by having that thing stationary. Yeah, and the insurance companies are much happier when it's inside of a building with a sprinkler system than rolling down the road in the back of a truck. We decided to add on to the building here, and build the Evel Knievel Museum. Yes. And just took a, a huge step, it was, you know, it was kind of a, a bit of I would say daredevil business move, but um, arduous. It was, yeah. And again, it was kind of like building the truck, you know, to do the museum, but it was, it was, there was so much passion by everybody and buy- in by everybody on our team here to, to build out this museum. And it was really just the, the team here at the, at Historic Harley Davidson that jumped in and all the displays, literally the walls. And then we learned how to print and Amanda Beach, um, who's my right hand, she learned how to print on a large format printer and then matted the pictures and did every single picture in here. Yeah, right out of the shop. Proud of the team and everything that, you know, came from it. And, interestingly, that's when we were getting ready to open this is when. I officially met you, Joe. We were trying to get some sponsors to help get the cost taken care of what, what it was taken to do this because it was a, it was a great thing for Topeka to have a, an attraction like this. And so she was reaching out to local business people and, uh, I remember meeting you down, it was in the ticket area, the first time that you walked in the door and we were looking at the counter, because your, your team redid our counter with a really cool blue, metal top that was, you know, better than what we had. And it was just what we needed for an Evel Knievel museum for the ticket counter. And, uh, that's, there's a lot of misconception with the, where all the money came from and who spent what. And it's another thing you, yeah, but that's to your credit too. Like Kaplinger was the, one of the guys I was on running on fumes and stressed out, you know, then he got, got my back and then Kaplinger had our back and then, you know, he's like what else is out there. And there was a few things that. You know, people wanted, once I got rolling, astronomical figures and guerrilla math were thrown my way for one thing that's left. It's like, "Whoa, you don't have this. How about half a million for it?" You know, but there's a lot of people took a lot of stress off of our backs. Yeah, Jim really helped you and I get to the point of getting enough things to open a museum. we could not open without a SkyCycle. Yeah. Yep. When we decided to do the museum, that's when Lathan and I kind of stepped on the gas pedal to go find more things. And, you know, as we were going through it, um, we were acquiring things, but to get, get to the big, massive pieces, yeah, Jim Kaplinger, a local attorney in Topeka and real estate developer and, um, rest in peace, Jim. We lost him a few years ago. He had a real, you know, the coolest thing is his daughters always say how much fun he had doing this. He loved it. Yeah. But he was, he was never like, no. It's like, what do you, he goes, "what do you need?""Um, we need a SkyCycle." He's like, "Okay, go get it." Yeah. Get stopped at the border and get strip searched with, with your checks. Well, The quick story about that is Lathan drove to, uh, and I'm, I'll get to tell this story. I went through the wrong part of the border. Yeah. So he went up to the border and to, to buy the, the, the sky cycle from Mark DeMarco, who we mentioned earlier. And, uh, Ryan Kavanaugh was with you, was the cameras blazing. Yeah. And, and you know, these guys aren't like. I mean, I'm just going to say Lathan's look and Ryan's look, they don't, they don't look like polished businessmen, you know, going into Canada to do a, to do a deal. I had been there a million times, but listen, here's, here's the thing. We came in from here, from Topeka. The usual way I go in is through Niagara Falls, New York. Way more mellow. I went in through Detroit and I was told not to do it because all the guns and the drugs pass through there. But it shaved off two and a half hours of my drive. So I'd never done it and that was like wow It's a whole different beast. The first thing out of their mouth is do you have any large amounts of currency to declare? And I just went "no" It's just I was so freaked out, you know, but but then they I wasn't cash Well, I think the best the best quote I know that was said was what do you what are you gonna do? What are you doing? You know, what's your business in Canada?"I'm buying a rocket." That's not the right thing to say. Well, no, the funniest part to a border patrol agent is that I'm buying a rocket. They don't, they don't, uh, it gets them a little excited. As soon as I said, um, I don't have any cash to declare. They, they have a secondary route. They, they point you to, because I was like, Oh man. because usually they just let you go. Yeah. They go, "over there." And so they took the whole car apart. It was freezing. Me and Ryan are just standing there like watching them take his car apart. What's all these cameras for? I'm like, well we're filming something up there. What are you filming? A sky cycle. And then I was like, please don't pull out my Evel bag. And they, I saw her pull up the leather Evel sack that I had around my neck, my little satchel. Digging. And I had the 50 checks, bank checks, buried in the bottom under a bunch of letters. She pulled it up just like you would think. What's this? said, oh my god. They confiscated your phone too. The funniest thing, they put us in detention for two and a half hours, took our phones, and I had emailed you. They were reading the correspondence and I called it the Lufthansa heist. And she goes, why did you say that? I go, it's just a play on the And I think I, I think I responded back like, "Hey, hope you don't get stopped at the border," you know, joking around. There was two good looking ladies, really. And they, they finally came back. I was handcuffed. And Ryan's sitting there, his legs popping off the ground. I was like, dude, we're not, we're telling the truth. It's going to be fine. But they finally, they gave me my phone back and I said, come here, count your money. And I was like, are we all good? She says, well, I looked up your name. Like you said, I looked up the SkyCycle. I found a YouTube thing showing it for sale. And you're free to go. It sounded so ridiculous. It does! So, I remember you telling me too that they said, um, Please tell us when you're coming back through because we want to see it. And then they were excited and they wanted, you know, they were all, they were all there to be able to see it. And Kaplinger's back here being the brilliant mind, legal mind that he is. And we had to prove that it was manufactured in the United States. So we had the paperwork and the checks that we scanned and sent over to prove that it was made in America. Actually, actually we had to, we went back into what we had purchased, all the paperwork from Truax. And, so, I went into the archives and, um, brought a bunch of paperwork to Jim and that was to prove that the SkyCycle had been built in the U. S. because they were going to charge us, I think it was like 75 grand tariff to bring it in and Jim got it to zero. So, yeah, yeah. But we had to, there was a couple of weeks of paperwork to figure that out. The checks were domestic checks. This is for the Sycycle. Right over there in that display. So we had all the proof that it was, it was built in Maryland. I think. So thank you, Scott Truax for all of that paperwork that we had got from him several years earlier, because it might've been trickier to get that thing in without that original paperwork, showing that, that all the parts were bought domestically. Yeah. Yeah. Bringing it home. Yeah. So we build the museum here and, uh, like Lathan said, that's when we got to meet Joe and Joe helped with several other pieces and artifacts and, but not only that, when we started talking about and the opportunity came up with Las Vegas, Joe was all in, you know,. Yeah, Las Vegas. We get that question so much. Why isn't it in Butte? Actually, uh, somebody from the Butte city council called me and was really mad and chewing me out for the museum being in Topeka and not in Butte. Why did we pick Topeka? Why didn't we pick Butte? And I was like, Hey man, you know, this is where I live. And we, you know, I told him a story and we just built this thing. And, and he really wasn't still kind of not happy. And then he, I said, well, listen, you guys had 40 years to build the museum in Butte and you never did it. And he's like, that's a good point. And then he was cool. After that, so. They wouldn't make enough money there either. Yeah. It wouldn't be wrong to be in Butte. I mean, there's no question about it. But I think Las Vegas, everyone agrees. so The opportunity came up with us. We had a lot of nice awards and some, uh, exposure, you know, almost, I'm going to say internationally, the awards that we received for the museum were, were awesome. And it caught the attention of a developer in Las Vegas, J Dapper. And J's, uh, done a ton of work in downtown Las Vegas. And he's taken some older buildings and, renovated them into really cool things. So he has a real passion for that. And, the Knievels live in Las Vegas, Kelly and Paige Knievel, Evel's son.. And, so we, you know, we always have a connection with Las Vegas there. I met J Dapper, um, Paige Knievel is a real estate broker. She's a lifelong Las Vegas person and she knows the place like the back of her hand. She's got deep roots there. Yeah, yeah. So we, we, we got to know J and he's like, this needs to come to Las Vegas and I'm going to buy a building and renovate it and make this happen. When we started this, obviously we didn't have, you know, the, the first idea was not to have a museum, but it evolved into that. We never saw it moving from here when we started the, with, with the museum coming here, but when this opportunity came up, it wasn't something that we could walk away from. We thought about doing, at one point, doing an experience there. Yeah. It's smaller we did talk about having it in two places, but we just felt like both would be compromised and it wouldn't be what it should. It's hard for us because this is our home, and this is our dealership, and this is where we live. To make the decision to move it, really hard. Very, um, you know, pulling both ways. Another interesting aspect of it is, we should mention is, a friend of ours now, who's a business partner, contacted me when he bought Evel's yacht by accident. He was in Fort Lauderdale, and he's looking at this boat. No clue it was Evel's, and the broker says, This belonged to Evel, and he got really curious. Mike and I got all the materials together from the yacht. The blueprints, the contracts, everything. And got those to him, and he said, What else is going on? And I was like, well, This, that, and that. We're making a movie. Oh, I'm in. I guess I have a meeting. We're going to do this. He, without him, he was one of the third tier. Dapper and him, like, I don't, it's just astronomical, you know, partners that made the next step happen as well, but Rob Steele Rob Steele is, he, him jumping on board, really the Facilitated to making it happen, and we've been blessed, Lathan and I have, to have somebody like Jim Kaplinger jump on, and then we got to meet Joe, and then to have someone like Rob Steele join Joe, Lathan, and I. It feels good to have people believe in you. Yeah. That really pulls my tears right there. Yeah. You're like, when I first hang out with Rob, he lives in my hometown also. But I would always just go, thanks for believing in us. Yeah. because he did. You can spot, some people can spot the negativity towards certain aspects of your mission, but all he saw was positive. What do you need? Let's go. Yeah. And he, and when we met him in Vegas, you know, we met him in Vegas. He was just like, okay, what did he say? I'm impressed guys. Yeah. It was three years ago now. Yep. Yep, um, we kind of had to, you know, we had to meet him and he came to the museum in Topeka. He wanted to see it. He met our team. We weren't even here. No, I actually intentionally wanted him to meet our team without us here just so he could see the type of people we had. And then we met him. You and I met him in Las Vegas and looked at some buildings in Las Vegas and, you know, we decided on the Mission Lennon Building, which is a historic building in Las Vegas. It's, uh, it's been unoccupied for a long time and How long? 20 years? At least, yeah, I mean, maybe more. It had that vibe of emptiness. I would, I wouldn't be surprised if it was 20. The Arts District is where it's located. Everybody asks us where it's going to be. And the neighborhood where we're at has really cool new restaurants, a brand new boutique hotel right across the street. There's a massive, project that is going in. Uh, to the north of the building, the housing, I can't remember the name of the project, Midtown, I think is right. I saw a story on the internet that said that the Arts District in Las Vegas is one of the hottest developing neighborhoods in the country. So we're we're right in the middle of it. Hopefully, uh, and I think we're, we're going to be a key part of, of all of that. And the city's looking at it that way. So, We're excited to be in that area. The building's going to have a really cool vibe. And it's actually happening. It's actually happening. You can actually say that it's happening now. It's been a long, long time. It's kinda like building the truck or then nobody believes it's gonna happen. At some points it was, I was wondering, you know, it was on, it was off, it wasn't gonna happen. And, um, it leaked out. Hmm. several years ago, um, and then, honestly, from the time it leaked out, there was a point where it was off. It wasn't going to happen, um, and then it got revived. The parallels with this journey and Evel's are so similar. Yeah. And we always talk about the hurdles, but it's just, you know, one day you think everything's gone and off, and you know better now. We'd like to, our brains developed into this kind of ESP Oh, today it's off, but it'll change tomorrow. The story changes every single day. But it always happens. Yeah. Every time we think something's not going to happen, it does happen. because you just keep persevering. Well, Evel means so much to people from our generation. We see it when people come into the museum and actually get emotional. I mean, they'll be looking at something and it cues them from their childhood and it was great times or, or the toy or seeing something on the video, one of our videos from Wild World of Sports, you know, just seeing that, um, pinball machine, yeah, something that cues them and, um, it, it's very meaningful to see the impact that it has on people. And then it kind of changes your idea of what you're really doing, you know, I mean, like we're not just putting together some cool display. This is something that is impactful with people's lives and Evel was a hero and he meant a lot to a lot of people. So there's a lot on, you know, the three of us and Rob and then our whole team um, to produce something that lives up to what it should be for a guy that of the stature of Evel Knievel You know what? It wouldn't have happened. None of this would have happened, I don't think, without us. It would, it would, yeah. I'm not sure the path it would have. There might have been something, but it wouldn't be like this. Not to this scale. No, not with every artifact and Might have been like what we first thought, like a small display. There's a lot of those around, you know, by the way. I mean, the Smithsonian has a display. Because it's such a huge deal. I mean, it's an international figure, but, uh, yeah, to have the amount of, uh, pieces and then there's been a lot of work by a lot of people to put it all together and into the form of a presentation. And the new displays are just mind blowing. There's a lot of new, new stuff that's come along too. Like you, the gates that you're remodeling. We got the letters from his gate. Yeah. Gratefully from, uh, Grandma Jeannie who we lost last summer. Yeah, just recently we've been able to come up with a lot more items that are going to be fun to display and people are going to enjoy seeing. In addition to, when we move to, to Las Vegas, the Knievels are going to allow us to utilize their collection, which they have some really neat pieces. The Wheelie Car and the other SkyCycles. So, we're 117 and 711 will both be on display at the museum. of diversity in the four minds. Yeah. When we started talking this The people that we've met that, that part is like all a bonus to, you know, the museum, we didn't expect that. We didn't expect seeing them light up and how much it's meant to them and just meeting new, interesting people and hearing stories. And, you're right. It's been amazing. yeah, Working with, um, you guys for me is inspiring. And it's, you know, journey's just beginning really. We could go on for days, but that's it in a nutshell, I think. road. We're gonna go see, uh, if we can obtain a famous motorcycle that made it over Caesars Palace Fountains. I know exactly where that bike is. Alright, let's go get it. And Mike, you you build the best museum in Las Vegas. I'll keep on it. Every day. Yeah. All right. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe. It's our mission to preserve and present the legacy of Evel Knievel. So, if you have an idea for an episode or a guest, or have a suggestion to improve our show, just drop us a line at joe@thrill.show I just think the Evel Knievel way. We leave you with the encouraging words from the Book of Deuteronomy."Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified. For the Lord, your God, goes with you. He will never leave you or forsake you." Until next time, happy landings! You like to fly to the seat of your pants? This is where you belong.