THE DINO HEIST

None of this was supposed to be a series. For as long as I've made content, I had a running bit where I chugged espresso and rode my motorcycle: first four shots, then six, then eight, ten, twelve, fourteen. Part one kicks off with sixteen shots of white espresso chugged in just thirteen seconds, followed by me taking the Sinclair gas station dinosaur with my motorcycle. Her name is Claire, she weighs forty pounds, and yes, I got away with it.

It worked a little too well. The video blew up, the actual news got involved, and a helicopter pulled up on my apartment. And every single person had the same question: what happened to the dinosaur? Well, I returned her, okay? We can all stop looking, thank you. LAPD, I'm innocent.

Turns out just a week later, the gas station replaced Claire with an even bigger dinosaur: three times as large, twelve feet long, seventy pounds. Oh, and they had the audacity to host an unveiling party to show it off. So obviously I went (without anyone knowing) and scoped out the new security measures.

Getting the new target took several weeks and a plan called Operation Dino Fury. There were scouting runs to figure out who worked what time, crew assembling meetings, and a hardware store run right before closing. Then, the night arrived…we pulled up at 3:00 AM in a twenty-foot moving truck, cut the feed to the cameras, and met the one thing we did NOT come prepared for: concrete pillars bolting the new dinosaur to the ground. So, I did the next logical thing: I had a contractor quote the demolition (without him knowing what it was for), and a demo crew got her out of the ground in about an hour and a half. She was heavy, I'm not going to lie.

And listen, before y'all say anything: yes, we anticipated a tracker. What we didn't anticipate was it being buried in a specific putty where no scan would catch it. Unfortunately the police tracked us to the warehouse, and the dinosaurs were returned (for now).

Season 2 opens with me out on bail and my face revealed to the whole world. But, not all was lost. A week before SWAT raided our warehouse, an anonymous DM from a follower said there was an even bigger dinosaur in Bali… so, of course, I had to see. I couldn't find a single thing about it on Google, but a local I met years prior on the island knew of the location. Naturally, I headed straight for LAX to fly to Bali.

I need to be honest: Bali got weird fast. A text from an encrypted number told me to meet at a market north of the town I was staying in. I didn't exactly know who or what I was looking for, but I figured it had to be connected to the other DM I received a week prior. After searching around the market, I found someone who led me upstairs to a shaman who handed me a drink. I know this sounds crazy, but that very drink showed me a vision into the future: a shipwreck that seemingly held an object I must retrieve. My local contact, Christian, confirmed the wreck is real but sits in very dangerous, shark-infested waters.

Finding a diver willing to take me into these waters was not easy. But, I managed to work something out with a local just a few minutes off the coast of the alleged dive site. Forty meters down, we found it: a treasure map with a big red X labeled "dino." Turns out, the X leads to Dolores: another dinosaur statue over twenty feet tall, eighteen feet long, and several hundred pounds. And get this: it sits proudly outside of one of the most popular malls in Bali. Obviously, she will not be easy to take.

I'm sorry to spoil the ending, but I never got my hands on Dolores. A guy offering to help with the job told me to bring the map to a club at night, and unfortunately, some other people found him too. To this day, I do not know if I was double crossed. What I do know is that I need to take some martial arts classes because I got knocked out and woke up (after god knows how long) in a truck bed in Japan. No phone, no wallet, and no shoes. What would you do?

A contact in Tokyo who deals in various black market affairs told me to head back to the United States and drop the heist. Apparently these "are not people you want to know." So, on that advice, I listened…for now.