[INTRO MUSIC: LOVE-FI BY ZEPHYR] Alright.

What am I doing in the ditch of Highway 97 painting my 4runner like this?

It's for identification and protection, of course.

But why?

I like that it's a little bit sloppy, you know, like, just a little bit.

Oh yo, it's a gambler car for sure.

You're going to the Gambler, I see.

Yep.

That's where we're headed.

We're with SOPBS, a PBS station out of Medford.

That's right.

In this episode, we're on our way into Central Oregon for the Gambler500, an event all about the love of cars, public lands, and getting rowdy.

On this trip, we're going to learn what makes the Gambler500 not just an outrageous gathering of motorheads, but something with environmental stewardship at its heart.

I'm not the first reporter to come to the Gambler looking for a story, but from the start, my intent was to get my hands dirty, and I accepted the possibility of totaling our production vehicle in the process.

At least if that happens, people will know it's us.

This one's epic.

Please join us.

Gambler500, buddy!

THIS IS US AS WE ARE!

WOO!

Us As We Are is made possible in part by The Roundhouse Foundation A private family foundation that supports creative solutions to the unique chalenges associated with rural culture culture and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

Additional funding by the Elizabeth C. Pease Memorial Fund for Education and Social Welfare and by the members of Southern Oregon PBS.

Thank you.

My name is Tate Morgan, and I'm the creator and founder of the Gambler500, which is an off road rally, navigation, adventure thing using impractical fun cars, but we changed it from a race.

Instead, the metric for competition is how much trash you can collect.

We utilize public lands, but everyone does, and everyone should be recreating on them, hunting on them, hiking on them, using them.

About half of all of our state's lands here in the West are owned by the public.

And that just means if you're in Florida, New York, or Vermont, you can come over here and explore these public lands that we all share.

And we know that if we're gonna use them, need to make sure we leave them better than we found it.

And in this case, we leave them far better than we found it.

This is the largest public land cleanup in the nation.

We've done over 4 million pounds between, you know, all of our states and different events.

We've done 2 million of those 4 million just right here in Central Oregon at this event.

The center of the action at this Gambler500 was the Deschutes County Fairgrounds, which transformed into a high octane gas fueled dust party called Gambler Town.

As soon as we arrived, Tate advised us to immediately hit the road again and check out a route called the Tumalo Pipeline made out of a series of back country waypoints.

Aside from the Tumalo Pipeline, there's two other routes.

There's the crooked loop that goes in the area of, like, the Crooked River National Grassland.

And then there's the Culo Del Diablo route, which you can Google translate that if you want.

That is more south of here near the Newberry Crater, and I believe it's supposed to be the most difficult.

[La Cucaracha horn] I really like cleaning up trash, digging the outdoors, and I'm really into cars.

So good combination of both.

I got it as I was driving, you know, about 500 miles a week for work, and I wanted a dirt cheap car.

Picked it up for about $560.

I was daily driving it, and struts were blown out, and I'm like, oh, if I'm gonna change the struts, let's put bigger struts on it, lift it up and everything like that, and let's go take it to the gambler and It's an '86 Toyota Tacoma.

I've slowly, I've sunk money into it because it was the only vehicle I had at the time.

You know, I have to get back and forth to work.

I'm an iron worker, so I I do steel all the important stuff I did to work on, you know, but but, you know, the body, I'm not gonna do anything to the body, you know.

Somebody hit me right here and one of our crew members gave me a Wile E. Coyote and he says, put that on your he goes, put that on your dent.

And so I put it on the dent, you know, I go, yeah, I'll take that.

I'm Cedric.

We're a part of a group that came from Montreal to Oregon just for the event right here.

We traveled, actually 3,000 miles.

We drove the whole time for three days.

I'm one of the two pilots of this piece of crap car.

And we're here to do some race.

Oregon's crazy.

It's really nice.

First time in the country and for real, I'm gonna come back here.

My son and I, we drugged this out of the woods out of Wilderville, Oregon.

He named it Team Glue Factory because his thing was, you know, it's held together by glue and then what else do you do with a dead horse, you know?

The hood scoop is a actual wild mustang horse skull that we found with my buddy and my son while we were out on a fishing trip on the John Day River.

ABG.

Get out there, people.

Listen.

Oh, What does ABG stand for?

Always Be Gambling.

What's up?

What's your name?

I'm Keegan.

Whats your name?

Hemlock.

And who are you interviewing for?

We're with Southern Oregon PBS.

This is a program called Us As We Are.

We're covering the gambler500 this year.

Oh, nice.

Nice to meet you guys.

I'm coming from Eugene with my buddy Chase.

It was very last minute.

Nice.

I'm on a free Ural I got at the dog park up on Orkus Island.

It's a crappy 2012 Russian bike that you can't get parts for because of a war.

I paid $45 for my last oil filter from an underground dealer who smuggled it in from Russia.

No way.

Yes way.

Wow.

Dude, that was incredible.

Yeah.

You didn't need to walk.

People wanting to ask me about my bike at, like, the gas station.

A lot of old guys, go, oh, is that one of them old Nazi bikes?

I'm like, no.

This is the Huna Herpes.

It's your standard '94 with the 4.6L V8.

What else?

AC works and cruise control.

And she's the gambler rig.

Now this is so cool to me because Louis and I, when we were getting into our Oregon exploring interest, we were driving around this exact model of T Bird but with no modifications whatsoever.

And we were fording streams and going into all kinds of crazy rock crawling scenarios, and it managed to get us where we wanted to go.

I will be back every year.

This is my third year, and I will be back for four, five, six till they stop.

Hopefully, my kids will do it.

My son wants to.

We've talked with Tate Morgan because they did do a family gambler one time, and my son idolizes that guy.

And he's like, I wanna do a gambler, and I wanna do a Tate.

So, Tate Morgan, you watch this?

We need a family event so we can bring the little kiddos to pick up trash.

Yeah.

I mean, the gambler was just a silly joke among friends.

We were all young parents with professional jobs.

I had actually just moved from Central Oregon during the Great Recession.

We had lost basically everything, moved in with my father-in-law.

Slowly, we're clawing back out of that, and we found I had a little bit of discretionary funds to go do something fun.

And so $500 was kind of my limit along with my friends, know, it was a tough time.

And so, yeah, we buy the old Corollas and then we were talking about 20 people.

I mean, it was just a kind of a rally, we kept time.

And then we camped and had a great time out on public lands.

Always was it was free for three years.

And then we had a viral video go nuts.

It was not our intention to have a public event.

So my wife, who's a corporate attorney, got in and copyrighted, trademarked everything, and then put together this event and say hey, why don't you guys show up?

And that's when we changed the metric to trash cleanup instead of a race.

I was expecting probably 200 to 300 people, which is lot more than the 60 we'd had prior to that.

And 3,000 people showed up.

I think it spoke to just people's, like, creativity and yearning for adventure and something different.

We were, we were kind of inventing a genre And that's what I wanted to do next.

Was graduate grassroots concept of really anyone can start a gambler and use our name and logo as long as they don't monetize it, as long as they don't charge for it, as long as they have fun and they pick up trash.

So we wanted people to recreate the fun that we were having in these small groups.

Right?

50 it's with 10 people.

Margaret Mead said that.

She says, "A small group of of motivated people can change the world, and in fact, it's the only thing that ever has."

And we're showing that here.

And we're showing that well with the hundreds of gamblers across the nation.

It's a couch cart only by Hasbro.

It's the best toy known to man.

You know, instead of carrying around a chair long distances, wouldn't it be better to have a couch and not carry it?

You know, as it turns out, it is kinda comfortable.

Cheers!

Tripp: Tell me if I'm gonna run into a hay bale.

[Rock Music] [Rock Music intensifies] [Discordant chaos] Party laps for eight hours.

That was the main theme of last night.

Despite that, I actually managed to sleep pretty okay.

Right now, it's about 7:30 in the morning and apparently at 9:00, there's gonna be a big lineup to go out and explore the grasslands area.

When we introduced we changed the metric from a race to a trash collection, that's really when the Gambler500 really really defined itself.

Our our people were attracted to this.

They love it.

And then we also I think we're able to convert some to really understand what stewardship does.

[Heavy machinery] We're at a site called the Water Towers out in the grasslands.

The Crooked River Grasslands.

This is a site that my wife and I, we were out exploring one day and we came across this site and we just looked down the side, top of this hill and we're like, my goodness, you know, what happened here?

So we started talking with Tate and the gambler and stuff like that to organize the Crooked River Grasslands Cleanup, which is what we're doing here.

We're just cleaning up trash, People leave all kinds of s*** out here.

It's stupid.

People come out here and dump and abuse our public lands, that winds up getting them closed.

Part of the reason why we're out here is to help keep them open.

Tell me about what what happened out there in the desert.

Why is there all this garbage out there?

What causes that?

Do you want the honest answer?

Whatever your answer is.

Is this hard hitting journalism we're doing?

Dumping on public land is nothing new.

When we started this endeavor, the garbage part came in about eight years ago, and and there was a lot of old trash out there.

Boats, appliances, couches, things that had been there that were weather checked for a decade, two decades, you know, a long long time, especially here in Central Oregon.

But in recent years with being faced with our housing crisis, that has in turn created a houseless issue.

Also, some of our policies here make it easier for people to from other states to come as well.

That is not the end of the story.

But you can take a little walk through here, and you can see while some of it is houseless encampment trash, some of it is also things that did not come from people that are living out in the desert.

A lot of times they get used as a scapegoat.

The issue becomes now and then particularly in the beautiful city of Bend, they're not doing anything to sustainably reduce the amount of trash and houseless population that's out there or the amount of public dumping.

When it comes to public lands that are on the West Side where they get to market their communities and make a bunch of money, bring, you know, developments in, they'll use public lands in their favor.

But when it comes to taking care of the East Side Of Bend and Redmond and all all the way up to Madras, no one really cares.

If you have a place that you like to go to and you see garbage, Sons of Smokey app is a good resource.

Are you?

Yeah, we downloaded it.

Oh, ok.

You have the app.

Good, good.

Sons of Smokey, it's a nonprofit.

It's a 501(c)(3.

We volunteer all of our time.

There are no paid positions funded mostly by the Ford Motor Company through the Bronco Wild Fund that is dedicated to moving trash off public land.

And and so we are nonpartisan and not even really a part of the Gambler500 so much as just a tool that exists to help dispose of this trash, but also create tools for participants and everyone, anyone and everyone, whether you're a hiker, birdwatcher, camper, hunter, motor sports enthusiast, anybody who's out in public lands can use our app, mark trash if they find it, so you don't even have to pick up trash to help mark it, take a picture of it, it uploads.

Stewardship groups like ours will come handle it or 4x4 groups.

Honestly, just citizens that we're out out recreating can go get it.

Yeah, hey.

If you guys got trash to get rid of, man, take it to the dumps.

Call a group like the Sons of Smokey if you can't afford it.

This definitely is not the way to do it.

Thank God for volunteers.

They come out and do this kind of stuff.

And it's obviously a lot of fun.

So anybody who wants to come out to the Gambler500, we love them to come, you know, hang out.

You know, obviously, there's all there's bands and parties and all this sort of stuff and the racing that goes on.

And if you don't like getting dirty and pick up trash, you don't have to, but, I think you'll find that it's it's particularly rewarding.

This shouldn't look like this.

And hopefully, when we leave, it doesn't look like it was trashed.

While the trash cleanup is now the emphasis of the event, a racing element has still been preserved in the form of Hooptie-cross.

Today, we are racing in a closed course rallycross style race series called Hooptie-Cross.

[Engine revving] Hooptie-cross is kind of the brainchild of me and my best friend Tate Morgan, who runs a Gambler500.

And the whole premise was cheap cars, you know, nothing over $500.

It was a loose rule, but the less money you spent, the more fun you'd have.

In the early days, when we didn't have a lot of people in Gambler500, we would race from Portland down here to Central Oregon and Bend.

We'd camp out, have a good time, and then would race back.

We'd abide by the laws, of course, on the highways and all that, but we did a lot of off road stuff and set waypoints in the forest.

Bombing around on public land back roads is a great Oregonian tradition and a big part of what happens during gambler.

But these roads aren't planned courses, so if you're not careful, things can go quite wrong.

Here's me making a mistake.

Don't try this at home.

I needed to get the show-off racing energy out of my system, so I got signed up to take the 4Runner through hooptie-cross.

[Radio chatter] When gambler got too big, there was a lot of people missing that racing element, and I was doing some closed course racing, some rallycross.

I came up with the idea, why don't we formulate our own sort of race series, keep it cheap, keep it accessible.

My whole goal is to bring people out that had never raced before and really get them to experience what racing is.

And this is pretty simple.

It's not professional by any means.

The thing that I love most about it is seeing people come out for the first time.

[Hype music] We race about 15 to 20 races a year all over the country.

And this event here in Redmond Expo is probably our biggest event of the year.

About a 120 racers between yesterday and today.

And we get people out here, 4Runners, they're daily drivers, work trucks, you know, stuff like this that you see behind us here.

Old Honda Civics.

I mean, you name it.

Anything's welcome.

It's a blast.

It's a lot of fun.

All you need need is a helmet and, you know, a car that's in decent shape and not compromised.

And we've got a a small rule book that's pretty simple, but it's designed to keep people safe and spectators safe.

We've got tons of volunteers on track.

And then watching them realize that they have a skill at at racing and watching them excel and get faster and faster and and they love it.

When they cross the finish line for the first time, they got a smile from ear to ear, that's one of my favorite parts about it.

How'd we look?

You didn't roll.

We did not roll.

No rolls.

And I actually think we made okay speed.

Yeah.

That was impressive.

Really glad I had the helmet cause there were litterally times I would've gotten knocked the h*** out.

Yes.

I hit my head so hard.

We just went out there in our press vehicle.

The blue 4runner up there.

Awesome.

Believe it or not, we actually I think we did okay.

Okay.

I didn't feel like it was off three minutes.

Think it's kinda the the borderline.

So if you're around three minutes, you're good.

I'm I'm glad that, like, we weren't just pathetically, like, piecing our way through.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm so glad being the generally cautious member of the crew, I was like, oh, geez.

Oh, gosh.

But, yeah, that was, that was great.

[Multiple engines revving] I am the scuba man.

That is the only title I go by.

I came here to race my bike.

I have a lot of fun.

It's all electric.

[Engine revving] Much than the rest of the crowd.

I sneak up on them.

I got a bell, though.

So you built this yourself?

That's correct.

This bike is version 2, but it's really like version 2.5.

I've changed so many things over the years.

Because there's no oil or gasoline or fluids, I can lay it down.

I don't need a kickstand.

What you're looking at here is a 24 series lithium iron phosphate battery.

This theoretically could take me about 50 miles.

The pilot could, certainly use some work as far as racing is concerned.

I certainly wasn't as fast as these guys were.

Would you like to take it for a ride?

Can I?

I forgot to tell him I had to put the chain back together with a miscellaneous screw, so he probably shouldn't give it too much power.

He'll be fine.

Bob & weave!

Bob & weave!

It's refreshing.

F***!

Oh, god.

I got you in the back.

I'll be careful with the camera.

Oh, you peed him, dude.

Oh my god.

This is our true $500 gambler.

Old timer put it on Facebook for $800, and I was just like, $500?

And he was like, deal.

No title, and there's no third gear.

Dude, we just had a whole mini fridge and all kinds of s***.

we went and cleaned up a hobo camp or a homeless encampment.

Correct.

You know?

But, hey, we're all people.

Our YouTube's gasoline sideshow.

We we do our own crash 'em up derbies, and we buy junk cars for cheap and spray paint them.

Like, last week for Father's Day, we had a huge rager.

There was, like, almost a 100 people there, and we had, like, six cars ripping around.

We had our fourth engine fire and first airbag deployed.

My buddy was in a Jeep Cherokee, and he just sent it straight into a tree.

[Hits tree] Oh f***!

He hit it, and it instantly caught on fire.

And I haven't I'm a big boy.

I haven't full sprinted in a while, but I was like, dude, game on for the for the fire extinguisher.

It was sweet.

It worked out.

And he had a helmet on, so the airbag deploy, it didn't really Yeah.

Safety first, then teamwork, and then beers.

Better safe than sober.

The casual viewer at home might by now have noticed that a lot of the activity in Gambler Town is done under the influence of alcohol, and many are probably concerned by this concept, wondering how on earth these folks are getting away with overtly drinking and driving.

In the state of Oregon, it's illegal to drive under the influence on roads that are open to the public.

However, these laws do not apply on private or closed off land, which is what allows the hijinks of people like Gasoline Sideshow.

Their property, their rules.

Gambler Town was at the Deschutes County Fairground, and it was a closed, ticketed event for adults only.

While the few rules for Gambler Town do mention no dangerous behavior, drinking isn't specifically mentioned and it seems a lot of people embrace the freedom that vagueness enables.

You guys are still rolling around?

Still rolling around.

Have you gotten up even once this whole time?

No, no.

We sleep here.

We eat here.

We...everything here.

Team Truck Norris.

Team Truck Norris over here.

Go check out the whole crew.

What's up, Team Truck Norris?

We we can't we can't hear.

We are trying to make it a little bit more lively here, here on the Strip.

It is about 7PM, and we're starting to see some lights coming out.

It's gonna get exciting.

Love your hat, by the way.

And he's been running this piece of s*** for f***ing years.

He got it for $350.

No way.

Dead serious.

No front end.

Doesn't, no front wheel drive.

Just two wheel drive and just mobs the s*** out of this thing.

This is the eighth year it's been here.

Rev it up!

Let's go!

what we're doing is we're bribing people with jello shots to hit the jump.

Nice.

When they hit the jump, they get the jello shot.

We we showed up.

We got the gambler rig over there, the $500 rig.

We already picked up a bunch of trash and freaking brought a whole truckload back at least.

and we're we're supporting it.

What's your name, man?

Pauley.

You're enjoying gambler so far?

F*** Yeah.

Gambling's living buddy.

We got this half van, half truck.

We're just out here having a great time cleaning up the earth, buddy.

America.

F*** yeah.

Us as we are.

You know, the biggest one I gotta say is make tomorrow happen today.

Get out there and actually do it.

Instead of talk about it, be about it.

If you see something laying on the ground, pick it up.

Leave somewhere better than you had found it.

Live life in pursuit of happiness, man.

ABG.

Always be gambling.

Always be gambling, buddy.

This was originally the company shuttle rig for the Toyota dealership.

And it was on its last leg, so the company let me take it out on the Gambler500.

It barely made it back.

I was getting ready to scrap it out, he's like, dude, you should stick it on the back of the F-150.

Took this and this and combined it, and here we are today.

Hop on.

Let's do it.

Alright, we're going for a ride.

[Metal music] GoPro Tripp.

Victory lap, boys.

A. B. f***ing G. YEAH!

Good luck!

Hey, hop on!

[Engine revs] YEAH!

WOO!

If anybody asks you, "what is the Gambler500?"

Ask 75 different people, and you'll get 38 different answers.

Oh!

You d***!

Watch the f***ing joint!

Keegan!

Keegan!

Keegan!

Holy s*** Hey, wait a minute, we're at the other concert!

That is amazing.

It is beautiful.

America!

Hey.

I'm taking the spot.

This is Us As We Are.

All: YEAH!

I'm looking for action.

Hey!

Come over here with the camera.

Alright.

That's exactly what I'm looking for.

ABG.

WOO!

This is a 1934 Snapper LT-450 14 horsepower Briggs and Straton.

It'll top out at a good, you know, 6mph.

See you later, gators.

Nobody's died yet, so I think it's pretty good.

Gambler500 is AWESOME!

As long as you're not hurting everybody, do what you want, brother.

There's no wrong answers today.

Always be gambling.

Always be gambling.

I can't believe it, man.

Like, it was it's a dream come true, man.

I worked so hard, put a lot of work in this car.

I got a lot of respect for my mechanic, Kevin.

And he f***ing did it.

Oh, hey, Jane.

I love you.

I love you.

Yeah.

Life is good, man.

It's just a '97 Pathfinder.

Next thing you know, we're Oh.

It's got a propane can on there and build a dragon.

It's got rockets on the back, shoot four foot flames out of the back.

Every once in a while, they'll drive it out and, light up the rockets.

It's pretty cool.

It's ultimate experience, You just gotta you gotta have the car set right and get the tires right.

And I gotta thank the baby Jesus and everyone else that's involved.

Thank my mother and my father to bringing me here.

Yeah man.

Life is good, dude.

Hooptie-Cross is the best thing that ever happened in this world, man.

Next time you see somebody in a junky car, don't immediately be quick to judge because you'll find that we may look a lot different, but we probably have a lot more in common when it comes to just being human beings.

Get out there, touch grass, get off the internet.

The more people that learn about it, hopefully the more volunteers we can get and the more people use an app and, you know, snowball effect and get things cleaned up and just raising awareness of it and discouraging people from dumping.

This is just too beautiful to destroy.

Way too beautiful to destroy.

Come on down to the Gambler.

It's a great time, great people, great fun.

You don't need to know anything.

Plenty of people out here that'll help you out That know what they're doing.

So if you don't, they do.

And we have people from all over the the country.

We have a family, two families that drove down Quebec, 48 hours to get here.

Yeah.

We talked to them.

That was pretty wild.

Well, I'm super thrilled.

I've met some French Canadians here in the Oregonian Outback At the Gambler500.

Okay.

Good to meet you.

Thanks for the ride.

H*** yeah, dude.

Awesome.

Thank you, William.

Great to meet you, man.

Hey.

You guys have a great day.

It's really good to meet you.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Awesome, Jonah.

Really good to meet you.

Nice to meet you guys.

Thanks for being out here.

It was great to meet you.

Thanks for the conversation.

It's really good meeting you and talking to you.

Absolutely.

I'm gonna go dump this load of stuff up the hill.

Okay.

We're back in the Crooked River Grasslands the next day at the spot that had all the garbage, and it's pretty much totally cleaned up.

They did a nice job.

Tate, really good talking my man.

Brother.

This is Us As We Are.

Pleasure.

Thanks for coming out.

I'm Keegan.

You are?

Brian.

Nice to meet you.

You are?

Kevin.

Kevin?

Tripp?

Yeah.

Like acid trip.

It's great talking to man.

Likewise.

And this is Us As We Are.

I really appreciate the time, the conversation, and the ride.

It was amazing.

Really good talking to you, man.

F*** yeah.

Gamble on.

Really good to meet you, man.

Take care.

Amazing car.

Tell your dad, I told him too, but this is that's incredible.

Life is good, man.

It's all one love.

Cool, anything else you wanna share?

ABG.

And this is Us As We Are.

Oh say that again, man.

And this is Us As We Are.

Yo!

This is us as we are.

Us As We Are is made possible in part by... The Roundhouse Foundation a private family foundation that supports creative solutions to the unique challenges associated with rural culture and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest.

Additional funding by... The Elizabeth C. Pease Memorial Fund for Education and Social Welfare and by the members of Southern Oregon PBS.

Thank you.