I was hammering around town when the hail hit. Nobody can ridethrough hail. At least nobody who buys their own paint jobs.
Stopping on the shoulder, I pulled out my rain gear and tried tolean over the tank, to keep the hail from ruining the $1,000 color thatEddie Meeks from Hardly Civilized in the Carolinas had just blasted on. As thehail slacked off, I stood up, turned and BUMP, walked straight into afemale State Trooper.
“Oh shit!” I hollered without thinking.
The gal trooper stepped backward from the impact and looked at mewith surprise.
“Whoa, you scared the shit out of me,” I said, trying to play itcool.
“Sorry,” the gal said, smiling. I immediately realized she wasvery good looking and had a huge rack pushing her body armor forward. “I thought at first youwere some guy pushing a shopping cart. Hard to see in this rain. Then I thought maybe you werehaving trouble, so I figured I’d better stopand help.”
“Nope, just getting on more duck weather gear,” I said, steppingstrategically in front of the low-mounted license plate holder.
“OK, well, be careful, it’s terrible weather to be riding in,” thetrooper said, smiling again.
For an instant, I could picture her naked, upside down, her asshigh, while I fired her pistol into the air and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But with theluck I’d been having lately with women, the last thing I wanted to do was engage one who’d beengiven the power by the state to place offending men under arrest.
I lit the RevTech fuse and rolled the Avon. My heart was stillpounding. I’d never get to Sturgis, S.D., with these dummy paper tags Trottamade, I thought to myself. The ink was running off them, they were fallingto pieces. I must be out of my mind. I tried to estimate what it wouldcost me in legal fees and lost work by the time I got out of some localcounty slammer. How did I let Bandit get me into these idiotic situations?He was a terrible influence. Bikernet was a disease. When would I learn?No doubt it was all part of his master plan. Bikernet was at last makingridiculous money, hundreds of thousands a month, and the pond scum hadgotten greedy. He was trying to get me out of the picture, not wanting to splitthe gold with the old Zebra. I couldn’t blame him. I’d have done thesame. The blasted hoodlum. He’d get his in Sturgis, provided I got there todeliver it. Which I most likely would not.
“Aw fuck the troopers,” I mumbled to myself as I leaned into thedriving rain and cranked up the gas handle. She did have a nice set of jugsthough. I questioned turning back. If that body armor was laying on them, justthink of what they’d look like without. I cursed myself. What was Ithinking? Sure, Zebra, engage with a chick cop. Best idea you’ve hadsince you left Miami with dummy plates you dummy fucker. Focus on the road,count the white dashes. What tits? I never saw any tits.
About an hour later, the rain cleared off and things warmed back up.I took a hotel room and rode the Great Northern Steamer in through thesliding glass door. Tonight I would sleep heavy.
Day 3
I awoke about 6 a.m., showered, gathered up the wrenches andtorqued the Great Northern Steamer.
I tried to imagine where Bandit was. Probably Utah, I figured,laughing. Bandit hates Utah and won’t ride there, claiming it smells bad and isinsufferably ugly.
The Baker 6-Speed was performing even better than I’d hoped and thetall sixth gear let me to roll lower RPMs, allowing the engine to break ineven easier. The tranny was smoother than an 18-year-old’s ass and shiftedcleanly and with almost no effort or clunk. It was a beauty.
As I drifted peacefully behind the big trucks through the rollingtobacco fields, I never saw a single trooper. Truckers have radios and high points ofvisibility. They also hide bikes until the last minute. They’rewonderful bird dogs.
When I rolled out of Kentucky and into Illinois, the condition ofthe asphalt improved dramatically. Illinois was abloom with corn fields andwaving farmers.
Illinois was the breaking point. Everything about me snapped and Ibecame of the road. Home was gone. Grief was gone. My sticky world was gone.Everyone’s sticky world was gone. All went numb and I was naught but arider riding a fast bike. I was a penny hustler who put motor oil on hiscereal, a rolling contradiction, duality in sixth gear, a searing, stinkingMr. Anyone with a gimmick and a goal. I am fierce and complicated, I believe fighting ispoetry applied, I have failed at everything twice, I am a proud, rolling menace, I haven’t anapology for anyone and when they take me down, mercy won’t be requested. I’d catch that hotrodfreak Bandit.
I rolled into east St. Louis at about 8 p.m. andcalled my second cousin’s place. He was a big shot ad executive there and I’d not seen him orhis wife in 10 years. He was also a biker and owned an antiqueIndian and several other scoots.
If you’ve never been to east St. Louis, don’t go. It’s due for a napalm strike. Losers,misfits, turncoats and nitwits populate a rusting infrastructure of gloom and infiniterecession into the vainglorious abyss of human indiscipline. Immediately, a drug slavewanted to know what my bike was worth.
“$25,000,” I said. “Want to buy it?”
“Where are you?” Liz asked.
“East St. Lewy,” I told her.
“What?! Hang up and get the hell out of there! You’ll be killed!”Dick’s wife commanded.
“I can’t, I’m about to sell my motorcycle,” I laughed.
I got the directions to the house, but unfortunately the old boywho wanted to buy my bike couldn’t come up with the cash. Pity, I really thought I’d sell itand ride back on a Wichita hotrod called Boeing.Dick was out fishing with the boys. Turns out the household had grown by three during myabsence. When Dick and the boys arrived, he failed to recognize me until I mentioned my name.
“Oh hell!” Dick exclaimed. “I didn’t recognize you at all. Whatare you doing in town?”
“I told you 10 years ago I was gonna build a custom chopper one ofthese days and ride it from stem to stern and you said when I did to be sure and stop by so you could see it. Here it is,” I said.
Dick laughed and looked the Great Northern Steamer over closely.
“Wow, nice bike, man,” he said. “Want to put it in the garage?”
“Sure.”
I met the boys and then Dick and I spent the night catching up. A man can measure how he’sdoing in life by how much family he’s got that he can call on a 10-minute notice and have aplace to stay on a cross-country run. Dick and his lovely wife Liz were kind enough to bunkan outlaw and even bought dinner.
In the morning, I geared up and tried to work out a mother of akink that was starting in my left shoulder just beneath the scapula.
“How’s it ride?” Dick asked as I lugged out gear.
“Hell, see for yourself,” I said, tossing him my state-mandatedbrain bucket.
Dick took the Steamer for a roll, then took each of his three boysfor a back fender ride.
One of his boys got off and Liz asked how he liked it.
“It felt like electric eels were biting me in the butt,” the ladexclaimed, apparently referring to either the vibration or an electrical short of which I wasunaware.
I packed up, said my goodbyes and pledged to return in 10 years totake the boys with me on their own scoots. Dick laughed, Liz cringed. Then the boys camebounding out of the house yelling, “Look mom!”
They were dressed in sunglasses, bicycle helmets and had plasticknifes hanging off their belts.
“You’ve clearly had an affect,” Liz laughed. I figured I’d betterhit the road before the little guys decided to be writers. I don’t mind turning youth intobikers, but I’d hate to see one go down the dark path ofliterary insanity.
I rolled on the throttle at about 8 a.m. and headed for the mightyRock Creek Ranch in Kansas.
I was planning to take a day off and let the vibration stop and myleft shoulder unkink at the ranch. It was home and I hadn’t seen everyone forquite a spell.
The ride from St. Louis to Kansas City was a smooth, easy, 90 mphrun through the grocery store of the world. Corn, milo, alfalfa, wheat,you name it. I rolled past hundreds of thousands of rows of the carbohydrateload of the human race.
Crossing the Arkansas River, I broke the boundary from Missouri toKansas and the wholly unique sensation of home washed over the handlebars. When you’re home,the sun always feels a little warmer, the breeze a little cooler and the water a little sweeter.
As I swept through Kansas City, I saw some of my old haunts, placesI hadn’t seen in 10 years. The stockyards, the Plaza, the old blues bars.Everything looked so easy, so simple. Of course, it all lookssimple when you’re just passing through. But throw down an anchor or two,get a residence, a few phone numbers, an old lady, a job, a boss, a fewoutstanding warrants, and presto — what seemed so simple is suddenly complex.
And therein lies the beauty of the two-wheeled machine. An engine,two tires and a chair. Always a front row seat to a game that’ll never beplayed twice. No connections other than abbreviated hookups to the localgas pump, and even those last only a few bucks. You slap the gas capback on, hit the starter and simplicity flows back over everything like wind.
As I came off a long sweeper, elevated, I noticed a marvelous woman,mulatto perhaps, streaking along beside me in a red Mustang. She gave methat smile that says ‘I recognize that you’re just passingthrough, you can’t possibly offer me any complications, I’m interested.’ Igave her my favorite smile back. It said, go fuck yourself, baby, I’mridin’. I’d had just about all the woman horse crap I needed lately. I hit the gas and sangher a little song on my new RevTech 88. It said the thrill isgone, the thrill is gone away…
The Kansas Turnpike west of Topeka was empty. I hit maybe twocars, two and a half all the way the ranch. A large white cloud of dust sat on the asphalt inthe distance. It looked innocuous enough and I was in a daze.Then a gust of wind kicked up the dust and I rolled through it.Almost instantly, my eyes were on fire. I nailed the brakes and felt therumble strips passing under. I had to find the kickstand by feel. Inailed the kill switch and stripped off my goggles, which had just enough air hole to allow themiserable stinging dust in. I grabbed the water bottlestrapped over the back fender, being careful not to grabthe Gatorade bottle of spare gas, and threw it in my eyes time after time.Then, with somewhat blurred vision, I drained an entire bottle ofVisine into my eyes. Still, they burned mercilessly. I sat on the side ofthe road for a good hour, waiting for the stinging to subside. I couldtell from the smell what the culprit was — concrete powder. The shit has anacidic base to it and if you get it in your eyes, you’ll find religion in ahurry. Finally, I was able to see well enough to find the starter buttonand get the Great Northern Steamer fired. Twice more I had to stop and tossmore water into my purple orbs. Seeing was damned near impossible.
I rolled to the toll booth.
“Two dollars,” the toll taker said.
“Here you go,” I said, sniffing loudly, handing her a five.
“It’s hot as a hooker in a French whore house, isn’t it?” the tolltaker said, applying some lipstick.
“Sure is,” I said, chuckling.
She turned, her eyes locked onto mine.
“Oh,” she said, coquettishly. “Hello…”
“Hello,” I replied, smiling through the tears. Or at least it feltlike a smile. It may have been facial contortions caused by my impendingblindness.
“I’m Sally.” She spoke demurely, though a part of me could tell,somewhere in there, was a woman. Somewhere inside this toll taker marooned on the vast Kansasprairie was a woman who longed for the moment she would meet aman who understood her complexity. A moment when she met a man whounderstood her complicated, horrendous, vile, despicable dualities.
“What’s your name?” she asked, feigning shyness.
“Zebra.”
“Do you have a first name, Zebra?” she asked, grinning.
“Special Agent,” I replied.
She put me at ease with her line of questioning. Nothing toodifficult. Nothing I couldn’t handle. Nothing I wouldn’t remember the answer to with a headfull of twisted, bad memories of a German Feminine gone utterlynutters, too many miles in too few days, DMV communist sympathizers and black horizons withrain and hail. I looked at this delectablecreature standing in the faded wooden toll booth and the same thought keptswirling in my mind — what a rack. How I’d love to get a hand on thoseoutlaw protuberances and maybe even write a poem on them. Ipictured us at the county fair, a blue ribbon dangling from each nipple aswe laughed and loved, danced and held her massive knockers long into thenight.
“So, I bet it’s pretty cool in there,” I remarked, fishing.
“Well, the air conditioner seems to make it cooler,” she concluded.
A woman of wit, I thought, grandly charmed.
“Probably harder to work up a sweat in there, eh?” I continued.
“Well, you’d have to do something pretty vigorous,” she saidenticingly, smacking her rich, full lips together. She twirled her finger through the finehair that hung delicately from her upper lip. “What are you doing for dinner?” she asked,handing me a tissue for my watering eyes.
“I thought I’d have June bug and grasshopper surprise.”
“I, I just want to say, that, I have feelings for you. Feelings Iwant to explore. But feelings I don’t understand. Feelings that, I don’t know, I,I need more time. Maybe if you could come back. Tomorrow. We could talk. There’s so muchyou don’t know about me. So much I don’t know about you,”she said hopefully.
Suddenly I became keenly aware of the Great Northern Steamer idlingbelow me.
“Oh, yeah, uh, I’m really just passing through. Can’t actuallystay that long…”
A dark look spirited across her face, but she recovered quickly witha warm, understanding, fiendish smile.
The concrete was back. My eyes were again ablaze. Down came thewater. The toll taker suddenly softened.
“Is everything all right?” she asked, her lip beginning to quiversympathetically.
“Fine,” I said, my eyes pouring water.
“You don’t look all right. Want to talk about it?” she asked.
A meadowlark chirped in the distance. A bull bawled on the horizon.
“Really, I’m fine. I just have something in my eyes.”
“Why won’t you talk to me?” she asked, injured.
“What? I’m fine,” I said, growing frustrated. “I just have …”
“I know, you have something in your eyes. Well that’s man talk.And you know what, if you won’t open up to me, then I just can’t keep doing this. I can’tgo on like this, pretending. I need more. I need more from life. I need more from a man,”she said, beginning to weep openly.
“I swear, nothing is wrong!” I bellowed, my eyes pouring.
“Oh scream at me! That’s just so like you! You’re afraid tocommit! That’s your problem! You’re afraid to commit and you look for every little excuse,like blindness, to get out of treating me right!”
“I don’t even know you,” I rebutted.
“Oh, so that’s how it’s got to be? Well I don’t know you either!I don’t even know who you are anymore!” she cried, turning away.
“Oh, come on, don’t be mad,” I said, feeling terribly guilty.
“No, just go. I can’t keep doing this,” she wept. “Just pleasego.”
“Can’t keep doing what?” I asked. “We were never doing anything.”
“Oh sure, just act like we never had anything together! Pretendlike it never happened! That’s so typical! I wasted 10 minutes of my life with you,Special Agent Zebra! I’ll never get those 10 minutes back. Yourobbed me! You used me while I was young and when you got what you wanted,you just threw me away like a piece of trash! I loved you!”
My head was spinning, my eyes were bursting with pain. Why didevery single encounter with a woman go south with me?
“You know what?” I said, exasperated, just wanting my change. “Ithink it’s time we ended this. I need to move on.”
The toll taker looked at me with broken eyes. Eyes of betrayal.Eyes that said everything we ever had was a lie.
“I always knew you’d do this,” she said in a trembling voice, eyespleading for me to change my mind, to stay and make everything the way it was, when I firstpulled up. She handed me my three bucks change. Istuffed it into my vest pocket.
When I clicked the Great Northern Steamer into gear, she burst intotears and ran to the other side of the toll booth, weeping.
I rolled away, confused, angry, wondering how it had all gone soterribly wrong. My God, I thought to myself as I rolled through the gears on my smooth newBaker 6-Speed, why is life so damned confusing? I could stillsmell her perfume as I crested the hill and she faded out of sight, out ofmy life, forever.
I rolled into Rock Creek Ranch around 4 p.m. I hadbarely had time to recover from my tumultuous breakup with Sally the toll takerand was feeling delicate, vulnerable. The time at home with family andthe simplicity of the ranch life would be welcome relief to the fast-pacedthroes of amore.
I unloaded the Great Northern Steamer and humped the gear up thelong stairs to the second floor of the sprawling ranch house, tossing it intoone of the guest bedrooms.
We all sat down to a huge dinner of steaks from a steer they’dkilled earlier in the day.
We laughed and joked and I told them my sordid stories of the roadand about the difficult break up I’d recently had with Stacy. Or was it Sally?
“You know it’s fair time,” dad said as he cut a steak.
“Is it?” I asked. I’d forgotten the county fair.
“Yep. Maybe you should stay an extra day or two and run over andsee it. Been a while since you’ve been.”
“That’s true. Although it’d give Bandit a pretty big advantage.He’s already riding 500 miles less than I am.”
“Oh hell, you can surely catch Bandit,” dad said. “Hell’s fire,you’re riding a motorsickle. We cover 100 miles a day on our old horses and they aren’t halfas fast as that big sickle sittin’ out there.”
The next day we all loaded up in the pickup and rattled off to thecounty fair. It was 30 miles of gravel road and we made the trip in just under an hour.
At the fair, I ran into a lot of old friends from school and the olddays. It was odd to see them again. Some I hadn’t seen since the mid ’80s. They all lookedmuch older, smaller, more frail. Most were married, many had akid or seven. A few were dead. According to all of them, I was one ofthem, but I quickly dispelled the rumor.
I watched the 4-H beef show and recalled my years as a youth when Iwould show my cattle and shoot for the blue ribbon. At the time, it all seemed so important,so big. I wondered as I sat there if one day I would look backon the race to Sturgis against Bandit, with its global media coverage andinternational flair, its women and wine and pomp and circumstance andthink that it all seemed so distant, so small, so insignificant. It was hard toimagine, but sometimes life does funny things.
The next day I saddled up and thanked them both and fired up theGreat Northern Steamer.
The break from the motorcycle had done some good. The massive kinkin my neck was far more relaxed. I could see again. And, drum roll please, the break-inperiod on my new RevTech 88 was over.
I lined the big chopper out on the two-lane black top that wouldlead me through northern Kansas and into Nebraska to my youngest brother’shouse, where I would stay the night. It was a short, 11-hour hop to hisplace and I was looking forward to throwing the spurs to the “unbreakable”RevTech and seeing how she ran.
I passed the Nebraska border at over 900 miles an hour. Jesus, Ithought, this fuckin’ thing IS full of torque. Then I realized the vibration from the rigidmount was actually creating the visual illusion of an extra 0. Ikept cranking the throttle, turning it round and round and round, until atlast I had the monster wrung out. At 100, the collars on my denim shirtwere handily stripping the finish off my chin. I could see the bungeecords holding my Bandit’s Bedroll on the front risers beginning to stretch. Iput my chin on the air-suspended bedroll, relaxed my neck and settled in for amad blast through Corn Husker country. Bandit would have to ride like ademon on the way to a soul stomping to catch this rig, I thought proudly asI swept past semis full of feeder steers laboring up the long hills leadingto the broad, muddy Platte River.
I made good time and got to my brother’s house in just under sixhours. I questioned this time since the sun was setting and my watch had been on the blinklately, but when you’ve got a new horsepower-belching monster like I had, hooked to a go-fastget-out-of-town tranny like the giraffe Baker,anything is possible.
“What the fuck’s wrong with your eyeballs?” my brother asked when Irolled into his driveway, having ridden past it four times previously.
“Cement dust,” I said, shaking hands.
“How’d you get cement dust in your eyes?” he asked, gesturing for meto mind my step and not trip over the coon hound.
“Ran through some on the turnpike in Kansas,” I told himmatter-of-factly.
“Why didn’t you go around it?” he asked as he began to scale somefresh bass in the kitchen sink.
I sat rolling his question over in my mind for several minutes.Why hadn’t I gone around the offending eye poison? It was a question that would haunt me forthe next 30 seconds.
My brother and I ate and drank for a short burst and I decided tokeep rolling. I had to catch Bandit before he got to the South Dakota borderbecause I knew from experience that once he hit that line on the map, he andMad Myron would go berserk and ride wide open until they got within 50 miles ofSturgis, at which point they’d slow down to 55 and enjoy the view. But bythen it would be too late.
I rolled through the strange land of northeastern Nebraska. It’s abeautiful and empty land, rolling, steep, smooth, with two-lanehighways empty of all traffic and offering enough space to allow a man’spulse to actually return to what it was before he became burdened with theways of the world.
A massive storm brewed on both sides of the highway asI crested a hill. The two storm systems were headed straight for eachother and their collision point promised to be the highway itself. Irolled on the gas and leaned into the wind. Eighty-five mph was as fast as I could gobecause of the constant switchbacks and curves. Lightening crashed and I got exactly onedrop of rain on my nose as I shot through the window and thestorms collided behind me. It was a perfect miss, the kind of evasion onealways hopes for but rarely gets. I would ride dry tonight.
Darkness. The spooky night of high-speed cycling. Tranquilitybroken by the occasional surprise railroad crossing. A pair of deer eyes staring from theditch. Don’t do it, you horrible beast, I thought as I blistered past, holding a wad of seat leather firmly in my ass. But the deer held his ground and didn’t leap.
I finally ran out of steam in the northeastern corner of Nebraska andgrabbed a nickel hotel next to an abandoned grain elevator.
At 6 a.m. I was making noise down the highway, headed for theelusive South Dakota border at 100 mph.
At the border, I stopped for a photo op on an unprotectedhill in big winds. The Steamer sat low, real low, and the kickstand didn’t have a lot oflean in it. As I unbuckled my gear on the ground to retrieve the camera, I felt a gust of wind, followed by the Great Northern Steamer falling down on top of me.
“Fuck!” I roared, whirling, trying to catch the new chopper as itfell into my lap. Downhill and on a steep gravel slope, I had little chance. The bikecrashed down on my legs. I got a grip on the frame and thehandlebar and incline pressed the gear-heavy bitch to get my feetunder me. I snatched it upright. There was little damagesave for a bent front brake handle and a couple serious dents to me.The paint job and carb had been spared.
I stood the bike back up, snapped the photo and strapped my brainbucket to the back fender. South Dakota is a free man’s state.
I’d be in Spearfish in five hours, or jail in four.
Streaking through the Badlands, I passed motorcycle aftermotorcycle. The roads became more congested, I rode harder, breaking, shifting, rollingthe throttle. The beauty of the scenery and the proximity of the goal helped to ease thehellish fire in my neck, the result of five days and nights of damned hard running. Iknew Bandit was in the area if not already at the hotel and half expected to roar past him,starting an all out race to thefinish line. The farther I got without passing him, the deeper my heartsank, realizing I’d been outrun.
When I rolled into the Spearfish Holiday Inn, I looked over theexpanse of custom choppers. This was clearly Hamster territory. Radical steel leapt anddove in impossible angles. Massive custom engines twinkled in the sunand bespoke of great and unruly levels of horsepower.
I parked the Great Northern Steamer and sat, head ringing, body buzzing. I felt likeI’d been on a week-long bender, which I had. I satfor what felt like an hour, staring, sunburned, exhausted, in pain, fried.I couldn’t see Bandit’s bike or Mad Myron’s. Had I actually beaten them?I knew better. No doubt they had gotten there hours, perhaps days earlier,unpacked and were in Sturgis drunk and singing.
Then I noticed on the opposite end of the parking lot an outlaw’sworst nightmare — troopers. And not just a few. The entire South Dakota Highway Patrolreserve force was staying at our hotel. Would wonders never cease? Here I was with anunregistered scoot, staying not near, but with thetroopers. The plot thickened. A lot. How had Bandit managed to book uswith state fuckin’ troopers when we were both running bikes with Oklahomapapers? The maniac. It was probably his idea of humor.
Finally I got off and checked in.
“Bandit here yet?” I asked.
“Nope, not yet,” the gal said.
“You’re kidding…”
“Nope.”
“Well I’ll be damned,” I mumbled.
I threw my gear into the hotel room and went to the bar where Iknocked back two stout whiskeys.
About an hour later, Bandit and Mad Myron rolled in, covered withbug guts and grime, a hose clamp holding Bandit’s gas tank on.
“You beat us?!” Bandit exclaimed in disbelief.
“Hola, compadre,” I said, shaking hands.
“Hell, I didn’t think you’d make it at all from the reports comingin before we left,” Bandit said.
“I said I’d be here, goddamnit. That means I’ll be here,” I said.
“How was the ride? Look at your motorcycle. How’d it get so damneddirty?” Bandit asked, looking over the filthy Great Northern Steamer.
“Miami Beach is a long ways from here, bro,” I said.
“Zebra,” Mad Myron said, extending a hand.
“Howdy, bro,” I said, shaking his thick hand.
“Let’s have a drink, goddamnit,” Bandit said. “I’m thirsty!”
STURGIS:
Day 1-3
The first three days of Sturgis were a blur of non-stop beer,roaring chrome and film. Two producers working on “1%er” and my writing partner, directorIan Truitner, had come up to get B-roll footage and discuss story changes. They were allvirgins to Sturgis, so the party essentially waswithout recognizable break. They filmed day and night. We interviewedeveryone who could or would talk to us, getting great shots of custombikes, bikers, club members and all the things they do that people in the civilian worldsimply would not understand.
Somewhere during the madness, the Great Northern Steamer split agas tank. I took it off and Bandit directed me to a local welder in Spearfish.
“Yeah, I kin fix her,” he said.
“I didn’t drain it because I didn’t have any place to put the fuel.Thought you might,” I added. I had a cold beer and was disgusted with thesetback.
“Nope, don’t need to. I’ll just weld her as she is,” the crustyold welder said. He fired up his machine and dropped his welding hood.
“RUN!” I hollered as the lunatic touched the rod to the groundedtank, which was half full of gas.
We sprinted out of the building, beer flying, expecting theresulting explosion to kill us all.
Half an hour later, we crept back into the old shack.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Back here,” the old welder called.
The tank was there, welded and ready to go.
“She’s all done, sonny. That’ll be $40.”
How the hell had that guy welded a half-full tank of gas withoutblowing his head off will no doubt be one of the greater mysteries of my lifetime. But he’ddone it.
On the third day, the producers and my writing partner had to headback to Denver in the rental car to catch their flight to L.A. The trunk of the car reekedof gasoline because the petcock had been bumped and had leaked about a half a gallon into thecarpet when we hauled it back from the welder’splace.
Later that night, I got the call. The airline had decided thecamera bag, which had been in the trunk for eight hours and smelled heavily ofgasoline, was a bomb. They had thusly blown it to smithereens in a bombbasket for everyone’s protection, destroying the film, camera and allour footage.
That night, as I ate dinner and listened to Hamsters discussupcoming custom projects, I saw a young lass, maybe 20, maybe not, waiting on tables.She was a cute gal, innocent enough and she clearly wanted amotorcycle ride. I was officially done working, the fucking fools atUnited Airlines having successfully fried our B-roll footage.
That night I took Jennifer on a slow putt through the local roadsaround Spearfish. She was doused in innocence, fearful and repeatedly made mepromise that I would return her to her family and friends and not spirither away to some heinous sex slave camp where she would be defrocked andmorally and physically vandalized for all eternity. Even her mother got in on the act,insisting on a curt interview to determine “my intentions” withthe wee lass.
My intentions? Well, my fair mother, my intentions, hmmm, that’s avery good question indeed. Should I mention the incident in New Orleans withthe five mulatto voodoo queens from the French Quarter? Would it be prudent todiscuss anything, anything at all, that ever occurred at my place in FortDefiance? Were the nude women lolling about at my palace in Miami a topicthat needed to be discussed? Did young Jennifer know the first thingabout Chinese basket sex? And what of this odd custom of wearing a bra? Wasthat localized? Need I mention my personal stance against such things?
No. Best to keep things like that quiet. Savor the suspense.
“What do you intend to do?” the she-mother asked. “With mydaughter? What do you intend to do?”
“I intend to teach her the rare and gymnastic ways of the KamaSutra,” I said, rolling the cigar between my fingers. No, best to say nothing. Let themysterious stranger vibe carry the day.
Apparently I passed muster and mom let me take her virgin on a shortafternoon ride, which involved a harmless fountain drink at a local bar anda lot of scenic back roads in 105-degree heat. I acted as the perfectgentleman, representing Bikernet in its finest light. Besides, I had mydoubts as to whether the goodly Jennifer had accomplished as many birthdaysas she claimed to have. The last thing I needed was the entire state ofSouth Dakota law enforcement hunting down a “juvenile predator”. Nosiree, this was to be a perfectly legal ride, a favor, a gift of charity.
I returned Jennifer to her mother no worse for wear and entirelyunpenetrated and roared off into the horizon.
What to tell about Sturgis? Sturgis is Sturgis, and this year wasthe greatest ever, with attendance estimates hitting the 600,000 mark. The entire regionwas jammed with American iron and American free men. It was what it is and if someone hasnot been, they will not glean from mere words thecelebration. If they were there, then no need to explain.
By day five I was ready to get the hell out of Sturgis and all thatit stood for. I had chrome sickness. Just the sight of other people’smotorcycles made me want to shoot someone and if I had to creep the 15miles between Spearfish and Sturgis in the stop-and-go motorcycle traffic(the state was so clever they decided the Sturgis rally would be theprefect time to work on one side of the interstate, reducing it to a dividedtwo-lane snarl) I’d commit suicide.
Bandit and Mad Myron had flown out already. Their bikes were ontrucks headed home. I was halfway done. Somehow staying with the troopers hadn’t turned outas badly as I feared. A sort of odd myopic failure ontheir part had prevented them from noticing that right in their own parking lot,two of the most high-profile criminals in the entire motorcycle industrywere running phony plates on unregistered bikes. Bandit, who’d let the old1%er get the best of him, had even gone a step further and raised thechallenge by sticking a “Bikernet.com” sticker on his plate holder. Atleast I’d gone to the effort to phony up a crooked tag. Bandit, hevirtually pleaded for an arrest. But the bust never came and we left aseasily as we’d come.
I loaded up and rambled south. Another 2,500 miles and I’d behome. But I had no idea what lay ahead.
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