KENTUCKY
Tobacco. Brown, rolling tobacco. Potholes, cops, tobacco. Thesplit in the fuel tank is significant now and my long-range bomber’s distance has been curbed from a solid 220 miles per tank to 190. I am leaking fuelnon-stop as I sweep down the highways, running 100, letting the semis fardown the road break the radar waves. They rarely let an alert biker down,their population so high these days that they can use their CBs to watch forpolice as well as the troopers can patrol for outlaw bikers doubling the posted speed limit.
Fatigue is beginning to be a factor as I watch the odometer flippast 978 for the day. Darkness is settling. Tobacco field. I am experiencing my own kind of sundown. The ride from Spearfish to Lawrence, Kan., and thesister’s house was a long one, but this ride, without a starter and a bikethat is becoming increasingly more difficult to fire, is going to be amonster. Tobacco field, trooper. I will try to ride to Miami Beach andfriendly mechanics who won’t bleed me dry with towing and phony hourlyrates and parts I probably don’t need or want. Tobacco field. Besides, I’vestill got some zombies to herd together and drive out of the skull.Tobacco field, two troopers.
By Kentucky I’ve gotten used to the sound of burning gasoline onthe heads at the gas pumps, though I can barely hear it over the idling bike. I no longer turn it off, merely pumping it full of fuel, stretching, gettingback on and rolling before it can melt itself in the blazing August heat.
TENNESSEE
Three states to go. Twenty-six hours in and 1,120 miles on this “day.”Midnight, the highway is mine, all those with starter motors having pulled over long ago.
Night is the hardest time to ride when you’re exhausted. It wouldbe one thing to ride 48 hours straight, but it’s something entirely differentafter first riding 2,300 miles to Sturgis, partying a week straight and thenriding 900 miles, before riding 48 hours straight.
I stop for gas. The station is closed. The pumps automated. Ilisten to the bike thump. Such a desire to shut it down and just hear some quiet and lie down on the soft asphalt and sleep until dawn. Surely it’ll startagain. What bull crap I tell myself as I hang up the pump. The fuckerbarely started hot. It’d never start ice cold.
Out of the parking lot I roll, taking the highway and rollingthrough the Baker 6.
Darkness makes the miles creep past. Nothing to take your mind offscreaming muscles or boredom. This is when your demons will attack.During times of sensory deprivation they come calling, reminding you of yourshortcomings, your insecurities, your failures. Rolling depression. Selfdeprecation. A sense of ultimate failure. A constant, burning tone inboth ears. How could it have all gone so terribly wrong? So many poordecisions, so many hurt feelings. Pain, with no visual music to take yourmind off it. Repeating highway lines, dizzying asphalt patterns. Cold.Hunger. Closed restaurants that serve no coffee and no joy. Loneliness. Asense of utter singularity that is a unique and ubiquitous pain. Roaring,punishing wind. Rain. Big raindrops. Gusting winds. A heart full ofanger and confusion and despair. Full-on rainstorm. I cut the throttleand squint into the stinging water. Visibility drops lower and lower. Quicklymy western boots are permeated and I feel the water standing in the heel ofeach. Colder. Forty miles per hour. Now the distance really gets an upperhand. I am losing the psychology war against the night. Harder rain. Thirty-five miles per hour. The road vanishes for short periods of time in theblinding rain. My goggles fog. I stop to switch to clear glasses. They’re only slightly better and now the rain splashes off both cheeks, keeping meconstantly blinking. Huge lightening. The wind increases from the side.Hydroplaning. Soaking wet, shivering. I am riding into space, having leftearth long ago. Where now are the friends? Where now is the payoff forthe effort and the laughter? Where is the next mile marker? Rain. Darkness.An endless purgatory. I curse the starter and “No Vacancy” signs.
I stop for fuel. The tank isn’t empty, despite the leak, but Ihave to stop. I am constantly hitting the rumble strips on the shoulder and the rain is freezing me, lulling me toward a crash.
The tank only takes two bucks worth of fuel, letting me know itwasn’t all that long ago that I stopped. The stops are becoming more frequent now as I wear down. If I could only find a bit of grub, that would give me acalorie boost. I down the last of a bottle of Gatorade I was saving. Fuck I’mtired. The ride has become work now and all I can think of isgetting home to Miami Beach and going to bed. But Miami Beach is a hell ofa long ways south still, entire states south, and I convince myself to tryand extract some enjoyment out of the run.
I cap the tank, get on and sweep left out of the station. WHAM! Inearly dump the bike as the kickstand catches on an underground tank lid. Thebike slides sideways, I make a massive attempt at a recovery, nearly dropping iton the wet, oily street. A pinging sound fades into the ditch. Thekickstand is gone. I can’t believe it. The entire kickstand has beensheared off and bounced into the deep, grassy ditch. I look around in theTennessee night. Nothing. Even if the kickstand hadn’t been lost, Iwouldn’t have been able to put it back on without a rack or someone to hold the bike. Well, that settles it, I thought, I’m riding back to MiamiBeach, straight through, from Kansas.
The Georgia border passes unceremoniously in the freezing rain at31 mph.
GEORGIA
Dawn. The rain stopped about an hour ago. My leather sticks tome. I can feel the weight of my soaked leather coat. I roll to the shoulder to take off the wet shit and strap it on.
As I stand naked on the highway, balancing the bike with one handwhile I try with enormous difficulty to switch out of wet leather pants into dry jeans, a carload of women pass and stare. They are spooked. This used tobe a region they felt safe in, but what of this hairy barbarianstanding naked on the side of the road next to a filthy motorcycle, lookinglike he might rape and eat the lot of them?
By 7 a.m. I am filling up and getting warmer as the Georgia sunpromises to fry me in just a few hours. Motorcycling is often a life of extremes and the weather is no exception.
I’ve gone 1,400 miles. At every gas station, I had been drinking two large bottles of Gatorade. An isotonic will keep the cramps and muscle failure to a minimum for a brief, but sustained period of 48 hours. But without the kickstand, there are no more such luxuries. Now I drink avarice as I sit on the bike or stand with it idling between my legs as I fill up with fuel and stretchas much as possible without getting off the mother fucker. Then theunthinkable happens. The scoot dies.
Turns out I’d not quite gotten the petcock set back to “run” when Iflipped it from “reserve” after filling up.
“Jesus,” I mumble as I sit on the popping and snapping bike,listening to the chrome cool after 31 hours of non-stop rolling. I put my head against the handlebars and sit.
I walk the bike to a clear spot in the large parking lot. Trucksline either side of the expanse of asphalt. Away I go, pushing. But this time,I’m so worn out I can basically only do a fast jog. The bike doesn’t evencough. I am mocked by the dead machine, as I push and push, my arms andlegs trembling with fatigue.
I stop, knowing if I don’t that I’m going to get so hot and wornout that I’ll either pass out or fuck around and drop the damned thing.
“What’s wrong, bro?” asks a voice behind me.
I turn and see a small but stout man and his wife.
“Starter’s out,” I mumble, feeling beaten.
“Got a Fatboy,” the man says. “My wife here, she’s got a Sporty.”
I look up, they’re both smiling.
“Seen ya pushing it. You got any rope?”
I shake my head, legs shaking, trying to hold the fucker up.
“Well, I got my truck here, we could try to pull start it. Honey,run inside and see if they got any rope.”
His wife departs.
“Coming from Sturgis?”
“Yeah,” I reply. “Rode down from Kansas last night.”
“Got-damn, that’s a pretty good run.”
“Startin’ to be,” I reply.
His wife returned with a brand new $50 tow strap.
“They didn’t have any rope, but I got this tow strap,” she said,smiling.
“Oh hell,” I said, “now I’ll have to pay you for that. You guyscan’t go toss $50 on my account.”
“No sweat, bro,” the trucker said, “we can always use anotherstrap.”
He backed his rig up to mine and his wife strapped the front forksof the Great Northern Steamer to the trailer. Then he got on his radio and called the surrounding trucks and asked the drivers to radio to him my status ashe pulled me in laps, since he couldn’t see me in his mirrors.
As the semi steamed in ever increasingly fast circles, dozens oftruckers stood on their decks and called out my progress on their radios as I tried different gears and throttle applications until at last the bike fired.
“I can run with ya as far as Atlanta,” the bro told me. “If youhave any trouble with her to there we can either pull her again or load her up in the trailer and carry it for ya.”
I thanked them and we blasted off down the interstate.
The white rig ran behind me the entire run to Atlanta, three hoursfrom the truck stop and I waved as they blazed east while I continued south. For a biker, there’s always a bro somewhere.
Peach stands, trees, Rock City, bridges, off ramps, on ramps, SouthDakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia…
Now the sun is working overtime. I pass through Rock City, climbingthe mountains fast. A local bank thermometer tells the temperature, 97.
There are no more bikers heading home from Sturgis. I passed acouple last night stopped on the shoulder with Georgia tags. There were Florida bikers at Sturgis, I saw them, but none show up today.
Where is that fuckin’ Florida border I ask aloud as I ride down thehighway, feeling like I have prickly pears under my skin.
The mountains of Georgia began to flatten and I knew that somewherein the distance was Florida. After that, I had roughly 8 1/2 hours to Miami Beach. The odometer was reading 1,699 miles since Kansas.
Flash, the Florida border sign passed and I almost missed it. Itwas about 2 p.m. and I was so fried that everything was onautopilot. The traffic in Florida drives as fast as that of states likeMontana and New Mexico and California between L.A. and Palm Springs.Everyone drives 100 and faster, even the trucks with loads.
I was rolling at 100. I’d stopped earlier and pulled a screwdriverout of the Bandit’s Bedroll and re-dialed the carb to compensate for being at sea level, having re-tuned it in Sturgis to compensate for the 6,000-footincrease in altitude.
Florida is the worst place to ride tired because the highways areshrouded by vegetation and the scenery is a mere 20 yards away on eitherside and never changes.
Suddenly a semi, which had blasted by me only a moment before, flewoff the interstate on a long, left-hand sweeper. Dirt and grass flew into the air as the guy hit the brakes and cranked the cab back toward the interstate.Cars slid everywhere. I stood on the back brake and crushed the frontbrake, veering hard to the left to give myself all the room I could get.The semi cab slammed back onto the highway at 100, the trailer swinginghard in a semi-circle. A car narrowly missed running under the sweepingtrailer, purple smoke flying out from under locked tires. A pickup swerved into the left hand ditch and flew into the brush, then rocketed back out, underbrushsticking out of the grill. The truck flew across both lanes as the truckerovercompensated a second time and cranked his cab back hard to the right.I was sliding on my back tire, cranking my front end to make up for thedrifting back end. He’s going to roll, he’s going to roll, he’s going toroll, I kept thinking as I rode hard to the far left shoulder, trying togive myself enough room to get around the trailer when it flipped. Theentire rig slid back right, following the jackknifed cab. By now everyonehad slid down to about 60 mph. I roared past the moaning backtires of the trailer as the driver sailed back off the right hand side ofthe road a second time and cranked it back hard to the left, heading rightfor me.
“JESUS CHRIST!” I hollered involuntarily as I saw the front tiresplowing 3-foot-high curls of Florida sod and the big truck cab heading rightfor me. I could feel the huge trailer bouncing the asphalt as it slammed backonto the highway. The trailer rocked horribly as the driver saw me and cutit back to the right. BOOM! The trailer slammed back down on all 16tires, did a few remaining fishtails and slid to a stop, crossing both lanes oftraffic, jackknifed as tight as a cab and trailer can be without poppingapart.
I roared off south, wide awake, gulping adrenaline.
I had no trouble staying awake for the next three hours as I blazed pastDaytona Beach, replaying the near-miss over and over in my head. It wasthe closest I’d come to getting run over since I’d actually been run over inL.A. a year ago (See “Attack of the Car People”) and hospitalized. Thattime it’d only been a pickup that had run over me. If that semi trailerhad hit me, it would have been the morgue.
Florida is known as the “Sunshine State,” but it could just as well be known as the Rains Every Hour or Two State. I hit a half-dozen five-minute downpours, just enough to soak me, then leave me rolling wet, exhausted and beat.
The broiling sunshine got stronger and stronger the farther Irolled toward the equator and the humidity pushed the 100 percent mark.
It had been 2,161 miles since I’d started and still Miami eluded my front tire. The traffic was getting heavy in south Florida. Now the ride was sheer work. Sturgis was so far away I was having trouble remembering what the great open Badlands even felt like as I rocketed along on a six-lane interstatethrough the dozen or so “communities” that preclude Miami. Fort Lauderdale. I was excruciatingly hot in the 99 percent humidity at 101, wearing a long-sleeve shirt and gloves and helmet, but I knew better than to take them off. The southFlorida sun is that of Cuba and you can literally get third degree sunburnsin 40 minutes. That far south, that means hospital time at best and deadlyskin cancer at worst. I had 50 SPF sunblock, but there was no way to get toit and get it on without the kickstand. It had taken me half an hour tochange pants earlier while holding the bike up, and the pants were on top in theBandit’s Bedroll. The sunscreen was at the bottom. On I rolled.
When I at last saw the sign for Miami Beach, I felt virtuallyinvincible. I was so tired and so pained and so fuckin’ miserably hot and thirsty, not having eaten or drunk anything for virtually 40 hours in the deep south, that I could have eaten a pitbull live and drunk the piss of a sour-gutClydesdale.
As I rumbled down Alton Road, I passed the German Feminine in theStinkin’ Lincoln. She looked surprised to see me, then waved and smiled. The car was stacked high with furniture and her belongings, which she was haulingfrom our place to her new place. Sometimes life tries to get you to say”uncle” but the word wasn’t in my mouth. It’d save me a lot of work, Ifigured, when I finished up the job here and loaded the gear to headback to the West Coast.
I rolled into Miami Beach and stopped on Ocean Drive, the street thatfaces the Atlantic and the white sand. A German tourist stared at me, covered in bug guts, grime and grease, with a filthy chopper and rain-washed gear. He shrunk into his restaurant chair when I spotted him and his wife and walked across the street in front of traffic toward him.
“Take a picture for me,” I told him as I walked to him and handedhim the camera. He nodded obligingly.
After the photo-op, I rolled home and hollered to a buddy’s window.He brought out a block of wood, which I slipped under the frame of the scootand then, for the first time in damned near 1,900 miles, I got off the GreatNorthern Steamer.
I sat down on the pavement and waited for the ringing and vibratingto stop, exhausted. The German Feminine pulled up and got out. She walkedover and sat down next to me and put her arm around my busted shoulders.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello, schnecke,” I said hoarsely.
Total trip, 5,313 miles.
Special Agent Zebra
Sturgis ChopOff 2000
Bikernet East, Miami Beach
Back to Part IV
