Unbelievable! We were forced to drive our motor home, loaded with the Assalt Weapan, dirt bikes, electric-powered scooter ice chests, 5-ball racing uniforms, stickers, tools, lifts, and granola bars, to downtown Long Beach to make a sponsor deposit before we could cut a dusty trail. We didn't want to eat casino toothpicks all week long. I need to thank Dave "The Jester" Florence, a Bikernet Reader and platinum sponsor, Bob Parsons of GoDaddy.com, all our Bikernet Reader Sponsors and Custom Chrome for helping us build this bike. We couldn't have accomplished the build or supplied grub on the salt for the hardworking team without that support, but we weren't out of town yet.

We sat in this rental fun mover in downtown Long Beach and counted the minutes. We were burnin' daylight, watching the Friday afternoon workers scramble for a myriad of freeways heading to Vegas on a Labor Day weekend.

We were fucked. Nyla and her daughter, Karley, were inside the bank, built in the late 1800s, negotiating, while Jeremiah and I parked illegally outside the plate glass windows and pulled ski masks over our sweaty faces. Nyla attempted to have funds released into our account, but the bank staff wasn't budging. I tapped the steering wheel and Jeremiah told nervous jokes and whistled. Banks.

We finally cut a dusty trail for the outskirts of LA. I call it no-man's land for Bikers. The city grows on a daily basis and progressively gets tougher to escape. We hit the 710 freeway north to the 105 east, to the 605 north, and then caught the 60 east to the 15.

It was almost 6:00 p.m. and the traffic wasn't awful by Los Angeles standards. The 15 is the notorious bastard that rolls from sprawling town to town heading toward Vegas. We hit Pomona, then San Bernardino, up the hill to Apple Valley, Victorville, Barstow, Baker and then cross the border into Primm Nevada where we were scheduled to stay, about 50 miles from Vegas.

One guy owned Primm, Nevada, who least land to casino brokers in Vegas and recently sold it to the Terrible Herbst family. They bought three casinos, Whiskey Pete's, Primm Valley Resort and Buffalo Bills, plus an outlet mall but not the land. Can you imagine the price tag? The Terrible Herbst oil company is seriously involved in racing, and recently someone fucked with their Nevada racing game, so they bought Primm to control their own race courses, unobstructed.

I've put the word out to a Primm executive. We could use a Bandit's Cantina Casino and a five-mile World Land Speed Record track. Whatta ya tink? Will they go for it? I like Primm. It's real small and easy to reach and escape from.

We snatched a much needed good night's rest and hit the Bonneville road in the morning. Highway I-15 rolls through Vegas to Mesquite Nevada at the border, slices off a corner of Arizona and into Salt Lake City, Utah, but there was a comfortable 100- mile short cut. We figured it's 750 miles from LA to Salt Lake, half-way to Sturgis from LA. From Salt Lake to Bonneville Salt Flats it's another 65 miles.

Our trip from LA to Bonneville, off the 15 and up the 93, taking the 316 direct route around Cathedral Gorge and the Snake Range, into Ely and then catching 93A into Wendover, covered about 650-675 total miles. Great roads, and we rolled into the grimy town of Wendover on the edge of Bonneville, the Great Salt Lake and the home of the Anola Gay airfield in the late afternoon. We arrived Saturday afternoon, to the hoots of the Chop N Grind Racing team from 16 Palms, California. They arrived a day early and set up. By the time we arrived, afternoon winds kicked up and we couldn't risk a trip to the salt.

Sunday morning, we rolled to the salt, checked in, then rumbled for five miles out to the pit area on uncomfortable salty surfaces, including a stretch of nasty potholes the size and depth of sauce pans. Was it a brackish sign?

Berry Wardlaw made a point, on bad Delta flights, to haul back a saline chunk the size of a shoebox. He snatched the salty souvenir in 1989 when he came to watch the Easyriders Team run Bob George's Streamliner for a record. The next year we broke the Motorcycle Streamliner World Land Speed Record. I was on the Easyriders' Team supported by our readers, and Bob George taught me engine building in the early '70s before I worked for Easyriders. Keith Ruxton was the engine builder and the crew chief during '89 and '90 attempts. Our final speed was 321 mph for a world record that endured for 16- years.

Sunday we unloaded the Assalt Weapan from the fun mover, checked her over and rolled her to tech. It was terrific to see other builders, but the controversy began when Jay Allen was asked to cut his Wink Eller fairing to pass tech. There's a set of obscure rules that vary from one sanctioning body to another. Racing rules are governed by three entities, AMA, SCTA and FIM. The Bub's meet recognizes the AMA rules, Speed Week and El Mirage are controlled by the SCTA (Southern California Timing Association) and FIM is the European Sanctioning body.

They're all reasonable groups with rules that don't always fit, so the tech teams got together and decided we had to cut our rear panels some, to adhere. We were scrutinized harder this time and nerves frayed as we wondered what the judges were whispering about.

On to Page 2...