I need to ride or find a king sized bed, now." Since Jennifer is engaged to a Hamster and I didn't have enough room in my bag to steal her back to the West Coast, I pushed my chair back and headed for the door. It was 95 in the shade and I had goose bumps as we rode out to a sports bar for more whiskey, some grub and conversation with another woman who wanders in and out of my life.

She's Crazy Horse, or JoAnn Bortels, who runs the Bikernet Bike Show. She is also one of the East Coast’s renowned bike custom painters and lives at her studio, on a sprawling handful of acres 30 minutes outside Charlotte.

The next thing I knew, I was pulling into Mike's garage for a nightcap then to hit the hay for the next morning. Mike has a cool pad laid out in early Harley-Davidson. He rides a full custom highbar Softail and built a tight little marbleized-blue rigid devoted to his son Justin. I've never spent much time in the South and so I'm not accustomed to the traditions there, but there's one thing I couldn't figure out. The doorbell went off all night long and nobody ever answered the door.

As we sat around shooting the shit, I discovered that Mike's son, Justin, had had asthma since he was young, but it was under control with medicine. His attacks were infrequent, and as long as he sought medical treatment in a timely fashion, all was well. The weekend three years ago, he was spending time with his best friend who may have had a dog or something in the house that triggered the attack. He was given timely treatment and rushed to a hospital, but by the time Mike was informed and got to the facility, Justin had passed. One of the reasons Mike chose to build this event for the American Lung Association was its Camp Air Care program, a week-long day camp for kids with lung diseases. The kids learn how to respond to attacks and various environments, and how to help others. I could tell Lee and Mike were bonding so I slipped off to the garage to sleep on the concrete floor.

The next morning, a man came storming through the premises shouting revelry. I awoke stiff from the unforgiving surface and shouted, "What time is it?"

"It's 7 a.m. sharp," came the reply in a North Carolina drawl.

"Well it's too fuckin' early," I said. "You're fired. Pack your shit and get out." Later, I found that the Sportster rider was Mike's brother, but we never saw him again. We snorted coffee, drank orange juice and munched as riders arrived steadily. By 10 a.m. Mike had his neighborhood packed full of bikes. The previous night, as we sat and chewed the fat, we watched new neighbors moving in next door. By 9:30 the next morning, the truck was back and they were moving out. It must have been something about the neighborhood.

Mike and I headed the pack down Margaret Wallace until we reached Highway 74 (Independence Boulevard). There we picked up a police escort for the trip through town to Ben's V-Twin, which at one time was the dealership on the other side of the tracks. Buffalo Bob shuddered at the thought as he described having been chased by a mad motorist to the local cop shop, where his rear tire was shot out as he was going for cover. At one time, Ben's was Creech H-D, then Hinson's H-D and finally Wiggins H-D before it became Charlotte H-D and was moved to its current location on Independence Boulevard in Matthews. The neighborhood looked fine to me, but as the riders dismounted, they hid behind their rides until they had a shot to make it for the bullet proof door and duck inside. I was unaware that guys in the South are often given the name Duck! There were a couple of other strange customs I learned to accept in Charlotte, but we'll get to them later.

After beans, weenies and coleslaw that you had to eat with your hands, I toured the shop and gazed enviously at Ben's personal swingarm Knucklehead. It was one of the cleanest bikes I've run across. After an hour we rolled out of Ben's parking lot for the cemetery, where we stopped to pay respects to Justin. I had sensed a deep respect and friendship for Mike and a general camaraderie from the local riders, but once we reached the grounds I was taken back. All the local bike shops and Mike's brothers had purchased an engraved marble bench and had it placed at the road's edge near Justin's grave. They also had dogwood trees planted next to the gravestone and the bench, and I was moved to find freshly cut flowers on all the graves in the cemetery. No one would own up to who paid for the heartfelt tribute.

Earlier that day I met a HORSE contributor named Edge, who has recently started to write for Bikernet. He’s an articulate young man who never suspected he could write until he started sending Christmas letters to rave reviews. The first fiction story he ever wrote was published. He's got a knack. While we stood at Justin's grave, Edge, a Green Beret, said, "You've never been in love until you have a child." It struck me like a bolt of lightning as I looked out at the lawn scattered with neatly arranged flowers and the pain of Mike and Lee became brutally apparent. We spent a half hour at the cemetery before rolling onto the highway toward Monroe.

While we were making our tribute trek, a larger group of riders was hitting various stops on a poker run that converged with us at Buffalo's Saloon and Cafe on Roosevelt Boulevard in Monroe. Buffalo's is a biker friendly hangout with a western theme and a vast parking lot where they set up vendor booths, a spot for me to sign books, and several poker run prize tables.

A band also set up a stage and the party began.