From left to right: Bandit, Mad Myron and Special Agent Zebra, Spearfish, South Dakota, Sturgis 2000

MIAMI, FLORIDA

"What you're trying to do is a felony," the DMV cunt behind the counter told me bluntly. A rule-crazy jackass, practiced at spouting out by-the-book bull crap, the sorry bitch was clearly taking delight in being able to turn down yet another applicant in a string of many.

"How is it a felony to try and register a motorcycle?" I asked, tired, mad as hell and on the verge of reaching across the counter, dragging her uniformed ass over it and pistol whipping her to death with my H&K .45. This chick needed it in the ass, in the ear, in the eye and down the throat.

She was in worse need of a stiff drink and a stiffer dick than any broad I'd come across in a long time. Angry, bitter, gray about the eyes, her pussy a dead clam on a tideless sea of fouled estrogen long gone sour, her single claim to life was the trickle charge she received in her numb spine when she could utter the governmental word "no".

"Well," she continued, "you have to have about 10 more pieces of paper that you don't have and you have to register in Dade County, not Broward. And you need an appointment. That will take at least two weeks."

I had all the fuckin' paperwork a man could get, MSOs for everything, receipts for everything, you name it.

"Oh fuck it," I said, reaching over and taking back my huge pack of papers.

"What are you doing?" the DMV grunt demanded.

"I'm going to Sturgis," I snarled.

"You can't ride that motorcycle until you've registered it with the Florida DMV."

"Watch me, sugar tits," I said as I slammed the door open and stormed out.

"YOU'LL GO TO JAIL!" she cried.

"State-sponsored bed and breakfast, baby!" I roared back. "Bring it on!"

Most bikers have at least one fuckup on a run as far as Miami Beach, Fla., to Sturgis, S.D., and back. But mine had already started and I hadn't even set off for the far north country.

"Fuck that cunt," Eddie Trotta barked when I got back to Thunder Cycles in Fort Lauderdale. "That bitch changes the goddamned rules every fuckin' time we go in there. I swear to God, no matter what we bring in, it's never right and there's always some new fuckin' thing these cocksuckers want."

Eddie grabbed a dealer tag, filled out a bunch of phony numbers and jammed it into the plate holder on the Zebra Great Northern Steamer.

"Get your ass on the road. You're gonna get beat by Bandit. He's got a 500-mile head start on you just from living farther north. If you get caught, you're going to jail. If you don't, you're going to Sturgis," Eddie said.

I agreed. When the goddamned law makes it impossible to get the job done, that's when you get American and stomp the law.

The Great Northern Steamer, my entry into the Bikernet ChopOff 2000, had about 100 yards worth of break-in on it when I rolled out of Thunder Cycles in Fort Lauderdale. I had to ride 40 miles south, back to the Bikernet.com East headquarters in Miami Beach, to get my gear. The extra 80 miles would also help me nail any potential landmines that might be hiding in the brand new scoot before roaring off into the great unknown.

Of course the minute I got on I-95 and headed back to the beach I hit very heavy traffic and rain. If you've ever driven around Cubans and South Americans, you know what it's like to be a pinball. There are no rules and people drive like suicidal maniacs. Every day there's at least one fatal wreck and a lot of non-fatal crashes that mangle three or four cars at a pop. Add to that a tropical rainstorm and a taillight the size of a match head and you've got a recipe for doom. Twice I could have reached back and touched the car behind me before it got slowed down enough to keep from ramming me under the vehicle in front of me. It was a great mood setter for a 3,000-mile run north on an outlaw scoot.

I got back to the house and strapped on a good amount of gear, tools and firepower. As I strapped on my Bandit's bedroll, I spotted the first problem. The primary case was leaking new oil everywhere from a dud seal. When I hooked up the gear on the back fender, I spotted the second problem. The lower hex nut on the back brake caliper had not been properly tightened and to do so would require sliding the rear axle forward about 4 inches. I loaded up and blasted back north to Eddie's place in Fort Lauderdale.

Eddie's crack mechanics jumped on the primary case and knocked the bad seal in the head in a matter of minutes. They noticed the headlight was coming loose and quickly created a custom bracket to hold it. Then they moved the speedo because it was blocked by the slant of the custom handlebars. This machine was so new that we had no bugs worked out whatsoever.

I hit the road at about 7 p.m., hoping to get to Daytona Beach before shutting down.

All the gear was strapped on wrong and I had to stop twice before I got the Bandit's Bedroll positioned so that it threw the wind up over me properly, which it's designed to do and do well.

I rolled 350 miles, to Cocoa, Fla., before wearing out. I was pushing hard because part of the ChopOff 2000 was to see who would get to Sturgis first. Bandit had left a day earlier but I knew he would have to stay a day in Arizona, where he was picking up Mad Myron. The downside to this was, when those two former 1%ers get together, they ride wide open.

Beat and mentally spent after a two-month breakdown with the German Feminine, I pulled over and got an over-priced shithole room at a grungy hotel on the north side of a nothing Florida coastal town called Cocoa. I was taking 95 all the way through Florida to 10, then east a bit to 75, then north into Georgia and Tennessee, then west through Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas, north and west through Nebraska and into South Dakota.

As I unpacked the Great Northern Steamer and flung gear into the dirty hotel room, a local horse thief sidled up and eyed the gleaming new chopper, now with just over 400 miles on the odometer.

"Say, that's a nice bike. What would a bike like that be worth?" he asked through rotted teeth and a dirty beard.

"It's worth a life," I said coldly.

The local eyed me warily as I bent over to pick up a bungee cord and my H&K .45 stood up under my Bikernet vest.

"Oh," the local replied.

I whipped a Krypto chain around a small palm tree and through the front tire to give me enough slow-down time to get a clear shot when the local and his 10 friends returned with a van and a need for a custom chopper.

That night, I slept with the window open and the H&K on the bed. South Florida is notorious for bike theft. Bikes vanish like fog and I wasn't about to let horse thieves pick off my new scoot. It was insured, but it wasn't the monetary loss I was interested in avoiding. It was a pride thing. Getting a bike stolen is a real punch in the nuts. I was tired and in an ugly head after the last month and wasn't in the mood for much nut punchin'. I gladly would have shot any man who so much as touched the fender that night. I've been in Too many gunfights in my life, some a fluke of bad timing, some just because there are folks out there who don't understand things like don't steal the motorcycle with the "Z" on it. I've never liked the sport, too hard on the nerves, but I had gone to the trouble to get serious training from the best combat shooters on earth and I wasn't about to play games with horse thieves. Apparently the old boy got the message and the evening passed silently.

I hit the deck at 6 and ate a huge breakfast. Then I broke out the tools and torqued the entire bike. The covers on the rear pushrods were loose as hell and I cranked them down tight, knowing I was in for a very long run and would need that engine oil all the way. I found about 15 loose bolts and hex screws and applied some blue stick-um to each. They wouldn't be coming loose again.

I'd gotten five hours of light sleep and wasn't planning on stopping for lunch. I had about eight hours to make up for and was determined to win the race part of the ChopOff if for no other reason than I hadn't won lately in life and was in a pretty competitive mood. Bandit's bike was prettier than mine, no doubt about it. So if I was going to extract any sense of victory out of the ChopOff, it'd probably have to be winning the run.

Plus, there's a certain cleansing to be had by throwing the spurs to a big custom chopper and letting a new RevTech 88 moan for 15 hours at a pop, streaking across America, free, illegal, feeling the leather crack.

I was leaving behind a messy relationship breakup. I hadn't taken a vacation in over two years. I was feeling hooky and getting out of town would prevent me from messing up a certain South Florida local who'd stepped over the line and was in desperate need of a crash course on class.

I lit the fuse on the new RevTech, dumped the resulting torque into my beloved Baker 6 and cooked some dinosaur oil.

Rolling, rolling, rolling, passing trees by the thousands. Bugs hit you like raindrops in Florida. Big, juicy, bitter to taste. For anyone who's claustrophobic, Florida is no place to ride. The interstates, highways and deer paths are all entirely walled off by heavy vegetation. The occasional dead gator lies by the side of the road, blasted by a passing vehicle in the night.