GEORGIA

Dawn. The rain stopped about an hour ago. My leather sticks to me. 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 hand while 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 to be a region they felt safe in, but what of this hairy barbarian standing naked on the side of the road next to a filthy motorcycle, looking like he might rape and eat the lot of them?

By 7 a.m. I am filling up and getting warmer as the Georgia sun promises 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 stretch as much as possible without getting off the mother fucker. Then the unthinkable happens. The scoot dies.

Turns out I'd not quite gotten the petcock set back to "run" when I flipped 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. Trucks line 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 even cough. I am mocked by the dead machine, as I push and push, my arms and legs trembling with fatigue.

I stop, knowing if I don't that I'm going to get so hot and worn out 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 guys can't go toss $50 on my account."

"No sweat, bro," the trucker said, "we can always use another strap."

He backed his rig up to mine and his wife strapped the front forks of 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 as he pulled me in laps, since he couldn't see me in his mirrors.

As the semi steamed in ever increasingly fast circles, dozens of truckers 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 you have 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 hours from 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, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia…

Now the sun is working overtime. I pass through Rock City, climbing the mountains fast. A local bank thermometer tells the temperature, 97.

There are no more bikers heading home from Sturgis. I passed a couple 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 the highway, feeling like I have prickly pears under my skin.

The mountains of Georgia began to flatten and I knew that somewhere in 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. It was about 2 p.m. and I was so fried that everything was on autopilot. The traffic in Florida drives as fast as that of states like Montana 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 screwdriver out 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-foot increase in altitude.

Florida is the worst place to ride tired because the highways are shrouded by vegetation and the scenery is a mere 20 yards away on either side and never changes.

Suddenly a semi, which had blasted by me only a moment before, flew off 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 front brake, 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 swinging hard in a semi-circle. A car narrowly missed running under the sweeping trailer, 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, underbrush sticking out of the grill. The truck flew across both lanes as the trucker overcompensated 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 the drifting back end. He's going to roll, he's going to roll, he's going to roll, I kept thinking as I rode hard to the far left shoulder, trying to give myself enough room to get around the trailer when it flipped. The entire rig slid back right, following the jackknifed cab. By now everyone had slid down to about 60 mph. I roared past the moaning back tires of the trailer as the driver sailed back off the right hand side of the road a second time and cranked it back hard to the left, heading right for me.

"JESUS CHRIST!" I hollered involuntarily as I saw the front tires plowing 3-foot-high curls of Florida sod and the big truck cab heading right for me. I could feel the huge trailer bouncing the asphalt as it slammed back onto the highway. The trailer rocked horribly as the driver saw me and cut it back to the right. BOOM! The trailer slammed back down on all 16 tires, did a few remaining fishtails and slid to a stop, crossing both lanes of traffic, jackknifed as tight as a cab and trailer can be without popping apart.

I roared off south, wide awake, gulping adrenaline.

I had no trouble staying awake for the next three hours as I blazed past Daytona Beach, replaying the near-miss over and over in my head. It was the closest I'd come to getting run over since I'd actually been run over in L.A. a year ago (See "Attack of the Car People") and hospitalized. That time it'd only been a pickup that had run over me. If that semi trailer had 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 I rolled 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 south Florida sun is that of Cuba and you can literally get third degree sunburns in 40 minutes. That far south, that means hospital time at best and deadly skin cancer at worst. I had 50 SPF sunblock, but there was no way to get to it and get it on without the kickstand. It had taken me half an hour to change pants earlier while holding the bike up, and the pants were on top in the Bandit's Bedroll. The sunscreen was at the bottom. On I rolled.

When I at last saw the sign for Miami Beach, I felt virtually invincible. 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-gut Clydesdale.

As I rumbled down Alton Road, I passed the German Feminine in the Stinkin' Lincoln. She looked surprised to see me, then waved and smiled. The car was stacked high with furniture and her belongings, which she was hauling from 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, I figured, when I finished up the job here and loaded the gear to head back to the West Coast.

I rolled into Miami Beach and stopped on Ocean Drive, the street that faces 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 handed him 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 scoot and then, for the first time in damned near 1,900 miles, I got off the Great Northern Steamer.

I sat down on the pavement and waited for the ringing and vibrating to stop, exhausted. The German Feminine pulled up and got out. She walked over 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.