TENNESSEE

I rolled Tennessee on the second or third day. I'd lost track of the days, the weeks, even the year. Everything was a seamless flow connected by a network of glistening August asphalt and flashing dotted lines. The way it should be.

I swept through the Tennessee mountains, climbing, climbing. The view was stupendous from the Great Northern Steamer. I sat almost 3 full inches above the fleeting asphalt and could see for miles as I climbed into the Smokies.

If you've never ridden through the Tennessee hills, you're missing out on a serious ride. The hills are relatively unsettled, wild, open, as God threw the clay so long ago with very little visible disruption from meddling human hands. The air is clean and the scent of moonshine mash and virgin hill pussy rides thick on the cool mountain breezes.

I leaned and twisted, swept and swooped through the hills, climbing, descending.

I stopped around noon at a restaurant that overlooked a vast vista of pine and lakes. At least I think it was noon. My watch had been giving me trouble lately. I'd thrown it off a bridge.

The waitress brought a flagon of ice tea and a half a hedge hog, which was smothered in glazed apples and bourbon.

"Do you want anything else?" the blonde asked, a knowing grin on her face.

"Ketchup," I said.

Her expression fell and she pulled a bottle of ketchup out of her cleavage in an automated fashion.

"From around here?" I asked her.

"No," she said, her expression brightening.

"Where you from?" I asked.

"Other side of the hill."

"Thought you said you weren't from around here."

"I'm not. I just told you, I'm from the other side of the hill," she remarked as if I was entirely dumb.

"Oh," I said, sensing that my own free roaming point of relativity wasn't shared in this part of the country.

"Ever been out of the country?" I asked.

"Went to Nashville once. Didn't like it," she responded, wiping a nearby table.

"Ever been out of America is what I meant, actually," I said, trying to clarify the error in interpretation.

Her rag stopped in mid circle.

"What?" she snapped.

"What?" I asked, a slab of wild hog hanging from my teeth.

"Are you saying I'm fat?" she asked defensively.

"No! How did you get that out of my asking if you'd ever been out of the country?"

"Oh I get it. So I'm not only fat, I'm stupid, too. Is that it?" she asked, stuffing her rag into her apron.

"I didn't say you were dumb," I defended.

"You didn't have to. You said it in your tone."

"I did?"

"Oh don't play dumb with me!" she shouted.

"Nobody said you were dumb!" I retorted.

"Oh, so now I'm not only fat and dumb, I'm a liar, too? Just who in the hell do you think you are, coming in here, calling me a fat, dumb liar?"

The patrons in the restaurant were beginning to stare.

"Well, you know what?" the enraged madwoman screamed at the top of her vocal ability. "You can just go to hell! You, with your arrogant holier-than-thou attitude! You, with your dirty, stinking leather, judging everyone around you! Do you think you are the only man in this world? Do you think I can't find someone who will treat me with respect? Who will love me for who I am, not whether or not I have a perfect ass?"

She flung her dishtowel in my face and stormed off. I sat there, dishtowel hanging from my nose, looking around at the local faces staring back in disgust.

I hadn't had much luck with the ladies lately. Maybe it was my cologne.

As I fired up the Great Northern Steamer, a crumpled $20 bill hit me in the eye.

"You call that a tip, you cheap bastard? Keep it!" the waitress yelled from the doorway of the restaurant.

I hit the gas and got the hell out of there before they could get the rope over the tree limb and take the kinks out of my back the old-fashioned way.

As I strummed along, I realized it was time to surpass the 65 mph break-in and opened the RevTech up to 75. But when I gave her the throttle, the engine fell flat on its face.

"Strange," I said aloud as I tried it again. Again, the bike fell on its face at exactly 74 mph. "Shit. What the hell?" I checked the fuel petcock, but nothing would coax the big engine over 74 mph. This was very distressing. Bandit would beat me for sure if I couldn't climb over 74 mph.

As I rolled along, I noticed it was time to do another break-in oil switch. The boys told me to dump the blood at 50, 500 and then 1,000. I found a local H-D dealer off the interstate. They rolled the Great Northern Steamer onto a lift and started to siphon the oil out. Bandit had not installed a drain hose from the oil bag, no doubt in an effort to retard my progress in our race to the Badlands.

"Why the rev limiter?" the mechanic asked as he siphoned the oil out with a marine sump pump.

"Rev limiter?" I asked.

"Yeah, you got a rev limiter here under the seat."

"I do?"

"Yeah," the mechanic said, pointing to a tiny rev limiter cleverly hidden under the seat near the battery.

"Why that worthless… Take it off," I instructed.

"Can't," the mechanic informed me. "Don't have anything to replace it with."

"But I don't want to replace it. I don't want a rev limiter at all."

"Yeah, but the way it's wired, you have to have something and we don't have anything for a RevTech. I mean, we have oil filters, those are pretty interchangeable, but the way this thing is wired up, you need something to replace the rev limiter in order to close the circuit."

"Why you evil bastard," I said, cursing Bandit. He'd really nailed me to the ground with this one. "Can you at least advance it?" I asked.

"Maybe, it looks adjustable. It also looks about half homemade. Don't think I've ever seen one like it."

"Oh that dank wretch." I could see him and Snake and Ink Dink and Digital Gangster roaring with laughter as they plotted against me at the Bikernet garage in L.A., where the majority of the construction on the bike had taken place.

"I'll try," the mechanic said.

The mechanics fiddled with Bandit's homemade rev limiter for about an hour and announced that they'd been able to advance it.

"You should be able to pull a steady 100. No more. When you get to the Badlands, find the Custom Chrome boys and they can get you something to replace it with."

When I get to the Badlands. Of course. How convenient. By then Bandit would be the victor. He had gone to great lengths to insure his victory.

Just a few hours before, I'd noticed my feet kept slipping off the custom foot pegs. Then I noticed they'd been put on upside down, in order to cause my feet to constantly work themselves off the ends. It had only taken me about 10 minutes to break down the tools and switch them, but each little booby trap Bandit had engineered into the Great Northern Steamer cost me precious time, time he was using to streak farther and farther down the road toward victory.