KENTUCKY

They don't need a sign announcing Kentucky. As soon as you cross the border and hit their dog shit amalgamation of potholes, you know you've hit a state with a piss-poor economy like Kentucky. Shame too, it's pretty, but one of the most polluted. Nice folks, with one of the worst levels of education. All reflected in the roads.

As I thundered through Kentucky at 100, I wondered where Bandit was. Were he and Mad Myron already lounging in Sturgis, sipping mint juleps -- Bandit's favorite drink? Were they neck-deep in local women, being fed grapes and having their motorcycles polished? Fuck the troopers, I thought. Let them try to take me alive. I knew if I so much as got stopped, the run was over. I was running an unregistered bike with California MSOs out of Florida through Kentucky. Shit, they'd just chop me into hamburger and feed me to the hogs -- after 20 years of slave labor picking tobacco naked under the blazing Kentucky sun while the bullwhip danced off my back. It was win or lose. There were no sidelines in this game. I cranked the throttle harder and rolled the bike to 101, where it began to flutter. I let it coast back to 100.

There's something about riding exceptionally long distances, the countryside ever unfurling before you, always just passing through. You begin to feel a bit invulnerable. Local gossip and pangs do not threaten you. You glide past headaches and feel nothing. Relativity changes. The weight you give one thing can suddenly shift into an entirely different area in your life, leaving something that you thought was critical feeling meaningless, and another part of your life, which you thought was of little meaning at all, feeling quite crucial or interesting.

I sorted through the last six months as I rolled on. A watched odometer is not unlike a watched pot, it never boils. As I rolled and rolled and rolled, I watched the odometer slowly flip past tenths of a mile, then a mile. Then it started over, flipping off life in tenths. A tenth of confusion with the German Feminine. A tenth of aggravation with the move to Miami. A tenth of re-writes on the film script "1%er". A tenth of my bills. A tenth of uncertainty. A tenth of self-discovery. A tenth of the smell of a sweating woman on a hot Miami night. A tenth of the laughs at Bandit's place. A tenth of brotherhood. A tenth of the thunder of a fresh engine, stripping the black off busted Kentucky highway. A mile. And over again.

Throughout history there have always been men who adventured, men who traveled great distances. But in reality, we are all pioneers into our own selves. We all journey forward, ripe and robust, fresh from the womb, to slowly degrade, to fail and to triumph, to love and to lose, to dance, as uncle Henry Miller said, "on the edge of the volcano, through the fingernail clippings and the gutter bile, giving a great, triumphant shout." What strange thoughts I had as the sun lay down its burning head on the soft wheat grass on the horizon. Strange thoughts in a strange time.

The miles rolling along on the odometer, silently recording their own passage, were not those of the motorcycle. They were mine. For when this motorcycle is rusted and gone, I thought, these miles will be credited not to the memory of the machine, but to myself. In the end, the miles we travel are our own. Though we might traverse different portions of our lives with certain people, even certain partners, in the end, the journey is our's alone. And when the individual at last can no longer be rebuilt and and we are retired and put to rest, the miles belong to us and our memories. None of us is more than an unremarkable pile of dirt with a temporary heartbeat. It is within this simplicity, this utter lack of permanent value, that our beauty lies. It is because our odometers, in the end, are finite, that there is some sort of rush, a sense of charge to the fact that with each flip of the meter, with each lap, we are closer to the end chapter in our own dirty, sexy, scandalous, glory-filled, fast-run non-fiction story.

I double-bumped over a hunk of unidentifiable road kill as twilight hit. Time to switch from the day goggles to the night glasses. Knock off the horseshit road philosophy and get down to the business of riding at top speed.

Gas stations and abbreviated conversations, minute relationships with fossil fuel customers and other adventure seekers. Phony interest, curiosity regarding motorcycles. Why do you ride? Did you build it? Where are you headed and where did you come from? Oh, how nice. My goodness, that far? I bet you get tired. Have you ever killed a man? Where do you sleep? Why Zebra? What is Sturgis?

Sturgis, who said anything about Sturgis? I don't know any Zebra. My name is Jones, Jones from Arkansas. Bought the bike at a flea market. Been riding ever since. Gun, no that's not a gun under there, that's my colostomy bag. Lost my asshole in WWII. German landmine blew it off. Dastardly business, war. And colostomy bags, too. Messy on dates, makes gymnastics impossible. What cologne am I wearing…?

A long, sloping hill. A near-miss with a sleeping truck operator. Clever ideas that will be lost to the waving ditch weeds and fence posts that tick past at top speed, as I ride, unable to write, trying desperately to catch the fleeting Bandit 3,000 miles to the west.

Night is a strange time on a motorcycle. The universe collapses, everything becomes condensed. Space and time become subservient to the headlight and its limited expanse. One's thoughts and rambling philosophies adjust accordingly, becoming more errant, distrusting, abbreviated, less focused in reality and more ready to believe that which you would not have believed in, in the light. The night is a fast-paced game of hiding. It is a flying pocket of light in which you incubate as grand lands and great distances magically pass without your knowledge, your understanding of your journey suddenly limited to that which your searching eyes can pry from the suffocating darkness. I say suffocating, but in reality, it is really quite liberating. For what you can't see is suddenly no longer your responsibility. You are free to ignore the ephemeral giganticness that sprints past you on all sides, hidden from your probing gaze, a non-liability that you will experience yet never be able to see, describe or recall due to its invisibility. But, like the grand reason, which escapes us all, it's out there and we can sense its magnitude, its heat, its sheer mammoth electromagnetic effect, though we cannot grasp its chaotic entirety.

I had been scheduled to stop at the house of a bro named Randy from Tennessee, who'd contacted me via the Internet and offered a cot and a hot. But when I got close, I was unable to figure out the directions to the interstate grocery store, which is where we were supposed to meet. I stopped at a restaurant to get dinner and called The Shepard, Mike Osborne, in California on my satellite phone.

"Where are you now?" he asked.

"I don't know, somewhere in Tennessee or Kentucky. Maybe Paris."

"Getting weird out there, is it, Zebra?"

"Weirder the better," I said.

"Well, let's see."

I could hear a flurry of keystrokes. The Shepard was accessing my e-mail account to retrieve the directions Randy had e-mailed me prior to lift off.

"Okay, got the e-mail. Let's see, you should be close. Let me check Yahoo Maps."

The Shepard accessed Yahoo Maps and plotted a course. He was giving me directions when my cell phone call waiting clicked. It was Randy.

"Zebra, whatever you do, don't come to that grocery store! The troopers are all over the place. They're running a license plate sting on bikes! They'll nail you for sure."

"Sweet mother of whiskey!" I exclaimed. Troopers running license plate stings was the last thing I needed.

"Sorry, man. We just found out. Been trying to get in touch with you all day. They've nailed half a dozen bros already. Hauled 'em off. Hit the highway and get out of the area, fast."

I thanked Randy and relayed the bad news to The Shepard.

"What time is it there?" he asked.

"Around midnight," I replied, gulping coffee. "And it's starting to rain. Heard from Bandit?"

"He checked in earlier," The Shepard said, as he plotted an alternate course for me on the Internet maps. "Said he's somewhere in Utah. Gas tank broke a mount. Fell off, blew up or something. Killed a whole bunch of people. He was pretty nuts when he called. He and Mad Myron were in the Jack and spewing nonsense about blowing up the plumbing in a local hotel with gasoline fumes and a hotel shop vacuum. Couldn't make sense of it. Then there was gunfire and a lot of screaming and I lost contact with them."

Bright news. Breakdowns for Bandit meant I still had a fighting chance.

"Get me to the next city," I told The Shepard. "I'll catch that villain yet. He put a rev limiter on me, but we got it dialed up wide open and I figure if I can put down 900 miles today on this hard-mount buzzing bastard, I can get back in the game."

The Shepard gave me a new route and it was a good one. Sure, I had maps and I knew the better end of the roads in the region, having lived in New Orleans for four years. But with the digital maps, you could get current reports on traffic, road construction, weather, you name it. That was something you couldn't get from a paper map.

"You're good with moderate showers to looks like Louisville. They've got some weather there, some heavy traffic on the south side, but it doesn't look like anything you can't ride through."

I thanked The Shepard and got the hell out of there. The rain was increasing steadily and I didn't need to deal with troopers.

Outside the restaurant, I strapped on the rain gear and lit the fuse to the RevTech. Riding fast, I cut through the rain on my new Avons, which held surprisingly well at speed in the heavy torrents.

Coming around the city, I went on reserve in heavy traffic and pounding rain. I had yet to figure the range on the new tank, so I took it 15 miles farther each fill up to try and locate the exact range. It was the first time I'd gone on reserve on that particular petcock and it took me just long enough to find the reserve that a heavy truck nearly wasted me when the bike lost speed on the rain heavy highway. I looked back and could see the massive Peterbilt logo. The rattle of the truck's pipes told me the driver was using everything he had to slow his rig down to keep from hitting a biker that no doubt appeared out of nowhere in the driving rain. I caught some fresh gas and dumped the big RevTech 88 into the Baker 6-Speed and got hell bound.

Taking the first off ramp I could get to, I rolled into a crap ghetto area of town and found a fuel station. As I screwed off the gas cap and flipped up my fogging goggles, I noticed a fat white car person filling his Jap car while eyeing me with disdain. He ogled the long K-Bar blade that hung from my right hip, then the large L-lump that the H&K made. His wife locked her car door and frowned. No doubt they expected me to sodomize the both of them.

A couple black gangbangers strolled up. They surrounded the yuppie and started putting the screws to him, their eyes on the car, the luggage on top and the cat's old lady. These were real hitters, guys with jailhouse tats and born-to-die brains.

"Yo, yo, yo, let me pump dat gas, Pennsylvania," one hood said, referring to the yup's out-of-state license plate as he tried to take the gas nozzle away.

"No, I got it," the freaked yuppie squeaked.

"You got a lotta shit stack on dat car," another hood said, tugging on one of the securing ropes.

"Hey, don't pull on that," the yup pleaded.

The cat's wife was terrified, knowing she'd soon be a widow and then probably a hump doll.

I topped off the tank on the Great Northern Steamer and hung up the pump. The five or six gangbangers were getting ugly and more aggressive as the yup lost his nerve. The black attendant who watched from behind 3-inch-thick bullet resistant glass was making no move to call the local heat.

"You get rained on coming from the north?" I asked the yup.

Everyone turned.

"Because I did," I said, unholstering my H&K and flinging the rain off it. "Soaked me clear to my fuckin' bullets," I added, holding the big German GSG9 special by my side, looking into the eyes of the gangbangers.

I didn't care if we had to gunfight. In fact, at the moment, a gunfight sounded like just the thing. Clear the senses, loosen up the joints, the smell of fresh cordite was always invigorating. You know you're alive when you hear that first, compressed pop. Or dead, whichever the case may be. I was soaked, full of demons and wasn't all that worried about consequences. Or losing.

"Uh, yeah," the yup stammered. "We got rained on." Maybe I should rob him and the gangbangers, I thought, chuckling to myself. Take 'em all for everything they've got, nab the guy's old lady, make her ride on the fender clear to the Badlands, a meat tenderizer of sorts. Then get married by the Chief himself and give her a stout corn husking. Yes…what a marvelous plan… But the fender was covered with gear, so piss on it.

"I was hoping it wasn't raining north of here," I said, walking toward the gangbangers, watching closely to see who might be stupid enough to go for a weapon.

The gangbangers began to drift backward and then slowly walked away, mumbling. I'd spoiled their fun, but only momentarily I figured. I handed the yup $10.

"Go pay for your gas and pay for mine with this. I'll stay here and keep an eye on your car and your old lady."

The yup took the money and stared at me like a frightened rat.

"I wouldn't take too long, if I were you," I said. "Chances are pretty high those old boys are gonna feel the sting of what just happened and come back around the corner of that fuckin' gas station shootin'. And the only thing we got for cover here is gas pumps. Move your ass."

The yuppie scurried to the bulletproof glass and slid the cash under the window. I kept a keen eye out for incoming fire.

"Boy, I've never been glad to see a biker before," the yup admitted when he gave me my change and got into his car. "What's Bikernet?"

"It's nothing," I told him. "Now go on and next time you see a biker on the side of the road having trouble, stop and ask if you can help."

"I sure as hell will," the yup assured me as he lit out of the station and gassed it for the interstate.