I was hammering around town when the hail hit. Nobody can ride through hail. At least nobody who buys their own paint jobs.

Stopping on the shoulder, I pulled out my rain gear and tried to lean over the tank, to keep the hail from ruining the $1,000 color that Eddie Meeks from Hardly Civilized in the Carolinas had just blasted on. As the hail slacked off, I stood up, turned and BUMP, walked straight into a female State Trooper.

"Oh shit!" I hollered without thinking.

The gal trooper stepped backward from the impact and looked at me with surprise.

"Whoa, you scared the shit out of me," I said, trying to play it cool.

"Sorry," the gal said, smiling. I immediately realized she was very good looking and had a huge rack pushing her body armor forward. "I thought at first you were some guy pushing a shopping cart. Hard to see in this rain. Then I thought maybe you were having trouble, so I figured I'd better stop and help."

"Nope, just getting on more duck weather gear," I said, stepping strategically in front of the low-mounted license plate holder.

"OK, well, be careful, it's terrible weather to be riding in," the trooper said, smiling again.

For an instant, I could picture her naked, upside down, her ass high, while I fired her pistol into the air and sang "The Star-Spangled Banner." But with the luck I'd been having lately with women, the last thing I wanted to do was engage one who'd been given the power by the state to place offending men under arrest.

I lit the RevTech fuse and rolled the Avon. My heart was still pounding. I'd never get to Sturgis, S.D., with these dummy paper tags Trotta made, I thought to myself. The ink was running off them, they were falling to pieces. I must be out of my mind. I tried to estimate what it would cost me in legal fees and lost work by the time I got out of some local county slammer. How did I let Bandit get me into these idiotic situations? He was a terrible influence. Bikernet was a disease. When would I learn? No doubt it was all part of his master plan. Bikernet was at last making ridiculous money, hundreds of thousands a month, and the pond scum had gotten greedy. He was trying to get me out of the picture, not wanting to split the gold with the old Zebra. I couldn't blame him. I'd have done the same. The blasted hoodlum. He'd get his in Sturgis, provided I got there to deliver it. Which I most likely would not.

"Aw fuck the troopers," I mumbled to myself as I leaned into the driving rain and cranked up the gas handle. She did have a nice set of jugs though. I questioned turning back. If that body armor was laying on them, just think of what they'd look like without. I cursed myself. What was I thinking? Sure, Zebra, engage with a chick cop. Best idea you've had since you left Miami with dummy plates you dummy fucker. Focus on the road, count the white dashes. What tits? I never saw any tits.

About an hour later, the rain cleared off and things warmed back up. I took a hotel room and rode the Great Northern Steamer in through the sliding glass door. Tonight I would sleep heavy.

Day 3

I awoke about 6 a.m., showered, gathered up the wrenches and torqued the Great Northern Steamer.

I tried to imagine where Bandit was. Probably Utah, I figured, laughing. Bandit hates Utah and won't ride there, claiming it smells bad and is insufferably ugly.

The Baker 6-Speed was performing even better than I'd hoped and the tall sixth gear let me to roll lower RPMs, allowing the engine to break in even easier. The tranny was smoother than an 18-year-old's ass and shifted cleanly and with almost no effort or clunk. It was a beauty.

As I drifted peacefully behind the big trucks through the rolling tobacco fields, I never saw a single trooper. Truckers have radios and high points of visibility. They also hide bikes until the last minute. They're wonderful bird dogs.

When I rolled out of Kentucky and into Illinois, the condition of the asphalt improved dramatically. Illinois was abloom with corn fields and waving farmers.

Illinois was the breaking point. Everything about me snapped and I became of the road. Home was gone. Grief was gone. My sticky world was gone. Everyone's sticky world was gone. All went numb and I was naught but a rider riding a fast bike. I was a penny hustler who put motor oil on his cereal, a rolling contradiction, duality in sixth gear, a searing, stinking Mr. Anyone with a gimmick and a goal. I am fierce and complicated, I believe fighting is poetry applied, I have failed at everything twice, I am a proud, rolling menace, I haven't an apology for anyone and when they take me down, mercy won't be requested. I'd catch that hotrod freak Bandit.

I rolled into east St. Louis at about 8 p.m. and called my second cousin's place. He was a big shot ad executive there and I'd not seen him or his wife in 10 years. He was also a biker and owned an antique Indian and several other scoots.

If you've never been to east St. Louis, don't go. It's due for a napalm strike. Losers, misfits, turncoats and nitwits populate a rusting infrastructure of gloom and infinite recession into the vainglorious abyss of human indiscipline. Immediately, a drug slave wanted to know what my bike was worth.

"$25,000," I said. "Want to buy it?"

"Where are you?" Liz asked.

"East St. Lewy," I told her.

"What?! Hang up and get the hell out of there! You'll be killed!" Dick's wife commanded.

"I can't, I'm about to sell my motorcycle," I laughed.

I got the directions to the house, but unfortunately the old boy who wanted to buy my bike couldn't come up with the cash. Pity, I really thought I'd sell it and ride back on a Wichita hotrod called Boeing. Dick was out fishing with the boys. Turns out the household had grown by three during my absence. When Dick and the boys arrived, he failed to recognize me until I mentioned my name.

"Oh hell!" Dick exclaimed. "I didn't recognize you at all. What are you doing in town?"

"I told you 10 years ago I was gonna build a custom chopper one of these days and ride it from stem to stern and you said when I did to be sure and stop by so you could see it. Here it is," I said.

Dick laughed and looked the Great Northern Steamer over closely.

"Wow, nice bike, man," he said. "Want to put it in the garage?"

"Sure."

I met the boys and then Dick and I spent the night catching up. A man can measure how he's doing in life by how much family he's got that he can call on a 10-minute notice and have a place to stay on a cross-country run. Dick and his lovely wife Liz were kind enough to bunk an outlaw and even bought dinner.

In the morning, I geared up and tried to work out a mother of a kink that was starting in my left shoulder just beneath the scapula.

"How's it ride?" Dick asked as I lugged out gear.

"Hell, see for yourself," I said, tossing him my state-mandated brain bucket.

Dick took the Steamer for a roll, then took each of his three boys for a back fender ride.

One of his boys got off and Liz asked how he liked it.

"It felt like electric eels were biting me in the butt," the lad exclaimed, apparently referring to either the vibration or an electrical short of which I was unaware.

I packed up, said my goodbyes and pledged to return in 10 years to take the boys with me on their own scoots. Dick laughed, Liz cringed. Then the boys came bounding out of the house yelling, "Look mom!"

They were dressed in sunglasses, bicycle helmets and had plastic knifes hanging off their belts.

"You've clearly had an affect," Liz laughed. I figured I'd better hit the road before the little guys decided to be writers. I don't mind turning youth into bikers, but I'd hate to see one go down the dark path of literary insanity.

I rolled on the throttle at about 8 a.m. and headed for the mighty Rock Creek Ranch in Kansas.

I was planning to take a day off and let the vibration stop and my left shoulder unkink at the ranch. It was home and I hadn't seen everyone for quite a spell.

The ride from St. Louis to Kansas City was a smooth, easy, 90 mph run through the grocery store of the world. Corn, milo, alfalfa, wheat, you name it. I rolled past hundreds of thousands of rows of the carbohydrate load of the human race.

Crossing the Arkansas River, I broke the boundary from Missouri to Kansas and the wholly unique sensation of home washed over the handlebars. When you're home, the sun always feels a little warmer, the breeze a little cooler and the water a little sweeter.

As I swept through Kansas City, I saw some of my old haunts, places I hadn't seen in 10 years. The stockyards, the Plaza, the old blues bars. Everything looked so easy, so simple. Of course, it all looks simple when you're just passing through. But throw down an anchor or two, get a residence, a few phone numbers, an old lady, a job, a boss, a few outstanding warrants, and presto -- what seemed so simple is suddenly complex.

And therein lies the beauty of the two-wheeled machine. An engine, two tires and a chair. Always a front row seat to a game that'll never be played twice. No connections other than abbreviated hookups to the local gas pump, and even those last only a few bucks. You slap the gas cap back on, hit the starter and simplicity flows back over everything like wind.

As I came off a long sweeper, elevated, I noticed a marvelous woman, mulatto perhaps, streaking along beside me in a red Mustang. She gave me that smile that says 'I recognize that you're just passing through, you can't possibly offer me any complications, I'm interested.' I gave her my favorite smile back. It said, go fuck yourself, baby, I'm ridin'. I'd had just about all the woman horse crap I needed lately. I hit the gas and sang her a little song on my new RevTech 88. It said the thrill is gone, the thrill is gone away…

The Kansas Turnpike west of Topeka was empty. I hit maybe two cars, two and a half all the way the ranch. A large white cloud of dust sat on the asphalt in the distance. It looked innocuous enough and I was in a daze. Then a gust of wind kicked up the dust and I rolled through it. Almost instantly, my eyes were on fire. I nailed the brakes and felt the rumble strips passing under. I had to find the kickstand by feel. I nailed the kill switch and stripped off my goggles, which had just enough air hole to allow the miserable stinging dust in. I grabbed the water bottle strapped over the back fender, being careful not to grab the Gatorade bottle of spare gas, and threw it in my eyes time after time. Then, with somewhat blurred vision, I drained an entire bottle of Visine into my eyes. Still, they burned mercilessly. I sat on the side of the road for a good hour, waiting for the stinging to subside. I could tell from the smell what the culprit was -- concrete powder. The shit has an acidic base to it and if you get it in your eyes, you'll find religion in a hurry. Finally, I was able to see well enough to find the starter button and get the Great Northern Steamer fired. Twice more I had to stop and toss more water into my purple orbs. Seeing was damned near impossible.

I rolled to the toll booth.

"Two dollars," the toll taker said.

"Here you go," I said, sniffing loudly, handing her a five.

"It's hot as a hooker in a French whore house, isn't it?" the toll taker said, applying some lipstick.

"Sure is," I said, chuckling.

She turned, her eyes locked onto mine.

"Oh," she said, coquettishly. "Hello…"

"Hello," I replied, smiling through the tears. Or at least it felt like a smile. It may have been facial contortions caused by my impending blindness.

"I'm Sally." She spoke demurely, though a part of me could tell, somewhere in there, was a woman. Somewhere inside this toll taker marooned on the vast Kansas prairie was a woman who longed for the moment she would meet a man who understood her complexity. A moment when she met a man who understood her complicated, horrendous, vile, despicable dualities.

"What's your name?" she asked, feigning shyness.

"Zebra."

"Do you have a first name, Zebra?" she asked, grinning.

"Special Agent," I replied.

She put me at ease with her line of questioning. Nothing too difficult. Nothing I couldn't handle. Nothing I wouldn't remember the answer to with a head full of twisted, bad memories of a German Feminine gone utterly nutters, too many miles in too few days, DMV communist sympathizers and black horizons with rain and hail. I looked at this delectable creature standing in the faded wooden toll booth and the same thought kept swirling in my mind -- what a rack. How I'd love to get a hand on those outlaw protuberances and maybe even write a poem on them. I pictured us at the county fair, a blue ribbon dangling from each nipple as we laughed and loved, danced and held her massive knockers long into the night.

"So, I bet it's pretty cool in there," I remarked, fishing.

"Well, the air conditioner seems to make it cooler," she concluded.

A woman of wit, I thought, grandly charmed.

"Probably harder to work up a sweat in there, eh?" I continued.

"Well, you'd have to do something pretty vigorous," she said enticingly, smacking her rich, full lips together. She twirled her finger through the fine hair that hung delicately from her upper lip. "What are you doing for dinner?" she asked, handing me a tissue for my watering eyes.

"I thought I'd have June bug and grasshopper surprise."

"I, I just want to say, that, I have feelings for you. Feelings I want to explore. But feelings I don't understand. Feelings that, I don't know, I, I need more time. Maybe if you could come back. Tomorrow. We could talk. There's so much you don't know about me. So much I don't know about you," she said hopefully.

Suddenly I became keenly aware of the Great Northern Steamer idling below me.

"Oh, yeah, uh, I'm really just passing through. Can't actually stay that long…"

A dark look spirited across her face, but she recovered quickly with a warm, understanding, fiendish smile.

The concrete was back. My eyes were again ablaze. Down came the water. The toll taker suddenly softened.

"Is everything all right?" she asked, her lip beginning to quiver sympathetically.

"Fine," I said, my eyes pouring water.

"You don't look all right. Want to talk about it?" she asked.

A meadowlark chirped in the distance. A bull bawled on the horizon.

"Really, I'm fine. I just have something in my eyes."

"Why won't you talk to me?" she asked, injured.

"What? I'm fine," I said, growing frustrated. "I just have …"

"I know, you have something in your eyes. Well that's man talk. And you know what, if you won't open up to me, then I just can't keep doing this. I can't go on like this, pretending. I need more. I need more from life. I need more from a man," she said, beginning to weep openly.

"I swear, nothing is wrong!" I bellowed, my eyes pouring.

"Oh scream at me! That's just so like you! You're afraid to commit! That's your problem! You're afraid to commit and you look for every little excuse, like blindness, to get out of treating me right!"

"I don't even know you," I rebutted.

"Oh, so that's how it's got to be? Well I don't know you either! I don't even know who you are anymore!" she cried, turning away.

"Oh, come on, don't be mad," I said, feeling terribly guilty.

"No, just go. I can't keep doing this," she wept. "Just please go."

"Can't keep doing what?" I asked. "We were never doing anything."

"Oh sure, just act like we never had anything together! Pretend like it never happened! That's so typical! I wasted 10 minutes of my life with you, Special Agent Zebra! I'll never get those 10 minutes back. You robbed me! You used me while I was young and when you got what you wanted, you just threw me away like a piece of trash! I loved you!"

My head was spinning, my eyes were bursting with pain. Why did every single encounter with a woman go south with me?

"You know what?" I said, exasperated, just wanting my change. "I think it's time we ended this. I need to move on."

The toll taker looked at me with broken eyes. Eyes of betrayal. Eyes that said everything we ever had was a lie.

"I always knew you'd do this," she said in a trembling voice, eyes pleading for me to change my mind, to stay and make everything the way it was, when I first pulled up. She handed me my three bucks change. I stuffed it into my vest pocket.

When I clicked the Great Northern Steamer into gear, she burst into tears and ran to the other side of the toll booth, weeping.

I rolled away, confused, angry, wondering how it had all gone so terribly wrong. My God, I thought to myself as I rolled through the gears on my smooth new Baker 6-Speed, why is life so damned confusing? I could still smell her perfume as I crested the hill and she faded out of sight, out of my life, forever.

I rolled into Rock Creek Ranch around 4 p.m. I had barely had time to recover from my tumultuous breakup with Sally the toll taker and was feeling delicate, vulnerable. The time at home with family and the simplicity of the ranch life would be welcome relief to the fast-paced throes of amore.

I unloaded the Great Northern Steamer and humped the gear up the long stairs to the second floor of the sprawling ranch house, tossing it into one of the guest bedrooms.

We all sat down to a huge dinner of steaks from a steer they'd killed earlier in the day.

We laughed and joked and I told them my sordid stories of the road and about the difficult break up I'd recently had with Stacy. Or was it Sally?

"You know it's fair time," dad said as he cut a steak.

"Is it?" I asked. I'd forgotten the county fair.

"Yep. Maybe you should stay an extra day or two and run over and see it. Been a while since you've been."

"That's true. Although it'd give Bandit a pretty big advantage. He's already riding 500 miles less than I am."

"Oh hell, you can surely catch Bandit," dad said. "Hell's fire, you're riding a motorsickle. We cover 100 miles a day on our old horses and they aren't half as fast as that big sickle sittin' out there."

The next day we all loaded up in the pickup and rattled off to the county fair. It was 30 miles of gravel road and we made the trip in just under an hour.

At the fair, I ran into a lot of old friends from school and the old days. It was odd to see them again. Some I hadn't seen since the mid '80s. They all looked much older, smaller, more frail. Most were married, many had a kid or seven. A few were dead. According to all of them, I was one of them, but I quickly dispelled the rumor.

I watched the 4-H beef show and recalled my years as a youth when I would show my cattle and shoot for the blue ribbon. At the time, it all seemed so important, so big. I wondered as I sat there if one day I would look back on the race to Sturgis against Bandit, with its global media coverage and international flair, its women and wine and pomp and circumstance and think that it all seemed so distant, so small, so insignificant. It was hard to imagine, but sometimes life does funny things.

The next day I saddled up and thanked them both and fired up the Great Northern Steamer.

The break from the motorcycle had done some good. The massive kink in my neck was far more relaxed. I could see again. And, drum roll please, the break-in period on my new RevTech 88 was over.

I lined the big chopper out on the two-lane black top that would lead me through northern Kansas and into Nebraska to my youngest brother's house, where I would stay the night. It was a short, 11-hour hop to his place and I was looking forward to throwing the spurs to the "unbreakable" RevTech and seeing how she ran.

I passed the Nebraska border at over 900 miles an hour. Jesus, I thought, this fuckin' thing IS full of torque. Then I realized the vibration from the rigid mount was actually creating the visual illusion of an extra 0. I kept cranking the throttle, turning it round and round and round, until at last I had the monster wrung out. At 100, the collars on my denim shirt were handily stripping the finish off my chin. I could see the bungee cords holding my Bandit's Bedroll on the front risers beginning to stretch. I put my chin on the air-suspended bedroll, relaxed my neck and settled in for a mad blast through Corn Husker country. Bandit would have to ride like a demon on the way to a soul stomping to catch this rig, I thought proudly as I swept past semis full of feeder steers laboring up the long hills leading to the broad, muddy Platte River.

I made good time and got to my brother's house in just under six hours. I questioned this time since the sun was setting and my watch had been on the blink lately, but when you've got a new horsepower-belching monster like I had, hooked to a go-fast get-out-of-town tranny like the giraffe Baker, anything is possible.

"What the fuck's wrong with your eyeballs?" my brother asked when I rolled into his driveway, having ridden past it four times previously.

"Cement dust," I said, shaking hands.

"How'd you get cement dust in your eyes?" he asked, gesturing for me to mind my step and not trip over the coon hound.

"Ran through some on the turnpike in Kansas," I told him matter-of-factly.

"Why didn't you go around it?" he asked as he began to scale some fresh bass in the kitchen sink.

I sat rolling his question over in my mind for several minutes. Why hadn't I gone around the offending eye poison? It was a question that would haunt me for the next 30 seconds.

My brother and I ate and drank for a short burst and I decided to keep rolling. I had to catch Bandit before he got to the South Dakota border because I knew from experience that once he hit that line on the map, he and Mad Myron would go berserk and ride wide open until they got within 50 miles of Sturgis, at which point they'd slow down to 55 and enjoy the view. But by then it would be too late.

I rolled through the strange land of northeastern Nebraska. It's a beautiful and empty land, rolling, steep, smooth, with two-lane highways empty of all traffic and offering enough space to allow a man's pulse to actually return to what it was before he became burdened with the ways of the world.

A massive storm brewed on both sides of the highway as I crested a hill. The two storm systems were headed straight for each other and their collision point promised to be the highway itself. I rolled on the gas and leaned into the wind. Eighty-five mph was as fast as I could go because of the constant switchbacks and curves. Lightening crashed and I got exactly one drop of rain on my nose as I shot through the window and the storms collided behind me. It was a perfect miss, the kind of evasion one always hopes for but rarely gets. I would ride dry tonight.

Darkness. The spooky night of high-speed cycling. Tranquility broken by the occasional surprise railroad crossing. A pair of deer eyes staring from the ditch. Don't do it, you horrible beast, I thought as I blistered past, holding a wad of seat leather firmly in my ass. But the deer held his ground and didn't leap.

I finally ran out of steam in the northeastern corner of Nebraska and grabbed a nickel hotel next to an abandoned grain elevator.

At 6 a.m. I was making noise down the highway, headed for the elusive South Dakota border at 100 mph.

At the border, I stopped for a photo op on an unprotected hill in big winds. The Steamer sat low, real low, and the kickstand didn't have a lot of lean in it. As I unbuckled my gear on the ground to retrieve the camera, I felt a gust of wind, followed by the Great Northern Steamer falling down on top of me.

"Fuck!" I roared, whirling, trying to catch the new chopper as it fell into my lap. Downhill and on a steep gravel slope, I had little chance. The bike crashed down on my legs. I got a grip on the frame and the handlebar and incline pressed the gear-heavy bitch to get my feet under me. I snatched it upright. There was little damage save for a bent front brake handle and a couple serious dents to me. The paint job and carb had been spared.

I stood the bike back up, snapped the photo and strapped my brain bucket to the back fender. South Dakota is a free man's state.

I'd be in Spearfish in five hours, or jail in four.

Streaking through the Badlands, I passed motorcycle after motorcycle. The roads became more congested, I rode harder, breaking, shifting, rolling the throttle. The beauty of the scenery and the proximity of the goal helped to ease the hellish fire in my neck, the result of five days and nights of damned hard running. I knew Bandit was in the area if not already at the hotel and half expected to roar past him, starting an all out race to the finish line. The farther I got without passing him, the deeper my heart sank, realizing I'd been outrun.

When I rolled into the Spearfish Holiday Inn, I looked over the expanse of custom choppers. This was clearly Hamster territory. Radical steel leapt and dove in impossible angles. Massive custom engines twinkled in the sun and bespoke of great and unruly levels of horsepower.

I parked the Great Northern Steamer and sat, head ringing, body buzzing. I felt like I'd been on a week-long bender, which I had. I sat for what felt like an hour, staring, sunburned, exhausted, in pain, fried. I couldn't see Bandit's bike or Mad Myron's. Had I actually beaten them? I knew better. No doubt they had gotten there hours, perhaps days earlier, unpacked and were in Sturgis drunk and singing.

Then I noticed on the opposite end of the parking lot an outlaw's worst nightmare -- troopers. And not just a few. The entire South Dakota Highway Patrol reserve force was staying at our hotel. Would wonders never cease? Here I was with an unregistered scoot, staying not near, but with the troopers. The plot thickened. A lot. How had Bandit managed to book us with state fuckin' troopers when we were both running bikes with Oklahoma papers? The maniac. It was probably his idea of humor.

Finally I got off and checked in.

"Bandit here yet?" I asked.

"Nope, not yet," the gal said.

"You're kidding…"

"Nope."

"Well I'll be damned," I mumbled.

I threw my gear into the hotel room and went to the bar where I knocked back two stout whiskeys.

About an hour later, Bandit and Mad Myron rolled in, covered with bug guts and grime, a hose clamp holding Bandit's gas tank on.

"You beat us?!" Bandit exclaimed in disbelief.

"Hola, compadre," I said, shaking hands.

"Hell, I didn't think you'd make it at all from the reports coming in before we left," Bandit said.

"I said I'd be here, goddamnit. That means I'll be here," I said.

"How was the ride? Look at your motorcycle. How'd it get so damned dirty?" Bandit asked, looking over the filthy Great Northern Steamer.

"Miami Beach is a long ways from here, bro," I said.

"Zebra," Mad Myron said, extending a hand.

"Howdy, bro," I said, shaking his thick hand.