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One day last year, he got a job just by turning wheelies.

The owner of a tree service company drove by, spotted him and gave him handbills to distribute by bike. The No Hand King still hands out business cards from A+ Tree and Crane Service. The cards show him riding no-hand style and say: Rodney Hines, marketing.

"I met him one day when he was riding around in a parking lot," said Ken Ellis, owner at A+ Tree. "I was like, 'What in the world? That looks like it's unnatural to me.' "

Ellis dropped the wheelie campaign before long and took up direct mail instead.

Now, though, the world can discover the No Hand King online. He has his own MySpace page, complete with testimonials from fans. One fan uploaded a 5-minute No Hand King video to YouTube.com, and about 1,100 people have watched it.

The Web site and video promote the No Hand King's proposed crusade -- a cross-country ride to raise money, morale or whatever else he can for soldiers everywhere.

All he needs is a sponsor, and the No Hand King does not see this as a hurdle.

"Wild guess?" he asks. "I need $5,000. It's just a matter of where you're gonna sleep. I can ride 50 miles a day. That's 60 days. Just get on 40 and go. I'm just looking for a sponsor, and I'm gone."

The trip would serve the No Hand King's ego along with his altruism, of course.

If he makes the ride, he would pass the world-record 2,839-mile wheelie ridden by Kurt Osborn of Orlando, Fla.

Hines obsesses over Osborn's record, which he considers minuscule. Osborn was using his hands, so how can he brag?

"I'll take him man-to-man on the Tour de France," says the No Hand King. "Just to show you I'm the best that ever lived. No hands. No handlebars."

Reached by e-mail, Osborn welcomes the challenge, and he reminds the No Hand King that he also holds the record for longest nonstop wheelie: 11 hours.

"He wants to challenge me, huh?" Osborn asked. "Sounds fun. I'm up for it."

A troubled past

To understand the No Hand King's world, you have go back to Raleigh's Walnut Terrace public housing community in the late 1970s and early '80s.

The No Hand King grew up there and in other Southeast Raleigh neighborhoods, the son of an absent father.

"He didn't want nothing to do with him once I got expecting," said Willie Mae King, Hines' 59-year-old mother, about his father. "What can I do? You can't make somebody want to know a child."

King, who now lives in Garner, worked at a meatpacking plant, sometimes seven days a week, leaving Hines and two brothers to fend for themselves.

Headlines from those years show a world where trouble came looking for kids.

In 1975, a woman was robbed while trying to pay rent at the low-income project's rental office. In 1978, a 15-year-old boy was stabbed playing basketball on the Walnut Terrace playground.

The No Hand King would have been 9 to 12 during those years, and he claims to have developed his no-hand wheelie technique around that time. But there were distractions.

By the time he was 13, Hines' older brother, Allen, went to prison for drug trafficking.

A few years later, Hines would follow suit. Over the next decade, he was charged with larceny and breaking and entering so many times that his record fills four computer screens at the Wake County courthouse.

"He would just do things to get in trouble," his mother said. "He'll go and take a camera and get in trouble."

But he never lied about it. Allen, his brother, would encourage him to clam up around police. But he admitted it all. "I did everything they got me for," he would say.

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