Wild Motorcycle Tales Here's a great story from Yonah Luecken. Got your own story? Send it to me. "Sturgis?" "Sturgis!" I had wanted to go for seventeen years. So it was a pretty big event when I got the vacation I needed and started the planning. An even bigger event the morning of, when I woke and started strapping small waterproof duffel bags across my fender. I was on my way. Almost. The sky was incredibly grey, filled with clouds threatening to unleash a torrential downpour. I continued packing with frequent breaks to dubiously scan the sky. I wasted three hours checking weather reports, somehow believing that if I checked enough, they would get tired and change. So I got a late start, but was finally headed south down 81 to meet up with 80W and take that out to Chicago, where I would meet 90W and follow it to Sturgis. 81 is one of my favorite interstates. I've trekked down its path on my little red Sportster more times than I can count. I know where the foggy patches are through the mountains of southern Pennsylvania; love the West Virginia rest stops and have felt that bone wearying fatigue that sets in somewhere through Virginia. 80 across Ohio becomes a tedious turnpike but redeemed itself because it was there that the first sightings occurred. I'd pull into a gas station, see a trailer loaded with motorcycles and pumping gas into the accompanying truck would be a man in a black shirt with the invariable motorcycle words or graphic on the front. The call and response social dance began: "Sturgis?" "Sturgis!", And so it began. Going to Sturgis on a bike is unlike anything I've ever experienced, and I've been riding bikes to music festivals and motorcycle events for years. There's always the anticipation, the list making, the packing, then the final launch out of the driveway and on the way to the event. There's the getting close and seeing everyone else who is obviously, by way of clothing and transport mode, going where you are going. There are the greetings, and there are the gas stops where everyone talks to everyone else, finding out where people are from and how long they've been on the road so far. All of that is familiar. But the sheer size of the migration of motorcycles on I-90 headed west, I was not prepared for. Or the quick associations among people who had never met before, all bonded by a shared destination. The way that we were so separated from the rest of the people traveling on the interstate, as if the stream of bikes moving toward Sturgis was carried on a river of some reality we had nothing to do with. The way that other people looked at us and tried to figure out just why they were seeing so many motorcycles that day. Explaining when they asked: "Sturgis!", knowing that they did not comprehend the bikers migrating like salmon, en masse up the interstates. After Ohio, I took 90W through Indiana. 90 becomes a turnpike in Indiana and intending no disrespect to Indiana, the only good thing I can state about the Indiana Turnpike is that it is short. The Turnpike is in truly horrible shape. The buildings at the service stations appear to have been built in the 1950s, with low ceilings and a vague "I'm just waiting to be mugged." feeling accompanies a person walking through them. It felt like the slums of the toll roads. After the short, ugly stint that was Indiana, I arrived in Illinois. And I had thought Indiana was bad. Illinois was a great big toll road, with tons of traffic and a huge nightmare to kick it off called Chicago. I had been making good time up until Indiana, when my stamina started to fade a little bit. I was making perhaps my fifth attempt at the coveted Iron Butt patch. I desperately want to join the Iron Butt Association. To join it, a person has to ride at least one thousand miles in twenty-four hours, and provide documentation of the event. I have tried it going to Florida, but I got lost in South Carolina, where I ended up meeting some South Carolina bikers and having a whole set of unexpected adventures. I was going to try another time after a trip to NYC to see the Dead at Jones Beach, but three days of partying with Long Island bikers kicked my scooter butt and I ended up riding home in the tail end of a hurricane (no joke!) through a hailstorm for part of it and then sleeping on the couch for two days straight. This time I was determined to make it. But then I met two bikers from Pennsylvania and after we had done the obligatory traveling to Sturgis social dance: "Sturgis?" "Sturgis!" and they had introduced themselves as Chris and Chris, I ended up socializing too long. They had pressed for all of us to go take a nap on a picnic table at a rest stop and I was feeling tired and they seemed to know what they were talking about. I kept iterating that I would miss out on my much vaunted goal of making the Iron Butt and this time it was in my sights. They told me it was still doable, even with a nap, if I just rode along with them when we all got going again after two hours or so. It was a big mistake on my part. We started getting ourselves together after a couple hour snooze. We slept from about five in the morning until seven, when it may have been too cold to ride anyway. As the day started warming up, we drank coffee and stood around our motorcycles, talking. They were convinced we would blast at 90 down the road. I explained to them that mine is an old Sportster and it's done many miles and one of the ways it's done so many is to not generally go over 75. It's a chain drive little beast and the last year of the 4 speed Sporty transmission, to boot. I compensate by running a 22 tooth front sprocket instead of 21, but I'm well aware that my bike is working harder than the big twins I ride next to on the highway to maintain the same speeds. And I don't like the bone shaking voyage that consistent 85 miles an hour brings on a chain drive bike. By the time we got going again, we'd picked up another straggler. Someone traveling solo who had stopped for gas and a snack. Our foursome started on the road and then the three of them put me in the dust. I purposely held back, because I did not like the velocity and because I was getting a weird feeling from one of the Chrises. I prefer riding alone most of the time, and was beginning to realize that I would prefer to continue adventuring by myself this time, as well. I was becoming part of a little mini-group's plans instead of my own. They disappeared at speeds that I'm pretty sure matched the sound barrier, and I continued along behind, calculating how many miles I had to do and whether I would make the much vaunted Iron Butt requirements. It was still within my sight. But then I hit Chicago, and somehow ended up on the 90W local headed through the city, rather than the express. The express has a toll booth and stopping plaza at the eastern side of the city, and another one at the west. The local has the same two gas stations and a bevy of toll booths at approximate distances of a half mile from each other all through the city. It was maddening. I was hot, the clouds had long since given way to a blistering heat that radiated off the road. I was doing the old shutting my engine off to let my bike cool down during the interminable standing waits at the toll booths routine, and pushing it ahead when the traffic was slow enough. I was becoming increasingly worried about running out of gas. Every toll booth person I asked gave frighteningly complicated instructions about gas stations and it was becoming obvious that Chicago has, apparently, some kind of anti-terrorist plan to make all its gas stations completely inaccessible. I crept along from toll booth to toll booth, seething, swearing to myself, feeling trickles of sweat work their way down my neck and back. I was missing Indiana. At long last, the madness was over and I emerged on the other side of Chicago. I stopped at the gas station with a feeling of relief akin to an old style ship pulling into a harbor after weeks at sea. I filled up with gas and then sat on a curb, looking at my watch and realizing I had to kiss the Iron Butt dream goodbye. Again. The Pennsylvania bikers pulled into the gas station, amazed they had found me again with all of us trying to figure out how I had ended up ahead of them. The weird vibe was increasing. One of them got way too close to me. I usually like to keep a distance until I know someone and he kept grabbing me, suggesting I rub my "titties" up against him. Okay, it was time to move on. I was beginning to not like this. He wasn't listening when I said I didn't like it and kept on saying he wanted me to take his cell phone number. He suggested we all share a hotel room that night. "Have you ever done two?" he said. "Two what?" I asked him, not sure if my impression was the real deal. I did not want to do two. I like sex well enough if it's a person I want to lay with but neither of the PA guys was that. I agreed to take their number, entered it into my cell phone and promised to call that night. I continued on past Illinois, entering Wisconsin. By now I was operating on autopilot. I had been too excited to sleep much the night before, and had been awake now for too many hours. I pulled into a rest stop in Wisconsin, seeing bikers stretched out on the grassy lawn snoozing or just relaxing. It looked like a good idea and after deleting the Pennsylvania guys' number from my cell phone's memory, I spent a few hours sleeping under a tree through the hottest part of the blazing day. I got going again in the early evening, doing a run through the dusk to Minnesota. Which is where I met Al, who later became the Angel from Wisconsin. I had pulled into a Minnesota gas station. At the next gas pump over was an old, green Tour Glide. I looked it over and did the social dance with its rider: "Sturgis?" "Sturgis!" The Tour Glide was the same year as mine and its owner, Al, and I had a brief conversation. Like me, he preferred to ride about 75. We decided to ride together and covered most of Minnesota before the temperature started dropping precipitously and both of us were soon wearing all the riding gear we had brought. We were still cold. Al suggested we find a hotel room and though I would have liked to continue on, the Iron Butt was a distant dream and the reality of exhaustion and cold was a close presence. A hotel would be good, I agreed. We ended up at a rinky dink hotel somewhere in west Minnesota, getting the second to last room. The entire hotel was filled with bikers and Al and I stood outside and socialized for a while. I was dead on my feet, however, and the bed beckoned. I went and laid down while Al stayed and talked to some other Wisconsin bikers. I fell asleep to the sound of Midwestern cadences discussing motorcycle riding. I woke Sunday morning and went outside to tighten my bike's chain. Al came out of the hotel room and we made our plan for the day: Sturgis or bust. After a quick stop for coffee, we settled into our seats for the last push on the journey. Crossing into South Dakota, the surroundings changed: from the convenience stores called the "Whoa and Go" to the barren western landscape that surrounded us, everything was West. We passed by some windmills, turning lazily in the distance. Al told me later that the turbines inside were spinning much, much faster. We began seeing the interminable signs for Wall Drug, and I remembered hearing bikers talk about the ice water and coffee there. Every exit we passed was closer to Sturgis and I was so incredibly proud of my motorcycle for making it to South Dakota. It's a battered old beast, and I love its heart, its tenacity. Three hundred miles blew by in excessive heat so bad we would drink ice water at each gas stop, drench ourselves from hoses and be bone dry and thirsty ten minutes after. I was discovering the difference between Western gas and the Eastern variety. The miles I get per gallon were dropping precipitously, and I had a hard time estimating when I would need more. This was due to a higher ethanol content, I'm told. Usually I can make it a hundred miles on a tank of gas, but all my estimations were faulty out there. The gas stations started becoming farther and farther apart. I was stopping at each one I saw, with a Sportster induced anxiety that made Al laugh. 80 miles from Sturgis we saw The Storm. It looked eerily biblical: Heavy clouds hung ominously, filled with lightning bolts that did a nonstop electrical dance. It was about forty miles dead ahead. Before I went to Sturgis, I talked to a lot of people, who had a lot of advice. Some of it was good, and some people had no idea what they were talking about. Many people told me about the wind: "Oh, you'll want to watch out for the Western winds," they told me. "They'll blow you clear over into the other lane." Yeah, right. I had been over seventeen hundred miles this trip and it hadn't been so bad, except for the exhaustion, due to my own late start. I was thinking the stories of the western winds were the kinds of things made larger by distance and myth. Then the wind started. I was noticing a definite cross wind, coming directly from my right. I focused ahead on the storm, aware there was no way but through and dreading every moment of it. The cross wind built in strength and I leaned into it, fighting as if an invisible force was pushing my bike inexorably to the left and indeed, that's exactly what was happening: I leaned and got pushed, and leaned and got pushed, and got progressively more frightened as I realized I was at a severe angle on a straightaway, and then the wind really did push me into the other lane and that was enough. I pulled over, almost hyper ventilating. It is an exhilarating experience to be pushed into another lane of traffic, one I would rather not repeat. Those Western winds, they'll push you into the other lane. Believe it. Al pulled up behind me and in a gulping voice I told him I simply could not ride anymore. That those winds were too much for me and there was an increasing chance I would end up road pizza if I continued. As I was telling Al this, other bikers were pulling over, all along the side of I90. Cars and campers began to follow suit. The wind blew the stowed away canopy off a camper parked behind us. I stood by my bike, putting on my rain gear as the first drops began to come down, watching everything becoming horizontal due to the sheer force of the wind. I was hungry, I was tired, I wanted desperately to get off the road and crawl into a dry, safe tent in a campground. I was enjoying a vivid daydream in which a camper with a trailer pulled up next to me and a passenger leaned out and said, "We've got space on our trailer if you?d like to load your bike" and I ended up trailering my bike into Sturgis. I looked desperately and longingly at all the trailers parked along the road, hoping someone would take the hint and offer up a spot. No one did, the dirty rats. After what seemed days but was probably only an hour at the most, vehicles began moving again and Al, in his Wisconsin accent, said that it was time for us to be heading toward Sturgis once again. I told Al I would do the best I could, but the wind was still fairly strong, the rain was steady and I could only go as fast as my Sporty could safely travel under the circumstances. Surprisingly, he said he'd still ride with me even at my projected turtle's pace, and offered to ride behind with his hazard lights blinking. I took him up on his offer and we continued on. It continued raining off and on, but the wind abated somewhat. Everything was becoming oversized and otherworldly gigantic. From the massive billboards suspended on huge poles, to the overwhelming numbers of bikers traveling west on the interstate: Motorcycles trailered, motorcycles inside huge campers with tiny garages in the backs, motorcycles ridden by people sharing an experience of solitude in the thousands. Al peeled off the interstate to get to his campground at Exit 32, and I continued on to Sturgis, Exit 30. I had daydreamed about Sturgis for years. I had sat in my driveway the first night I brought my bike home daydreaming about eventually riding it to Sturgis. I had a vision of myself entering Sturgis in sunshine, bikers on each side of the road cheering me on and my reliable little bike carrying me, triumphantly, into a golden city called Sturgis where I would be the coolest biker on the planet. I did not live the daydream. I entered Sturgis a creeping, frightened little mouse, head down low over handlebars, trying to avoid rain and wind, and miserably overheating in my rain gear. I was tired, I was sore, I was hungry and I was still freaked out by the wind. I was having anxious thoughts about wind being a steady state out west and trying to decide if I had ridden all those miles on a fool's errand, to a place I could not ride without being blown over. Sturgis: I had completed 1850 miles and was now looking at the biggest traffic jam I had ever seen. Which I could not simply scoot around the edge of since I was on a motorcycle, because the whole thing was motorcycles and my instructions to the campground took me through the town, through the jam. I had no choice. I sat on Lazelle Street in Sturgis for hours as my engine got hotter and hotter and the parade of motorcycles and campers moved so slowly that once again I resorted to the tried and true "shut it down and push along when I can" means of surviving traffic jams on an air cooled engine. I had a rapidly developing headache, possibly brought on by dehydration, though I didn't realize it at the time. I had taken off my rain gear and stuck it into saddlebags during another one of the Chicago type standing waits in traffic. I was stuck next to a really cool looking, extremely loud with probably straight pipes Texas Chopper looking monster motorcycle with a grinning man piloting the beast and repeatedly revving the engine. Straight pipes. Did I mention that headache. Ooh, it was a long, long time getting through Sturgis. Eventually, after hours of creep, creep, creep and people hooting and hollering and talking to people while we waited in traffic, and going and stopping and going again, I finally got past the Full Throttle Saloon at the edge of town, took a left onto 79 and found the Iron Horse Campground a few miles down on the right. I pulled in about 10 o' clock at night, weary bodied and bleary eyed, got registration paperwork quickly taken care of and headed out into the campground in the darkness, looking for a flat place to camp. I was too tired to even set up my tent; just threw down a tarp, then my sleeping bag, then another tarp on top. I make this sleeping bag sandwich if I know it's just a quick one night stay when I'm traveling. I make it at Sturgis when I just don't give a crap. I was exhausted, I was thirsty, I had a pounding headache, and still harbored feelings of vengeance toward the jerk who had been next to me on the straight pipe chopper show bike, revving his engine over and over. For hours. Fuck this. I wanted to be home right then. I was tired, I was still freaked out from the wind and worried that it would be a constant experience throughout Sturgis week. I was exhausted from the rain, frustrated at the traffic jam, furious at the hot shot asshole with the straight pipes. Fuck Sturgis. Fuck motorcycles. Fuck rain. Fuck the campground. Fuck South Dakota. Fuck Chicago. Fuck Sturgis. Fuck all of this. This sucked. I wanted to go home. I finally fell asleep. => Read the second half of the story as Yonah starts feeling better about the Sturgis experience.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||
© 2015 Walter F. Kern. All rights reserved.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
