Motorcycle Views

Wild Motorcycle Tales

"Sturgis?" "Sturgis!" - Part 2

I woke in the morning, blinked at the morning air, put on my glasses and sat up. I was looking at a mountain. I was listening to a moving, thundering sound and looked to the side to see Route 79, a steady river of motorcycles. I looked back at the mountain., I was in Sturgis. The mountain was Bear Butte. It's a sacred site to Lakota and Cheyenne Indians, and part of a legend involving Devil's Tower. It's an incredible sight, even more so because I'd had no idea I was camping near a mountain the night before. It matches its namesake, looking like a bear that is sleeping. I spent every morning at Sturgis sitting and staring at Bear Butte while drinking coffee. This morning was no exception.

I started out making a cup of coffee on my stove, and was admiring my surroundings when my neighbors invited me over for breakfast. They were a whole crew from Minnesota, and they gave me a plate piled high with eggs and French toast. They were extremely friendly people, I could tell they'd be fun to hang around with. Which is why I felt so badly when I looked at the plate of food. I was having the feeling that I was going to barf. In fact, I was beyond the feeling and was fairly certain I'd be barfing soon. I just didn't want to do it in front of these nice people, especially right after they gave me a plate of food. I was nauseous, thirsty and tired. I told them I just didn't feel well and just couldn't eat. They told me I could lay under their canopy tent while they went out riding for the day. So the first morning in Sturgis I spent sleeping in the shade under their canopy, waking occasionally to drink water and Gatorade. I had figured out that I had all the classic signs of dehydration: Nausea, headache, irritability and thirst.

By afternoon I was feeling better, so I went exploring the campground. The Iron Horse is divided into two sections, the flat camper area and the tent area. A big hill is between them, with showers and flush toilets on top. Not a bad setup overall. I met some bikers from Colorado in the camper area, and some others from Florida. I watched as two bikers from Ohio pulled in and said hello as they set up camp next to me. Another biker, from California, set up next to us. The Ohio guys were Mitch and Rick. The California guy was Jerry. Our neighborhood began to form.

By early evening I was feeling fine, and participated in some of the revelry down at the campground's bar. They had a mechanical bull, which is a lot harder to ride than it looks, and music and merriment and a generally good time. I spent Monday evening meeting and trading stories with bikers from across the United States and even a few from Canada.

Tuesday it was time to ride. Monday evening our little neighborhood of tents had decided to take a group trip to Devils Tower. We took a route away from Sturgis and avoided interstates. Devils Tower from a distance looks like a bizarre geographic structure that was picked up from one area of the country and absent mindedly plonked down in the middle of Wyoming. I could easily imagine early settlers first setting eyes on it and wondering at its weirdness and size. We got to Devils Tower and navigated our way through the motorcycle filled parking lot to some empty spaces. I ended up talking with some bikers from Long Island. They had ridden out to Sturgis also, and we compared experiences on our trips. Our group of bikers explored the visitor center, learning about an Indian legend linking Bear Butte and Devils Tower, and examining hiking trail routes shown on a display map.

We finished up the day by riding around Wyoming, getting lost somewhere near Aladdin (population 15) and eventually finding I-90 and taking that back toward Sturgis and the campground.

Wednesday was hang out in Sturgis day. I started out by buying a wristband for a shuttle bus that went around campgrounds and into Sturgis. I had decided after my initial trip through it that I would rather ride through western wind than ride through Sturgis again.

Sturgis is everything every story has ever said. It is huge, it is loud, it is pure motorcycles for miles. It is a gigantic convention center full of motorcycle things for sale, and it is small operations in booths made of tarps set up alongside the street. It is people wandering, attired in all manner of biker garb, and drunken freaks wandering the sidewalks, shouting "Hello" to all that will listen. It is a parade of motorcycles, anything a person could imagine on two or three wheels: All looks, colors, heights, purposes and piloted by just as differing a group of bikers: Beards, no beards, tall, short, wide, Indian, Italian, Harley riders of every sort riding every kind of Harley imaginable. It is a madcap fantasy tale: The bikers have taken over the town and it has become a biker utopia. It is the loudest, most amazing motorcycle thing I have ever witnessed.

I stood on Lazelle Street and felt the air vibrate from the motorcycle engines. It was incredible. I explored Lazelle from one end to the other, meeting people and looking at bikes on the street. License plates heralded riders from every state in the union. In the evening I went to the Full Throttle Saloon to hear the Reverend Horton Heat, a musician I'd heard great things about. The wind had been picking up during the day, and I was glad I had not been on the road. Another South Dakota storm was rolling in, and everything was blowing sideways. I stood in a huge bar, thousands of bikers around me. The bar was the size and shape of a baseball stadium. Motorcycles were parked in the middle and the sides were mostly open. The stage was at the front of the parking field, and it was being pelted by rain and wind: Tarps were flapping, speakers and stage equipment were being covered and moved to prevent water damage. People were gathered toward the walled sections of the bar and it rained and rained and rained outside. Sideways. Because this was South Dakota.

After a few hours, when the Reverend Horton Heat still had not come on due to the storm and the wind had not abated, I decided it was time to head home. I went outside, to where the bus stop was for the little shuttle. I waited in the rain, utterly drunkenly delighted with being in South Dakota, completely, happily dry under a rain poncho over my shorts and shirt, with water running across the toes of my sandal clad feet. I wasn't exactly positive I was waiting in the right place. I usually navigate by landmarks and nothing seemed the same as it had many hours ago, when the world was dry and light. So after a while, when a little van pulled in, with "Da Cab" painted in large letters across the side, I was thrilled that I had done somewhat right in my inebriated state. The company that ran the shuttle bus, called "Da Bus" also ran a taxi service, called "Da Cab" during Bike Week. I went over to the van and asked if they knew where the stop for Da Bus was. The bus driver told me that, "as of now, Da Cab IS Da Bus" and told me to get in. Which I did. Several other people were on the bus, or the van, or whatever it was supposed to be now. We started driving. The van took us out to the Buffalo Chip Campground, right as one of their big concerts was letting out.

The traffic was crazy. Motorcycles were all over the road in the driving rain, with four wheel vehicles surrounded by smaller vehicles, and everyone everywhere. At least one bike had gone down in the mud and the bus driver had her head stuck out the window, trying to see through the weather and yelling at all of the bikers to get out of the way. The driver pulled her head back in, exasperatedly reached into a pocket and got a cell phone, and called either the dispatcher or the police traffic control. A complaint ensued about the traffic, and the information that some police needed to be sent down to control the jam outside of The Chip. The driver wasn't hearing what she wanted - and the tone of the argument ramped up. The cab driver, or bus driver, or whatever she was, was throwing out names with a vengeance, reminding someone of a prior meeting and that someone named Earl, or Merle, or was it Wall, wouldn't be happy when he heard this was happening. All the passengers of course took their cue and began shouting what they thought Earl would have to say about this. The situation was becoming chaotic. Becoming chaotic? Hell, it had been chaotic since day one of entering this fine city! We eventually nosed our way through the traffic, and back out onto a side road, and eventually to my campground where the van took me right to my tent to drop me off. I shucked off my rain gear, crawled inside, and went gratefully to sleep for the night.

Thursday our campground neighborhood took a collective ride to Custer Park. I was invited to be a passenger for the day. Usually I like the independence of riding my own bike, but after some consideration of benefits to occasional passengerdom, I decided to take advantage, mixed up some vodka and ice tea, and boarded a back seat of a yellow Gold Wing. I hesitate to include this section, which includes the image of myself, upon the back seat of the aforementioned Gold Wing, guzzling my ice tea and vodka concoction, shouting lustily at anything and anyone we went by, and naming my ride "The Taxi" due to its bright yellow tint. To those who know me, riding on a Honda is an unexpected detour from my normal modes. I am firmly a Harley rider. However, (and here goes my frantic attempt at justification), I believe that life is experienced best when someone does what is not expected. I can now say based on experience that I love Harleys best. This is not to say that the Gold Wing was a bad bike, for it absolutely was not. It was a seamless machine which glided through curves and took us past Rushmore and on through Custer Park. It was an excellent machine, and I took full advantage of the cup holders and arm rests and speakers and wind flange things. It's just that it had no thunder., When I ride my motorcycle, there is a dialog between the two of us. I listen to its engine, I feel the way it handles. It tells me how the road is and I tell it which one to travel on. I once got to ride a friend of mine's old Superglide, and as I rode, it tried to have a conversation with me. I heard its engine thunder the way it does for its owner. I felt the frame telling me about the road and the transmission gave me a conversational greeting every time I shifted. A Gold Wing, while an eminently competent bike, does none of these things. It simply goes. There is no soul, there is no conversation. I ride a bike for the adventure and for the companionship. So I guess I'll stick with my Sportster.

We took a back road to I-90, and took that toward Rapid City and on to Custer Park. One of the park's claims to fame, along with amazing views and over seventy thousand acres of land, is the buffalo herd. We were looking forward to seeing the herd thunder across the road in front of us. Every time we stopped, we asked if a herd was nearby. And each time we were told how it had just passed through, or was only a little ways ahead of us. We saw no buffalo. We trekked along, a small convoy of Harleys and one bright yellow Gold Wing, with me by then appointed the lookout for buffalo. My job entailed looking at trees and jack rabbits, spying the occasional cool rock formation and reading roadside signs stating "Buffalo Are Dangerous. Do Not Approach" which we would not have done, had we seen any buffalo.

We wound up leaving the park and going to a restaurant to eat dinner, ducking inside just as another one of the torrential western downpours occurred. We whiled away a massive rainstorm consuming excellent food and joking about South Dakota's fraudulent buffalo advertising. Buffalo in South Dakota; Yeah, right.

Friday I went out riding. I aimed for North Dakota, trying to go somewhere I had never been before, but met up with a group at a gas station who were on their way to Devils Tower. After talking with them for a while, I changed plans and decided to go along with their group. We were headed to Hulett, Wyoming. We meandered along, stopping often for food and more conversation, and I eventually left them at Devils Tower, where I tried to hike and realized it was fruitless in either bike boots or flip flops. I rode back to the campground, listened to a band play at the small bar there, and made one more try at the mechanical bull. I'll stick with motorcycles.

Saturday I started packing up to head home. After a morning of puttering and preparing for a quick exit Sunday morning, I went into Sturgis one last time. I hitch hiked again, not wanting to ride in the molasses of the town. After wandering thoroughly up and down Lazelle Street, I strolled a side street across and made an amazing discovery: Lazelle Street was not the main thoroughfare. In fact, it was just a side show. All week long, I had thought I was at the center of Sturgis when I was merely at the warm up. I still am not sure exactly how I managed to miss this great truth. However, having newly discovered the center of Sturgis Bike Week, I resolved to spend the day exploring all that I had missed. I wandered up and down the streets, talking and socializing to the point of exhaustion in the August heat. I saw a vendor whose stall had a wading pool filled with water with a few chairs in it. The water level was just below the seats and I spent the late afternoon seated in a comfortable plastic chair, splashing water with my feet, watching the traffic go by and enjoying the last views of Sturgis I would have for a year.

In the evening I wandered to a mega-huge bar in Sturgis for a while and eventually hitchhiked my way back to the campground, hung out and drank a few beers with my neighbors and went to bed.

Sunday morning I got up and went. I had prepared for a quick exit and mostly, it was that, except for one long, extended shower. When I'm on the road, showers aren't a frequent occurrence and I wanted to start out clean. I rode like a banshee East on I-90, passed Pioneer Auto and the Mitchell Corn Palace without even a second thought toward stopping to check them out. I made it over 400 miles with a few brief stops for gas and short conversation before getting into Minnesota where I stopped again for gas. And then my bike wouldn't start.

Each time I hit the starter, I heard a circuit breaker sounding like it was tripping and resetting - a clicking sound coming from under my seat. I swore softly to myself as I wheeled away from the gas pumps and settled down at the side of the gas station to consult my service manual and fix the problem. I was having the discordant feelings of capability and panic that overtake me whenever I run into a mechanical problem far from home. A gaggle of Minnesota bikers came over, asking if I needed help: I explained my situation and everyone gave their opinions as to what could be wrong. I ended up atop my ride, with a biker on each side of me and one behind. They pushed my bike for all they were worth and I tried starting it by popping the clutch. While it was very entertaining, the click noise continued and I was prepared to start checking circuit breakers.

One guy asked what the last thing I had done to my bike was, and I told him about replacing the turn signal flasher after arriving in Sturgis. It had given out sometime on 90W between Illinois and South Dakota. Based on that, we took a look behind the headlight and lo and behold, the problem was a short. My panic abated. The Minnesota bikers sent me on my way, after giving me a phone number to call when I got home so they would know I made it, and several other numbers of bike shops and people throughout Minnesota in case I had any further troubles. After a few more hours in the saddle, I pulled into a campground, set up my sleeping bag sandwich and went to sleep for the night.

Monday morning I woke up bound and determined to make it to Pennsylvania. I headed through Minnesota at a furious clip, barely stopping for gas. Which was, it turned out, a mistake. Once again I had made a faulty estimation and ended up coasting up an exit ramp, reserve fuel spent and bike in neutral. A Minnesotan on a bicycle came over and offered to help me push the last few yards into the gas station. Gassed up, I continued on through the last of Minnesota, crossed the spectacular Mississippi River and entered Wisconsin. Wisconsin passed by at a rapid gallop and was superseded by Illinois, where I met the Long Island bikers from Devils Tower. We were all stuck at one of the infernal toll booths together and gave our opinions of Illinois to each other. We did not think highly of it.

By Monday night, I had made it to Indiana. I finally had to stop when exhaustion became an unwanted passenger on my trip. I decided to use the handy road guides at the Indiana traffic plazas. The road guides list campgrounds and hotels available at each exit. I prefer camping in a tent next to my bike over any other accommodations on the road. I like the feeling of partnership that develops when I tie a tarp off of my bike's handlebar and sleep under it after checking oil and chain tension. A sort of "I take care of it and it takes care of me" sensibility develops on a long trip. , Unfortunately, the only campground that answered their phone was the Jellystone, which charged over forty bucks per night. For one person on a bike. I was amazed, and told the person who had answered the phone just how stunned I was. He politely explained that they had tennis and whirlpools, and a swimming pool, and horseback riding and that those were just a few of the many recreational pursuits the Jellystone Campground and Resort offered. I explained I was just looking for a place to set up a tent for a night and promised not to go horseback riding or play tennis if I could pay a reasonable rate for a patch of ground and be gone first thing in the morning.

Dejectedly, I got off at the next exit, hoping to find one of the smaller campgrounds and deciding I would stay at whatever came up first. I saw a hotel advertising $29.95 per night, the parking lot packed with motorcycles. This, I decided, would be my resting place for the evening. I pulled in, requested a room on the ground floor and was told they had none left. I got a second floor room and after parking down below, unloaded the few items I would need for the night and headed to my room. Gratefully my head met the pillow and I remember nothing until dawn the next day.

In the morning I woke up, and went downstairs to tighten my chain and check my bike over before the day's ride. I had noticed oil coming from under one of my tappet blocks, and had been nervously watching it all the previous day, hoping it wouldn't speed up or turn into an oil explosion as a gasket gave way completely. Throughout the day I was checking the tappet block, trying to decide if it was a slow leak or a fast seep, and beginning a fervent prayer that I make it home without a problem. My old bike had been through a relentless, pounding voyage and the pace was taking a toll. I had lost a bolt at the bottom of my rear exhaust pipe somewhere on my journey, and had stuck a piece of scavenged safety wire into the hole, twisting it as tightly as I could and hoping it would do the job at preventing vibration. I was proceeding on fervent hope and luck as my bike and I rattled and rolled our way across the Eastern United States. Every time I stopped I was checking my bike over, hoping nothing else had given way or was leaking, and taking a break from the unending vibrations. As much as I love my Sportster, I was considering with envy the rubber mounted, six gear twin cams I saw passing me on the roadway.

My ride had been slowed down tremendously by my frequent checks and prayers, and I entered Pennsylvania sometime in the early afternoon, happy to be one state from home and with a plan worked out that involved renting a truck if the worst happened and my bike could not continue. The leak continued its relaxed rate and I continued my agitated checking on it, convinced I was hearing noises I didn't usually hear and hoping I was wrong. I pulled into a rest stop somewhere on I-80 with the intention of making coffee and having a small travel snack. A truck pulled in, with a bike on the trailer behind it, bearing Connecticut plates. The driver saw me examining my bike and asked how my bike was running. I explained my situation to him, and he saw the heat shield from my exhaust that I had shoved into a saddlebag after the bracket had vibrated its way off. I checked on the safety wire, which was barely holding the exhaust pipe in place, and sighed heavily. The Connecticut bikers unloaded some camping gear from the back of their truck and made a pot of coffee. They offered me a cup, which I gratefully accepted, and proceeded to make and feed me an excellent sandwich. We sat around the rest stop and traded biker stories for about an hour. As we prepared to leave, they gave me their cell phone number and told me to call them if I had any problems, saying they would double back and pick up me and my bike if necessary, and transport us to home in New York. Feeling a little more secure, I started my bike and headed east again.

I rode along Interstate 80 as fast as my rattling little bike dared to go, enjoying the views where the highway cuts through the mountains and reliving scenes from Sturgis in my mind. I was the biker running solo across the landscape, giggling to myself as I remembered various things that had happened fifteen hundred miles earlier. I passed the time looking for buffalo, figuring my chances were about as good in Pennsylvania as they'd been in South Dakota. The ride became less funny as evening came in, and decidedly serious as the fog settled in behind the darkness. I was in Pennsylvania mountains, barely able to see two car lengths ahead of me, with great, big trucks barreling along as fast as their governors allowed. Then the road construction started.

The highway narrowed to one lane going in either direction, with concrete barricades dictating lane access as we approached bridge construction. One of the giant trucks was trying to get into the lane its driver wanted and cut around a car ahead of me. The truck zinged back into place as the lanes narrowed, and its trailer hit one of the barricades. Little bits of yellow plastic lens reflectors tore off and scattered amidst the traffic in a brilliant show. He barely slowed down and I wondered how things would be if it had been my little taillight he had tried zinging around, instead of the car ahead. A rest stop came along, and I got off the highway, relieved to have a break. The rest stop was calm and still. I enjoyed the peace after the frenetic movement of the highway. I enjoyed that all the huge trucks parked there were staying still and there were no small pieces of flying plastic to dodge. I sat at a picnic table, took out a map and figured out how many hundreds of miles I had to go. Home was getting closer., A man about seventy or so, who turned out to be the rest stop attendant, came over to talk. He asked how I was doing, and I explained my quandary regarding the fog and my exhaustion and the sign at the rest stop that stated, "No staying beyond two hours". I wanted to sleep, but wasn't sure it was safe to sleep there. And I knew I needed more than two hours. He let me know about a bench behind the bathrooms, telling me, "people sleep there all the time" and when I asked about the two hour time limit, he said it was only enforced if people were causing trouble. I decided not to cause trouble and to try to sleep instead. I took out my sleeping bag and went to the bench behind the bathrooms. I laid down to try to sleep, convinced anxiety about being robbed or worse during the night would keep me awake until dawn. I was asleep before I had time to start worrying.

I woke early in the morning, stiff from sleeping on the wooden bench, and packed my sleeping bag away. I wandered around the side of the building and froze, terrified at the sight of three state trooper cars, one at each end of the rest stop and one in the middle, and in a panicked misunderstanding of my place in the world, somehow I thought they were for me. Then I saw angry truck drivers and listened to their fury filled, muttered conversations, realizing as I did that the police were there to check their books and so hopped lightly on my bike and chugged away from that whole scene.

I followed 80 to Scranton, where it intersected with I-81, which I took north toward home. I arrived back at my trailer tired, dirty, battered and spent. My body was sore from the relentless shaking, and my bike looked as if it had completed a cross country trip in four days. Which, in retrospect, it had. I unloaded two weeks of dirty laundry and threw it in the washer, spread out my tent to dry on the lawn and sat down by my Sportster to survey the damage: My bike had bled its heart out through a gasket, had a warped exhaust pipe from the relentless vibrating after the bolt had gone, had South Dakota dust still wedged in various crevices. It was almost as badly damaged as it got on the trip to Tennessee. But that's another story... -- Yonah Luecken

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