Rally Week 2014
07/08/14 05:14
When I was a young teenager, my cousin had an old Cushman motor scooter that he got running and I rode it around the yard at the ranch. It was an early experience of driving for me and I can remember that it was fun riding around and around. My cousin also had a used Harley-Davidson motorcycle that was much bigger. I can remember him riding it a couple of times.
in high school my family came into a used 90cvc Honda trail bike. It was a significant upgrade from the tote goat bikes that a few hunters were using to pack out game and the forest service was beginning to use for some trail maintenance jobs. I rode the Honda around town a little bit for one summer. I had a friend with a larger 350cc Honda and I rode his motorcycle around town a little bit. In fact there was a stage, when he was dating my sister, when he’d loan me his motorcycle to get rid of me. You know, “two’s company, three’s a crowd.”
That’s it. That’s the sum total of my motorcycle experience. I never got into riding motorcycles as an adult and have never owned one. I have quite a few friends who really like motorcycles, however. That high school friend who used to loan me his motorcycle has owned a lot of different motorcycles over the years, sometimes owning two or three Harley Davidson bikes at the same time. He is just one of my friends who makes the pilgrimage to Sturgis and the Black Hills a regular part of many of his summers. I think that my cousin’s son is somewhere in the hills this week, but we probably won’t see him during the rally.
For a lot of people, the rally is a big deal. I kind of get a kick out of talking to the people who come to the hills to visit, so I’ve had dozens of pickup conversations with some of the folks who are here for this year’s rally.
There was the man who saw me buying a couple of quarts of local honey and stopped to ask me how much I paid for the honey. Local honey is going for $14 a quart around here. It turns out that the guy who stopped to ask is a beekeeper and was curious how his prices compared. He charges the same for a quart of honey. He said he was “just in town to ride motorcycles.”
The guy drying out in the coffee shop yesterday had to give me a complete weather report (“It’s solid rain all the way from Deadwood.”) before telling me that he comes to rally every year. He doesn’t go to many of the concerts, he just likes to ride around the hills.
When I stopped by the gas station to fill up a gas can for my mower, I was the only customer who wasn’t riding a motorcycle. No worries, They saw my “Rev Ted” vanity plates on my pickup and one yelled, “Hey guys, clean it up, there’s a reverend here!” They all asked me about my church. I invited them to come, but it didn’t really seem like that was their plan for Sunday morning.
One man, driving a beautiful all-white motorcycle with whitewall tires and lots of chrome signaled for me to roll down my window as we stopped side by side at a traffic light so that he could compliment me on my wooden canoe on the roof of my car. I complimented him on his motorcycle.
One of my friends reported last week that they don’t drive their motorcycle too much, only about 1,200 miles a year, but they always put on 800-900 miles during the rally.
Some locals complain a bit about all the motorcycles. You add that many guests into an area as small as the hills and there are some traffic issues. I figure it takes me an extra five minutes to get almost anywhere during the rally and, frankly, I try to avoid going to the VA Medical Center in Sturgis during rally week. That can add an hour or more to my day, though there is nothing boring about that hour for someone who likes to observe human nature. In the town of Sturgis the people don’t just go in for motorcycles - they go for costumes, too.
I’m not a big fan of traffic, but it is only a week and a couple of weekends. It is soon over and we go back to normal. Normal, of course around here is a lot of tourists, plenty of RV’s and quite a few folks who don’t know where they are going and tend to make sudden turns from the wrong lane when they see the destination they have in mind.
I think it is interesting that I get to live in a place that others only get to visit. I can understand what attracts them to the hills. We have wonderful, scenic, winding roads. We have cooler temperatures than the surrounding plains. We have lots to see and do.
On the other hand, I kind of like being able to roll up the window and turn on the wipers when it rains. And these days I prefer not to be sleeping in a tent when there are flash flood warnings in the hills. And there are some parts of the motorcycle culture about which I’m not too excited.
I’ve never had an urge to get a tattoo or a piercing. I tend to avoid t shirts with crude language. I’ve never been much of a party-hardy-all-night-long kind of guy.
So be careful out there. We’ve got lots of guests. And they are good people. Most of them we’d like to have come back and visit us again. And those bikes do involve a bit more risk than other modes of transportation. We hate to have folks get hurt.
Once again the good folks at Black Hills Harley Davidson have to look elsewhere for customers. I’m just not ion the market for a motorcycle this year.
in high school my family came into a used 90cvc Honda trail bike. It was a significant upgrade from the tote goat bikes that a few hunters were using to pack out game and the forest service was beginning to use for some trail maintenance jobs. I rode the Honda around town a little bit for one summer. I had a friend with a larger 350cc Honda and I rode his motorcycle around town a little bit. In fact there was a stage, when he was dating my sister, when he’d loan me his motorcycle to get rid of me. You know, “two’s company, three’s a crowd.”
That’s it. That’s the sum total of my motorcycle experience. I never got into riding motorcycles as an adult and have never owned one. I have quite a few friends who really like motorcycles, however. That high school friend who used to loan me his motorcycle has owned a lot of different motorcycles over the years, sometimes owning two or three Harley Davidson bikes at the same time. He is just one of my friends who makes the pilgrimage to Sturgis and the Black Hills a regular part of many of his summers. I think that my cousin’s son is somewhere in the hills this week, but we probably won’t see him during the rally.
For a lot of people, the rally is a big deal. I kind of get a kick out of talking to the people who come to the hills to visit, so I’ve had dozens of pickup conversations with some of the folks who are here for this year’s rally.
There was the man who saw me buying a couple of quarts of local honey and stopped to ask me how much I paid for the honey. Local honey is going for $14 a quart around here. It turns out that the guy who stopped to ask is a beekeeper and was curious how his prices compared. He charges the same for a quart of honey. He said he was “just in town to ride motorcycles.”
The guy drying out in the coffee shop yesterday had to give me a complete weather report (“It’s solid rain all the way from Deadwood.”) before telling me that he comes to rally every year. He doesn’t go to many of the concerts, he just likes to ride around the hills.
When I stopped by the gas station to fill up a gas can for my mower, I was the only customer who wasn’t riding a motorcycle. No worries, They saw my “Rev Ted” vanity plates on my pickup and one yelled, “Hey guys, clean it up, there’s a reverend here!” They all asked me about my church. I invited them to come, but it didn’t really seem like that was their plan for Sunday morning.
One man, driving a beautiful all-white motorcycle with whitewall tires and lots of chrome signaled for me to roll down my window as we stopped side by side at a traffic light so that he could compliment me on my wooden canoe on the roof of my car. I complimented him on his motorcycle.
One of my friends reported last week that they don’t drive their motorcycle too much, only about 1,200 miles a year, but they always put on 800-900 miles during the rally.
Some locals complain a bit about all the motorcycles. You add that many guests into an area as small as the hills and there are some traffic issues. I figure it takes me an extra five minutes to get almost anywhere during the rally and, frankly, I try to avoid going to the VA Medical Center in Sturgis during rally week. That can add an hour or more to my day, though there is nothing boring about that hour for someone who likes to observe human nature. In the town of Sturgis the people don’t just go in for motorcycles - they go for costumes, too.
I’m not a big fan of traffic, but it is only a week and a couple of weekends. It is soon over and we go back to normal. Normal, of course around here is a lot of tourists, plenty of RV’s and quite a few folks who don’t know where they are going and tend to make sudden turns from the wrong lane when they see the destination they have in mind.
I think it is interesting that I get to live in a place that others only get to visit. I can understand what attracts them to the hills. We have wonderful, scenic, winding roads. We have cooler temperatures than the surrounding plains. We have lots to see and do.
On the other hand, I kind of like being able to roll up the window and turn on the wipers when it rains. And these days I prefer not to be sleeping in a tent when there are flash flood warnings in the hills. And there are some parts of the motorcycle culture about which I’m not too excited.
I’ve never had an urge to get a tattoo or a piercing. I tend to avoid t shirts with crude language. I’ve never been much of a party-hardy-all-night-long kind of guy.
So be careful out there. We’ve got lots of guests. And they are good people. Most of them we’d like to have come back and visit us again. And those bikes do involve a bit more risk than other modes of transportation. We hate to have folks get hurt.
Once again the good folks at Black Hills Harley Davidson have to look elsewhere for customers. I’m just not ion the market for a motorcycle this year.