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The Other Way
Last updated Friday, September 19, 2008 8:21 PM CDT in Columns
By Becca Bacon Martin
Editor's Note: With Bikes, Blues & BBQ moments away, one columnist is reminded of a visit to an even bigger rally. Here's her column from 2006.
The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally really starts just outside Kansas City, when I-29 becomes a river of motorcycles headed north.
It's no Sunday afternoon cruise to Sturgis, S.D. -- from anywhere! I-29 carries bikers through the western farmlands of Iowa and across the South Dakota line to Sioux Falls, where travelers turn west on I-90.
In the vast prairies of South Dakota, road signs casually promote the next tourist attraction -- even if it's 190 miles away. The best examples are the billboards that blossom like sunflowers for Wall Drug, a small-town block of souvenir shopping in Wall, S.D. -- clear across the state from Sioux Falls! And rest areas are precious and few, filled with RVs, Ford F-350 pickups hauling bike trailers, and bikes loaded with tents, sleeping bags and the cash for a very expensive vacation.
I should have looked at a map before I agreed to go to Sturgis. I knew it was in South Dakota -- not that far away, right? It's only there nominally, though: Wyoming is 30 miles away. This is the "Wild West," where tumbleweeds roll across the road, and Wild Bill Hickok rests in Deadwood's Boot Hill. But for a week every August, it's the motorcycle capital of the world, where half a million bikers come to ride, to talk, to shop, to drink a lot of beer and listen to a lot of bands. It's a culture I didn't understand going in and know no better coming out.
Here's what I do know: Cycling is not a poor man's hobby. Start with a tricked-out Harley-Davidson motorcycle -- at least $30,000 -- and even if you ride it in, you've come to a bike rally where camping is as much as $300 a week, a beer is $6 and a hot dog is $7. There are two concert series -- at $60 a show -- and even the local parks charge an admission fee that is hefty by our standards.
That's not to say free entertainment isn't plentiful. Just find a shady spot on Main or Lazelle and watch the bikes go by -- thousands of them, of every shape, size and description. Eventually, you'll buy earplugs just so you can hear yourself think.
In 2006, for the first time in two decades, violence married Pappy Hoel's rally. Allegedly -- I have to say that, because this is journalism -- a couple of Hell's Angels shot at half a dozen Outlaws and someone stabbed a stranger on "Da Bus," the rally's version of public transit.
I was never scared. Most of the bikers at Sturgis are in their 40s or 50s and look like they just dropped their kids off at college. Their wives fill the campground showerhouses with the sound of hair dryers and laughter, and the scariest things I saw were people rising at dawn to play with their toys -- I mean, to work on their bikes.
The best part of my trip to Sturgis had very little to do with motorcycles, I must admit. I went to meet my sweetie's best Navy buddy, Elgin, who rode in from upstate New York, and was lucky enough to also spend time with his two riding companions, Mike and Nick; Mike's wife Tanya, from Ukraine; and family friends Nora and Dennis, Protestants from Northern Ireland serving in the British Army. We talked around their camp's makeshift dinner table for hours -- and I'd be perfectly happy to be there still. But Mount Rushmore and the Badlands were waiting.
About this columnist
Becca Bacon Martin is the entertainment editor at The Morning News. Her column began running in 1988 and appears each Sunday. Her work was recently honored with first place in the Arkansas Press Association Better Newspaper Contest. See past columns on her archive page.
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