"Life is the great adventure ride. Twist the throttle hard."

August 6

We stopped by Wall Drug (everyone stops there who crosses southern SD).  Along the highway, we rode with hundreds of other bikers and made it to Sturgis for dinner.  We are staying at the Buffalo Chip campground.   With 400,000 people in a town of 2000, there is very limited Internet access so I’ll post more pictures when we find WiFi. 

At that Wall Mart stop, we bought a big canopy to put the bikes under and sit in if it rains.  It’s been nice as there is a shower once or twice a day. 

Alice Cooper did a great concert tonight.  An amazing showman.  You would not think a 70 year old guy singing about high school would work, but he pulls it off very well. 

August 7 – Decided to ride to Mt. Rushmore, but got 15 miles out and turned around because I miscalculated the route, and there were no gas stations on it and we were very low.  Back at Sturgis, Chris’s front back had issues, so we took it into one of the many mechanics here in town and they replaced the pads for us.  Here’s a picture of main street.

I made the call to kick-back the rest of the day and do nothing.  Sam read a biker-book I gave him;  Chris and I took a nap and just enjoyed doing nothing. 

We had dinner at the Taco Bell inside our campground, and went to the concert stage.  Sam rode in, and Chris and I walked in with our chairs.  There’s about 30,000 people at this camp ground, and many don’t go to the concerts so its great to be able to walk in with a beer, stroll/ride up to the stage, and watch the show.  I’m on the young side of the crowd, and Chris is one of the youngest here.

Tonight, Bachman-Turner Overdrive opened and Styx closed both doing very good shows.  I was skeptical about BTO, but I think those old guys did great knocking out classic after classic.  Aunt Karen should have been here for Styx Come Sail Away.  Very moving.

August 8

I got up early, went into town to find a coffee show with an AC power plug to charge the laptop and update the blog.  Found one, but no WiFi.   I also found a way-cool leather vest and had a ride-to-live eagle sewn on it.  Now it fit in real well with all the leather-clad, over-weight, over-the-hill Harley riders here 🙂    Went back to camp and met the boys having cheeseburgers for breakfast.

We rode out to Mt. Rushmore this morning with full tanks of gas. The Black hills are emerald green now, and the weather great when it’s not raining.  We got rained on for about 30 minutes, and we had all of our rain gear at camp, so it was a character-building experience.  At one point, we pulled over for a bit to let the worst of it blow by.  Big rain drops hitting arms and face at 60 mph down- right hurt.

Despite the rain, we did make it to Rushmore and had a nice afternoon walking around the monument. 

I did take some time to call the office.  Not a bad place to have to work.

Back at camp we were all tired so we took naps, some of us in more comfortable places than others.  As you can see, we’re getting very comfortable sitting on the bikes now.

On stage tonight was Def Leopard, one of the long-hair rick bands I grew up with.  As anyone who’s walked in on me late at night in my lab knows, Hair Nation is what I crank up when programming C code.   I’ve written more software to Pour Some Sugar on Me Honey than any other song.  Sam thought they were OK, and Chris passed on the concert.