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

August 5^th

We got an early start, and with only 300 miles to Sturgis, the roads were already covered with Harleys. It seemed half were on trailers being hauled to the rally, and each gas stop was an experience meeting people from across the country.

There are about 500,000 people attending the rally, and 100,000 bikes going into the town each day. We rolled in around 3:00pm, and parked right on main street.

The variety of bikes at the rally is just amazing. 95% are Harleys, and most all the rest are some type of custom chopper, crazy 3-wheel vehicle, and a few Jap crotch rockets. The Sturgis Rally started in the 60s as a motorcycle race in the Black Hills, and about 25 years ago grew so big, the race became secondary to the parties, food, and cruising. Dad, it’s basically the Dayton Hamvention for Bikers. Now that I’ve been to both, I can say for sure – bikers play a little harder than the hams.

Finding where we parked our bikes is like the Find Waldo game.

We stayed at Buffalo Chip camp-ground, the largest in the area. We found a spot for our tent in the back on a nice hill. The camp-ground is HUGE, with tens of thousands of people, dozens of restaurants, bars, a lake, laundry, and good facilities. It has a concert park surrounded by vendors, restaurants, bars, mechanical bull, elevated ride-up tavern, burn-out competition area, and tattoo parlour.

We saw the 80’s bands Rat and Poison in concert Monday night. Poison put on an excellent show and it was nice having the concert at the camp-ground, so we could come and go as we pleased. The stage had something going on from 6:00pm till almost 1:00am. The camp-ground was surprisingly laid-back at night, and we got a good night sleep.

August 6^th

For years, Sam has been itching to get a tat in Sturgis, and there was no changing his mind. He zeroed in on a few designs, and we spent the morning walking the streets of Sturgis, visiting the dozens of tattoo artists who descend on the city each year. He found a way cool American flag theme graphic by a guy Rich Helton, and he spent the next 3 hours in the chair being jabbed with needles. It turned out really well.

So this is Sam’s side of the tattoo story: “After sitting there anxiously waiting to get it and watching the preparation to be the first one of the event for this artist. I finally get to sit down in the chair and he preps my arm. He says that he is gonna do a short line so I get the feel of it and when I said I was ready he went for it. Initially it wasn’t so bad but after he had outlined the bottom 3^rd of the tattoo I had to take a break. I was feeling a little nauseous so he got me a water and gave me a cup of some super intense energy drink to get some sugar in me and then we started at it again. Its hard to describe the type of pain it was but It was like taking 3 sharp needles and scratching just deep enough to get under the first couple layers of skin over and over. The only way I was able to keep my mind off it was to talk about random things unrelated to the tattoo I was getting. After about 2 hours we had finished the outlining and so he had to set up to start colouring it. The colouring wasn’t as bad as outlining because the needles are spread out more and not so concentrated. I had gotten to the point the pain didn’t bother me any more and was doing good, until he was almost done and just needed to do some shading. That was the worst part because he would hit areas that had already been done and were tender. All in all the pain wasn’t to bad and it was totally worth it.

We stopped in at a exhibit called Thunder Road put on the same magazine, where many of the top custom bike builders exhibit their rides. Many were truly great works of art. I just can’t imagine how the V-8 powered bikes could actually be ridden, but there were lots of them running around. We even saw an LS1 powered bike.

The warm-up band that night was a group Rock Legends, made up of 60s and 70s band members. One of the guitar players played with Iron Butterfly, and they did an amazing rendition of A Godda Da Vida (SP?).  Hearing it in a crowd of bikers made if feel like 1967. Later, Toby Keith played on the main stage.  He’s played for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his patriotic music made both of us feel pretty good about Sam’s new art.

At night, the campground was totally out of control. We saw this guy who must also use Mobile 1 synthetic oil in his engine, as it was so slippery and fast it made his wife’s top blew right off.

With the rally in full swing, the camp-ground was noisy all night long, so we did not get much sleep.  This guy had real train whistles on his bike.

August 7^th

We’re finally on the last leg, heading home for San Diego. We took the scenic route out of the Black Hills, and headed across Wyoming. We were both quite tired so we did not ride too far today, but we did get a classic father-son picture taken just outside of Deadwood South Dakota. We’re both sun-burned, tired, and yes, badly in need of haircuts.  We are ready to be home.  Its been a great trip, and we are looking forward to getting back to family, friends, and our own beds.