Ready For Sturgis?

Most people who attend rallies and "get it" understand that the event is only one small part of the experience. Not to knock people who trailer their rides, but they're missing out on one of the central joys of riding to points known and unknown. Nowhere is that quite as true as with Sturgis. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of world-class entertainment options at the Black Hills Rally from racing to custom motorcycles to concerts to just watching the human circus at the huge bars. But Sturgis is all about the ride, both getting to the rally, as well as side trips once there. We got this story from "Hombre" late last year, way too late to run as a "Sturgis Story." So here in our August issue, about the time most of you who are going will be finalizing plans and checking to-do's off of lists, we give you Dan Stafford's big road trip to and from last year's Sturgis Rally. But for most of it, this story could have happened just about any year. -BB

Hombre, Have Motorcycle Will TravelThat's what my card says, and that has been my mission statement for the last 40 years. My latest journey carried me through 12 states and 5,246 miles of genuine American back roads. Riding a good motorcycle on the back roads that allows access to the real beauty of this country. It is truly the best way to see America. Both of my bikes are insured with the good hands people, and Matt, my agent and friend, had dreamed of the day when he could ride his scooter on a cross-country adventure. So I invited him along.

I left St. Louis, Missouri on Saturday, August 2nd 2008. I'm a shutterbug on a motorcycle photo safari, yet miss my first photo op: A road gang, complete with striped uniforms, collecting trash alongside U.S. 61. Before even leaving our home state, we roll by Mark Twain's birthplace of Hannibal, the famous Locust covered bridge, General Pershing's boyhood home, and eventually St. Joseph, birthplace of the Pony Express.

Within minutes we're rolling down U.S. 36, the Pony Express Trail, west into Kansas. Kansas is mostly flat, and doesn't offer much in the way of landscape variety. It can get downright boring unless you've got a good imagination. I've actually looked in my mirror and seen Pony Express riders being chased by Injuns. There has been a wagon train along the way that stretched out a mile. This is the Oregon Trail, boys and girls.

A truck is pulled over on the side of the road headed in the opposite direction and I notice an elderly lady with a young girl in the cab. Slowing to turn around I head back to offer assistance. Help is on the way, but I still can't leave until I'm sure they have enough H2O. I hand grandma one of my spare bottles then resume my trek. That's part of what being on the road is all about.

After a turn north on U.S. 281 toward Nebraska we pass the geographical center of the Lower 48. Hastings is our stopover for the night. Three years ago my son Justin and I rode a pair of Kawasaki Vulcan 1500s to Sturgis. We stopped in Hastings, Nebraska at the Colonel's for some bird. We struck up a conversation with a group of older folk wondering what we thought of the goings-on up in Sturgis. I replied that you have to go looking for most of the debauchery, which is largely confined to the campgrounds and bars, and that I don't drink or frequent those kinds of places. Long story short, our new friend Stan and his wife Donna offered us a place to crash. we talked and watched TV with them late into the night and scored an invite to came back any time.

Consider this, a couple old enough to be my dad and mom take in two strange men, dressed in leather, that could very well do them harm. We became friends, with plans of returning each time we go through Hastings. I hope you guys love them, cause I sure do!