After two days on the train from Boston to North Dakota, we were itchy to ride. Arriving in Minot, N.D., early in the day was a good thing because we had 450 miles ahead of us to get to the Sturgis area. The sun was shining as we unloaded the bikes, but as soon as we hit the road the temperature dropped and it started to sprinkle. By the time we stopped for lunch, it was warm and clear again.
Charlie St. Clair, the guy responsible for getting Amtrak to provide freight service for our bikes from Boston, had ridden his own from New Hampshire to Sturgis, then rode the 450 miles from there to Minot to meet our train and lead us back to Sturgis. The countryside was beautiful — wide-open spaces where a "small" farm is 4,000 acres! We drove for 75 miles without seeing a house (or a gas station), just cattle.
The train bikers were staying in different towns around Sturgis. Only one of our group, "Big Bob," had a place in the town itself. Bike Week is a boon to every hamlet within 50 miles of Sturgis, population 6,000. Some of the most popular stopping spots are Spearfish, Deadwood, Lead, Custer, Hulett, Sundance, Belle Fourche and Rapid City (which comes closest to being a city and has a major hospital and an airport, both of which are important to the event).
We had rented a house in Lead with the "Puerto Rican Posse." (To see pictures, click here.) Lead is about 18 miles north of Sturgis and houses Homestake Mining, which boasts the largest gold mine in the United States. My son Brendan rides with the Posse in Puerto Rico several times a year. The informal leader of the group is Jose de Miguel. Brendan met him through sailboat racing on St. Thomas when Jose crewed aboard Cachando. He and his dad ride together like Brendan and I do. This year there were 11 of us staying at this little 3-bedroom house with one bathroom, and at the end of the week, we were all still friends!
Bike Week in Sturgis is a phenomenon that, as the biker T-shirts say, "If I have to explain it to you, you wouldn't understand." The event centers on track racing, countryside riding, vendor displays, and looking at everybody else's bikes and female friends. And partying.
FLASH RACING AND OTHER FUN
The first event we attended was the annual FLASH race sponsored by American Iron Magazine. Brendan is a contributing writer for the publication, which focuses on Harleys, so we got to be on the inside at the event. FLASH stands for Fastest Legal All Street Harley. The idea is to drag-race machines that are street legal.
The day started at 9 a.m. with the Thunder Alley Drag Racing school event for novices. Experienced racers lectured on drag-racing techniques, then the amateurs got to go out on the track under the watchful eyes of the experts. After lunch, racing began. To qualify, bikes had to pass a technical inspection and then go on a 70-mile street ride led by the editor of American Iron, Chris Meda.
No bike could stop for more than a minute or refuel during the ride. Brendan and I were the "tail gunners," following the pack and timing any stops bikers made. Four of the 35 bikes that started dropped out. One broke down before we even left the track, another got a flat, a third bent a push rod and the fourth ran out of gas.
Back at the track, two hours were devoted to tuning and testing. Every rider was given as many times as he wanted on the track. Two bikes were run at a time, so these guys were racing. The idea was to get more experience and fine tune the engine. Here, more bikes got busted.
The actual race, for prizes, began at 7 p.m., in two classes — FLASH and Pro FLASH. The Pro FLASH class allows certain speed modifications. In each class, two bikes race side by side, and the winner moves up the ladder while the loser drops out. It was tough on top of 10 hours of school, the 70-mile ride, and the testing and tuning. The winner of each heat had to move on to more torture to man and machine.
We got to go home at about 10:30 p.m. (For pictures of the event, click here.)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Actually, we decided to go out to dinner. But by the time we got to our chosen restaurant, it was no longer serving, so we had breakfast instead. With nearly 400,000 people looking for three squares a day, finding food could be hectic. Many establishments hardly qualifed as restaurants; corn dogs, sausage grinders and beer were their main fare.
Some spots became favorites for one reason or another. St. Clair held court at Mom's on Junction Street, one of the two main arteries into Sturgis. Mom is long gone, but her heritage of good attitude and reasonably priced, edible food remains. A 16 oz. T-bone steak with mashed potatoes and gravy, a veggie and a biscuit is $9! The $6 breakfast buffet features scrambled eggs, biscuits and gravy, french toast, pancakes, the usual breakfast meats and coffee.
Lead is a really small town, so late-night dining was out of the question — except for Lewie's, on the edge of town. In the winter, Lewie caters to skiers, but in August, the joint's a biker bar. There's a great collection of mining and logging memorabilia. Draught beer is served in quart jars, and a half-pound cheeseburger was $3.50. Great '60s tunes on the jukebox, too. The favorite pastime there is to wrap a quarter in a dollar bill with a thumbtack and toss it at a bullseye on the wooden ceiling about 16 feet above the bar.
Deadwood has two claim to fame: as the place where Wild Bill Hickock met his last match, and gambling, mostly slot machines. We had to pass through Deadwood on the way from Sturgis to Lead, so it became an obligatory stop, mostly at the Oyster Bay Bar for a crack at the slots and for Oyster Shooters — an oyster, hot sauce (pick your degree of heat), lemon juice, Worcestershire and Tabasco sauce, salt, pepper and beer. I scored a jackpot early in the week, so the Shooters were on them!
BB Cody's in Deadwood was our only disappointment, with the worst service and worser food!
The town's # 10 Saloon was packed nightly with bikers and locals getting in on the biker act. This is supposedly where Wild Bill took his fatal bullet. It's attractions: a rock band, slots, poker and blackjack, and a long cowboy bar with sawdust on the floor. We never did try the food there.
In Sturgis, aside from the hot sausage vendors, our favorite eatery was Dave's Beer Tent, which sheltered a couple hundred picnic tables and stage with a live band. Dave's served up canned beer and the best barbecued pork sandwich I've ever had. Darcy Kirkman there was our favorite server, too. We made a couple stops there each day we were in town.
We also met Joe Camel there — actually a fellow named Scott, offering three packs of Camels in trade in for whatever pack of smokes you had. That reminded us of the "Camel Tent." Camel sets up an area at most major biker events with beer, busts, butts and bikes as well as live rock 'n' roll. Another place to hang out, catch up with old friends and make new ones. (For pictures of my favorite bikes seen at the rally, click here.)
BEST BUYS
The two main streets of downtown Sturgis that are devoted to Bike Week run for about two New York blocks and are lined with motorcycles, vendors and thousands of people. This year, there were 939 registered vendors and at least a hundred gypsies. Most sold bike-related gear, from clothing to bolt-on parts to comic books to cigars.
One of my best purchases was from Anna and Gabor Ruzsan of Classic Goggles. When you ride without a windshield, goggles are the only way to go, but if you're a "senior" biker, ya need yer bifocals — and they make 'em! A pair I had bought at an earlier rally leaked air around the edges. When I compl
ained to Anna, she made the needed adjustments, gave the goggles a special cleaning and threw in a fresh pair of tinted lenses.
For my grandson I got a $5 HD comic book autographed by the two authors along with the requisite T-shirt.
When it's hot in downtown Sturgis, it's hot. The best-kept secret is the Community Center, where for $4 you get the use of the gym, pool and showers. And for 50 cents more, a towel and soap. It was a great way to freshen up for the final adventure of the day, the Broken Spoke Saloon.
A legendary institution among bikers, the Broken Spoke holds 4,000 people in various kinds of spaces — including eight enclosed bars, sheds and open courtyards. The sheds have a piped water system that lets loose every 10 minutes or so, showering patrons with a cooling mist. The menu features food from hot dogs to steak and beer, beer and more beer. You can get thrown from the mechanical bull, try to ring the bell with a sledge hammer, dunk a pretty girl by hitting a bullseye with a baseball, enter the nail-driving contest (Brendan won), get your portrait drawn by an artist and have your boots polished by a lovely lady named Lisa.
The Broken Spoke has a huge map and a supply of pins so you can mark where you're from. There was a pin on St. Croix, but we never met the rider. (For pictures at the Broken Spoke, click here.)
RAINY DAZE AND BAD BREAKS
The riding in South Dakota is sensational, from the Badlands to Mount Rushmore. This is our third year, and there are still places we haven't had time to ride to. One goal this year was to make the 120-mile round trip to Devil's Tower in Wyoming. We rode about 30 miles to a restaurant to hook up with friends at breakfast, then ride on to Wyoming. It started to rain on the road and got worse at the breakfast stop. A rider who came in from the direction we were headed said it was worse up there! So, it was bag Devil's Tower, and head for Deadwood to buy some famous South Dakota gold jewelry, then on to Lewie's. By then it was still raining and cold, too, so we rode back to the house and built a fire.
That evening we were supposed to meet up with our fellow train travelers in Rapid City, 30 miles in the opposite direction, for dinner. We started out, but as we passed through Sturgis the rain started again, so it was forget Rapid City and the reunion dinner, and on to another night at the Broken Spoke.
With 300,000 motorcycles concentrated in 50 square miles, there were bound to be some accidents, and our group was not spared. The problem was not other bikers, but a deer! Our guy Russell Paquete ploughed into one — and spent the week in the hospital. A friend drove him to the train for the trip back. His bike is being shipped back in pieces.
Another fellow rider lost his rear brakes in the rain, locked up his front wheel and went down, fracturing his leg. Despite the cast, he continued to ride for the rest of the week. (For pictures of the Main Street scene, click here.)
Other events at Bike Week included new motorcycle demo rides, the Rat's Hole Custom Chopper Show, the National Motorcycle Museum, the Miss Sturgis Contest, hill climbs and WCW wrestling.
Next: We'll wrap up the trip with the ride back to Minot and introduce you to some of the interesting people we met along the way.
Frank McLaughlin studied for a career in broadcast journalism. On St. Thomas, he worked at WSTA Radio and WBNB-TV before getting into real estate in the '70s. Between them, he and his son Brendan, owner of Appraisal Associates and Mad Dog Cycles, an importer of custom after-market cycle equipment on St. Thomas, own four Harley Davidsons and five other bikes.
