Yello!

Only a biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.  ~Author Unknown

Bike Week 2008 has come and gone.  Even though we make no claims of being real bikers (or campers!), we ventured west to Sturgis for the fifth year of adventure in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  For those of you who have followed our trials and tribulations with the air mattress (see http://www.whiddenfarm.com/yello/2007/08/21/the-saga-of-the-air-mattress-continues-on/), you’ll be happy to know that we got a larger tent on sale in January and our queen-sized Bed-in-a-Box fit perfectly with room to spare!  No more getting wedged between the bed and the side of the tent – it was great!  🙂We weren’t sure we had chosen a good camping spot after we pitched the tent and then read the sign saying something about live fire. Hopefully that was intended for off-season visitors to the Buffalo Chip campground.

One of the highlights of the Sturgis Rally for us has always been the Custom Bike Show on Thunder Road and this year was no different.  We saw awesome custom-built motorcycles that were more like works of art than modes of transportation. 

Another highlight from our day on Thunder Road was the opportunity to meet well-known bike builder, Billy Lane, and seeing Steven Tyler of Aerosmith, who also has his own line of custom bikes called Red Wing Motorcycles (http://www.redwingmotorcycles.com/).

And we always get a laugh when we look for our favorite little saying posted on the wall at Thunder Road…

It does make you stop and think!!!  🙂

Of course we had to stop in downtown Sturgis to take in the sights and sounds.

Another of the highlights of Bike Week has been the great music.  This year the Buffalo Chip Campground had a phenomenal line-up of entertainers, from Kid Rock to Alice Cooper to Three Doors Down to Kelli Pickler!  Unfortunately we weren’t able to be away from the farm to see all of them (or even most of them!)…but, we did see some of them.  Sugarland and ZZ Top drew a huge crowd on Thursday night and it was difficult to get very close.  Friday afternoon I happened to be there when country singer Dierks Bentley and the alternative band Staind was there for their sound check and got to listen to them both later that evening at their concerts.  Pictured below is Staind’s lead singer Aaron Lewis.

We had other adventures while at the Rally.  The Full Throttle is always a fun time with great music.  We even went back one morning for a huge all-you-can-eat breakfast.  Someone told us about the Extreme Fight Nights at the Knuckle and so we checked that out one evening.  I’m not sure why anyone would put themselves through that, but I suppose it must be a guy thing.  Although, one girl challenged any guy willing to step into the ring with her in the 185 pound division.  We didn’t stay long enough to see if she had any takers.  We headed up the road past Bear Butte one afternoon and came upon the new Broken Spoke where the bikes enter by driving right through the place!  Some amazing sights there were the motorcycle engine blender and the bike with the see-through gas tank.  There would be no excuse for running out of gas with that bike.

One of the best parts of going to Bike Week each year is the people.  We met very interesting people from all over the world.  The greater part of one afternoon was spent just sitting and talking with a radio DJ from Oregon and a guy from northern California, trading stories and coming up with solutions to most of the world’s pressing problems.  We’ll look for them again next year.

Too soon it was time to head for home.  We stopped past the Harley store and the newly opened Cabela’s store in Rapid City to admire their display of trophy animals.

One last stop was for lunch in the tiny town of Scenic, SD – home of very few people and several young ducklings.

So long Sturgis…until next year!  🙂

In the midst of wedding preparations, we slipped away during Bike Week for a couple of days at Sturgis. Francis protested that we really didn’t have the time to go, but I really wanted to and he finally agreed that we just needed to take the time for us. We had a great time – Thursday evening at Full Throttle listening to Jackyl and Friday night at the Buffalo Chip listening to Blue October and Chris Daughtry. A trike show was featured at Thunder Road. The music was good, the bikes were fun, and the people were awesome as we made some new friends and connected with some old ones during our stay at Sturgis.

We laughed the hardest though over the continuing challenge of camping and dealing with an air mattress. To give you a bit of background regarding our camping experiences at Sturgis…two years ago we borrowed an electric pump and adapter to plug it into our pick-up only to find it didn’t seem to work. Francis spent about 20 minutes blowing the air mattress up the old fashioned way and had to rest for another 20 minutes after becoming lightheaded!!! Last year, we thought we were smart when we stopped in Rapid City to pick up a bicycle pump to alleviate our air mattress blowing up dilemma…only to find that someone had neglected to put the plug back into the air mattress after they had used it last. So we took the plug off the end of our ice cooler and wrapped masking tape around it in an effort to wedge it into the hole in the air mattress as a make-shift plug. Well, it worked pretty well except that a few hours into the night we steadily kept losing air until we were laying flat on the ground by morning! So this year, we thought we finally had figured this air mattress problem out. Francis got me a 4-minute bed-in-a-box for Christmas with the intention of taking it along to Sturgis this summer. It had a pump with it and built-in plugs that fit – our mattress problems were over… or so we thought! We first put up our small four man tent and then starting blowing up the new air mattress outside the tent. To our surprise the air mattress quickly blew up into a tall, queen-size inflated bed! Now our problem was getting this monstrous air mattress into our small tent. I tugged from the inside and Francis pushed from the outside as a neighboring camper wandered over laughing hysterically as he snapped pictures of our futile attempted to get the giant mattress into the tent. So Francis decided to let some air out until it was spongey enough to push it into the tent. So when it was time to retire for the night, I crawled into the tent (which was entirely consumed by the air mattress inside) and immediately rolled off the squishy, partly deflated mattress and got wedged between the mattress and the tent wall! Francis answered my yell for help and dived into the tent to rescue me which only caused me to become more tightly lodged between the mattress and the tent wall. He couldn’t even see me!!! He finally got me pulled out and the rest of the night was spent trying to sleep on the squishy mattress without getting rolled off again. Next year we need to try again to finally get this air mattress thing right – I mean, how hard can it be? Any suggestions?

Francis and I have just returned from three days at the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Fun, fun, fun! Even though we are far from being real bikers, we love watching all the bikes, bikers, and excitement that goes along with one of the largest motorcycle rallies anywhere. We camped at the Buffalo Chip and took the bike on a short drive yesterday down to Deadwood to take in the sights. Thursday night we enjoyed hearing Joe Walsh & the James Gang and Ted Nugent in concert. Friday night we spent most of our time at the Full Throttle Saloon which is billed as the largest biker bar. It lived up to it’s reputation with good music, shopping, great food, and lots of varied entertainment. For the third year in a row, we had a great time at the rally. The pictures that follow show Francis and I at our campsite, Francis in front of the flags in tribute to those who have fallen in Iraq, mainstreet Sturgis and one of my favorite bikes at Thunder Road.