STURGIS!!!

Monday, 9th August 2010

At last! We're actually going to Sturgis today! We met at 9am for the 10 mile ride to the small town where the 70th Sturgis Rally was taking place. It's a lovely ride from Deadwood, with long, sweeping curves through pleasant countryside, & of course those roads are teeming with motorcycles on both sides, coming from & going to Sturgis.
Riding along Lazelle Street we slowed to a snails pace, snarled up in the sheer volume of traffic, with multiple STOP signs at the junctions slowing us down even further, but giving us the chance to see the many stalls & trade stands which line both sides of the road, all vying for our attention & tempting us to buy from them.
We were baking in the heat, with the sun beating down, & the engines burning our legs as we crawled off Lazelle, & eventually turned in to Main Street. We rode slowly up the street, parked motorcycles lining both sides of the road, with a double row up the middle. Every building wore biker livery - all the usual shops & businesses move out for the rally, & rent their premises to the hundreds of t-shirt shops, food outlets, stalls selling cold drinks, leather gear, tattoo parlours, bars, pin & patch stalls - anything to make a buck from the bikers.
We continued in awe along Main Street, until we came to the end of the shops & stalls, & into the residential area. There were tents in almost every garden - some people move out of their homes for the rally & rent them to bikers, others have signs up advertising camping space in their gardens, some offer bike parking, some offer showers, some sell cold bottled water & soft drinks from coolboxes in the garden, & all along people sit on garden chairs to watch the bikes go by.

We left our group in Sturgis to wander & soak up the atmosphere, & maybe even buy a t-shirt or two, or chill out on the balcony of One Eyed Jack's Saloon with a cold drink to watch the biking world go by. Bliss!