"Are ya goin to Sturgis then?" we were asked.
"What's Sturgis?"
"You haven't heard of Sturgis? Wow, everyone's heard of Sturgis. Biggest motorcycle rally in the world!"
"But we're the non-motorized type..."
"It doesn't matter, it'd be worth it to check it out, you'll be so close..."
Still, being in close quarters with half a million motorcyclists wasn't so appealing to me. They're not the same sort of people as me-they share different views. When they pass me on the highway they give me a fright with their noisy motors and higher speeds. While I like to hear the insects buzzing and the birds chirping while I ride, they seem to enjoy the sound of petroleum burning in their engines.
"I think the louder the better. It sounds rough, like an animal does - pretty manly," said Gerald Roberts as reported by the Rapid City Journal's article "Decibel debate: Do loud pipes save lives?" He continued to say "We're a free country. Being a motorcyclist is all about freedom and doing what we're allowed to do."
Yet somehow, I found my idea of motorcycles start to change as I got closer to the Black Hills. I would meet them in places I'd stop and they all seemed like nice people. I'd get all sorts of comments, ranging from "You just need to put a motor on that," to "That's one way to beat the gas price," to "Now look at that, that's a real bike." One rider I talked to from Wisconsin told me "One day you'll make a list of things you want to see in your life. Sturgis will be on there."
By the time I got to Rapid City, I had pretty much made up my mind, I would ride 30 miles north in the evening and see what the big deal was about. The ride north was exhilerating. I could feel the energy in the air as I rode along the service road north. The sound of Harleys filled the air. A never-ending stream of motorbikes passed me on the freeway as I headed north. There was an 8 mile stretch I had to take along the interstate. As I hit 30mph on the downhill stretches - half the speed of the motorbikes - I really felt like I was sharing the road with them. I was going fast so I was a vehicle on their radar, rather than the silly guy hugging the pavement next to the ditch without a motor to power my two wheels.
When I got to Sturgis, the uniqueness of my form of transportation once again proved a huge benefit to me. While bikers were being charged $30/night to set up their tent on people's lawns downtown, I found a spot on a couple's driveway for free. As I got my gear sorted out I heard "Forrest, are you hungry?" Before I could muster up an answer, there was a plate with grapes, a ginger ale, and a huge piece of grilled chicken before me.
I headed down to the bars to see what all the crazy fuss was about. I had been warned "You're going to the bars? Watch out, the girls there are wild, you won't come back a virgin." What I found, however, was far different than what I had expected. Middle aged to older men that, in any other bar would be labeled as 'creepers,' stood around bars where girls in their early 20s dressed in bikinis flaunted themselves for dollar bills. I was disgusted. At least I knew that I'd never have to put Sturgis on my list of places to see - in fact, I could double cross it off with a permanent marker.
After falling asleep to the sound of motors, I awoke to a similar noise and got ready to leave. A brief encounter at the grocery store on my way out of town boosted my experience. A tall man, skinny with long shoulder length hair rode up to me on his low-rider bike. "Nice ride," he told me. After taking a closer look at his, I realized he was on a 'bicycle' as well. His, however, was a front wheel drive, battery powered, solar charged cycle. He claimed to be able to race Harleys from light to light in town. "20 years ago they were all talking about going green, man. I went green and nobody followed," the old hippie said in a grooved out voice. At least, it was nice to meet someone with a similar mindset.
As I biked further out of town, I saw a sign "Learn to Weld." Being slightly worried about the integrity of my front rack, I stopped and had the experts at Lincoln Electric take a look at the problem. About an hour later, I had two weld jobs done on the rack that was about to fall apart. Perhaps Sturgis had been a good idea in the end.
When I finally hit the road, I headed west to the historic town of Deadwood. The sound of motors filled the air of the Black Hills. An extremely sacred spot to the Lakota Sioux, the hills are literally a green bubble in the middle of brown arid plains. The hills finally came alive to me when I got on the Michelson bike trail in Deadwood - 108 miles along an old railway track. Immediately, I was carried away from the noise of the road and transported to the beauty of the hills. The trail followed a mountain stream up up up. I could hear the noise of the stream, saw fauns and bucks, birds and wild mountain flowers. I followed a kingfisher as he soared along the stream, searching for a morsel. The trail lead me over old railway bridges and through old tunnels, past mountain wetlands and meadows where cattle grazed and under rocky outcroppings that jutted hundreds of feet above me. I was in a state of euphoric bliss, on the verge of tears, realizing how much I missed the sound of silence and the sound of the forest.
That night I camped above Hill City, just off the bike trail in the Black Hills National Forest. It was a perfect night. No bugs bothered me as I made a quick dinner in the forest. I was in bed by 9pm. At 2am I woke up and stuck my head outside my tent. The Milky Way appeared above me like a great rift in the sky. Shooting stars shot above my head every 20-30 seconds. I could feel it, I was in a different world, lost in time and space with no thought about the constant drone of motors that filled the air miles away in the same sacred hills.
Should motorcycles be allowed to make noise? It's a controversy, one that is valid for debate and reflection. In the city, the sounds of motors, people's stereos and cars are noises that should be expected. When the noises of the city fill the air of the countryside, noise is a public issue. It's the econ 101 issue regarding the use of public resources. Motorcyclists should be respectful of the fact that, while they may enjoy the sound of their motors, many people searching for peace and solitude in the hills do not. It's not about "freedom and doing what we're allowed to do," but about sharing the beautiful resources of this country with eachother and being respectful of other people's methods of enjoyment - by motorcyclists and nature enthusiasts alike.
Regarding the Sturgis rally, for one week a year they bring thousands of dollars to the people of the Black Hills which allows many of the small towns to continue to exist. One week a year of noise in the Black Hills seems a decent price to pay in exchange for the money that is brought in.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Badlands by Bicycle
The National Park system, it truly was the United State’s best idea. Where else can you find foreign visitors, license plates from all 50 states, large families with kids, senior citizens, bikers, and kids in their 20s all enjoying and learning about the same place? The environmental education that the parks offer to people is outstanding, and I really hope that people take the messages home with them. Yet it is slightly upsetting to see RVs pulling an SUV through the park-I guess you can’t convince everyone.
The amount of people that the parks attract is wonderful, but being one in a crowd like that-not so fun. Where is a person to go? To the backcountry... In countless national parks I’ve had the same experience. The touristy places that attract throngs of people are way overrated, far better to get out on the trail and make your own discoveries, which is exactly what I did. I locked my bike up at a trailhead, changed my shorts, and took the path less traveled. Somehow I was transported from crowds of people to being back, completely on my own in the middle of the badlands. I saw birds again, watched hesitantly/hopefully for rattlesnakes, prairie dogs chirped, vultures soared the heights and the grassland was alive. The path lead me up river paths where, just the night before, water had gushed down small waterfalls, became stagnant in small pools, and eroded away at the small canyon’s sides in its rush to shed its potential energy and get to the White River. At the end of the 6 mile, one-way hike, I got a ride from some fellow hikers from South Dakota back to my bike.
Biking through the badlands proved to be a harder ordeal than I had anticipated. My destination was the Sage Creek “primitive camping” site, 34 miles from the visitor center. (Primitive, I thought!?!! That’s how I’ve been living! It’s not primitive…). Going through the passes as the scenic road wound itself up and down the ancient, eroded lake-bed brought my bike down to its lowest “granny” gear. Cheers and thumbs up from
passing car windows gave me the energy I needed to complete the climbs. One “bikers r sexy” sign from a passing Subaru (with two young women in the front seats) completely made my day and powered me to the campsite. The loaded touring bike completely stuck out and it seemed like every other person wanted to know my story and where I was going.
As for now, I met up with Brint in Rapid City and we’re deciding our next move. Sturgis seems like a good idea, but we’ll be in Wyoming and headed west through the least densely populated state in the US soon enough.
Photos of the plains at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/forrest9/TheGreatPlains?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPeprIDd1fGUiQE&feat=directlink
sorry for the disorder, they got disorganized during the upload...
The amount of people that the parks attract is wonderful, but being one in a crowd like that-not so fun. Where is a person to go? To the backcountry... In countless national parks I’ve had the same experience. The touristy places that attract throngs of people are way overrated, far better to get out on the trail and make your own discoveries, which is exactly what I did. I locked my bike up at a trailhead, changed my shorts, and took the path less traveled. Somehow I was transported from crowds of people to being back, completely on my own in the middle of the badlands. I saw birds again, watched hesitantly/hopefully for rattlesnakes, prairie dogs chirped, vultures soared the heights and the grassland was alive. The path lead me up river paths where, just the night before, water had gushed down small waterfalls, became stagnant in small pools, and eroded away at the small canyon’s sides in its rush to shed its potential energy and get to the White River. At the end of the 6 mile, one-way hike, I got a ride from some fellow hikers from South Dakota back to my bike.
Biking through the badlands proved to be a harder ordeal than I had anticipated. My destination was the Sage Creek “primitive camping” site, 34 miles from the visitor center. (Primitive, I thought!?!! That’s how I’ve been living! It’s not primitive…). Going through the passes as the scenic road wound itself up and down the ancient, eroded lake-bed brought my bike down to its lowest “granny” gear. Cheers and thumbs up from
passing car windows gave me the energy I needed to complete the climbs. One “bikers r sexy” sign from a passing Subaru (with two young women in the front seats) completely made my day and powered me to the campsite. The loaded touring bike completely stuck out and it seemed like every other person wanted to know my story and where I was going.
As for now, I met up with Brint in Rapid City and we’re deciding our next move. Sturgis seems like a good idea, but we’ll be in Wyoming and headed west through the least densely populated state in the US soon enough.
Photos of the plains at:
https://picasaweb.google.com/forrest9/TheGreatPlains?authuser=0&authkey=Gv1sRgCPeprIDd1fGUiQE&feat=directlink
sorry for the disorder, they got disorganized during the upload...
First encounter with the West
As we headed west of Pierre, the landscape changed drastically. The large expanses of corn and soybeans disappeared, and we instead found hills covered in prairie grasses, with far fewer grazing cattle to entertain us. If I didn’t find the middle of no-where before, certainly I found it west of Pierre. Not to say that it didn’t have its own beauty, by all means it did. The hills, while they created an additional challenge for us as we began to use our climbing muscles again, stretched as far as the eye could see. As I climbed, I lost all knowledge and sight of the expanse of land that lay around me. But when I summited the small hill, immense grasslands and large, rolling hills swept the landscape before me. The road went down, up, down, up, down, until finally up a bigger hill and out of sight.
We thought that on the road west of Pierre we would be relatively secluded and on our own. A sign saying “next services 66 miles” confirmed our belief that we would really be on our own. But the day we left Pierre -Friday- happened to be the day before a little biker rally in the small town of Sturgis, SD, about 30 miles north of Rapid City. For those of you not familiar with this event (I wasn’t until we got to South Dakota…), from what I’ve since gathered it’s the biggest motorcycle rally in the nation. The small town of Sturgis (roughly 2000 people) increases by at least 10,000 bikers, but I’ve heard numbers far higher than that... So instead of being relatively on our own for the 66 miles, we instead hugged the shoulder the whole way, being passed by countless numbers of loaded motorcycles headed to Sturgis. I guess I don’t have such a sophisticated appreciation or understanding of motors, but it seems like the louder the bike, the better it is. The sounds of cicadas and prairie birds was constantly drowned out by the buzz of engines.
We rolled into Midland at about 3pm, a town that consists of a couple of bars and a convenience mart. The tap beers were only $1.50 which turned out to be very hard to turn down after my second beer with the knowledge that we still had 30 miles to pedal to get to our intended destination for the day, Philip. Fortunately we had a tailwind all the way to Philip (pop. ~800) and got there by 5pm, just in time for happy hour in the largest town for 100 miles in all directions. If you’re ever near Philip, SD on a Friday night, the
Saloon 78 is the place to be. There was a steak roast-$15 for a GIGANTIC cut of local ribeye with all you can eat garlic bread and potato wedges. The grills got set up and you grill the meat yourself. We ate until we were thoroughly stuffed and retired to play pool the rest of the night.
After Philip, Brint decided to go to Sturgis to pick up his bike shoes which his neighbor had brought out for him. I headed south into the Badlands National Park.
We thought that on the road west of Pierre we would be relatively secluded and on our own. A sign saying “next services 66 miles” confirmed our belief that we would really be on our own. But the day we left Pierre -Friday- happened to be the day before a little biker rally in the small town of Sturgis, SD, about 30 miles north of Rapid City. For those of you not familiar with this event (I wasn’t until we got to South Dakota…), from what I’ve since gathered it’s the biggest motorcycle rally in the nation. The small town of Sturgis (roughly 2000 people) increases by at least 10,000 bikers, but I’ve heard numbers far higher than that... So instead of being relatively on our own for the 66 miles, we instead hugged the shoulder the whole way, being passed by countless numbers of loaded motorcycles headed to Sturgis. I guess I don’t have such a sophisticated appreciation or understanding of motors, but it seems like the louder the bike, the better it is. The sounds of cicadas and prairie birds was constantly drowned out by the buzz of engines.
We rolled into Midland at about 3pm, a town that consists of a couple of bars and a convenience mart. The tap beers were only $1.50 which turned out to be very hard to turn down after my second beer with the knowledge that we still had 30 miles to pedal to get to our intended destination for the day, Philip. Fortunately we had a tailwind all the way to Philip (pop. ~800) and got there by 5pm, just in time for happy hour in the largest town for 100 miles in all directions. If you’re ever near Philip, SD on a Friday night, the
Saloon 78 is the place to be. There was a steak roast-$15 for a GIGANTIC cut of local ribeye with all you can eat garlic bread and potato wedges. The grills got set up and you grill the meat yourself. We ate until we were thoroughly stuffed and retired to play pool the rest of the night.
After Philip, Brint decided to go to Sturgis to pick up his bike shoes which his neighbor had brought out for him. I headed south into the Badlands National Park.
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