Some
truly excellent rides |
I attended the annual gathering of motorcycles in Sturgis S.D. 97 for the first time. Rode from Sunbury Oh. to Sturgis S.D. on the Valkyrie. With T-bag full and saddle bags bulging I left. I took three days there and two days back. I wanted to arrive Sturgis during the day so that I had daylight to set up camp. Hotel rooms are quite expensive and even more scarce unless you get lucky or know someone there. I chose to camp and avoid the whole issue. Camping and motorcycling go very well together, the same openness of the road is accented even more by sleeping outside. We stayed in the black hills just south of Deadwood (where Wild Bill Hitchock was shot/killed playing poker). The campground consisted of a pub/restaurant a wash house and laundry.
The first day ended in Pieoria Ill. But only after a stop at the time trials for the Brickyard 500. I really wish Tony George hadn’t ruined the Indy 500 but we still got the Brickyard. Saw some friends at the track and met one of Indianapolis’s finest coming into the track, who while I was trying to negotiate crowds of thousands, wanted to talk motorcycles J We saw a few qualifying runs and a practice session and then time to move on.
Day 2 ended Sioux Falls South Dakota. Stayed at a Holiday Inn where I was starting to develop this motorcyclist mentality. I’m not sure how to describe it but it’s like your on your own, living by you wits, completely responsible for yourself, completely self assured, Oh yea I know Freedom.
Day 3, the Sturgis rally is quite an event, for three states all you see are motorcycles, thousands, 10’s of thousands and later you really get to see what 100’s of thousands of bikes look like all in the same place. There are dozens of places to visit so you have to pick and chose. The first day we went to Sturgis. Set up camp there but soon found out that if you want to ever sleep or relax you have to get out of town. So packed up and headed for the hills, some friends from home were camping south of deadwood so I found a site close to their campground and pitched the tent, again. My favorite line from the instructions is "the tent should now be partially erect", burned in my memory forever. Another charm to the black hills are the exploding rocks. Throw them in the camp fire and watch them blow up, pretty cool.
Went to Sturgis again the next day to see what it was all about, well its about everything. It’s the only place I’ve been where ATF agents patrol in cruisers. Crime wasn’t too bad as long as you kept your eyes/ears open and didn’t piss anyone off. For the most part it’s vendors, some good food, a few bands, gangs, yuppies, trailer queens, a few motorcyclists and a lot of motorcycles. Trailer queens were my favorite, they trailer their bikes all the way to Sturgis then ride them around town like they have a clue, some even get them off the trailers 100 miles from town and ride them in like the just made the long journey. To each his own but I thinks it’s funny.
The rest of the trip was to Devil’s tower, Crazy Horse monument, Mt. Rushmore, Rapid City and a lot of cruising around. Devil’s Tower in Wyoming is pretty neat, it’s an old Volcano core that the soil has eroded from exposing the rock core. Spearfish canyon is another great ride, it runs for some distance with just beautiful rock formations. Crazy Horse monument was the most impressive to me.
This will be a monument to Chief Crazy Horse, started 50 years ago by Korczak Ziolkowski to immortalize Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala band of the Lakota Sioux Indian tribe, it’s expected to be completed in another 50 years by his grandson. Chief Crazy Horse was the only Indian Chief not to surrender his people to the reservations, and did not make any treaties with the white man. In 1877 he was lured by a friend (little big man) into Fort Robinson where he was stabbed in the back by a U.S. Calvary guard. He was also one of the Chiefs who fought Custer at Little Big Horn.
There’s a party Wednesday night in Hulett Wy. that replaces what was the party time of Sturgis. I was told the town council of Hulett wanted to get some of the rally revenue and voted to have a Wednesday party with $.25 hot dogs, $1.00 beer and women can take their tops off without being arrested. It worked, 50,000 people showed up J
After 6 days of traveling by motorcycle and sleeping on the ground it was time to pack up and go home. We made Des Moines Iowa the first day and stayed at an Eocene lodge. A room with a bed and shower was nice but not really comfortable. The next morning we got to the intersection to continue home when I told my riding partner that I wan’t sure I was ready to go home yet. She said "all you have to is turn left instead of right" (like I need encouragement). Well I turned right and that evening the Valkyrie was in the Garage waiting for the next expedition.
Key West:
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Went to Key West for Christmas 97. The holidays worked out so that I got 7 days vacation
for 3 days leave, what a deal J Headed south on I-77 on the Valkyrie loaded with a T-bag,
1 pair of jeans, 2 T-shirts, "down the road you go". I got to Savannah Ga. the
first night where the frost was starting to form in the parking lot of the Holiday Inn.
Made Key West the next day and found a KOA at the 70 mile marker. Pitched camp and went to
the campground bar.
Next day was fabulous, I had left the cold nasty stuff in Georgia and was enjoying the crystal blue waters and bright sunshine of the Florida Keys. Mostly drove around to see the sights, Duval St. is sort of the main drag with several land marks. Visited Sloppy Joes, the bar Ernest Hemingway was so fond of, Ripelys believe it or not, Hard Rock Café, Hog’s Breath Saloon and just generally in and out of shops trying to get a feel for what Key West was like. The Hard Rock Cafe was the coolest place there. The place is small but very well laid out and very tastefully decorated. They had one of Dicki Bets guitars, a vest Jimmy Hendrix wore and just on and on. That is the only Hard Rock I’ve been in and its was a real treat. Clint Eastwood has a Hog’s Breath Inn in Carmel Ca. And I asked the guy at the Key West location if Clint has to pay a franchise fee, he said yes, $1.00 per year.
I heard a lot of stories about the bohemian atmosphere their but I never really saw it. I guess love of money has replaced the historical flavor of Key West. The other Keys are more interesting if your looking for the laid back stuff. On my way back up the Keys I saw a large blimp in the distance and went to check it out. Turns out that the DEA has a radar on the thing with a tether cable. They run it up at night to monitor low flying traffic over the keys. Probably the biggest coincidence happened there. I get to the end of Blimp road and there sets another R/W Valkyrie. Just amazing, but then so is motorcycling.
The trip home was a little different, I woke up Christmas morning 5:00 am with a little voice saying, time to go home. So I pack up and by 7:00 am and was headed back to Ohio. I made it to N.C. that evening and had decided to make it a one day trip from Key West to Sunbury Oh., well that didn’t happen. I was starting into Va. When it started raining and then started freezing on the mirrors so I found a Holiday Inn and stopped for the night. The next day it started getting colder. I stopped at the gas station just north of East river mountain and was paying for gas. Somebody cut in front of me to pay for their gas when some else said, hey this guy was there first. I’m still in a daze and said "hell, go ahead I’ll stay in this warm store for as long as you want me to." By the Ohio river the wider vest was on high and running continuously along with the gloves which had burnt my hands so I lined them with some jersey gloves.
At the Ohio river it was 25 deg. and I had been riding in it for several hours. After 80 deg. in the Florida Keys yesterday to 25 deg. today I was ready to see the Keys again. I arrive in Columbus Oh. where I passed the guy who used work on my bikes from his mobile cycle service. He used to race flat track till his partner got killed in a race. After a wave and a smile I was rejuvenated and quickly finished the 40 miles home. Getting home, I stood in the House and shook for an hour trying to warm up.
All in all it was a great trip and look forward to doing it next year J Key West for Christmas, what a concept.
Africa: 
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September 97 I traveled to South Africa for work and some motorcycling. I took a weeks
vacation before work started to see the country. WOW. When I got of the plane I looked at
the countryside and said "this ain’t Kansas". What a place, I first rented
a car and went to Kruger National park. You can’t ride a bike in the park, the lions
will eat you. I’m not kidding, it happens several times a year. It happened the week
before I got there, some guy with his family gets out of the car to get a better picture
of the Lions and they ate him in front of his wife and children.
The Park really is wild Africa, our countries wildernesses were broken and tamed 100 years ago but this place is incredible. I saw Elephants, Rhino, Leopard, Baboons, Wildebeests, Zebra, Impala (Lion snacks), Kudu, basically all the African wildlife.
The big thing is to see the Big Five: Lions, Waterbuffalo, Leopard, Elephant, Cheetah. I didn’t see them all but I was in awe of what I did see.
Occasionally they have to cull the Elephant herds as they uproot the trees and would destroy the park. Turns out that the game people have to be sure and wipe out the whole herd, if on survives it kills every human it can until it’s killed. All the Elephants in the park are in constant communication with each other, when the culling starts every elephant in the park goes crazy. Elephants miles away know that another herd is being wiped out..
There are a few places where you can get out of your car at your own risk. I got out at two stops, what a thrill, knowing that a Lion/Rhino/Elephant/and hundred other things could come out of the bushes and have you for lunch. I’ve never felt more alive.
After hooking up with some of the work people, who also ride, I rented a GS 1100 and toured the Eastern Transval. They made the trip even better since I didn’t know where anything was. I was skeptical about the GS at first since I hadn’t ridden one before but after a few hundred kilometers I was sold. The GS is a great bike handles very well, good cruising range, reliable, fast and comfortable. I think if a guy/gal had to pick one bike forever that would be it. I like the Valkyrie but I could never go up cross country without roads or get 250 miles on a tank of gas.
The Eastern Transval is a mountain range on the eastern side of the country. The scenery is fabulous with high cliffs sheer and drop offs, with some really nice roads. As I was coming around one corner I realized that if for any reason I went of the road and down the cliff no one would find me, just one more missing white guy in S.A.. The Transval is a favorite vacation area for visitors as well as locals. I saw a bunch of sport bikes who were corner carving through the mountains. There are speed limits in S.A. but they don’t have radar guns and all that tricky stuff. They have cables buried in the road, they connect them to a unit their car and set on the side of the road and wait for speeders, needles to say we never got caught. The country side is heavily eroded and gives it a very old quality. Just standing in the countryside you get an eerie feeling of just how ancient this place really is.
The people are basically nice in the country but the cities are extremely dangerous. I was told not to stop a stoplights/signs at night. Carjacking is a common crime, they started by yanking you out of the car and stealing it. Then people started putting alarms in that would call the police from their car. So now their tactics have changed, they wait hidden by the stop signals, when you pull up stop they shoot you and take your car. Violence is very common there, we have a much lower threshold for an acceptable level of crime. It’s like going to inner city NY and turning the volume way up.
I had three days touring, the first day was getting to the Transval on some very nice freeways. The Transval area is like our state routes, only nicer. We traveled a circuit laid out on the tourist maps that went by several waterfalls and rock formations. Places like Gods Window, the Pinnacle, Berlin Falls, etc. From God’s Window you can see Mozambique. Turns out Mozambique is very poor an they often try to get to S.A. but they have to cross Kruger Park and most get eaten before they get across.
The exchange rate was R4.65 to $1.00 so souvenirs were very inexpensive. We found our overnight accommodation in a small town with a pub. You don’t get a room you get a hut, pretty cool. We started having a very good time at the pub and the South Africans wanted to try something American. So I suggested a "Duck Fart". Everyone wanted to try it but I had forgotten how to make one. I borrowed a cell phone and called to my local here at home and got the recipe (1 part whiskey, 1 part Kailua, 1 part Baileys). Needless to say fun had by all.
The next days riding was more of the Transval on roads we hadn’t traveled the day before. We saw the "potholes" which are rock formations under a waterfall and the "three rondovals" which are three giant hut like rock formations on top of a cliff. At the "potholes" we met up with the other guy that flew there with me, coincidence? He was collecting pictures for his wife and kids, he’s a good family man who really wished his family was there. South Africa has a mandatory helmet law but sometime during the day I strapped mine to the back of the GS and enjoyed the sounds and smells of the African countryside.
The next day we headed back the Pretoria in the pouring rain. At one point in the mountains it started hailing. These were localized storms so you just go a little quicker to quit getting pelted (that stuff really hurts). Next was the freeway to Pretoria, the rain was heavier now and so was the traffic. The South African drivers are much more courteous than Americans, when you pass they don’t speed up and if your merging they let you in. The GS never missed a beat although I would liked to of had a bigger windscreen. I turned in the GS that evening a little reluctantly but $60.00 a day is $60.00 a day. Once back to the Hotel it was time to get ready for work the next day.
One week later I was reluctantly on a flight home. It’s the longest flight in the
world 8K+ miles. With lots of time for reflection, I realized that being in a really wild
untamed and dangerous place brought out a part of myself that I didn’t realize was
there. South Africa is somewhere people should really try to go. As always, the trip is
better on a motorcycle.J
Kevin Sickles