12,000 miles in four weeks PT 2

I left for Milwaukee the first days of August with a saddlebag full of clean socks and a huge tube of sunscreen. The plan was to spend 1 month on the road living out of my bike. I had a ton of places to go and friends to see/meet. My first stop was the birthplace of HD.

I travelled with some of the boys from the Harley-Davidson styling department across the upper mid west though the great plains and then on into Sturgis. The first night (and the first photos in this post) we stayed at Bob's fish camp overlooking the Missouri river in west Minnesota. We traveled through some heavy rain on that first day but after that I stayed dry the rest of my trip.

We arrived in Sturgis proper the following afternoon. Our first stop was the Mike Lichtener bike show at the Thunder Dome east of the city. The photos reveal my favorite bikes there including Jeff Decker's killer Crocker and Chopper Dave's little white hotrod. The blue 45 with the VL frame and Indian forks also made the list and still has the gears turning. Cool stuff for sure.

I was anxious to get to my hotel in Rapid City and find my ULH which had made the trip west in the back of a pick-up thanks to my good friends from FMC - Bones and Lobo from the Forbidden Wheels who graciously put me up and Harley-Dave Petlichoff who hooked me up with a shiny new FLH for my month on the roads of the US. I manged to get the old bike out to Nemo road for a good thashing but was ultimately chased back to Rapid by the scariest storm clouds I had ever seen - take a look above for yourself. Lobo, Dave and a cat from Harley-Davidson and I decided to hideout in the hotel bar for food and hot fudge Sundays - yummy.

Then next morning I got up bright and early for a blast down Nemo on the ULH. I managed to make it all the way to Deadwood with no storms - in fact it turned out to be a beautiful day for riding around the black hills on a 70 year old scoot. In the late afternoon I decided to ride into Sturgis to see the craziness but got stuck in a huge traffic jam trying to get into the downtown area. While stuck in traffic idling I noticed off to my right one of the most interesting collection of bikes I'd seen since I had arrived in South Dakota. While sitting there I also realized I had seen these bikes before? These bikes belonged to the guys from the So Cal Sinners so I popped up the curb to get some better shots of the choppers, that's when I met Chopper Dave and some of his crew trying to get a juicy new shovel started on it's way to a show. Dave took some shots of my bike, I took some of his. Once the shovel was alive and kicking Dave told me about a party in the hills outside of Sturgis he and his crew were riding to and asked if I like to follow him there for some food and beer. Heck yes!

That's how I met Crazy Dave (the creator and host of "Crazy Dave's burger burn), T-man (from the Jalopy Journal) and the ever animated Shoe from somewhere down south. Great old bike guys all of which made the bond instanious and I ended up with 4 new friends that night. The food was amazing, the beer cold, and Dave's shop and grounds squeaky clean. "I clean shop? "asked my bike, so of course it just had to get in there and leave it's mark on Dave's floor. That's when it decided to shed an exhaust pipe in his driveway. So into the garage the ULH went. Dave gave me the key to his kingdom and I had the lower part of my bike off and on the floor within minutes. After some tricky welding and grinding by Dave himself and his buddy "the Cowboy Welder" (he told me that was his name) the pipe was ready for the install. Once the bike was done I had a chance to sit down with the whole gang and tell stories. It was a great night for sure and I would like to thank Chopper Dave for the invite and Crazy Dave for the tools, welder and delicious food whaich we covered in sparks grinding my exhaust pipe (see pic).

The next morning Kirk and Tony from HD invited me to go for another rip through the black hills. Tony wanted to visit a mountain top he found on a previous trip to the hills. He promised an amazing view and we were not disappointed. After that it was on to the "Top 50" bike show just off of I-80 heading west into Sturgis. Cool stuff, but to me not nearly as neato as the bikes I found with Shoe, and the Dave's from the night before. So I convinced the guys from HD to ride over to the Dave's house thinking they might be able to meet some of the crew from the night before. Which is exactly what happened. Shoe even did some minor metal work on Tony's bike. Kirk became the impromptu lighting man for Chopper Dave when it came time to shoot the other Dave's red shovel for an upcoming feature. Dave then insisted we all stay for a steak dinner he and his wife were preparing for us all. It was killer to say the least - what good people we had stumbled upon. I had a whole new outlook on Sturgis and it's constituents!

After dinner Dave and Shoe invited me to a private party thrown by some of the builders, I think it was also sponsored by Jeff Decker's Hippodrome Studios(?). The bikes at the party alone were with the sneaking around to get in and eventually I was able to bring the ULH right into the center of the party grounds next to Chopper Dave's S&S X-Wedge powered rocket. Classic grind house biker movies played on a giant screen in an ex-marine base camp tent. Drinks were free, lovely biker people roamed around drooling at all the hardware on display. Big fun - I have to thank Crazy Dave and Shoe for this invite. (Shoe sidehack rig is also worth mentioning as it kept peopl e from driving into my ass on the way to and from the party) Thanks guys.

More to come...