Sometimes, It's Good to be a Cager

© Flickr / Wetsun

The opportunity to see 1,000 Cushman scooters engulfing downtown Sturgis, SD, was too good an image to miss, so the rally is now underway and I’m writing from a motel room in Deadwood, about 8 miles from Sturgis. And I have to confess, I did not come here on my motorcycle. And truth be told, I’m not sorry about that.

My initial intent was indeed to ride my Kawasaki Concours, and I intended to camp out somewhere. I’m allergic to high-priced motels and I enjoy camping anyway, so it’s a no-brainer. Then I got the idea to ask Judy, my wife, if she’d like to go on vacation in the Black Hills. We’ve been to the Black Hills before and love it here, so she said yes.

While it is easy to carry camping gear for one on the bike, the gear required for two is another story, unless you have a trailer, which I don’t. That meant we either needed to plan to stay in motels every night or take the car so we could camp, at least some nights. We chose the car. This was all decided weeks ago.

Then the rains started. It rained for two days in Colorado before we left and the windshield wipers were going the entire way as we drove Saturday to Guernsey, WY. It rained hard in Guernsey and I was glad we were at the Bunkhouse Motel and I was not camping at Guernsey State Park.

The next morning we headed on to Deadwood and it was raining. Picking up U.S. 85 at Lusk, we were now on the main road to the Black Hills and it was pouring. And passing us going the other direction were group after group of motorcyclists, all swathed—and hopefully dry—in their rain gear. Yeah, that would have been me.

We got into South Dakota and the road got curvier and narrower. At one point we rose up into a low-hanging cloud. And the rain continued. And we continued to see motorcycles headed the other way. Were all these bikes coming from some rally I didn’t know about? I have no idea. I think they were just on vacation. And what a vacation.

We reached Deadwood and checked in and the lady at the desk told us it seemed like it had been raining forever. At one point the guy who owned one of the Harleys we saw parked outside came in and told how they had been riding up around Mount Rushmore . . . and got drenched. The sky just opened up on them. She told me after he left they were from Illinois and had been here for several days and had hardly been able to ride at all.

When we cruised down to Sturgis mid-afternoon the sky was almost clearing and the rain was just a mist. On the way down we saw several Cushman scooters coming up the canyon. We mixed and mingled with the Cushman crew, had dinner with the mayor of Sturgis and his wife (our wives know each other), and drove back to Deadwood in a torrential downpour. I was thinking about those scooters we saw going up, and once again I was thinking about my plans to ride and to camp.

“So despite the fact that I’m an annoyance and an inconvenience you’re glad you brought me,” Judy said. (Just kiddingly – honest.)

Oh yeah.

Now today there is still some overcast but it looks like the storm is finally breaking. By tomorrow I may be wishing like crazy I had my bike, but on the whole I think I’ll survive. There’s always August, when I’ll be back for the big rally. And I’ll be riding, and camping, for that one. Pray for sun.