Homecoming

Friday morning found me packed and ready to roll at 10 am (mountain).  Google told me that I could be home at 9 pm (central).  Ten hours of riding is a lot, but the motivator was sleeping in my own bed.

I flew across South Dakota covering quite a bit of the same ground that I had covered on Thursday when I rode to Sturgis, Wall, Badlands National Park, and Rapid City.  But I didn't have Hoopy with me Thursday and I needed shots like "Hoopy Goes to Wall Drug", so I made a quick stop there and the Badlands entry to keep my photographic obligation.

The rest of the ride was quick, all interstate highway and there was a cool tailwind to keep things comfortable.  The dull South Dakota stretch was punctuated by stops for gas and a brief stop at the Corn Palace in Mitchell SD.    

Speed enforcement is higher on this busy stretch of road going into the Labor Day weekend. While I hadn't seen more than a handful of speed traps in the past two weeks, I saw a half dozen on this day alone.  East of Worthington MN, I spotted a police cruiser coming up to tail me, check my speed (motorcycles are nearly invisible to radar), then breeze on by.  My rear view video camera probably paid for itself in that moment!

Darkness fell after 8 pm in Minnesota with about 45 minutes to go.  There are good reasons not to follow close behind another vehicle ... the best one avoiding kicked up road debris such as tire tread or a rock.  But at dusk in late summer, this is offset by the fact that tailgaters are protected from deer by the leading vehicle. I followed a van up highway 169 from Mankato to Chaska with a tight "thousand one thousand two" count gap between us.   

Julie kept in touch through the day to check on my progress.  As I pulled into my neighborhood, I saw my downstairs neighbor and his young son waving a flashlight as I breezed by.  A hundred feet on, another man was waving a sparkler.  Another hundred feet and another sparkler waved.  

Julie had arranged an audience to line the street for me!  I tooted my horn as I continued past several more sparklers illuminating the dark street.  As I pulled into my driveway, Julie smiled in front of the garage emblazoned with signs:

Doe, a deer. Fa, a long long way to run.

Every motorcyclist knows that - sooner or later - something is going to go seriously wrong. The safety margin is simply too slim and there are too many random factors beyond the rider's control. Those "random factors" include weather, debris, pavement conditions, other drivers, and critters. (Toss in controllable factors like speed, alcohol, and machismo and later becomes sooner.)  Bad stuff happens, even to the most attentive and prepared rider.

After a dozen days and over 3400 miles on the road, I counted myself lucky for not having encountered any TRUE near misses. Sure there was that time I had been nose-to-nose with a herd of twenty bison. And yes, there had been hailstones and near-zero visibility on the continental divide in Yellowstone. And okay, my rear brake pedal turned to useless mush in the midst of descending from Guardsman Pass on a gravel switchback.  But my gut reaction to those weren't the heart-pounding "Oh crap" sensation of a genuine near miss.

That feeling came Thursday morning.

I told the front desk at the hotel that I would like to keep the room a second night and headed for the Spearfish Canyon Road.  I entered at the opposite end of the canyon going toward the town of Spearfish, SD.  The ride was breathtaking: shear stone walls rising beside a beautiful mountain stream and a road that meanders, swoops, and dives its way through the gap.

This was as much fun as a person could have on a motorcycle ... with or without chaps. My bike and I had become one.  You simply couldn't find the point of separation between us.  After spending well over 7,000 miles in the saddle, I know my horse and she knows me.  When I think left, we go left.  When I think whoa, we slow down. There simply is no conscious activity involved any longer in starting, shifting, steering, braking ... they simply happen out of will. And so there was perfectly fluid motion, swaying deeply left then right then left again as a pendulum marking time. The feeling of free flight was there as I (we) breezed though the canyon.

But all good things must end and the canyon walls soon began to shrink from thousands of feet to mere hundreds.  The canyon became a valley as the basin widened and the walls took on a less radical slope. Signs of civilization became more evident and I knew the town of Spearfish would appear around the next bend or two.

I slowed to under 40 mph thinking "Fun's over." But it was just about to begin. A doe appeared in the left lane about three seconds ahead. The bike and I gently gave up on power and coasted to the right side of my lane.

I watched the deer crouch to spring directly into my path.

That was the moment.

As my head was going down to brace for impact. I caught a glimpse of that doe catching herselp mid-leaf and turning to let me dash by unscathed.  My heart pounded as I fully comprehended how close I had come to a serious collision.

In hindsight, I feel good about my instinctive reaction: No crazy avoidance maneuvers, just holding the line toward the right side shoulder while cutting the throttle and gently braking.

Soaring

The three key ingredients of a great motorcycle ride are scenery, curves, and hills. Decelerate approaching the bend then shoot an arc (outside-inside-outside of the midline) while accelerating through it. Bike and rider pitch together against gravity and the centrifuge of the road. All this accompanied by Harley-Davidson's trademark sound of rolling thunder. The feeling can only be compared to flying.  Not the 737-passenger-flight-to-Newark type of flying.  More like F22-fighter-jet-in-the-Grand-Canyon.

And you never know what you will find around the next bend:

On this trip I have covered several of the great motorcycle rides in the U.S.:  The Going to the Sun Road in Glacier Park, the eastern shore of Flathead Lake in Montana, the Beartooth Highway and the Chief Joseph Scenic Highway outside the northeast entrance of Yellowstone, the Big Cottonwood Canyon and Guardsman Pass in Utah.

Today's mission is to ride the Spearfish Canyon, the Needle Formation, and the Badlands of South Dakota.  The forecast is crisp and brisk with gusty winds. I will stay overnight in Deadwood a second night, this gives me the opportunity to ride today without the T-bag of clothes, the duffel of camping gear, or the saddle bags. Not exactly light as a feather, but a lot less encumbered than usual.

Tomorrow I will push on across the South Dakota prairie toward home in Minnesota. I can hardly wait to get back to my peaceful town Chaska.

Arrived Deadwood SD, looking for blackjack. Nice ride, bighorn sheep crossed in front of me at Mt Rushmore.

Cowboys and Oilmen

Yesterday's ride took me across the high plains of southern Wyoming where "extraction" rules the economy - coal, soda ash, potash, gas and oil. Easy interstate the first 250 miles, good two-lane from Rawlins to Casper. Supper at the Beacon "where cowboys sneak in." Cowboys and oil rig wranglers have the same lean and sun-baked look and even dress alike. The cowboys don't have as much money to toss around as the ten-on-four-off drillers. Today's weather looks like it could get wet late in the day. My target is the Black Hills (Custer SD).