Sturgis Turns 69

Sugar Bear aboard one of his legendary Springers

Reaching Sturgis nearly several days before the official start of the rally provides quite a different perspective-basically there are a lot less ants on the farm. After a serene 4x4 tour of the remote backwoods and mountains above the city of Lead on a couple of Rick's quads, I handed the RC RK keys back to Rick and picked up my new ride for the week, a Victory Vision Tour.

Beauty and the Beast?

The Mothership as I called it, turned out to be the perfect ride for hitting all the hot spots in and around Sturgis proper, packing in all my photo gear, collecting souvenirs, and transferring my clothes from one flop spot to another. Throughout my time on the Victory, I was stopped several times by other "Vision-aries" who wanted to talk shop and discuss all the intricacies of the clan of the "V." I think I was offered an honorary spot in the VOG, but my Tour and I couldn't be assimilated. We were like a lone wolf left to carve Spearfish canyon the way it's meant to be ridden-in solitude. And it was dipping and diving in and out of the canyon's sweeping turns that the Tour took on a life of its own and kicked into autopilot as it continually increased its speed and took less and less effort from me to get around the next corner. It quickly became evident that this bike lives in the turns. Without a hiccup, wobble, or skip; no matter what the radius or speed of the turn it was headed into the Tour didn't whine or shudder, it just wanted more.

The Tour at rest in Spearfish Canyon.

Even with the extra days in town, I still didn't accomplish everything I wanted to and missed out on quite a bit. I didn't catch any of the old school flat track races at the County Line, I didn't make it out to Needles Highway, I didn't get a look at Michael Lichter's photo-stravaganza or see Steven Tyler's stage dive at the Chip, and apparently I dodged outta town before the hailstorm of the century decided to play the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida drum solo on a bunch of bikes, trailers and people's heads. Between tech shoots, bike shoots, trips to the Badlands and Devil's Tower, press events like the Legends Charity ride, watching Dave Cook of Cooks Customs take the title of the first American builder to capture the AMD World Championships crown, and trying to figure out how the hell I was going to transcribe all my experiences via words and photos into a mere seven pages, my working road trip was pretty damn good.